Josh Jackson poised for ROC 83 welterweight title challenge
Louis Neglia Jr and Frankie Perez’s Dead Serious Promotions are pillars in the MMA community. Their consistency in providing a high-level forum for mixed martial artists to perform and entertaining fights for the fans just keeps getting better.
Ring of Combat will host their first of four 2024 events on Friday evening, March 1, at their usual home inside the Showroom at the Tropicana Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City.
Lou and Frankie are not messing around with their first fight card of the year. There are three championship fights and a super-fight which could be a title elimination fight. I would bet money that there are multiple fighters entering the cage this night, that will be making that walk to the UFC”s Octagon in the near future.
The Main Event
Itso Babulaidze is the defending ROC welterweight champion, and his story is amazing just like he is. Itso came to the US about four and a half years ago from the Republic of Georgia at 25 years old wanting to follow his dream of becoming a professional fighter like his fellow countryman Merab Dvalishvili. He had no fighting or mixed martial arts background at all. He found a construction job and a fantastic gym at Marquez MMA in Northeast Philadelphia. They are home to numerous UFC fighters. Head instructor, John Marquez told Itso if he wanted to fight, he had to train. So Itso did. Every day. In less than five years, Babulaidze has fought five amateur fights and now gone on to start his professional career at 4-0. In his most recent fight at ROC 81, he fought through adversity and losing the first two rounds to Jimmy Drago, to finally clamp on to Drago and do his best python imitation as he secured the choke, and the submission win to earn his first ever championship of any kind. This was a tremendous fight from both men. But now it’s time for his journey to continue and he is tasked with a very dangerous Josh Jackson. Jackson is 8-3 and coming off of 3 consecutive KO finishes. Jackson comes in from Maryland and 6 of his 8 wins have come from KO/TKO stoppages. Looks at first glance like your grappler vs striker matchup.
Interview with Josh Jackson below
MyMMANews reached out to Josh Jackson to learn a little bit about him and how he sees this matchup. When asked about how he found MMA and fighting, he tells us…
“I just randomly happened to see the Anderson Silva vs Chris Leben fight at my grandmother’s house. I was like, this is different. I like this. I continued with college and played football and baseball but found my way back.”
Please check out our interview on the link above to hear more about his path into the cage as well as his take on his main event and welterweight title opportunity. Josh is confident and has a very good team around him.
Ring of Combat 83 is hosted in Atlantic City at the Tropicana Casino and Hotel Resort on Friday evening March 1st. Doors open at 8 pm. First bell is 8:30 pm. The event will be streamed live on the Streaming Pulse app and is absolutely FREE. Check us out as I will be at the commentary table with Professor Jay Regalbuto and former UFC standout “Raging” Al Iaquinta, and heading into the cage for some post-fight interviews as this card is stacked with 3 championship fights, a super-fight and several other great matchups.
