Petar Stoikov lands dream fight in New York

Saturday night at the Lincoln Fight Factory saw the team take on there biggest ever challenge, not only organising one K1 4 Man tournament, but organising two K1 4 Man tournaments in one night.

Lincoln Fight Factory and Kickboxing Classics (promotional side of the gym) owner Shawn Burton has long had a dream of promoting a super show that would put some of the best kickboxers in the country in a tournament to see who was the number one fighter at that weight.

Over the years we have had some great kickboxers in the gym including Chris Deakin (x2 World and European Champion), Aaron Robinson (x3 British Champion), Tom Scutt (British, Commonwealth and Intercontinental Champion), Callum Thompson (British and 4 Nations Champion), Trevor Tacy (x3 World Champion) and Jack Deakin (World and European Champion) to name a few, but over the last couple of years we have turned more into a boxing club, a very successful boxing club, but now we are regaining a fearsome reputation on the kickboxing scene.

12 months ago we had a new influx of Eastern Europeans enter the gym including professional K1 fighter Karolis Maciševskis from Lithuania, who has sadly gone back home, but 5 months ago a new fighter came into the gym.  A quiet, modest Bulgarian 20 year old named Petar Stoikov sent the club an email to see if he could come training, he came that night with his training equipment and as the saying goes ‘the rest is history.’

From Petar’s first sparring session it was obvious we had a special talent in the gym.  We were told his record was 12 wins and 3 loss under K1 rules and after a pull out for a show he stepped in to fighter after just 2 training sessions to fight under Full Contact rules, a rule set he had never trained under, disposing of a very good European Champion in under 1 minute of the 1st round.  It then hit the team just how special this lad could be.

Coach Shawn Burton immediately put the wheels in motion to get a 4 man tournament on his next show, putting a message out to the biggest gyms in the UK to see who had the best fighter at 74kg.  This caught the interest of New York based promoter Bobby Campbell (who beat Shawn for the WKA World Title 8 years ago) and they spoke about the winner of the event fighting in New York in November 2017 for the World K1 Rules title.

When word got around the interest was huge and names were being submitted by coaches from all over the UK.  We made a shortlist to filter out the best fighters and the line up was frightening to look at, sadly we lost one fighter due to injury but were left with the highly rated Tommy Crossland from Combat Academy, very strong Dawid Majcherzak from Musashi Gym in Peterborough and British Champion Piotr Panczak from Function First also from Lincoln.

On the night we had game plans for each fighter Petar could face and when the draw was made Petar was up against Crossland, this is probably the fight we didn’t want in the first round as he was the obvious favourite, despite only being 18 years old.

Tommy had a great record of 20 wins and 3 losses and we knew he was very technical and effective with his combinations.  In the weeks leading up to the event, we knew the key to beat Tommy would be to pressure from the off and not give him the space to showcase his skills.

This was a top class bout from the start with Petar using solid kicks to the legs of Crossland and Crossland replying with his silky skills.  This was the pattern for the whole 3 rounds and it really was tough to call, neither corner could be 100% confident they would have a fighter in the final.

Luckily for the Lincoln Fight Factory the 3 ringside officials could and Stoikov took the win and would face Dawid Majcherzak in the final who was coming off a 2nd round stoppage over Panczak.

The final of the 74kg tournament was the main event of the evening and certainly lived up to the hype and the excitement hit boiling point and both men entered the ring.

Neither fighter took a backward step for the whole of the 3 rounds as they both pushed forward landing hurtful blows in their quest to win that huge fight in New York.

It was Stoikov who appeared to be the busier and the stronger throughout the fight and after 2 close rounds really took the fight to the Peterborough based Pole in the final round.

After 3 rounds, again it went to the scorecards and again in was Lincoln Fight Factory’s Petar Stoikov who was awarded a unanimous points victory and would be fight in America much to the delight of a sell out crowd.

Petar later told us that he broke his toe in the first round of the first fight, which makes the win even better and shows the heart and determination that this young man had to win.

Well done Petar from everyone at the gym.