Czech welterweight Jan Malach had a relatively calm appearance at the Oktagon 64 press conference this week.
His counterparts in the night’s main event? Not so much.
“The press conference overall was rather calm – mine, the first leg of it,” Malach said with a laugh, speaking with Cageside Press immediately after. The later part was anything but calm, in fact, as Hatef Moeil and Lazar Todev got into it and had to be separated.
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Malach (17-14) finally faces off with Gokhan Asku at Saturday’s Oktagon 64 card in Munchen, Germany. The welterweight veteran of over 30 fights had been booked with Asku twice before, only for his opponent to withdraw due to injury. As it turned out, it was third time lucky.
“There is a thing that, Oktagon will put you on a card everywhere, in Germany, against a German fighter. And I was in a state where, I like to fight in Germany. I had an opponent, it’s a good match-up, and I wanted to keep it that way,” Malach explained. “Even though he injured himself two times, I was like, ‘I’m going to give him a third chance.'”
Third time lucky, or, as Malach added, “third time’s the charm.”
Malach enjoys fighting in Germany, but it’s less about the location, and more about the variety of opponents.
“All that matters is that I’m fighting a guy who I’ve never seen before. I don’t like fighting Czechoslovaks, because I know all these guys,” he told us. “It’s hard to go a full 100% against them when you’ve known them for like 10 years. They don’t have to be your close friends – it’s weird.”
Jan Malach also addressed his iffy weight cut ahead of Oktagon 64. While he did make weight, it didn’t exactly go as planned.
“It was mediocre. It went well, but it was a bigger weight cut than I expected. But it went kind of well.” The bottom line is that he wound up cutting more weight than planned. “I expected that I’m going to be left in the morning with a certain amount of kilos, but I was two kilos heavier. On the other hand, I kept sweating in the sauna. So it took a long time, but it went. Sometimes, it [sweating] just stops. And this time it didn’t stop, but it was a big amount.”
Watch our full interview with Oktagon 64’s Jan Malach above.
