ACA Lightweight Grand Prix winning trainer Edward Vartanyan Armen Ghulyan shared with the details of the fighter’s preparation for the fight against Artem Reznikov and named the name of the sparring partner for the wrestling workouts.
At the ACA 159 tournament, Vartanyan defeated Reznikov in the Grand Prix Final, earning $200,000 for the victory. The fight ended in the third round with a technical knockout and all the while it was in favor of Vartanyan.
— We practiced many more variations in actions. The same side control, comes out of “North-South”, if the opponent attacks like that. We have recorded a podcast where we will show the text of the fight plan, which we have been working on for a month, and we want to show a video of the elaboration of the technical elements in the morning before the fight. The same front kicks, the same jerks, uppercuts, defense in the fight – all that was actually implemented in the battle.
“Artem told me that North-South starts by taking side control from him. How did you protect yourself from this?
– I practice North-South fights myself, but my physical data probably does not correspond to Artem Reznikov (Gulyan competes in the weight category up to 61.2 kg – ). In general, Edward went to the Grusha hall, worked with Igor Vasilyevich Smolyanov. He’s a boxing trainer, but now he does a lot of grappling, and he has a really strong shoulder girdle. And when Edik leveled the abilities of Igor Vasilyevich by entering the North-South, we already understood for sure that we could not surprise you with physics, but we were ready for anything with a technical arsenal. Even if there was a North-South exit, we would still block it. Igor Vasilyevich is the person who can strangle the North-South, even on the back. And he went out with Edik, more even on the folds [шеи], because in the beginning, Edward was looking at the variations and throwing him into different tricks. But when Eduard approached the fight himself, not a single person at the reception could catch him.
When Eduard said in a press conference on something like “Let’s go to the gym now, we’re going to fight until the reception, and I’m going to win…”. In fact, Edward believed it. If you fought in the format: transfer, stand, score, then yes, maybe Artem would have won. But, from the point of view of functional endurance, work, physical strength, Artem has never met a person like Edik. Edik can be transferred, but almost impossible to keep.
“Is there at least something Artyom managed to do?”
– The only thing that surprised him was when Eduard changed his position, he got a knee from him. It was unexpected, and everything else is predictable. Before that, in the semis, Artem thought we were upset when he beat Koshkin. But there, I looked at the fight from a tactical point of view: Koshkin collapsed on the other side and thus allowed Artem to enter the choke hold. Andrei made a mistake that was most unacceptable at that time and got caught. And I was bowled over by how predictably he acted,” Gulyan told .
Vartanyan and Reznikov met in the ACA Lightweight Grand Prix Final, defeating Yusuf Raisov and Andrey Koshkin respectively in the semifinals.
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Source : MatchTV

I am Ashley Ortiz and I am a professional journalist working for Athletistic. My specialty is in sports journalism, particularly boxing. I have written articles for some of the most renowned publications on the subject, and my work has been featured across both print and digital media platforms.