ADCC veteran Lachlan Giles will be competing at the eighth installment of Polaris on December 9 after a series of unfortunate events for both him and the former welterweight title contenders.
The original matchup for the title was set to be Ross Nicholls vs. Oliver Taza, but since Taza was injured and unable to compete, Marcin Held stepped in to replace him. Later, however, Held also suffered an injury and was replaced by Mansher “Munch” Khera. Then, yesterday it was announced that Nicholls also had to pull out due to injury, which leads us to the current matchup of Giles vs. Khera.
The opportunity is a silver lining after a crazy week for Giles, who had been planning on competing at the ADCC Asia & Oceania Trials on December 9. However, ADCC ultimately canceled the Trials due to a lack of participants, leaving Giles and his teammates stuck between either canceling their flights to Kazakhstan altogether or taking a long and expensive flight for a tournament that wasn’t going to happen. Now, Giles will be taking a last-minute trip from Kazakhstan to Cardiff, Wales to compete for the title opportunity that he originally had to turn down in order to compete at the ADCC Trials.
Giles’ teammate and famous student Craig Jones will be competing against Keenan Cornelius for the light heavyweight title in the main event. Could they both return to Australia with new championship belts?
Polaris 8 will take place on Sunday, December 9 at Ice Arena Wales.
