Salovaara and Silander on Solidified Cage Challenger Tampere Card

August 15, 2014

Espoon Kehahait fighters Joni Salovaara and Mikael Silander will be the big names on the Cage “Challenger” event which will be held in Tampere on Saturday, August 23. While the original card had planned to include Marcus Vänttinen (24 wins, 5 losses, #3 Nordic ranked LHW) and Espoon Kehähait MMA pioneer Mikko Rupponen on the card, however both fell off due to injury.

Cage Poster Tampere

“I am of course anticipating all the fights on the Cage Challenger Tampere card, there are good fighters who will step in the Cage-promotion cage for the first time. But there are two fights which are top European level fights, the main event and co-main event.” says Cage matchmaker Timo Lampen to MMAViking.com.

After dropping two bouts in 2013, Silander (11-3) has reeled off three straight victories that includes the most recent unanimous decision triumph over Daniel Barez at Cage 26 in April. “In the co-main event, Hulk fights Dimitar Kostov a wrestling based fighter who is Andreas Bernhard training partner. I think it’s Silander standup skills against Kostov’s wrestling game. I am expecting a really good performance both fighters. Maybe one of them will be in UFC or maybe both in future.” comments Lampen.

Salovaara (13-7) last fought in Cage 25 and suffered a unanimous decision loss to American Adam Ward after impressively stopping another American Chase Beebe via rear-naked choke in Fight Festival 33. “In the main event, we see Salovaara against Nicolas Joannes, both are really experienced and like fight standing up. It’s going be war of these highly skills fighters and the Tampere crowd is going be wild.”