Giancarlo Bodoni has just been booked to challenge Pedro Marinho for the Who’s Number One Light-Heavyweight title, with the match serving as the co-main event for the upcoming Gordon Ryan v Felipe Pena event on February 25th. This would be far from the first time that these two have crossed paths on the competitive mats either, as they have faced one another twice before. Their first meeting was all the way back when they were purple belts and Bodoni won in the gi, with their second match coming much more recently in black belt no gi competition and was won by Marinho.
This isn’t the first time that this trilogy match has been proposed either, as the pair were originally scheduled to compete shortly after Bodoni’s breakthrough performance at ADCC 2022. Unfortunately for the fans, Bodoni was forced to withdraw from the match and it didn’t go ahead at the time. Both men actually competed in the 88kg division of ADCC 2022, but their results were significantly different on opposite sides of the bracket.
Bodoni emerged with a gold medal, while Marinho defeated Jacob Rodriguez in the opening round before losing to Vagner Rocha. They also both competed in the absolute division at ADCC 2022 too, but Pedro Marinho lost in the opening round to Tye Ruotolo whereas Bodoni submitted Haisam Rida before losing to his teammate Nicholas Meregali. Since his 5-1 run at ADCC 2022, Giancarlo Bodoni has quickly become a fan-favorite and he will only improve his legacy if he manages to defeat Pedro Marinho and add the WNO Light-Heavyweight title to his collection.
The original co-main event for the epic Gordon Ryan v Felipe Pena 4 match was due to be a rematch between Nicholas Meregali and Craig Jones, but this was postponed indefinitely when Jones withdrew. Now that FloGrappling have managed to put together Giancarlo Bodoni v Pedro Marinho as the replacement, the event will go ahead with just as much hype as before. The rest of the card has not yet been announced, but it’ll no doubt be stacked with some of the best grapplers around.
