On November 8th, at Lisebergshallen in Gothenburg on the west coast of Sweden, The Zone returns with the cage, for another night of MMA action, featuring Sweden’s most feared striker Alexander “The Mauler” Gustafsson (Pictures), and the debut of a former wrestling world champion.

The Zone promotion is essentially a sequel to the popular and well-recognized “European Vale Tudo” (EVT) events, which took place between 2003 and 2006. EVT was visited by UFC fighters such as Guy Mezger (Pictures), Travis Lutter (Pictures), Martin Kampmann (Pictures) and Dennis Siver (Pictures), and the fight-card for Zone FC continues this tradition by being filled with up and comers, hoping to make a name for themselves.

The 13 fights on the card include fighters from Brazil, Spain, Scotland, Denmark, Switzerland, Norway and Sweden.

In a highly anticipated light-heavyweight fight, Swedish striker and rising star Alexander “The mauler” Gustafsson is up against Spanish K-1 veteran Pedro Quetglas. Gustafsson, a former amateur boxing champion, is undefeated in five amateur and six professional fights in MMA. The hard hitting swede has finished eight opponents with strikes so far. With a background in professional kickboxing and amateur boxing, twice participating in K-1 Marsella, spanish striker Quetglas won’t back down from the upcoming slugfest.

Main event, in the super heavy weight division, has former olympic wrestler Eddy Bengtsson, making his MMA debut. Bengtsson who was a world champ in greco roman as a junior, has been preparing for a new career in the cage for quite some time, training boxing and sparring with MMA fighters on a daily basis. Bengtsson was supposed to make his debut cage fight this spring, but the opponent never showed. This time, the call was answered by Scottish powerhouse and brawler Andy Hillhouse, who’s hoping to knock the big wrestler out.

Swedish MMA pioneer August Wallén won’t be stopped by the fact that he just turned 40. He’s once again on the main card, in a middle weight bout against another veteran, Frenchman Yahya Lalanne. A former judoka training with Haute Tension, Lalanne has been competing in grappling tournaments and thaiboxing as well as MMA. This will be a fight between two old timers who knows more about fighting then their records suggest.

In a promising light weight matchup, undefeated Martin Svensson will try once more to wow the crowd. This 21 year old grappler finished his last opponent in just over a minute, with a Chute Boxe-esque attack of jumping knees and high kicks. Before that, the young man from Malmo had an impressive seven fight win streak (6 amateur, 1 pro), all by submission. He’s up against powerful ground’n’pound specialist Rasmus Bendtsen of Denmark.

Also on the card we see a couple of EVT veterans, such as purple belt Christian Dellevåg fighting fellow swede Per Friden. And experienced crowd favourite Åke Bergvall in a fight against powergrappler Peter Mettler of Switzerland. Brazilian grappler Alan Carlos of the Carvalho team, will compare jiu jitsu prowess with Swedish purple belt and judo black belt Mats Nilsson.

Fightcard:

SHW: Eddy Bengtsson, Sweden (debut) vs. Andy Hillhouse, Scotland (1-1-0)

-93 kg: Alexander Gustafsson (Pictures), Sweden (6-0-0) vs. Pedro Quetglas, Spain (2-2-0)

-84 kg: August Wallén, Sweden (2-1-0) vs. Yahya Lalanne, France (3-1-1)

-84 kg: Mats Nilsson, Sweden (1-0-0) vs. Alan Carlos, Brazil (2-1-0)

-70 kg: Martin Svensson, Sweden (2-0-0) vs. Rasmus Bendtsen, Denmark (3-1-1)

-76 kg: Åke Bergvall, Sweden (2-2-0) vs. Peter Mettler, Switzerland (4-1-0)

-77 kg: Christian Dellevag, Sweden (1-2-0) vs. Per Friden, Sweden (1-0-0)

-93 kg: Anders Hansson, Sweden (debut) vs. Peter Ottosson, Sweden (debut)

-77 kg: Besam Yousef, Sweden (1-0-0) vs. Thomas Formo, Norway (debut)

-77 kg: Fredrik Klingsell, Sweden (0-3-0) vs. Jens Östling (debut)

-84 kg: Daniel Engström, Sweden (1-0-0) vs. Jakub Bugai, Sweden (debut)

-65 kg: Tobias Hellström, Sweden (debut) vs. Oskar Sollevi, Sweden (1-0-0)

-70 kg: Henning Svendsen, Norway (3-1-1) vs. Erik Kalseth, Sweden (0-1-0)

Zone FC website(english): http://www.thezonefc.com/default.asp