A Week Later and GLORY Still Rocks
A Week Later and GLORY Still Rocks
By Christopher Jester
A week after GLORY 11, the event still has fans reacting from its impressive debut. Full of action-packed fights, GLORY’s debut on American television might have been one of the more exciting debuts in a long time. Out of the six fights that were televised, only two fights went the distance. So many great stories came out of the event. The epic tournament format, which is unbeknownst to new-aged combat sport fans, returned in devastating fashion with an underdog defeating two of the best kickboxers in the world. It was just that kind of night. And with any sort of repeat reaction like this, GLORY and kickboxing will become a mainstay in America.
Ironically, the more well-known kickboxers in Gokhan Saki and Daniel Ghita lost to relative underdog Rico Verhoeven. The Dutch heavyweight won the Glory Heavyweight Tournament Championship with aggressiveness and technique. This showcased the new dawn not only for GLORY but for new fans who were introduced to this combative sport.
What helped was that newcomers to kickboxing found the introduction easy. They did not have to learn a lot of rules, which cannot be said about the popular combat sport of mixed martial arts. There was no need to worry about how a takedown works, or how judging is applied. The fighters left very little to judge anyway with knockdowns and knockouts galore. GLORY debuted with enough action to grab any fan that was not willing to fork out the pay-per-view dollars needed to watch the boxing match between Tim Bradley and Juan Manuel Marquez.
Spike TV had done their part throughout the week, providing appropriate teasers and ads for the program during their male-dominated sport segments such as TNA and Bellator. Just as much as GLORY gained a new standout star in Rico Verhoeven, it was just as fitting that Spike TV added another all-star program in GLORY. The benefit to both is just how social media erupted about the event. Upcoming events will tell the story of just how much kickboxing will remain relevant in America but to say the least, the partnership between GLORY and Spike TV did a great job providing ample enough to remind us why we should tune in to GLORY 12: New York on November 23.
Tyrone Spong surely helped out the ratings for the show as well. The “King of the Ring” avenged an early career No Contest to Nathan Corbett by earning a TKO victory in the second round. Just how much Spong helped ratings? Well, comparably his headlining of World Series of Fighting 4 did 264,000 viewers whereas GLORY 11 achieved 381,000 viewers. While these are not numbers comparable to UFC or Bellator, it is a good starting point considering this is the first time kickboxing has been showcased on television in America in decades.
It was not just Spong alone. With Verhoeven defeating both Saki and Ghita, along with Joseph Valtellani and Errol Zimmerman both scoring TKOs in their bouts – this was just the exciting kind of event that will go down as one of the best events of the year. GLORY and kickboxing is here and finally has what appears to be what it takes to remain prominent in the States. Hurry up November 23rd; combat fans are looking forward to seeing how GLORY 12: New York will top the remarkable debut of GLORY 11!
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