Glory 44 Chicago: Doumbé, Groenhart, Abraham, Jacoby, van Soest, Moroșanu [25th August]

[null]

I don't know UWanna, I think Dustin Jacoby, who is much improved the last few years as a kickboxer and had a reasonable showing vs a champion in Simon Marcus, would have a decent chance of beating up a third tier Thai assuming you could find one that big, at least if the bout was with kickboxing rules in the Glory ring.

 

[Snubnoze707]

I just feel like the match ups being made in China are more intriguing and generally more entertaining than what Glory is doing lately. I think the K-1 events in Japan are 100x more entertaining than Glory.

Really the most exciting thing to happen in Glory lately was that Groenhart Grigorian debacle.

@JimGunn has the advantage of coming into this late rather than seeing Kickboxing in its "glory" days. Our standards are much higher, and they aren't all unrealistic.

 

[ctrlaltdelete]

Doumbe vs Murthel - fuck yeah I'll watch
Abraham? Sure I'll watch.

Morosanu - listens to metal yeah I'll watch.

I'm not mad at Glory for this card, it will be entertaining for me.

 

[Snubnoze707]

I dont think anyone is mad at the card, just getting that "meh" feeling. Glory has been stale as hell for a while. I'd rather be excited about the promotion but I just have to be honest. The last card I had to warn my friend that it was just so-so level and it was. I can't try and spread my love for the sport to others with "meh" events...

 

[VinceF]

I had this line of thought like two years ago but some Glory cards in that time weren't enjoyable at all. more like a chore to watch them sometimes.

and you don't have to rely on Glory to watch kickboxing anymore, there's K-1 Japan and Kunlun putting better events regularly.

FW and LW yes. For the rest we need to rely on Glory. And thats no problem, decent amount of cards, some fun promos etc. And not all cards are crazy good, but at least it is something.

Also i expect a big card for glory 46 and 50.

I will watch glory44 and think/hope i will enjoy it.

 

[SuperLuigi]

I just feel like the match ups being made in China are more intriguing and generally more entertaining than what Glory is doing lately. I think the K-1 events in Japan are 100x more entertaining than Glory.

Really the most exciting thing to happen in Glory lately was that Groenhart Grigorian debacle.

@JimGunn has the advantage of coming into this late rather than seeing Kickboxing in its "glory" days. Our standards are much higher, and they aren't all unrealistic.

K-1 Japan puts on better cards but I appreciate that Glory is able to put on decent cards pretty regularly, don't require VPN, and have English commentary. China is the best overall imo.

 

[null]

I had this line of thought like two years ago but some Glory cards in that time weren't enjoyable at all. more like a chore to watch them sometimes.

and you don't have to rely on Glory to watch kickboxing anymore, there's K-1 Japan and Kunlun putting better events regularly.

It would be nice if Kunlun and K-1 Japan weren't just completely focused on their home markets in China & Japan. Only the one-tenth of one percent hardest of the hardcore foreign fans and hipsters who take pride in jumping through hoops to be fans are realistically going to watch their cards regularly. It would be awesome if they ended up on Fight Pass with a knowledgeable commentator or even if they had tape delayed cards on a smaller channel CBS SN like Superkombat. I know that one doesn't have to hear commentary to see people punching or kicking one another or getting their hands raised by the referee, but it takes away a lot of the entertainment value to most people to completely miss out on all context, back story or anything other than the raw physical combat of the fight.

 

[Karaev fan]

It would be nice if Kunlun and K-1 Japan weren't just completely focused on their home markets in China & Japan. Only the one-tenth of one percent hardest of the hardcore foreign fans and hipsters who take pride in jumping through hoops to be fans are realistically going to watch their cards regularly. It would be awesome if they ended up on Fight Pass with a knowledgeable commentator or even if they had tape delayed cards on a smaller channel CBS SN like Superkombat. I know that one doesn't have to hear commentary to see people punching or kicking one another or getting their hands raised by the referee, but it takes away a lot of the entertainment value to most people to completely miss out on all context, back story or anything other than the raw physical combat of the fight.

Agreed, but its a slim hope. I can't imagine things like the CBS deal for SK or the ESPN deal for Glory is a real money maker. Glory supposedly makes decent money from Fight Pass but its a desperate, short sighted move to allow someone like the UFC to build up a Netflix-like subscription on the back of your content.

Its crazy frustrating, but those guys are likely to be focusing on their own market for the time being so long as there is such huge growth potential there.

 

[Karaev fan]

yeah lets all boo on glory for giving us an event that does not contain 15+ top 10 guys...


Lets just enjoy the fights mkay? cause its what we like and stuff...

You absolutely should boo Glory for not putting on an event filled with top fighters.
Most kickboxing fans were raised by K-1. The expectation is that we should see a bunch of top ranked guys fight each other on one night. In return, its fine if there's only 2-3 really top level cards a year for a division. K-1 was a spectacle that people got hyped up for.

Now with the US Commissions not allowing one night tournaments, Glory has switched to the UFC model of frequent but relatively thin cards featuring only 1 or 2 noteworthy fights. That can work too, but if you try to pull that off you better be building up your promotion as a sport you can follow regularly with clear rankings and title progression. If you can't convince people to buy into it as a sport, you're just left with a bunch of stakeless weak cards.

Since 2015 or so Glory hasn't been a spectacle or a sport. Worse of both worlds.

 

[null]

Agreed, but its a slim hope. I can't imagine things like the CBS deal for SK or the ESPN deal for Glory is a real money maker. Glory supposedly makes decent money from Fight Pass but its a desperate, short sighted move to allow someone like the UFC to build up a Netflix-like subscription on the back of your content.

Its crazy frustrating, but those guys are likely to be focusing on their own market for the time being so long as there is such huge growth potential there.

Glory essentially creates two cards out of each event with the SFS and Glory main card being separate and therefore has multiple ways to license the content. That's what is in it for them, whether it was the SFS on CBS SN like it used to be and main card on Spike and now Fight Pass and ESPN instead. Then of course they have deals in various other countries around the world for one or both parts of the cards eg, Canada, UK, Netherlands, Australia, etc etc. It's kind of odd that a promotion like Kunlun doesn't care at all about additional revenue streams, even if smallish, from international tv deals. I know the time zone and language are issues, but there are relatively inexpensive solutions for that like tape delay, or a local English speaking or remote commentator. Of course China is their main market but the overall picture not about one or the other, good businessmen should be trying to add various licensing tv deals all the time.Why limit yourself?

 

[null]

...Glory has switched to the UFC model of frequent but relatively thin cards featuring only 1 or 2 noteworthy fights. That can work too, but if you try to pull that off you better be building up your promotion as a sport you can follow regularly with clear rankings and title progression. If you can't convince people to buy into it as a sport, you're just left with a bunch of stakeless weak cards.

These division recaps they do after every card explain who the next contenders are in each division:

 

[Karaev fan]

Glory essentially creates two cards out of each event with the SFS and Glory main card being separate and therefore has multiple ways to license the content. That's what is in it for them, whether it was the SFS on CBS SN like it used to be and main card on Spike and now Fight Pass and ESPN instead. Then of course they have deals in various other countries around the world for one or both parts of the cards eg, Canada, UK, Netherlands, Australia, etc etc. It's kind of odd that a promotion like Kunlun doesn't care at all about additional revenue streams, even if smallish, from international tv deals. I know the time zone and language are issues, but there are relatively inexpensive solutions for that like tape delay, or a local English speaking or remote commentator. Of course China is their main market but the overall picture not about one or the other, good businessmen should be trying to add various licensing tv deals all the time.Why limit yourself?

You're making it sound like Glory's current arrangement where their cards are cut up and split between Fight Pass and ESPN is some sort of business strategy and not a frankenstein like arrangement they bungled into while trying to survive the Spike debacle. When I was trying to follow Glory while in the states it was an absolute nightmare just trying to watch this stuff. There is no single place where you can see the whole coherent card. I had to subscribe to fight pass, then tried to see the main card on ESPN 2, only to find out that it was delayed do to some sort of college football nonsense and thus was now broadcasting ESPN 3 (a fact I only found out because I checked what others were doing on twitter), then found out that ESPN 3 wasn't even available with my subscription.

As for foreign promotions not doing English broadcasts that's hardly a non-trivial expense. K-1 Japan has 15 guys and a shoe string budget with which to arrange a show or two per month (including the Krush, Khaos and amateur events). Yeah, they could go around trying to set up a broadcast deal with fite TV, go grab a commentator, and hire a PR guy who speaks English to keep up English PR. A lot of work for an audience--lets face it--are likely the few thousand who were crazy enough to go around staying up at night and using VPN services anyways.

On the other hand, K-1 and the Chinese promotions both have a huge local crowd that's increasingly demanding more. K-1 started with only a few thousand watching their shows on Niconico. Then they moved to Abema and got 300K viewers for their March 2016 event, 800K at the end of 2016 and are now at 1.5M now. They're now the single biggest recurring programming on Abema and increasingly producing more content like documentaries, backstage stuff and pre-event hype shows all of which feed back into their core. Not to mention the fact that the opportunity to actually put their show out on Golden Time TV still eludes them. That's a ton of work that they can be doing that directly feeds back into their core.

These division recaps they do after every card explain who the next contenders are in each division:

Yeah, a vid recap that's watched by a few K people isn't what I meant. What I mean is stuff like actually having Contender tournaments that lead to actual Contenders, rankings that are not an absolute joke, and clarity for events in the upcoming year.

 

[null]

You're making it sound like Glory's current arrangement where their cards are cut up and split between Fight Pass and ESPN is some sort of business strategy and not a frankenstein like arrangement they bungled into while trying to survive the Spike debacle. When I was trying to follow Glory while in the states it was an absolute nightmare just trying to watch this stuff. There is no single place where you can see the whole coherent card. I had to subscribe to fight pass, then tried to see the main card on ESPN 2, only to find out that it was delayed do to some sort of college football nonsense and thus was now broadcasting ESPN 3 (a fact I only found out because I checked what others were doing on twitter), then found out that ESPN 3 wasn't even available with my subscription.

As for foreign promotions not doing English broadcasts that's hardly a non-trivial expense. K-1 Japan has 15 guys and a shoe string budget with which to arrange a show or two per month (including the Krush, Khaos and amateur events). Yeah, they could go around trying to set up a broadcast deal with fite TV, go grab a commentator, and hire a PR guy who speaks English to keep up English PR. A lot of work for an audience--lets face it--are likely the few thousand who were crazy enough to go around staying up at night and using VPN services anyways.

On the other hand, K-1 and the Chinese promotions both have a huge local crowd that's increasingly demanding more. K-1 started with only a few thousand watching their shows on Niconico. Then they moved to Abema and got 300K viewers for their March 2016 event, 800K at the end of 2016 and are now at 1.5M now. They're now the single biggest recurring programming on Abema and increasingly producing more content like documentaries, backstage stuff and pre-event hype shows all of which feed back into their core. Not to mention the fact that the opportunity to actually put their show out on Golden Time TV still eludes them. That's a ton of work that they can be doing that directly feeds back into their core.



Yeah, a vid recap that's watched by a few K people isn't what I meant. What I mean is stuff like actually having Contender tournaments that lead to actual Contenders, rankings that are not an absolute joke, and clarity for events in the upcoming year.

Here's an interview with Entrepreneur magazine where a Glory founder specifically says that they divided up their shows into two cards to create two sources of tv/online licensing revenue. https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/298082. It's true that you have to go more than one place to watch both parts of a Glory card, but that's hardly unique to Glory- with the UFC we often have to go to three places starting with Fight Pass for the early prelims, Fox Sports 1 or 2 on tv for most of the prelims and then big Fox on tv or PPV for the main card. Even Bellator and other promotions have online prelims and then a main tv card, and three for Bellator PPV card starting with online, Spike and then PPV. If you're a fan it's not that big a deal, especially if you're the type to watch a foreign language stream of an international promotion you like through a VPN at an odd hour.

In spite of the minor hassles and expense, I hope some of the international promotions decide to cater a little to the Western audience even on tape delay if nothing else. I'm not sure how you think the Glory FW rankings should be re-shuffled. That's a pretty specific complaint and probably easy to fix even if by chance after RvR fights Adamchuk. The contenders tournaments are a little overused and creating logjams of two contenders in some divisions, but the UFC has the same thing going on in more than one weight class for different reasons because of champion injury, inactivity and because they keep creating interim belts, so I have learned to accept some ambiguity until such time as it gets resolved. Clarity of events in the upcoming year- well Glory at least provides some video podcasts and recaps and regular press releases and announces two or three cards or more ahead of time and announces matchups and locations. Not sure what else you would be looking for. Whatever Kunlun does in that regard is in Chinese and is lost on most of us reading here anyway.

 

[UWanaPlayDaGame]

It would be awesome if they ended up on Fight Pass with a knowledgeable commentator or even if they had tape delayed cards on a smaller channel CBS SN like Superkombat. I know that one doesn't have to hear commentary to see people punching or kicking one another or getting their hands raised by the referee, but it takes away a lot of the entertainment value to most people to completely miss out on all context, back story or anything other than the raw physical combat of the fight.

K-1 Japan puts on better cards but I appreciate that Glory is able to put on decent cards pretty regularly, don't require VPN, and have English commentary.

sincerely, Glory's commentary doesn't add anything to me, in fact it's actually one of the main reasons why I'm so eager to burn Glory at the stake anytime I can.

 

[Snubnoze707]

K-1 Japan puts on better cards but I appreciate that Glory is able to put on decent cards pretty regularly, don't require VPN, and have English commentary. China is the best overall imo.

True, the ESPN3 stream off my phone through the app to my TV looks perfect. That's certainly a plus for Glory. It just sucks that the ones playing at a decent time in my timezone are all the mediocre US cards. The K-1 events I have to watch YouTube vids but they typically go up same day.

 

[Karaev fan]

Here's an interview with Entrepreneur magazine where a Glory founder specifically says that they divided up their shows into two cards to create two sources of tv/online licensing revenue. https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/298082. It's true that you have to go more than one place to watch both parts of a Glory card, but that's hardly unique to Glory- with the UFC we often have to go to three places starting with Fight Pass for the early prelims, Fox Sports 1 or 2 on tv for most of the prelims and then big Fox on tv or PPV for the main card. Even Bellator and other promotions have online prelims and then a main tv card, and three for Bellator PPV card starting with online, Spike and then PPV. If you're a fan it's not that big a deal, especially if you're the type to watch a foreign language stream of an international promotion you like through a VPN at an odd hour.

Sorry, but I don't buy it. Narrative fallacy in action. If you saw how Glory was scrambling to try to survive their fallout with SPIKE a year or two ago, you really cannot see their current arrangement as anything less than a corner they backed themselves into. At the moment their ESPN deal is for ad revenue (i.e. making them close to no money) whereas their SFS cards actually bring in cash from UFC. Now they're in a situation where they actually have pressure to put on top names on the SFS to appease Fight Pass at the expense of the main card. Their main card strengths continue to wane and their TV ratings decline accordingly. Its an unsustainable model.

The UFC comparison is faulty. The UFC does that because

1. Their business model involves multiple events every month and retaining a huge roster of sub-contenders. That means that they have a steady backlog of events that are not PPV worthy and thus can farm those out to different networks/Fight Pass
2. They actually get the ratings that means that guys like FOX are willing to pay good money for its events
3. They can sell PPVs, thus it makes sense for them to have effective prelims on for "free" as a traffic builder for its PPV sections

Glory has none of those. They have yet to prove that they have a product that a growing market wants (unlike the Chinese promotions or K-1), thus I wish they would really just focus their investments on building that.

In spite of the minor hassles and expense, I hope some of the international promotions decide to cater a little to the Western audience even on tape delay if nothing else.

China won't. Not only does is their home market so competitive and (supposedly) growing so far that they need to invest entirely there, the whole difference between the Chinese internet and the internet outside of China makes it incredibly unclear how they're supposed to recoup their investment outside of China. K-1 puts all its fights up on its Youtube for free, so not sure what you think they can be doing at this point without the expense of retaining an English broadcast team.

I guess what's frustrating to me is that you're pointing out these inconveniences that you would have to jump through as a Western fan (which are fair and real), but sorta implying that they are no brainers that they should have fixed already. Actually, it is specifically because these guys know how to build up an entertaining product that their market wants that they're focusing all their efforts on that (i.e. they know what they are doing)

On the other hand, you seem to be fine with excusing Glory since their content is more readily available to a Western audience, even though they have not demonstrated that they can actually create an entertaining product. Case in point

I'm not sure how you think the Glory FW rankings should be re-shuffled. That's a pretty specific complaint and probably easy to fix even if by chance after RvR fights Adamchuk.

It is not the snapshot of Glory FW rankings today. Its the fact that Glory DOESN'T REALLY HAVE A TOP 10 but still maintain the illusion of rankings, contender tournaments and championships even though everyone knows there's no legitimacy there. They're trying to become the UFC and get you into buy into following the sport, but there's nothing to follow. There are fighters on the Top 10 who have never won (and occasionally never FOUGHT) in Glory before. Fighters are ranked not on a basis of "who beat who", but on an arbitrary point system (why is Adamchuk above Petch when Petch just beat Adamchuk?).

The contenders tournaments are a little overused and creating logjams of two contenders in some divisions, but the UFC has the same thing going on in more than one weight class for different reasons because of champion injury, inactivity and because they keep creating interim belts, so I have learned to accept some ambiguity until such time as it gets resolved.

And you will note that the UFC is getting a ton of fan flak and losing talent due to that situation. Only for them its a recent cultural change coming from the buyout. For Glory this was always the situation. Go follow the Contender tournament winners, how many of them actually got a title shot?

Clarity of events in the upcoming year- well Glory at least provides some video podcasts and recaps and regular press releases and announces two or three cards or more ahead of time and announces matchups and locations. Not sure what else you would be looking for. Whatever Kunlun does in that regard is in Chinese and is lost on most of us reading here anyway.

Not good enough. There have been periods where Glory went months without announcing what or where their next event would be. Cards are not finalized until weeks before the event. There is practically no marketing before hand. Its amateur hour. The same slipshod desperate scrambling we saw from FEG when their org was dying.

K-1 Japan announces all of its events for more than a year ahead including date and venue. It finalizes all of its cards at least 2 months before they take place. That gives them the time they need to market their events with interviews, mini-documentaries, and hype videos for all fighters leading up to the event. That's in spite of the fact that they put on many more events including Krush, KHAOS and amateur events than Glory and operates with a shoe string budget.

There's a lot of reason to hate on K-1 Japan, but they at least know how to run a promotion which is more than I can say of Glory.

 

[null]

Sorry, but I don't buy it. Narrative fallacy in action. If you saw how Glory was scrambling to try to survive their fallout with SPIKE a year or two ago, you really cannot see their current arrangement as anything less than a corner they backed themselves into. At the moment their ESPN deal is for ad revenue (i.e. making them close to no money) whereas their SFS cards actually bring in cash from UFC. Now they're in a situation where they actually have pressure to put on top names on the SFS to appease Fight Pass at the expense of the main card. Their main card strengths continue to wane and their TV ratings decline accordingly. Its an unsustainable model.

The UFC comparison is faulty. The UFC does that because

1. Their business model involves multiple events every month and retaining a huge roster of sub-contenders. That means that they have a steady backlog of events that are not PPV worthy and thus can farm those out to different networks/Fight Pass
2. They actually get the ratings that means that guys like FOX are willing to pay good money for its events
3. They can sell PPVs, thus it makes sense for them to have effective prelims on for "free" as a traffic builder for its PPV sections

Glory has none of those. They have yet to prove that they have a product that a growing market wants (unlike the Chinese promotions or K-1), thus I wish they would really just focus their investments on building that.

You may not recall this, but the SuperFight Series was already broadcast separately from the numbered Glory cards on CBS SN while they were still on Spike. The split into two cards didn't happen as a result of them leaving Spike, it was already a reality before that, suggesting that it was done purposefully like the Glory founder flatly stated in that interview. I suppose you're calling him a liar. In any case, I really don't see Glory having half their card on Fight Pass and the other half with the numbered Glory cards on ESPN online and on tv as being such a bad thing. Fight Pass has a perfect crossover audience of combat sports fans and provides free adverting for them to a potentially receptive audience of fight fans. I believe Glory is one of the most popular non-UFC properties shown on Fight Pass after Invicta FC (women's MMA) and the new Dana White's Tuesday Night Contender Series. The nice thing about online streaming is that the UFC and Glory, if they share the viewing info, can know exactly how much it is being watched. The ESPN deal may not be that lucrative, but kickboxing is a niche sport here and that's probably all it's ever going to be, so I hardly think you can blame Glory that they're not getting big ratings here or having some 2005-era UFC-like explosion in popularity. It's probably never going to happen so at best they can grow slowly maybe.

China won't. Not only does is their home market so competitive and (supposedly) growing so far that they need to invest entirely there, the whole difference between the Chinese internet and the internet outside of China makes it incredibly unclear how they're supposed to recoup their investment outside of China. K-1 puts all its fights up on its Youtube for free, so not sure what you think they can be doing at this point without the expense of retaining an English broadcast team.

I just checked K-1 Japan's YouTube because I was curious to see what it looked like and genuinely interested in learning more about high level kickboxing. Nice of them to put their fight videos and other content up in high quality. It's a little hard to follow for a newcomer since even Wikipedia doesn't have the card lineups listed if you want try try to use it as a reference to watch the latest super welterweight GP from June for example in the order as it happened and make sure that you don't skip any bouts. Obviously most of the text on the page and language on the videos on YouTube are in Japanese. But the saving grace was that they showed most of the fighters' Twitter handles on screen when they introduced them so that was pretty much the only thing that a Westerner can use to tell one fighter from another unless you already know their look.

I guess what's frustrating to me is that you're pointing out these inconveniences that you would have to jump through as a Western fan (which are fair and real), but sorta implying that they are no brainers that they should have fixed already. Actually, it is specifically because these guys know how to build up an entertaining product that their market wants that they're focusing all their efforts on that (i.e. they know what they are doing)

On the other hand, you seem to be fine with excusing Glory since their content is more readily available to a Western audience, even though they have not demonstrated that they can actually create an entertaining product. Case in point

Well, I'm entertained by Glory and I know a few other fans who are. It doesn't have to be perfect for me to enjoy it. I watch a lot of lesser UFC and even regional MMA cards like Titan FC or whatever on Fight Pass and just accept them for what they are and often at least enjoy a few of the fights. I do appreciate being catered to a little so I can understand what is going on, who wouldn't? I'm mostly caught up on what's going on with Romania based promotion Superkombat in 2017 for example because they put their recent cards on CBS SN in the U.S. and have the rest of the fights in English on their YouTube. Once again, if you are under the illusion that all Glory has to do is try harder or be smarter about their promotional efforts or matchmaking and that will make kickboxing super popular in North America, I think you're imagining a pipe dream.

It is not the snapshot of Glory FW rankings today. Its the fact that Glory DOESN'T REALLY HAVE A TOP 10 but still maintain the illusion of rankings, contender tournaments and championships even though everyone knows there's no legitimacy there. They're trying to become the UFC and get you into buy into following the sport, but there's nothing to follow. There are fighters on the Top 10 who have never won (and occasionally never FOUGHT) in Glory before. Fighters are ranked not on a basis of "who beat who", but on an arbitrary point system (why is Adamchuk above Petch when Petch just beat Adamchuk?).

I don't think featherweight is one of Glory's best divisions necessarily, but that being said, isn't RvR one of the very best featherweights in any promotion worldwide? Please correct me if you disagree. And wasn't Petch who was RvR's most recent challenger, a very legit opponent and also one of the best in any promotion in the world? I don't think the exact rankings at any given time matter all that much or are something to be that upset about since it can be a bit subjective. But former featherweight champion Adamchuk who RvR is fighting next seems like the best title fight to make at this moment. And if you ask me, the next challenger after that should be VanNostrand coming off two impressive wins in the most recent featherweight contender tournament over Abdurahman and Chikadze.

And you will note that the UFC is getting a ton of fan flak and losing talent due to that situation. Only for them its a recent cultural change coming from the buyout. For Glory this was always the situation. Go follow the Contender tournament winners, how many of them actually got a title shot?

Good question, I just looked it up. Going back to the start of 2016, the last full year of Glory, it looks like 6 out of 9 Contender Tournament winners got a title shot since they won the tournament. So it's a lot more that did than didn't.

Dustin Jacoby: MW Contender Tournament Winner- YES
Sittichai: LW Contender Tournament Winner- YES
Ismael Londt: HW Contender Tournament Winner- NO
Murthel Groenhart: WW Contender Tournament Winner- YES
Zinedine Hameur-Lain: LHW Contender Tournament Winner- NO
Matt Embree: FW Contender Tournament Winner- YES
Israel Adesanya: MW Contender Tournament Winner- YES
Benjamin Adegbuyi: HW Contender Tournament Winner- NO
Dylan Salvador: LW Contender Tournament Winner- YES

Not good enough. There have been periods where Glory went months without announcing what or where their next event would be. Cards are not finalized until weeks before the event. There is practically no marketing before hand. Its amateur hour. The same slipshod desperate scrambling we saw from FEG when their org was dying.

K-1 Japan announces all of its events for more than a year ahead including date and venue. It finalizes all of its cards at least 2 months before they take place. That gives them the time they need to market their events with interviews, mini-documentaries, and hype videos for all fighters leading up to the event. That's in spite of the fact that they put on many more events including Krush, KHAOS and amateur events than Glory and operates with a shoe string budget.

There's a lot of reason to hate on K-1 Japan, but they at least know how to run a promotion which is more than I can say of Glory.

What exactly do you think Glory should do differently to market themselves better that is realistic in terms of budget and effectiveness? They already have a pretty nice effort with original content on YouTube. Their next three cards are already announced in Chicago, Amsterdam and China. Do you just have some vague hope that they can throw money at the problem and magically make casual fans want to watch or do you actually have a specific idea of what they should try that is different than what they are doing now? Do you want a billboard in Times Square? I'm pretty much convinced that there is nothing that they could do to ever make some people say anything positive about them.

 

[Snubnoze707]

I can't read these giant block of text paragraphs on a cell phone, y'all are killing me...

 

[null]

I can't read these giant block of text paragraphs on a cell phone, y'all are killing me...

Sorry, it looks good on a laptop or desktop screen and makes it easy to respond point by point in an organized manner.

 

[null]

Betting odds about to drop on 5Dimes:

GLORY 44
ESPN 3 at 11PM ET

Welterweight Title

Murthel Groenhart +185
Cedric Doumbe -265

Over 4.5 -185
Under 4.5 +145


Welterweight Bout

Daniel Morales +200
Richard Abraham -280

Over 2.5 -190
Under 2.5 +150

Welterweight Tournament Bout

Zach Bunnell +435
Antoine Pinto -705

Over 2.5 -130
Under 2.5 -110

--

GLORY Kickoxing SuperFight Series
UFC Fight Pass at 8PM ET

Super Bantamweight Title

Meryem Uslu +485
Tiffany van Soest -855

Over 4.5 -190
Under 4.5 +150