Saturday featured the latest from Scott Coker featuring Bellator MMA and Glory Kickboxing in the form of “Dynamite 1” on SpikeTV. The 3 hour plus show featured a mix of MMA and kickboxing but according to Liverkick.com, the attempt at mixing the two sports was much more a showcase for MMA than it was for kickboxing.
Via Liverkick.com:
What’s clear is that both Bellator and GLORY didn’t exactly mesh well together. Bellator was protective of the card being their show and GLORY was trying to protect the integrity of their own brand and put on a strong showing on their biggest platform. Instead what we got was everything feeling half-cocked. We got two Bellator fights contested under GLORY rules and we got a GLORY Light Heavyweight Championship fight that saw MMA fans turning their noses up at the prospect of having to sit through it for who knows what reason. All of this happened without a single advertisement or mention of GLORY 24 outside of from the lips of Mauro Ranallo and Stephan Quadros.
The event on Spike TV featured more Bellator MMA than Glory Kickboxing even though the arena setup had included the Bellator cage and Glory ring. Still one of the fights featured a pair of Bellator fighters, Paul Daley and Fernando Gonzalez. While Daley is an experienced kickboxer, Gonzalez was not. A women’s kickboxing matchup featured Keri Melendez and one can infer that her appearance was more of a way to promote her future endeavors in MMA.
Payout Perspective:
While the concept of featuring MMA and kickboxing fights on one card sounds like an interesting combat sports event, the reality of last night’s event was that it was more of a vehicle for Bellator than it was for Glory. The initial thought when hearing of this event seemed to be more of an event mix of both promotions. However, according to Liverkick.com’s, Dave Walsh, it was clear that kickboxing was taking a backseat to Bellator. Certainly, the Glory promotion, and the sport of kickboxing on a whole, has yet to gain traction with an American audience. A quick survey of the ratings from this past year reveals that while Bellator MMA ratings are growing (when considering the implementation of it’s “tentpole” events), Glory ratings are down compared to last year. Saturday’s event could have been a way for the promotion to show its best. However, it appears that save for one fight on the main card, it was not able to do it. We shall see if Spike TV ratings dip dependent on whether MMA or kickboxing were on at the time. This may reveal whether cross-promotional shows like this will occur in the future.
Kickboxing has no stars yet for the American audience, Bellator would have did the same ratings without Glory.
Tito is a big star, King Mo & Phil Davis & Josh Thompson are well known and have beaten some top names in the UFC.
Glory needed more than this mo-name fighters to shine. Last Glory with R. Daniels would have been a more spectacular blend with Bellator’s event. Also, the whole thing was too long.
It could have been done better. I didn’t think the kickboxing fights were very good. Overall it was an average event. I don’t foresee Bellator or Glory trying to do this again.
There is a reason why Strikeforce was sold to UFC. Coker better be careful not to make the same mistakes twice. The non-signing of Fedor is a start, but the Glory fights on an MMA card is an error which should be corrected.
mmaguru,
I wonder how much of this Glory-Bellator marriage is a shotgun-wedding forced by Viacom and how much of it originates with Scott Coker. This feels like Viacom trying to get some Bellator ratings to rub off on Glory. I think the danger is that Glory ratings will rub off on Bellator instead. Either way, it should be one and done.
This event had so much potential if they honoured the real Dynamite/K-1/Pride spirit with the traditional Japanese flavourwith a perfectly balanced fightcard between the 2 promotion (like K-1 and Pride did in the past)
Now there was no balance at all between the 2 promotions. Bellator had their top-lineup scheduled but Glory looked like the black sheep of the Viacom-family with most of the line-up setup by Mr.Coker (and his kb-buddie) which was basically Bellator-fighters doing kickboxing. The only real Glory fight was the 3rd choice of the Glory-staff because a couple of top Glory-fighters (Schilling, Varga, Saki) got injured or could not come to an agreement.
This was n’t a Glory-event at all this was 99,99% Bellator and a fraction of the remains of Glory…
Missed opportunity