I recently recorded an episode of my podcast with none other than walking kickboxing encyclopedia Bjarne Collet. We previewed GLORY 94 Antwerp and among other things we discussed the main event between Stefan Latescu from Romania and the last minute replacement opponent, the Turk, Cem Caceres. No, I'm not going to talk about GLORY moving Bahram Rajabzedeh to GLORY 95 (even though that's easy clickbait), I want to talk about the fact that the main event was not a title match and while that's a good thing, I still have something to say about that.

Kudos to GLORY for choosing for a superfight as the headlining fight instead of sticking to old habits. It probably won’t have escaped your notice that in the past we have had to watch title fights where, with all due respect to the fighters, there was basically no interest from fightfans. I would like to add that this is often due to the lack of good marketing from the organization, because storytelling is essential if you want to put on an impactful match. Anyway, I digress. Sometimes a superfight simply has much more pulling power than a title fight. For the oldtimers among us, just remember  Andy Souwer vs Masato in 2009 or Badr Hari vs Gökhan Saki in 2012. But amazing superfights have also taken place in more recent years. Just think of the match between Takeru Segawa and Tenshin Nasukawa where 56,399 fans were in the arena. Even when you take a look at GLORY, because it's not like GLORY hasn't done this before either. Just think back to the first showdown between Rico Verhoeven and Badr Hari and recently the match between Tyjani Beztati and Endy Semeleer; which is a nice segue to the point I’m about to make. The match was fantastic, but just when I and other fans with me were getting into the fight, the much talked about match was already over.

Of course we are used to a 5 round headliner, but this was obviously not a titlematch so this showdown was unfortunately over after 3 rounds. Why did they choose for only 3 rounds? Is GLORY sticking to old habits or is it perhaps a money issue? Whatever the reason may be, I honestly would have liked to have seen 2 more rounds. If it was possible to step into GLORY's shoes, I would say that all main events, except tournament finals, should simply be 5 rounds. When there’s a high profile main bout between two big names that we all massively buy tickets, PPV’s and Videoland subscriptions for, we want to enjoy these fights for a bit longer than just 3 rounds, right? Of course I do have to say I don’t mind knockouts, but when that doesn't happen, I'll happily watch 5 rounds of high level kickboxing. 

The landscape of kickboxing has changed tremendously in recent years and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Just think about the champ vs champ battles, the advent of social media and the impact on combat sports marketing, etc. What I mean by that is that it is good to try new things. Not recklessly, but listen to the fighters and the fans. See what sticks and leave out what doesn't work.

It seems like coincidence is almost non-existent, because GLORY announced that the main event of GLORY 95 in Croatia, Levi Rigters against Bahram Rajabzadeh, is going to be a whopping 5 rounds! Whether this is an experiment or whether GLORY has decided that title eliminator matches will be 5 rounds from now on, I don't know. But nevertheless, this is definitely a step in the right direction!

Actually, this column has almost become an speech. Not quite how I originally had in mind, but oh well. What do you think about this? Let me know in the comments! While you're here, check out Bjarne's articles on Warriorcode as well, as he recently started writing for this great platform too.

De Kickboks Podcast regularly publishes new episodes (in Dutch) on YouTube, Spotify en Apple Podcasts.