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View Full Version : GLORY CEO says kickboxing primary focus, no plans beyond NYE for DREAM



Kemal
01-01-2013, 20:05
GLORY Sports International aims to revive kickboxing in Japan and around the world.

At the moment, though, MMA is not a priority.

Despite funding Monday's DREAM.18 event in conjunction with its first big kickboxing event, the company isn't ready to commit to future MMA shows.

"We are, naturally, in discussions to look at more for DREAM in Japan, but that has to be something that's decided after the show," Glory CEO Marcus Luer told MMAjunkie.

GSI, which earlier this year purchased Dutch kickboxing promotions GLORY and It's Showtime, just wrapped a massive end-of-the-year event at Saitama Super Arena in Saitama, Japan. It featured the eight-bout DREAM.18 card as a lead-in to a one-night, 16-man kickboxing tournament, "GLORY 4: Tokyo." The kickboxing event, which sported modified rules to amp up the action, aired live on CBS Sports Network. DREAM.18 airs on the cable channel tonight at 10 p.m. ET.

Luer said the CBS partnership was a "one-off," though discussions are in place with multiple TV partners for future shows. The company plans to promote two to three kickboxing events in the U.S. in 2013 and hold a series of eight-man tourneys to cultivate new stars.

Luer said GSI's partnership with DREAM gave the company leverage with Japanese broadcasters while putting together the year-end event. That could be the promotion's saving grace for future events.

Cash-poor after several years of declining revenues, DREAM, which emerged in the wake of PRIDE's collapse, partnered this year with the upstart MMA promotion ONE FC but was widely reported to be defunct by June.

In DREAM's absence, the UFC returned to Japan for the first time in a decade when it promoted UFC 144 at Saitama Super Arena back in February. The promotion plans a return to the arena on March 2 for UFC on FUEL TV 8, which former PRIDE champion and star Wanderlei Silva co-headlines.

"Whatever the UFC does in the marketplace is great," Luer said. "They're the market leader; everybody looks at them in terms of how big they are as a brand. But we have good fighters here. We have guys that have fought in the UFC, Strikeforce and Bellator."

DREAM's stable includes several notable fighters, among them champ Shinya Aoki, Tatsuya Kawajiri and Bibiano Fernandes, who turned down a UFC contract to fight overseas in ONE FC.

Luer said GSI employed several employees from DREAM to matchmake the fight card and give the show a Japanese feel while Glory's card was designed to have international appeal.

The majority of big-name fighters on the kickboxing card are members of Dutch fight team Golden Glory, from which GSI takes its roots, though Luer said the management and promotion components of the new company have been separated.

Whether GSI keeps both MMA and kickboxing under its roof is a wait-and-see proposition.

"I wouldn't call it a one-off, but it was an interesting opportunity to take this unique slot on Dec. 31, which has a lot of tradition in this country and around the world," Luer said.