Tonight, Glory kickboxing will air their first show of the year on Spike TV, featuring a heavyweight championship fight between Rico Verhoeven and Errol Zimmerman in the main event. Now, the Dutch kickboxing promotion scored another broadcasting agreement in the United States: CBS will air three two-hour shows per year on a one-week tape delay. The shows will consist of five fights each.
Glory has contracted most of the world’s elite kickboxers and is the arguably the biggest kickboxing organization on the planet since the constant fading of K-1. This is how the deal with CBS looks like:
- Glory will hold about nine live events per year, broadcasted on Spike TV
- The week before an event, Spike will air a preview show for this event
- Three times a year, CBS will air five undercard superfights that didn’t make the Spike broadcast one week after the live event
Glory CEO Jon Franklin’s defined goal is to have his organization on U.S. TV every Friday of the year, so this is another big step in their U.S. expansion.
“Spike is the numbered events (Friday’s show is called Glory 19), CBS Sports will be taking the Superfight series,” said Franklin. “Both are in two-hour blocks. When you come to a Glory show, we have local fighters in the undercard, then we have the Superfight Series. Sometimes we’ll have a title fight on the Superfight series, and sometimes we won’t. Then we’ll go to the live show, which will have a contenders tournament, a title fight and usually a special event.”
(Transcription via MMAFighting.com)
On a side note: Franklin mentioned he would like to do a rematch between Glory kickboxer Joe Schilling and Melvin Manhoef under Glory rules. Schilling beat Manhoef last November via knockout at Bellator 131.
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