| Don’t take my word for it. Here’s the smoking gun: Scott Rudmann, Managing Partner of Nectar Capital said: “We are delighted to have acted as corporate finance advisor to Glory Sports International…[to] effectively place all of the world’s top kickboxing athletes under the same promotional umbrella and solidify GLORY and the Glory World Series as the unquestioned world leader with the number one kickboxing series… there can be no doubt that the GLORY franchise is on its way to becoming one of the largest new sport leagues in the world and that it has quickly come to dominate global kickboxing.” Never mind who’s supposed to develop the next beat generation with the chump change that’s left over? |
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How better to conjure an industrial strength “sports content and branding solution” than by claim jumping the entire world’s (athletic) resource market in order to lock down Kickboxing’s “content IP rights holders”? Take GSI’s North American property portfolio (talent pool) in its entirety.
It was Scott Kent’s Lion Fight series, where the rivalry between Joe Schilling and Simon Marcus made national headlines. “Bazooka” Joe Valtellini fought Gregory Choplin in Scott’s ring, where Ky Hollenbeck was once a regular. Simon Marcus even did battle there with GSI’s Russian star Artyom Levin. |
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Glory Sports International developed none of these careers. U.S. career developers like Scott Kent did all of the heavy lifting, along with Montri Supanich and Anthony Lin in California, as well as Justin Blair and Aziz Nabih in New York City. It was there thatWayne Barrett and Gabriel Varga also did their apprenticeships.
So maybe it was just a coincidence that America’s top fight impresario Dana White put Lion Fight XVI on the calendar for UFC Fight Week and scheduled the show for America’s 238th birthday. It might even have been a coincidence for the show to feature two “name brand” mixed martial artists going bada bing bada boom in full rules Muay Thai. Then again a case could be made for The Empire Strikes Back. [EDITOR] |
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Show Coverage by Brian O’Hara. Photography by Ray Kasprowicz.
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Las Vegas, NV – LION FIGHT 16 ignited an explosion of spectacular Muay Thai action inside the Pearl, at Palms Casino Resort on July 4th, 2014. The excitement was not limited to fireworks over Las Vegas Boulevard, as the premier Las Vegas based promotion featured a super lightweight championship fight between Muay Thai Champion, Kevin Ross, and Australia’s Muay Thai prodigy, Michael “Tomahawk” Thompson.
Lion Fight Super Lightweight Championship
Kevin Ross (U.S.A.) vs. Michael Thompson (Australia):
The crowd erupted as the two fighters exchanged blows for a full five rounds of hard-hitting combat entertainment. Although Thompson proved his toughness, it was Ross who dictated the pace of the championship bout.
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| It was Ross (left) who dictated the pace of the championship bout. Photo by Ray Kasprowicz. |
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Ross punished Thompson round after round with a mix of blows to his opponents head and midsection. During the closing seconds of the last round, Ross almost put his challenger away with a well-executed flying knee that crashed into Thompson’s face. The crowd erupted as Thompson was visibly hurt. Rattled and defeated, Thompson held on in the clinch to survive the round, despite losing the title bout.
Kevin Ross def. Michael Thompson by Unanimous Decision: 50-45, 49-46, 49-46 for the Lion Fight Super Lightweight Championship, Professional 142 lbs. Men. 5 x 3 Rounds.
Tiffany Van Soest (U.S.A.) vs. Sindy Huyer (Italy):
In the co-main event, former LION FIGHT featherweight champion Tiffany Van Soest squared off against Italy’s Sindy Huyer. The opening round could have gone to either fighter, but it was Van Soest who turned the heat up on her opponent inside the ring for the remainder of the fight. |
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| Van Soest (left) battered her game Italian opponent. Photo by Ray Kasprowicz. |
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Van Soest battered her game Italian opponent, while winning the following four rounds. A percussion of excitement ripped through the venue when the American standout, Van Soest, landed a jaw-shattering front-kick that stopped Huyer in her tracks. Stunned and vulnerable, Huyer seemed to be out on her feet when she absorbed a final left hook, which caused referee Kamijo to jump in and call a halt to the punishment.
Tiffany Van Soest def. Sindy Huyer by TKO (Front Kick to Face) at 0:56 of Round 5. Professional 125 lbs. Women. 5 x 3 Rounds.
Rungravee Banchaemek Sasiprapa (Kingdom of Thailand) vs. Adrian Morilla (U.S.A.):
The night also included Thailand’s superstar, Rungravee Banchaemek Sasiprapa, who made his American debut with LION FIGHT promotion that evening against Adrian Morilla. The bout lived up to the billing as a special attraction fan superfight when Sasiprapa showed of his skill set from bell to bell. |
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| Rungravee Banchaemek Sasiprapa got the better of the exchanges. Photo by Ray Kasprowicz. |
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Morilla put forward a valiant effort, however he could not prevent getting stalked down by his veteran opponent round after round. Sasiprapa got the better of the exchanges during all five rounds to earn a split-decision victory.
Rungravee Banchæmek Sasiprapa def. Adrian Morilla by Split Decision: 48-47, 49-46, 49-45. Professional 132 lbs. Men. 5 x 3 Rounds. |
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See Ray Kasprowicz’s Photo Gallery HERE.
Bennie E. Palmore II’s entire Photo Gallery is also a CLICK away. |
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LION FIGHT XVI delivered a blowout of Muay Thai excitement on Independence Day from the Fight Capitol of the World. Despite GSI’s claim jumping so many North American properties, Scott Kent’s All-American resourcefulness continues to develop spectacular talent on our own native soil. For full show coverage, CLICK HERE.
It turns out that indigenous is integral to this enterprise through its affiliation withUSMTA, which began as the Native American League. No big surprise, then, that the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation hosts the Eastern edition of Scott Kent’s Lion Fight series.
Fans are looking forward to the next installment of America’s premier Muay Thai showcase at Foxwoods Resort Casino in the Northeast Corridor about midway between Beantown and the Big Apple on August the 1st. It airs live on AXS TV starting at a special time, 9:00 p.m. ET/6:00 p.m. PT. We’ll give you a report in our next edition. |
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| Starship Glory’s Orbit Towards Oblivion |
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| ”Bazooka” Joe Valtellini, right, vs. Marc de Bonte at Glory 17 in L.A. on June 21, 2014 |
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Let me see a show of hands. How many of you are hard core into stand-up and hail Glory Sports International’s (GSI) campaign to deliver us to the Promised Land? Well guess what? You just flunked Capitalism 101.
The triple threat that’s vowed “to dominate global kickboxing” – Pierre Andurand (a hedge fund manager heavy into trading commodities), Marcus Luer (Total Sports Asia’s world beater in sports content and branding solutions) and Andrew Whitaker (Kings Highway Media’s erstwhile Managing Partner in a brand and media distribution advisory) – actually includes a fourth swashbuckler. There is also Nectar Capital’s Scott Rudman. He brokers deals, like GSI’s funding to acquire “It’s Showtime”. He has also stayed on board to police the deployment of his equity stake. (09 07 12 // Glory Sports International Pte. acquires Kickboxing Competitor ‘It’s Showtime’ at http://nectarcapital.com/glory-sports-international-pte-acquires-kickboxing-competitor-its-showtime/#09-07-12) |
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| Wayne Barrett (airborne) vs. Joe Schilling at Glory 17 in L.A. on June 21, 2014 |
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Exactly what kind of corporate mission do you suppose these operators in the sports entertainment business aim to accomplish? No matter what agenda they’ve been selling (understandably) for public consumption, here’s the bold print on theirinvestment prospectus. They’re pledged to “serve the content IP rights holders, private equity and venture capital space”.
Truth or consequences, Glory Sports International brings us the working capital this sport so desperately needs but has missed since K-1 went flat line. So we’re all down with the pursuit of happiness that their money can buy us. Lest we forget, though,there is no such thing as a free lunch. So we’ve also got to read the fine print in GSI’s pitch, which is supposed to make its patrons rich(er).
Where none before have been able to conjure the Midas touch in stand-up, GSI’s Managing Director Marcus Luer tells BJ Penn “The problem has always been lack of funding…The money behind it hasn’t been there because there hasn’t been enough television, funding, and advertising in place to make those events happen and to pay that money out.” Judge for yourself what kind of omen it is for a sports content and branding solutions guru to omit live gates from his bucket list in a business that until now has lived or died at the box office. |
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| Joe Schilling (right) vs. Simon Marcus at Glory 17 in L.A. on June 21, 2014 |
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Reports of twofers reaching us from L.A. (Glory 17) – on top of what we know to have been gratuitous freebie ticket offers in NYC (Glory 12) possibly from a panic attack – disguise wonder in this thunder of so much public chest thumping. By way of comparison, Dana White tells Yahoo! Sports that the paid gate at UFC 175 in Las Vegas just a couple of weeks ago was estimated to surpass $5 million. What whiz kid worth his MBA skips the part about paying customers?
Ask not for whom the bell tolls in any sports entertainment business. It tolls for popularity pure and simple. While Spike TV might be the best available broadcast platform for Glory Sports International to get there, the metric of viewership factors into how much advertisers will pay and how the subscription cable network will split the proceeds with a content provider. Since this is the aim of a Total Sports Asia’s ad salesman’s game, let’s go to the score cards.
Viewership averages 459,000 for GSI’s U.S. shows. This pegs it around ⅔ of Bellator’s 712,222 benchmark but perennially troubled brand on the identical broadcast platform during the same time span. From Chicago’s (Glory 11) ground zero rollout, tv ratings seems to have peaked at 498,000 in Denver (Glory 16). They then fell back into a 483,000 groove with the collateral damage of leaving only a Russian man standing in the L.A. ring at Glory 17, plus two Canadians. |
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| Gabriel Varga (right) vs. Shane Oblonsky at Glory 17 in L.A. on June 21, 2014 |
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So GSI’s audience metrics are calendar comparable to the UFC’s 457,857 average, only those are pay-per-views (ppv’s). In the campaign to monetize whateverpopularity its $millions have bought, Glory’s “Last Man Standing” Grand Prix middleweight elimination tournament sold an estimated 6,000 ppv’s. “According to Dave Meltzer from this week's edition of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter…the PPV ‘bombed’.” (“GLORY Last Man Standing PPV Sales Disappoint” by Dave Walsh onLiverKick.com) Having already given up the gate, weak impulse control now seems also to be giving up the ghost.
Any commercial strategy that amounts to strip mining the top off of our sport’s popularity potential – until it hits a plateau below the surface – is destined to produce a lot of rubbish. How stoked are you for a Joe “Stitch ‘Em Up” Schilling rubber match with Artyom Levin or Wayne Barrett? The truth or consequences of this killer strategy is nothing more than koombaya with sugar coating. Execution means getting the job done, which appears to be a stretch for someone inhaling his own fumes. |
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| Chris Weidman (left) vs. Anderson Silva at UFC 168 in Las Vegas on December 28, 2013 |
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What does Dana White know that informs his own success in the sports entertainment business? He knows what the numbers mean and how they tell him what the fans want. Toss out a single outlier in UFC 168 and his ppv average goes from 457,857 to 363,333. That’s because Weidman vs. Silva II got 1,025,000 ppv’s on December 28, 2013. This is a business that prospers from the goose that lays golden eggs. Who in his right mind would put Floyd Mayweather in a Grand Prix elimination tournament?
Short of folding up its tent, Glory Sports International has to parachute into venues where it can fill a house with paying customers. If that means some local pay-to-play, so be it. Don’t stage a show that can’t pay the rent. How hard is this?
I can recall Ky Hollenback forfeiting a WMC world title shot at 160 lbs. because he couldn’t shed the weight. Climbing through the ropes at Glory 17, he looked to me like a shadow of himself at 153 lbs. Whoever is piloting Starship Glory has to learn impulse control. It would probably be a good idea, also, to take a refresher course in risk/reward tradeoffs. |
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| Andy Ristie (left) vs. Ky Hollenbeck at Glory 17 in L.A. on June 21, 2014 |
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A pretty convincing case could be made for mission control to stop inhaling its own fumes and to learn from its mistakes. This means toning down the gimmicks and novelties, like Grand Prix elimination tournaments. Where GSI has already bought a hot rivalry – say Joe “Stich ‘Em Up” Schilling vs. Simon Marcus or Wayne Barrett or Artyom Levin – it makes a whole lot more sense to prolong the shelf life instead gambling everything on 6,000 ppv’s. This is just plain bad merchandising.
Locking the barn door after the (middleweight) cow has already gone to pasture probably isn’t going to fill any milk pails. Fresh prospects will come along, though, from career developers without whom GSI would be shooting blanks. It’s going to take more patience than GSI has so far shown for athletes to win over enough fans to begin moving tv ratings back up the growth curve. This is what they’ve got to watch like it’s a deal breaker, because it is. |
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| Joe Schilling (right) vs. Artyom Levin at Glory 17 in L.A. on June 21, 2014 |
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They’ve also got to refrain from any temptation to cheat the scale with cheese in the milk pail. Don’t play fans for suckers, because guaranteed we’re going to take their measure. (See “Epitaph for Sanity in a Sport’s Fairy Tale”) If fans think the game is rigged, it’s going to be sayonara señorita might as well pivot to WWE.
No matter how many horses you can put under a hood, they can’t pull the buggy if the ignition switch doesn’t work. (“Why did GM take so long to respond to deadly defect? Corporate culture may hold answer.” by Michael A. Fletcher and Steven Mufson in The Washington Post on March 30, 2014) Authenticity is job #1 for “sports content and branding solutions” that’s got any realistic prospect of paying dividends for whom the bell tolls. |
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| Jarrell “Big Baby” Miller (right) vs. Mirko “Cro Cop” Filipovic at Glory 17 in L.A. on June 21, 2014 |
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There is an art to match making. It’s obviously going be done better by a pro than an ad salesman. Hire the right guy for a job this important. Get rid of anyone who thinks that throwing money at a problem is sufficient to solve it. The whole idea is to reverse the direction of cash flow down out the door. No business succeeds by pissing away all of its working capital.
Throwing in the towel now would be snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. A good corner man would tell this wounded warrior to stop swinging wildly and grind it out. Even though sunk costs aren’t recoverable, stock should be bought on the basis of future earnings prospects. That’s why GSI’s patrons went into this and – for an exorbitant tuition in the school of hard knocks – they’ve proved that it is entirely possible.
Glory Sports International has only itself to blame for getting backed into the corner. It is incumbent on these world beaters now to show the heart to fight their way outand pile up some points with time still on the clock. Otherwise they really deserve to fail. Getting it right is the only possible way they can earn a return on their investment. Our photographer, Dan Eric, can be contacted at danericphotography@gmail.com. |
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| Epitaph for Sanity in a Sport’s Fairy Tale |
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If you’re wired into tech toys, then you’re not just a fan of the fights. You’re also a fan of technological innovation. The latest epitaph for sanity in corporate fairy tales is ‘Disruptive Innovation’. We think of mixed martial arts (mma) as an ‘innovation’, for example, that’s been ‘disruptive’ of boxing. Never mind boxing dug its own grave for mma to dance on it.
Now we’re seeing Glory Sports International (GSI) stand up to ‘innovation’ with a campaign for ‘disruption’ of the UFC’s choke hold on brand recognition. If this sounds more WSJ than ESPN, take a peek at the wizardry behind the curtain in Singapore’s Emerald City.
Full disclosure: the hyperlink to an ESPN url is a WSJ key word. “In 2011, multi-award winning hedge fund investor and martial arts enthusiast Pierre Andurand along with well-known media investor and asset manager Scott Rudmann and Marcus Luer, CEO of sports marketing agency Total Sports Asia (TSA), became the catalysts for the formation of Glory Sports International…In his role as Managing Director, Marcus taps into his 18 years of experience across the global sports marketing world and brings the core skills of TSA: Asia’s global leader in sports content and branding solutions.”
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Bet you never thought that prize fighters could be commodified into investment properties like such erstwhile best-selling brands as Hulk Hogan, Randy “Macho Man” Savage and André the Giant. Herein lurks a temptation to bake artificial flavors into meals on wheels the better to own every stall in the mall across the entire planet.
There've been some sketchy episodes in GSI's entertaining new series, where certain plots seem tuned to the kind of wishful thinking that’s sometimes contiguous to the realm of scripting. A case in point was Glory 9, where NYC fans got a taste of FIFA officiating at its worst, which is ground zero in why soccer isn’t main stream here. What fans took away from this was that Tyrone Spong seemed to have been spared having to earn his Grand Prix tournament win over Danyo Ilunga – with the plot twisting on a foreign ref – who’d been imported for a job that a local like Chris Wagner obviously does a whole lot better. (See “How to Kill a Sport” by Mark Jacobs) |
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| Tyrone Spong vs. Danyo Ilunga at Glory 9 in New York City on June 22, 2013 |
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It just so happens that Glory Sports International operates outside of the law – meaning outside of regulatory jurisdiction – in both New York and California. You can blame your politicians for this, but exactly who the hires them to endorse WKA in New York and ISKA in California for the pursuit of happiness on a metric of customer satisfaction? When an industry like this regulates itself, shareholders decide which customer has to be satisfied. Fans and fighters both, thus, are effectively traded like derivatives on an unregulated exchange.
Following the weigh-in, I once attended a rules meeting inadvertently for officials at an ISKA sanctioned show in Chicago. What made it memorable was the hidden handicap: “When in doubt, give it to the home team”. You can interpret “home team” to mean whoever’s paying a for-profit’s “sanctioning” fees. Whatever it takes to satisfy such a customer is a matter of “sports content and branding solutions” to solve the profitability puzzle as GSI alone defines it.
Orbiting outside of public policy’s gravitational pull, you’d expect market incentives to lift off Starship Glory’s rocket thrust in live gates, paid subscriptions and Spike TV viewership. A 3% loss of altitude over L.A. (Glory 17) discerned this truth in the consequences: “The fact it was slightly off from its last outing could be a concern. Mirko Cro Cop appeared on the prelim portion here which provided name recognition to hopefully garner viewers.” (Jason Cruz in mmmpayout.com on June 24, 2014) So there was enough riding for Starship Glory on Mirko “Cro Cop” Filipovic to merit a corporate urine sample on the possibility of performance enhancement.
Viewers around the world saw Jarrell “Big Baby” Miller’s knees crumble “Cro Cop” repeatedly. Time and again, Brooklyn’s “Big Baby” had the Croatian in trouble. Only the ref “Big” John McCarthy nullified all of them, as did apparently the judges, all of whom ultimately were on GSI’s payroll by way of ISKA.
Now it’s more rule than exception for a ref to give the benefit of the doubt to close calls in the foul zone. Never mind we've got different rules than boxing about below the belt, basically because of the low kick. So McCarthy exercised his prerogative to give “Cro Cop” safe passage out of harm’s way from Miller’s first two borderline yellow cards, even though very few males of our species bounce back that fast from genuine ball busters.
If two’s company, the third wasn’t even close. It was bull’s eye on Mirko’s solar plexus. See for yourself. |
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| Jarrell “Big Baby” Miller vs. Mirko “Cro Cop” Filipovic at Glory 17 in L.A. on June 21, 2014 |
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“Cro Cop” was in visible trouble. He could have been down and out in L.A. had the ref kept his finger off the scale. Instead of a count and mandatory point deduction for GSI’s tv ratings mascot – which almost certainly would’ve made a difference in the verdict – “Big” John McCarthy declared yet another cease fire. Even though the re-play made manifest this mistake, the network’s talking heads were like soccer commentators: much too eager to go with the flow.
The whole point about knees in this sport is that they're supposed to matter. So we’ve now got to wonder whether a veteran mma ref blew it, or was he caught up in a corporate culture (like General Motors) that preaches the practice of following the herd? (“Why did GM take so long to respond to deadly defect? Corporate culture may hold answer.” by Michael A. Fletcher and Steven Mufson in The Washington Post on March 30, 2014) Competitive sports just aren’t a natural fit for contrived content and branding solutions. |
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| No one succeeds in this mall, who doesn’t heed common sense: “You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool ALL of the people ALL of the time.” (From: “A Lincoln Album: Readings by Carl Sandburg.” Caedmon TC 2015, 2 LP set, (c) 1957, last 2:25 of Side 1.) Outsourcing public policy to circumvent the regulation of athletics is like gambling in casinos outside the jurisdiction of gaming commissions. Caveat Emptor – Let the buyer beware. CLICK HERE for the full story. |
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