GLORY

GLORY was formed in 2012 by absorbing several European promotions — It's Showtime chief among them — into a single global brand at exactly the moment K-1's original organisation was failing. It inherited the audience, much of the roster and the essential ruleset, then tightened the latter for television.

The rule changes were small on paper and significant in practice. Faster clinch breaks and an active penalty for passivity produced higher-volume fights than the K-1 era, which in turn favoured a particular athlete: conditioned, aggressive, comfortable trading. Rico Verhoeven's long heavyweight reign is the clearest product of that environment.

GLORY kept the one-night tournament alongside conventional title fights, and its lightweight and welterweight divisions have arguably been the strongest in the sport's history — Petrosyan, Sitthichai, Grigorian and Pereira all competing in the same era.

For most viewers under thirty, GLORY rules simply are kickboxing.