GLORY 4 Grand Slam, December 2 In Tokyo + Press Conference Details

Last Updated on Thursday, 20 September 2012 19:40 Thursday, 20 September 2012 14:26

Written by Rian Scalia

Today a big press conference took place in Tokyo to announce the GLORY 4 Grand Slam event which will take place at the Makuhari Messe on December 2. The Grand Slam features a 16 man, one night heavyweight tournament with a new tournament format.

Among fighters on hand were Remy Bonjasky, Peter Aerts, Semmy Schilt, Fabiano "Cyclone" Aoki, Koichi Pettas and Yoshihiro Sato. Bonjasky, Aerts and Schilt will all be fighting in the Grand Slam tournament. Fabiano Aoki and Koichi Pettas will be fighting at GLORY 2 Brussels on October 6 in and Yoshihiro Sato will be fighting at GLORY 3 Rome on November 3. Also on hand were some of the men behind GLORY, Pierre Andurand, Marcus Luer and Bas Boon.

The Grand Slam tournament format pits the round of 16, quarter finals and semi finals as three rounds of two minutes each, with an extension round if needed and if one fighter wins the opening two rounds then he'll automatically win the fight and move on to the next round. The final is the standard three rounds by three minutes with an extension round if needed.

Notes from the press conference:

- As you can see in the picture, Musashi was also on hand. He'll be part of GLORY's Japanese commentary team.

- Rino Sashihara of the Japanese idol group HKT48 was on hand and on stage promoting the event.

- GLORY will hold 14 events next year, Road to Glory events not included.

- GLORY will also hold a Grand Slam tournament for 70kg in the future.

- In addition, next year GLORY will be expanding their weight classes to 65kg, 70kg, 77kg, 85kg, 95kg and Super Heavyweight where there will be "Slam" tournaments of the standard one night, eight man tournament much like what is happening with GLORY 3 Rome on November 3.

- "Road to GLORY" events will start up next year and act as local events to develop local talent in regions (Japan and United States were mentioned).

- Tokyo will host three GLORY events next year, not including Road to GLORY events.

- The promoters of domestic Japanese kickboxing promotions Krush, RISE, REBELS and NJKF were all in attendance at the press conference and will keep a good relationship with GLORY and assist them in finding fighters. It's already started with Krush and RISE getting fighters recommended to them by GLORY for their events (Hamza Soesie for Krush and Javier Hernandez for RISE).

- GLORY will continue to expand and open more training centers around the world.

- GLORY Rankings will start up next year and will be calculated by results of fights.

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