GLORY COLLISION | Rico VS Badr [10-12] Results

[sg]

Badr was looking him like: C'mon, princey, i want more of those statements in the interviews you gave months ago.

The staredown was active in the whole press conference and in the end, when it was time for the real stare down, he just walked away

I liked how he was answering some question and he was not finished, then the translator was like "OH! HE FINISHED .. BLA..." and in the second "BLA" Badr was ready to unleash on him, but in the last moment he realized what he was about to do, held down and turned it to a joke. That was really funny.

[themagi]

Perhaps I'm reading too much into things, but Hari's constant facial twitching doesn't look particularly promising. He also looked as if he has aged 5 years in the last 365 days. Was he also being a touch obstructive by insisting on giving his responses in Dutch, despite Tim Hughes' request for both questions and answers in English where possible?

What's the forum's general consensus on how he went about avoiding the staredown? If I had stock in GLORY, I'd be a touch pissed off at him walking away, missing out on photos that would have been seen and shared throughout the world and losing out on a tonne of publicity. My belief is that the whole thing was about him giving GLORY the metaphorical middle finger but in a way made him look a tad scared.

Power, did you see the whole thing? Did we miss out on any interesting quotes that the translator left out?

[K1power]

I'm typing a bit of a review as we speak. Will be back ASAP!

[K1power]

I just watched it and I must say the Q&A section started to feel more unprofessional as it went on. I have no problem with fighters or press speaking Dutch or any other language than English, but Glory should have prepared accordingly and gotten an actual experienced press event translator for such cases. This man, while he was able to convey the core message of each statement, left out a lot of stuff and some actual juicy parts. I feel like he had trouble keeping up. If you don't speak Dutch, I'd estimate you got only got 60-70% of the actual statements and a lot of stuff was lost in translation, if not left out completely.

I will properly translate the answer(s) to JJ's question as he's a member here, co-represented LiverKick and it produced one of the better bits of the Q&A so it should be interesting for the non-Dutch speakers here:

===

JJ: This fight was a long time in the making and now it is actually happening. How do u feel now that the fight is so close?

Rico (he actually did answer in English): For me it feels good, you know. I'm excited. Like I said, I never get out of the way of a good challenge and always try to challenge myself to the max and I think that I'm doing that this time again, you know. So yeah, I've been performing on a top level now for several years and to jump in to what I mean with the new school vs old school: He said he was fighting in Japan when I was still fighting with shinguards, so he's putting himself on the pedestal that he's older and I'm coming up and fought some old school guys as well. I feel like he's an old school guy, because he's from the K-1 days. He was in the top 8 of the K-1, he made it to the finals. I missed those days, that's what I mean with the old school vs new school time. Now we have the 'new school rules'. When you fight for the title you have to go 5 rounds. Well, he didn't want to go five rounds, because back in the day they only did 3 rounds. But, like I said it's new school now, so it's also a new school time.

JJ: Same question to Badr, but with a little twist. You can finally look each other in the eyes now and I can see that you've been staring at Rico the whole time. Can't take your eyes off him. You said you were in Morrocco sitting 'high and dry' and this fight has brought you back. What has it done for your personal motivation and your love of the sport?

Badr: You don't have to translate it I understand him... I'm confused, too much translation. Is it in English or Dutch now..?

Translator: He's asking about the whole old school/new school stuff.

Badr: Err....

JJ: Is this the kind of challenge that you needed?

Badr: I get it. It's a challenge. He's the Glory champion. I don't want to downtalk Glory so I'll put it like this: He's their champion. What kind of value that belt holds to me is for him to figure out... and then he goes on to say I don't want to fight for a World title because it's 5 rounds.. let me clear the air of the smoke a bit here: It's not that I don't want. It's just that I'm thinking about other things and possibilities. He thinks it's a "fun fight" and it's for honor and fun, but I fight for money. Money is what gets me to the ring. Sure it helps when it's a bit motivating. The reason why I didn't do the title fight, of course, is that when I knock him out in the first round, I'll tell this to Cor [Hemmers] so he can prepare for next year, the rest of Glory as well.. When I knock him out in the first round his belt will be worthless. Not one Euro. So what would be the next fight? That would be the title fight, of course. "For real" this time. That means cashing twice for me. This year and the next year, I'm looking at Cor... forget it. That's the whole idea behind the belt. He thinks I don't feel like fighting 5 rounds, but I think there is potential for two good paydays. So that's my answer to him, to you and everybody else, just to be clear.

===

*For a reason beyond me, people felt the need to applaud Badr's answer.*

Some sentences may seem a bit weird, but they were also weird and made little sense in Dutch. It's just conversational drivel that happens sometimes.

If I'm Jon Franklin I wouldn't exactly be enthusiastic with Badr's behaviour. I don't really have a problem with him speaking Dutch as speaking in your native tongue usually produces better dialogue. He kinda talked down on Glory though and literally stated he doesn't really care about fighting, or fighting for Glory, but just fighting for money. On the other hand you could take it as Badr just being honest and some of his comments absolutely sell the fight. At other times I felt like Badr didn't care about any of it and didn't want to be there at all, which was made especially obvious when he walked away before the staredown. You could counterpoint that Badr was trying to create some sort of unnecessary controversy as per usual, but to me he just didn't really seem to care.

I did think it was interesting when Badr mentioned K-1 going broke initially is what killed his motivation to compete as he feels there isn't really "the one big stage that counts" anymore. That statement might have held some actual value if he didn't literally say he just fights for money. He just meant that the end of K-1 meant the end of regular, big paydays.

I was disappointed that there was so much more interest in Badr than in Rico while Rico is the champion. That's just sad.

It was funny to see Badr get ticked off when someone asked him about "the facts" stating that Badr has barely been active while Rico has been fighting at a high level regularly. Badr did his absolute best to be a dick and made the reporter feel like an ass, even if the reporter did come off as a bit cocky at first. Badr did mention that opposed to Rico who thinks of fights as having 'fun', he never thinks of it as fun and would fight once every 3 years if he could make enough money per fight.

On to some other things I really do like the Londt VS Ben Saddik matchup. Both guys seem to be doing serious training at the moment from what I gather of Facebook updates and how Ben Saddik looked in his latest fight. I still ask myself why Londt had to go through a tournament if after winning it he's back to fighting superfights, but that's a topic for another day I guess. I do like the matchup though.

While Doumbé has defeated Murthel on an off-day, I don't think he'll be able to give Holzken a lot of trouble. Especially if Holzken really shows up to fight.

Not sure how I feel about the PPV stuff for international viewers and I have a feeling not all fights will be aired on Ziggo Sport, probably just the Collision portion of the card.

So yeah, those are my quick thoughts that took over an hour to type out. lol

[K1power]

BTW I was expecting Rico to be a bit more fierce here. He came across more confident in Dutch TV interviews where he said Badr wouldn't be much of a challenge for him and stuff like that.

At the Glory presser today Badr was the aggressor, much more so than Rico. At one point Badr mentioned the lack of KO victories Rico has on his record and asked "How many fights have you won by KO?". Rico didn't respond. Badr continued "He's scored about as many KO's as words he's giving me right now.". I think by cathering to the English speaking audience Rico might have shot himself in the foot a bit as he wasn't really able to give any snappy comebacks at some of the stuff Badr dished out.

Don't get me wrong: I still have Rico as a 70% favorite. It's just that Rico - while polite and media friendly - didn't have a big strong presence here. Especially considering the fact that he didn't get a lot of attention here he should have made the most of every time he got the chance to speak.

[themagi]

Cheers for that, Power. I gleaned more from that post than the entirety of the presser.

Right now, I think that JBS-Londt will promise more than it will deliver and that Doumbe may give Holzken a very awkward night. Two potential back to back five rounders, and their respective training camps, in relatively quick succession may leave a toll on the champion.

[K1power]

It's possible. Murthel seemed to have some trouble with Doumbé's weird style as well. I also think that Murthel had an off-day, which didn't really help.

JBS-Londt will probably be entertaining either way. If it does go three rounds it might get ugly as both guys will throw everything they have early on and with the small gas tanks they have that usually means a slow third round.

[themagi]

And the guy who came armed with the pics of Hari last year and the infamous recent pic is either as brave as a lion or as soppy as a sack.

He's just been added to Hari's 2017 hit-list alongside hotel receptionists, wine waiters and a trio of refuse collectors.

[K1power]

Looking at Hari's previous hit list, he has more than enough time to run.

[mehdi89ahmadi]

<abbr>GLORY COLLISION press conference:


</abbr>

[sg]

"How many fights have you won by KO?". Rico didn't respond. Badr continued "He's scored about as many KO's as words he's giving me right now."

Cheers, K1power for the translations! Badr is doing the right things to sell the fight. Kickboxing is in need of confident mouths and trash talkers, cuz it never really had one. Boxing had guys like Muhammad Ali, Tyson Fury, Floyd Mayweather, MMA has guys like Diaz brothers and Connor McGregor that sell the fights pretty good and attract audience. What does kickboxing have? "Oh, yeah, he is a good opponent, thank you very much GLORY for this opportunity, i will do my best to win the fight" *hug* *kiss* USSS .. between the opponents. And this is all of the press conference, you are then bored to dead and don't see intrigue, controversy, nothing. Just respect and guys that love each other. I mean, c'mon? In the end of the day those guys are fighters and are supposed to rip each other apart. The sport is entertainment. People tun in to see bloody faces, broken noses, bitten off ears, legs broken in half, trash talking and so on. The once that can't provide those things to the audience are simply not enterteining enough. They won't bring new fans and people around the sport, only the hardcore kickboxing fans will love them. The kickboxing needs the boxing fans, the MMA fans, the football fans in order to grow. Like it or not only people like Badr that knock everybody out, trash talk and are ferocious will attract and will be more popular.

[K1power]

It's sad that people are this stupid that they need athletes to act like dicks to get interested in a sport, but it's true.

[samurai1]

I was very surprised when I saw how scared Rico looked, especially at some points. I still think Rico wins this, but if I had 65% for Rico before the press, right now I think it's 55%-45%. I never seen a fighter look so scared at a press conference.

Also shame on Hari that he robbed us from an interesting staredown.

[K1power]

Welcome aboard, samurai1!

[h]

Oct 19, 2016 20:30:27 GMT 1 K1power said:

I hope the back of his shirt says "LoL" right between his shoulders.