This Friday marks the return of GLORY Kickboxing, following a nearly three month absence for the promotion. Oddly, this card ended up in Fairfax, Virginia, but that should have no bearing on the fights, and GLORY always seems to have exciting fights on their events. The major attractions of GLORY 19 are a heavyweight championship match between reigning titleholder Rico Verhoeven and the heavy-hitting Errol Zimmerman. In addition, one of the more successful American kickboxers on the scene today, Joe Schilling, competes in a featured middleweight bout against Canadian Robert Thomas. Finally, as has become GLORY’s custom, the card features a four-man tournament contenders tournament in the welterweight division. On the undercard, GLORY’s inaugural lightweight champion, Andy Ristie, continues his road back to the title, as he takes on Aussie Steve Moxon, who has competed on three previous GLORY cards. MMA oddsmaker Nick Kalikas released the betting lines for the main card bouts of GLORY 19 today at Several Bookmakers. Take a look: ——————– MAIN CARD (Spike TV, 9pm ET) GLORY Heavyweight Title Rico Verhoeven -305 Errol Zimmerman +225 Joe Schilling -475 Robert Thomas +325 Nieky Holzken -505 Alexander Stetsurenko +335 Raymond Daniels -350 Jonatan Oliveira +250 ——————– Brad’s Analysis: Well, this is a far cry from the line for their June 2013 bout, but given Verhoeven’s resume since that bout (wins over Gokhan Saki, Daniel Ghita x2, and Peter Aerts) it’s not difficult to see why. Zimmerman has only lost to Ghita since he last faced Verhoeven, but his level of competition has been markedly lower, and there’s always the questions of how effective he can be if his fights get into the later rounds, somewhere Verhoeven often takes his bouts. Interestingly, the last time a Verhoeven bout didn’t go to the final bell (win or lose) was when Zimmerman knocked him out in under a minute back in January of 2012. That possibility certainly still exists, but I believe Rico has developed beyond that. From a pure kickfighting perspective, I think Joe Schilling is a tad overrated due to the lack of quality Americans out there. Still, this is essentially a setup fight for him against a talented youngster who just isn’t quite ready for this stage. Thomas was soundly outstruck by Artem Levin in his GLORY debut, dropped a bout to Alex Pereira in his next outing, then recovered with a third-round TKO in his last GLORY appearance. That was a very competitive fight against a lesser fighter than Schilling however, so I see Joe winning a clear decision here.
