GLORY 9 NEW YORK is in the books, it's all change in the official GLORY World Series rankings.
Tyrone Spong emerged as the winner of the event’s centerpiece eight-man light-heavyweight slam tournament, scoring two stoppages and one decision win along the way.
Under usual circumstances a GLORY tournament winner adds 360 points to his total, but the rules are different in Spong’s case.
He usually campaigns at heavyweight and had dropped to light-heavyweight only for this tournament. In such circumstances, GLORY rules dictate that he gets three-quarters of the available points - 240 - to take back to his native heavyweight.
That is still a good number of points to take away from a single event but it doesn’t allow Spong to climb over Daniel Ghita, who retains his world-ranked #3 spot after stopping French heavyweight Brice Guidon (#13) in the first round of their superfight contest and scooping 121 points in the process.
The light-heavyweight tournament didn’t produce any significant movement in the division, due to the higher-ranked fighters generally taking victory over the lower-ranked fighters they encountered.
Danyo Ilunga took 200 points for coming second, semi-final losers Dustin Jacoby and Filip Verlinden took 110 points and 50 points went to the losing quarter-finalists (Steve McKinnon, Brian Collette, Mourad Bouzidi and Michael Duut.
The only light-heavyweight climber was American prospect Jacoby, who beat Collette in the quarter-finals before losing to the world #1-ranked Ilunga in the semi-finals.
He climbs three places, from #9 to #6, and leapfrogs more established names in Nenad Pegonis, French #1 Stephane Susperregui and his countryman Collette.
The first of the tournament reserve matches saw #11-ranked Randy Blake swap places with #10-ranked Japanese fighter Koichi with a decision win over him, Blake gaining 85 points and Koichi losing just 6.
The other tournament reserve match saw #14-ranked Luis Tavares stopped in the first round by a body shot from debutant Russian talent Artem Vakhitov, a rankings wildcard, with Tavares losing 20 points and dropping one spot in the rankings.
In the middleweight division, #6-ranked Mike Lemaire was taken out in style by the unranked (but very impressive) Wayne Barrett. Lemaire was KO’d and that cost him 33 points, forcing him to drop to #7 and moving Eddie Walker to #6 - a position he holds by just one point.
Casey Greene, #16-ranked at middleweight, lost early by way of knockout and dropped 18 points. The loss doesn’t affect his ranking position.
Canada’s ‘Bazooka Joe’ Joseph Valtellini continues to impress and he moved up to #7 in the welterweight division in this outing, stopping the #19-ranked Francois Ambang with leg kicks and adding 70 points to his total.
Finally, two heavyweight superfights thrilled the crowd. Rico Verhoeven set out for revenge on Errol Zimmerman and got it, the two battering each other on the way to Verhoeven gaining a split-decision win.
Verhoeven’s 102-point gain moves him up three places from #10 to #7 while Zimmerman, who challenged for the GLORY heavyweight title last year, loses only three points but falls from #8 to #10 in the rankings.
Top Brazilian heavyweight Anderson ‘Braddock’ Silva fought England’s Daniel Sam and won every round, taking a unanimous decision over the #20-ranked fighter. He earned 52 points but that doesn’t move him up the rankings from his #9 slot.
