GLORY Strikes Deal with Fuji TV in Japan for K-1 Video Library

I feel like when it comes to talking about the old K-1, operated by the Japanese FEG, there aren’t many people who actually understand what happened with it outside of me. I’m not saying that because of some sort of weird arrogance or whatever, but because there literally was no one else in the English-speaking world outside of Dan Herbertson who really invested the time into figuring out what was going on. Basically, it was like this; FEG owned the K-1 brand, copyright and assets and promoted shows under the name. They had two television deals; TBS and Fuji TV. TBS is where Dynamite!! and DREAM shows aired, as well as K-1 MAX, while Fuji TV was for all other K-1 events.

So FEG declared bankruptcy last year after selling off the rights to K-1 to a mysterious Japanese real estate firm called Barbizon. This was done, apparently, under the control of K-1 founder Kazuyoshi Ishii. Ishii then put the assets of K-1 up for sale and the bidding came down to Bas Boon with Pierre Andurand and Mr. Kim, an executive from EMCOM/formerly Jalesco. As we know, the rest is history, as Mr. Kim acquired the rights to K-1 and not to be deterred, Andurand along with partners like Scott Rudman, Marcus Luer and Total Sports Asia formed GLORY Sports International. That is where we are at today, where the Kickboxing world is broken down into GLORY Sports International and K-1 Global.

So here is the news from today, where GLORY announced that they have acquired Fuji TV’s K-1 television library. This all came about because of FEG’s bankruptcy proceedings where they lost whatever assets that they had left, which was apparently the rights to this footage. Not all of the K-1 library was owned by Fuji TV, mainly the K-1 World Grand Prix events at Heavyweight, as most of the MAX and Dynamite!! footage is with TBS in Japan. Anyway, so GLORY, with the help of new partner Viacom, was able to scoop up these rights, which is HUGE. This means they have over 3,000 hours of footage in their library now.