GLORY returns to Spike TV on Friday, August 7 with GLORY 23 LAS VEGAS at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.
The headline slot features a World Welterweight Championship fight as Nieky ‘The Natural’ Holzken (86-11, 45 KO’s) and Raymond ‘Real Deal’ Daniels (27-2, 17 KO’s) square off for a second time.
At stake is the World Welterweight Championship title, which ‘Bazooka’ Joe Valtellini was forced to vacate earlier this month due to injury.
Holzken won the recent Welterweight Contender Tournament at GLORY 19 VIRGINIA and is the #1-ranked contender in the division. He also won the GLORY 13 TOKYO tournament in December 2013, stopping Valtellini in the final.
While a shoulder injury sidelined Holzken in early 2014, Valtellini went on to capture the World Welterweight Championship. GLORY 19 marked his return to action and he made a statement by beating two opponents in one night.
The second of those opponents was Daniels, who had stopped Brazil’s Jonathan Oliveira in the semi-finals. Daniels is a multi-time world champion in karate and Tae Kwon Do and brings a completely unique set of skills to the ring.
He is 4-2 in GLORY with all four wins by way of stoppage, each of which came via his patented spinning heel kick. Three opponents were stopped by way of one clean shot while Oliveira endured several knockdowns before the referee waved the fight off.
Holzken also felt the power of Daniels’ spin kick but eventually was able to shut the Los Angeles man’s space down and let his hands go to work, scoring several knockdowns to end the fight under the ‘four knockdowns’ rule which governs tournament finals.
Afterwards, Daniels reiterated his desire to win the GLORY World Welterweight Championship and pointed out that his only two losses in the organization were to Holzken and Valtellini.
Daniels believes a single fight with Holzken will look different to the match he had as his second fight of the evening, and on August 7 he gets to put that theory to the test.
