Eight Men, One Night, $100,000: Inside the GLORY Collision 9 Light Heavyweight Grand Prix

The 95-kilogram division of GLORY Kickboxing has spent the past 12 months in free-fall. A failed steroid test stripped one champion. A refused fight stripped the next. A torn groin sank the third attempt at a coronation. By the time matchmakers ran out of ideas, only one option remained: burn the rulebook and crown the king the old way.

On June 13, 2026, GLORY COLLISION 9 returns to the Ahoy Arena in Rotterdam with all eight entrants now confirmed for the Light Heavyweight Grand Prix. The winner walks out with the vacant title, a $100,000 purse, and the burden of three fights in a single night. It is the most brutal format in combat sports, and the only honest way left to settle a division this poisoned.

So who actually walks out with the belt? The styles in this bracket are a stylistic powder keg, and the favorite almost never wins these things. Let's work through the wreckage.

The Power Vacuum: How GLORY Lost Its King

The chaos started at GLORY 100, where Lithuanian veteran Sergej Maslobojev chopped down then-champion Tarik Khbabez with a fourth-round TKO built on calf kicks and intercepting hands. It looked like the dawn of a new era. Within weeks, it was over.

Maslobojev failed a post-fight test for stanozolol, an anabolic steroid prized in combat sports for its endurance and recovery profile, and voluntarily vacated the title under provisional suspension. GLORY's clean-up plan collapsed almost immediately:

• GLORY 100 (Jun 2025): Maslobojev TKOs Khbabez, then fails the steroid test and vacates.
• Pre-GLORY 104: Khbabez refuses a vacant-title rematch with Bahram Rajabzadeh and is stripped outright.
• GLORY 107 (Apr 25, 2026): Reigning middleweight king Donovan Wisse agrees to jump up to face Rajabzadeh. Rajabzadeh tears his groin in camp, Wisse pivots back down to defend his 85kg strap against Chico Kwasi.
• Now: Title still vacant. Three failed coronations in twelve months.

The Grand Prix is not a creative flourish. It is GLORY's last clean way out.

The blueprint already exists at heavyweight. After Rico Verhoeven vacated his belt following 4,100 days as champion and 15 successful defenses, leaving for a DAZN-broadcast crossover boxing match with Oleksandr Usyk at the Pyramids of Giza, GLORY ran the "Last Heavyweight Standing" gauntlet that ended at GLORY 105. Mory Kromah (37-3-1, 21 KOs) was crowned without throwing a punch in the final after Milos Cvjetićanin (19-5, 10 KOs) broke his toe finishing Sofian Laidouni in the semis. The two now headline COLLISION 9 in the rematch co-main, an undisputed heavyweight title fight stacked underneath the Grand Prix. The undercard also features Croatian heavyweight Antonio Plazibat (23-5, 16 KOs) against 2025 Breakout Fighter of the Year Anis Bouzid (49-5, 37 KOs), giving Rotterdam one of the deepest single-night cards in modern kickboxing.

The historical warning, though, is older. At GLORY 15 Istanbul, the spiritual ancestor of this format, Tyrone Spong was the consensus favorite. He didn't win. Neither did Gokhan Saki, fighting in his ancestral homeland, nor Nathan "Carnage" Corbett, who carried the highest knockout rate into the bracket. The Grand Prix is never won by the hardest hitter. It is won by whoever is still upright, still mobile, and still willing to bleed in Round 9.

The Eight Confirmed Entrants

GLORY confirmed the final two slots earlier this month, locking in a complete bracket. The random draw for quarter-final matchups follows later in May. The bracket is a textbook clash of philosophies: Dutch counter-strikers, Kyokushin distance managers, Maghrebi pressure brawlers, and unhinged knockout chasers all sharing a 24-foot ring.

• Bahram Rajabzadeh "The Golden Wolf" (73-6, 65 KOs). A genuinely terrifying 89% knockout ratio built on pure linear violence. Does not believe in lateral movement; walks opponents into the corner and breaks the guard with overhand rights. Was brutally flying-knee'd into unconsciousness by Kromah in 2:14 at GLORY 100, and is coming off the groin tear that scrapped his April title shot. If his core hasn't fully healed, his predictability gets him countered into the canvas. If it has, he ends a quarterfinal in 90 seconds.
• Artem Vakhitov (22-7, 8 KOs), former LHW champion. The most technically diverse striker in the bracket. Famously dethroned Alex Pereira to reclaim the LHW belt, took a detour through MMA (a debut elbow injury, two sub-two-minute finishes, then a rejected UFC contract he called a "lowball"), and most recently dropped a 50-45 decision up at heavyweight to Verhoeven at GLORY 100. Operates upright, reads rhythm inside the first 30 seconds, and chops with calf kicks. His low-output style is a structural asset over nine rounds.
• Michael Boapeah (23-6-1, 9 KOs), 2025 LHW tournament winner. The most dangerous man in the bracket nobody is talking about. Lost a heavily debated split decision to Wisse for the middleweight strap at GLORY 100, moved up permanently, and immediately won the Collision 8 tournament, including a clinical 1:54 of Round 2 TKO of Stefan Latescu via low kicks alone. He's already done this exact format and survived.
• Mohammed Touchassie (20-3, 14 KOs), former LHW title challenger. A 70% knockout ratio carried by frantic high-output volume. Positive +0.17 strike differential and a brilliant 6:2 knockdown ratio, but he absorbs 6.26 SApM, which is a death sentence over three fights. Needs an early finish or he becomes the second-round-knockout victim someone else uses to advance.
• Cem Caceres (20-3, 14 KOs), 2024 GLORY Newcomer of the Year. Lands 7.40 SLpM at 50.37% accuracy, but absorbs 6.89 SApM, the most porous defense in the bracket. Just got iced in 70 seconds by Cvjetićanin in the Collision 8 semis. His only path is a Round 1 viral knockout. There is no Plan B.
• Donovan Wisse (23-2, 10 KOs), former Middleweight Champion. The pound-for-pound storyline. Just broke Pereira's middleweight title-defense record with wins over Boapeah and Chico Kwasi. A surgical Dutch counter-puncher with an impossibly heavy guard and stabbing knees off the back foot. The risk is structural: he has openly complained about jumping between 85kg and 95kg, and absorbing one clean head kick from a natural light heavyweight is a different category of impact entirely.
• Mohammed Hamdi (22-4, 10 KOs), undefeated in GLORY. The bracket's spoiler. A Moroccan body-snatcher who dominated Emin Ozer at GLORY 105 with a perfectly placed liver shot for a first-round knockdown. Astounding output and elite striking accuracy, with the cleanest body-attack game in the field. If anyone forces a frontrunner to drown in lactic acid by Round 7, it is Hamdi.
• Luis Tavares (65-11, 21 KOs), perennial contender. A 76-fight veteran with unparalleled ring generalship. Coming off a heated, viral grudge-match unanimous decision over Mo Amine at GLORY 107. +1.03 striking differential, elite distance management, and a chin tested across 16 years of professional kickboxing. The perfect Grand Prix pace-setter, and the easiest fighter to undervalue in this bracket.

The Tactical Reality: What Wins a One-Night Tournament

In a standard superfight, a phone-booth war is a viable strategy. In a Grand Prix, it is suicide. Three concepts will decide June 13:

• The myth of the brawl. Even a winning quarterfinal slugfest leaves swollen orbitals, bruised ribs, and torn knuckles that compound during the 45-minute locker-room cool-down. Adrenaline dumps between rounds are the silent killers of tournament fighters. The veterans (Tavares, Vakhitov) will be coaxing the Caceres and Touchassie types into burning their tank early.
• Chopping the tree. The low calf kick is the single most decisive weapon in this format. A bruised peroneal nerve cannot be iced, taped, or massaged away in a 45-minute intermission. Boapeah is the most dangerous calf-kicker in the bracket, and he knows exactly what five clean ones do to a man's lateral movement two fights from now.
• The body snatcher. If the calf kick is the great immobilizer, the liver shot is the great equalizer. Body damage doesn't just score; it permanently depletes the cardiovascular reserve for the rest of the night. Wisse's stabbing teep to the solar plexus and Hamdi's liver-targeting hooks are the body-investment plays that decide who drowns in Round 9.

Statistically, the fighters with the largest positive striking differentials, Tavares (+1.03) and Hamdi's elite output, are the ones built to survive multiple bouts. Anyone running a negative differential in a nine-round night is mathematically guaranteed to be unconscious before the final.

The Verdict: Pacing Beats Power

So who walks out with the belt and the $100,000? Not Wisse, and not Rajabzadeh.

Wisse brings the sharpest defensive fundamentals in the sport, but the weight-cut whiplash from 85kg to 95kg and the chin-test of absorbing natural light-heavyweight power across three fights is a structural ask his frame may simply not survive. Rajabzadeh brings the most kinetic terror in the field with his 65 career knockouts, but linear pressure with a freshly healed groin against this bracket's counter-strikers reads like a 3-minute exit, win or lose.

The format historically rewards battle-tested veterans who can dictate distance, conserve gas, and weaponize the calf kick. That points squarely at Artem Vakhitov, who has already gone the distance with both Pereira and Verhoeven without ever being structurally broken, and Michael Boapeah, who already won this exact format six months ago. The dark-horse pick is Mohammed Hamdi, whose body work could realistically drag any of the brawlers into a fifth-round drowning.

If the bracket gods give us Vakhitov vs. Boapeah in the final, kickboxing gets the cleanest possible answer to a year of legal chaos, failed drug tests, and stripped belts. When the Ahoy lights cut on June 13, the man left standing won't just be carrying GLORY's vacant Light Heavyweight crown. He'll be carrying the geopolitical weight of the entire post-Verhoeven era, and the burden of proving that the most brutal format in combat sports is still the most honest.