Last month, I put together a ranking of my 15 favorite sports. Kickboxing came away with the No. 1 spot, and on Thursday night, that choice was really put to the test.

The show was GLORY Underground, the first venture of a new partnership between GLORY Kickboxing and Jake Paul’s Betr gambling app. Rather than putting on a typical fight card in a stadium, an arena, or a ballroom, this one was booked for the Betr Warehouse — which looked like a basement without space for much of an audience. The small crowd was “invitation-only” and appeared to be a collection of influencers (the Morning Routine Guy might have been the most famous fan in the building) and Miami luminaries. GLORY and Betr were going for a Fight Club atmosphere, and they kind of pulled it off; the event felt like something between Edward Norton’s delusion and the empty-arena shows that were put on by the UFC and WWE during the COVID pandemic.

The concept was cool; respect for trying something outside the box. The production, though, needs work if this is something they plan on doing more than once. GLORY Underground was advertised as being free on YouTube, but the feed was so choppy that viewers were redirected mid-show to DAZN, the (not free) streaming service best known for carrying combat sports. The DAZN feed worked perfectly fine, but it’s never a good look when you have to pivot from your original plan in the middle of an event.

Then there was the announcers, by far the worst part of the show and the thing that really tested my dedication to the sport. GLORY’s regular color analyst, former fighter “Bazooka” Joe Valtellini, was the one bearable voice on the program. His three partners on the mic, who I’m assuming are Betr regulars, were like a trio of Pat McAfee wannabes — and on top of being generally annoying and unnecessarily loud, they didn’t know much about kickboxing. One time a fighter missed an aerial kick and landed on the mat, and one of the Betr announcers asked, “Is that a knockdown?” After fans in the live chat and one of his announce partners clowned him, the guy’s best comeback was that he would beat up his partner, so he was indeed qualified to call a kickboxing match. Yeah. Throughout the show it felt like Bazooka Joe could barely stand these guys and wanted to beat them up himself.

But I sat through the grating commentary and the glitchy streaming because, well, apparently I do love some kickboxing.

GLORY was smart to limit this experimental show to five fights. (By comparison, GLORY 98 in February had 11 fights; seven on the main card and five prelims.) Because if there’s one thing worse than a mess of a fight card, it’s a mess of a fight card that takes a long time. Although it started late, GLORY Underground moved at a pretty brisk pace and was finished in about two hours.

Younes Smaili, a Muslim welterweight of Dutch-Moroccan descent, lost to Don Sno via split decision on one of the undercard fights. In the co-main event, Michael Boapeah defeated Stefan Latescu via TKO in a match between two top-10 light heavyweight contenders.

The main event was a GLORY Welterweight Championship rematch between challenger Tyjani Beztati and champion Chico Kwasi. Beztati, a Dutch-Moroccan Muslim, is currently the GLORY Lightweight champ, although that division may be phased out of the promotion soon. Beztati and Kwasi fought for the welterweight title back in October 2024; that bout was ruled a draw, allowing Kwasi to retain his title. In Thursday’s rematch, Kwasi scored a flash knockdown in the second round and was the aggressor for most of the fight, but Beztati won a lot of the exchanges even when fighting off his back foot. At the end of five rounds, it was ruled a draw. Again. Kwasi is still the champion.

In his post-fight interview, Beztati couldn’t hold back his frustration.

“Alhamdulillah for everything, but to be honest — to be (expletive) honest — the first round was mine, the second round was his, and all the other rounds were mine. Much respect for Chico, we are the two best in the division … but this fight, I definitely won this fight.”

Kwasi was already talking trilogy in his post-fight interview, and that’s probably what’ll happen after two draws and the fact that Beztati and Kwasi actually are the clear-cut top two welterweights in GLORY, if not in the world. But as closely contested as their fights are, I can’t say they’re particularly exciting. Kwasi and Beztati are polished technical fighters, not headhunters looking for knockouts. So while they’ll give you impressive kickboxing, they don’t always give you a thrilling fight. Looks like they’ll get a third shot at it, though.