Glory 80 in Hasselt should have been a party for kickboxing enthusiasts, but it got completely out of hand. Fans of Badr Hari and Arkadiusz Wrzosek confronted each other, threw chairs and fought with security guards. “We deeply regret that the event has been canceled because people are displaying dangerous behavior,” Glory said in a brief statement.
The match was initially temporarily halted after the second round, but it soon followed that the evening would not be resumed at all. That meant that Jamil Ben Saddik and the Dutchman Levi Rigters, who should have taken care of the final chord in the Trixxo Arena, could go home with nothing done.
,,We do not accept that fans who want to enjoy an evening of top sport are at risk. At the request of the Hasselt police, we have canceled the event after the second round of the match between Badr Hari and his Polish opponent Arkadiusz Wrzosek,” reports Glory.
Wrzosek is a big fan of ADO Den Haag and was supported in Hasselt by supporters of the club from the Kitchen Champion Division and by Polish fans. Many Hari supporters had also come to Belgium. Wrzosek responded on Instagram saying that the Polish fans are not to blame. ,,The referee didn’t stop the fight because of them. More information will follow soon.”
For Rigters, who was about to start his fight against Ben Saddik, the grapes were all sour. ,,I understood the decision, of course. I’m thinking about my own game now, but it’s bad for the sport. It just slowly came into the good light and then this happens.”
,,In the past, something happened regularly, but recently not more than this. It’s bad for the whole sport, for me, for Jamal. I’m assuming this match will just be moved. They were just hesitant to clear the room and fight tonight without an audience. That is a very annoying situation. Will it go through? Isn’t it going on? While you are so high in your adrenaline.”
Tarik Khbabez, number nine on the Glory heavyweight ranking, also spoke of a disastrous evening and lashed out at the rioters. “We train every day of our lives to show you great fights. For that we leave our house and our wife and children behind. You should be ashamed of yourselves. You are destroying the sport. Not only for us, but also for the real fans who want to see a fight and not idiots creating chaos.”
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