FROM DENVER WITH KICKS.

AuthorSchley, Stewart
PositionSPORTS BIZ

Here's a handy life tip: Try not to get kicked by Chris Camozzi.

It's a revelation, the usefulness of which becomes apparent seconds after the 6-foot-2 martial arts specialist begins sparring on a Thursday afternoon with his friend, Marc Montoya, owner of the Factory X gym in Englewood. Except "sparring" seems an understated way to express what Camozzi does in the ring. The kicks he launches from his muscular frame produce thunderous echoes as they smack hard against the protective pads Montoya 's thrusting out from either hand. It basically sounds like a gunfight's going on. Even so, the moment lacks any suggestion of menace. Camozzi, an affable, polite, look-you-in-the-eye 30-year-old who graduated from Jeffco's Bear Creek high school, is half-smiling and conversing nonchalantly as he follows an arpeggio of punches with a devastating wheel-and-deal blow from his right leg. For him, it's just another afternoon at the office.

Camozzi's training for a big moment: his debut as a professional kickboxer in a fight scheduled for Dec. 1 at New York's Madison Square Garden. As a six-figure earner on the UFC circuit, Camozzi has plenty of experience fighting for prize money under the lights. But the December fight will be his first in the combat sport of kickboxing, where a different set of rules (no on-the-ground wrestling, no elbows) changes the nature of the game.

The event is one of dozens of tournaments staged annually by Glory Sports International, a promoter and presenter that brings talents like Camozzi to the ring for nine minutes of adrenalin-laced fury. Glory Sports works a global marketplace, staging four- and eight-fighter tournaments in far-flung locales such as Amsterdam and Guangzhou, China. But its home is Denver, where longtime sports executive Jon Franklin runs the show from an office at the corner of Larimer and 21 st streets. Franklin, a DU Law School graduate, knows his way around the ring. As a kid growing up in Detroit, he used to ride his bicycle to the famous Kronk Gym, where legends like Thomas "Hit Man" Hearns and Evander Holyfield trained. During the 1990s, he worked for the late Denver-based cable TV mogul Bill Daniels, running a boxing promotions company that staged fights involving Mike Tyson and others.

Franklin later worked for the large sports-and-entertainment agency IMG Media, running the group's Winter Sports and Olympics divisions, which represented skiers including Bodie Miller. For years, he's been a fixture...

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