Prior to GLORY 20, there weren't many kickboxing experts who were picking Simon Marcus to get past Wayne Barrett in the first round of the four-man middleweight contender tournament, let alone win the whole thing.
Combat Sports analysts, like most, follow a "what have you done lately?" approach. Fighters are often only considered as good as their last fight. And for Marcus, that was a brutal technical knockout loss in February to Fang Bian on a Wu Lin Feng card in China; A fight where he was knocked down four times.
Two fights before that, Marcus had entered the GLORY Last Man Standing tournament in June of last year at 39-0, but suffered the first loss of his career to Joe Schilling in the quarter-finals.