The development of IZLI Sport
Tim Izli has never been one to rest on his laurels. The discipline and energy he devoted to his highly successful full contact career was immediately channelled into coaching and promoting when he hung up his well-used gloves. Tim established the renowned Cobra gym in Victoria, London in 1983 and it has flourished ever since, not only bringing him a succession of champions but maintaining a solid client base whatever the economic climate.
Tim Izli
It’s an impressive CV but Tim Izli never dwells in the past, rather he constantly looks to the future and his next challenge within an industry that he knows inside out and retains a fierce passion for.
Always one to look at the bigger picture, Tim has constantly tried to evolve the combat sport industry and give back as much as he takes from it by utilising a sound understanding of business and the growing influence of multi-media to present the arena he loves in the most positive fashion. His latest initiatives, however, are the most ambitious yet, as Tim launches a dedicated clothing brand and a state of the art gym under his ‘Izli Sport’ umbrella. The clothing range is something that he has wanted to develop for a long time but with the desire to do it right, opted to wait until he could not only bring out a credible range but establish himself in a notoriously competitive market. It helped that his gym, with over five hundred members, was already firmly established as a solid base. “First and foremost I run a successful gym and people are always going to want to buy products. I was dealing with lots of other companies but my own brand was always on my mind and I looked at the quality of some of the stuff and the way it was being distributed and I wasn’t really happy and thought I could do a better job.”
Despite being confident that he had great designs for a good-looking range and had done the necessary research, Tim knew that finance was the key to the venture and he felt that he needed to work with people that could also bring something to the table. He found his man in Bruno Rodriguez, a former French military policeman and martial arts instructor as the two were on the same page when it came to everything from the financial aspects to the actual designs-“ When I was looking for someone to come in with me on a financial level it was important that they had involvement in the sport and an understanding of what I was doing and not only look at ideas I had but bring their own ideas to the table as well and then come to an agreement on what would sell based on what we would both want to wear. Bruno has done just that, we’re on the same wavelength.”
All the designs have been based on what Tim and Bruno like or don’t like and although the focus will be on fightwear they will be developing an urbanwear collection as well, conscious of the fact that fightgear has become very trendy and worn regularly in many social contexts. With this in mind, the Izli Sport range will be both functional and eye-catching, doing the job it’s supposed to but making the fighter look good in the process. Tim believes that MMA has had a huge impact on this duality, citing the stylish brands that have come just from the UFC and the way they have developed outside the fight arena and into the urban market. As a result he believes that there’s definitely a niche there, especially for a good product. “In this respect I’ve got a bit of a head start because I’ve been in the sport a long time and my name is fairly well known, so I when you put everything together I think we’ve got a winning formula and I want fighters to buy the range because they feel good in it, they look good in it and it’s comfortable and practical, not because I’m paying them to wear it.”
Tim is acutely aware that he is dipping his toes into the churning waters of a highly competitive marketplace but this awareness only rekindles his own natural fighting instincts. Tim does not simply want to survive, he wants to be right up there with the market leaders and key to this development is getting the brand noticed. To this end he has been busy sponsoring a number of events, rather than simply hoping that the brand sells itself. “We managed to get the brand on a fighter at the UFC, also Muay Thai Legends, we’re sponsoring the CFC’s, and we’re looking to work with the ISKA, we’ve got a number of organisations that we’re dealing with and the response has been great, so I can’t wait to get the rest of the products out on the market.”
If his move into the clothing market were not a daunting enough prospect in its own right, Tim has also decided to go ahead with long-held plans to open a brand new state of the art gym. Again, this venture was totally dependant on getting the right financial backing in place because he readily admits that it is a huge project. Experience is also vital here and Tim points to the fact that his Victoria based gym has been successful for a long time, despite being relatively small and having no ring-“but I run it very well and I’ve maintained around five hundred members for a number of years, so if I can do that somewhere that is relatively small imagine what I could do with somewhere really big?”
Confident that there is a need for a gym of the size and scope he envisages, the new gym is going to be a fully functional fighting gym with a cage and a ring, allied to very hi-tech elements such as plasma screens and varied camera angles to watch the fight action back. Whilst perceived as a fight-training gym, rather than somewhere you go just to have a little workout the gym will obviously be open to people who may not want to fight but who want to train like a champion. This is where Tim’s coaching and promoting experience proves vital as he has worked in a marketplace that has seen the growth of white collar boxing and many ‘city’ types aspire to be like a fighter. “They spend all day making money in an office and I think part of them wants to be in a gym, punch the bags, spar but their lifestyle doesn’t allow them to do it on a professional level and this gym will give them access to that fighting world.”
Similarly he sees the gym as an asset to the growing breed of MMA fighter, noting that whilst it is very rare that you can go to one gym and get all the disciplines you need, his gym will have specialist trainers in all disciplines under one roof. It’s part of a long-term strategy to attract the best fighters from around the country to train at a state of the art gym, knowing that they will be serviced by people that obviously care about them as fighters and who can move them forward with their career. “It’s important that they’re actually at a place where they can not only learn something but also move forward because there’s funding-so there is a need for a gym that builds revenue through the white collar participation to help develop and fund the up and coming fighters.”
Tim is looking to open the gym in December 2009 but is confident that he will have the brand established before the gym opens and he will be working closely with like-minded people, namely those that see the same bigger picture he sees, those that he hopes will grow with him, if they see the potential and support him now. Izli Sport is the perfect umbrella for Tim’s projects and he’s given himself a rigorous two year timetable to see how far he can develop the brand on the back of the hard work already put in. Ever the realist, Tim knows that two years will be enough time for people to see that there is a new brand out there and although there’s already a lot of interest in what Tim’s doing, he knows that site traffic has to be converted to sales for the brand to move forward. “I’ve proven to everyone that my main interest is in the sport and this new venture is exciting and something I want to put out there so people can say “I like the stuff” and I put something into the industry that people can remember me by and that is something I’ve always wanted to do.”
For further details visit http://www.izlisport.com
4 May 2009
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