K-1: past and future

K-1: past and future

or Japan and the great

In the 1990s, my Japanese dojo friends pestered me with questions about “Iron” Mike Tyson and his various comebacks from the penal system. Could Tyson have beaten a top Ali? No, I would say… have you ever seen Roy Jones fight? Floyd Mayweather? His eyes would invariably search the premises as if looking for lost keys or a joke. Can they beat Tyson?

Come the new millennium, and my Japanese acquaintances have turned their attention to Bob Sapp and his bizarre foray into K-1 fighting and Pride. Can anyone beat Sapp, they wondered? Will he eventually crush the perfect Ernesto Hoost, the greatest K-1 fighter of all time? Yes, I scoffed at the former, and not the latter, mystified and mystified by the Eastern obsession with Western big boys. I thought I was a phenomenon not unlike my boxing fan friend who is overly impressed by the flashy high kick, or the karate fighters who marvel at the arm bar. wow. Watch that guy do what I can’t. Look at that guy being bigger than everyone in my race. wow.

Kazuyoshi Ishii had been a karateka in the (then) fearsome Kyokushin system, before splitting off and forming the Seidokaikan fighting system. When Mr. Ishii created the K-1 wrestling format in 1993, he was essentially taking the Kyokushin openweight tournament format he grew up in and modifying it with reality-based kickboxing techniques. In Kyokushin, blows to the face were a foul that led to disqualification. Relatively smaller Japanese fighters had been able to maintain a tenuous superiority over larger foreigners through vigorous training, rules that favored smaller fighters in close decision fights, and questionable judgments. Strong, skilled, relatively small Japanese men like Kenji Midori and Shokei Matsui were able to win world championships. In K-1, however, we found that weight discrepancies carry more weight when punches are aimed at the head, and judges’ decisions carry less weight when one fighter is more unconscious than the other.

Realities: There is a fundamental difference between a chin and a chest. Dutch men are considerably larger than Japanese men. It’s much more exciting to see two half-naked men (either Dutch or Japanese) trying to knock each other out with punches to the head than two guys in gis slapping each other’s chests at a kiai festival.

K-1 was a hit in Japan, and towering Europeans named Branco, Ernesto, and Aerts became fan favorites. The most popular of all was Andy Hug, an exciting Swede who had grown up in the Kyokushinkaikan (before wisely supplementing his extraordinary kicking skills with a healthy dose of Muay Thai kickboxing); and he spoke Japanese to boot. Other great Kyokushin karateka such as Fihlo, Feitosa and Pettas tried to punch in the face, as did some Japanese Don Quixotes such as Sataake and Musashi. K-1 spread throughout the world, with fighters and tournaments appearing in Australia, Africa, various European outposts, and finally the Americas. It was “the days of the salad”.

or Trouble in Paradise

Boxing pundits like Teddy Atlas and Emanuel Steward lament the current state of the heavyweight division, noting that the current shortage of big men is largely due to marketing. Big boys (who often become big men) are raised on television, and television is more likely to show big men, big rich men, dribbling basketballs or catching footballs than hitting (and being beaten) by other men. The same applies to the current state of other fighting arts: the greats prefer balls to brutality.

Although the K-1 tournaments had become global events, the same fighters always seemed to make it to the final Grand Prix tournaments that take place in Japan towards the end of each year. There were the champions (Hoost, Aerts, Hug), the almost champions (Le Banner, Bernardo, Sefo, Fihlo), and they were always fighting each other. Then in 2001 a fat bum from Australia named Mark Hunt and won the world tournament, and K-1 was either evolving (new blood) or completely random (fat guy won it all). And Bob Sapp arrived. Random seemed to take the lead.

Any sport looking to market its product needs a superstar, and Ernesto Hoost was the K-1 man. A tall, elegant Dutchman of Surinamese descent, his terrible pimples and consistent technique had earned him the nickname “Mr. Perfect.” He seemed quite aloof, and his style could be too cautious at times, but he was without a doubt the best fighter in K-1, the toughest guy in the neighborhood, the man who could stand behind Mr. Ishii as he would. told others. big martial arts wigs: “This is my bodyguard.” And Bob Sapp arrived.

With a melon head larger than most men’s torsos, sitting on a torso more muscular than a comic book hero’s, supported by legs that seemed too heavy to lift (much less kick), Sapp was a character. strangely scary. But he had no fighting pedigree. Sapp, an unsuccessful football player, had recently brought his 350-plus pounds to the kickboxing gym to train. Although he seemed rather silly when he fought, the smaller men often didn’t step aside when Sapp charged, so he gained some trivial advice. Japanese fans loved his cartoon character appearance and personality. But putting Sapp with Hoost was crazy; he was Primo Carnera versus Joe Louis.

During the first few minutes of the fight, Hoost gave the amateur a perfect beating. Who would have thought that Mr. Right couldn’t move his head or feet when an injured, scared and enraged Sapp backed him into a corner? That Sapp would knock out the best K-1 fighter? Twice! Kickboxers don’t know how to move their feet and head? It was as if Michael Jordan had become a professional baseball player AND put a new hole in Randy Johnson’s ass. Tonya Harding had laced up her boxing gloves AND knocked out Lucia Riijker (twice!). No, this was even dumber. The best boxer in the world had been knocked out (twice!) by a mediocre soccer player. How tough was Mr. Ishii’s neighborhood, when the toughest guy couldn’t beat an amateur? The implications were bigger than Sapp’s melon head: How seriously can you take a sport built on such a precarious foundation?

or Paradise reinvented

Here’s a strange contradiction in American sports culture: In practice, martial arts tend to attract upper- and middle-class practitioners, while boxing attracts fighters primarily from the ghetto, yet the decidedly upper-class media High media outlets who reluctantly cover boxing have avoided the competition altogether. martial arts (UFC, K-1, Pride) for excessive brutality. Most boxing fans and the media are drawn to blood and guts fighters who sacrifice their well-being through aggressive and reckless fights (think of the recent Gatti-Ward trilogy). But somehow, K-1 with its shocking head kicks, and MMA with its relatively foreign ground game, strikes many of these same Americans for being brutal in a bad way (“human cockfighting”). To appeal to a broader (ie American) audience, K-1 needs to market a product that is not only action-packed, but also witty in a way that isn’t too subtle for an inexperienced audience. Elegant butchery.

Maybe it’s time for K-1 to turn to the smaller guys, instead of relying so heavily on the small talent pool of the big boys. There are many men in Japan and elsewhere who are not 6’5′ tall, but possess the athleticism and heart to compete in a sport that does not require abnormal size. These men are not only more abundant in quantity, but often more agreeable in quality. After all, the most popular boxer of the last decade has been Oscar De La Hoya, fighting at weights ranging from 130 to 160 pounds. K-1 could do worse than increase exposure to its World Max tournaments (70kg and under), with some special heavyweight bouts added to the card to satisfy our fascination with the big boys. Perhaps diminutive Norifumi “Kid” Yamamoto could be some sort of midget Golden Boy. Does “Kid” speak English? She sings ballads and he talks about his dead mother? Is she dead? He thinks of the possibilities! “Kid” Yamamoto at the Grammys, singing Japanese love ballads…

This brings us to the second phase of K-1 evolution: the MMA fighting rules. Although it would be nice to expand the K-1 fan base, there are many die-hard fans of full contact martial arts, and we need to be tended to and stimulated from time to time. K-1 has recently entered the world of MMA with the addition of Hero’s to their shows. Following the recent lead of Pride and the UFC, K-1 Hero features MMA competition in various weight classes. They’re cultivating a crop of smaller, more exciting Japanese fighters (Yamamoto, Tokoro, and Sudo), recruiting old MMA stalwarts (the Gracies and, wow, Sakaraba), and providing a training ground for stand-up fighters who wet their feet in the full contact pool (Aerts, Le Banner and Sefo). This ladder group indicates the attraction of full contact MMA in the world of martial arts. Whether out of boredom with the same old opponents or a desire to prove themselves in a more challenging format, K-1 fighters are branching out. One can only hope that K-1’s foray into MMA is long-lasting, fosters competition and cooperation between the three major organizations (UFC, Pride, K-1), further develops fighters of varied stature, and eventually helps translating the excitement of MMA into the lexicon of the American fight fan. Or maybe we should get Yamamoto and Sapp together and let them punch each other in the chest.