Best Fights of 2022

[Monte Moku]

Hello everyone! 2022 was an amazing year for Kickboxing, and I didn't feel like GLORY's candidates for fights of the year accurately reflected that. Our community is small and I don't think putting together a formal poll would be the most effective way of deciding the 'best', especially since this forum covers two sports scattered across the globe and all that. Anyway, let's just post the bangers from 2022 and enjoy ourselves. Technical chess matches, all-out brawls and everything between are welcome

Some of my Kickboxing favorites from 2022 --

Masaaki Noiri VS Kaito Ono:


Marat Grigorian VS Tayfun Ozcan:

Link for us Americans

Zhang Peimian VS Jonathan Di Bella:


Akihiro Kaneko VS Masashi Kumura:


Capitan Petchyindee VS Hiroki Akimoto:


I'll admit, I haven't really been following Muay Thai very much over the past year so I don't really have anything to contribute in that regard. If anyone else does though, please share!

 

[Monte Moku]

Further, I would like to say this has been a landmark year for Kickboxing in my opinion. We saw the biggest purse ever in the sport from Tenshin VS Takeru ($2.5M for Tenshin), and the ripples of THE MATCH have lead to basically every major Kickboxing promotion starting to run co-promoted events. Enfusion is almost acting as a feeder league to GLORY now as well as GLORY’s other Collision events beginning to highlight new talent, ONE Championship is hosting Road to ONE tournaments around the world and the path to competing there is opening up (I just wish they put more effort into promoting these tournaments and putting the fights on YouTube), RISE is co-promoting a ton with Shootboxing and recently GLORY and quickly growing their talent, and lastly it seems K-1 is facing significant hardships in the face of losing a lot of their stars recently. I think/hope a lot of those guys will go over to RISE and bolster their ranks further though! I don’t really keep up with the Chinese scene, so if anyone has any updates on them over 2022, that would be awesome! I always see guys like Wei Rui and Jia Aoqi in the rankings, but I don’t know a lot about them.

 

[BoxerMaurits]

@Monte Moku Cool initiative man!
Regarding ONE, I really liked these fights:

Roman Kryklia vs Iraj Azizpour




Petchmorakot vs Tawanchai




Sittichai vs Mohammed Boutasaa




(and ofcourse the Marat Grigorian va Tayfun Özcan fight you already mentioned)

 

[machida90]

 

[Trupsi]

This one was short but crazy.

 

[Khonda]

Great picks guys, there was so many good fights here are some others I liked:
For Kickboxing:











https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBXXM84z6-s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtdywIxOGIw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjStPxF67PU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUNlNcnYe-M

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USBA0l0tMJo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvjYecB_3Cw

I could also add honorable mentions for Camara vs Nastase, Masahiko Suzuki vs Mutsuki Ebata, Koprivlenski vs Billet, Niimi vs Junguang, Regian Eersel vs Arian Sadikovic, Zhang Peimian vs Aslanbek Zikreev, Issei Ishii vs Koji Ikeda, Shiro vs Koki Osaki, Allazov vs Sitthichai, YA MAN vs Sumiya Ito, Tetsuya Yamato vs Daizo Sasaki, Denis Wosik vs Mohamed El Mesbahi, T-98 vs Ryojiro, Shintaro Matsukura vs Jinbo, Mohamed Simsek vs Matthew Daalman, Riku Kazushima vs Momu Tsukamoto, Zhu Shuai vs Jin Ying, Hyuma vs Yuki Kasahara, Tenshin vs Takeru

In Muay Thai : Savvas vs Duangsompong, Kaito Wor Wanchai vs Kongchai, Dani Rodriguez vs Yodwicha I & II, Petchdam vs Chorfah, Flukenoi vs Matias Gallo, Mongkolkaew vs Matias Gallo, Flukenoi vs Kimluay, Suayai vs Yoddoi, Shadow vs Sajad Sattari, Praewprao vs Dinnuathong, Mongkolpetch vs Paideng, Kongchai vs Petchthong

 

[WolverReem]

Suzuki vs Kaneko

 

[GreenGorilla]

and obviously his fight with Superbon.

Call it recency bias but those two fights of Allazov were amazing to me. The way he way aggressive but also super fluid really impressed me and the results speak for themselves.

 

[Blazeblack]

It's between Maslobojev vs Khbabez, Kryklia vs Azizpour, and Akimoto vs Caption, imo.

 

[Doctor Grudge]

For Muay Thai I'd say Liam Harrison vs Muang Thai

For KB I'd give it to Keisuke Monguchi vs Taisei Umei. Haven't seen it since it happened but I remember just being very impressed by the action and drama though a lot of the fights posted were also contenders for me.