- Joined
- Aug 3, 2011
- Messages
- 5,644
- Reaction score
- 2,335
beast
Everybody these days is practising that "scissor" kick made famous by Saenchai, I find that so cringy.
beast
I have been binge watching K-1 Max tournaments for nostalgia's sake, and my goodness. The number of
robberies Masato got away with is just ridiculous.
Just obvious ones:
Gifted a decision in the first Zambidis fight (2003).
Gifted an extra round in the first Buakaw's fight (2004).
Protected by the ref against Kid (2004).
Gifted a decision gainst Zambidis (2005)
Robbed Sato and Kyshenko in the same night (2008) (Judges refused to deduct a point for knock down)
And I totally forgot the obsession of Masato and K-1 producers in trying to prove their superiority against boxing.
Matching Masato against one shot boxer after another, then Masato kept on calling out a boxing fight
in Las Vegas against Oscar De Lahoya.
Crazy years of kickboxing.
What Japanese star came into the UFC at his peak other then Mach, Horiguchi, and Okami? I'm not saying you're wrong but guys like Gomi and Kid were on the down swing of their careers when they came to the UFC. Then there is guys like Akiyama who started late and fought in the wrong weightclass.I actually have been thinking about the economics of Japanese fight sports promotions lately.
Because Japan is such a large economy, they never really need to rely on promoting their events abroad.
All of their promotions are home based (Boxing, K-1, Pride/post-pride MMA) and just need to get Japanese people
to buy the tickets or watch their events at home.
So they do what make sense to them, getting the Japanese stars either easy or most marketable fights, whether it is
boxing, K-1 or Pride, then rinse and repeat.
The result is that once these promotions die, Japanese fighters then perform so poorly abroad that it is kind of sad.
They are used to having home-town advantage that the challenges of 1. jet lag 2. unfavorable match up 3. unbiased judges/refs
result in them losing fights after fights. (This is super obvious in UFC).
I mean we as a fan rarely think about it, but it is kind of crazy to fly from the US or Europe a few days before,
then go fight in Saitama Super Arena lol. One of Tenshin's opponents was actually featured in Japan's TV show
and dude was doing sightseeing and chill before days before fight.
But Dillashaw beat him up in sparring and bullied him with cheap shots after the bell...
I would love to see a sparring footage even less than a minute.
Wonder how well Takeru did.
I meant Takeru's style sparring...if you know what I mean...