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K-1 March 2009 event notes
By Zach Arnold | March 25, 2009
Some fights announced for K-1’s World GP event in Yokohama (3/28 Yokohama Arena):
- Remy Bonjasky vs. Alistair Overeem
- Badr Hari vs. Errol Zimmerman
- Jerome Le Banner vs. Ewerton Teixeira
- Glaube Feitosa vs. Jun’ichi Sawayashiki
- K-1 Heavyweight Tournament match: Melvin Manhoef vs. Chalid “Die Faust” Arrab
- K-1 Heavyweight Tournament match: Ruslan Karaev vs. Gokhan Saki
- Tournament winners face each other later in the night
Topics: Japan, K-1, Media, MMA, Zach Arnold | 35 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
Poor Melvin, I’m sure K-1 won’t be happyuntil he’s actually dead in the ground.
Overeem is in a whole heap of trouble. Bum rushing a guy with a mediocre chin is one thing. He is not gonna be successful if he tries that with Bonjasky. In fact, its difficult to think of ways he will be successful with Remy.
I don’t see Overeem winning this one. Overeem competing in K-1 brings up a bigger issue for me….
The Heavyweight Division in MMA is really hurting. Overeem is just an example of this. Of the Top 20 in the world:
1. Andrei Arlovski – Boxing Next
2. Tim Sylvia – Boxing Next
3. Alistair Overeem – K-1 Next
4. A. Emelianenko – Can’t Fight In The US
5. Randy Couture – Probably has 2 fights left in him.
6. A. Nogueira – Looks to be completely finished.
7. Mirko Filipovic – Looks to be near finished.
8. Sergei Kharitonov – 1 Fight in 18 months.
And people want to see a Cruiseweight Division? That would be a horrible idea.
I don’t blame guys like Overeem for competing in K-1 if that is what he likes and that is where the money is at. But he is just one of the many examples of how bad the Heavyweight Division in MMA is. I think there is something to be said for the big guys…. Who probably went through life being the toughest of the bunch. They want a lot of money quick, and they don’t seem to interested in griding it out like the smaller guys.
That card is actually pretty awesome looking thus far. I hope Melvin pulls it off, he is so fun to watch.
Melvin has a pretty decent shot against the competition on that card. He’s fairly used to taking on competition that weighs more than him, hence why he hops around the ring rather quickly to avoid having the distance closed in on him.
I think he can beat Arrab, but the winner of Ruslan Karaev vs. Gokhan Saki is going to be a test.
what is this heavyweight tournament?
i thought hari was heavyweight champion
There is a Heavyweight World Grand Prix every year…
yeah but this ain’t that Grand Prix. This is to crown a new champ because part of Hari’s punishment for fucking up the finals
sorry … meant to finish with “was to strip him of the heavyweight title”
ttt: Hari was stripped of the HW title as part of the his punishment for getting DQ’ed against Bonjasky.
Dave: This is not a WGP tournament. The Yokohama show, historically, does not have a WGP qualifier tourney. This is a tournament for the vacant HW title.
Finally, reserve fight is Tyrone Spong vs. Keijiro Maeda (aka Kyotaro Ranger). It’s a bummer that Spong isn’t in the main tourney, but I suppose they just want to test him out for his first K-1 fight in Japan. And it’s cool that they’re having an entire tournament of guys who are cruiserweights, more or less.
Leland Roling Says:
“I think he [Melvin] can beat Arrab, but the winner of Ruslan Karaev vs. Gokhan Saki is going to be a test.”
Melvin already knocked out Karaev in 30 seconds in ’07. What makes him a test now?
[…] the most sought after heavyweight in MMA right now Alistair Overeem has announced he will be fighting at K-1’s 2008 Grand Prix champion Remy Bonjasky on March 28th at K-1’s 2009 World GP. […]
Yeah what is up with Sergei K anyways?? I have a hard time thinking he’s either independently wealthy or still doing service in the Russian paramilitary…
[…] —Tatsuya Kawajiri has been added to the DREAM.7 card in a non-tournament bout. He’ll be facing Ross Ebanez, who DREAM is marketing as “BJ Penn associate.” […]
Gosh, didn’t badr hari just fight zimmerman a few months ago? Or do I just think that he did!
K-1 is getting so long in the tooth these days that its just sad.
Long in the tooth means old. Not sure what you mean by that.
K1 is matching Errol Zimmerman and Badr Hari because it was a really good fight last time (in the semifinals of the GP Finals on 12/6/08), and Errol was coming off of a brutal war against Ewerton Teixera that same night. If he had been fresh, the fight would’ve been even better I think.
Ironically, Badr, Errol, Ewerton, Melvin, Die Faust, Karaev, and Saki represent K1’s YOUNG talent…this card is showcasing those young guns. They are all excellent young fighters. Not long in the tooth at all.
I didnt think that Hari had a week chin. Ive seen him take some shots before. I think Overeem can take Remy. Remmy can be bull rushed but it will depend on how technical Overeem really is. If he just swings for the fences Remmy will wait it out and then pick him apart.
at his current growth rate Overeem should show up at about 275.
I think robthom is trying to get at the fact that these are the same guys that you can see on K-1 Classics on HDNet fighting in some tournament from going on three years now.
Not much turnover for sure.
That’s a bizarre argument then. Last I checked, I remember Rampage Jackson fighting in the main event of PRIDE’s middleweight tournament 5 1/2 years ago. Randy Couture was fighting for UFC titles UFC 12 years ago.
if you’re talking about lack of fresh talent in K-1, yes it’s true, unfortunately.
Gokhan Saki, Ewerton Teixeira and Errol Zimmerman just made their names in K-1 last year. Karaev and Hari are also very young.
This is the exact opposite of long in the tooth. How many new fighters can you expect from the heavyweight division? At least K-1 is finally finding the replacements for the 90’s generation.
Oh oops, I thought they were going to be doing qualifications for the WGP different this year.
Alan, it’s not that some guys have been around for a long time that is the problem, it’s that the entire roster has been around for a long time. Four of Jerome Lebanner’s last five fights have been rematches. Five of Semmy Schilt’s last six fights have been rematches. Four of Remy Bonjasky’s last eight fights have been rematches.
K-1 is mostly a steady stream of rematches with very little new blood thrown into the mix. They really need to be more proactive about developing new talent and giving them a shot at the big boys.
The entire roster just saw a huge infusion of new talent in the last 18 months or so. It was a legitimate criticism in 2006, I’ll give you that, but you look at that list of fights and there’s a whole lot fewer 37+ fighters.
As for rematches, anyone who complains that K-1 has too many rematches doesn’t understand what made K-1 so huge in the first place. There have always been a ton of rematches in K-1. Always. And that happens because fighters are competing 6-9 times a year for K-1.
Long in the tooth as far as the product on the whole. The old broken down vets, the constant rematches, just everything.
Thats nice that K-1 finally got 3 new guys, but then to deliberately start rematching them within a few months already is just kinda played out and lame IMO.
I mean jeesh, how are you supposed to get excited about the same matchup 4,5,6 times over. Maybe down the road, but not a few months later back to back, over and over!
Plus 3 new guys, who may or may not actually be worth a damn, does not a roster make.
Maybe I’m expecting too much from getting used to the more rapid and higher pressure turnover rate in UFC (which has its flaws also).
But as long as there is the UFC to compare it too, K-1 just isn’t stacking up terribly well for overall excitement.
I mean jeesh, how are you supposed to get excited about the same matchup 4,5,6 times over. Maybe down the road, but not a few months later back to back, over and over!
I dunno, I found it easy to get excited about K-1 at its peak because the fights were awesome. Same with K-1 MAX now. If you hated the Japan GP this past week, you should probably just stop watching kickboxing altogether.
Do you people know how the K1 tournament system works???
All you have to do is win a regional tournament and you have a chance to fight in the finals.
LOTS and LOTS of guys get shots of in the regional tournaments. You cant blame K1 because those guys didnt make it to the world stage.
As someone already stated, K1 was built on rematches. Do you have any idea how many times Aerts/Lebanner/Hoost/Hug fought eachother??
K1 has really spread around the world and more fighters have a chance of making the big time than ever before. For you to criticize them and say that they need to give more guys a chance is ludicrous.
I didn’t even know there was a gp last week?!
I still watch K-1, when it appears to be on, and still get mild enjoyment out of it. That strange fellow who was dressed like a half-girl half-kitten a few days ago put me off my lunch initially. Be he(it?) turned out to be a surprisingly decent fighter.
Also I can see how if its a tournament and the same guys keep winning then theres not much you can do about it in the finals. But they do control the bracketing until the finals, so it would be so much more exciting if they would avoid the obvious and unnecessary rematching until theres a reason for it.
It seems to me like this, when the same guys, no matter how good they are keep fighting against each other too often, it defeats any anticipation for it.
It makes it not as special of an event. For example:
“I remember when bonjasky fought hoost”!
“Oh yeah! The first time, the second, the third time…?”
Its like remaking star wars every year. It was a classic the first time, and its still called star wars, but your gonna get sick of that!
For real, listen to samscaff. K-1 isn’t ‘holding down’ new blood. The issue is that the top fighters are the top fighters in the world, so you won’t exactly see a lot of names shuffling around. The fact that some of the names we saw in last years were even there was pretty awesome.
Here is a graph of how they (at least used to) run it, it is still pretty similar now; http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/62/K-1system.jpg
The same guys fight because they are the best in the world and nobody else has made it to that level.
Honestly, I didn’t even know they were going to declare another HW champion or maybe just give it to the winner of the WGP this year.
Wow…complaining about Bonjasky vs. Hoost rematches.
A total of SEVEN(7) K1 WORLD GP titles between them, the two very best Surinamese-Dutch kickboxers of all time, from different K1 generations. God forbid they should fight eachother more than once. In fact, it would be a god damn crime if they hadnt fought more than once. We’re talking about 3×3 minute rounds. Two of the best K1 fighters of all time and the fans deserve more than 9 minutes of fighting between them.
Just ridiculous. If you dont like the very best fighting the very best repeatedly, then just dont watch K1, because thats always been what theyve done and its always what they will do.
@Dave: The GP system changed last year. Now the selection for the final 16 is:
– the 8 finalists from the previous year
– 4 GP winners (Europe, Asia, Japan, and USA/Hawaii)
– the HW + SHW champ
– 4 fan/media choice (any redundancy above, ie: SHW champ also being a previous year finalist results in an extra pick in this category. Last year there were 6 picks in this category IIRC).
Edit to post above: 2 fan picks, not 4. My bad. And there were 4 last year, not 6.
When/where is the US GP this year?
you should update this list
Aerts replaces Hari and Sprong for Karaev
http://www.k-1.co.jp/k-1gp/top903.htm
Dave: US GP details have not been announced yet. I’d assume it would be in August and probably in Hawaii though.
This year is weird though, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it were sometime else. The Europe GP is usually on the combined It’s Showtime/K-1 card in April/May, but K-1 isn’t partnered with them for that show this year.
Stoked for this…HDnet rules.