Kakutougi's Pick Your Best Of 2021 In Kickboxing

[K1power]

You guys know the drill. Before starting off with my own picks I'd like to see what you guys thought of the year.

Here are some categories to help you get started:

- Fight(s) Of The Year

- Upset(s) Of The Year

- Fighter(s) Of The Year

- Breakout Fighter(s) Of The Year

- Knockout(s) Of The Year

- Comeback(s) Of The Year

- Controversy(s) Of The Year

- Event(s) Of The Year

- Story(s) Of The Year

You can name a single favorite, do rankings or just share something that stood out to you in 2021.

We'll be doing this for kickboxing, MMA and boxing.

Let's kick this off!

PS: Of course anything kickfighting is welcome.

[Fox]

Fight of the year: Verhoeven vs JBS
Upset: Arkadiuz vs Badr
Fighter of the year: Hiroki Akimoto
KO: Superbon
Comeback: Arkadiuz
Controversy: Superlek vs Enahachi
Event: Im leaning towards Glory 78 but Collision 3 and ONE First Strike come very close
Story: For a lot of people it will probably be the Badr flop, for me personally it was seeing Prajanchai deput in an international promotion.

My basic views on 2021:

Glory survives COVID, Perreira, Doumbe, and Takei leave, Tenshin announces he will leave soon, ONE continues making lots of cool fights, Takeru takes out Pettas.

[Shadess]

Good picks so I'll just agree with them 

I'll be a downer
COVID has managed to almost entirely kill my enthusiasm for the sport. For me kickboxing is very much Glory now which is quite sad as they don't exactly hold a lot of events. ONE has good single fights but don't really care about their events as a whole, First Strike with all those high level fights was a bit of an exception.

K-1 Japan, as fun as it can be, hasn't really ever caught with me for whatever reason either.

[K1power]

It's unfortunate, but I can relate to what you're saying in the sense that we all have our own (niche) preferences within the sport.

I'm following K-1, Glory and a bit of what happens in Europe.

I pay little attention to China and Thailand. If/when someone puts a good fight in front of me I'll watch it and I'll keep up with the news that other members post here, but I won't go out of my way to see what's going on over there.

As for ONE, I feel similar to you. Don't care much for the promotion and don't like fighters signing with them, but they do put on some good fights from time to time and the First Strike event was solid, even if I wasn't as high on it as many other fans.

Will try to share my own picks by tomorrow.

[K1power]

Here are BeyondKick's 2021 picks:

[Fox]

I was considering Superbon for fighter oty but it feels wrong to award that based on one fight. I guess covid has most guys fighting once a year though.

[K1power]

Can't believe I'm actually getting these done before the end of the year, but here goes:

- Fight(s) Of The Year



Rico Verhoeven vs. Jamal Ben Saddik 3 - Between its initial cancellation, Jamal's injury and jailtime this fight seemed so far away. Then it's announced as a replacement when Overeem got injured and we got a great fight out of it. The way it played out was pretty much what a lot of us predicted, but damn did JBS get close to actually doing it. Rico showed some real heart and turned the tables once Jamal started running out of gas.




Takeru vs. Leona Pettas - People weren't so sure Takeru would be able to put Pettas away, but it was a short explosion of violence that ended in Takeru's favor and it was awesome to watch.




Sina Karimian vs. K-Jee - What was it, the third time they fought? These fights are pretty much guaranteed back and forth brawls that are spectacular to watch. Cruiser is a weightclass that works surprisingly well for K-1.




K-Jee vs. Aitaka Ryo - Another one of those crazy back and forth brawls at K-1's Cruiser weightclass.

- Upset(s) Of The Year

Arkadiusz Wrzosek over Badr Hari - They gave Badr a gift, he was beating the snot out of Wrzosek then gets KTFO'd by a counter high kick. Movie level scenario.

Superbon over Giorgio Petrosyan - It wasn't so much that Superbon won (Petrosyan had to lose another fight sooner or later), but the way he did it. To put it in Mortal Kombat terms; 'Flawless Victory'.

Antonio Plazibat over Benjamin Adegbuyi - Theoretically, an early KO was the way for Plazibat to make this happen, but seeing it play out like that I was still surprised.

Sina Karimian over Kyotaro - At least to me this was a bit of a surprise. Good win for Karimian.

- Fighter(s) Of The Year

Noiri Masaaki - 4 fights, 4 victories, 3 stoppages, all of those happening in a tournament. Noiri looked like an absolute beast this year.

Rico Verhoeven - 3 fights, 3 wins, 2 stoppages after no fights in 2020. His fight with Jamal was one of the best fights of the year.

Superbon - Only one fight/victory, but it's the quality of that victory that puts Superbon in that conversation.

- Breakout Fighter(s) Of The Year

- Antonio Plazibat - Obviously we already knew about Plazibat for a while, but with a couple of knockouts he's in title contention and it put him on a lot of people's radar.

- Sattari Weerasakreck - A fighter that looked so so not too long ago is now challenging Karimian, looking to take the K-1 Cruiserweight belt.

- Knockout(s) Of The Year

Cheating a bit with Anpo Rukiya as that switch kick was just a knockdown, but I needed it on this list lol.

- Comeback(s) Of The Year

Anpo Rukiya - After that crushing loss to Yamazaki Hideaki last year, I didn't expect Anpo to come back like that. Four KO victories in five fights with his only loss being to Noiri, who looked like a beast in that tournament.
Overall a strong comeback.

Arkadiusz Wrzosek - Badr was beating the snot out of Wrzosek and the way he turned that fight around was nothing short of a miracle.

Gökhan Saki - A comeback that was long anticipated and while Saki certainly looked rusty, it was a great lowkick stoppage over McSweeney.

Kyotaro - Easily disposed of Jitsukata in his comeback to kickboxing, but stumbled against Karimian. I wonder what's next for him.

Raul Catinas - While Catinas may have lost, for a guy that hasn't fought in over 5 years he looked surprisingly solid against Mahieddine.

K-Jee vs. Aitaka Ryo - After two quick knockdowns it looked like it was all over for K-Jee, but he completely turned it around, finishing off Aitaka.

Wajima Hiromi - Stopping Kimura who he was stopped by twice before was impressive.

- Controversy(s) Of The Year

Drama surrounding Jamal Ben Saddik: Injuries, jail, switching gyms.

Artem Vakhitov and Alex Pereira. Namely the discussion surrounding their first fight.

Some questionable decisions in Romanian events, but what else is new?

- Event(s) Of The Year

K’FESTA.4 Day.2 - The best event of 2021 for me.

Glory 78 - Not perfect, but still a great event overall.

Glory 79 | Collision 3 - I had little faith in this event and it definitely surprised me.

Honorable mention: ONE FC - First Strike - A solid event, just not as high on it as some fans.

- Story(s) Of The Year

While COVID still affects everything, I think we had more events than in 2020 at least.

That said, we had a remarkable amount of fighters leaving the sport for Boxing and/or MMA (Doumbé, Murthel and Tenshin, just to name a few).

Grigorian effectively retiring Souwer.

Tenshin vs. Takeru actually being announced. I believe it when I see it, but I didn't expect to even get it announced.

ONE somewhat more comitting to stand-up.

SuperKombat making their comeback, albeit with little fanfare.

Not so much a story as a surprise: Badr's analytical skills as a commentator.

Also wanted to mention that we lost some fighters this year, most recently Frederic Sinistra and Lloyd van Dams.
RIP champs.

That concludes my picks. Probably still missed a lot of stuff, but I think this should cover most of it.

So what are your kickboxing picks?

BTW I'm a bit surprised Steven 'the Warman' Wright aka lordgaul still hasn't come out with his best of 2021 in kickboxing highlights yet. Will keep an eye out, though.

[K1power]

K-1 2021 Awards

[K1power]

It's finally here!