K-1 International Comeback

[K1power]

After years of limiting themselves to the Japanese market, K-1 is making its return to the international stage.

This means we'll see some changes from the system we've had in place these past few years:

- Carlos Kikuta replaces Takumi Nakamura as the company's producer.
- The K-1 World GP branding will refer to weightclasses 90 kgs and above.
- K-1 WGP will have an international elimination system.
- The K-1 World MAX branding is returning and will refer to weightclasses below 90 kgs.
- K-1 MAX will be more Japan-based.
- K-1's main partner will be Kyokushin Kaikan/IKO1/Matsui group, which is the world's largest Kyokushin organisation.
- K-1 is also partnering with multiple international promotions like KOK and WGP.
- KOK will host one of the K-1 WGP elimination tournaments in 2024.
- Other tournaments are expected in the US, France, Korea, Thailand, China, Brazil and (presumably) Romania.

The first event after the K-1 rebranding takes place on September 10th in the Yokohama Arena.

This event will feature:

55kg Championship Bout
- Akihiro Kaneko vs. Masashi Kumura 3

8-Man Open Weight Tournament
- Michał Turyński (KOK Champion)
- Ariel Machado (Glory veteran, current WGP Champion)
- Valentin Bordianu (DFS veteran)
- Liu Ce (WLF)
- Mahmoud Sattari (K-1 Japan veteran, Krush Champion)
- TBA
- TBA
- TBA

Event Thread

Additionally, K-1 is partnering with Kazushi Sakuraba and his QUINTET organisation to promote Team Grappling events.
After a 5 year hiatus, QUINTET is making a comeback of its own.



Some details were announced:

- QUINTET.4 (their first comeback event) will start after the K-1 Yokohama card ends at the same venue.
- K-1 Yokohama and QUINTET.4 cards will have separate ticket sales.
- Sakuraba is the CEO of QUINTET and will be captaining a team of his own.
- Other team captains include Eddie Bravo, Gregor Gracie and John Danaher.
- Akira Maeda (Puroresu legend, MMA promoter and former HERO'S producer) will act as supervisor.
- QUINTET will have its own World GP.
- There are plans for a QUINTET World Cup featuring national teams.
- Their goal is to partner up with the Japanese Judo Federation.
- Sakuraba's son Taisei will make his pro grappling debut here against Masato Uchishiba.
- The card will also feature a women's fight.

Event Thread

U-NEXT, ABEMA and GAORA are partners of #K1ReBIRTH and #QUINTETreStart.
International broadcast details will be announced at a later moment.



Props to lero, Shadess and Daniel Dziubicki for sharing the main bullet points.

[Shadess]

Carlos guy seems a bit shady. Also as a fun fact, he seemed to run Glory's Japan operations for a few years.

Curious to see how this all shapes up tho. They seemed to just have a bunch of random flags to make it seem more international. What's Liechtenstein got to do with kickboxing lol.

Should be good for the smaller promotions willing to be a part of this tho.

[K1power]

Jul 18, 2023 15:37:41 GMT 1 Shadess said:

Carlos guy seems a bit shady. Also as a fun fact, he seemed to run Glory's Japan operations for a few years.

Curious to see how this all shapes up tho. They seemed to just have a bunch of random flags to make it seem more international. What's Liechtenstein got to do with kickboxing lol.

Should be good for the smaller promotions willing to be a part of this tho.

I think the flags to make it look international are just that; promo material. Nothing wrong with that as long as it doesn't end up being restricted to something like three countries in the end lol.

You may not be wrong about their new producer, though. Yasu Carlos Kikuta has a good looking LinkedIn page at first glance, featuring some major positions. However, his CEO position at ETA Holdings is interesting to say the least. Going by their official website, ETA Holdings has all the hallmarks of a nothing company. At best, I'm wrong and he's a serious businessman and good producer to have in their corner. At worst, he's not much different from the people running Glory.

[vampiro]

Excited.

Sceptical.

Interesting.

[lero]

Rico Verhoeven (1)
Antonio Plazibat (2)
Roman Kryklia (3)
Guto Inocente (4)
Rade Opačić (6)
Levi Rigters (7)
Iraj Azizpour (8)
Kevin Tariq Osaro (9)
Sofian Laidouni (-)
Françesko Xhaja (10)

Five in ONE, Five in Glory. K-1 World GP return probably won't have any of the 10 best heavyweight kickboxers of the world (K-1 doesn't even have the best iranian heavyweight). While will be good to discover new talent, they are not going to have their former glory if they decide to focus in a weightclass were the best people is locked in other organizations. They are also not going to make big waves on the world max category (7k0kg) while all the elite guys are still locked in ONE's contracts

I'd rather they focus on the -90kg division (they could bring Vakhitov, Maslobojev and Kozlov), keep growing the new 75kg where Hasan Toy is the champ, and try to make an elite 65kg division bringing the best chinese and thai guys around. That would be more exciting that having some second level heavyweights in a long tournament.

[K1power]

I agree and disagree at the same time.

Part of me is skeptical about this whole thing.

The names they've announced for the "open weight" tournament so far aren't exactly filling me with excitement. It's a mix of international veterans sure, but the line-up thus far can't exactly compete with Glory's heavier divisions.

On the other hand, we saw what happened when K-1 Global and Glory went to a bidding war for the biggest names back in 2012: it screwed them both over in the long run. I'd like K-1 to build their own big names and perhaps mix them up with affordable veterans:

- Rico fought in K-1 before he went to Glory.
- Badr fought in K-1 before he went to Glory.
- Plazibat fought in K-1 before he went to Glory.
- Mannaart fought in K-1 before he went to Glory.
- El Bouni fought in K-1 before he went to Glory.

And those aren't the only ones, obviously.

A lot of these guys had their first taste of international exposure in K-1, whether it was the old FEG K-1 or the current one. If they're serious about this and they have a bit of luck on their side, K-1 can easily rebuild. The downside of this approach is that it takes time to build new stars. Personally, I don't mind if it takes them a while to get a strong division off the ground. They gotta start somewhere. Ignoring the heavyweight division just because the best guys are in other promotions is the worst thing they could do IMO. It's not like those current top 10 guys are 25 years old or all fantastic.

And I deliberately left out ONE, because honestly I don't really care about their kickboxing branch. Hell, they don't even care about it themselves. They may have some big names under contract, but most of them want out because they never get to fight. The way they handle kickboxing at the moment, ONE isn't really competition as far as I'm concerned. K-1 can easily surpass them, just by regularly holding events.

You raised some good points though; K-1 should try to get some *affordable* free agents that instantly boost a division.

[lero]

Jul 19, 2023 19:13:07 GMT 1 K1power said:

And I deliberately left out ONE, because honestly I don't really care about their kickboxing branch. Hell, they don't even care about it themselves. They may have some big names under contract, but most of them want out because they never get to fight. The way they handle kickboxing at the moment, ONE isn't really competition as far as I'm concerned. K-1 can easily surpass them, just by regularly holding events.

-It would be beautiful if Glory can snatch Kryklia, Zhaja, Opacic, and Eersel from ONE.

-Then K-1 snatchs Menshikov, Petchtanong, Qiu Jianliang, Zhang Peimian, Di Bella and Akimoto also from ONE.

-Then Glory changes Petchpanomrung for Hiromi Wajima with K-1.

-K-1 brings most of those russian and belorrusian guys that can't fight with Glory now (Vakhitov, Nikita Kozlov, Islam Murtazaev, Usubyan, Akopyan, Yusupov, Ulianov and Kiamran Nabati) and also gets the elite chinese guys to fight in every K-1 event.

-Let ONE just keep the 70kg guys until ONE Kickboxing goes the Bellator Kickboxing way.

[K1power]

Any variation of that could work and we probably will see some acquisitions and 'transfers' in the next few months.
Pretty sure a bunch of negotiations are going on behind the scenes right now.

[K1power]

BeyondKick write-up:

K-1 Is Back! The Heavyweight Grand Prix & MAX Return, International Qualifying Tournaments, Partnership with Other Promotions, Plus Kazushi Sakuraba To Lead Quintet Joint Event

beyondkick.com/news/k-1-is-back-the-heavyweight-grand-prix-and-max-returns/

[Shadess]

Think open weight is the way to go for them, even if they can't quite get the best names. If they can get a bunch of champions from other promotions it still sorta sells the idea of trying to have the best face each other.

Problem, beyond a single event, is that they need some money to keep doing this. Unless they can get more meaningful media deals I don't see this being that sustainable.

They probably made some decent money off of THE MATCH and spent it on acquiring the complete(?)/international rights to the K-1 brand. Now spending whatever they have left over kickstarting this project, but how much money they still got?

Hopefully it won't end up being another "K-1 Rising" where they hold an event and immediately understand it's not working and scale back. Tho this version of K-1 does have a home market and Abema at least so they're not entirely without a foundation like K-1 Global was.

[K1power]

The main thing that gives me confidence is that the people running the show have done K-1 events since 2014 now and Krush/Khaos cards from before that. Sure, they've had their own managerial transitions through the years, but I imagine they've at least thought things through and planned out some moves if it took them this long to finally make a big move again.

My feelings on this are a bit of a mixed bag, but if I had to put it in a few words I'd say I'm cautiously optimistic.

We'll see how it goes.

[Shadess]

Jul 19, 2023 20:19:37 GMT 1 lero said:

Jul 19, 2023 19:13:07 GMT 1 K1power said:

And I deliberately left out ONE, because honestly I don't really care about their kickboxing branch. Hell, they don't even care about it themselves. They may have some big names under contract, but most of them want out because they never get to fight. The way they handle kickboxing at the moment, ONE isn't really competition as far as I'm concerned. K-1 can easily surpass them, just by regularly holding events.

-It would be beautiful if Glory can snatch Kryklia, Zhaja, Opacic, and Eersel from ONE.

-Then K-1 snatchs Menshikov, Petchtanong, Qiu Jianliang, Zhang Peimian, Di Bella and Akimoto also from ONE.

Glory sooooooooooooooooooo missed the boat on Kryklia. Been saying for years and years they should've brought him into their HW mix, used him just like Wilnis, Guto, Adegbuyi etc. Just somewhat regular fights against kinda top talent and let him earn his way to the top, or not.

Eersel is also a weird one, seems like a complete no brainer for Glory to have signed. They must've either given him some absolutely low ball offer or there's some beef. Was arguably already kind of a top fighter, Dutch based, would've been cheap at the time, probably would've jumped at the chance to fight in Glory, was probably 2nd only to Kyshenko as an absolute foreign terminator in China and Glory was trying to go to China...
Definitely one of the weirder cases of Glory ignoring a fighter. 

Re: Kryklia (and Allazov)
Glory has a history of ignoring Belarus based fighters entirely, very much a blind spot for them. Wonder if it's just that they didn't want to sign fighters who had absolutely 0 reason to go train at Hemmer's gym ...or Mike's, Colosseum or any other Dutch place.

Gridin Gym/Chinook ftw.

[K1power]

Unfortunately, we already have our first bit of negative publicity.

Apparently Quintet participant Masato Uchishiba is a convicted rapist.

Probably not a good idea to mention him in their big presser, or associating with him at all.
Even if he didn't do it, he was convicted and will always have that attached to himself and everything he touches.

[Shadess]

Jul 20, 2023 12:01:40 GMT 1 K1power said:

Apparently Quintet participant Masato Uchishiba is a convicted rapist.

Probably not a good idea to mention him in their big presser, or associating with him at all.
Even if he didn't do it, he was convicted and will always have that attached to himself and everything he touches.

Funny if this somehow ended up instantly doing them in like I think when they had some porn star at a presser in China way back when and it was a thing...

[K1power]

Lol that actually happened? I can't recall.