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Post by K1power on Jun 16, 2017 18:19:23 GMT 1
 FightcardPrimary Welterweight TournamentKubo Yuta vs. Kimura 'Philip' Minoru Tsukakoshi Hitoshi vs. Han Wenbao Yamagiwa Kazuki vs. Melsik Baghdasaryan Watabe Daiki vs. Mohan Dragon Tournament Reserve FightMakihira Keita vs Kenji Super FightsTakeru vs. Wang Juanguang Taiga vs. Stauros Exakoustidis Takei Yoshiki vs. Izawa Namito Hinata vs. Sergio Sanchez Urabe Hirotaka vs. Yamamoto Masahiro Shimano Kotaro vs. Koji I have no idea what they mean with 'Primary Welterweight', but going by the fighters involved and some of their profiles I'm guessing 67kg? Definitely feels like a less stacked lineup, but the weightclass is a bit of an oddity and there's still some big names like Kubo and Kimura, even though Kimura's star has definitely dropped over the past year. |
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Post by Shadess on Jun 16, 2017 23:46:24 GMT 1
I have no idea what they mean with 'Primary Welterweight', but going by the fighters involved and some of their profiles I'm guessing 67kg? Just that it's the 1st one of these I'm guessing. They call the others 2nd and so on too. 67,5kg? IDK. The weight thing is a pretty small thing but annoying when they do other things fairly well. With the weights it's just well we renamed this and won't list the actual weight ANYWHERE. |
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Post by Fox on Jun 17, 2017 8:04:20 GMT 1
They should just call it mini-MAX.
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Post by karaevfan on Aug 18, 2017 6:39:50 GMT 1
This card is pretty much finalized at the moment
Reserve
-- Makihira Keita vs Kenji
Super Fights
-- Takeru vs. Wang Juanguang
-- Taiga vs. Stauros Exakoustidis
-- Takei Yoshiki vs. Izawa Namito
-- Hinata vs. Sergio Sanchez
-- Urabe Hirotaka vs. Yamamoto Masahiro
-- Shimano Kotaro vs. Koji
This card will also feature the finals of the K-1 College tournaments at 55, 60 and 65kgs.
Gotta say, this is the first K-1 Japan card I have been disappointed by. Now I'm sure its gonna feature a ton of knock outs and exciting moments and what have you, but the field is weak. Its not all K-1's fault (they tried to get Qiu Jiang Liang on the card but he declined and Komiyama Kosuke was supposed to fight Taiga but he selfishly injured himself saving a man from a burning car), but its hard to look at this field and say "the winner of this is the best guy in the division", especially when the division itself is a weird one K-1 is inventing from this event.
Instead of top names, you look at the card and you see that they're trying to sell it on the strength of storylines like Kimura vs Kubo. That might work for Krush, but K-1 is supposed to be about the best fighting the best. K-1 Japan needs to take a good hard look at the decisions that left them with this card and decide if they're fine with being Super-Krush or if they really do want to be worthy of calling themselves K-1.
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Post by Shadess on Aug 18, 2017 9:52:48 GMT 1
QJL, Varga, Pinca & Ulianov tournament rumoured on GoH for September. They've just been a mess for a while now but that'd be a good tournament hopefully meaning they're gradually getting their shit together. That tournament is ~5 days later I think so QJL is busy anyway, he was also supposed to fight a week from now but that event got cancelled like a few days ago. Still, doubt they would have wanted him in there unless he was to fight Kaew or Noiri. |
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Post by karaevfan on Aug 18, 2017 10:27:13 GMT 1
QJL, Varga, Pinca & Ulianov tournament rumoured on GoH for September. They've just been a mess for a while now but that'd be a good tournament hopefully meaning they're gradually getting their shit together. That tournament is ~5 days later I think so QJL is busy anyway, he was also supposed to fight a week from now but that event got cancelled like a few days ago. Still, doubt they would have wanted him in there unless he was to fight Kaew or Noiri. They mentioned that they failed to get QJL when they revealed the card a couple months before. It was nice to dream though. Also lack of Jaraya is glaring. Yeah, I get that he really shouldn't be rewarded with more fights given what he's done but that's another absence that makes this field look weak. |
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Post by Fox on Aug 18, 2017 14:47:34 GMT 1
Ya now that I think about it, its a pretty weak tournament and realistically Kubo will probably dominate the field if Kimura doesn't KO him.
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Post by karaevfan on Aug 19, 2017 5:07:33 GMT 1
Ya now that I think about it, its a pretty weak tournament and realistically Kubo will probably dominate the field if Kimura doesn't KO him. Kubo has transitioned from a fighter to a trader unfortunately. Melsik Baghdasaryan by 3 KOs. |
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Post by dvewlsh on Aug 19, 2017 6:14:43 GMT 1
Yeah, this feels tailor-made for Melsik.
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Post by K1power on Aug 20, 2017 1:25:08 GMT 1
That tournament is ~5 days later I think so QJL is busy anyway, he was also supposed to fight a week from now but that event got cancelled like a few days ago. Still, doubt they would have wanted him in there unless he was to fight Kaew or Noiri. They mentioned that they failed to get QJL when they revealed the card a couple months before. It was nice to dream though. Also lack of Jaraya is glaring. Yeah, I get that he really shouldn't be rewarded with more fights given what he's done but that's another absence that makes this field look weak. As much as I'm agreeing with this being a weaker card as far as star power goes, I for one am glad that Jaraya is not on it. In fact, I wouldn't complain if we never got to see him compete again. Not that that's even a remote possibility, just sharing my thoughts. From the get go, this card kind of felt like an inbetween event to me so somehow I care less about the lack of names. It probably shouldn't be way to look at this, but that's the way it is for me. At least as far as this card goes. If it becomes something frequent that's a different conversation. If the reason for this card having somewhat lesser names is that they're using the saved resources from this one to get a more quality heavyweight tournament I'm all for it, actually. I guess time will tell. Besides, this still might end up having high entertainment value like all their other events. |
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Post by karaevfan on Aug 20, 2017 8:49:19 GMT 1
They mentioned that they failed to get QJL when they revealed the card a couple months before. It was nice to dream though. Also lack of Jaraya is glaring. Yeah, I get that he really shouldn't be rewarded with more fights given what he's done but that's another absence that makes this field look weak. As much as I'm agreeing with this being a weaker card as far as star power goes, I for one am glad that Jaraya is not on it. In fact, I wouldn't complain if we never got to see him compete again. Not that that's even a remote possibility, just sharing my thoughts. From the get go, this card kind of felt like an inbetween event to me so somehow I care less about the lack of names. It probably shouldn't be way to look at this, but that's the way it is for me. At least as far as this card goes. If it becomes something frequent that's a different conversation. If the reason for this card having somewhat lesser names is that they're using the saved resources from this one to get a more quality heavyweight tournament I'm all for it, actually. I guess time will tell. Besides, this still might end up having high entertainment value like all their other events. Yeah feel the same on Jaraya. I don't doubt that this tournament is gonna be exciting. I guess I'm somewhat worried since I can't imagine that they're gathering top names for the HW tournament (after all, they've mentioned that KOICHI Pettas might be an entry). So that would make it two in-between events until the March card (which has to be huge). I guess this sorta embodies the worried I had about them expanding the number of weight classes to 2.5kgs. It thins the field somewhat and restricts them from being able to do regional tournaments like they used to do to build up weight classes. It was a concession they had to make to give opportunities to more domestic fighters stuck in Krush. |
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Post by K1power on Aug 20, 2017 12:47:16 GMT 1
You raise some good points/concerns, including things I didn't even consider.
I'm still holding on to my better names in the HW tournament theory for the time being, though. KOICHI being in there doesn't necessarily mean much, since Japanese guys being put in the tournament is a given and Japanese HW kickboxers at the moment don't get much better than guys like KOICHI and Uehara. And they aren't even real heavyweights. The best Japanese heavyweights to this day are Musashi, Sataake and Kyotaro and nobody currently active comes close to them. At least not that I know of, perhaps there are some upcoming youngsters.
Remember the K-1 Global LHW tournament last year? It had a few big names like Kryklia and Kwasi and for the rest it consisted of just 'okay' guys and that turned out to be a pretty solid tournament. I mean, it's K-1 Global so of course they dropped the ball on literally EVERYTHING else, but you can build a solid tournament around 2-4 bigger names if you spread them out and don't put absolute cans in there.
I would give a big thumbs up if they get Ibrahim El Bouni back. He defeated Uehara and they could sell a storyline about them possibly having a rematch in the tournament. El Bouni is becoming a very solid fighter and has already competed in their events so it would make a lot of sense.
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Post by K1power on Sept 11, 2017 19:29:25 GMT 1
Happening this.. Monday!?
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Post by dvewlsh on Sept 11, 2017 21:08:40 GMT 1
I completely forgot about this card.
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Post by karaevfan on Sept 12, 2017 7:00:56 GMT 1
Happening this.. Monday!? Its a holiday in Japan. This one has flown under the radar, perhaps even more so than the HW event. I think K-1 still hasn't sold out the venue, which would be a first at this point since they rebooted in 2014. Of course this is in the Saitama venue (8K) which is bigger than most of their past events. There are a couple things I'm looking forward to though. Kimura vs Kubo is overdue, but it should be a fun fight stylistically and has a ton of backstory to it. Also Wang Junguang is a fun, aggressive fighter. Him vs. Takeru should be fireworks. At this point though I'm more hoping for Baghdadasaryan or Wenbao to tear through the ranks and give us a new star to root for |
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