On October 26 2010 01:11 floor exercise wrote:
That fight happened early October and it was indeed awesome. it's kind of horrible that it went to a tiebreaker round, it technically shouldn't have but it was just more incredible fighting so no one seemed to mind other than Sefo.
K1 before HDnet Fights was almost impossible to watch in North America. Now that HDnet shows K1 and K1 MAX people are starting to realize how awesome it is, and how embarrassingly low level a lot of the MMA striking actually is by comparison. The sloppy brawls that usually make peoples "best mma fight" lists are usually all trumped by any random K1 or MAX fight
Jeo Rogan had Mike Schiavello on his podcast recently and Joe said it best when he said if the average UFC fan even knew K1 existed they'd like it as much if not more than UFC.
As far as great fights, in MAX just youtube guys like Petrosyan, Buakaw, Masato, Souwer, especially when they fight eachother.
K1 is a little more hit or miss but some great fights: Ray Sefo vs Mark Hunt, Badr Hari vs Karaev 2, Abidi vs Jerome LeBanner.
My advice is to just watch the entirety of the 2010 K1 and MAX world GP final 16 that took place earlier this month, they were both fantastic.
Oh indeed. I've been a fan of MMA for years and years (before TUF 1 I think) but I was never fooled into thinking of the level of MMA striking as high, especially compared against K-1 Max level. Anderson Silva is probably the only really high level "pure" striker in the sport (of course Overeem had some success but he is primarily MT anyways)
The era of Buakaw's complete domination in K-1 Max is something I'll remember for life. The guy was so unstoppable they changed the rules against his style just so he could lose.
Buakaw Highlight that I've probably seen 100 times: