K1 World GP

An awesome day of fights out at Olympic Gymnasium yesterday as Colin and I headed out to take in the K1 final 16. Here is a break down of the good and the bad:

Good:

• Schilt serving up a stiff knee to the chops putting Slowinski to sleep
• Park Young Soo dancing around with his hands at his waist and LeBanner taking advantage of it by flooring him with one punch
• Bonjasky serving up a flying knee to the forehead of Leko. Leko wasn't interested in asking for seconds.
• Hari giving Viney a whomping / KO
• Our seats were great. Thanks to LVJ for helping arrange that.
• the production was quite smooth and professional looking. The arena atmosphere was quite exciting

Bad

• Fujimoto...just terrible. It was an embarrassment for everyone. He was tumbling around the ring like a class of grade 3 students practicing log rolls and somersaults with Mrs. Kroupa (remember that fierce bitch?).
• Sefo / Aerts fight was lame. Sefo was not up to par at all and quit after round 1.
• Mighty Mo and Choi Hong Man. Again, Choi did nothing at all and somehow ended up getting a decision. At one point he did manage to kick Mighty Mo in the nads, but the ref wouldn't stop for a break, even though everyone from Choi to the judges to the ushers up in the crow's nest knew it was low. As Choi walked around with a guilty expression, Mo took a short break and leaned against the ropes, touching his knee to the canvas, at which point the ref called him down and he got an 8 count. What a joke.

Update...I just found a clip of the incident. Decide for yourself. If you can watch this without wincing, then I guess it was fair and square.

• The venue facilities were fucking brutal! Was this really an Olympic venue?
  
• Most of the lower concourse was blocked off, leaving 3-4 closet sized washrooms...lined up out the door most of the time.
• No vendors selling any kind of K1 memorabilia
• only 2 drink / snack vending booths that I saw on our level of the arena. The 3 hour line to get a bag of squid just wasn't worth it.
  
• Drink vending machines opposite the section gate doors making it impossible to get in or out of the gate due to huge lines waiting to buy a pepsi from a machine
• Who knows why, but an unreasonable number of people couldn't figure out how to find their seats. Come on people...the seat numbers are in order for Christ sake. Ushers were doing SFA (too busy noticing obvious low blows) which made for about 5 arguments in our section alone as people were having a hell of a time counting up to 100 to find their chair.
  

Most of the fight clips are on youtube already. Here's a taste