OSAKA, Japan, Dec. 31 — Ladies and gentlemen, what a night we had, watching a great show here in the Osaka Dome called K-1 “Dynamite.” Am I sucking up K-1 organization? No. The show was great. It was a lot better than I expected.
Let’s focus on “Kid” Norifumi Yamamoto (Pictures)’s fight with Genki Sudo (Pictures) for the HERO’S Middleweight (154 pounds) title. “Kid” entered the vast arena to reggae music and danced his way to the ring, very relaxed. And his dance continued in the ring after he entered. On the other side, grappler Sudo entered with a platoon of dancers and it was all coordinated.
I found this was to be a bit interesting. Why? “Kid” punches hard. He steps in unspeakably quick and punches very sharp. Genki, however, is grappler and uses jiu-jitsu, the “gentle” art. But when we look at their entrances, “Kid” looked to be the much more relaxed of the two, almost looking like an octopus the way he danced.
Bottom line, “Kid” doesn’t look like he throws punches as sharp as he really does. Meanwhile Genki’s entrance looked like it was all coordinated, and when both fighters were in the ring they ended up dancing at the same time, looking at each other. So it looked a bit like they started a “dance battle” before they smacked the hell out of each other.
What do you call this in English, cutting the rug — or in this case, cutting a mat?
Once the fight started, guess what happened. Who imagined Genki would fight back against “Kid” on his feet? If you saw Genki’s last two fights, you could have easily imagined Genki running around the ring, trying not to get hit hard. Then he’d try to take the fight to the ground. I thought, Genki would come with the same kind of strategy, but he didn’t.
Genki took a traditional fighting stance and threw a good right kick to Yamamoto’s midsection. “Kid,” however, was more aggressive. Yet somehow after few minutes Genki owned the center of the ring, and it was “Kid” who was circling around looking for space and timing to throw his right hand bomb on Genki’s chin.
Here’s another interesting point, if you can see this fight, check out how far away they are when they face each other. These two gentlemen are square, but their stances were not like kickboxing or mixed martial arts. It was more like fencing. You don’t really see this kind of stance. Maybe that’s because Yamamoto can step in is so quick that it seems like he’s keeping his distance, but still is be able to connect his right hand on his opponents.
Eventually “Kid” connected his right hand on Genki, who dropped to his hip and was hit with a series of punches on the ground before referee Umeki stopped the fight 4:39 of round one. Yeah, the stoppage seemed too early for me, but Sudo didn’t necessarily agree.
Said Sudo: “Hmm, the stoppage, everything is happening as it is supposed to be. So when the fight was stopped, I’ll just accept it. And now, I’ll take this second place in tournament position as position as of this moment. But I’m very sure this experience will push me to the next level.”
A lot of fighters would complain about an early stoppage and get upset. Not Genki. Personally, I wasn’t really interested in Genki as a fighter. But today his comments and attitude made me a fan. You know, it’s probably easy for fighters to say something cool when they win because they’re in a good mood. But it’d be kinda hard to keep that good attitude after a loss. Yet Genki did, at the interview space at least.
Sudo didn’t really get many questions from media. However, he did a great job anyway. Talking calm. Looking at the person who asked the question. Great guy, I thought.
Without this fight “Dynamite” would not have been this much fun. Yes, I can say that. I’m looking forward to seeing Genki in another show sometime soon.
Now, let’s talk about “Kid,” the champ. How strong is this boy, really? This time, there was a five-inch different in height, and 11-pound difference in weight between “Kid” and his opponent, and he still won … against a super duper grappler, no less. Oh, man, “Kid” is a monster. But he’s not just a monster. He has a heart as a human being.
After he won tonight, his nephew was up in the ring. When “Kid” saw this nephew’s face, we saw sweat of his heart come out on his eyes.
In the interview space, “Kid” commentated about this sweat.
“For this fight, I couldn’t play with my kids and my nephews enough, even though we’ve been coming through the Christmas season and New Year’s holidays,” he said. “So I kinda felt sorry for them. But today, I got the belt. So I am very happy that I achieved my goal and finally get to play with them. So I was happy, and the sweat comes out from my heart on my eyes.”
Now he has the time and he has the bling bling, winning 10,000,000 yen, equivalent to $86,000. That’s a freaking big bonus for New Year’s holiday. I bet he’s going to have a red-hot sweet vacation with that money. Nice, very nice.