http://www.fightopinion.com/2010/11/25/k-1-nye-pay-for-play/comment-page-1/#comment-86800 The fight industry in Japan is at an all time low right now.
Hopefully not, K1 has brought Kickboxing to the forefront, and becuase of the way the matchups are...is brining the standard higher and higher. Fighters like Schilt, Hari and Overeem have all fought each other numerous times creating in each a will to perform even greater....imagine Hari never having to fight the best of the best and just cherry picking likes it happens in boxing?
This rumour has been doing the rounds now for a little while. Bad bad news if K-1 ever went under. Theres literally nothing that can take its place.
I thought they were going out of business a year or two ago. Hopefully they can keep going. Maybe they need more Yakuza backers!
Nobody believed me when I said their "raising capital with a Chinese company" was a sign they were not doing well.
I don't think its any secret that FEG arent in the best of health although that artcile makes an awful lot of assumptions. I'm not really supprized their having problems getting their old terms on NYE. That is afterall one of if not the biggest nights for TV viewership in Japan and the previous sucess of MMA that night depended on guys like KId, Yoshida, Sapp etc with strong appeal to the general public. I wouldnt say that means this is the start of an inevitable decline though, MMA/K1 is still pulling decent numbers and that hardcore viewship maybe enough to sustain TV deals when NYE level numbers arent expected.
I hope not. Their product has consistently given the best moments in combat sports, despite being on the fringe.
Like i said its brining high level combat, to such an extent that if you could do a mythical, pound for pound, cross for cross type ranking of the best combat fighters in the world then at least three K1 fights would be in the top ten. 1. Fabrico Werdum 2. Fedor Emilenko 3. Alistair Overeem 4. Wladimir Klitschko 5. Vitali Klitschko 6. Cain Velaquez 7. Sammy Schilt 8. Badri Hari 9. Junior Dos Santos 10. David Haye
K-1 would do great business in America, it's what the casual UFC fan wants to see: short, high paced stand-up bouts with plenty of knock-outs.
Well clearly it will not; it's been tried for years. ESPN gave K1 an enormous push for years, got nothing out of it.
It's weird. Maybe it's lack of publicity, but the format itself is simply great as is the action. Every boxing and mma fan I have shown it to liked it right away. So I do think the sport would have huge potential in the fightbusiness. I think oen of the problems is lack of American participants. Btw I don't think K-1 will die, they started back in 1993 very low budget - they could always go back to that. Downsized version. Like the K-1 Battle at the Bellagio events - cosy.
I didn't know that, but I'm still pretty sure it would be successful if marketed right. I'm not familiar with how K-1 was sold by ESPN, but perhaps now that mixed martial arts has risen in popularity, the market for a K-1 style promotion has been opened. I can't see why it wouldn't succeed, when all the ingredients seem to be there. Any ideas why it wouldn't work?
People just don't seem to watch it here, don't really know why. People usually don't understand the rules and want it to be MMA. The time difference is another big factor, people aren't going to watch at 4 AM and don't want to watch tape delay. Last time ESPN ended up promoting a PPV with the main event being Bob Sapp vs Kimo in one of the most crooked fights I have ever seen in any sport. Also they held fights under 3 different rule sets: full-contact, K1, and San Shou.
I think a lot of it is because the U.S. audience isn't really into the reality of global sports. Things need to be localized for the average U.S. citizen to give a ****, and there needs to be a big time U.S. / Local hero to be part of it. The U.S. fans aren't so sophisticated. Need guys like Couture, Liddell, Lesnar to appeal to the average U.S. fan. If they see some big dutch guy dominating, they change the channel and bury their head in the sand. Just, we are too insulated as a nation to really care too much about what goes on outside. Makes me wish the World Series was renamed to the National Series, etc.
