Bill Wallace was the best. best as in better than all the rest. his techniques were superior, accuracy and speed.
Hug is my favorite K1 fighter, held the record for most consecutive K1 gp final appearances at 3(later equalled by Schilt) but Peter Aerts had a better, longer career than him and Hoost got KO'd by Bob sapp twice.
I re-watched the Hoost/Sapp fights a few days ago. Brutal yet so entertaining! The crowds in Japan are usually silent, but with how loud the crowd were for those fight you'd have thought it was a huge football/soccer and not a fight! Those two fights were SERIOUS fights. Some of the best I've seen across combat sports. Both men showed serious heart - Sapp when taking those vicious leg kicks and laying into Ernesto afterwards, and Hoost when getting beaten to a pulp yet coming back for more and dishing out out toe to toe.
I also rate Le Banner very highly. Ok, he never won the GP, but he was a seriously bad dude with scary power and skills. Same goes for Ray Sefo. At the lighter weights it has to be Buakaw, Masoto and Petroysan. All 3 of them are so f*cking awesome at what they do. You can't go wrong when watching any of them fight.
The Hoost-Sapp fights were great to watch, extremely entertaining. K1 was at the peak of its popularity. Despite being a novice Sapp showed good composure and heart(especially in the second fight)...As for Hoost, he technically fought atrocious fights. He stopped moving and allowed Sapp to pin him in the corner and he then got brutalized. Twice. I couldn't really say Hoost showed great heart in those fights, he was more like a bully. He was only strong when he was doing all the hitting, the second he started getting hit hard by Sapp he folded up. Sapp got destroyed by Crocop shorty after and didn't really do anything good the rest of his career so in history these are really bad loses on his record and it hurts his legacy a bit in my eyes.
Lebanner was a great kickboxer, him and Bernardo are imo the best to never win a GP. Lebanner came so close to winning it in 2002 but his arm was broken against Hoost in the final. Then Hoost started dancing around the ring like a douche....Hoost didn't really serve to even be fighting in that GP because of his 2 loses to Sapp in the qualifiers and quarterfinal. the lower weights are usually more exciting because they are faster and have more stamina... A lot of great classics in lowerweight like Zambidis vs Chahid fight,my alltime favorite [YT]i8Y5cDeNeO4[/YT]
Yeah, Le Banner was on top form in 2001/2. Maybe his peak... 'Iron' Mike is a machine. I loved watching him destroy Kid Yamamoto.
