I'm a fan. He's as tough as they come, and has some of the best boxing you will see in MMA. Certainly one of the best body punchers in the sport, which is something that I love. His fight against Ninja was such a brutal mismatch and beating, it was almost hard to watch. Watch his K1 fight against Ghita to see how tough he is. He took so many of Ghita's hardest leg kicks before finally giving in.
Conversely the Ghita fight showed how much of a mental midget he is. I mean who willfully takes kicks from a stud like Ghita? Bottom line is Sergei never should have been in the K-1. His boxing by Pro boxing standards is fairly average. The dude is tough but blocking punches with your face isn't smart. He also doesn't have much variation with his hands. Translate that into MMA and iv never seen a victory of his where his boxing ever excelled.
I don't think he had a choice but to take those kicks. He wasn't skilled enough to stop it from happening. And what do you mean by that last sentence? There are a fair few performances by him where he relied pretty much solely on his boxing skill to get the win. Obviously by pro standards he is lacking, but, in MMA, there are very few guys as offensively effective in the HW division their boxing. Who else mixes up body/head attacks as well as Sergei?
Well K-1 is after all the 3 K's. Kickboxing, Karate and Kung-Fu. Sergei possesses none of those. Personally when he entered i knew he was on a hiding to nothing. So should his team and encouraged him not to bother. Almost everyone who has employed boxing only in the K-1 has been on the end of a severe beating. If Sergei doesn't have the ability to check a kick he should have learnt. And Sergei's boxing to me is overrated the same way Arlovski's was. Their effectiveness is very debatable as both men haven't been able to display the kind of boxing technique that could habitually keep an opponent honest. To be fair id say JDS's boxing is more effective than both those guys just going by his results alone. And JDS's boxing also by boxing standards is very pedestrian.
Sergei can beat most guys with his stand-up but he does dumb things in the ring/cage. The best example is the Jeff Monson fight. If any of you have seen that, Sergei is on the ground with Monson willingly, has a chance to get up, stays, gets submitted about a minute later. Sergei would be a mid-level guy if he ever got to the UFC.
Probably one on the only Heavyweights not on steroids. He KTFO of Alisteroid. He had Overroid trying to jump out of the ring face first to get away from the beating he was taking. Sergei ****ed him up badly. So you cant question the guys stand up ability. Fighting IQ ,sure it wasnt the smartest a lot of times.
Very tough man but low ring IQ, and tough stiff/static. Basically tries to win on strength and toughness. Same with his boxing, he did pretty decently as an amateur, but he's hardly spectacular in terms of skillset.
