yesterday ben, bjorn, jason and i went to the k-1 world grand prix final 16 kickboxing at olympic gymnasium-1. we almost didn't make it though. we ended up at the only olympic park we knew and at the gymnasium there was a ping pong tournament. i mean, i'm a big fan of the game but i was looking for some blood and not a bunch of old ladies sipping green tea. we went to the olympic stadium next door and found yet more disappointment. it was cool to actually check out the place because it's a pretty awesome sight to see but on the field was not a bunch of muscle-bound giants but the opposite, a bunch of kids running around. there was apparently a tug-of-war going on.
anyway, an old man spoke to us in korean and we understood him when he said "k-1" and after about five minutes of trying to understand him, he led us to the taxi queue and told us it was at another olympic park further down the street (about two subway stops).
we finally made it and it wasn't sold out. it was 22,000 won or $25 cad which was decent when we were willing to pay about double that. there were some shady scalpers advertising half-price discounts but that would have been a last resort.
inside, the place was pretty packed and we had decent enough seats with a fairly good view. probably seated about 5,000(?) or so. the crowd was mostly korean but i hadn't seen that many foreigners in one place at one time since i got here. we missed the first couple fights but there were still like eight more. there were some decent competitive fights most of which only lasted a couple minutes. my favourite match was between glaube feitosa and chalid "die faust (the fist)". it lasted all three rounds and what was good about this one was that the german, guess which one, got knocked down a bunch of times and just kept getting back up. talk about persistance. he ended up losing on the judges' decision anyway.
the main event was between these two characters: one, a large american dude named mighty mo and the largest korean i've ever seen, choi hong man. he's 7'2 and 350lbs. in their previous fight mighty mo knocked him out. go figure. this time it was given to choi by decision. you can view the part where choi delivers mighty mo a low-blow here. awesome.
my favourite fighter of the night is this guy from holland that i've seen on the tv box before. remy bonjasky is a muay thai fighter and that means he throws flying knees everywhere. he beat this other dude pretty bad and pretty quickly. i got a really poor picture of him too. i swear that's him.
these are the official results of the matches.
i just got home from poker night. i lost about $3 in a little more than three hours. not bad, but i was up a few dollars about ten minutes before we called it quits which kinda sucks. these things happen. you live, you learn, you lose $3.
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