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Interesting insights Spells. Tonight I'll jump to some of those time marks. I'm looking for a really solid showcase for karate and I'm not sure this is it.
It's not, but 34:20 pretty much shows what is good and bad about the event in one bout.
Spain takes a few seconds, sweeps with the front leg, follows up with the rear leg sweep and then punches him in the head. The Italian is starched after the first or second shot, seconds after tapping gloves. This is a pretty pure and quick karate victory. Unbalance, sweep from a safe distance, incapacitate. Nobody really does this except karateka.
In an MMA bout, the fight would be stopped, in the streetz, the Italian needs a hospital. In this format, the ref inexplicably stands back him up and Spain gets a little spazzy because this Weird Greek Eyes Wide Shut format is dumb and he isn't thinking clearly IMO. The Ecuadorian later is in a similar situation later, pushes too hard, and is trading shots with a hurt guy, but a fast/accurate hurt guy, who knocks him out.
All these guys should be going to Belem or LA to get some instruction from the Machidas, or a time machine to learn to clinch and grapple. But they're basically the karate equivalent of Olympic judoka and they're going to have holes in their game that need plugging when it's their first event.
Kudo. One major strength of Kyokushin was it's early adoption of cross-training judo. The weakness was "We bang really hard but nobody's allowed to punch anybody in the head." Other styles have found ways to work around that, including FC styles, but the Kyokushin guys have spent 50 years saying "I wanna figure this out by myself."