Bloody Elbow 2.0 | Anton Tabuena

Welcome back to Weekly Kicks, Bloody Elbow’s regular round up of news from K-1, Glory, Superkombat, and the world of international kickboxing.

What was a moderately quiet week in terms of fights for this time of year ended up being a pretty big week for news thanks to the always newsworthy Badr Hari.

Badr Hari out of jail… or not

Badr Hari, the (former?) K-1 Heavyweight, has been released from prison, only to promptly be put right back in. Hari has been in jail for the past few months stemming from his involvement in a criminal assault at an Amsterdam nightclub. Last week, he was given a provisional release, meaning he is still a suspect, and is still facing charges, but no longer needs to await his court date in incarceration.

With his release were certain restrcitions – namely that he can not have any contact with witnesses or victims, and that he is barred from nightclubs and similar establishments.

As it turns out, they were serious about those restrictions. Hari was spotted in a restaurant over the weekend and was re-arrested today. As of this writing, he’s back in jail.

Hari is likely to be on trial in January for the assault, so we’ll have to wait until next year to find out more about Hari’s future.

Superkombat results

Tournament season marched on this weekend with the opening round of the Superkombat World Grand Prix 2012. Four fighters advanced to the tournament finals on December 22. Advancing were Ismael Londt, Pavel Zhuravlev, Sebastian Ciobanu, and Benjamin Adegbuyi. Looking at the final 4, my money remains firmly on Ismael Londt for the GP crown.

Adegbuyi scored the biggest upset, taking out defending champion Sergei Lascenko. There was a bit of weirdness heading into the fight though. Lascenko was originally set to face Londt here, however, after his K-1 fight with Hesdy Gerges, Lascenko bowed out a few weeks ago. Adegbuyi was paired with Alexey Ignashov, but when Ignashov was injured, he too dropped out shortly before showtime. Superkombat replaced him with… Lascenko. Weird. So while I don’t want to take anything away from Adegbuyi here, it’s worth noting that Lascenko was fighting on very short notice on a card which he originally dropped out of due to injury.

Full results from Liver Kick:

Superfight: Ibrahim Aarab def. Dzevad Poturak by decision
Super Fight: Tomas Hron def. Dimitry Bezus by DQ (Illegal Spinning Elbow)
Final Elimination 1: Pavel Zhuravlev def. Freddy Kemayo by decision
Final Elimination 2: Sebastian Ciobanu def. Roman Kleibl by decision
Final Elimination 3: Ismael Londt def. Daniel Sam by TKO in Round 1 (Doctor Stoppage)
Final Elimination 4: Benjamin Adegbuyi def. Sergei Lascenko by KO in Round 1
Superfight: Ionuţ Iftimoaie def. James Wilson by decision
Superfight: Catalin Morosanu def. Carter Williams by decision

Glory 4 moved to New Year’s Eve

Glory made a big announcement this past week. They have one mega-show left for the year, as Glory 4 Tokyo is set to include their big Heavyweight year end tournament. With names like Semmy Schilt, Remy Bonjasky, Peter Aerts, Gokhan Saki, and Daniel Ghita involved, this is the top Heavyweight tournament of 2012, no doubt about it. Now, fans will have to wait just a bit longer for the show.

Glory announced that Glory 4 Tokyo was postponed to December 31, and will now be joined with the big Dream.18 Dream/Glory New Year’s Eve show, resulting in one of those insanely overstuffed NYE spectacles Japan loves. Expect Dream.18/Glory 4 to run about 8 hours (seriously).

Shootboxing S-Cup this weekend

One final piece of tournament news – Shootboxing stages their big S-Cup event this weekend. This tournament goes down in Japan every other year; past champions have included Andy Souwer and Buakaw Por. Pramuk. They’ve announced the first round pairings, which provide some intriguing possibilities:

Hiroaki Suzuki vs. Joachim Hansen
Henri van Opstal vs. Bovy Sor Udomson
Gesias Cavalcante vs. Hiroki Shishido
Andy Souwer vs. Kem Sitsongpeenong

Souwer vs. Kem is the clear money fight of this round, and should be a great one. I’ll take Souwer’s experience there, but I’m very interested to see how it plays out. Elsewhere, I’ll pick Suzuki vs. van Opstal plus JZ vs. Souwer as your semi-finals (JZ vs. Souwer? Cool.), then Souwer taking out Suzuki to once again claim the S-Cup. Both Kem and JZ could play spoilers here though – Toby Imada took out Souwer 2 years ago, and if the veteran didn’t learn from that fight, he could find himself again struggling with the MMA skills of his opponent, this time courtesy of JZ.

Sadly, I doubt there will be any sort of live stream for this one. Sorry folks.

Fight of the week

Here’s Benjamin Adegbuyi scoring the big upset win over Sergei Lascenko at Superkombat: