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Hello, kids. Wild week in martial arts, right? With all the fight bookings and major signings and whatnot. And the dope finishes, those hit the spot. That’s great! But we’re here to take a breather and look at the fringes of martial arts, as well as some amazing combat action outside of the MMA sphere.
And boy howdy, have we got a winner up front. A quality goose, a king for the ages. This is the caliber of trainwreck that people like myself wake up every day and yearn for. You are not ready.
Kung Fu so deadly it shouldn’t be in a ring
Man, this is juicy. And as is custom, it’s a relic from the vault courtesy of our guy Jerry at Fight Commentary Breakdowns. A Kung Fu guy decides to participate in a combat event against another dude who’s just tickled to be there. The tale of the tape screen is worth the price of admission. It looks like one of those 90s fighting games that tried to capture that Mortal Kombat glory.
Way of the Warrior was about 10% less goofy than this. Let’s go to the videotape (remember those?)!
An interesting opening gambit to commence the fisticuffs. My man goes for the finesse early whipping out a spinning hook kick to the dome that comes nowhere near the target. Gotta get them thinking from the opening bell, you know?
But then he does the equivalent of party foul #47: you don’t double-dip your chip. That first kick was quick, and it was also bad. It’s then followed up by the same kick. Somehow, it looks even worse. Just look at this:
This is where I need to put on my Karate Pedant™ hat and dispense some knowledge. Back when I was 15 doing Karate, this is exactly the kind of thing that would have me punished by running ten laps, doing 50 pushups and threatened to be hit on my hands and feet with a cane for doing. It applies for Kung Fu as well.
Friends don’t let friends open their arms like this when they’re throwing a kick. Probably helps with rotation, I dunno. It’s an instinct that any serious instructor would work out of a student, so this guy is starting to give me a “bad comedian doing punchyface” vibes.
Then he busts out the Andy Hug. That went well.
All of this is within the first five seconds and at no point was any of this within actual striking distance. It’s like he just wanted to express himself so bad, man. He starts throwing looping punches that resemble a poor attempt at attempting to avoid drowning than actual punches in any Kung Fu form, and then he appears to dip for a takedown before being shucked off.
He gets tangled in the ropes and almost seems appalled that they’d have the temerity to be there at all.
And kids, it’s not gonna get any better for him from here. He squares up and tries to make his kicks happen, and they do not happen. Then Big Haystacks (I swear I’m not making that up) gets pinned against the ropes and kneed in the breadbasket.
He goes on to get sniped with punches and eating some kicks, embarrassing himself en route to a loss. But no, it doesn’t end there. The video has THREE fights of his. Haystacks is not a man that has the decency to give up.
We’ll skip the second one for our purposes, but we absolutely need to discuss the third one. He’s back without the gi, and competes against this big beautiful legend. This absolute Chad of a lad.
Haystacks masterfully displays his Kung Fu misdirection and sets the trap. Then he busts out The Prestige when he unloads this special move that depletes his meter.
Not quite a Rolling Thunder, but I’ll take it. Pretty sure there’s not a Sifu from here to Guatemala that would encourage that as a Kung Fu technique. Just putting that out there. Did it win the fight? Sorta. Did it look impressive? Absolutely not. Do I want to see more of him? You better believe it.
Sumo Slept™
You guys like Sumo? You probably should watch way more of it. And you’re in luck, because our very own Tim Bissell has been killing it with his Sumo Stomp series. Be sure to check that out as he’s got rankings, results, news and highlights that are truly worth your time.
Now I’m not anywhere near as knowledgeable as he is regarding the subject. What I do have is an eye for certain kinds of action. And here we have a collection of Sumo collisions and knockouts that are outright frightening.
It’s a rough life, man.
Judo Worlds Highlights!
The 2023 Judo Worlds have been a delight. We’ve got some clips and highlights courtesy of Judo Highlights on YouTube. First up, days 1-4:
Next, a lovely match between Japan’s Tatsuru Saito and France’s Teddy Riner:
A quick reminder..
Bloody Elbow excels at covering fight-related nonsense like this. We do it for the eyeballs and the ad revenue and to amuse our loyal audience who appreciates that nonsense is a big part of the combat carnival.
We also do some of the most serious reporting and hard-hitting opinion pieces in the game. We’re independent and answer to you, our readers. Subscribe to our newsletter to keep up with the whole range and variety of what we do.
Senegalese Laamb Classic
Here’s a battle from 2008 from Senegal featuring Papa Sow and Paul Maurice. These guys are off the charts when it comes to strength and it’s impressive to see them just hoist each other up in the air like this.
Like, seriously…
Finally, we’ll shine a spotlight on Bulgarian Kyokushin competitor Valeri Dimitrov. This guy’s beyond talented, and has some lovely technique. Enjoy this highlight vid of him doing what he does best.
That’s all we’ve got for this week, kids. Hope you all get big bags of cash like Francis Ngannou is about to. And remember – you might think you can fight, but there are many guys like you all over the world.
Bloody Elbow excels at covering fight-related nonsense like this. We do it for the eyeballs and the ad revenue and to amuse our loyal audience who appreciates that nonsense is a big part of the combat carnival.
We also do some of the most serious reporting and hard-hitting opinion pieces in the game. We’re independent and answer to you, our readers. Subscribe to our newsletter to keep up with the whole range and variety of what we do.
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