We visited Kobayashi previously in his bout against Namsaknoi. He paid for his loose style in that fight against a sharper, fast fighter. That style pays off in this fight, at least for the audience, though you can still see its shortcomings. I've only seen this one fight from Osman Yigin. He seems to be from the same school of thought in terms of boxing as Kobayashi, one where patience is deemphasized in favor of aggression and power. I think the closest parallel to Kobayashi we currently have is Badr Hari, a fighter with a loose, powerful style that emphasizes offense with the hands over defense. (Kobayashi actually trained in Holland early in his career, at Mejiro Gym where Andy Souwer came up.)
Kobayashi wears red gloves in this bout, Yigin blue.
I'd like to thank MTtube7 for uploading this video. You can really see how much power these fighters generate. Wanderlei Silva gets a lot of acclaim for being an exciting fighter, but brawlers have been catching fans' eyes in various types of boxing for a long time. (In my opinion, Bovy Sor Udomson is the O.G. android killing machine, but we'll get to him later. Suffice to say that Wanderlei and Kobayashi look downright measured compared to him.)
Kobayashi, for all his looseness, has very solid technique and his hand combos especially are very fast, fluid, and powerful. A fighter like him with power and a talent for boxing on the inside could have benefited greatly from better footwork but, as we see, he sometimes is too much a target. You might say that the price of the audience's enjoyment is Kobayashi's braincells, though that could be said of any fighter.
Watching this feels like watching a heavyweight bout: a KO is imminent. Ruslan Karaev vs Badr Hari in 2007 and Lin Chi Bin vs Su Hwan Lee in the finals of the 2009 K-1 tournament in Korea are very similar to this in dynamic. I may post both, seeing as they are great fights.
No comments:
Post a Comment