Plague of Strength

Catch up on the other stuff in the series:

Pehlwani and Pankratists

Catch Wrestling

Kickboxing Part 1

Kickboxing In General

As we saw in the previous installment, the term kickboxing could be used to describe an incredibly wide range of styles, from Chinese san shou to North American Kickboxing to French savate to Indian-influenced (which includes muay thai  [Thailand], pradal serey [Cambodia], lethwei  [Myanmar], muay lao [Laos], yaw-yan [Philippines], and tomoi from Malaysia styles, and they all have their merits. The sport of kickboxing today encompasses the totality of this type of full-contact stand-up fighting that involves more than just the use of the hands as weapons.

Obviously, different styles have different rules- from the types of contact allowed to the type of protection worn, the various styles of kickboxing are pretty far afield. The type with perhaps the lest respect given to it is North American kickboxing, as it looks admittedly uncool by comparison to Thai boxing to the casual observer. American kickboxing began its life as full contact karate, and as such only allowed punches, leg sweeps, and kicks above the waist (clinching, knees, elbows, and kicks below the waist are disallowed in points fighting, and that rule carried over into full contact before full contact karate/American kickboxing and kickboxing became separate). America being American, however, our style of kickboxing utilized the upper body movement patterns, punches, and defense of American boxing with the above-the-waist kicks one generally associates with traditional karate, making it entirely different than the knees, elbows, and low kicks style of Thai kickboxing and much more aggressive and upper-body dominated than Japanese non-boxing based karate.

What most people don’t know is that there were a lot of hyperaggressive fighters in the United States and Europe who wanted to fight under less restrictive rules- kyokushin is virtually unknown in the US, so American karateka had few options. A few of these guys broke from the restrictions of the American kickboxing rule set and were basically the real-life basis for shit like Kickboxer and Bloodsport because they would fight anyone, anywhere, at any time. Guys like the Urquidez brothers, unknown beast-mode badass Everett Eddy, and Canadian light-welterweight badass Pete “Sugarfoot” Cunningham started fighting anyone and everyone on whom they could lay hands, no matter what the rules, to prove they were the best (and by far and away the most aggressive). And that’s not to mention the kyokushin fighters from the Pacific, like Japanese kickboxing legend Tadashi Sawamura and Aussie badass Adam Watt, and the spate of Dolph Lundgren-lookalikes from Germanic Europe like Peter Aerts and Swiss monster Andy Hug, whose 600+ pull helped power an axe kick so lethal he should have starred in one of the Silent Night, Deadly Night films.

Though the notable fighters of the time are too numerous to mention, two American kickboxers were integral to formation of modern organizations like K-1- Playgirl coverboy Joe Louis (b. 1944 d. 2012) and Rick Roufus (b. 1966), both of whom were badass gym rats. These two men created an international interest in the burgeoning world of hybrid fight sports, which was a festering boil on the gilded asshole of boxing as most people in the West had seen it previously.

Joe Lewis took fights under any conditions he could, simply to prove he was the hardest cunt on the planet, winning his fights on blazing speed and raw power built in the gym. Building upon a background in high school wrestling, Lewis studied Okinowan karate while stationed in Japan with the Marines. From 1967-69, Lewis trained privately with Bruce Lee on a daily basis, and because of Lee he enlisted the help of legendary boxer puncher Sugar Ray Robinson for boxing instruction. After Lee and Lewis had a falling out of some kind, Lewis began training with boxing trainer to continue improving his striking. What resulted was a fucking nightmare for his opponents- the combination of heavy weights and jeet kune do combined with Shōrinryū, various kung fu styles, boxing, and wrestling enabled him to defeat all comers regardless of the rule changes (though he could not get a fight with a Thai fighter to materialize, likely because he was 30 pounds heavier than their biggest fighter).

Lewis is considered the “father of [American] kickboxing,” though the sport dates back to Japanese karateka Tatsuo Yamada, who began holding “karate-boxing” fights in Japan pitting karate fighters against Thai boxers and promoted the first “kickboxing” contest in Japan in 1966 (which allowed butts and throws for the first two years to distinguish it from muay thai).

Meanwhile, in America,

“In late 1969 promoter Lee Faulkner contacted Joe Lewis to fight in his upcoming United States Karate Championships. Lewis had retired from point fighting at the time but agreed to fight if Faulkner would promote a full-contact karate bout with Lewis and an opponent who would fight to the knockout. Faulkner agreed. As Lewis and Greg Baines entered the ring wearing boxing gloves the announcer identified the fighters as “kickboxers” [the first recorded use of the term in the United States]. That night Joe Lewis won the first-ever kickboxing bout in North America on January 17, 1970, with a second-round knockout over Greg Baines [after defeating another guy in point fighting immediately prior to the fight]” (Wiki).

Rick Roufus’ career has spanned kickboxing, boxing, and mma and almost 25 years, during which time Roufus adapted his fight style constantly to meet new challenges. Having fought professionally for three years in 1988, Roufus did the unthinkable and challenged a lightweight thai boxer to a fight under muay thai rules. Though Roufus was a lean, muscular 5’11” 195, the Thai, Changpuek Kiatsongrit, was only 5’8″ and 154 pounds. Kiatsongrit, however, had a hilariously deadly weapon on his side- low kicks. In Roufus’ own words:

“My life can be separated into two parts; the part where I thought ‘how much can a low kick really hurt?’ And the part after that thought.”

This fight was an international sensation on the order of Sepultura when they played Dynamo Open Air- they didn’t headline the show, but their unique blend of groove metal, death metal, hardcore, and industrial melted every mind in the metal world when we first heard that album. That’s what Rick Roufus’ foray into the femur-shattering world of muay thai was- he didn’t win, but holy hell he made a brawl of a fight that everyone expected to end in a goddamn funeral.

Apparently emboldened by the fact that he didn’t drop dead like he’d been shot during a fight with a Thai fighter, Roufus and his fellow kickboxing legend brother Duke (who was also seminal in the formation of modern kickboxing and continues to train champion fighters) tracked down Thai boxing instructors to learn how to defend and deliver low kicks with deadly effectiveness. At the same time, Kiatsongrit went on a mission to repair the shame wounds Thailand had from refusing Roufus’ American predecessor’s fights and began fighting internationally as a heavyweight (though he never weighed more than 75kg). This both validated the open-weight format that some organizations used and basically forced the sport of international, mixed-rules kickboxing into being.

Roufus did the exact same thing from the other side of the Pacific. After mastering the art of low kicks, he embarked upon a career spanning multiple disciplines and every conceivable kickboxing ruleset you can imagine (he was DQ’d, for instance, for failing to make the required minimum of eight kicks a round for three successive rounds), and was seminal in the formation of modern kickboxing.

The premier organization for this type of international stand-up fighting (which as I mentioned originated in Japan in the early 1960s as karate vs muay thai matches) is K-1. K-1 began in 1993, when full-contact karate had waned in interest in Japan. A prescient kyokushin practitioner who’d founded his own style of full-contact, hardcore sportfighting (Seidokaikan), Kazuyoshi Ishii, envisioned a sport in which the practitioners of all of the stand up contact sports, specifically karate, (Indian-inspired) kickboxing, kung fu, kempo, kakutougi (the Japanese term for “combat sports”), and tae kwon do, could fight under unified rules. He’d been holding massive full-contact karate tournaments in Japan for over a decade, but he felt that expanding the scope internationally would improve the product.

And he was dead fucking right.

K-1 is basically a one stop shop if you’ve a need to see some claret spilled in the midst of fisticuffs between massive, unhinged brawlers. As a general rule, K-1 is more entertaining than any other televised combat sport, because the fights they televise are all Super Heavyweight fights between some of the biggest bastards on the planet, with the occasional sumo thrown in just to shake things up and provide the Japanese crowds with the bizarre spectacle they desire. The rules are simple- take all of the rules from muay thai, then drop the stupid dance, the clinching, and that godawful music.

Jerome Le Banner

In terms of sheer face-pulping, femur-snapping, smashed-face brutality, one needs look no further than K-1’s Jerome Le Banner. Though not the most decorated fighter in that organization, Le Banner is famous for being one of the most physically punishing fighters ever witnessed in any organization, and has 78 knockouts between professional boxing, kickboxing, and mma to show for it (so we’re not including the massive number of KO’s he has racked up in kyokushin karate). Tragically, there is no way to train one’s chin, and that proved to be Le Banner’s undoing- the man is no pussy and hits like a fucking dump truck, but a suspect chin is an Achilles heel to man whose motto seems to have been the basis for E-Town Concrete’s song “End of the Rainbow”

ALWAYS ON THE ATTACK… AND NEVER ON THE DEFENSE. DEFENSES UP, MOTHERFUCKER!

Aside from the fact that Le Banner takes naps in the ring like he’s a fucking fainting goat every now and again (over the course of 100 fights you’re gonna get caught occasionally, especially since he doesn’t jog around the ring like Floyd Mayweather for 10 rounds), his punches land like avalanches on his opponents’ faces, and his low kicks hit hard enough it’d be surprising if some of his opponents ever walked again. And to become artilleryman firing shells carrying weaponized polio, Le Banner lifted a fuckton of weights.

Le Banner trains twice a day to achieve peak condition, training cardio and weights in the mornings and then kickboxing, sparring, and drills in the evening (Carpinello). Heavy weights put 263 pounds of face-pulping, narcolepsy-inducing lean muscle on Le Banner’s 6’3″, and that far-bigger-than-Arnold musculature enabled him to win by knockout 70 times in 86 wins (he had 22 losses, 13 of which were by KO). Likewise, Le Banner has three wins by KO in MMA (3-3 record) and five KOs in boxing (6-0 pro boxing record).

As it happens, Le Banner’s coach is the one Holyfield used to transform from a badass light-heavyweight into a fucking knockout monster in the heavyweight division. Initially, they used a trainer who focused Evander’s weight training on heavy, explosive movements to help him bulk up from a heavy cruiserweight to a small heavyweight. Though he had knockout power, he decided he needed to gain more weight after squeaking out a win over 257 pound George Foreman.

Thus, they went big on their strength trainers- Mr. Olympia Lee Haney and world record-holding squatter, Dr. Fred Hatfield. Under the tutelage of Mr. Olympia and using the diet and programs designed by Hatfield, Holyfield went from 208 to 218 in only twelve weeks. During that time he also drastically increased his cardio in pre-fight prep (which was described by Hatfield as borderline Greek tragedy), though he did no road work of any kind and lifted five times a week for an hour or more.

Le Banner’s weight training would be very much like one of those two systems, both of which proved effective in building mass and strength simultaneously. It’s clear from his training videos that he does heavy bodybuilding work, so his methodology might best be described as “powerbuilding with a shitload of GPP.”

Likewise, other K-1 heavyweight champs from Maori knockout monster Ray Sefo to Croatian special forces-turned-kickboxing and mma badass-turned-politician Mirko Cro Cop to (sadly dead) Swiss karateka Andy Hug and brick-shaped smashing machine Mark Hunt (who does insane, ultra-heavy chain yoke walks and other strongman shit) rely heavily on weight work to maintain mass and enable them to develop bone-crushing power.

In short, heavy lifting does a fighter good, no matter what the 150lb fuckwits on Youtube say in the comments they use to justify their fat-assed, Cheetos-dust-filled existence. That is not to say that brute strength alone will carry you through a fight with an elite fighter, but all other things being equal, more strength means more wins. Mikhail Kolkaev seems not to have gotten that memo, but after losing to the perpetually drunk and detrained brother of Fedor, you’d hope he might (though Aleks is a fucking badass).

And as always, help a motherfucker out and hit up my Patreon if you feel like this shit is worth keeping porn-and-gore filled, rather than sanitized for advertising. If you already do, I really appreciate the support of strength sports counterculture- we’re the only motherfuckers keeping it alive at this point.

Sources:

Benjamin, Kathy.  Six surprising badass figures from the victorian era.  Cracked.  16 Oct 2015.  Web.  14 Oct 2017.  http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-surprising-badass-figures-from-victorian-era/

Carpinello, Dave.  Jerome Le Banner interview.  Mixfight.  18 Aug 2008.  Web.  12 Jan 2020.  http://www.mixfight.nl/forum/showthread.php?84581-jerome-le-banner-interview

Goyder, James.  Inside a Burmese lethwei gym.  Vice: Fightland.  22 Jul 2015.  Web.  9 Oct 2017.  http://fightland.vice.com/blog/inside-a-burmese-lethwei-gym

Hatfield, Frederick C.  How They Train: Conditioning methods of world champion boxer Evander Holyfield. Reprinted from Sportscience News, Sep-Oct 1997.  Sportsci.  Web.  16 Jan 2020.  https://www.sportsci.org/news/news9709/hatfield.html

Kesting, Stephen.  The Ancient Vale Tudo of India: Vajramushti.  The Grapple Arts.  13 Mar 20212.  Web.  16 Jan 2020.  https://www.grapplearts.com/the-ancient-vale-tudo-of-india-vajramushti/

Musti Yuddha.  Wikipedia.  Web.  9 Oct 2017.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musti-yuddha

Odebunmi, Ollie.  Evander Holyfield and weight training.  Livestrong.  Web.  12 Jan 2020.  https://www.livestrong.com/article/369069-evander-holyfield-and-weight-training/

Rao, Sumana.  Musti Yuddha: “Art of Eight Limbs”  W R India.  12 May 2017.  Web.  16 Jan 2020.  https://healthylife.werindia.com/your-road-to-healthy-life/musti-yuddha-art-eight-limbs

René, André.  Lethwei champion Lone Chaw.  Burmese Boxing.com.  Web.  9 Oct 2017.  http://www.burmese-boxing.com/Lethwei/Lone_Chaw.html

Tom Sayers.  International Boxing Hall of Fame.  Web.  14 Oct 2017.  http://www.ibhof.com/pages/about/inductees/pioneer/sayers.html

Wedlan, Candace A.  A knockout routine : George Foreman on the joys of skipping.  Los Angeles Times,  14 Nov 1995. Web.  11 Apr 2018.  http://articles.latimes.com/1995-11-14/news/ls-2947_1_george-foreman/2

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