MMA K1

The K-1 World Grand Prix 2009 is the year's biggest kickboxing event, and as we get ready for the December 5 show, we have K-1 announcer Michael Schiavello offering his commentary on each of the fighters. His thoughts on Ruslan Karaev are below.

The K-1 World Grand Prix 2009 is the year's biggest kickboxing event, and as we get ready for the Dec. 5 show, we have K-1 announcer Michael Schiavello offering his commentary on each of the fighters. His thoughts on Badr Hari are below.

The opponent for Masato's farewell to competitive kickboxing will be fellow two-time K-1 World MAX GP champion Andy Souwer on the New Year's Eve Dynamite!! 2009 event in Saitama, Japan, promoters announced Thursday.

Masato, whom Souwer has already beaten twice, will aim to avoid the clean sweep in the finale to his 12-and-a-half year career.

Before he himself retires on New Year's Eve, two-time K-1 World Max champion and Japanese fan favorite Masato snuck in a fight over the weekend to help send-off his friend and teammate Daiguji Susumu.

K-1 has released the latest promotional video for its World Grand Prix Final 2009, and it shows once again that K-1 knows how to hype a fight. Video below.

Giogrio Petrosyan won the K-1 World Max 2009 championship Monday at the Yokohama Arena in Japan and will likely face last year's champ Masato in his retirement fight at "Dynamite!! 2009" on New Year's Eve.

Petrosyan made quick work of his first opponent Yuya Yamamoto, knocking out the lone Japanese tournament representative with a right hook two minutes and nine seconds into the fight. In the finals (video above), Petrosyan won unanimously on the scorecards against two-time K-1 World Max champ Andy Souwer, who advanced earlier in the evening with a split decision over Buakaw Por.Pramuk.

After beating James Thompson in a Dream 12 squash match Sunday, Strikeforce heavyweight champion Alistair Overeem said he wants his next MMA fight to be against a much, much tougher opponent: The best fighter in MMA, Fedor Emelianenko.

In North America, people who know who Alistair Overeem is know him as an MMA fighter. He's the Strikeforce heavyweight champion, and his 14 fights in Pride included one in Las Vegas (against Shogun Rua) and one against Chuck Liddell when Liddell was the most popular fighter in the UFC. To the extent that Overeem has any name value in this country, it's for what he's done in MMA.

Only the hardest of the hard-core fans watched it, but the Ultimate Glory MMA and kickboxing event in Amsterdam Saturday featured four of the eight participants in December's K-1 World Grand Prix Final 2009: Errol Zimmerman, Ruslan Karaev, Alistair Overeem and Semmy Schilt. So what did that event tell us about what we should expect from the year's biggest and best kickboxing event?

Getting revenge for an ugly loss more than five years ago, the enormous Dutch kickboxer Semmy Schilt defeated the Belarusian Alexey Ignashov in a fairly dull decision Saturday at Golden Glory's Ultimate Glory 11 event in Amsterdam.