Tape Delay Kickboxing 14: MAROOMS presents KNOCK OUT 2023 SUPER BOUT “BLAZE” - 2023-03-05
NINE champions in non-title action, kickboxing and Muay Thai on the same show, and two Round of the Year-candidates. No spoilers, free on Youtube!
This series shall, where possible, allow you to watch the shows in order as if you were watching live, without spoilers.
Beyond Kickboxing event calendar: https://beyondkick.com/schedule
MAROOMS presents KNOCK OUT 2023 SUPER BOUT “BLAZE” - 2023-03-05
National Yoyogi Stadium Second Gymnasium, Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan
For the big KNOCK OUT stadium show SUPER BOUT “BLAZE,” an incredible NINE KNOCK OUT champions are in action. Now, literally none of their nine fights are for a title, but this is Japanese combat sports, what do you expect? The stranger part is that, because KNOCK OUT promotes both kickboxing and Muay Thai rules fights, some of the champions are fighting out of their lanes. Four of the fights are straight “should be a title fight but not” matches, but then you have weird stuff like kickboxing 138 lb champion Bazooka Koki doing a Muay Thai fight at 142 lb. This mainly served to make it very hard for me to transcribe the card, and as such it also looks like a lot of word garbage to read. Sorry about that.
KNOCK OUT also threw in, at the last minute, a boxing exhibition featuring disgraced 13-0 former champion Panchan Rina, who got arrested in December for selling a THE MATCH 2022 poster with forged signatures from Takeru and Tenshin Nasukawa to a guy for $730. Last month she relinquished her KO-BLACK Atom title and announced that after this exhibition she will return to the ring in May or June.
In the main event, young Peruvian-Japanese rising star Chihiro Suzuki, with a combined MMA/kickboxing record of 24-4, makes his return to the stand-up game after going 5-0 in 2022 (1-0 MT, 4-0 MMA). His opponent is Marcos “Wasabi” Rios, who comes to the show with, let’s say, an “unverified” 69-2 record, 40 knockouts. Rios was seen in January winning a unanimous decision over #5-ranked GLORY featherweight Dennis Wosik at the Glory Rivals 5 show in Mexico.
Fights highlighted in bold were ones that I found particularly entertaining.
KNOCK OUT Basics:
KNOCK OUT BLACK is kickboxing rules. No elbows. Knee strikes cannot be delivered when clinching under the opponent's armpits. KNOCK OUT BLACK rules do allow you to hold the opponent’s neck while kneeing.
KNOCK OUT RED is Muay Thai rules. Elbows allowed. Knee strikes can be delivered when clinching under the opponent’s armpits. Title fights are 5 3-minute rounds.
Most fights have one extra round in the event of a draw, and the standard Japanese scoring that commonly awards 10-10 scores for close rounds. In extra rounds, the rules state that the judge must choose a winner and cannot score a draw.
I couldn’t find anything written in the rules about the length of the clinch for BLACK or RED but in practice the referees break them a moment after the action stalls, which is not typically how clinches are officiated in traditional Muay Thai.
The color of the gloves indicates if it’s BLACK (KB) or RED (MT) but I also noted it next to the weight of the fight on each line.
Part 1
The bulk of the card was shown live on a single stream on Youtube, so the part 1 fights can be found via timestamp on the following file:
Preliminary Fights
Tesshi Takeda (2-0, 1 KO) vs. Rui Kakizaki (1-0, 1 KO) (KB 115) 23:50
Koki Inomoto (2-1-1, 0 KO) vs. Shota Maeda (3-2, 0 KO) (KB 115) 40:42
Yuzuki Sakai (6-15-4, 1 KO) vs. Haruka Abe (8-14, 6 KO) (KB 115) 57:47
Masaji (3-0, 3 KO) vs. Yuki Chiba (12-12-2, 5 KO) (KB 127) 1:13:58
Main Card
Reo “red” Kudo (11-11-5, 8 KO) vs. Takaya Ogura (17-11-2, 8 KO) (KB 121) 2:08:11
Kohei Tokeshi (1-3, 1 KO KB, 8-4-6 Lethwei) vs. Masato Bravely (10-5-1, 5 KO) (KB 154) 2:18:09
(C) Shinta (8-8-2, 1 KO, KNOCK OUT-RED Super Fly (115) Champion) vs. Masa Bravely (18-11-1, 8 KO) (MT 117) 2:45:24
(C) Seiya Furuki (5-1, 4 KO) vs. Musashi (5-1-1, 1 KO) (KB 121 Non-Title) 3:04:34
(C) Issei Saenchai-Gym (22-7-1, 8 KO) vs. Kyoha (9-7, 6 KO, first KNOCK OUT-RED Bantam champion) (MT 121 Non-Title) 3:16:43
(C) Hisai Taimu (3-0, 3 KO, KNOCK OUT-RED Super Feather (132) champion) vs. Yuki Motoyama (13-8-2, 2 KO) (KB 130) 3:37:04
Shinya Sugihara (12-12, 9 KO) vs. Hide “Meison” Usami (1-0, 0 KO, karate champion) (KB 149) 3:55:55
Daiki Watabe (24-28-2, 13 KO, former Krush Welter champion) vs. Suarek Rukkukamui (105-38-11, 33 KO, former KNOCK OUT-RED Light champion) (KB 149) 4:14:40
Part 2
The remaining fights were aired live on SamuraiTV and uploaded to Youtube later as individual files, so these have links directly to them.
Exhibition Match: Panchan Rina (13-0, 2 KO, former KNOCK OUT-BLACK Atom champion) vs. Ruka Sakamoto (0-1) (Boxing 2Rx2min)
(C) Bazooka Koki (27-9-3, 10 KO, KNOCK OUT-BLACK Light (138) champion) vs. Fukashi (43-18-2, 20 KO, former RISE and Bigbang Light champion) (MT 142)
(C) Kuntap Charoenchai (73-18-9, 21 KO, KNOCK OUT-RED Super Welter (154) champion) vs. Philip Minoru Kimura (36-10-1, 29 KO, former K-1 Super Welter and Krush Welter champion) (MT 159)
(C) Eisaku Ogasawara (41-7-1, 21 KO) vs. Ronnachai Tor.Ramintra (67-23-6, 2 KO, 2022 Muay Thai MVP Fighter, former Lumpinee Stadium Bantam, Fly, and MIni-Fly champion) (MT 127 Non-Title)
(C) Ryusei (13-0, 10 KO, KNOCK OUT-BLACK Feather (127) champion) vs. Phetsaensaeb Sor Jor.Tongprachin (49-20-2, 24 KO, Rajadamnern Stadium Super Bantam champion) (KB 129)
(C) Chihiro Suzuki (11-1, 9 KO, 10-3 MMA) vs. Marcos “Wasabi” Rios (69-2, 40 KO) (KB 143 Non-Title)