The World’s Largest Korean
February 12th, 2007
While clicking around YouTube I found this footage of Choi Hong Man. He appears to be a K1 fighter. He fights Bob Sapp, a former football player who was brought to Japan to be a villain, a former sumo wrestler (Akebono) who was offered a lot of money to get into K1, a little Muay Thai fighter and some French guy. I’d like to see this Choi Hong Man fight someone like Mirko CroCop.
I watched a lot of K1 while in Japan. They have a MMA devision that Bob Sapp sometimes fights in. They bring over Western fighters but usually fighters who are past their prime or who never were that successful like Butterbean. There is one other major fighting organization, Pride, but they have less money behind it. Rumor is the UFC may buy that promotion. Although there are some really good fighters not in the UFC, a lot of the best fighters who aren’t Asian have been lured there. Most good North American fighters have moved back home, such as Quinton Jackson, a lot of Brazilians have always fought in the UFC, it was originally run by Brazilian-Americans. Very rarely do the best Japanese fighters come to the US.
The UFC plans to hold events in Canada, Mexico, the UK, and elsewhere. So maybe Choi Hong Man will fight Tim “The Maine-iac” Sylvia, if he hangs on to his belt with “The Natural” and CropCop after him.
Needless to say a big Asian guy beating up all the foreigners goes down well with the locals. Although Bob Sapp and Akebono have many Japanese fans they are marketed as heels in the pro wrestling sense. K1 has more theatrics than Pride or the UFC. I’m not talking about bright lights or loud music. I’m talking staged pre-fight footage, Bob Sapp’s entire career is based on being “The Beast” of course some people still think he is 可愛い, others might think he is 怖い.
One quirk of Japanese is the word for cute ‘Kawaii‘ is close to scary ‘Kowai‘. Using kana or kanji makes things more clear but the pronounciation is close enough to confuse me, I learned this on Halloween when I refused to dress up as anything cute and instead went as a vampire. It was a very popular costume, though it consisted of only makeup, the fangs didn’t really work out, I chose it so I could meet the entire dress code.
I wonder how many dubious keyword referrals this will lead to?
This entry was originaly posted on , it was last edited on and is filed under: Sporting Life and tagged: Japan, K1, Korea, Martial Arts, MMA.
This post gets popular every time he fights. Of course when you beat up Jose Canseco… Fights like that would be illegal or not sanctioned in the US/Canada but they sell tickets in Japan.
I should just get a job predicting the future. Although I didn’t state Choi Hong Man would fight Brock Lesnar, I did write how he has fought a bunch of ‘foreign heels’ and Brock Lesnar would fit that bill to a T. Brock his big and strong but I’m not sure if he has had to fight someone who was 7 feet tall and really trying to knock him unconcious. At least he is doing some training, maybe he can become the next Bob Sapp.
Here is the story over at MMAWeekly.com:
I found someone for this guy to fight that is his size. Well besides all those huge Russian heavyweight fighters that are in pro boxing. The Giant Silva used to wrestle in the WWE and now fights in Pride. I stumbled on to his MySpace page. I clicked on one of his YouTube clips and he lost badly.
He might have been brought to Japan just like Bob Sapp to be the big bad foreigner. Bob Sapp seems to have worn out his welcome in Japan and was to fight in the UK but some guy ducked out of it.
Maybe I’ll have to add an MMA tag to my blog, Gary might read that, if Gary reads anything I write now.
Here is another video that is pretty funny, apparently a former Brazilian pro wrestler doesn’t make the best MMA fighter. I heard the UFC and Pride tried to get Kurt Angle to sign with them, they are also talking with Brock Lesnar, maybe Goldberg will do something besides count his money and appear on stupid TV shows… He used to be huge but he was a football player not a college wrestler, he says he is too old to start MMA.
Ah it is my romanji that is wrong. I hate romanji. I never use it. I had to write something in English characters so people would get the idea… I’ll fix it. I carefully looked up the words I wanted in the dictionary, but of course it didn’t have the romanji…
The Japanese for scary is kowai, cute is kawaii