First time in Europe K-1 Fighting Network HERO’S in Lithuania!!! First time in Europe K-1 Fighting Network HERO’S in Lithuania!!!
November 26th of 2005 is date to be seen by the MMA enthusiasts as a landmark in the European MMA scene. For the first time on European soil the K-1 and its MMA promotion named HERO’s docked in Siemens Arena at Vilnius – Lithuania. The Arena had no seats left for this exciting night of 11 fights featuring some veterans who have already performed in HERO’S, Pride FC and other competitive events spread around the World.
The opening ceremony of the event was conducted by the legendary RINGS personality and the actual HERO’s main promoter, Akira Maeda. Besides Maeda, several representatives from world famous international organizations came to watch this event at live.
The Lithuanian fighters faced opponents from Russia, Japan, Brazil, Israel, Georgia, Holland, and Ukraine. The local team took this challenge by 7-4 againstthe rest of the World. Some important fights mixed in K-1 rules, HERO’s rules and old RINGS’ rules (punches to the face were not allowed on the grounded fight) were disputed with only 3 of them going to the judges’ opinion. The rest, were a succession of KOs, TKOs and several submissions that will be related below:
In the first fight, the impression of a good evening was soon solidly positive when Erikas Petraitis dominated Takayuki Ohkouchi during the three round fight. Petraitis didn’t give any chance to the Japanese Ohkouchi, who just survived to receive the notice of Petraitis beating him by unanimous judges’ decision.
Israel has never been looked at as a country to generate MMA fighters, however this sport is always surprising us. This time wasn’t different, the World champion of Pankration (a kind of MMA with more rules), Israeli Ido Parienti didn’t have problems with fighting in the front of his opponent’s Mindaugas Smirnovas home crowd and sunk a kneebar at the end of R1 to hail the local crowd and submit Smirnovas.
Lithuania versus Russia in the third fight of the show; known as “Terminator” by the Lithuanian fans, Valdas Porkevicius battled RTT representative Konstantin Uriadov. The Russian has impressive titles in his fight career, such as muay thai champion and Universal Fighting champion, but it didn’t change the will of the strong Porkevicius, who dictated the pace and armbarred Uriadov when the clock marked 3:10 minutes of R1.
Lithuanian combatants fought a K-1 Max rules match in fight number #4. K-1 Max is an extraordinary event held in Japan, also under K-1 organization, where fighters who weight less than -70 kgs can fight. The meeting between two strong guys in Darius Skliaudys (muay thai) and Janas Kacenovskis (kickboxing) was very close. Both of the strikers alternated moments of superiority on the 3×3 rounds minutes bout. I’m glad I wasn’t a judge for this fight due to the balance of it, but in the final the judges gave the nod to Skliaudys by majority decision.
In the fifth fight Lithuanian Tadeu_as Cholodinskis (9-2–1) got a unanimous decision over Dutch Evert Fyeet (6-9-2) after three rounds of intense combat.
Gracie Barra PitBull athlete, Brazilian Jair “Sorriso” Goncalves facedthe most important match in his career until then, the Lithuanian and Pride Bushido 2 veteran Egidijus Valavicius. Valavicius was in his 8-6-0 resume; a contest against the inhuman Pride FC heavyweight champion, Emelianenko Fedor in 2003, where Valavicus was beaten by kimura. Valavicius was in his country and had the audience on his side, so this atmosphere could make the Brazilian champion a little hesitant. The expectation of a great fight left the eyewitnesses attentive on the ring when Sorriso and Valavicius closed the distance. However any of the factors mentioned above were shook from Sorriso’s mind, who imposed his better BJJ game and rear-naked-choked a disappointed Valavicius at 2:55 in R1.
A super heavyweight clash in the seventh match –Lithuanian Tadas “The Bear” Rimkevicius and Japanese fighter Keigo Takamori of Pancrase Megaton weighed more than 200 kgs together. Rimkevicius was defending his undefeated resume in MMA and he kept it when he connected a heavy strike at 2:41 of R1, ko’ing Takamori. Rimkevicius is now 9-0-0 with only one victory by decision.
Another match involving Lithuania versus Japan in number #8, and the final result was replay of the previous one. The KO this time was a little late, Kestutis Smirnovas overcame Hiromitu Miura at 4:55 of R1 in a fight that Smirnovas handled from the start.
The next to the last match showed how an excess of confidence can harm a strategy. We had no idea of the plan of Yuri “Playboy” Kiseliov from Ukraine against Valentinas Golubovskis but Kiseliov was 100% sure about a good performance. But Golubovskis scored the brutal KO(the third on the roadin the event) over Kiseliov in incredible and fast 22 seconds.
Co-Main event was the return of Russian idol Mikhail Illoukhine against local Jordanas Po_kaitis in a RINGS’ rules pre-determined match. Illoukhine started the fight by studying his opponent and controlling the actions. Once on the ground, the RINGS’ rules don’t allow punches on the face. But Po_kaitis seemed to forget it for while and punched Illoukhine’s face, who really got mad and had to be contained by security. After reestablishing the control, the Russian bear Illoukhine kept his dominance, but the bell sounded. R2 started by the same way, but didn’t elapse too much when Illoukhine in a smart-maneuver knee-barred Po_kaitis at 1:10.
A Lithuanian hero at HERO’S Lithuanian; it seems redundant right? But it’s true, when Remigijus Morkevicius appeared to do the main-event of this 26/11 HERO’s show at Lithuanian. This is amazing to see how Morkevicius has charisma with the Lithuanian people and how he rewarded the crowd and followers this time. Morkevicius needed only 9 seconds to knock Jokhardize Ramazi unconscious. Ramazi is a judo and sambo champion in his country, but the fast kick of Morkevicius didn’t let us see how Ramazi of Georgia would do. After the fight, Ramazi (already recovered) stated that he knew that Morkevicius was fast, but not that fast. Us either!