European Championship – Open weight in 2013, held in Oradea, Romania. Open-weight will always be interesting since we get fights across the regular weight-categories. That was the case in the final, where Marius Ilas (Romania) fought Antanas Klibavicius (Lithuania) We will look into the quarterfinal: Maciej Mazur (Poland) vs Jimmie Collin (Sweden)
From the European championship in 2018, so this is nothing new – but we will give it some attention anyway. The European region and WKO expand and develop – and in 2018 we did get a new set of weight categories in the EC. This gave us some new match ups. One between two World Champions: Salahat Hasanov vs Valeri Dimitrov.
It is twenty years since Valeri Dimitrov entered the European Championship in Spain – his first European Championship. Since that time he has been the “one and only” We tried to gather some of the EC finals trough the twenty years, not every final can be find – but e did a decent try. The EC finals are from weight category championship.
As always, we are impressed looking at the full-contact fighters that enter the tatami over and over again. But this year, due to the pandemic that has – and still are, a huge challenge for us all. Championships of any kind are not more important than life itself, and it has to come in that order. Well some great tournaments did go trough – and we will take a closer look at some of them – women’s first.
Over ten year ago Mikheil Tsiklauri capture the European tittle in the LW division. The EC final in 2009 was a great start – and a warning of things to come..second place the year after, before winning the EC tittle once again in 2011. After this he entered the podium 4 times, including going all the way winning the EC final in 2019 – for his third time (MW) Representing Georgia in the World Championships has also ended in good results, 3rd place in World Championship in weight-categories in 2017 – in the process beating All Japan Open Champion Shunsaku Kawase.
World Champion 2022, 7th World championship in weight categories. European Champion in weight categories and in Open Weight – top 6 in The 12th World Championship 2019 – to name some of the top results. Also known for his incredibly strong finish in his matches, with a pressure, pace and power that is very difficult to resist. Good knock out set ups – like the high knee or the “death roll” that secured his EC tittle in 2018. EC Champion 2020 EFKO European Championships, and EC shin Champion 2021. Been national team member of the Lithuanian team for many years, representing them i European Championships and World championships across countries and organizations. (Photo top of the blog pufasfoto.lt )
These days, many old video clips are popping up. No wonder, since not much new is coming. Covid-19 has put the brakes on when it comes to championships. The joy will be great when the time is right to reopen this activity. Until then, we can have fun with old clips – of our role models and heroes – which also give an enormous amount of joy! We have collected some clips of European fighters, Dimitrov (97), Wallmen (?), Trampov (95), Imbras (00), Stefanovics (02) ,Najduch (95) Popov (03)
Educated by the legendary Tsukamoto – explosive and agile as a lightweight, razor-sharp timing, all backed by tremendous force. Yasaku Watanabe maintains a significantly high level, and it will always be interesting to see what comes out of this fighter. It is also amazing to see what quality Watanabe has, when he reads his opponents, and perform counterattacks on their attacks.
Continue readingIn 2008, related to the last performance of one of the absolute top Polish fighters in the history, a match up between Poland and the top fighters of Europe was held. At the time Poland did also contributed with their very best athletes, who actually held top European level. Some videos are to find, an fighters as Mariusz Mazur, Krzysztof Habraszka, Sylwester Sypien and more from Poland, as the European team had fighters as Alejandro Navarro, Jan Sokup, Viktor Teixeira to name a few..
