Fight analysis: WKF National Championships '12 Lukas P., Full Contact, Fight #1

Last saturday, I competed at the WKF national championships 2012 in Villach. Took silver. My first fight on that day was against Jakob (if I remember correctly), a former boxer from ATUS Weiz.

Gameplan

When my fight was up, I wasn't really warmed up properly. Therefore, I decided to take things rather easy and start out slowly. Now I'm not particularly good at sticking to game plans, but at least I stuck to the easy pace for around 15 seconds before rushing in for the first time. My technical goal for that fight was to "force choice", as video game players call it. Virtuafighter.com defines the terms as follows:

"In a situation where you can move before your opponent can, you can threaten them with two different potential attacks, such as a mid attack or a high throw. These are difficult to defend against at the same time, and the opponent is forced to choose how to respond."

 In my case, this simply means alternating kicks, punches, high and low attacks and constantly switching between attack angles. For example, I'd throw a jab-cross-rear roundhouse-cross-lead hook combination. This combinations covers attacks to the head and the body, on the inside lane (jab, cross) as well as the outside lane (hook, roundhouse). I think I did a pretty good job on that goal.

Style differences

Now I'm not actually a kickboxer, you see. Shinergy, the style I practice, was always geared towards a very realistic (i.e. non-sportive) form of fighting. Hence, we've employed light, MMA-like gloves from the beginning, rather than the heavy 10oz gloves used in kickboxing. That's why a classical double cover as used by boxers isn't taught in our classes. You don't see a lot of that kind of blocking in MMA competitions, either. With lighter gloves, blocking becomes more active - Bruce Lee said that

"The main characteristic JKD is the absence of the usual classical passive blocking. Blocking is the least efficient. Jeet Kune-Do is offensive; it's alive and it's free."

The same holds true for Shinergy.  In kickboxing, however, the double guard is an extremely valuable tool that must be mastered at all costs. Still, this is the position I feel least comfortable in. However, I've been working on that issue and I feel that I did pretty well in that fight.

Fight analysis

Overall, I'd say I had the upper hand over the course of the entire fight. Those turning kicks didn't work out the way I wanted, but I scored with flying spinning back kicks twice. Those are risky, but then it's a spectator sport, after all.

Probably my top scoring technique in that fight was the right overhand. Definately need to work on the follow-up, though. Most of the time, the overhead took me right into the clinch. Also, I sometimes seemd to freeze after scoring with that technique. Again, this is where I need to work on following up with a flurry of strikes.

Bottom line: it was a good, solid fight and I enjoyed it a lot. I really think I've deserved to win (which I did), but then you can judge that for yourself. Just watch the video below and feel free to post your thought to the comments section below.

Next up: My second fight that day, the finals against Andreas K. from the Fightclub Graz. I'll post this in the next couple of days, so stay tuned.

So long,

take care