Quote:
Originally Posted by Bill Cosby
Wear and tear on the fighters is what i've read, fighters having to drop out of the tourny due to injuries from previous matches ( Masato ) is a biig no no now
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The wear and tear thing is hard to justify. In all of MAX in only one instance was there ever a fighter that had to pullout out due to injury (Masato). Compare this to the HWs where there have been tons of cases where alternates had to be called in, and even situations where there were no alternates the losing fighter was used as a replacement. Yet MAX is the one that gets the tournament format changed.
It's a shame because K-1 has always been about the tournament, the whole slogan of the old K-1 used to be "All Roads Lead to the Dome" since Tokyo Dome was where the finals usually where (for HWs at least). Injuries, fatigue, all of those were big parts of what made winning a GP really hard because it was so wearing on the body. The GP was never about who was the best fighter that night, it was always about who was the toughest and most tenacious. Besides in K-1 fighters lose to each other so often that one fight didn't neccessarily prove who was better than the other, it was a lot more unpredicatble and exciting that way. If you want to watch who's the better fighter when fighting fresh then watch single fights but K-1 has always been about the GP.
In MAX though I guess that's just not the case since much more than K-1 it's a character based promotion driven by the charisma of its stars. In fact it has been said before that the MAX is basically the Masato show. Take the tournament lottery where fighters choose their brackets and opponents. Masato this year got a free pick, along with Andy Souwer. Now the defending champion always gets a free pick but usually only the defending champion. Here though it's the defending champion and Masato. And the argument's already been made that Masato is the main reason for changing the format regardless of what other justification they give. So yes at the moment MAX is the Masato show and while it's not undeserved since he is their biggest star along with very likely their best fighter (in their top 3 at least) I still hope that regardless of this the event and talent pool does not become compromised more in the future just for the sake of favoritism.
