Welcome to the latest edition of Missed Fists where Jed Meshew and Alexander K. Lee shine a light on fights from across the globe that may have been overlooked in these hectic times where it seems like there’s an MMA show every other day.
A few weeks ago, we promised readers some Hong Man Choi. And now we bring you some Hong Man Choi.
(These clips, among others, courtesy of @Jolassanda. Give that account a follow!)
Hong Man Choi vs. Yi Long
AL: For anyone who may have missed this fight announcement, actual giant Hong Man Choi stepped back into the ring after a two-year hiatus on Saturday to take on actual monk Yi Long at MAS Fight in Macao, China. It goes without saying that this is the kind of matchup that raises so many more questions than answers, but I guess it is a fitting tribute to the 25th anniversary of the very first UFC show that was celebrated over the weekend.
Let’s skip right to the ending here.
uhhh, Yi Long with some undesirable success pic.twitter.com/QX7nqzrXFu
— Jolassanda (@Jolassanda) November 10, 2018
JM: Choi getting spinning back kicked to the nether regions by a man literally half his size is peak Missed Fists content.
To be fair to Yi Long, the kick was definitely borderline, and if HMC wasn’t 10 feet tall, it would’ve been a rocking spinning back kick. Then again, if HMC wasn’t 10 feet tall, this fight probably wouldn’t have happened in the first place. Such is the way of the MMA world.
This finishing fight Monk's spinning kick to the balls is legendary already
— Jolassanda (@Jolassanda) November 10, 2018
Yi Long > Choi Hong-Man – TKO (MASFight) pic.twitter.com/suLhRIQ9vM
AL: Would you go as far as to call this a spinning sack kick?
JM: You’ve been waiting all weekend for that one, haven’t you?
AL: There’s really not a lot going on in my life.
Apparently, this strike incapacitated Choi for such a long time that Long was eventually awarded the victory. I’m not sure if that was the official ruling; then again, I’m not sure if anything about this fight was official.
That makes it two weeks in a row now that we’ve had a fight end via low blow, and I’ll be honest with you, that’s not a great trend.
JM: OR IT JUST PROVES MY POINT! Bring back groin shots. Look at how efficiently that kick dispatched the Techno Goliath. There is no good reason to ban them!
AL: I can think of one man who would disagree with you.
Prayers for Hong Man Choi please. #MASFIGHT pic.twitter.com/577z7i5D1Z
— caposa (@Grabaka_Hitman) November 10, 2018
Oleg Borisov vs. Thiago Henrique
Marcin Held vs. Musa Khamanaev
Rasul Mirzaev vs. Gleristone Santos
Alexey Polpudnikov vs. Alexander Peduson
Moving on to some legal finishes (boring, I know), courtesy of the highlight reel factory that is Absolut Championship Berkut. They held ACB 90 on Saturday in Moscow and one of the best knockouts of the evening came courtesy of bantamweight dynamo Oleg Borisov.
dead
— Jolassanda (@Jolassanda) November 10, 2018
Oleg Borisov KOs Thiago Henrique in 2R #ACB90 pic.twitter.com/i0STjdXmg1
Borisov was originally supposed to fight UFC and Shooto veteran Michinori Tanaka. Looks like Tanaka dodged a bullet there.
JM: That is some devastating power for a bantamweight. Also, Borisov is a really good fighter. He’s 21-3 with one early loss and then losses to Magomed Magomedov and Rustam Kerimov in ACB title fights. Those are two absolute studs and the Kerimov loss was a close fight.
He’s a touch old to be considered a prospect but I hope he gets a look from some of the bigger promotions after this. Though I guess with ACB soon to be acquired by Akhmat, he does kind of fight for one of the bigger promotions now.
AL: Also on the card, Marcin Held made his second ACB appearance, and he continued his winning ways with a nasty heel hook of Musa Khamanev.
>@MarcinHeld doing his best - 1R heelhook ! -HL#ACB90 pic.twitter.com/Cst4vFi8IK
— Jolassanda (@Jolassanda) November 10, 2018
Credit to Khamanaev for gutting this out as long as he could, but just tap, man!
JM: No credit to Khamanaev. Haven’t you ever heard the phrase “Don’t hook with a hooker?” Sure, that has traditionally applied to not throwing bolos with people for whom throwing bolos is a way of life. But it is equally (if not moreso) applicable to heel hookers.
Diving back on a heel hook against Marcin Held is just bad fight IQ for anyone not name Paul Harris and Khamanev paid the price. As the other old saying goes: you play with fire, you’re gonna get a jacked-up knee joint.
AL: Thankfully, it looks like Khamanaev wasn’t too much the worse for wear afterwards.
Up next, another left hook KO, this one courtesy of Rasul Mirzaev.
Rasul Mirzaev KOs Gleristone Santos in 2R #ACB90 pic.twitter.com/c0uZYc0NSJ
— Jolassanda (@Jolassanda) November 10, 2018
Gleristone Santos has a ton of experience, so for him to get hammered like this is damn impressive. Especially when you consider that this was Mirzaev’s first fight in two years. He was actually the victim of a brutal assault in January of last year, which you can read more about here.
JM: That’s one hell of a comeback. And one hell of a left hook. Maybe not quite as good as Borisov’s but it’s damn close, and it came in the middle of an entertaining fire fight. We should amend the previous rule: never hook with a dude who has been shot three times. He’s clearly hard to drop.
AL: And to cap off the ACB violence, how about a tap-out to body strikes?
Brutal TKO finish (knee, body punches) from Alexey Polpudnikov. Peduson taps#ACB90 pic.twitter.com/7SQAdgcXdb
— Jolassanda (@Jolassanda) November 10, 2018
There’s a segment of woefully misguided fans who think it’s somehow a sign of weakness to tap to strikes, but I just call that a good business and life decision, one that Alexander Peduson made here as his insides were being liquefied by Alexey Polpudnikov.
JM: In an ironic twist, fans may mock Peduson for lacking guts, but it wasn’t a lack of guts that was the problem. It was those guts getting mashed up by blunt force trauma.
All Absolute Championship Berkut matches are available to watch for free on the promotion’s YouTube channel.
Anthony Engelen vs. Meas Meu
JM: Time for a quick check in with Missed Fists Favorite, ONE Championship. At the Heart of the Lion event in Sinagpore on Friday, Anthony Engelen showed off his commitment to the promotion’s unique brand of ultra-violence, ethering poor Meas Meu in under a minute.
Anthony Engelen returns to ONE with a BANG as he knocks out Cambodia's Meas Meul at 0:39 of Round 1! #WeAreONE #HeartOfTheLion #Singapore #MartialArts pic.twitter.com/fzSezaa3wS
— ONE Championship (@ONEChampionship) November 9, 2018
But for Yair Rodriguez’s KO of a Lifetime on Saturday, this well could have been the knockout of the weekend.
AL: You see guys duck into head kicks all the time, but this is as bad as it gets.
Engelen, who hails from the Netherlands, has won three straight in ONE and is quietly emerging as a name to watch in the promotion’s 135-pound division.
Make sure to check out the rest of MMA Fighting’s ONE coverage and replay the event yourself for free via the promotion’s YouTube or its official app.
Carlos Huachin vs. Andrine Dalla
FFC 35: Huachín vs. DallaPelea completa por el título de peso gallo del Fusion Fighting Championship - FFC entre el peruano Carlos "Perro Malo" Huachín vs. el brasileño Andrine "Graveto" Dalla en el #FFC35
Posted by MMA Fusion on Saturday, November 10, 2018
While we’re making quick stops, here’s a shout-out to the Fusion Fighting Championship crew who put on another entertaining effort in Lima, Peru, last Wednesday. Perhaps the best fight of the show was a three-minute banger between Carlos Huachin and Andrine Dalla, which ended with Huachin silencing Dalla, though it feels like it could easily have gone the other way.
Carlos Huachín y otro aplasante TKO para su record. El peleador peruano acabó en el primer asalto con el brasileño Andrine Dalla y se coronó campeón peso gallo del Fusion Fighting Championship - FFC. pic.twitter.com/zLlTWySwPv
— Jaime Valverde (@Jvalverdee) November 8, 2018
JM: Make sure to check out the full fight above because those two guys were giving hell to one another. Still, that’s a nice clean drop right there. Plus he got a belt. Can’t ask for much more from your regional MMA efforts.
AL: Several of the show’s best fights have been clipped for Facebook and the entire FFC 35 show is available on that page as well. I recommend the scraps between Paolo Rivas and Albert Sanchez, and Jose Ochoa vs. Yhosue Mego.
That’s all for the MMA portion of this week’s Missed Fists, but we weren’t going to leave off without mentioning Oleksandr Usyk’s spectacular KO of Tony Bellew on Saturday. I don’t claim to be a boxing expert, but I think it’s technically accurate to say that this was a solid punch right to the kisser.
WHAT A PUNCH, BELLEW GETS KO'd BY USYK #UsykBellew pic.twitter.com/ygQAq2ZZet
— Shuj (@ChocMilkSheikh) November 10, 2018
JM: First of all, mad respect to Bellew for not only comporting himself well in there, but also for taking that sledgehammer to the face, getting damn near knocked out of the ring, and not just standing back up after that, but even giving a post-fight interview. That requires a level of masculinity I don’t possess so nothing but props to him.
Secondly, Oleksandr Usyk is a motherf**king problem.
AL: Let’s not overwhelm our readers with this technical mumbo jumbo now.
JM: I’m just saying. This dude went 335-15 as an amateur, won an Olympic gold medal, and is the first undisputed cruiserweight champ. Ever. And he’s only 31. Dude has years of waylaying folks ahead of him.
AL: That fight was also billed as Bellew’s last and as cliche as it sounds, he went out on his shield. Happy trails, Tony.
JM: Well, his last real fight. Bellew can probably wrangle up a few more sessions as as Pretty Ricky Conlan in the many future Creed sequels. He still won’t be as cool as the greatest boxer in UFC history though.
Being able to laugh at yourself is a prime trait. Respect to Art Jimmerson. #UFCDenver pic.twitter.com/f4yxaiP0yZ
— Kyle Johnson (@Maldobabo) November 11, 2018
Poll
What was the most memorable Missed Fists moment this week?
This poll is closed
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38%
Yi Long the monk fells the giant Hong Man Choi
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30%
Oleg Borisov’s killer left hook
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6%
Marcin Held goes limb collecting
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5%
Alexey Polpudnikov gets the tap-out with body strikes
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12%
Anthony Engelen takes Meas Meul’s head off
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5%
Other (leave comment below)
If you know of a recent fight or event that you think may have been overlooked or a promotion that could use some attention, please let us know on Twitter @JedKMeshew and @AlexanderKLee using the hashtag #MissedFists.