I've got it. I love where the thai boxer kicks thru the wine bottle balanced on its top. You notice that they didn't show the thai's losing? I think it was the BS board breaking between rounds....keeps any non-karateka from storming their comp.
Great flick. Originally titled "Strongest Karate".
William Oliver, the smallest of the NYC Black Belts, recently passesd away. Willie Williams went on to fight for Akira Maeda's "Rings" shootfighting when it originally started.
The Japanese first runner up competitor was Joko Ninomiya, who started Enshin Karate. Tough competitor.
Freakin awesome, especially when they ask the average person on the street about karate and they speak of it like its some alien technology. The entire dojo clan running barefoot down the streets of any big city is also classic.
I loved the match where one guy kept leg kicking the other one and the guy seemingly had no defense. Eventually the guy just collapses cuz his leg can't support him. Then he tries to get up and ends up doing some sort of breakdancing move?
Also, I love the narrators description of Muay Thai. He couldn't even say it right. "They call their art...MO En Thai"
I watched about 45 minutes of this on my lunch break... I'm going to have to watch out for it and try to get it on tape... it was pretty entertaining.
The leg kicking match was great. The guy wouldn't get out of that deep stance even though the japanese fighter was leveling leg kick after leg kick into his lead leg. Some pretty tough looking matches, from what I saw.
Unfortunately, they did a little highlight on the thai, but I don't remember seeing his match.
There are a few Thai's shown fighting...they all have the brown Gi's on, for some reason. The guy who got leg kicked to death...wasn't he from some other style?
Just found the tape...P. Somchai #63, wins his fight (just before the narrator explains what MT is). Then the smaller thai is shown winning, and the narrator says he pulled out because he didn't want to fight a heavier opponent. The whole thing is a big promo for karate, tho, so who knows. I love the Thai's fights, because here you have all these karate guys going "ee-yah" and shit, and they're just "shhhh"-ing all over the place. Funny.
I saw the film today on TV and really enjoyed the film. It was very interesting seeing how far martial arts have developed since that film was made. If they would not have had the traditional Karate techniques, then the Thai's would not have lost a match.
That was very the first competition with the newly designed "knockdown" rules that is now used with some variations by all bareknuckle fullcontact karate styles (kyokushin, world Oyama, enshin, shidokan, seidokaikan, ashihara and many others).
No one had ever seen the rules system in action. As a effect, many fighters were simply not ready for it (beliving it was just like nocontact-point karate, and that you only had to punch a bit harder) and got slaughtered.
This is especialy true for the invited representatives from other karate styles and other arts.
The muaithai reps was better prepared than most, but they still lost/resigned from the competition. No great suprise realy. AS for the thais losing due to the tamashiwari (board breaking), that was not done until late day 2 (or was it 3??) and when there was only 32 contestants left. No thai was still in it by then.
"by the way eevry thai lost. And one backe dup cause he was scared of going up against a larger opponent."
Yeah, and that guy REALLY cought that katana, too. Go Karate!
If the thais lost, why not show it? They show everyone else losing.
kolsyrade: then why did they show the highlight of samchay AFTER the breaking round? They never even mentioned what happened to him. they just say " here's samchay, famous thai boxing champion, intercut with him whipping ass on the scrawny uruguay dude. then it's like he was never there. He might have lost, or he mightve been dq'ed for not doing some ghey knifehand board break. or he might've gone home with a bad case of diarhea...we don't know.
What is the deal?? So the muaithai guys got beat fighting with unfamilliar rules. Peaople get beaten in competitions all the time. Live with it!
Btw, the video does not show all fights. It does not even begin to show all fights the 128 contestants had. It does not even show most quarter finals.
As for the sword thing. Of course it was a stage demo and the guy didnt actualy try to cleave his head. So what? It was a Stage Demo done to entertain in the pause between fights. What has that got to do with anything?
