FanHouse Michael Schiavello

The K-1 World Grand Prix 2009 is the year's biggest kickboxing event, and as we get ready for the December 5 show, we have K-1 announcer Michael Schiavello offering his commentary on each of the fighters. His thoughts on Strikeforce heavyweight champion Alistair Overeem, an MMA fighter taking kickboxing by storm, are below.

The K-1 World Grand Prix 2009 is the year's biggest kickboxing event, and as we get ready for the Dec. 5 show, we have K-1 announcer Michael Schiavello offering his commentary on each of the fighters. His thoughts on Badr Hari are below.

Early on Friday I noted that Melvin Manhoef prides himself on being a brawler when he steps into the ring, rather than a cerebral fighter with a game plan. So that makes it especially interesting to note that Manhoef's opponent in Saturday's K-1 World Grand Prix in Seoul, Remy Bonjasky, prides himself on being a cerebral fighter who protects himself from knockouts -- and from the long-term brain damage that he fears suffering in the ring.

With four words in the above video, Melvin Manhoef explains why he's such a popular K-1 and MMA fighter -- and why he's also a fairly limited fighter who wins plenty of fights by exciting knockout but also loses plenty of fights to more tactical opponents.

I've always believed that the one thing Japan's K-1 kickboxing promotion needs to take off in the United States is the emergence of one recognizable star. It's looking increasingly like HDNet, which owns the U.S. TV rights to K-1, thinks that star is Badr Hari.

As far as American MMA fans are concerned, there aren't a lot of stars outside the UFC -- and there really aren't any fighters in Japan who have crossed over beyond the hard-core fans in the United States. But HDNet Fights, which owns the American broadcast rights to the Japanese promotions of Dream, Sengoku and K-1, may have its star: Michael Schiavello.

Jesse Taylor, the bad boy best known for getting booted out of the UFC by Dana White on Season 8 of The Ultimate Fighter, will fight on TV for the first time since leaving the UFC Monday, taking on Dong Sik Yoon at Dream 10 in Japan. Taylor says he's ready.

Michael Schiavello is well known in much of the world as the English-language voice of Japan's K-1 kickboxing, but in the United States, kickboxing is a small niche sport. In an interview in advance of K-1's July 13 event, I caught up with Schiavello for an interview to discuss where kickboxing is now, both in the United States and the rest of the world, and where it could go if it capitalizes on the boom in popularity of MMA and on its U.S. television deal with HDNet. The full interview is below.

Japanese MMA superstar Norifumi "Kid" Yamamoto, fresh off a loss to Joe Warren at Dream 9, has announced that he'll get back into the ring on July 13. But instead of fighting MMA, Yamamoto has taken a K-1 MAX kickboxing fight against South Korea's Jae hee Cheon. That represents an interesting challenge to Yamamoto, because the last time he fought in K-1, he got knocked cold by Mike Zambidis, as you can see in the video above. For thoughts on Yamamoto fighting in K-1, I turned to K-1 announcer Michael Schiavello, whose comments are below.

The best kickboxer in the world survived a tough test from a rising star in mixed martial arts on Saturday, as Remy Bonjasky defeated Alistair Overeem by unanimous decision in the main event of the K-1 World Grand Prix 2009 in Yokohama.