HUNGARY DEF. ITALY 5-0!

Hungary is a very strong country in different sports and in kickboxing in particular. Hungary just won  more medals than Italy in "semi contact" , for example, during last World Championships held in Lignano Sabbiadoro, defeating the Italians also in the final of the team championship. 'Chapeu' then to this little country which has only 9 million inhabitants, like our Lombardy region, but which  have very talented   competitors.

However, this time we are not talking about "semi contact", but about K1 Rules, a style in which Italy finished 3rd in recent World Championships held in Villach (Austria) and where Hungary was far behind. So, what happened?

It happened that Richard Leyrer had the kindness to invite an Italian team to be opposed to his one during a very important K1 event called "Collision", a Gala   beautifully and very professionally promoted by Attila Katona and Vilmos Pap  last February 8 in the great  and enormous Budapest sport-hall. Richard has the idea of launching a European Team Championship in K1 Rules which could attract the interest of media in general more than any individual title fight. The Championship should be called "The Champions' League" - like in football -, and it would consist of several Galas hosting eliminations with a final event where the two best teams would fight for the European title. It's a very good idea, of course, and so the Hungary-Italy  team fight represented a sort of test before launching the idea. We agreed about 5 weight-classes and the ball started rolling. I have been working with Hungarian Kickboxing Federation for 30 years now, and I know them all, fighters, judges, referees. They are good people, hard  workers and I was very confident they would do a good job. So I decided, being a friendly match, to leave at home our judge, trusting in the capabilities of our friends. Srdjan Bugarcic from Serbia was there acting as one of the judges and in the end..., I can only blame myself for having left at home our Italian judge. The reason? Very simple: I have to say that the Hungarian judges were a little bit too partizan and they penalized the Italian team too much. I don't normally complain about anything, but just to let you understand the problem,  I  can honestly say that the team fight should have ended 2-2 (the first Italian fighter got injured after 50 seconds. His shin was open and he had to be hospitalized. It should have been a "no contest", but victory was awarded to Hungary). On the contrary, we came home with a terrible 0-5! It's useless, I think, to tell you names of fighters, what they did in the ring, why this and why that. The show was great, it had everything: from a rock'n' roll concert lights, to mega-screen, music, smokes,good audience, a formidable parterre with the notables of the town. But the Hungarian judges had simply a bad night. They didn't apply the rules and the standard of judging correctly and that's it: they ruined my Gala. Sorry, but that's the simple truth. Ask Srdjan Bugarcic. And one thing I have learned from the Hungary lesson: in case we will launch the "Champions' League", one thing we absolutely need: good, neutral judging to save our good shows.

 

Ennio Falsoni