[div class=”notice” class2=”icon”]The following is from an article on LiverKick.com, part of the MiddleEasy Network.[/div]
Simon Rutz promised a statement on the K-1 situation today, and he has delivered. There is so much in here that has been floating around for quite a while now that I don’t know where to begin. LiverKick.com had heard from multiple sources that Bas Boon and a group of American investors had planned to purchase K-1. This initially started a few months ago when Fight Game, a company owned in part by Bas Boon and Frederico Lapenda had acquired certain rights to footage and began removing K-1 fights from YouTube under infringement to “Fight Game.” This was the first clue that something was going down and backed up some of the rumors of K-1 being purchased.
Then nothing happened. K-1 went nowhere. There was talk of Barbizon, a real estate company acquiring certain rights to K-1’s brands, and that this was possibly a part of the sale. Then there was talks of another company having possibly purchased K-1, while the talks of Golden Glory acquiring K-1 refused to die down. All of a sudden there were people who were dead set that one group had purchased K-1 or that the other group had, yet nothing was happening, there was no movement and FEG finally decided to run events under the K-1 name themselves. It turns out that K-1’s founder Kazuyoshi Ishii had not signed away on his baby, his creation that had helped shape the world of kickboxing, that he was what was holding back the sale, claims Rutz.
