The year 2011 is almost over and all MMA media outlets review the past twelve months. Eurosport.pl website announced their awards for the best of the best in the passing year. KSW Federation and its fighters were honored in four different categories.
KSW superstar Mamed Khalidov received the FIGHTER OF THE YEAR award. – The Chechen born standout once again proved he’s the best pound-for-pound fighter in Poland. Three ultra quick victories over the experienced albeit burned out James Irvin and Matt Lindland as well as against the more dangerous Jesse Taylor got him the award. It is also worth mentioning that Mamed started showing a little bit of business sense producing his own line of... male underwear. I can’t rate his products because I haven’t tried it yet, but his sporting class is clearly an A+. It’s time for Khalidov for tougher, younger and hungrier foes, 2012 should be his breakout year – website editor Piotr Onami concludes.
According to Eurosport.pl KSW 16 was the Polish SHOW OF THE YEAR in 2011. The justification reads as follows: - There were no uneventful fights on this card, each one was exciting, even the Marcin Rozalski’s lucky victory over Sergey Shemetov. The show also featured Materla vs Zikic clash, Jan Blachowicz’s dominant victory against Toni Valtonen, the first Pudzianowski vs Thompson showdown, when the Pole almost knocked out the Englishman, the solid fight between Artur Sowinski and Cengiz Dana as well the battle of foreigners Attila Vegh versus Grigor Ashugbabjan. In the event’s top fight Mamed Khalidov outclassed Matt Lindland submitting him with a spectacular guillotine choke. The whole show was enjoyable to watch, ran smoothly and had a few fights with built-in history.
Eurosport.pl declared Michal Materla vs. James Zikic bout at KSW 16 the Polish FIGHT OF THE YEAR. – Was it really the best fight of the year? If not for the later overturned controversial judges verdict, I would pick Borys Mankowski vs Peter Sobotta confrontation at premier MMA Attack show. In this case I’ve decided to honor Michal Materla victory over an always tough foe in Jamses Zikic. “Cipao” demonstrated an improved stand-up in this battle and dominated his opponent on the ground. At the end of the day, they both provided fans with ten minutes of high-level MMA – Onami explains. Last but not lost, Eurosport.pl honored KSW lightweight Artur Sowinski with the Polish KNOCKOUT OF THE YEAR award for his upset victory over Maciej Jewtuszko at KSW 17. - Before the fight not many people favored the Silesian fighter. “Kornik” proved them all wrong flooring “Irokez” just 46 seconds into their bout. The punch itself was something between an uppercut and a straight left and turned out to be an extremely devastating one.
It’s definitely not the last review where the KSW shows and our fighters are honored. We’ll inform you about further awards won by our Federation, in the meantime you can read the whole Eurosport.pl’s year in review article here.