After multiple events all around the world including Italy, Brazil, and Romania, the final 8-man tournament is ready to go for the upcoming K-1 World GP 2024 on December 4. K-1 looks to relive their glory days reminiscent of their legendary heavyweight tournaments in the 90s and early 2000s.
Current K-1 Cruiserweight Champion Liu Ce, Claudio Istrate, and K-Jee make their way into the bracket as familiar faces on the main K-1 Stage along with the qualifier winners Rhys Brudenell, and Ariel Machado, K-1 Fighting Network Romania main event winner Errol Zimmerman, and brand new face Kwon Jang Won.
Miloš Cvjetićanin of Serbia, who won the 'Eastern European Round' in Bosnia, has decided to instead to sign with GLORY, so the last competitor to complete the 8-man will be a wild-card to be announced at a later date.
Liu Ce will most likely be the favorite going into this tournament due to him looking unstoppable in his bouts in the organization so far. He has delivered 8 finished in his last 10 wins, capturing the K-1 Cruiserweight title and a K-1 Open Weight Tournament win.
Akihiro Kaneko makes a speedy return after his 55 kg tournament win back in September of this year. He will be fighting ONE and WLF veteran Aslanbek Zikreev in a non-title bout. The fact that Zikreev has competed five times for ONE over the past few years could be significant, especially considering Kaneko's recent expression of interest in ONE Championship.
After some exhilarating performances in the 55 kg tournament back in September, Rui Okubo and Riamu come back and fight to possibly be a contender for a title fight against current champion Akihiro Kaneko. Rui Okubo had an excellent performance against 2 time title challenger Masaashi Kumura and came out with the win. He then went on to face Kaneko in the final of the tournament but unfortunately was stopped in the second round.
Riamu on the other hand fought Kaneko for his first bout in the tournament, but suffered a controversial majority decision loss. He gave the champion a run for his money, and will look to earn his rematch by defeating Okubo.
Making a quick return after his win in Osaka, K-1 World Max Champion Stoyan Koprivlenski is set to face former K-1 Welterweight title holder Hiromi Wajima in a non-title bout. Stoyan will look to reaffirm his position as the welterweight king of K-1 as he comes off of a split decision win against Jinku Oda in October.
Hiromi Wajima on the other hand will hope to continue his momentum coming off of his KO win against Kim Joon Hwa in October. Before his Osaka win he was coming off 2 rough KO losses against Ouyang Feng and Darryl Verdonk that made many question his legitimacy as a dominant fighter in the 70kg division, so this fight will be very important for his career moving forward.
Other fight announcements include:
Sina Karimian vs. Shota Yamaguchi (Openweight)
Daizo Sasaki vs. Takuma Tsukamoto (Super Lightweight 65 kg)
Momotaro Kiyami vs. Koji Ikeda (Super Bantamweight 55 kg)
