European Games 2023 Road to Paris 2024

[Grassmarket 2,995]

15 minutes ago, phelps said:

I have no idea, I haven't had the chance to watch a single second of the competition, thanks to the wonderful coverage and organization of these EGs 

 

p.s. as it often happens in all combat sports, there's a high chances that also here a few (many) judges are biased/inept 

 

but for sure there's a lot less corruption because there's no olympic interest, no media coverage and basically no money up for grabs compared to boxing 

Yeah, what about a free expenses-paid two week holiday in Rome or Florence?   As opposed to Dushanbe, Lagos or Wuhan?

Edited June 30, 2023 by Grassmarket

[hckošice 13,712]

MEDAL STANDING AFTER DAY 9

 

[Monzanator 3,863]

43 minutes ago, Olympian1010 said:

Well, it was one of the nine sports shortlisted for potential inclusion by LA28, so it’s very much in the conversation.

 

I mostly meant my post as a joke though.

Kickboxing missed their window 30 years ago with the Van Damme hype and the K-1 breakout in the late 90s/early 00s. IOC is like 20 years behind the curve if they want to make it happen as Olympic sport. The juice ain't worth the squeeze anymore. One might argue the sport recruits poor boxers at this stage in most areas and it' quite clearly a pariah sport compared to where it was 30 years ago.

[Gianlu33 3,736]

Day 10 Gold Medal Events  (26)

• 10:00 Triathlon Mixed Relay
• 12:30 Shooting Men's Team 25m Rapid Fire Pistol
• 12:40 Canoe Slalom Men's K1
• 13:10 Canoe Slalom Women's K1
• 13:50 Pentathlon Women's
• 13:50 Pentathlon Women's Team
• 14:30 Table Tennis Women's Team
• 14:45 Shooting Mixed Trap Team
• 17:15 Pentathlon Men's
• 17:15 Pentathlon Men's Team
• 17:30 Ski Jumping Men's LH
• 17:30 Taqball Women's Double
• 18:00 Badminton Women's Double
• 18:00 Boxe Women's -54kg
• 18:10 Taqball Men's Double
• 18:15 Boxe Women's -60kg
• 18:15 Table Tennis Men's Team
• 18:30 Badminton Men's Double
• 18:30 Boxe Women's -66kg
• 18:30 Beach Soccer Women's
• 18:45 Boxe Men's -51kg
• 19:00 Judo Mixed Team
• 19:00 Boxe Men's -63.5kg
• 19:15 Boxe Men's -80kg
• 19:30 Boxe Men's -92kg
• 20:00 Beach Soccer Men's 

[heywoodu 13,834]

Looks like the whole results system website is down at the moment?

[Vektor 3,199]

10 hours ago, Monzanator said:

Kickboxing missed their window 30 years ago with the Van Damme hype and the K-1 breakout in the late 90s/early 00s. IOC is like 20 years behind the curve if they want to make it happen as Olympic sport. The juice ain't worth the squeeze anymore. One might argue the sport recruits poor boxers at this stage in most areas and it' quite clearly a pariah sport compared to where it was 30 years ago.

Yeah, it's not popular anymore. If any of the combat sports find a way into the Olympics, it should be MMA because it's the most popular non-Olympic combat sport at the moment thanks to UFC. But we are a long way from mixed martial arts becoming a possibility. 

[heywoodu 13,834]

9 minutes ago, Vektor said:

Yeah, it's not popular anymore. 

I think that is made even clear by one simple thing: even in the Netherlands, the absolute top of the kickboxing world for many many years (both with athletes and with tons of the world's best foreign athletes training in the Netherlands), kickboxing is behind a poorly-visited paywall nowadays. There used to be a Glory event more or less monthly, a few years ago, and they were watched well on regular open TV, then on a still regular but paid sports channel (which also had F1, so a lot of people had a subscription anyway, and they showed the entire event live no matter where in the world it was). Then it moved to a channel which only showed highlights in random order and it went downhill very fast.

 

So yeah...not good.

[Vektor 3,199]

1 hour ago, heywoodu said:

I think that is made even clear by one simple thing: even in the Netherlands, the absolute top of the kickboxing world for many many years (both with athletes and with tons of the world's best foreign athletes training in the Netherlands), kickboxing is behind a poorly-visited paywall nowadays. There used to be a Glory event more or less monthly, a few years ago, and they were watched well on regular open TV, then on a still regular but paid sports channel (which also had F1, so a lot of people had a subscription anyway, and they showed the entire event live no matter where in the world it was). Then it moved to a channel which only showed highlights in random order and it went downhill very fast.

 

So yeah...not good.

It also should be popular in Hungary, I mean, look at our results here, we are winning 8 medals in kickboxing. But I never see it on Hungarian TV. But you know what I see when I turn up the TV? The UFC. If I would be in charge of IOC, I would try as hard as I can to include mixed martial arts because that's actually something people are familiar with these days. 

[Josh 7,946]

Men's K1 Olympic Quota down to seven nations after the semi-finals. 

Edited July 1, 2023 by Josh

[heywoodu 13,834]

1 minute ago, Vektor said:

It also should be popular in Hungary, I mean, look at our results here, we are winning 8 medals in kickboxing. But I never see it on Hungarian TV. But you know what I see when I turn up the TV? The UFC. If I would be in charge of IOC, I would try as hard as I can to include mixed martial arts because that's actually something people are familiar with these days. 

To be fair, I doubt this can really be compared with the real, professional kickboxing though? The likes of K1 and later Glory in it's top days and such. Even in those top days, I doubt kickboxing on an Olympic level would have been interesting for many people to watch, since they want to watch the stars of the sport (think Rico Verhoeven, Cedric Doumbé, Badr Hari, Murthel Groenhart, Serhiy Adamchuk, Robin van Roosmalen and such....and before our Polish friend comes with names from the 50's, I'm just talking about a few years ago ).

 

Just like pro boxing has a high level of popularity, even here in the Netherlands where we have nobody in it it's quite decent at least for the heavyweights, but the Olympic boxing, with the athletes people don't know....nah, nobody will watch it anyway.

 

It's more about the stars than about the sport itself in these cases I think, and sports like boxing, kickboxing and MMA have stars that made or make them popular, but in a shortened Olympic version with a whole different level of athletes....I doubt it'd be a success (and a real, top-level MMA tournament with the big stars isn't going to work within a two week period I'm afraid ).

 

Spoiler

This also reminds me I really should get back to watching UFC, I am quite literally four years behind now and am still planning to catch up. Luckily it's not super huge in the Netherlands, so I have managed to avoid any kind of spoiler for four years now and am actually 'living' in 2019 when it comes to MMA