k1 new years event backstage fight !!
hehe fucking awsome lol
In what will go down as one of the most bizarre things you will ever see in MMA, the fight between Heath Herring and Yoshihiro Nakao was literally over before it began. Nakao, who is known for his legendary “stare downs”, came into his fight with Heath Herring trying to psych out his opponent.
Nakao, taking a page out from one of his previous fights with a legendary stare down with Don Frye, started moving in closer and closer during the referee’s instructions. As Nakao moved in closer, he first head butted Herring, and then out of nowhere planted a kiss on the Crazy Horse. Obviously that didn’t sit too well with the big Texan.
“I don’t get into stare downs, obviously he does, whatever...,” a dejected Herring told MMAWeekly’s Ryan Bennett. “He started to get into me and I thought whatever. Then he plants a kiss on my lips? That really pissed me off. So it was just a gut reaction. I went pow (shows the short punch reaction). If you watch the tape, I didn’t step back and hit him with a full swing, it was just a short get off me you freak, reaction.” a frustrated Herring told MMAWeekly.
Nobuaki Kakuta, the chief referee of K1 told MMAWeekly, “The way the official scoring went, was Nakao received a point taken away for “the kiss” and unsportsmanlike like conduct. But once Herring landed the short punch he was disqualified immediately.”
Nakao landed on the mat motionless for a good two to three minutes. Even though it wasn’t a “full blown punch” as Herring later stated, the short punch did knockout Nakao. Yoshihiro was later carried out on a stretcher back to the dressing room. In almost a comical moment, after Nakao was carried off, a K-1 referee later told the audience that quote “if Nakao could recover, the fight would continue later in the night.” It was obvious with the stretcher taking out the Japanese fighter that he would not be able to continue at all during the night.
The melee wasn’t done yet. As Herring exited the ring, before he could even make it backstage, Nakao’s corner men jumped Herring. “I was walking out of the ring heading back and all of the sudden this dude jumps on my back, I was like what the hell? I look back and it’s Nakao’s corner man jumping on my back, trying to choke me out.” Herring said in disbelief. “I got one guy jumping on me, my corner guys, Ricardo (Pires) trying to pull this guy off then, they jump my corner men. I felt like I was doing pro wrestling instead of MMA...” Herring told MMAWeekly.
So after being officially disqualified from the event, it’s been a rough go for Herring since he’s been with K1. A knee injury ended his first appearance in K1 officially as a loss to Sam Greco. Now the “Kiss of Death” resulted in a disqualification for the Texas Crazy Horse. Herring hopes for a rematch and that we will see an actual fight between these two in the ring, instead of outside it.