King in the Ring begins its fightback
After picking itself up off the canvas from a second Covid-19 lockdown, the King in the Ring returns today as eight of the country’s best lightweights battle for the national kickboxing crown.
Reigning lightweight champion Nikora Lee-kingi is back to defend his title at Auckland’s Eventfinda Stadium, where he faces stiff competition in the eightman eliminator, including from training partner and runner-up Dominic Reed.
The Christchurch pair fought out a slugfest in the 2018 62kg final, where Kingi outlasted his team-mate in a torrid third round.
Yassin Yass is expected to be one to watch after dropping several kilos to compete in a weight class better suited to his body size. He has shifted to Dan Hooker’s gym, The Combat Academy, where he has been coached by the UFC star.
Representing City Kickboxing is David ‘Sanchai’ Aung, who joined the famed Auckland gym as a wayward 14-year-old nine years ago.
Aung, 23, credits head trainers Doug Viney and Eugene Bareman for helping turn his life around. With Bareman in quarantine after cornering four of his fighters, including middleweight champion Israel Adesanya, at UFC 253 last week, former Olympic boxer and K-1 Las Vegas champion Viney will head Aung’s corner.
With a swathe of knockouts and titles in his muay Thai career, veteran Rasy Soth shapes as the dark horse for the title.
The field is rounded out by elite Thai kickboxing duo Craig Marshall-hughes and southpaw Andre Macdonald, as well as Oliver MMA’S Prashanth Guda.
The King in the Ring, New Zealand’s biggest combat sports series, is an eight-man elimination tournament where the eventual winner fights three times on one night for the crown and a $10,000 prize.
Having returned in July with the super middleweight tournament after the coronavirus threw the sporting calendar into chaos, the lightweight event was postponed by a month when Auckland went back into alert level 3 lockdown.
With the city still at level 2, today’s event is limited to 500 people, who will be partitioned off into groups of 100 to ensure compliance with government restrictions.