K-1 World Grand Prix Final 16 Qualifying GP Not Happening? A Breakdown of the 2010 World GP

FEG's Sadaharu Tanikawa made a rather ominous statement about a K-1 tournament being canceled (via gryphon) to Kamipro. This refers to the last qualifying tournament that K-1 has been known to hold, the K-1 World Grand Prix Final 16 Qualifying GP. Last year's tournament happened in Tokyo on August 11th and featured names like Melvin Manhoef, Brice Guidon, Sergeii Laschenko and Daniel Ghita. Of course, this was Daniel Ghita's coming out party in K-1, winning the tournament and taking his place in the Final 16 as well as making himself a regular in K-1 competition. 

It looks like we finally have official word that there will not be a Final 16 Qualifying GP this year. This, of course, should come as no shock to anybody as there was never a formal announcement about it happening and in order for it to take place and leave ample time for the Final 16, it would have to happen in the coming weeks. There is no way for K-1 to organize such a large scale event in Japan on such a short notice, so like I said, this is not a shock to anybody.

This also shouldn't be seen as a sign of the apocalypse, as there were three qualifying tournaments last year, one of which being the Final 16 Qualifying GP. K-1 revamped their qualifying system this year and might have overreached a bit. If you'll think back, you'll remember this graph, which tells us to expect 5 qualifying GPs, when the reality is we walked away with two. It was presumptuous on their part, as the Asia GP hit a hitch with their Korean television deal falling through and having to be renegotiated (all is fine now, but it took a while, hence the later Final 16), the Western Europe GP hit a similar hitch with Germany actually cracking down on combat sports after a UFC event and K-1 not able to find a suitable promoter to run the event for them. This leaves the Final 16 Qualifying GP to question and it seems like FEG was focused on the deal with PUJI over the past few months, as well as getting the rather unexpected -63kgs division up and running, I think it is safe to say that they pooled their money into trying to build new Japanese stars and a new division than run another heavyweight GP.

On top of this, K-1 has also been kicking around the idea to spreading out the World Grand Prix over a course of a few years, ala the World Cup. So, this leaves us with a Final 16 set-up like this so far;

Semmy Schilt
Kyotaro
Alistair Overeem*
Badr Hari
Ruslan Karaev
Ewerton Teixeira
Jerome Le Banner
Errol Zimmerman
Remy Bonjasky*
Freddy Kemayo
Ben Edwards

That is eleven fighters who have qualified. I have starred Overeem as it isn't clear if he will participate yet or not, but our money is on Alistair coming to an agreement with K-1 as long as it doesn't interfere with Strikeforce obligations. As for Remy Bonjasky, there is still no official update on him, so for now we are including him. So we have five wildcard spots available. The following have no qualified but are names that we can't imagine not being in the mix;

Peter Aerts
Daniel Ghita
Ray Sefo
Melvin Manhoef
Gokhan Saki**
Tyrone Spong
Alexey Ignashov**
Hesdy Gerges
Zabit Samedov

Gokhan Saki qualified for last year's Final 16 but was injured in August, kicking him out of the tournament until the Finals where he was in a reserve bout. Ray Sefo seems like an odd name, but Sefo has mentioned wanting one last run at the title and honestly, with a thin GP line up this year it is a perfect time to bring him back. Ignashov was kicked out of the European GP due to an injury and the man he beat, Kemayo, went on to win. I think that as a first round of the Final 16 makes perfect sense, don't you?