Badr Hari as a Revolutionary

The government is tottering. We must deal it the death blow at any cost. To delay action is the same as death.

-Vladimir Ilyich Lenin-

I, like every other writer on this site, have been going on a bit of a Badr Hari binge in preparation of his eminent return on the It's Showtime card in Lyon in nine days. I've rewatched every Badr Hari fight I can get my eyes on, and honestly I struggle to think of a more enjoyable assignment. What's really struck me about Badr Hari's fights isn't just his aggression or power. Those two traits are obvious. Anybody who watches a single second of a Badr fight can see that. What really impressed me and shocked me even was Hari's determination and persistence. His drive to finish the fight not with his physical assets, but by his sheer will and volition.

Badr Hari fights like a revolutionary. No revolutionary, or perhaps even man, ever possessed the extreme voluntaristic drive to change and shape the world they lived in quite like Vladimir Lenin. Lenin ate, drank, and slept a revolution which for the majority of his life looked as though it would never come into fruition, and never would have if it weren't for his tireless effort. He advocated that a revolutionary must be a professional, that every aspect of the revolutionary's life would be focused on the cause. The October Revolution of 1917 wasn't just the culmination of his life's work, it was the culmination of his life. Lenin shaped the world he lived in with his iron will and focus. It's a trait shared by few men in history. Napoleon, Julius Caesar and Alexander. These Hegelian figures reshaped the world with their drive, opting to cut the knot in half instead of untying it.

Badr Hari fights like one of them. It may not have been one of his career's highlights, but Badr's 2010 win over Alexey Ignashov was a perfect example for this. They had met before back in 2003 when Hari was still just an 88 kilogram twinkle in his mafia boss's eye. At that time Ignashov was still the toast of the kickboxing world and the favorite to go on to win the Grand Prix. Hari on the other hand was a late replacement for Melvin Manhoef and completely undersized and under-prepared for competition like Ignashov. Ignashov, for his part, fought like the massive favorite he was; Hari, on the other hand, refused to play the part of overmatched underdog. Ignashov was too much for the skinny Hari. He outpointed him throughout the three rounds and eventually dropped Hari with a body punch. The last image of the fight consisted of Ignashov humiliatingly teaching Hari how to breathe and recover from the blow.

But Hari had absolutely no business even making it that far against Ignashov. The entire fight Badr had that look in his eye, that dead set stare, that made you think he didn't realize that he was supposed to be the underdog. He came at Ignashov with everything he had, even a flying head kick at one point. At the end of the fight the announcer prophetically argued that we should re-watch this fight in five years. It took seven, but he was right.

When Hari and Ignashov met again in 2010, everything had changed. Hari was no longer the skinny upstart that dropped to a shot to the solar plexus; he had blossomed into the single most important fighter in kickboxing. Ignashov had seen his career make an about face as well as his bloated body felt the weight of years of alcoholism and under achieving. The fight was again meant to be a blowout, but in the opposite direction. Ignashov represented the old decaying regime, like an antiquated but once great autocracy that only required a gust of strong wind to send it crashing down in pieces. He was the Russian tsarist system in the twentieth century, the bloated monarchy in France in the eighteenth century. Badr was going to be that strong wind. The look in his eyes guaranteed it.

Ignashov was unable to mount any offense at all, but he proved to be nearly impossible to hit. His head movement paired with his willingness to flat out run away at times kept Badr on the outside. At one point in the third as Hari came crashing in with hooking punches Ignashov simply leaned against the ropes and threw the calmest teep ever which caught the overextended Hari off guard and dropped him on his butt. But Ignashov's elusiveness never even came close to frustrating Hari, nor did it even make him change his strategy.  He was unshakable. He worked to put Ignashov in the corner, where he could put a winging glove to Ignashov's face. He did this for three rounds.

Like Lenin, or Napoleon, or Ceasar, or Alexander, Badr Hari will not allow for the universe to tell him no. If he finds himself in a situation that isn't laid out for his benefit, he simply reshapes the world. In the ring Hari has the ability to tell reality what it is going to look like, and more often than not reality listens.

After the jump videos for both fights:

Their first fight from 2003 at It's Showtime:

Part one

Part two

Their second fight:

Part one

Part two