Bas Boon plans to force K-1 into bankruptcy, build new kickboxing brand

With K-1 and its parent company FEG having been in severe financial difficulties for some time, there have been prolonged negotiations between various parties trying to buy the trademark to continue the brand. These have broadly fallen into two camps - one headed by K-1 president Mr Tanigawa and backed by a Korean investor named ‘Mr Kim’ and the other headed by Golden Glory in association with K-1 founder Mr Ishii.

Golden Glory thought it was close to taking over the K-1 brand in late 2011 but co-owner Bas Boon now claims that double-dealing and underhand tactics have put paid to that. Mr Tanigawa’s faction have retained control of the K-1 brand, but Boon contends that they are penniless and cannot meet the debts that K-1 has, nor handle the operational costs to go forward.

Excerpts from Boon's message appear below.

“Mr. Kim from Emcom came to Holland several months ago with Mr. Tanigawa and visited Simon and some other fighters, lots of promises were made and everybody was going to get half of their money and had to reduce their fighting fee so Mr. Kim from Emcom guaranteed everything would be paid.

(At this point Boon suggests that the ‘Mr Kim’ on Tanigawa’s side may be Kim Dok-Soo, a Korean-Japanese member of the Yakuza mafia. More specifically, the Yakuza faction which was involved with Pride FC)

Kim now controls K-1 and the future looks dismal. He hasn’t paid up all the outstanding money and doesn’t look like he has enough money to kick of K1 again. It also doesn’t look like he has a real business plan or idea of how to run the business.

When one of the investors meets Kim again after it was clear he screwed us and bought the K-1 [brand], the investor asked him why he shook hands with us and [said] that we told him all our plans and that we were not amused and would inform all our associates to not work with him as this was not the way you should do business.

I guess the real face of Mr. Kim came out as the president of the public company Emcom started threatening the investor and was screaming “I will have you vanished, you vanish!” and that was the end of that meeting.

The result is now that we (Golden Glory) demand all outstanding payments from FEG and if this is not done in a few days we will file for their bankruptcy.

Pride lost the Fuji TV deal when Gendai Magazine started publishing details on the court case I had and won with Miro Mijatovic against Kawamata Bombaye in 2003 and they also did not pay the fighters and left. As we won the case all the juicy details with Yakuza and threats came to service which cost Pride their TV deal with Fuji.

Now, history repeats itself, you have the president of Emcom who needs a new vehicle for his public company and purchases K-1. However this president of Emcom makes screaming threats, the former owner Mr. Ishii was convicted of tax evasion and sentenced to prison.

Tanigawa is in hiding after he already got beaten up twice and his car and property received damages by angry Japanese lenders who all want their money back. I am sure they will try to throw some mud or accusations towards me and others like Pride attempted… After bankruptcy is filed and the truth comes out we will see how this plays out, it is a very interesting time!

The Moscow show looks great and the start of the tournament will be May 25th in Germany Westfallenhalle - for more updates go to unitedglory.com and gloryworldseries.com. We feel confident enough to build up the strongest and highest-paid professional stand-up fight tournaments in the world and to do so in record time.

source: fightersonlymag.com