Comments Thread For: Tenshin Nasukawa 'becomes a man' with victory over Jason Maloney

[famicommander]

I wonder if he'll figure out how to get power in his hands. He's got knockouts with the hands in kickboxing. It's sorta bizarre how little power he seems to have in boxing. Boy is his footwork good though, especially for a 6-0 contender. I thought he cleaned house pretty good on Moloney, who had two good rounds, but otherwise mostly just had moments. Could maybe give him the last couple rounds, but even then he still loses the fight by two rounds. Tenshin landed a lot more punches, and even though the best punch of the fight was landed by Moloney (the 1-2 in 6), that was still just one round, and it didn't even result in a KD.

Sounds like he's taking on Yoshiki Takei next, while Junto is unifying with IBF champ Nishida. I assume Tsutsumi will be fighting Antonio Vargas. If Nasukawa can get past Takei, he'd be a HUGE money fight for Nakatani, even if he'd be really overmatched, since he's been co-main even since his debut, over world title fights. Don't know if they'd want to risk that though.

For what it's worth, I think he could've stopped a couple of his opponents but was busy showboating and playing to the crowd instead. Even his trainer admonished him for it in one of the fights.

But in general, the difference in perceived power comes from being able to land punches in kickboxing and MMA against fighters that are worried about knees, elbows, takedowns, and kicks. Your right hook is a lot deadlier weapon when your opponent is expecting a leg kick than in a sport where punches are the only allowable attack. It's not that he's hitting any less hard or that his opponents have better chins, it's simply that he's having fewer opportunities to catch guys with shots they don't see coming.

As for his footwork, it comes from an early start in combat sports. He began kyokushin karate in age 5. Kyokushin is a brutal style of full contact karate that allows bare knuckle punches to the body as well as full contact kicks to the head and body. And unlike most karate styles the fighting is continuous in competition and sparring rather than the point fighting you'd normally expect from a guy like Chuck Norris. He won national level tournaments in Japan before making the jump to kickboxing full time in his teenage years.

By all accounts he seems to be a very adaptable guy. Kyokushin, kickboxing, MMA, and boxing are all very different sports and he has excelled at all of them. He even has a submission victory in pro MMA during his 4-0 sidequest into the sport during his kickboxing run.