Just received a phone call from USA Team Member, Jon Lewis, who informed GoKickbox that all eight U.S. fighters who fought today suffered defeats in the first round of the competition. Scott Lanigan and Adam McDermid are scheduled to fight their first bouts sometime tomorrow.

According to Lewis, the all amateur team looked good in the ring against the top world-ranked professionals, but they gave up too much experience in their records and in the type of scoring used. It sounds like the fights are being scored very similar to how Olympic Boxing is scored on a point basis. Damage inflicted in a strike doesn’t matter, in fact a knockdown is scored just like any other punch or kick that lands. When many fighters from the U.S. team may have been landing strong, effective strikes, their international opponents would fire back with 5 or 6 punch, “pitter-patter” combinations that would score much better with the judges. It was also clear that the U.S. fighters were facing an uphill battle with the judges scorecards and three U.S. fighters that appeared to have won their bouts all fell victim to a losing decision.

* 132 lbs – Deejay Jones – Jones was one of the fighters that Jon thought won his fight, unfortunately the judges didn’t see it that way. Lewis thinks Jones won the first and third rounds.
* 140 lbs – Jon Lewis – Lewis fought a very talented Russian fighter who knocked Lewis down in the 1st with a spinning hook kick (Jon says he was looking at his corner when it happened which is ironic because WAKO rules state the corner can’t coach during the round). Jon looked better in the second round, but again lost on points. He believes he won the third round, but still lost the fight 2 rounds to 1 (remember the knockdown is not scored like a 10-8 round, it was just another kick that landed). Lewis found out afterwards that his opponent had over 200 wins as a professional fighter. Lewis is now 13-2 as an amateur.
* 147 lbs – Aaron Swenson – Swenson lost by knockout in the second round against a very, very, talented fighter.
* 156 lbs – Jeremy Ramsey – Ramsey was out pointed in a judges decision
* 164 lbs – Billy Mathies – Billy is the second fighter Jon thought should have won his fight. Billy looked very good in the ring, but fell victim to another decision loss.
* 178 lbs -Andrew Krzeptowski – Didn’t get any info on this fight, Lewis mentioned that all 7 of 8 fighters today lost by decision, so it is assumed that Andrew is one of those 7.
* 189 lbs – Adam McDermid – Fights tomorrow against a member of the Portuguese team. He will most likely need a very decisive win or KO to take this fight against the home-country fighter. McDermid’s style might be the best suited for this style of competition, McDermid is very effective at throwing flurry after flurry of punches and kicks.
* 200 lb – Neil Osten – Neil is the 3rd fighter Lewis thought won his fight, but lost on a judges decision. His Croatian opponent wasn’t technical in his style, but he was busy. He also repeatedly (5x per round) used a hip toss style move, throwing Neil to the canvas; this technique was apparently scored as a sweep, and he used it enough to win the fight. Neil is one of the least experienced fighters on the team, his amateur record going into this bout was 2-1.
* 220 lb – Scott Lanigan – Fights tomorrow against a member of the Russian team. According to Lewis the Russians are the “Real Deal” and this will be a tough fight for Scott.
* 143 lb female – Leslie Stoll – No details yet about this fight, but it appears she too lost by judges decision.

To sum up the short conversation with Lewis, the guys overseas are great fighters and great at the style of fighting they are competing in. They fight non-stop, throw lots and lots of combinations, and score well on the scorecards. But he mentioned that most of the fighters are not good technical kickers. They have some power behind their kicks, but they aren’t clean and they only throw round kicks. The international fighters rely mostly on their hands, and they put a lot of punches together that score. But he is convinced that if the U.S. team had more experience fighting under this different scoring system, they would do quite well overseas. They’d also do quite well against their competitors in longer round fights.