On 07/12/03, the 1st World Sanda King tournament was held at the Beijing Workers Gymnasium. The Chinese Sanda Kings of Wu Chaolai, Han Yuzhu, Baoligao & Liu Hailong defeated their American rivals 4 : 0 and thus seized the IKF championship belts from them, bringing the belts to China for a historical first time.

The first bout was between female fighters Wu Chaolai and Morgan Smith. The fresh-faced Smith had recently won the World Amateur Sanshou cup as well as the North American Kickboxing championship. For Wu, though she only switched over from Taekwondo to Sanda a year ago, still managed to capitalize on Smith's weaknesses in defence as well as poor kicking. Using the leg-grabbing throw, she took Smith down to the canvas many times, beating her in all 3 rounds of the bout.

The second was the 65kg category bout between dark horse Han Yuzhu and Fernando Calleros, who was the IKF champion for that weight. He holds a so called record of 16 TKOs against his opponents. Experience aside, Calleros had also trained in Muaythai and was well versed in elbow & knee attacks. However when he faced Han's throwing, side & round kick combinations, Calleros ran out of steam sooner than expected. Despite keeping up a fierce stare, he had not the same fierce punches to really hurt his Chinese opponent. Having won only the 1st round, he lost the rest of the rounds to Han.

The third was the 75kg bout between Sanda King 2002, 22 yr old Baoligao and Dave Marinoble. Baoligao's aura was still as unstoppable as in August, when he humiliated his Thai opponent in Bangkok by knocking him out with a high round kick. So strong was his aura that from the start of the bout Marinoble became totally suppressed. Against Baoligao's rapid punch kick combos, it was all he could do to prevent himself from being KOed. To his credit, he made quite a tough sandbag. Towards the end of the bout, as Baoligao's stamina weakened, the desperate Marinoble tried hard to stick close and grapple with him, but that failed to yield any points and in the end he still lost all 5 rounds of this bout to Baoligao.

The fourth and final 80kg bout was between the Sanda King of Kings, Liu Hailong and Eduardo Fujihira, a Brazilian World Sanda champion who had trained with Cung Le. Fujihira was the aggressor from the beginning, attempting to jolt Liu with axe kicks. Although Liu defended well, Fujihira was relentless in his attack, staying close to Liu and pummeling him with with strong punches. Liu was not himself that night for he was not able to fully unleash his usual arsenal. It might be due to memories of defeat during the 1999 Art of War. In the last round of the bout, Fujihira sent Liu cleanly to the canvas with a side throw. Liu, who put on much weight in recent times, suffered from a decrease in stamina, which was obvious during the fight. It was only due to ring experience and bias Chinese judging that he won 4 out of 5 rounds of this bout. In fact, everybody could see there was no superiority shown by him at all. Liu was lucky to get away with this one.

*Incidentally, Cung Le, the Master of Sanshou from the US came to Beijing along with the IKF team to observe the fights upon invitation. After all the bouts have ended, the already roused Cung Le issued a formal challenge to Liu Hailong, who is undeniably the best in China. But at 31, Cung Le is much older than Liu, and thus does not have much time left to fight. However, both of them are around 80kg, and both fighters are at their peak right now. This is the best time for the Sanda King of China and the Sanshou Master of the US to have their long awaited clash and finally determine who is the strongest in the world. Cung Le hoped that the Chinese side would show some action and plan something along this line soon. Will we get to see this anticipated fight next year? Or will the Chinese continueto play mother hen to Liu's "invincible" reputation and deny his destiny to meet Cung Le? Only time will tell; meanwhile let us roar!  

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