Takeru vs. Leona: Parallel Lives
The King is Dead
For those who come to know K-1 through the context of MMA, the reverence for and mythology implied in the words of commentators seems in stark contrast to their banner holder, who invariably ends up unconscious at the hands of someone not particularly good at kickboxing. As we hurtle further into a world where the popular understanding of any combat sport is informed largely by how it’s seen through the prism of MMA, the news that the best, most consequential K-1 title fight in years is happening soon contends with the popular understanding that K-1 is dead. A popular understanding not helped by how fiercely guarded their free live broadcasts are outside of Japan.
K-1 has died many deaths. K-1 was a mid-90s kickboxing extravaganza born from the melding of style vs style karate challenge matches and TV sensibilities, it died in the early 2000s in a confusing tax scandal guest starring Mike Tyson that landed its owner in prison. K-1 was a mid-2000s clash of variety show sensibilities and the far reaches of human physiology, designed to get your grandma watching for a few fleeting minutes. It died due to mismanagement, a raft of unpaid debts in its wake. K-1 was a short-lived Hong Kong based kickboxing promotion that staged a handful of confusing, expensive shows that very nearly got it an American TV deal. It died due to a longstanding commitment to incompetence by its owner. K-1 is the all-digital deathmatch of the Uberized precariat, an economic paper tiger staging grandiose tournaments to baying crowds of thousands, set against the glaringly bleak fiscal realities of the other side of the “kakutougi boom”. It has yet to die.
Building the Pyramids
The present K-1 owes its life to two major factors. The first is a golden age of domestic talent at the lower weights that easily rivals the depth of the heavyweights of the 90s. The second is “the pyramid”.
When K-1 first re-emerged to hold its inaugural 65kg tournament in 2014, they hit upon and maintained a formula that persists today: tournaments, tournaments, tournaments. Months later at the second show, then producer Kensaku Maeda and all marketing material had one major point. The point was not to seize on the obvious and marketable human drama of a tournament which would ultimately pit brother against brother, the point was one of sustainability. The aim was not the oft-tried and never successful attempt to hold on by their fingernails until a charismatic star could propel them to another, lesser boom; the aim was to build “a K-1 that lasts a hundred years”. To that end, K-1 has cultivated a self-sustaining ecosystem, with an amateur system at the bottom, Khaos, a thematically experimental league where people turn pro and gain experience, Krush, the “second tier” pro league, and K-1. In theory, a young fighter walking through the doors at a K-1 affiliated gym can spend their entire career within the K-1 system, regardless of how high or low their ceiling is.
However, what really undergirds the pyramid is the same thing that led to the inexplicable inception of this golden generation of talent at weights that had rarely, if ever enjoyed the spotlight or money, at a time when kickboxing had died a public death: karate.
In the dying days of FEG, what most consider the last incarnation of the “real” K-1, new ideas tended to be a result of directionless flailing in an attempt to keep the doors open, leading to things like the infamous Super Hulk Tournament. However, one idea was remarkably forward thinking and continues today, the K-1 Koshien Tournament. Piggybacking off of the enduring popularity of the Japanese national high school baseball tournament (often simply referred to as “koshien” due to the famous stadium it takes place in) they would stage yearly under-18 tournaments to give screen time to Hiroya, the teen already anointed as “the next Masato”, the promotional darling of K-1 MAX. The three years these tournaments ran, Hiroya won once, being given all he could handle and more by young fighters like Masaaki Noiri and Koya Urabe, who were already deeply embedded in exactly this form of competition through karate.
This, however, is not a tale of champions or runner ups, this is the story of two of 2009’s also rans who are now top of the heap, a story of two men swirling around one another in the constantly churning waters of karate and kickboxing. Two men who couldn’t be more different, two men who couldn’t be more alike. On March 28th, K-1 60kg champion Takeru finally faces Krush 60kg champion Leona Pettas, and it’s about time.
The Karate Kids
In an actual and metaphorical sense, Takeru vs Leona Pettas was born in the ‘90s. Despite being born in 1991, Takeru was raised on a steady diet of 70’s and 80’s pro-wrestling tapes through his father. While the likes of Antonio Inoki and Tiger Mask entertained him, only one man spurred him into action: Andy Hug. After watching Hug win the 1996 K-1 Grand Prix, Takeru told his parents he wanted to start karate immediately. Sat in front of the glow of a CRT television, he’d already picked his mononym ring name “Takeru” before throwing a punch. This was the world he wanted to be part of. By the time he was, Hug would be dead, K-1 would be dead, even CRTs would be dead.
Leona Pettas, real name Reona Kato, is the eldest of four siblings, and found karate through his youngest, Krush kickboxer Kona Kato. From third grade until the end of junior high school, Leona’s sport of choice was soccer, his goalkeeper position a natural fit for his long limbs. Not wanting to quit part way, Leona occasionally dabbled in karate alongside Kona, but maintained his captain position on the field. While Takeru was all in from second grade, attending the dojo three times a week without fail, Leona would not commit fully to karate until the move to high school. Leona intentionally chose a high school an hour from home, but only 15 minutes from Kyokushinkaikan headquarters. With four children to provide for and a small business to run, it was difficult for the Kato family to afford the monthly fee. Fortunately, karate master, last live-in student of legendary Kyokushin founder Mas Oyama, K-1 fighter (and winner of the Andy Hug memorial tournament) Nicholas Pettas had opened up The Spirit Gym, offering free training to aspiring fighters.
Takeru in shin karate
Far from the strip mall conception of karate as a series of dance moves presided over by a plainly unathletic man with questionable facial hair, karate as practiced in Japan is a physically gruelling martial art, one that saw the second grader Takeru sparring with adults. He recounts in interviews at first being knocked to the ground but always refusing to quit, taking a beating from everyone in the room. He would cry and scream to his mother in the car before practice that he didn’t want to go, but would still step back through the doors every time.
The Spirit Gym would not last, partly due to Nicholas Pettas’ struggle with a series of unfortunate injuries. Chairman Hidetoshi Hanzawa of Bungeling Bay gym would take over Leona’s training and become “Bungeling Bay Spirit”. Hanzawa trains Leona to this day, but his first impression was that Leona was always crying. He would cry when he lost, he’d even cry when he won, but he too would still step back through those doors.
Leona’s family was against the idea of trying to make a living through martial arts, school had to come first. Takeru meanwhile had hit a rebellious streak and was expelled from high school only three months in. However, upon hearing that koshien qualifiers would be opening up in his region, Takeru, then some 20lbs below the weight limit had a goal. Already keenly aware of what it took to reach the top of Koshien (promotional darling Hiroya trained full time in Thailand and attended an international school) and with nothing left but kickboxing, Takeru would follow suit and sell his belongings to train in Thailand.
There was only one wrinkle in the plan. To win the high school tournament, you have to be a high school student. And so Takeru too would choose a high school that would align with his kickboxing goals: a correspondence school.
The Crash of 2009
There was no fairy tale ending for either man. Both Leona and Takeru had the misfortune to face the eventual winner of their regional qualifying tournaments as their second opponent and crash out. Masaaki Noiri would take the crown that year. FEG would be dead two years later. Two months more, Takeru would make his pro kickboxing debut in Nagoya, winning a decision. A month after that, Leona would make the finals of the shin karate (a gloved karate competition allowing punches to the face, the direct predecessor of K-1 Koshien, and the major source of its talent) K-3 GP. No footage exists and records are spotty, but Takeru and Leona fought twice in shin karate, each taking a win. The bout Leona won came during a national tournament he very nearly won, during the finals Leona scored a knockdown but threw an extra strike at his downed opponent (another unfortunate trait shared by both men) and drew a foul instead.
Beyond 2009, Takeru would bounce between Muay Thai, karate, amateur, and pro kickboxing, and not always in an order that made sense. Obsessively detailing his victories and defeats on his blog, each setback was seen as a delay to his inevitable goal of a Krush debut. Leona’s family in contrast were against the idea of trying to make a living through fighting, and he would continue balancing an amateur career with an education, studying biology at college. Despite being a late bloomer in the cutthroat world of under-18 karate competition, Leona would make his Krush debut only 9 months later than Takeru.
Leona in shin karate
Launched prior to the death of FEG, Krush was a collaboration between K-1 and AJKF that would take on a life of its own and provide a refuge for lower-weight kickboxers teased with the fleeting promise of FEG’s attention and the potential money that entailed. Now seen perhaps unfairly as the second tier in K-1’s pyramid, the modest Krush shows held in the tiny Korakuen Hall became the biggest game in town. Available only on a niche satellite TV channel rather than national terrestrial television, kickboxing as an industry had severely contracted but still had a pulse. Armed with a battalion of karate talents and experienced AJKF event producer Mitsuru Miyata, Krush would ride out the rough years and be absorbed as part of the new K-1 group, to be headed up by Kensaku Maeda, mastermind of K-1 Koshien and head of Team Dragon, Takeru’s eventual gym.
Early Days
Despite swirling around and clashing with one another in karate, and now being under the same promotional banner, Leona and Takeru now separated by 10lbs were worlds apart. Takeru’s early Krush career was a dream of KO win after KO win, a single doctor stoppage against him the only blemish. The pile of endless victories eventually led him to declare that if he ever loses again, he will immediately retire. Takeru stormed his way to a title and several defenses, earning an invitation to fight on the inaugural new K-1 show against “the next Masato’s” younger brother, Taiga. Takeru won by a now infamous spinning backfist KO, a loud and flashy announcement that none of the common wisdom about lighter weight fighters was true. The boy desperate to fight on the K-1 stage had made it, but the goalposts would shift.
Takeru vs Taiga (with the legendary spinning backfist knockout!)
The goal was not simply to fight and win in the K-1 ring, the goal now was to bring the K-1 ring back to the masses, back to national television. It is a goal he’s thrown himself at with every fiber of his being, an endless flurry of product promotions and media appearances. Becoming synonymous with the K-1 promotion, publicly declaring to never lose again, and a barrage of promotional appearances have placed a burden on Takeru that clearly weighs him down. After his most recent win, he broke down crying on the microphone for reasons he subsequently has difficulty explaining. He stands as a fighter singularly obsessed with the goals ahead of him, but progressively more and more encumbered by a legacy he is keenly aware of.
Leona vs. Taiga
Leona would have a bumpier ride. A still unpolished fighter, Leona explained that the reason he continued to cry even after winning professional fights was out of frustration at not being able to perform the way he wanted, often running backstage to immediately ask his teammates and trainers what he should do to improve. Developing a respectable record with a smattering of disappointing losses, Leona would also make a successful K-1 debut against Taiga, earning a tournament berth. Having fought half of the field and beaten most of them, Leona came in confident of victory, planning out how he’d fight against opponents in the subsequent rounds. Instead, he would fall prey to his own overconfidence and lose a decision to his first opponent. He would subsequently throw himself into a tournament in China, and return to Krush a champion.
Bubbling behind the scenes at this time was ever-present political turmoil within the K-1 group. Krush would usurp K-1 and event producer Mitsuru Miyata would displace Kensaku Maeda. K-1 had planned a triumphant return to large scale events, announcing the first K’Festa show at the cavernous Saitama Super Arena, to be headlined by Takeru rematching Taiga. Takeru had won the 55kg title, then the 57.5kg title, and would now fight in a third weight class at 60kg.
This fight would never happen. Try Hard gym in its entirety was expelled from the K-1 group for whatever unknowable reasons spur the endless chaos at the heart of the Japanese fight business, and instead an emergency 60kg grand prix was held. Takeru won, again.
Away from the K-1 spotlight Leona had earned and lost a Krush title shot, relegated to the dangerous proving grounds against extremely tough prospects like Taio Asahisa, Yuma Saikyo, and loaned Chinese talent like Zhao Chongyang. Paradoxically, K-1 champions at the top of the pyramid often get winnable showcase bouts, Krush title bouts are also not necessarily against the cream of the crop, but amongst the second rung of fighters with imperfect records trying to break out in Krush, a procession of killers face each other in search of the right moment. Take the case of Taio Asahisa, a contemporary of Tenshin Nasukawa in the amateurs, born into a hard-nosed karate family. The ludicrously tough K-1 62.5kg champion Kenta Hayashi was left without an opponent mere days before K’Festa 3. A weight class below, with a respectable if unspectacular 14-7 record and only 4 days to prepare, Asahisa would break the champion’s jaw with a spectacular jumping switch kick, drop him with punches, and generally outclass him in every way.
Asahisa’s K-1 spotlight moment would probably have come earlier, had he not had the misfortune to run into Leona Pettas in Krush, not just once, but twice.
In these shark-infested waters, Leona at last was thriving, but not just out of his competitive drive, but by factors outside the ring.
The Fight Against Time
K-1 has done well in terms of human interest stories over the last few years. Yoshiki Takei, the reformed delinquent who came a hair’s breadth from a murder-suicide at the hands of his frustrated mother, to be taken in by a destitute kickboxing trainer and formed into a formidable champion (Takei recently departed the sport to fully focus on boxing). Kaisei Kondo, a teenager who went from being unable to walk to brutally knocking out opponents with head kicks. Kosuke Komiyama, the lifelong karate practitioner who mangled his own arm rescuing two passengers trapped in burning vehicles after a head-on crash by elbowing out the glass and pulling them to safety.
Takeru vs Yodkitsada
A potted history of who fought who and when is nice to bring context to a fight, but context and the ways in which two fighters’ paths have diverged and converged over the years is only part of the story. The real heart of this fight has nothing to do with the fight in the ring. Takeru has given as much out of the ring as he has in the ring, and is openly uncertain how long he can hold on. Following his knockout win over Yodkitsada Yuthachonburi at K’Festa 2, he underwent surgery for a ruptured tendon in his fist, a bad omen for a heavy puncher. He openly agitates at any given opportunity for a fight with one of the other greats of this generation, Tenshin Nasukawa. To make such a fight requires a fundamental reconfiguration of the business of kickboxing as it exists, and this is one of the battles Takeru has taken up. His real enemy in this fight is not Tenshin, is not contractual nonsense, nor promotional intransigence. It is fundamentally a battle against time. Much has changed for K-1 since reconstituting into the small, dark void of Yoyogi 2nd gymnasium (little brother of the 1st gymnasium which hosted the inaugural 1993 K-1 Grand Prix) in 2014, and much is still to change. Can he hold on physically, can he continue growing the audience, can he build his position until the hands of the brass are forced, and can he do it all before the sport claims his body?
After going 11-1 in the dangerous wilderness of Krush and Chinese tournaments, Leona finally was given another spot on a K-1 card. His opponent, the aforementioned Kosuke Komiyama, was the tournament runner-up at the first K’Festa. Despite trying his best to keep his distance from Takeru and land one of his array of lightning fast, out of nowhere kicks, Komiyama would instead be relentlessly chased to exhaustion and clubbed into submission in the final minute of the fight.
Takeru breaks down Komiyama
As a late starter in karate and kickboxing, Leona has always been fighting against time, always having to play catch up while consistently facing and beating members of familial karate dynasties. Komiyama is one such member, having started karate in his father’s dojo in his kindergarten years. From a curious bladed stance with a perilously low lead hand, Leona drew in leg kicks, dropping and stopping a veteran who’d set himself high up in the 60kg pecking order with a single jab.
Leona drops Komiyama with a jab
The way Leona has dealt with experience or technique deficits is simple, by punching his opponents in the face very hard and very often. That’s not to say there aren’t admirable or beautiful techniques in his arsenal, just that the most common sight when he’s in the ring is him careening forward rarely throwing fewer than double digit punches in combination, regardless of where his feet, hands, or body are. A distillation of a particular style of karate, geared towards winning tournaments where the opening stages are often a single short round, a martial philosophy he shares with Takeru, but differs on the importance of planting your feet first. A torrid whirlwind of fists that gets faster if he thinks he has his man hurt. And when that storm settled and Komiyama had left the ring, Leona got on the mic with a soon to be familiar refrain. A challenge to Takeru and a report to his sick mother at home that he was able to win.
Around five years prior, Leona’s mother Mika felt ill and sought a medical checkup. The result of which unfortunately was a diagnosis of stage four cervical cancer, so large as to be deemed inoperable except by the country’s leading cancer institute. Several bouts of surgery, recurrence, and metastasis went on until she entered palliative care. Time was not on her side, but Leona was determined to encourage her the only way he could, by fighting alongside her against an opponent he says he’s not sure he can beat, to never give up, to show that dreams come true. He promised her he would be a champion, and that she could win too.
Iconoclasm
After seven years of chasing, Leona would claim a Krush belt and hand it straight to his mother in the last of his fights she’d ever be able to see in person. He takes it to her grave to update her on his progress updating the other half of that promise, the K-1 belt. Leona has lost his battle against time, a victim of the often-nonsensical matchmaking afforded to K-1 champions. In interviews he now no longer says “I’m running out of time”. He says he’s not in a hurry anymore.
“I’m running out of time”.
Leona handing the Krush title to his ailing Mother, who passed shortly after this victory
A fierce competitor critical of those who talk their way into fights, Leona asks that his record speaks for him. He estimates that he spends two-thirds of his waking hours training and largely disregards the side hustles other kickboxers turn to. It’s not that he harbors any hatred or bitterness towards self-promotion, he just doesn’t care about anything other than being the best in the world at his weight class. He compares trash talking luminaries in his division to the Kameda brothers, and hopes his own path is more like Naoya Inoue. If fame and money come his way, great, but it’s as a side effect of what he achieves in the ring. Takeru is the man holding the belt, but Takeru is not the aim, it is simply being 60kg champion regardless of who is in the way. By his own admission, he’d never even seen a whole Tenshin Nasukawa fight until attending RISE El Dorado last month, because he’s from a world that doesn’t yet intersect with his goal.
In late 2020 the fight had finally, tragically been made after Mika’s passing. None of it happened the way it was supposed to. It was not caused by Leona demolishing fighters Takeru struggled with on the biggest shows. It was Leona taking a comfortable decision without drama in a small, sparsely populated Korakuen Hall over the tough but thoroughly second rung Tatsuya Oiwa, one of Takeru’s closest training partners. When challenged directly by an impatient Pettas, Takeru would traditionally deflect, asking Leona to get more wins in K-1, or simply sit and stare until Leona’s time on the mic ran out. This time, he marched straight to the ring, and tersely said “let’s do it” into the microphone before throwing it to the canvas.
The fight with Oiwa was a step back for Leona, a defense of his Krush title he was explicitly told he didn’t need to make. The man obsessed with reaching his goals on merit gets the fight with the man obsessed with reaching his goals through the kind of transcendental fame he saw on that TV screen all those years ago. The fight didn’t materialize through a competitive climb to the top, but the jumbled up-and-down of promotional vagaries. It was the right fight, but at the wrong time and place. Originally destined as a main event in Tokyo, it was suddenly moved to the complete opposite side of the country in Fukuoka due to sumo requisitioning the venue in the wake of COVID. It seemed for a moment that perhaps that’s the way it had to be. Perhaps the only way that the media-averse sporting side of kickboxing could ever be reconciled with the media-savvy, all-singing living embodiment of K-1 was in the wake of a virus, an external force causing the kind of fundamental realignment of the possible that Takeru hasn’t been able to conjure yet.
And then it got cancelled. Whispers had swirled on social media that in his frequently posted training videos, he was only throwing one hand, and then Takeru regretfully announced that he’d fractured his left fist and the fight was off. In true Takeru fashion he launched himself immediately into a regenerative medicine clinic, frequently documenting his stem cell treatments on social media and training one-handed, promising the fight would be back on as soon as humanly possible. Takeru carries on his shoulders the weight of the unreasonable expectations he’s unwittingly created, having entered the ring seriously compromised in the past. He drew criticism from the angrier corners of the internet for pulling out, noting that he’d fought Yodkitsada with a broken foot. Having never pulled out of a fight before no matter how broken his body, it is a sign of how seriously Takeru is taking what may be the stiffest challenge of his career.
Amidst that criticism, Takeru had a notable defender in kickboxing’s public square: Leona Pettas. With some perspective on the matter having had to pull out of a fight due to injuries sustained in a crash, Leona pled with the legion of Takeru “anti-fans” to leave him alone and re-stated that injuries are an unavoidable part of the game and that he looked forward to fighting Takeru at his physical best.
Following coordination between Takeru and the promotion, true to his word the fight was back on the docket as soon as humanly possible. K’Festa, K-1’s yearly “big show” on the scale of Japanese New Year’s Eve extravaganzas, traditionally takes place around the vernal equinox, its branding reminiscent of the changing season. It wasn’t the structural realignment he seeks, but reflecting his increasingly powerful stake in his industry, time was now dancing to Takeru’s tune and K’Festa 4 was scheduled two months early. What’s more, the echoes of the past continued to surround the fight as it was to mark K-1 Japan Group’s first foray to Yoyogi’s 1st gymnasium, the ancestral home of the K-1 World Grand Prix. Roughly four times bigger than the second gymnasium that birthed K-1’s re-emergence, it was a tacit reminder of what has been willed into existence in the bleak conditions of modern kickboxing.
And then, of course, it too was cancelled amid rising concern about coronavirus in Tokyo and the impact of travel restrictions on the proposed card. Just as the gravity of Takeru’s star was showing his influence on K-1’s tides, on their timing, on their willingness to entertain co-promotion, that same external force conjured a course correction. A K’Festa 4 without Takeru had seemingly been in the works already and remains on the docket, but now twinned with “K’Festa 4 day 2” a week later. Now booked for the Budokan (previous stomping grounds of K-1 MAX and the venue of Leona’s college graduation ceremony), the twists and turns seem to have ceased, the fight appears to finally be happening.
And for his part, the quiet man who holds no sway over time has continued training, growing in confidence about his chances over the months he’s remained on weight, unencumbered by anyone’s expectations but his own. Marking approximately a year since both men last fought for K-1, the 28th also marks to the day a year since Leona last spoke to his mother.
In the short history of the “new K-1”, no fight has been more worthy of a title, and no fight has been more representative of the unknowable behind the scenes politicking. It is a nexus of the good and bad of kickboxing. More importantly, it is a man out of time trying to keep a promise to his late mother vs a man against time trying to fulfill his ever-growing ambitions. It is two men with intertwined paths, who fight with the same ethos in different ways, with different aims but intersecting goals. It is one man trying to blow up the pyramids, to show that the most important stone was never the one on top. Krush will attempt to usurp K-1 again, but this time on the other side of the curtain. The fight is billed as King of Kings, and heavy lies the crown.
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The writer can be found here on Twitter, and would like to offer a special thanks to the following people who assisted in the creation of this piece: LJ, Kenta Oshima and The Kyokushin Analyst