Kim Dong Hyun - Both Ends of the Spectrum

When he first stepped in to the Octagon in his debut against Jason Tan, he was coming off of a 9 Win 1 Draw 0 Loss professional record in the Asian mma leagues, mainly Spirit MC and DEEP Impact, along with two CMA Fastivals (yes, they really spell it like that.) His nick name was "Stun Gun" because of his devastating left that knocked out 3 Japanese DEEP fighters in a row, each with a single punch. You can see his videos on youtube.

vs Tomoyoshi Iwamiya DEEP 25
vs Mitsunori Tanimura CMA Fastival
vs Kousei Kubota DEEP 26
vs Jun Ando DEEP 27
vs Yukiharu Maejima CMA Fastival 2 <---- 11 second KO by shotgun vs Hidenobu Koike DEEP 28
vs Hidehiko Hasegawa DEEP 31 <------Gotta see!

At his match against Jason Tan, he displayed unexpected superiority in just about every aspect. He went so far as to try a backdrop (which is illegal)! Unfortunately, the call was somewhat disputable as Tan didn't seem to be really taking much damage from the seemingly dangerous onslaught of elbows at the end. However, given Kim's superiority in stand up, take down, and ground skills, he would likely have lost anyway, so no real problem as far as I am concerned. I do wish the ref hadn't called it so soon though. I thought it was slightly unfair to Tan. Regardless, I digress. Where was I? ....Oh yes.

So, after displaying such superiority at his UFC debut, everyone expected him to give us an amazing fight in his second bout with Matt Brown............

......which was a total flop. I agree that he should have and did win the fight by split decision, since he did rack up more points, but....if this had been PRIDE, Matt Brown would have won. Why? In PRIDE, if you fought like Kim did this day, you would have gone bankrupt just from the point deductions from not fighting aggressively enough. The UFC point system is a little quaint and doesn't reflect certain factors as much as it should, but I'm not going to go in to the details. That's for experts to explain. What I CAN say is that Kim just did horrible. It was so obvious what he was going for, a take down or a big left, and Brown had just no problem avoiding Kim's attacks while launching many of his own. Brown's take down and ground defense was also more than sufficient to stave of any attacks Kim attempted without taking too much trouble. I still think that Kim did perform enough to win by split decision like he did, but I would not have been surprised at all if it had swung the other way. Aside from technique, Brown stood out more in cardio conditioning and, more importantly, in spirit.

I've been a fan of Kim since I first saw DEEP 25 (I don't normally watch SMC...accessability issues). However, after the second bout, I was seriously disappointed. I do hope that he doesn't perform like that again, or he will never make it to aired bouts, much less main event status. GSP isn't going to wait forever, you know.