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Dragons Forever (1988)

World Combat League 1 - LA Stars vs Denver Fury & St. Louis vs New York

Turns out someone posted a whole collection of Chuck Norris’ World Combat League cards to YouTube.

For those that don’t know, the WCL was supposed to be a throwback to the days of the Professional Karate Association (the 70s/80s style kickboxing you’d see on espn back in the day). Took place a in a big old pit. Basic kickboxing rules - all strikes but elbows/forearm strikes and low kicks. No passivity, clinching, throws, takedowns, etc. The weirdest thing about the fights were the rounds. I don’t think these aired live, so you probably wouldn’t notice on a dvd release but each fight was had 2 3-minute rounds. A weird number to start off but the weird thing was there were 20 minute breaks between rounds when other fighters would get in the ring to fight. They did this in order to have both fighters start fresh. Truly bizarre.

Some vets of the WCL ring include MMA fighters like Stephen “Wonderboy” Thompson, Uriah Hall, Pat Barry, Lyman Good, Chidi Njokuani, Felice Herrig, and Andreas Spang. Kickboxer/MMA fighter Raymond Daniels got his start in the WCL as well, fighting guys like Spang, Wonderboy, and Njokuani. And boxers like Jarrell Miller and former WBO jr welterweight champ Chris Algieri also fought for the promotion.