Bajan takedown

Local MMA fighter brings down NY hometown boy in kickboxing championship

Barbadian professional mixed martial arts fighter Kobe Bowen silenced a boisterous New York crowd on Saturday night when he brought down hometown boy Rocco Giambrone in a first-round technical knockout of the Co-Main Event Fight Series Kickboxing Championship.

Bowen, 25, who was booed by the partial crowd when he was introduced by the ring announcer, kept his focus throughout and executed a strategic move from what the commentators described as “out of nowhere” to floor the popular Giambrone and proceeded to pulverise him with lefts and rights before the referee stopped the fight.

It took Bowen, the local 2018 Sanda kickboxing champion and gold prize winner at the U.S Sanda Open Kickboxing Championship, 2 minutes and 51 seconds to knock out Giambrone.

The noisy buildup to the action in the ring, boosted by the music that accompanied the lyrics “we will, we will rock you” pounding in the background, came crashing down to an anti-climatic end for the New York fans.

The Bajan fighter’s performance was labelled impressive against the hometown hero in a hostile environment.

“It’s not the first time I am in enemy territory,” Bowen replied when asked how he felt. “I am a fighter. I have been working hard through losses and losses…but I continued to get better and better…I continued to keep striving. I want to big up everyone back home in Barbados. I want to big up my gym, 246, let’s go KB Kickboxing,” the exuberant kickboxing champion blurted out.

When asked what his game plan was coming into the fight against a tough opponent such as Giambrone, the owner of KB Kickboxing Gym declared, “it was keeping him off and cracking him”.

The mixed martial arts fighter has been honing his craft professionally in Barbados, the Caribbean and the United States since he was 17 years old.

Bowen is also the first bare-knuckle boxer to represent Barbados and also won that fight in a first-round knockout in 2021.
(EJ)