(Melvin Manhoef highlights just never get old, do they?)

Those of you who love K-1 kickboxing enough to either wake up in the middle of the night or else just stay up until 3:30 am EST probably already know this, but we thought we’d remind the rest of you that the 2009 K-1 World Grand Prix Final 16 goes down early Saturday morning on HDNet.  That means Melvin Manhoef vs. Remy Bonjasky and Alistair Overeem vs. Peter Aerts, plus a whole bunch of other fights.  So whether you stumble home late enough to catch it, or if you just can’t sleep because of crushing guilt, K-1 will be there for you.  Because K-1 knows you’d do the same for it…wouldn’t you?

(Props: MMA Scraps)

Before Ray Mercer became known as the unstoppable heavyweight juggernaut who wrecked Tim Sylvia in 8 seconds, Mercer had a two-fight kickboxing stint in K-1, losing his debut to Musashi by unanimous decision in June 2004. His second bout against Remy Bonjasky at the K-1 World GP 2005 in Seoul was even less successful. We won’t spoil the suprise for you, but the fight (if you can call it that) starts at the 3:53 mark of the above video and ends very shortly afterwards. It’s pretty sad when losing a match to Kimbo Slice by submission still isn’t the low point in your fight career.

Speaking of Merciless, the former WBO boxing champ and Olympic gold medalist may have his next MMA bout booked. American Top Team boxing coach Howard Davis Jr. is in negotiations to put Mercer against old-schooler Marcus "Conan" Silveira in the main event of a December 12th MMA card called "U.S. vs. Brazil," put on by Davis’s new Fight Time Promotions company.

(Alistair Overeem presents Remy Bonjasky with the K-1 Oscar for "Best Acting" at today’s pre-event press conference. Bonjasky humbly accepts it, then accuses Overeem of steroid abuse. Yep, that should do it. Props to MMA Scraps for the video.)

The K-1 World Grand Prix 2009 goes down tomorrow in Yokohama, Japan, and will be broadcast live on HDNet. Because of the time difference, it’ll air late tonight in the U.S., at 4 a.m. ET/1 a.m. PT. We’re not fucking vampires, so we’re going to set up the little magic box on our cable TV and watch this thing tomorrow. And it definitely will be worth watching, particularly for the heavyweight headliner between Alistair Overeem and Remy Bonjasky.

If you’ll recall, Overeem most recently scored a shocking first-round TKO over Badr Hari in a K-1 rules match at Fields Dynamite!! 2008 on New Year’s Eve; earlier that month, Hari had his K-1 heavyweight title stripped after he stomped and punched a downed Bonjasky at a K-1 World GP event. You’d think that these experiences would bring Overeem and Bonjasky together as friends, but as you can tell from the above video, not so much. Alistair thinks Remy faked his complaints of vision problems to pick up the DQ win against Hari, while Remy thinks Alistair faked his new muscles. Trash-talk aside, if Overeem can pull this off, it’ll prove that his demolition of Badr Hari was no fluke, and cement his new reputation as the Baddest Heavyweight Striker in the World. And when you have accolades like that, who needs to pass a drug test in the U.S.?

The World GP will also feature a four-man heavyweight tournament starring Melvin Manhoef, and a group of "superfights" that include Semmy Schilt, Jerome Le Banner, Peter Aerts, and Errol Zimmerman. The full fight order is after the jump, courtesy of NightmareOfBattle.

Though he’s being courted by both the UFC and Strikeforce, where he is the reigning heavyweight champ, Alistair Overeem will likely have his next fight back in the K-1 ring.  A report on MixFight.nl, translated by our trusty friend Robert at Free Fight Videos, says Overeem has accepted an offer to fight 2008 K-1 Grand Prix winner Remy Bonjasky at the end of March.

There’s no word yet on whether Bonjasky has officially agreed to the fight, and after seeing what Overeem did to the dude who stomped his head in the finals of the Grand Prix he might be having some doubts.  If he does take the fight he might want to try and bulk up first, considering what a monster Overeem has become.

The bad news for us MMA types is that this further delays Overeem’s return to the land of little gloves.  His recent fights have made me all the more eager to see him in against big time MMA heavyweights, either in the UFC or somewhere else, to see if he can keep up these performances against top-notch opponents in places where there are commissions and – I’ll just say it – drug tests.   Looks like the wait continues.

Just for shits and giggles, rewatch Overeem’s destruction of Badr Hari after the jump.  ‘Cause what else you got to do?

It took them 11 days to do it, but K-1 has finally come up with a punishment for their heavyweight champion Badr Hari, who became possessed by spirits at the K-1 World GP Final on December 6th, and ended his match with Remy Bonjasky by tossing him to the mat and stomping on his head (both big no-nos according to K-1 rules). The verdict? Hari will have to forfeit all of his earnings from the event, and he’ll be stripped of his heavyweight title and his status as World GP second-place finisher. Ouch.

Of course, Hari’s dickheadedness in the wake of his disqualification contributed to the harsh sentence. Said FEG event producer Sadaharu Taniagawa:

Maybe if Hari didn’t compare endangering an opponent’s life with head-stomps to "cycling on the pavement," K-1 officials might have shown some mercy. Unfortunately, they were forced to send him a message, and that message was: "Not cool, bro."

Badr Hari discusses his DQ loss in K-1 – Watch more free videos

Badr Hari doesn’t seem too concerned about his disqualification loss in the finals of this weekend’s K-1 World GP.  In case you missed it, Hari took Remy Bonjasky down, which is already illegal in K-1, but then he decided that as long as he was down there he might as well punch him a couple of times and then stomp on his face.  When the interviewer here points out to him that this is “prohibited,” Hari responds: “Yeah, but cycling on the pavement is prohibited too.”

Seriously?  That’s his response to illegally attacking an opponent who was under the referee’s care?  Apparently Hari didn’t feel that his actions in the fight made him unlikeable enough.  No, better go ahead and follow that up with a dismissive statement that reveals your amoral thought process to the world, just to be sure.

The argument that I absolutely don’t buy in this case is that he let his emotions get the better of him because Bonjasky didn’t come to fight.  First of all, when Bonjasky dropped him in the first, that seemed an awful lot like fighting.  Second, if you get mad in a kickboxing match, why not kick or punch the other guy in the head, torso, or leg region while you’re both standing?  It’s an effective expression of anger, and it’s legal!

Then again, if you fight only within the scope of the rules, how is everyone supposed to know what an asshole you are?