The belt of the Italian professional WAKO PRO Kickboxing K-1 specialty title in the -66,800 kg weight category, achieved only a week ago, is already tight for champion Danilo Andrulli: he, trained by master Biagio Tralli – multiple kickboxing champion and director coach of the Italian national team -, is thinking about the European Championships. And it is a concrete achievement, given the technique and determination of Danilo who prevailed without too many problems over Florian Qokaj in a match scheduled for four rounds of three minutes each. The strategy was studied meticulously, with the supervision and experience of maestro Tralli: “We knew that my opponent prefers boxing, so we worked on his legs with low kicks to remove the supports on his arms.
In the fourth round his shots were very weak, he couldn’t feel his legs anymore,” explains Danilo.
An intense month of training before the match even if, having faced the Kickboxing World Cup at the end of March, the conquest of the Italian title was a continuation of that preparation.
A curiosity: his good luck charm before entering the ring is to think of all those who believe in him: “To those who write me messages, call me and are close to me. They are my luck.”
Danilo has been on the tatami since he was eight years old: his father, himself a student of master Tralli, took him to the gym, the Dynamic Center in Matera, and as often happens with kickboxing he was love at first sight with this discipline. The mother, however, prefers not to watch the fighting; anxiety, in these cases, is inevitable. It is precisely to his parents, to his teacher, to his training partners, to his Elite kickboxing gym in Putignano that he dedicates his victory.
The maestro is enthusiastic about the performance of one of his most talented fighters: “It’s a great satisfaction – he underlines – Danilo is a boy who can do a lot, but unfortunately he was penalized a bit by bad luck. He broke his hand on his last European journey in Türkiye, he had to stop and leave the title. As soon as he got the okay from the doctors, he took back what in a certain sense had been taken away from him. Now we are already thinking about the next title, the European Championships. The hope is to hold them in Matera before the end of the year.”
In the meantime, the Dynamic Center is working to bring the fighters to the Italian Championships at the end of May: “Let’s see how many kids we can color blue this year”, concludes the maestro.
Rossella Montemurro
