Rob Kaman and the proof that the Dutch method worked
Before K-1 existed, a Mejiro fighter went to Thailand repeatedly and won, which is why the Dutch school arrived at K-1 already believing it was the best in the world.
By the early 1980s the Dutch school had a method. What it did not yet have was evidence that the method beat anyone outside the Netherlands. Rob Kaman supplied it.
Kaman fought extensively through the 1980s, including in Thailand against Thai opposition, and won repeatedly at a level no European had sustained before. His low kick became the reference example of the technique — thrown as the end of a hand combination, at a leg already loaded, with the whole body behind it rather than the leg alone.
The significance is chronological. When K-1 opened in 1993 and invited the world's striking traditions to settle their argument, the Dutch did not arrive as hopeful outsiders. They arrived with a decade of results against Thai fighters and a training system built to produce more of the same. That is why Hoost, Aerts and the rest were immediately competitive rather than gradually so, and why the K-1 heavyweight division was Dutch-dominated almost from the start.
The pattern also runs the other way. Kaman's generation went to Thailand and adapted; the Thai clinch game they could not use under K-1 rules simply fell away, leaving a Dutch–Thai hybrid that is still the default striking style in European gyms.