Semmy Schilt and the problem of the two-metre man
Four Grand Prix titles came from a fighter whose main weapon was a front kick, which tells you something uncomfortable about how much range matters under K-1 rules.
Semmy Schilt won the K-1 World Grand Prix four times, more than anyone else. He did it at roughly two metres tall, and he did it mostly with a teep to the body and a knee — a technical arsenal that on paper looks thin next to Hoost's or Petrosyan's.
The explanation is the ruleset. K-1 breaks the clinch almost immediately, which removes the standard answer to a much taller opponent: get inside, tie up, work there. A shorter fighter under K-1 rules must cross the gap repeatedly and then be pushed back out again, and Schilt's front kick made crossing that gap expensive every single time.
His reign is therefore a rules argument as much as an athletic one. Under Muay Thai rules, where the clinch is legal and a shorter fighter can attach and stay attached, the same physical advantage is worth considerably less. Schilt's record against elite opposition in a full-clinch code would very likely look different — and that is not a criticism of him but of the assumption that a champion's dominance is portable across codes.
He is the clearest case on the site of a fighter whose greatness is inseparable from the rulebook he fought under.