Kiyoshi Tamura vs. Tsuyoshi Kohsaka (RINGS Fourth Fighting Integration, 6/27/98)

Kiyoshi Tamura vs. Tsuyoshi Kohsaka (RINGS Fourth Fighting Integration, 6/27/98)

To the extent to which it occurs at the point of intersection between legitimate grappling and the aesthetic, shoot style pro wrestling is literally crucial (this is obvious). If, in keeping with Shinsuke Nakamura's recent yet yore-wise suggestion that strong style (and, by extension, probably also Romanticism) is best understood as real techniques plus real emotion, what shoot style offers—indeed, insists upon—is a realer technique in the hopes of a realer emotion and a style stronger still. What is the history of shoot style if not the spontaneous overflow of strong style feelings until strong style is itself incapable of bounding them? What becomes of that excess? Akira Maeda kicking unsuspecting people in the eye for real, initially. And from thence the several iterations of this style we call shoot: UWF, UWFi, Pro Wrestling Fujiwara Gumi, Pancrase, Kingdom, Fighting Network RINGS, BattlARTS, U-Style, in several instances Pride FC; who can say where it ends (it ends pretty much there). Whenever and wherever strong style, though worthy, is deemed insufficiently strong, and yet no one wants to actually fight for real, shoot style emerges, to be supplanted in time, perhaps inevitably so, by shooting proper. Shoot style—a season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, but an ephemeron—cannot and perhaps must not last. Death is the mother of beauty, mystical, within whose burning bosom we devise our earthly mothers waiting, sleeplessly, Wallace Stevens writes in “Sunday Morning,” arguably composed the Sunday morning immediately following the Saturday night in which Kiyoshi Tamura and Tsuyoshi Kohsaka performed in the greatest professional wrestling match he had ever seen. In one corner, he saw Kiyoshi Tamura, beautiful would-be ace, highest-born of any boar-fierce prince, generous of holds and niggardly of cowardice, noble of mien. In the other, Tsuyoshi Kohsaka, whom all name one who knows much well. There could be no greater contest.  
                
At least there could be none to the shoot style initiate. But is there a style of wrestling more divisive amongst the splintered wrestle-caring legions than that of the worked shoot? Each mode of pretending to fight, of course, creates its own conceptual plane and necessitates its own informed subjectivity. Shoot style, though, asks of even the most enthusiastic of professional wrestling enthusiasts—indeed, asks especially of the most enthusiastic of professional wrestling enthusiasts—to forsake much of what they know and value in the performance to which they are best accustomed. The three-second pin fall, that most fundamental form of professional wrestling victory, is nowhere to be seen (except in the earliest incarnations of the UWF, and intermittently thereafter, but let us here avoid such pedantry). No ropes will be run. The Irish will neither whip nor be whipped. Folding chairs will perform their principal duty alone. A high-risk maneuver does not involve the top turnbuckle or a dive to the floor so much as, say, a forward throw that, if missed, exposes the back, or a leg lock attempt against a foe equally conversant in that dark discourse. For the fan of, I don’t know, let’s say Memphis, or whatever, there is much, perhaps too much, to leave behind. At its best, shoot style asks comparatively little of the martial arts enthusiast, demanding 0nly I suppose that we see the smoothness of positional transitions as evidence of the athletes’ uncommon skill than as evidence of a cooperative and giving uke, and that we forgive the strikes that don’t seem quite as murderous as they potentially could be in a fantasy realm utterly (as opposed to reasonably) free of ethics. And that’s when we can even tell: there is no shortage of shoot style matches that appear in the (otherwise? supposedly?) legitimate fight records of mixed martial artists who competed in Japan in the 1990s. In the 1990s shoot-stylings of the Japanese promotions—particularly and especially in Fighting Network RINGS—the grey areas of the work-shoot spectrum attain apex intrigue.
                
To the extent to which I am a judoist, and probably the foremost judo partisan (in the most pejorative sense possible) currently living, I come by my interest in especially-real-looking dishonest grappling honestly, but in truth I doubt I would be a judoist at all were it not for the formative childhood influence of the scientific wrestling of local hero Leo Burke (Leonce Cormier), variously described in Bret Hart’s Hitman: My Real Life In the Cartoon World of Pro Wrestling (also known in some dark circles as Too Poor for Real Pants: The Bret Hart Story) as “a great French-Canadian wrestler out of the Maritimes,” “ruggedly handsome in a Burt Reynolds kind of way,” and “a really great pro.” Leo Burke is the wrestling forever-king of the Maritime provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island, bound up with the place for good, a true regional hero of the kind that will not come again. Everyone over thirty-five who grew up here—and I don’t only mean sports fans, but anyone who read the paper (Chronicle-Herald, Mail-Star, Times-Transcript, you name it)—knows his name. His picture was on the wall of the barbershop my father took us to in Moncton, alongside the other wrestlers and boxers and hockey players who either had a local connection or played for Montreal. My wife’s family, people (quite sensibly) without the merest shred of interest in wrestling, have stories about the Cormier brothers. And now I do, too: not long ago, at a Leo Burke appreciation night at a small show at the Lion’s Arena in Spryfield, Leo came up behind my dear friend Nick, grabbed him manfully about the shoulders, and initiated a completely spontaneous and organic conversation about home, family, mortality, and workouts (we are all three of us grapplers of great renown and prestige and so our workouts are vitally important).  Our talk held such great meaning for me that I told my mother about it. She asked if remembered my father driving my brother and I to Cocagne (if you get to Saint-Antoine, turn around, you have gone too far) to watch Leo Burke (wrestle Frenchy Martin; yes, I remember clearly). Only much later would I learn that during those same years he reigned over the Maritimes throughout the summer months Emile Duprée promoted Atlantic Grand-Prix Wrestling, Leo Burke worked in Japan when he was not working in Calgary for Stu Hart, most often for Giant Baba’s All-Japan Pro Wrestling, but also--and I am going to suggest to you now significantly--in the first incarnation of the UWF: July 1984, two shows at Korakuen Hall, a tag match teamed with Rocky Della Serra vs. Nobuhiko Takada and Yoshiaki Fujiwara (shoot-stylists of the highest order, both) and a singles match against Pierre Martel, also known as Frenchy Martin (R.I.P. Jean Gagné). This all seems uncanny to me now. I do not wish to belabour the point, although I plainly have already, but that I grew up watching Leo Burke’s really quite actual-seeming grappling I am quite sure led not-at-all-that indirectly to my interest in legit grappling, and so to the noblest art of judo, and so to an intimate appreciation of and respect for the holds and throws and positional grapplings that (plus a lot of kicking, in fairness) constitute the central elements of shoot style wrestling. And so to RINGS, and so to this, the greatest shoot style professional wrestling match ever contested or performed or pretend-fought.       

The RINGS Official Rankings that appear near the beginning of this high-end WOWOW production from the Tokyo Bay NK Hall inform us that, after his inglorious TKO loss a month earlier, Kiyoshi Tamura is at this moment the number one contender to Georgian Kyokushin karateman Tariel Bitsadze’s Open-Weight Championship rather than himself the holder of that esteemed title. Tsuyoshi Kohsaka, for his part, is coming off a strange win over Volk Han (perhaps you know him best as Magomedkhan Amanulayevich Gamzatkhanov) that appeared to be a worked shoot ending in a legit injury, but who among us could ever truly know? Herein lies the intrigue and indeed the glory of our undertaking. Prefight pre-taped video reveals an affable Kohsaka utterly at ease in a low-key t-shirt in support of car stereos; Tamura, in his signature all-red everything, looks tense and severe; all of this is, I would argue, revealing.

First to walk the aisle is Tsuyoshi Kohsaka, high-school judo pal of Olympic and World Champion Hidehiko Yoshida, college judo player at Senshu University, pro player at Toray Industries before a knee injury rendered the judoings to which he was long accustomed untenable, and brought him to the Karl Gotch-trained Akira Maeda’s RINGS, where to TK’s high-level (yodan, fourth degree) Kodokan skills and attainments were added a heap of extra leg locks. The familiar blues rockery of The Stone Roses “Driving South” fills the air as Kohsaka’s slick blue-and-white Alliance track jacket calls our attention to the seminal mixed martial arts team he co-founded with Frank Shamrock and Maurice Smith, and also makes me wish someone, anyone had agreed with me any one of the many times I suggested our judo club get tracksuits that year. But no, although one time we did order hoodies, and I still have mine. Kohsaka closes his eyes, folds his hands humbly, and utters a quiet prayer before stepping through the ropes. And now Kiyoshi Tamura, Okayama University of Science High School sumoist (despite his lean musculature) turned brooding heir to the UWF(i) shoot style throne, student of the ineffable Nobuhiko Takada, whom he would later accidentally, and much to his own dismay, knock out in a PRIDE FC bout that was by all appearances shoot style gone terribly awry (or was it; and did it). Unlike Kohsaka’s entrance, which got him to the ring, certainly, Tamura’s has the crowd eagerly clapping along to “Duration,” a piece more Fire Pro than Fire Pro itself, and yelling their hero’s name beseechingly. His deep, long-held bows to all four sides of the ring are no doubt meant to convey humility, and yet by making so much a show of that supposed humility they reveal a deeper arrogance and indeed vanity that prove to be, in the fullness of time, when one considers his legacy once all has unfolded, Tamura's curse and undoing.
                
It is a truth universally acknowledged that the RINGS ring announcer, whose name none of us have ever known, speaks the names, fight team, and weight (in kilogramu) of each competitor in a finer cadence than anyone else has ever managed for anything, and which reveals all Bufferisms, come they from Bruce or Michael, as sad trash. He does so again here. The fighters are called to the centre for the referee's final inspection and instruction, return to their corners, and the bell is sounded to begin this contest that appears on both men's mixed martial arts records wherever you look but let us see; let us just see.

As Tamura’s first tentative kick (Frank Shamrock would later say Tamura’s kicks were the hardest he had felt, but this is not like that) is checked, what better time to note that both athletes are attired in the kick pads that for reasons I cannot quite determine I can never think of as anything but “Pancrase boots” even though we all know they do not come from there and Pancrase, though very fine, holds no unique place in the history of kick pads. (Shall we note here also that, in time, Tsuyoshi Kohsaka would become the first and indeed only Super-Heavyweight King of Pancrase? Imagine it.) No gloves are worn here, as they impede grappling hideously and also allow us to lie to ourselves about the reliability of the fist as a blunt weapon in a prolonged fight (fists are great but are filled with little bones that break a lot if you hit heads with them). Closed-fist striking to the head is not allowed in this eminently civilized epoch of RINGS in any event, so none of that will matter.
                
Although this match technically opens with exploratory, uncommitted kickboxing as Akira Maeda looks on at ringside in his red sports coat, the bell of the heart truly sounds when Kohsaka grabs a Tamura body kick, the fighters clinch, and Tamura’s failed attempt at a forward throw allows Koshaka to take the back and set a hook as they come to the mat. Tamura rolls through--no, he is half-nelsoned over--and, soon, TK settles in between Tamura’s legs and into his guard (or do-jime, or, in keeping with the catch tradition that informs Tamura's work, shall we say bottom scissors, as you have perhaps heard Josh Barnett say one time? Upon closer inspection this is a butterfly guard, though, and so very little of this terminology actually applies here and I have been a fool). For the first of what will be in the end an infinity of times, Kohsaka drops back into an attempted leg lock (a figure-four toe hold/ankle lock here, ashi-dori-garami) at the cost of his advantageous position, which bestows upon us the gift of Kiyoshi Tamura working from the top, darting in and out of and around TK's legs with a nimbleness that borders on the sprightly. It is a thing of beauty to behold this man's hips, and I welcome any reading of that statement you wish. Kohsaka entangles a leg amidst all of this (ashi-garami, an old judo term that is now en vogue once more amongst the leading leglock exponents of our time, John Danaher and his disciples) and, this time, opts for a straight ankle/Achilles hold (kata-ashi-hishigi). This troubles Tamura, but only slightly, as he escapes to the relative safety of the guard. Kohsaka, who has twice already forsaken positional gains to make fairly wild attempts at leg submissions, this time appears to take the more staid route, passing his left arm under Tamura's right leg to attempt an over/under pass, but he telegraphs it to such an extent that he might as well be putting himself in Tamura's triangle choke (sankaku-jime). Isn't that odd? And Kohsaka's work is usually airtight, right? Oh wait though Kohsaka stands, and drags Tamura away from the ropes, which seems like exactly the wrong idea if he has any concerns about this triangle at all, but as Tamura begins to transition from the triangle to the juji-gatame arm bar, TK steps over and swings through for a knee bar (ashi hishigi juji gatame). Kohsaka baited Tamura, and indeed us all, with a telegraphed guard pass that made perfect sense as a change of approach from the early wild leglock attempts that have already cost him, in order to lure Tamura into the triangle/armbar, only for TK to make a wilder leglock attack still. 

This is subtle. 

"KOHSAKAAAAAA" a man yells as all of this unfolds, and I join him now as heartily as anyone could or can at this great remove of not just time and place but also culture and language however what unites us here is the extent to which grappling has revealed our common humanity . Kohsaka's position, following this sheer leglock abandon, is terrible, as Tamura slides from dominant position to dominant position, switching hips to and fro whilst maintaining top pressure. Until he doesn't: from beneath kesa-gatame, using a technique that, while not exactly the TK Scissors for which he is rightly renowned, certainly falls on the TK Scissors spectrum, Koshaka hits a backdoor juji-gatame that is so sudden and so tight it seems a rope break will be Tamura's only means of defense. Tamura turns in hard, though, pulling his trapped elbow to the mat, and sits up into TK's guard, but not the TK Guard (about which accounts differ; its true nature remains an enigma these many years later). 

When I say to you that dueling leglocks and guard-work dominate the next several minutes of the bout, please understand that I am not being the least bit dismissive of either of those things. The crowd certainly isn't, as each "catch" registers fully with this crowd that completely knows what's up. Tamura's kata-gatame/arm triangle sweep from the bottom and Kohsaka's attempt at the ude-garami/figure-four-grip juji-gatame roll (the variation that is most closely associated with Neil Adams, who stood me up on Skype twice but in the end it is for the best as I didn't really want to promote his products under the guise of sports journalism anyway, not in my heart I didn't) are the finest bits of grappling here but  believe me when I tell you this is all exhaustingly, impossibly real and right and good, every bit of it. There's a complaint that you have perhaps heard about several contemporary New Japan wrestlers who work not a shoot style as such, but shall we say a strong style that seeks the shootmost mode possible under the current, post-Inokism, Gedo-loves-old-Memphis-tapes era of New Japan (I mean no disrespect, NJPW is super good). I am thinking here principally of Kyle O'Reilly, Bobby Fish, KUSHIDA when he's on the mat, the thousand-year-old (brilliant, irreplaceable) Kazushi Sakuraba, and Katsuyori Shibata (though he seems to get a pass on this critique when he headbutts people for real and blood appears across his immaculate hairline--think here of his grappling, though, not his striking).  Bryan Alvarez and "Filthy" Tom Lawlor articulated this the most clearly not long ago when they pointed to Sakuraba's work on an episode of Figure (Filthy) Four Daily, and said that when he was in with either Fish or O'Reilly (both of whom, to my eye, were beside themselves with joy to be in the same ring as Saku) it just kind of looked like people rolling lightly at the gym, and neither Alvarez nor Lawlor saw the appeal at all. While I do see the appeal (it is neat), they're not wrong in the way the characterize that kind of shootesque, slightly-stronger-than-strong style we see sometimes in New Japan (and elsewhere). What I mean to say here is that whatever exactly that is, Tamura and Kohsaka are extremely not doing it; they are going like absolute hell here and it both looks and more importantly feels real. 

A standup! Of all things! And not one of the referee's doing: Tamura simply disengages and returns to his feet, where neither grappler has been for kind of a while now, given their fighting styles and also taste levels, which in the end are probably the same thing. Both men glisten as though covered by the dew of morn as the referee attends to Tamura's disheveled knee pad, which, until moments ago, ably concealed his pretty thoroughly wrapped and no doubt messed knee, but no more, and they are nearly set to fight anew. 

Thus ends the beginning, twelve minutes of the realest unreal grappling you or I will ever know, except for in grappling matches that are actually real, but they're not as good, so forget it. 

Once Tamura has slapped Kohsaka right in the damn ear and Kohsaka has push-kicked his way into conceding  a winding leglock takedown into yet another leg lock ("Ashi-gatame! Ashi-gatame!") we are back to the mat, which is where I deeply need this to be. Dueling leglocks resolve themselves into a seemingly dire situation for Tamura, caught in a heel hook (without question the grossest of all such holds, ask anybody) some distance from the ropes, and with the pain and worry visible in his aspect but never cartoonishly so the crowd takes all this enormously seriously. After much twisting and scooting Tamura makes the ropes at 13:35 for the bout's first rope break. Have we yet discussed the place rope breaks hold in this Fighting Network? Should one find oneself in straits as dire as those just described, the hold must be broken once uke (he on the business end of waza) grasps the ropes; the symbolic death of ippon is thus evaded as uke flees to the symbolic safety of the forest, finds refuge in its wood-hems and holt-eves. The cost of this is a point; a more exacting  toll of two points is charged the victim of open handed or kickpadded onslaught to the point of unfeeting. After each rope break or knockdown, an on-screen graphic with nine tiny boxes (ten is unnecessary, the bout would be stopped) under each fighter's name  informs the WOWOW audience of just where this tally stands (shade them a green-tinged highlighter yellow for rope escape, a red only slightly less vivid than Tamura's trunks for the fury of a knockdown, or so these colours appear preserved on iffy-trackinged VHS and then later subjected to the pitiless process of digitization). 

Now the kickboxing begins in earnest, with Tamura's kicks seeming the most dangerous weapon here--that, or his fairly heinous willingness to slap TK very hard in the face and ear for real. Under great pressure, Koshaka drops low for an ankle pick (kibusu-gaeshi) but the sprawling Tamura takes his back and sets to work. Once Kohsaka rolls through, and Tamura assumes a north/south position (kami-shiho-gatame), the stage is set for Kohsaka's first attempt this match at the scissors that bare his name, an inverted variation here, the kind he would in time hit on Randy Couture in a straight shoot (he would also throw him, and, I mean, think about that for a moment). But Tamura has seen these scissors, these TK Scissors, before, and is not so easily scissored, owing to his wiles and the designs of his wizardry. Tamura's hips quicken as he does not so much flow as teleport betwixt mount and side control but despite its suddenness this movement allows Kohsaka the room he needs to begin to roll, and of course what he rolls for is a leglock, this time a toe hold that he switches to a knee bar near enough the ropes that it's clear at once that this hold is no match-ender, but Tamura is forced into his second rope escape at 16:05. Kohsaka gets a "HWAAAIIII" of approval from the crowd as I think he holds two fingers briefly but low-key-assuredly towards them as he returns to his corner, emboldened.  

The halfway mark of this thirty-minute-time-limited affair now behind us, we return almost at once to the configuration we left behind only a a moment ago: TK underneath the dynamic Tamura, who this time hunts for armlocks. It takes Tamura no more than a minute to transition a gyaku-ude-garami (Kimura) grip into an inverted juji-gatame with Kohsaka rolling face down under the bottom rope, his first escape at 18:23. Every rope escape returns both men to their feet, which cannot help but favour the exceedingly kicky Tamura, can it, but here Tamura himself initiates the groundwork with a low double. Kohsaka does not remain in (TK?) guard long but sweeps with an ude-garami (Americana, or shall we say double-wrist lock; let us catch-wrestled; let us Fire Pro) and applies jugi-gatame with what I think you would have to call alacrity. After scooching, Tamura's third rope escape comes at 20:04. Such is the rising action of the piece that each catch elicits a greater response from the crowd regardless, now, of where the grapplers are positioned in the ring; the people are just super, super in. 

Kohsaka's reward for nearly ending the match with a tidy reversal of position and a classic application of juji-gatame is that now he must stand with a Kiyoshi Tamura down three points to one, all of them scored trough Kohsaka's mat superiority (thus far), and so a Kiyoshi Tamura who sensibly chooses to press his advantage striking, and so one who absolutely wails on TK, backing him up into his blue corner with hard kicks and open-hand strikes that drive him to the canvas. Tamura does not follow there and continue his barrage, as one would were one engaged in the putrid cretin spectacle of mixed martial arts, but instead returns to his corner; for this is RINGS. Koshaka beats the referee's ten count with little to spare, and the match, now tied at three following this two-point knockdown, resumes at 20:56 and the crowd is doing so much yelling.

Valiant Kohsaka comes forward boldly, and fares better than he had a moment ago, but one hard shot to the face is enough to remind him that when this match was on the ground, he was winning, and now that it is standing, he is totally not, and so he drops low for a double-leg takedown (morote-gari). Tamura sidesteps and ends up on top, but despite the styling he puts on Kohsaka here positionally (the commentator is especially excited by the kesa-gatame, and meeee tooooo), this is still where Kohsaka wants to be, given that, when standing, his ticket is being remorselessly cancelled. "Jujiiiiiii!" a voice cries from the crowd, not unwisely, and Tamura hears the call, but Kohsaka escapes through the back door, takes Tamura's back, and, hooks in, works towards hadaka-jime, the naked strangle (I was once misheard whilst saying "rear naked choke" and Sensei J. Comrie, 5th dan, 1976 Judo Olympian, said "bare naked choke, haha, that's a new one!" and I was mortified, even after I repeated myself more cleary and he said "ah ok" [he is a very nice man and a great teacher and to learn from him was a privilege and I am in his debt]). Here both men become tangled in the ropes, and so there is a rope break, but not a rope escape that gets charted to anyone, so they are merely restarted on their feet. 

The crowd approves so hard when, once Tamura slips and falls during the striking exchange that follows, Kohsaka, after the merest moment's hesitation, allows his opponent to stand again rather than leap atop him in the most mildly unsportsmanlike manner you could even come up with. "Such . . . decency," they say with their quick polite applause, and they are correct. Tamura, though appreciative, chops TK down with a low kick, sinks in a mounted front choke/guillotine/mae-hadaka-jime, and forces a rope escape to take his first lead at 24:04. These guys look spent, and yet they come out firing with just under six minutes to go: things get so heated that Kohsaka throws a high kick combination, of all things, and the crowd's position on that is "hahahaha what is even going on right now hahahah oh man" only there is no laughter in what they are doing. Spirited though it was, the TK High Kick Combo comes to a close with Tamura grabbing a leg and stepping over into knee bar that has everyone at Tokyo Bay NK Hall (and eighteen years and I don't know how many viewings later, me too, kind of) convinced that this is it: the not-even-that-tight camera shot from above reveals the grimacing pair adrift in a sea of blue canvas, the safe harbour of how it says WOWOW near the ropes nowhere to be seen. "GIVE UP? GIVE UP?" Fire Pro referee Panther Trottori inquires as the crowd's pitch continues to rise, but Kohsaka inches his way both towards the ropes and out of the hold. Tamura switches to a figure-four ankle lock, Koshaka lunges desperately, and the rope escape comes at 25:05.

Down by two points with less than five minutes to go, the exhausted Kohsaka needs to somehow push the pace standing against the superior striker, and to his immense credit does so by employing the throwing techniques of Kodokan judo: the only person more excited than me by the harai-goshi hip sweep TK hits out of the corner is the commentator, and we're both completely right, it really is tremendous. Tamura's ukemi is strong though, and he rolls through and and indeed on top, but cedes his position to apply juji-gatame, to which Kohsaka responds by posturing up, throwing his leg across Tamura's head, and attacking with his own juji-gatame to force the rope escape, and at this point this is just the greatest thing you will see, and actually has pretty much been that for some time. Tamura's lead is now but a point at 26:06.

Clinching worked out so well for Kohsaka last time that he is eager to get there and throw again (aren't we all), but this time Tamura fills him in nicely with a solid knee to the body. Undaunted (or maybe a little daunted; it was a very hard knee), TK traps the head and arm and rolls through for a hikkikomi-gaeshi sacrifice technique, maintains his grip, and forces the tying rope escape with an arm-in guillotine at 27:07. The rising action is rising so hard right now.

Tamura and Kohsaka now muster all of their considerable art into communicating their sheer exhaustion. That art, in addition to the very actual exhaustion they are no doubt very much totally for real feeling also, makes for quite a scene as Tamura braces an arm on the bottom rope whilst TK holds on one knee. Again they stand, again they clinch, and again Kohsaka looks to throw, but as he performs the tsukuri or entry for the harai-goshi hip sweep that earlier launched Tamura so thoroughly, Tamura, now wise to this scene, drops his weight to the rear. Koshaka loosens (indeed looses) his grip and attacks with a rolling kneebar in the most sambo of fashions, but seems too exhausted to finish it as Tamura slips out and assumes the mount. What better time than now for the TK Scissors, the least probable of all mount-escapes that actually kind of work? Not long ago my friend David brought to my attention Josh Barnett's character's mention of the TK Scissors in the surprisingly excellent (in a belated VHS-you-rent-from-the-corner-store idiom) Michael Jai White vehicle Never Back Down (3): No Surrender, which led me not only to the immediate delight I took in this knowledge, but also to consider once more Kohsaka's performance in the Lumax Cup: Tournament of J '95, where he hit the technique again and again against Egan Inoue en route to victory. I then taught the scissors the next time I had the chance at judo, and we all agreed that it was fairly absurd, and yet I hit the move in transition against someone consistently and demonstrably better than me that very same night, probably in no small part because I threw him off by exclaiming "TK SCISSOR TIME!"  just before attempting it. 

TK exclaims nothing here, and achieves only partial success: Tamura is badly unbalanced by the scissors, but remains unswept, and the juji-gatame Tamura fixes fast looks like the end until the knee bar with which Kohsaka counters looks even more that way. Although they are quite near the ropes, with so little time left in a tied match each catch threatens to be decisive regardless of ring position; the crowd recognizes this, and is bananas. Now the toe hold that inevitably follows the abandoned knee bar (it is like the seasons) does so, but rather than seem perfunctory it seems menacing and the crowd is shrieking as this time Kohsaka goes back to the knee bar after the toe hold only for Tamura to slip out of the whole mess and take the back with both hooks in and the choke nearly sunk but Tamura's left hook is in so deep Kohsaka can counter with a simple yet subtle hiza-tori-garami trapping the foot and extending it painfully causing Tamura to not only release the choke but look longingly towards the nearby bottom rope but it's far too late for a rope escape to bring anything but certain defeat and so he fights on and slides through to a juji-gatame screaming with exertion as he struggles to break Kohsaka's defensive grip as the bell sounds and the crowd bellows a low "WOOOOAAAAAAHHHHAAAAA" to end this the greatest bout ever as a time-limit draw. A time-limit draw! Who would have thought that the greatest professional wrestling match of all time would be a shoot style time-limit draw? And yet here we are, confronted with that incontestable fact. 

While the fighters lie still, exhausted, Akira Maeda, enormous at ringside, speaks with the referee and timekeeper to confirm that yes, the time did indeed expire in this the greatest match anyone has ever seen before Tamura was able to either see his hold through to completion or force Kohsaka to concede defeat by either rope escape or submitting for ippon. Koshsaka rises to his feet first, and bounds spiritedly to the crowd's deep and hearty approval. He is soon enough joined by Tamura, and the two embrace, smiling, and I am moved at their joy.

Here, please, watch the whole match yourself.

This was the not the first time Kohsaka and Tamura had met (4/27/97, Tamura by ashi-dori-garami in 13:57), nor would it be the last (1/23/99, Kohsaka by harai-goshi to juji-gatame in 9:42; U-Style 2/4/04, Tamura by juji-gatame in 15:51), and, although you may hear otherwise, each of their encounters occur at the absolute highest level of this style and indeed of style itself. Be deeply suspicious of the taste levels of those who would even hint to the contrary, and be particularly wary of those who argue the 1/23/99 bout is the black sheep among them (they betray their anti-judoism and thus themselves; that finish was flawless).  Kiyoshi Tamura is the finest shoot stylist we have seen--or will ever see, we may just as well say, given U-Style's death and unlikeliness ever to rise again--surpassing even the great Volk Han (may both find entry soon to the Wrestling Observer Hall of Fame; I remain in a state of perpetual outrage until this is resolved), and Tsuyoshi Kohsaka his best opponent. 

It is no doubt self-defeating to begin a years-long essay (in the original sense of an attempt) into the Fighting Network we call RINGS by beginning with the greatest match it or any other promotion has ever staged; clearly everything else that follows will be lesser. But here we are; the RINGS are before us; there are certain things that can be said; let's say some of them.