October 29, 1992 in Nagoya, Japan
Rainbow Hall drawing 8,100
A gorgeous ambient synth opening invites us to assemble with the people of Nagoya in celebration of the opening round of this inaugural MEGA-BATTLE tournament until the tune switches into what is I guess the just generally-commercially-available music that accompanied Prime Time Sports, Canada's leading sportstalk radio presentation for many years, a show that I listened to daily in what really does feel like several lifetimes ago. How could I possibly have cared? How could my taste level have been in such disarray? What specific steps did I take to get from that point in taste to this? If I knew I might enumerate them for the benefit of others and indeed humanity and so I genuinely wish I could say but so much is lost now, I am sorry.
Akira Maeda backstage in a tracksuit (which is to say, Akira Maeda) offers his soft-spoken thoughts regarding the shape of things to come as the MEGA-BATTLE brackets appear in an on-screen graphic that calls to mind the Wrestlemania IV fold-out bracket that could be had at the Hostess chips display at the Green Gables convenience store up the hill and which made the chip-bag wrestling sticker-chase, already electric, a singular chip-bag sticker-chase, exceeding even the one where their were bands, and indeed groups. I would ask that you behold it (the RINGS one):
When I tell you that fighters were both weighed-in and paraded, I pray that, given what we have built together already, you will be able to believe me. It is perhaps worth noting that not only do stray voices shout out MAEDAAAAAA when Akira Maeda himself parades, but they do so when other fighters parade as well, and it is sort of thrilling. Again the best-loved foreign fighter is plainly Dick Fry, even more so than the probably incomparable Volk Han. I have at times espoused the view that Kiyoshi Tamura is in fact, by the narrowest margin, the finest shoot-stylist we have seen or known, but having these earliest Volk Han bouts visited upon me and experiencing them not as given but as gift has led me to doubt that earlier assertion. In the fullness of time perhaps this can be known, but maybe not, who can say.
Dimitri Petkov will face Vladimir Kravchuk in our opening bout, and he will both warm-up and enter the ring in a shirt with cats on it that says "LOVE IS BLIND," see for yourself:
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| it is, you know |
The pace here is slow but the men are huge and so it is true and we must remain free of complaint. Kravchuk has thrown with a massive harai-goshi hip sweep, Petkov with a slow, deliberate ura-nage, and there is a low-key rising action to it all. Neither fighter seems entirely at home in ne-waza, or at least to its kansetsu (joint-locking) and shime (strangulation) waza (techniques, as you know). There is a certain brutal efficiency though to Petkov's arm-in kubi-hishigi neck crank that ends the bout at 8:52 to the cheers of a Rainbow Hall impressed, I think, by sheer girth as much as anything else, both his and his foe's. These boys . . . these boys are big.
Hans Nijman, the Volkswagen-Golf-heavy details of whose death we encountered only recently (R.I.P.), is next in against Georgi Keandelaki and once again I will note that there is no commentary on this RINGS in a celebration of taste levels (theirs, ours, perhaps God's). Georgi Keandelaki is in every bit of his movement and aspect a boxer, and so I search to see to what degree of accomplishment, and I learn that he will go to box for the proud nation of Georgia at the 1996 Olympic Games, claim a World Amateur title in 1997 (the first of his people to so do), and hold the World Boxing Union Heavyweight title in 2002 and 2003 before retiring to a life of coaching and sports administration following an eye injury. He boxes Nijman up ably in the first, but is ura-nage'd nearly beyond recognition in the second. Oddly, Keandelaki himself throws with a kind of harai-makikomi winding hip sweep, hardly a core technique of his discipline, but he is growing as an artist and we should support that. In the third, Nijman seems dickishly unfazed by Keandelaki's onslaught to the body (it is a work, Hans, come on), and early in the fourth our departed friend takes the match by head-kick knockout (0:35 Round 4).
The feeling of this card two bouts in is so low key ("like sea shells," as the GZA tells us at the height of his poesy), and so nice.
Willie Peeters! I neglected to mention that he did a cartwheel in the ring during the parade of fighters and the crowd saluted him for it. If he does not best Herman Renting in the match that is now upon us I will be "shoot" disappointed because I want to see Willie Peeters take it to the very top of the mid-card rather than remain mired in the mid-mid-card (that's death). I say all of this lightly, of course, as every match on every card so far has been well-treated by the fans, regardless of its position (I am not sure why but that is what has happened). Peeters does exactly what we want of him almost at once, an arching lateral drop (yoko-otoshi) with an odd jackaly look on his face the whole time, recalling no one so much as former hockey player of modest note Ville Nieminen (I mostly noted him for looking like a jackal). Renting takes his back pretty firmly, though, and attacks with a choke for a rope escape. When they're returned to their feet, they hit each other awfully hard for a while and should probably take it easy. Renting rides Peeters down and does something to a leg that would never even inconvenience it, get it together, Herman, you're embarrassing yourself right now. Peeters really gets the better of things standing, at least until Renting punches him right in the face and is admonished for this (Renting is contrite). An odd break in the action comes a short time later when Renting I guess jams his fingers in the way I most associate with catching a football terribly, and he receives a soothing spray-balm from his corner. Nearly ten minutes in, Peeters hits maybe the sikkest throw of his already robust RINGS career, a kubi-nage headlock takeover that is not just authoritative but rudely so. Renting has had an odd habit of just backing up into a corner and letting Peeters wail on him for a while, and it seems pretty miserable. This tactic is redeemed though, I guess, when Peeters corners Renting, botches a throw to get him out of there (after some light wailing), allowing Renting to take the back and quickly sink the short-side, trachea-annihilating variation of hadaka-jime for the submission win at 12:10. I had been hoping for Peeters!
Sotir Gotchev and Andrei Kopilov MEGA-BATTLE next. I don't know and cannot find anything about this Sotir Gotchev but I will tell you what is immediately apparent: he is a good thrower! And so this should totally be good, because Andrei Kopilov, you will recall, is good at this (the broad this) as well. Kopilov is not dissuaded by his recent loss on an errant juji-gatame attempt; he has decided to get right back on the cross-mark-horse, and good for him. He is also super fond of leg-locks, and there are many to be found in the early going here. Kopilov is all over Gotchev, forcing rope breaks and crushing him, a little, with knees. Kopilov is doing it again, he is trying to grip-break a juji-gatame by rolling to the hip! Doesn't he know that is only valid when your body-side (as opposed to head-side) leg is trapped? If it's entangled between his legs in the mode of niju-garami, it is a grand idea to roll to the hip of your trapped leg and, as uke rises, stomp your head-side foot to the mat, driving your upper thigh and, if so blessed, your lower seat very much into uke's now-mashed face. This is all well-established, and popularized by Korean judo master Ki-Young Jeon in an old tape called Jeon, Korean Judo Master (why overthink it). But in rolling towards the body when his leg is not trapped, Kopilov risks the very same fate he met at the hands of Maeda Akira. But who am I to tell Andrei Kopilov anything, let alone this specific thing. He is doing great! In this good match! And in fact he has just now won by armlock, though of a very different kind, a waki-gatame (armpit-hold/Fujiwara armbar) with Gotchev's face driven squarely into the mat. Searching for anything on Gotchev led me to a thread at the Kayfabe Memories board (I have never liked that name) that listed this match result as ANDREI KOPILOV OVER SOTIR GOTCHEV (JUDO ARMBAR 11:50) and it is not wrong!
Another show with only limited graphical use of the Roman alphabet frees me to say Dirk Vrij as much as I please, and oh, I please. Anyone as conversant in the still-nascent discourse of RINGS as we find ourselves at this moment would expect Vrij to make rather short work of the stout Nobuaki Kakuta but we have been surprised once so far this evening (R.I.P. Willie Peeters' Mega-Battle hopes) and so who among us can speak to the shape of things to come. Kakuta is looking both more shredded and more chill than he has previously. He is snapping his tiny kicks in there but when Vrij returns the ball he chops him down with sweet ease. I think this is a work but I also think I am worried about how badly Kakuta is being beaten for real. The crowd is KA KU TA KA KU TA though and this is not the way they usually are for him so perhaps he has decided this is the way he will connect with people. Vrij is grinning and stalking him, though, and there is no way this ends well. Vrij is nearly a foot taller, I think. This (by which I mean the match, not my height-speculation) kind of feels wrong and a little upsetting. When Vrij transitions from driving his fist into Kakuta's throat (the referee asks him to stop) to ude-hishigi-juji-gatame my hope is Kakuta will tap, but alas he makes the ropes, and does so again on the next juji-gatame attempt. Stay down, Nobuaki; stay down. But his fighting spirit will not allow it, and in fact he manages a slumping little takedown of his own and a leg-lock attack that causes a rope break. It doesn't go too well after that, though, as he gets knocked down pitilessly four times in less than a minute and I am including the counting. Add in the knockdown that occurred pretty much right at the opening bell and that makes five, the number of times you can be knocked down from strikes to the head to at last compel RINGS's institutional mercy.
Chris Dolman thinks "this tournament is very good idea" even though he must face Grom Zaza in its first round and we should applaud him for his broadminded approach. He makes his way to the ring as part of a Dutch-train caboosed by Hans Nijman. Dolman is going once again with the loose shorts over the singlet and even though both are black this is not a slimming look. Zaza looks young and lean and hungry and I cannot help but worry for Dolman as the blows are rained upon his still-imposing-but-increasingly-loose form. Zaza, unsurprisingly, takes him down with little effort, and attacks with a Boston "kata-ashi-hishigi" Crab for a rope escape, and again the same for another. Dolman looks his age--well not actually his age, as I have looked it up and he was already 47 here, somehow--but older than someone fighting should look (I don't think this one is real). Dolman's wiles are still wily though, and he grabs a gyaku-ude-garami/double-wrist-lock/Kimura from beneath for a screaming submission win (in that Zaza was screaming) in only 5:27!
Masaaki Satake and Mitsuya Nagai carries with it the hope and I would go so far as to say the promise of immense karate and so I welcome it. OK in fact this was very odd: Sataki threw a punch to the face, which one is not supposed to do really, and Nagai just stood there for an instant, then dropped for the KO at 1:25. Not a great one! As soon as he is through the curtain Nagai drops to his knees and cries. I am at a loss!
AKIRA MAEDA VS. VOLK HAN is a credible RINGS main event I guess and in recognition of this the Rainbow Hall Nagoya crowd is lit (when I say "lit" it is short for "liturgical" and I hope that is what everybody else means when they say it as well). Just after the referee tells them to fight but before bell even rings (RINGS) Volk Han hits his spinning backhand to Akira Maeda's big unsuspecting head and he is knocked the the mat and the crowd does not like this at all! And who could blame them. Maeda, outstruck, seeks the comfort of græppling, but against Han what more dangerous comfort could there be? Right? For example Han is going for his odd but compelling double-heel-hook exactly now, at this very moment, and it has to be troubling to both Maeda and to his partisans yelling MAEDAAAAAAA also at this very moment. Such a tangle of legs, just an endless tangle of them, that when Han chooses to float up to a juji-gatame attack it comes as a relief to all. He jerks the hold, rather than apply pressure slowly and evenly, and the crowd gasps but Maeda makes the ropes.
Maeda drags Han down with a low gyaku-ude-garami double-wrist-lock grip and works towards a yoko-sankaku-jime (side triangle choke) for maybe the first time in RINGS, and I am immensely fond of that technique and so probably would have noticed if anyone had tried it before. But there is nothing there. Back on their feet, Maeda answers Han's osoto-gari (major outer reap) with an ura-nage which is such a fundamental kaeshi-waza (counter technique) that I feel great. We are up and we are down and we are up again in this match, not at once, but with a kind of half-languid pace that has characterized this card in its pleasant entirety. Maeda (rope) escapes Han's simultaneous front-choke/te-gatame that we all agreed (look, we agreed) to refer to as The Double Agony in Man but the reward he then goes to is a signature Volk Han kani-basami flying crab-scissor and so from Maeda's perspective, perhaps, it was not much of one. Back up, Maeda spins out of Han's kouchi-gari (minor-inner-reap) and into a variation of the much loved kesa-gatame (Kesa is King, Kesa is Queen) called makura-kesa-gatame (pillow-scarf-hold), so named because you drive your leg up under your pal's head the better to squish him.
Leg-locks to rope escapes to leg-locks to rope escapes: it's all here. The crowd is nearly silent aside from MAAAEEEDAAAAAAAAs here and there, but whenever anyone is caught even slightly, the HHHHHWOOOOOAAAAHHH rises at once to a great din. Maeda finds an advantage striking, which leads a wary Han to rely even more on his flying scissors than he usually does, if you can conceive of it. Maeda does it too! Kani-basami! Right into a leglock! No time for any more on that now because as soon as they got back up Maeda tagged Han with a knee for a knockdown and Han barely made the count! Han is in trouble! Han is so badly off his pace now that Maeda can style on him slightly on the mat, cycling through positions looking for the perfect hold (aren't we all). That double heel hook, though, that double heel hook; Han does not want for cræft.
These guys look awfully tired as we pass the twenty minute mark, but not too tired for a tobi-juji-gatame (flying armbar) from Volk Han! That doesn't do the trick, and neither does the Double Agony in Man II/reverse-STF that follows, and Han looks spent. Maeda knocks him down with a hard slap, and we are really getting down to it in terms of knockdowns and escapes, in that neither guy has very many of either left (Maeda is doing better on this score, though). Han is hands-on-knees tired as they come to their feet for I believe the thousandth time, and shake hands as though to congratulate each other for their efforts thus far and oooooh just a moment after that it is a head-kick knockdown for Maeda, and Han is all out of knockdowns (he's so lost without them), so even though he springs back to his feet with no apparent idea as to why the bell was sounded, that is it! TKO at 23:27! That was grueling! Maeda is greeted in the locker room by Mitsuya Nagai, who is either crying still or crying anew but either way it is uncomfortable and I feel for him because of our shared humanity. Thank you for your time and attention, and look at Akira Maeda!
WHAT DID DAVE MELTZER SAY:
September 28, 1992:
A reader writes (in part):
Is PPV available in England and how did this show do? How do you think PPV will affect the Japanese wrestling scene? I enjoyed reading about your trip to Japan. It made my mouth water just thinking about attending those shows live, especially All Japan women. I see your point about hot shot angles and screw jobs but I don't think a straight wrestling style like in Japan would work in the U.S. I think you need a balance. I believe all TV shows should have hot shot angles and outrageous interviews but all the feuds should culminate with straight matches with conclusive endings. That way you can build up feuds and personal matters, which is why most U.S. fans tune in. I'd like to address your remarks about Akira Maeda. I have to admit he's accomplished some incredible things, but my personal opinion is that he's nothing but a cheap shot artist and a fraud. If you're going to hand out praise for someone doing a lot of with nothing, talk about Atsushi Onita. Onita has even less to work with than Maeda. They both have built promotions without any talent, but Maeda started out with a larger than life rep. Onita had basically nothing to work with and right now FMW has a brighter future than Rings. Also, with or without Hogan around, Onita is the only choice for babyface of the year. I've never seen anyone get crowds as rabid a Onita.
Jeff Benson
Concord, California
DM: There is no PPV in England. It doesn't seem like there will be any in Japan in the foreseeable future. If it comes to Japan, the result will probably be that all the promotions will peak for the big shows and cut down on the touring shows. New Japan is going in that direction anyway. It was a direction largely started by Maeda's success in running monthly shows and cutting out the touring. Obviously wrestling in this country needs angles, but I think that now, with the business' reputation in disarray and the fact the hot shot angles haven't worked, you need to build matches with believable personal issues. Angles based on fantasy, characters that are unbelievable and implausible scenarios have knocked the foundation of popularity out from under this business. While All Japan doesn't run angles, New Japan runs personal issues and doesn't get carried away with running so many that when they run them, they almost all have impact. Trying to run an angle for every match on the card just dilutes the angles on top, which are the only ones that draw money to begin with. New Japan also doesn't get carried away with its angles. They all fall in the realm of believability. As far as Onita is concerned, he has to be given credit for building a very successful promotion out of practically nothing by finding his own niche. This is not meant to downgrade him, but Onita is perceived like a pro wrestler while Maeda is perceived as something apart and more respectful than a pro wrestler which is a phenomenon from his ability as a self-promoter and promoter in general. I'm not sure which has a brighter future because both groups look strong today, but they are also both cult promotions, subject to the ups and downs of fads. But FMW, as successful as it is, is still considered "garbage wrestling" in fans' eyes whereas RINGS is thought of a sport on a higher plane than pro wrestling. As far as Maeda being a cheap shot artist, the thing in 1987 was a cheap shot, but that was also five years ago. As far as him being a fraud, technically you're right, but by those standards, everyone in the wrestling business would qualify as pretty much the same thing, he's just done a better job than most.
October 12, 1992: "RINGS on 10/29 in Nagoya has the first round of the Mega Battle tournament 'to determine the toughest gladiator who walks the Earth', which continues with quarterfinals on 11/13 in Osaka, semifinals on 12/19 at Tokyo Ariake Coliseum and the tournament final on January 23, 1993 at Tokyo Bay NK Hall. First round matches are Masaaki Satake (Japanese karate ace) vs. Mitsuya Nagai, Willie Peeters (Holland) vs. Herman Renting (Holland), Dick Fry (Holland) vs. Nobuhiko Kakuta, Hans Nyman (Holland) vs. Georgi Kandaraahki (Greece), Chris Dolman (Holland) vs. Grom Zaza (Graziya, USSR), Andrei Kopielov (Graziya) vs. Sotel Kochiev (Bulgaria), Akira Maeda vs. Volk Han (Graziya) and Vladimir Kravchuk (Graziya) vs. Dimita Petokov (Bulgaria)."
November 9, 1992: "Rings drew 8,100 in Nagoya on 10/29 for the first round of Mega Battle tournament. Quarterfinals are 11/13 in Osaka and will have Masaaki Satake vs. Willie Peetres, Dirk Leon-Vrij vs. Hans Nyman, Chris Dolman vs. Andrei Kopielov and Akira Maeda vs. Dimita Petokov. Semifinals are 12/19 in Tokyo and finals are 1/23/92 in Tokyo."
November 16, 1992: "RINGS karate fighter Masaaki Satake suffered a broken leg and is out of the Mega Battle tournament. Satake is the only regular who hasn't done a job yet in RINGS and there was a good chance he was being programmed to face Akira Maeda in the tournament finals originally. Based on the bracketing, it appeared the semifinals in December at Ariake Coliseum would be Satake vs. Dirk Leon-Vrij and either Chris Dolman or Andrei Kopilov vs. Maeda. Now, barring a surprise, the January finals took to be Maeda vs. Vrij."
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