December 19, 1992 in Tokyo, Japan
Ariake Coliseum drawing 11,600
Hard to believe we are nearing the end of the (Gregorian) calendar year of 1992 with these our Mega Battle Tournament Semi-Finals! The RINGSturgical year, of course, carrying with it its deeper rhythms and significances, will not truly resolve itself until late January 1993, at which point the Mega Battle Tournament 92 Grand Finals will have made known their champion. But until there is that, there is only this, and so let us to't pell-mell, if not to heaven, then hand in hand to hell, except we have every reason to expect this will be super good so the last part is needless. TO'T!
We get only an abbreviated parade of fighters tonight at the always-echoey and totally-my-favourite Ariake Coliseum, in that they cut straight to the part where Akira Maeda addresses the crowd in a tracksuit, and he must be doing material here because he has the people in stitches. There is no messing around here, the first bout is upon us already! Yoshihisa Yamamoto clad in yellow faces Nobuaki Kakuta in his darkest weeds of widowhood. You will recall that Kakuta has been endearing himself to his public by getting just endlessly battered by pretty much everyone and it is totally working. Yamamoto is endearing himself to me just going out there and getting after that waza, man, just getting it done (even when he does not). This bout will be contested in a series of five three-minute rounds, and I am not at all sure why they do that sometimes and straight-time at other times. My initial impression was that the matches divided up in rounds seemed to have had a better shot at being real? But I am not at all sure this has held up to even the least scrutinous of scrutinies.
In the first round, Yamamoto comes close with first a Volk Han reverse S.T.F./Double Agony in Man and then a kata-ashi-hishigi straight ankle lock, and ably controls Kakuta's position throughout the second before firing up the Double Agony again (the dread double Double). Yamamoto's got a neat double leg-lock, too, where he pretty much has a hiza-hishigi slicer on one while he messes around with both hands on the other; good for him, that looked slick. It serves him well aesthetically but in terms of the fighting he gets knocked down clubbingly to open the third, so really it's closer than what might fairly be inferred from what I have written so far. Yamamoto still has the overall advantage, I think it, and presses it with solid attempts at both juji-gatame and a full-on, hooks-in hadaka-jime (rear naked choke) by round three's end. In round four the pace slows a little, but, I mean, let's be fair to these men. Kakuta is hauling an oft-locked leg around like an anchor, and yet he wills himself to wail on Yamamoto with that selfsame anchor to the point of low-kick knockdown. Ah jeez he keeps that up pretty thoroughly in the fifth, and I don't like to see people's knees take a pounding even when they only pretending to fight (maybe especially when they are only pretending to fight?). Yamamoto is still clearly the better of the two when they take to the mat but Kakuta, in terms of kicking but also of hitting, is very strong. The crowd is main-event-level-into Yamamoto's struggles as his knees are pounded into dust between the pestle of Kakuta's blows and the mortar of being.
As the fifth rounds end, there seems some measure of confusion as to how to proceed. Yamamoto is seen making wave-it-off gestures about something I cannot discern, and a white-haired man is consulted at ringside. He now speaks, in his winters-earned wisdom, and though I cannot tell you what of, I can say with all certainty that the crowd agrees completely. Round six! OK here we go the crowd is wild for this! A flurry of kicks to Yamamoto's legs and Kakuta wins the day at 0:14 of this bonus (and apparently golden score) sixth round! A heated bout!
Mitsuya Nagai sees the debuting Serguei Susserov in the corner opposite in exquisite purple pants and a fine build for a short little chap. Susserov quickly reveals himself to be an artist working exclusively in the media of enormous throws and aggressive juji-gatame attempts and I am won to his side at once. He's got leg-locks, too, if you can believe it, and Nagai is down two rope escapes a minute or two in. My goodness these throws! They are pretty much all of the yoko-otoshi and ura-nage massive arching sacrifice variety and I am so pleased with them and with him. He does jumping reverse spin kicks, too! And shrieks whilst jumping them! So much has been achieved already here, only minutes in. Nagai is not utterly without his own things, but they are so badly overshadowed here it is hard to hold them in the mind even long enough to comment on them. O-goshi, that biggest of hips, is yet another technique that finds expression here through this vessel of Susserov. You know what, it turns out I don't actually like his jump kicks, which are more than a little too theatrical, but arguably this is an imperfection Susserov deliberately maintains in his art so that it might not be figured an affront to God. But soon enough he is back to the koshi-waza family of hip techniques and my criticisms fade to irrelevance.
Almost despite himself, I think, Nagai just happened a lovely bit of ne-waza when his failed juji-gatame ended up as the ashi-sankaku-garami (leg-triangle-entanglement) that has come to be known as the Huizinga roll (after the great Dutch and Olympic Champion Mark Huizinga) and then, again, to juji-gatame (but, alas, the ropes). Oh my goodness Nagai got him! Just a huge combination of knees and hitting and then knees and also hitting! That is a knockout at 17:29 and both of these fights have been really good so far.
Rudy Ewoldt, about whom little is known but thickness, next faces Georgi Keandelaki, whose status as venerable Georgian boxing legend is well established among those of us who found that out the other day. The first of a scheduled (but who can say) five rounds largely involves mostly body-punching but Ewoldt gets off a pretty significant ippon-seoi-nage which is to say judo throw with about a minute to go in it. We have a Keandelaki knockout win from body punches that mostly hit the arms and then a slap at 1:38 of the second, and, mysteriously, a number of sites list on this date and at this event a legitimate shoot win for Keandelaki against someone named Vladimir Kravchuk, and I have no idea how this was any of those things.
VOLK HAN IS NEXT against Sotir Gotchev so this starts at I guess four and a half stars and we just make minor adjustments up and down from there probably. I have gleaned that this week shall be the week of the Wrestling Observer Hall of Fame issue and one can only speculate as to whether or not people will finally be sensible (there is little reason to hope). Just after the handshake, but before he bell, Gotchev gets a little cute and fires in a kick that well-displeases the crowd and the referee but which Volk Han seemed to take genuinely good-natured amusement in. Han himself has previously been a little jumpy before the bell so perhaps he is like Sotir Gotchev, c'est moi a little. Gotchev has the early lead in throwing, also, as he hoists Han around pretty effortlessly, but Han, unstunningly, looks to be the slicker of the two on the mat, coming close with a sankaku-jime (triangle choke) and hadaka-jime (naked choke) before standing and getting tossed again. How will Han overcome this pronounced imbalance in throwing skills? Will it be through cræft and wiles? It would appear so, as he ties Gotchev up in a weird tangle of a standing wrist lock and scores a knockdown with an elbow to the chest that suggests nothing so much as a kind of ritual murder. The standing ude-gatame straight armlock that follows looks like a sure submission until Gotchev just picks Han up and puts him down as though Han were nothing more than an eager toddler and Gotchev his grown-up. It is not as though Gotchev, who comes close on more than one hadaka-jime, is completely at sea on the mat; it is just that Volk Han is a poet of there.
I am disappointed that Han's combination te-gatame armlock/standing choke is not effective in this instance but it is affective in every instance so it's okay. His use of the oldest of old school sukui-nage scooping throws marks the first time that waza has been seen in either competition or the simulation of competition in perhaps decades and I thank him for that, too. The referee's instruction is "FAITO," and, when Gotchev has clearly not quite heard him, "Hey, faito," and this has actually been a pretty long match I think. Woah okay there's the finish at 14:25 with the weirdest standing reverse-grip cross-choke with an arm in? A most arcane form of juji-jime, the cross choke? I don't know but it was a wild scene:
The slow-motion replayists at WOWOW seem far less impressed with whatever it is that was, exactly, and are way more into the murder-elbow that scored the first knockdown, and they are right.
AND NOW THE MEGA BATTLE SEMI-FINALS THEMSELVES ARE HERALDED BY THE HERALDRY OF SPECIAL MUSIC TO MAKE CLEAR IT IS TIME FOR THEM AND ALSO THIS GRAPHIC
Our first such match will see Herman Renting I believe pummeled horrendously by Dick Fly. I think of all the early RINGS regulars the one I am the least interested in is Herman Renting; I don't know if that has come across so far but it is how I feel, I cannot even say why. It isn't because he can't throw, because he totally just took Fly over and into kesa-gatame (scarf hold) in a way that should appeal to me directly and in truth it does and yet here I am, looking at a Herman Renting who leaves me cold despite this. "It's not actually bad rap, I just don't feel it; there, I said it," Doseone rapped in a rap one time but don't say anything about how he did that or anything about him at all on Twitter, no matter how admiring of his poesy, because he searches his own name and it's embarrassing (I don't think he searches RINGS blogs). Much as in round one, Renting has the best of the græppling in round two, and has the decency, I guess, to apologize spontaneously for raking Fly across the face with a scoop-shaped hand whilst atop him, but what was your scoop-shaped hand doing at his nose to begin with? I don't know about this guy one bit. Fly has a moment of control on the mat as round two ends, and gets in a light gyaku-kata-gatame in the mode of the gator roll but it is too late.
In round three Herman Renting is charmless; he begins round four similarly. Why can't Dick Fly used his muscles and end this? Okay good, he did, hitting him a million times for a knockout with only a second to go in the fifth round. In the locker room, Fly is asked who he would rather face in the MEGA BATTLE TOURNAMENT 92 FINAL, and without a moment's hesitation he says, "Maeda. Dolman is my teacher, I don't want to fight him." Well let's just see!
Setting aside whatever qualms I have had (though they are not minor) with Chris Dolman's ring attire of late, he is truly among the greats of huge Dutch proto-mixed-fight/worked-shoot judo players in sikk track suits and I respect the hell out of every bit of that, so when I say to you I have no expectation that he has much of a chance here against RINGS ace Akira Maeda I do not say it out of a failure to grasp Dolman's magnificence in any of its manifold dimensions. Just look at these pictures of Dolman and his students just out there in the (presumably kvlt, fvkkn) forest getting it done that TOM posted:
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BUT ENOUGH ABOUT CHRIS DOLMAN WHAT DID DAVE MELTZER HAVE TO SAY ABOUT CHRIS DOLMAN:
December 7, 1992: As part of a piece on Jim Cornette and Smoky Mountain Wrestling, Dave notes in passing, "Atsushi Onita and Akira Maeda are making fortunes in Japan as niche promotions rather than trying to be an everything for everyone group."
December 14, 1992: "Sergei Suselov, who was the teenage Soviet national champion in sambo in 1989 and also the national teenage bodybuilding champion, will work for RINGS starting next year." [I guess he got bumped up!]
December 21, 1992: "RINGS 12/19 Ariake Coliseum show had all the $160, $120 and $80 seats sold out weeks ahead." Also in a note about merchandise sales at a WWF show Dave attended at the Cow Palace, he writes, "A few notes on the show beforehand. First, the lines and demand for merchandise is nowhere close to what it was even a few months ago. It's like night and day compared with almost all the offices in Japan, even the small ones, let alone Maeda where you have to stand in line for 15 minutes just to get near the tables."
December 28, 1992: "In Tokyo, strong-style groups RINGS and UWFI ran shows 12/19 and 12/20 respectively, both drawing sellout crowds in 11,500 seat arenas with $162 top ticket prices. RINGS saw the major surprise as Chris Dolman was put over Akira Maeda via kneelock submission on Maeda's bad knee in the Mega-Battle tournament semifinals. The tournament championship match on 1/23 in Tokyo will have Dolman vs. Dick Leon-Fry to determine the first RINGS champion with Maeda in the semifinal for the first time against Herman Renting. It's one of those moves Maeda does whenever he has to, because the title will do more business with Maeda starting out as the challenger. The guy doesn't let his ego get in the way of doing what's right for the company. "
Then we have Dave's personal end-of-year picks, which offer the following on Maeda.
From "Wrestler of the Year": "Nobody this year stands out in all categories. Atsushi Onita and Akira Maeda are the most valuable wrestler to their promotions, which both did well this past year. However, Onita gets thrown out because he's an average worker and Maeda didn't work enough although seeing him live, he's deceptively good within the framework of his style."
From "Most Charismatic": "Really, Akira Maeda has more charisma than anyone in this business over the past several years with the exception of Hogan. For a one-man promotion to draw the houses they did, he's got to be taken very seriously here. I'll go with Vampire first because he literally came out of nowhere while the rest have been established stars for years. Maeda second."
We also have: "Gong Magazine's fan popularity balloting results: Natives: 1) Misawa; 2) Muto; 3) Tsuruta; 4) Tenryu; 5) Choshu; 6) Onita; 7) Chono; 8) Kawada; 9) Hase; 10) Kobashi; 11) Maeda; 12) Fujinami; 13) Liger; 14) Inoki; 15) Funaki; 16) Dragon; 17) Taue; 18) Takada; 19) Hashimoto; 20) Kikuchi. On the foreign side: 1) Hansen; 2) Dynamite Kid; 3) Hogan; 4) Norton; 5) Sting; 6) Vader; 7) Gordy; 8) Ultimate Warrior; 9) Scott Steiner; 10) Rick Steiner; 11) Williams; 12) Ace; 13) Mascaras; 14) Terry Funk; 15) Hawk; 16) Spivey; 17) Shamrock; 18) Sheik; 19) Haku; 20) Davey Boy Smith and Doug Furnas tied."
OK THAT'S IT, THANKS AND SEE YOU IN 1993.
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