January 25, 1992 in Tokyo, Japan
Tokyo Bay NK Hall drawing 6,390
The freezing (kvlt) moon itself welcomes us on this very night [of composition, forgive me] when the super (kvlt) moon ascends the (kvlt) heavens in our own non-1992 timeline unless our reality is like the vision that drove Philip K. Dick to madness at the dentist's when he became convinced that history had actually stopped in the first century after Christ and all else was illusion (you can't prove it isn't) although I grant that this is unlikely! What we are welcomed to especially here is MEGA BATTLE: KAITEN and "kaiten" is a word with which you might be familiar from the zenpo kaiten ukemi (前方回転受身) forward rolling breakfall you practice so assiduously as it is foundational to your way of judo (which will never end). Let me be frank with you and say clearly that ASTRAL STEP: FINAL left me feeling no less than ravished, both astrally and in terms of stepping. Though unrushed, there was a headlongness to its energy that brought about an emotional intensity as undeniable as it was . . . delicious. I do not need to remind you, I am certain, that the final astral step saw Volk Han take his RINGS-bound first (step), and that it surpassed pretty much all understanding when he did so. Inexplicably (there is probably a totally reasonable explanation), Volk Han does not appear scheduled to compete on this Tokyo Bay NK Hall card before a (worked)shoot-ready crowd well in excess of six thousand; if they say things in the Japanese that I no more than 4% understand to clarify this situation I will relay those tidings to you at once and without fail. Until then what can we say but the Mega Battle is underway and the graphics situation is unusually strong even for RINGS:
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| The parts up top that say "RINGS"? Yeah those *spin* |
EARTH BOUT: Herman Renting vs. Shtorm Koba! AQUA BOUT: Mitsuya Nagai vs. Koichirou Kimura! FIRE BOUT: Willie Peeters vs. Bert Kops Jr.! AIR BOUT: Nobuaki Kakuta vs. Rob Kaman (wait, what, Rob Kaman? kickboxing murderist Rob Kaman?) THUNDER BOUT: Willie Wilhelm vs. Igor Kolmykov! UNIVERSE BOUT: Masaaki Satake vs. Gerard Gordeau! ASTRAL BOUT: Akira Maeda vs. Dick Fly (this is how they are spelling it now)! To this I must add that I feel very sure the announcer said "Norman Smiley" whilst Renting paraded during the parade of fighters and I am deeply intrigued, and just now I am learning that Norman Smiley worked UWFi and also that there is so much art in the world. Also notable from the parade of fighters is the crowd's enthusiasm for Willie Peeters, which matches my own, as Peeters has emerged as a kind of generational mid-card shoot-style talent. Chris Dolman, who is not to compete this night, comes to the ring and speaks briefly after Maeda: "Konbonwa! RINGS is number one!" All agree.
No entrances are shown leading up to our EARTH BOUT but as all fighters have already participated in a literal parade there is no need to show them, it's OK. Shtorm Koba intrigues me as he is entirely of the stoutness, hirsuteness, and general aspect to suggest the presence of profound and quite possibly crippling levels of Russian judo/sambo (Khabib Nurmagomedov is not the first, only the most recent). An early and air-tight ouchi-gari (major inner reap) extremely confirms my suspicion. Oooohhhh my goodness, our new favourite guy Shtorm has been slashed nearly to ruin on a headbutt from either a Herman Renting lateral drop attempt that didn't get sufficiently lateral or a Herman Renting ura nage effort that lacked both core elements (ura, nage), depending on how you parse it, but either way this is a cut, and this cut is a straight shoot. A less-stout man who had witnessed far fewer horrors first-hand would have never been able to continue under such circumstances but Shtorm is almost upsettingly real and has in his heart forgotten blood. In fact, he responds with an infinitely more cleanly executed lateral drop or yoko-otoshi of his own, followed by a rolling juji-gatame and some considerable leg-lockery before Renting's own foot-touching forces a Koba rope escape, their bout's first. Seconds, but several leg-locks later, it is Renting who must escape.
Were I still in a place in my life where I was regularly making Fire Pro guys, I assure you Shtorm Koba would be the next Fire Pro guy I made; I would even try to get a little white line of script down the left leg of his tights to simulate how it says "Champion" (again our thoughts turn to Raekwon). If Shtorm has a failing, and that is an enormous "if," it is that he does not convincingly sell the knockdown he plainly fakes under Renting's less-than-killer striking, but he is new at this and has perhaps yet to truly flower? A kata-ashi-hishigi/single-leg Boston crab later (Shtorm briefly held an ashi-dori-garami/toe-hold, but could not sustain it) and Herman Renting is your winner by submission at 13:40, but in terms of artistry this one was Shtorm soup to nuts.
Mitsuya Nagai vs. Koichirou Kimura is a match that has lone voices shouting the names of each before the action has even begun, which is an achievement this low on the card. Nagai can really snap those kicks in there! "Wooooahhhaaa" is right! Kimura, though, whose purple-trimmed black singlet (his shoes are purple too) again reads SUBMISSION ARTS WRESTLING, unsurprisingly wants this match on the mat. An ankle-pick (kibusi-gaeshi) gets him there and the commentator says "kannnnnnsetsu-waza!" in anticipation of how sikk joint-locking techniques really can be and often are. But Nagai, despite what one might surmise from his early insistence on kicking, is no rank amateur on the mats, and forces a Kimura (the guy, not the hold; I would have said gyaku-ude-garami had I meant the hold [because of my taste level]) rope escape soon thereafter. I think we are trimming time here pretty significantly? In any event, Kimura really seems to want to secure the trachea-choke/air-choke/short-choke variation of hadaka-jime, the kind that Fedor Emilianenko finished poor old dumb (I say this in sympathy and solidarity) Tim Sylvia with that one time, and when Sylvia was asked about it, he was like "I don't know what it was, I just know it hurt like hell." Just last night I was teaching a ne-waza heavy class and we discussed this particular application and its several virtues but ended by being clear about how we shouldn't do it to each other so much as other, blood-choke hadaka-jimes because (i) it is inefficient, and (ii) it hurts so don't be a jerk to people. I was assisted in this class by an old friend of the club (and to me) who holds a black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in addition to that same rank in the exquisite art of Kodokan Judo and he too was pretty much like "yes, this version makes you a bad friend, and you should instead be a good friend, to your friends."
Ah jeez Kimura is just wrecking Nagai with a neck-cranking kubi-hishigi kesa-gatame scarf-hold, and there's another rope escape, but this is really impressively subtle: the narrative of the match is that Kimura is horribly cruel, but these cruelties only fully reveal themselves to those with some knowledge of which submission techniques make you a jerk to my friend and I who taught ne-waza last night. Nagai fights on nobly and, I think, at length, but who can say with any certainty given the seemingly many minutes clipped from this bout? I am not complaining, mind you, as what remains is grueling and I love gruel but am not such a glutton for gruel that I need all of the gruel, necessarily. Another just brutal neck-crank and another rope escape; Nagai, please, just yield, man, bend the knee, hold fast to what lands and titles remain to you under Kimura's mercy (perhaps he is merciless).
Nagai gets his share of "hope spots" I guess we might say, righteously wailing on Kimura in standing exchanges as the crowd shrieks their exhortations, even to the point of knockdown, but Kimura's SUBMISSION ARTS WRESTLING is well-conditioned and able to largely sustain him UNTIL IT DOESN'T MY GOODNESS THAT'S IT NAGAI KNOCKS KIMURA DOWN TWICE IN SHORT ORDER AND TAKES THE CONTEST BY KNOCKOUT IN 28:05 oh man that match (that I guess we maybe saw half of?) contained some serious rising action. "Shake-hand-o" is the commentator's call as Kimura reveals himself at last as the grinding but sportsmanlike competitor we had hoped and not a man lost utterly to needless cruelty as we had come to fear he might be.
FIRE BOUT gives us Wille Peeters whom all love and Bert Kops Jr. who I will diplomatically say is not yet my favourite but I will give him every chance to grow into that rôle. The commentator praises Peeters' nage-waza which is totally the right thing to do, this guy can throw for days, right? Right! It would be wrong to call it a slow start between these two, exactly, but thus far it is a lot of bouncing around and only the most tentative græpplings, anticipating, one might argue, the effective but utterly uninspiring wrestle-boxing that would eventually crush mixed martial arts (aesthetically). Luckily, once Willie Peeters has made clear his grim warning about the art-doom that for that time, at least, abided, he throws Kops Jr. to the moon with a belly-to-belly suplex because he is a poet of doing that. Whenever Peeters gets an arm under-hooked in the clinch, the pitch of the commentator's voice rises noticeably but organically; in my view this is because he lives and breathes, our commentator; he lives and breathes.
OK, here is the extent of Willie Peeters' art: he just scored a knockdown with a shoot(style) piledriver off of a stuffed double-leg takedown (think Bob Sapp/Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira avant-la-lettre), smugly cackled about it with Dick Fly (I swear that is how they are spelling it), and the crowd ate it up, like they loved it and bought it completely in the context of a RINGS match. When, a minute or two later, Bert Kops' Jr. wins with kata-ashi-hishigi straight-Achilles-hold at 11:23, literally no one could care as it was utterly beside the point. I mean, look:
AIR BOUT is live and yes this is certainly the Rob Kaman you know perhaps from people talking about his significant Muay Thai brilliance even if you have not seen this brilliance yourself? I know nothing about Muay Thai other than that when Tony Jaa totally ong-bakked that guy with a flaming knee to the motorcycle helmet it led me to a rugged Muay Thai gym over an auto-shop in an area of Toronto I had never before ventured to; a judo pal of mine told me about the place, and I went a few times, and everyone was very nice despite being terrifying, but it just wasn't for me (not because the people there were not nice, because they were totally nice). But despite my immense ignorance, this Rob Kaman I have heard of--such is the reach of his legend.
He is smacking around the shorter, densely-muscled Nobuaki Kakuta pretty well here in this bout contested in a series (sequence?) of three-minute rounds. The kicks to the legs, in particular, look just brutal, but the rapid-fire palms to the head probably don't feel great either. Some of these RINGS matches look like a dream to work, like, they are no-wear-and-tear, high-paced randori (乱取り, literally "chaos taking" but functionally "wrassling with yr pal") that is probably the safest style of professional wrestling you are ever going to see; others, like this one, although none so bad as this one, look like they hurt an awful, awful lot, especially if you are the guy who isn't Rob Kaman. Kakuta's nose, for example, gets obviously broken in the third round from a closed fist that I guess is ruled incidentally or accidentally closed, so the match does not end in disqualification, and blood just pours and pours forever. Kakuta, a gamer, gets right after it as soon as he is allowed to do so, but goes to his reward at 2:03 of the third three-minute round, ended by knee driven savagely into his definitely broken nose. Was this a shoot, or the cruelest work? Either way it was gross. Kaman is sportsmanlike, and apologizes with apparent sincerity for the closed fist that started this whole mess, but that knee was pitiless and chilling.
And now it is THUNDER BELT as Kolmykov Igor confronts the Willie Wilhelm we have come to love best, and to enjoy, just, like, beholding, in every bit of his you-know-that-guy-who-teaches-judo-at-the-Y-is-actually-kind-of-an-unrelenting-He-Beast-of-yore aspect and bearing:
Despite the jacket you see before you while beholding just now, the commentator is very clear that this a "no-jacketooo-match" and then says both judo and sambo a number of times in close proximity which befits the close proximity of these these two great græppling arts and arguably indeed ways. Wilhelm announces the illness of his waza first with a tawara-gaeshi (rice-bale-reversal, you would not be wrong to call it a suplex[ooo], as the commentator does here) and a harai-goshi hip sweep that has the commentator himself speaking to the nature of the waza as particularly as he is able ("judo waza!", he emphasizes, as do I). Wilhelm searches for a sode-guruma-jime sleeve-wheel choke (some call it the "Ezequiel" choke in tribute to Ezequiel Paraguassu, Brazilian judoist who . . . enjoyed it) which is possible but tricky in this sleeveless environ. It is the choke you may perhaps associate with Hidehiko Yoshida, not during his judoing-proper but instead his mixed fighting? (Royce Gracie really had Yoshida where he wanted him, didn't he, when he was taken down, his guard passed into tate-shiho-gatame in an instant, well-ensqueezed in sode-guruma-jime, when he decided to go completely limp and then complain to the referee that everything had been fine. It was a classic moment of humility and good sense from that esteemed competitor who is probably right that it was actually a conspiracy that led to his positive drug test against Sakuraba and who is no doubt entitled to any low-income tax credits he may have been claiming whilst his wife was a doctor and he was Royce Gracie; who could doubt him in any of these regards.)
When they return to their feet, Wilhelm again hucks Kolmykov as the merest rice bale and attacks with juji-gatame. This Kolmykov knows what is up, however! He is, while perhaps not replete with wiles, of sufficient wile to escape this great plodding judoaf (I say this with respect that borders impiously on reverence). In time, Kolmykov throws with a lovely osoto-gari (major outer reap); his way of judo/sambo is strong. The match ends abruptly when a seemingly routine little period of ne waza ends in a Kolmykov win by ude-hishigi-juji-gatame (the commentator yells the first half of that, rather than the second, which is rare and notable) at 11:20; to the credit of both men, and to RINGS itself as both a martial and an aesthetic institution, once the arm was extended, that was it, there was no struggling with the pain of a completely extended arm in the all-too-familiar attempt to build drama during that waza that ultimately undoes drama because of the extent to which such a performance undermines the credibility of the very hold it seeks to exalt through art. This is not the first time I have raised this point, nor, I fear, will it be the last: I have strong views and many feelings about juji-gatame in the context of shoot-style-professional wrestling and also lesser styles of professional wrestling and we will explore them together over the course of many years; welcome.
It saddens me to report that no like glory is visited upon the contest to which we now attend. It starts well enough, with Gordeau terrifying me as he slithers to the ring to the strains of what must be a deep cut by The Cult before Satake strides forth resolutely accompanied by what sounds like the kind of music one would hear in Japanese movies of the 1950s; there is no doubt a specific culture resonance here that I am ignorant of. But it doesn't take long for things to devolve utterly. Our first three-minute round (of a scheduled five) is unremarkable enough, especially if you are me and know the absolute least anyone who has watched as much fighting as I have can know about kickboxing (I know nothing). But the second falls apart completely and unmistakably: after a rope break in the corner in which Gordeau seems determined to get some shit in as the referee works to separate them, Gordeau walks lazily back to his corner and, en route, has a breezy conversation with his coach, I guess? The referee calls "Gordeau! Gordeau!" to get his attention, but he doesn't really have it. Satake throws a kick to the legs when Gordeau is not super duper ready for it (I still don't understand why that might be), and, with his cornerman now up on the apron (I have no idea), Gordeau loses it and starts unloading on Satake with the very sort of closed fists to the face I do not need to remind you are prohibited in this lordly realm of RINGS. Chris Dolman hops up in a neutral corner, a young Japanese I am unable to identify beyond that cursory description utterly flies across the ring to intercept, and that is very, very much a DQ finish at 2:13 of the second round. Satake is bloodied, angry, and eager to fight on, but that's not about to happen. Gordeau attempts some late-breaking sportsmanship, apologetically raising Satake's hand, but on the whole this Gordeau still worries me kind of a lot, and it's not getting better.
(I will pause for a moment to note that literally just now I have taken delivery of the Neil Adams Judo Masterclass Techniques: Armlocks volume published by Ippon Books in 1989 which contains thirty pages on ude-hishigi-juji-gatame alone and I note this so that you can be certain that I am not just here saying things to you about ude-hishigi-juji-gatame without making every attempt to come to what understanding I am able in this life of this profoundmost and purest waza in terms practical,scholastic, and aesthetic; please accept this.)
The presence of an ASTRAL BOUT here suggests that ASTRAL STEP: FINAL was in some sense not final? Rather than press on I choose to embrace the mystery as Akira Maeda arrives to the chants of his name to face Dick Fly who we knew previously as Dirk Vrij when he (work) defeated a (shoot) unwell Maeda in (shoot) upsetting fashion (because of the extent to which we were worked). That Maeda is introduced first here seems odd. It is perhaps worth noting that there are as yet no championship titles in RINGS: plainly, Maeda is their champion, and there could be no doubt of that for even the slightest, darkest moment, but there is no prop to accompany his championship; rather, he is its living incarnation, inhabiting the ethos of RINGS corporeally and . . . perhaps . . . astrally? Is this the final step? I will not give in to astonishment but instead tell you about how Maeda's capture suplex into ude-garami to force a rope break is the most promising opening his partisans could have wished for, dreamt of. Is he kicked super hard for a while after that? Certainly he is, yes, and he is in fact slapped to the mat for the bout's first knockdown but nobody said this would be easy or even possible given the continued monstrosity of Fly (né Vrij?). Fly follows an osoto-gari sweep with a prolonged attempt at juji-gatame to force Maeda's first rope escape but coupled with the earlier knockdown this is not looking good for Maeda! Although better than last time, I guess.
Maeda's attempt at the most Street Fighter II footsweep ever fails but entices the crowd. They are not enticed so much as horrified, though, now that Fly (I think I am going to have to go back to saying Vrij, this is just odd) is laying into Maeda's heavily wrapped and still-(probably workedly?)-injured left knee. Maeda is game but cannot help but be charged with another knockdown after he is kneed pretty egregiously to the body again and again in the corner. And here come those kicks once more, and yet another knockdown. The crowd is pretty worried about a TKO and so am I! My goodness Maeda is good at this, though, like I am having noooo stop the fiiiiight feelings as Vrij (there, that's better) lays in those heavy kicks even though I am completely sure this is not a fight. AH HAAAAA YES ASHI-DORI-GARAMI WHICH IS TO SAY A TOE-HOLD MAEDA CAUGHT A KICK AND HAULED VRIJ (that really is much better, I am glad I switched back) TO THE MAT AND THAT IS THAT THE SUBMISSION FOLLOWS AT 9:19 MA-E-DA MA-E-DA MA-E-DA MA-E-DA LET US UTTER IT TOGETHER UNTIL THE LIGHT TAKES US WAIT DID I MAKE THIS WEIRD
Settling back down for a moment to consider this fine event in its totality, if only briefly, let us agree that while on the whole it lacked the headlong madness of ASTRAL STEP: FINAL, MEGA BATTLE: KAITEN is itself worthy, offering as it does a measure of finality the "final step" so-called itself lacked: Maeda's loss to Vrij (let us leave Fly behind forever) festered unavenged for too long, and thrilled (thrilled) though I did at the lean wolfishness of Volk Han, I did not feel good about those matters left unsettled. But I feel better now. I hope you do too and again I thank you for both your time and your attention.
YES YES BUT WHAT DID DAVE MELTZER SAY:
JANUARY 20, 1992: BLOGGIST's NOTE: This is not news really but Maeda finished tenth in the balloting for "Best Babyface," a category that trivializes a man of such attainment, but nevertheless I note it here (he trailed Hogan, Sting, Onita, Savage, Misawa, Sid Justice, Ultimate Warrior, Keiji Muto, and Tsuyoshi Kikuchi, but would annihilate all of them in a [worked] shoot).
JANUARY 27, 1992: "Weekly Pro Wrestling's 1991 Fan Awards saw Misawa win Wrestler of the year over (in order) Tsuruta, Fujinami, Onita, Kawada, Chono, Choshu, Akira Maeda, Muto and Bull Nakano."
FEBRUARY 3, 1992: "Akira Maeda's RINGS promotion drew 6,390 (7,000 capacity) on 1/25 at Tokyo Bay NK Hall headlined by Maeda beat Dirk Leon-Vrij in 9:19 with a leglock submission. Former world karate champion Willie Williams, who had a famous mixed match in the late 1970s against Antonio Inoki, signed with RINGS and starts 3/5. Current World Karate Association heavyweight champion Maurice Smith (who worked a mixed match on a UWF show in 1989) faces Masayoshi Satake (a Japanese martial arts star) on RINGS mat on 3/26."
FEBRUARY 10, 1992: "Akira Maeda's Rings announced shows on 3/5 in Hyogo, 4/3 in Hiroshima and 5/16 at the Ariake Coliseum in the Tokyo Bay Area."
These pickings: are slim.
I think the music Satake comes out to is the military march from the Godzilla movies https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8IQFyoxCxs
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