April 23, 1994 in Hiroshima, Japan
Sun Plaza drawing 4,238
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| who could doubt it |
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| new tracksuits |
WELCOME TO HIROSHIMA SITE OF UNREAL TORMENT THAT FOREVER SHAMES HUMANITY AND HOME TO THE HIROSHIMA TOYO CARP (広島東洋カープ) OF THE CENTRAL LEAGUE OF NIPPON PROFESSIONAL BASEBALL however before we get to any of that let me begin by drawing your attention to a handful of RINGS oddities and ephemera that have come to my attention in recent days, like for instance this (in some ways problematic with regard to questions of race?) clip from a TV show in which Akira Maeda demonstrates some real live street shit. I don't know what is going on in the opening seconds on the bed (if you do, please do not explain it to me) but the gyaku-ude-garami Maeda employs against a waist-lock in the elevator is an unassailable technique should one find oneself assailed (not that self-defense as such is something I like to talk much or indeed at all in my teaching; it is in my view implicit in each of the beauteous and rational waza of the Kodokan [講道館] and if you cannot yourself put together the ways in which a thunderous throw worthy of the symbolic death of ippon followed by the robust incapacitations offered by its ne-waza could be brought to bear in the context of, I don't know, somebody being unwilling to get off your lawn, or whatever, you fucked up a long time ago bro, and anyway the people who are super focused on self-defense [or like this one guy who couldn't do anything despite his insistence he was into "survival martial arts" lol ok I wish you all the best in martial survival I guess] are, generally speaking, weirdos and not an appealing kind of weirdo like you and me but more like the kind of weirdo to whom you don't feel all that comfortable teaching strangling efficiencies? But I digress pretty hard right now).
The other thing I wanted to show you is how there are RINGS toys, look:
That there would be an Akira Maeda toy is I suppose self-evident (I am sure there have been several), but it is neat that they made Yoshihisa Yamamoto and Tsuyoshi Kohsaka ones! There are a bunch of interesting Japanese wrestling toys here if you are inclined towards looking at them (and you really might want to be, I think: Nobuhika Takada, for instance, in either black or lavender trunks!). The Kohsaka one is ten dollars less than the Maeda and Yamamoto ones because it has been out of its box but unless you are a hopeless mark (what could that mean in this context) that non-boxness will not dissuade but rather encourage and embolden you to obtain it (I do not believe it is sufficiently articulated to perform the scissors we associate most closely with his ne waza but in truth few of us are [don't worry I totally am]). Some quick searching reveals that they totally made a Kiyoshi Tamura one, too, as you might well expect--
--which is all well and good, but that same searching (unfailingly chaste though it may have been in intent) has revealed the distressingly erotic fact of this apparent post-RINGS, U-File Camp Kiyoshi Tamura sexdoll--
--and so we must at once turn away lest our thoughts dwell any longer on what could have become of any one of us had our enthusiasm for shoot-style græppz taken a dark turn at one of really any number of points if we're going to speak with the degree of honesty I think we will all agree we owe each other by now.
THERE BUT FOR THE GRACE OF GOD TURN WE our attention to the Hiroshima Sun Plaza (広島サンプラザ I think but maybe that is the street address or something, the thing I was looking at was unclear, forgive me) and the seemingly tidy little two hours of RINGS that await us there beginning first with Grom Zaza and Todor Todorov, both of whom we enjoy a great deal. I feel like it has been a little while since we have seen Grom Zaza? If so let us welcome him and if not let us apologize to him for having forgotten. Zaza is greying slightly but don't worry it is only making him handsomer. He begins by kicking, and what this kicking lacks in technique (I am no expert but I think it is probably really terrible) it atones for at least in part by its brutalizingly savage enthusiasm and Todorov is downed early. And now for the græppling(s) as Todorov under-hooks an arm and performs what I can best describe as a Tiger-hikikomi/sumi-gaeshi (pulling/corner-reversal) sutemi-waza (sacrifice technique) and I am so in favour of it. It is in the end Zaza who gets the best of the matwork though as he forces Todorov to the ropes as the crowd goes WHHHHHOOOOAAAHHHHHH already, this is great. Todorov attempts osoto-gari (major outer reap) but as kuzushi (unbalancing) has been insufficiently visited upon his partner he is countered by that very same waza and by countered I mean here utterly launched and recklessly. Zaza is having a very strong match! When on the mat he seeks any number of holds but chief among them a cross-face; Todorov, for his part, pursues the (ritual) purity of juji-gatame. Zaza, who is in truly great shape, palm-strikes Todorov about as hard as anyone has yet been palm-struck in RINGS for this his third knockdown and while it is not as though Todorov is getting nothing in, this has been for the most part pretty one-sided and that side is Grom. Just as I say that, Todorov comes close with juji-gatame, but just as I say that Zaza forces a rope escape with the Fujiwara armbar/waki-gatame (the standing application of which was recently clarified at the International Judo Federation Referee and Coaching Seminar in Baku! I watched all ten hours so I could clarify the new rules and their implementation for our club!) so what do I know about any of it. Todorov is down to his last knockdown for sure and maybe his last escape! Zaza throws with a neat kata-guruma (shoulder wheel) only for Todorov to get a hold of his leg and contort it foully with hiza-hishigi (the knee crush one might call a calf-slicer) AH HAAAAA only for Grom Zaza to secure the juji-gatame for the finish, what a great counter for ippon at 12:33! Grom!
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| tough to see but trust me it's sikk |
Next we have Mitsuya Nagai (who you will recall as Mitsuya, The Guy who had such an improbably wonderful match against Volk Han some time ago now) against Hans Nijman who is definitely not getting any smaller nor any less likely to be killed in an incident involving multiple Volkswagen Golfs/Golves (I mean disrespect to neither man [R.I.P. Hans Nijman] nor machine [I think any of us would enjoy a GTI in particular {who are we kidding though those are a lot of money for a little car}]). I have a feeling that Nagai is going to be just totally smashed here but he starts well enough, in that in the first thirty seconds they are up, down, rope-broken, and yet Nagai lives, so who knows, right? Oh dear no that is a Hans Nijman KO at 7:04 someone please help Mitsuyai Nagai (okay good he is being helped by TK amongst others).
Sotir Gotchev will try his hand against Yoshihisa Yamamoto but not before we take another look at these pretty tight new RINGS tracksuits for '94:
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| an instant classic imo |
If anything Yamamoto's acne is worse now than at any point thus far and I know there are much more serious afflictions but what a drag for him. STANDING DRAGON SLEEPER AND AN ELBOW FOR A KNOCKDOWN my goodness that took maybe fifteen seconds for Yamamoto to lash out at a cruel world over his misfortune, and now he has been launched by Gotchev and Yamamoto bails to the ropes THIS IS THRILLING. Gotchev hits a pleasingly Mongolian (to the way I organize techniques nationally) kosoto-gake (minor outer hook) and the crowd, which has been deeply into everything so far, continues to be very much that way. Remember when Dave Meltzer wrote a couple times about how the UWF's failure(s) came in part from an inability to appeal outside of Tokyo (there were other enormous problems like Maeda shootkicking Tiger Mask in the dikk amongst others obviously)? But the crowds outside Tokyo totally get this style at this point. I am sorry if I have already said this (I probably have). Gotchev's ne waza, particular his juji-gatame attacks from the back in the mode of Iaskevitch (who was quite a character at the IJF Seminar Baku this weekend, let me tell you!) are hard-fought and real, as is the harai-goshi he has just now visited upon not only Yoshihisa Yamamoto but us all.
Everybody who would care to know anything about RINGS knows that Yoshihisa Yamamoto is really good but he is really very really good, especially in the key shoot-style area of ne waza verisimilitude (without it all is lost). I want to be as clear with you as my feeble art allows on the subject of how good I think Yoshihisa Yamamoto is as he gets launched by Gotchev and, whilst trapped in the kata-ashi-hishigi of the single-leg-Boston-crab, struggles mightily for the ropes as the crowd chants Y'MA-MO-TO Y'MA-MO-TO to speed his journey to there. This is stirring! Aside from his initial waza-storm, pretty much the entire match has been Yamamoto hanging on by a thread until just now when a rolling hiza-juji-gatame knee-bar ends the bout in surprising but genuinely earned fashion at 12:56, yesssssss:
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| look close, it's his leg way up there, not his arm! |
RANKING MATCH is what we are told regarding Nikolai Zouev and Masayuki Naruse, and is in fact the case for each of the final three bouts on this already very satisfying card (I do not know what it means). Zouev is excellent at all of this and has had really fine showings against Volk Han so I do not say this because I have anything but admiration for Zouev and for example the huge makikomi (winding entry) he just hit but he has got to chill out on those juji-gatame attacks; you can't just snap those on on like that, you've got to control it all the way through if you want your partners to have any interest in working with you, Nikolai Zouev. He is mauling Masayuki Naruse. Naruse, in time, gets a few licks in, but it comes as no real surprise when Zouev finishes with an unusually gross hiza-juji from behind at 10:26 which I guess now will be good for his rank?
Another Ranking Match, then! This one is Volk Han and Bitsadze Tariel, and one wonders immediately at Volk Han's approach against a Georgian karate fighter this massive. Han is tall, so he is not giving up all that much height, but he is clearly at a disadvantage with regards to sheer beef. Han is slipping in around those big kicks! He's applying juji-gatame! This is what he should be doing for sure! And he is up by a rope escape early. Oh okay then he is pummeled mercilessly in the corner by huge fists and feet; that is scored a knockdown. Han tried his kani-basami (crab-scissors) but got kicked right in the bread basket on the way in, not unlike a shoot-style antecedent of the time Kazuchika Okada hit his dropkick on Hiroshi Tanahashi mid-high-fly-flow in the Wrestle Kingdom 10 main event I recently placed atop my Wrestling Observer Newsletter Awards ballot for match of the year! Tariel is such a big karateman this is a nightmare, imagine it. Han remains game though and pursues these very low double-leg takedowns with very little relent and tangles Tariel up nicely whenever they are on the mat but Tariel is long and the ropes seemingly always at hand. Han is getting knocked down a lot and is in fact down to his last one HOLY SHIT VOLK HAN DID A TOPE OUT OF THE RING OR A PLANCHA OR WHATEVER I DO NOT WATCH MUCH LUCHA LIBRE OUTSIDE OF THE ANNUAL NJPW FANTASTICA MANIA TOUR okay what happened was that Han thought he had Tariel hurt with a little kick to the knee and as Tariel stumbled back, Han dashed forward with the speed of Tetsuya Naito but Tariel kind of rolled away and Han went absolutely fucking flying out of the ring, I think between the bottom and middle ropes? Maybe it was just under the bottom but he really flew. Back in, and seemingly unscathed, he tries first a rolling hiza-juji-gatame knee-bar (close!) and ultimately a kata-ashi-hishigi straight Achilles lock that kind of half turns into a heel-hook for the submission win at 8:27. This was intense!
Our final Match, Ranking or otherwise (this one is Ranking, too) sees Akira Maeda and Pieter Oele in what seems like a staggering mismatch of who people like as the chants of MA-E-DA MA-E-DA welcome not just our hero but our hero's return to the plain black trunks we need him to be in for this be the thing it needs to be. Oele is a lot bigger than Maeda but you know else was way bigger than Akira Maeda that's right André the fvkkn Giant that's who. Unlike André, this Oele seems to kickbox ably enough, and once he throws you to the ground he can keep you there with a credible kesa-gatame scarf hold, well done Pieter Oele. But it does not take all that long (a mere 7:12 in fact) for Akira Maeda to pretty viciously shove Oele down by the face and snap on a juji-gatame so quickly in transition (from the face pushing) that there isn't even time to switch to the overhead camera for the finish, it's just right on there:
Here in early 1994 Akira Maeda is on the kind of run (seven straight wins, including the big annual tournament, you will recall) that I totally expected him to go on right out the gate; that Maeda went as long as he did in the earliest RINGS years winning a few then losing key matches was totally unexpected to me, and intriguing, but now he's just running through people, and it feels like the right thing to be happening, at least in terms of getting thousands of people to go MA-E-DA MA-E-DA which is really an awful lot of what this is all about isn't it.
THAT'S TRUE BUT WHAT DID DAVE MELTZER SAY:
April 11, 1994: "It was first announced that judo gold medalist at the Barcelona Olympics, David Haharashivili from Gruziya, would face Akira Maeda on the 4/23 RINGS show in Hiroshima, however Maeda's foe will be Peter Ura and Haharashivili will debut on 5/17."
also
"[redacted] of Green Bay St, Shawano, WI 54166 is looking for a cassette tape or CD of theme music from the 1988 version of Maeda's UWF."
I hope he lived to know Youtube, I sincerely do.
April 18, 1994: "UWFI announced complete 5/6 Budokan Hall line-up. Besides the four tourney matches listed last week (Vader vs. Masahito Kakihara, Nobuhiko Takada vs. Jean Lydick, Gary Albright vs. Yoji Anjyo and Kiyoshi Tamura vs. Naoki Sano) are Kazuo Yamazaki vs. Salman Hashimikov, Dan Severn & Billy Scott vs. Hiromitsu Kanehara & Yoshihiro Takayama, Vladimir Berkovich vs. Tatsuo Nakano, Tom Burton vs. ?, and Makoto Ohe defending his ISKA lightweight kick boxing world title against Dominic Kane from France. Apparently Hashimikov did nothing and the match with Vader was pretty bad. They did an angle at the show with Vader and Albright when they brought all the wrestlers in the ring at the start of the show where they had a stare-down and started shoving until Lou Thesz broke them up. Front Row Entertainment, which is promoting the PPV show (and also plans to promote a live UWFI show in the U.S. this year) sent out a press release this week that heavily knocked American pro wrestling ("Grown men in Halloween costumes jumping around in a ring pretending to hit one another. In amazement you ask yourself, `Am I the only one who sees that this is fake.'") while claiming their product was the real thing.
After the last show reporters brought up Akira Maeda's name and Anjyo said that Maeda was past his prime and that he could beat him easily now. When Takada was asked about Maeda, Takada simply said that he was focusing on winning the tournament and can't be bothered worrying about anything else.
RINGS announced 5/17 in Sendai headlined by Maeda vs. Willie Williams."
and
"[A man of taste and discernment] of Lowland Close, Astral Way, Sutton, Hull, Humberside HU7 4YT England is looking for tapes of UWFI, Rings, Pancrase and tough-man contests with mixed matches."
May 2, 1994: "The feud between Rings and UWFI grew stronger this past week. I'm not clear of the details, but apparently Akira Maeda did a magazine interview and got hot about Yuko Miyato (the UWFI wrestler who handles much of the company's business affairs) and said something to the effect of that if he fought Miyato, he'd beat him 200 times out of 200 and that if he caught him on the street he'd prove it and made some remarks about Miyato's family, which apparently resulted in some kind of civil action filed by Miyato and UWFI against Maeda. Since it appears a lawsuit was filed, this angle doesn't appear to be a work."
and
"Rings on 4/23 in Hiroshima drew 4,238 with Maeda beating Peter Ura in the main event. 5/17 in Sendai is Maeda vs. Willie Williams on top, while 6/18 Rings has the Ariake Coliseum in the Tokyo Bay area booked with Maeda vs. Volk Han.
4/23 Hiroshima (RINGS - 4,238): Grom Zaza b Todor Todorov, Hans Nyman b Mitsuya Nagai, Yoshihisa Yamamoto b Sotir Gotchev, Nikolai Zuev b Masayoshi Naruse, Volk Han b Bitarze Tariel, Akira Maeda b Peter Ura"
Okay that's it! Thank you for your attention and your time and your continued fanatical devotion to RINGS.
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