December 16, 1994 in Nagoya, Japan
Aichi Gym drawing 7,128
WHERE DOES VOLK HAN KEEP HIS WAZA (技) WHEN HE IS NOT USING IT does he hide it beneath the pillow he dreams on I don't know but I am pretty sure that he is a '94 Fighting Network RINGS Tournament semi-finalist (if I understand the brackets?) and will face (again I hope this is right?) Hans Nyman who continues to frighten me whilst Akira Maeda will have set before him young Yoshihisa Yamamoto upon whom it is impossible not to dream. I did not mean to say the word "dream" twice already and worry that the impact of each utterance of it has been more than halved but there is time for neither visions nor revisions at the moment because Wataru Sakata has just utterly wrecked the arm of Minoru Tanaka of (Purofesshonaru-resuringu Fujiwara-Gumi, プロフェッショナルレスリング藤原組) with an ude-hishigi-juji-gatame (腕挫十字固) in a bout that I have got to conclude was either a straight shoot or a work of just extreme commitment or possibly a feat of lighting and misdirection that my mother would call "camera tricks" to explain away the horrors that would unfold before my eyes in the television and film of the 1980s:
That one only took forty-nine seconds! Sportsmanship (and possibly even budo) abounds in the way these two approach one another in the aftermath of what they have græpplewrought and in addition to this Sakata did a back flip and somehow it did not seem gratuitous.
A kickboxing match, which is to say a match I have a very hard time caring about even a little if I may speak perfectly frankly with you now, is to be contested between Alben Belisnki and Jan Lomulder. I wish both men well but almost as much as that I wish there could be even the the slightest possibility of the throwing techniques we shall call nage-waza (投げ技) and the græppling techniques known to us as katame-waza (固技) (commonly and quite sensibly called ne-waza 寝技 but come on man standing locks are not 寝, let's be serious) in the bout they are about to do. To the credit of both men, I guess, they are absolutely beating the shit out of each other in a grim reminder that this is a bad idea for a sport that we should reject at once and instead reflect on Mercy. Alben Belisnki is your winner, in a limited sense, by TKO at 1:11 of the sixth round; my god, though.
Holy moly look at Willie Peeters' new look, and do not be shy because there is enough of it to go around:
This is a radical departure from the neon-accented and/or stripey singlets of his past! I am not at all convinced this is good for him. Pieter Oele is his foe this night, a man whose work I cannot imagine any of us have particularly enjoyed at any point in his pretty lengthy RINGS run, but he has just been yoko otoshi (side drop) suplexed to the mat by yeah you guessed it Willie Peeters. He's done it again! Good for him; I hope Willie Peeters puts it all together, or I guess puts it all back together, as he really was ahead of the game in the earliest RINGS shows but the world seems to have passed him by (who among us). His juji-gatame attempt here is a credit to him and to his teachers. Oele, as you can no doubt imagine, would prefer to kickbox; certainly he would favour it over being launched over Peeters' hip in something on the koshi-guruma (hip wheel)/kubi-nage (neck throw) spectrum, but that's not gonna save him, man. I think this is the best Willie Peeters match in a while, and the best Pieter Oele one, too? I am happy for them both. OH SHIT HARAI GOSHI FROM PIETER OELE THAT IS A HIP SWEEP that I did not at all anticipate, this match is pretty good! Willie Peeters for some reason has moved onto what Nick Diaz has famously called "spinning shit" and it does not suit him (Peeters); he is being brutalized with leg kicks for his trouble. Leg kick TKO at 13:04! Even in a worked context that must stink, because you still need to eat a tonne of kicks to your dumb legs!
MASAYUKI NARUSE vs MITSUYA NAGAI for neither the first time nor I suspect the last is very much the sort of match-up one (me) hopes to see when one (me) ventures into one's (my) RINGS box and settles in on one's (again my) couch. These guys are awesome and they demonstrate as much at once with nice smooth double-leg takedowns (morote-gari, no longer a scoring technique in IJF judo but invaluable as transitional ne waza and I thank the IJF for their recent clarification on this point at the recent IJF Referee & Coach's Seminar in Baku, streamed on Youtube for many, many hours and then disseminated to my students who were at once interested [in the information] and thankful [that they did not have to watch any of its many hours themselves]). ASHI-GARAMI ASHI-GARAMI HIZA-JUJI HIZA-JUJI GIIIIIIIIVE UP are the sounds this match makes alongside its heavy breathings and boot-canvasings and I am under its spell, indeed its ġealdor ([Old English], song, incantation; enchantment, spell, divination; charm; magic; sorcery; sound). As is this crowd: they are main-event(o)-into this essentially perfect mid-card bout contested between two lean young trunkists whose style is so deeply shoot that it fills one not only with admiration for its beauty but also with a Romantic sense of the inherent sadness of that beauty in that all beauty is, in its position at a single point in a cycle inseparable from Nature's broader order, fleeting and especially this kind of beauty because no one works this style anymore because everyone is cowards (æsthetically). Ah ha, yes, a seemingly sure-fire hadaka-jime (裸絞 naked strangle) countered by the hiza-tori-garami (knee-taking-entanglement) of a careless leg to force the strangler to the refuge of the ropes; let us note that particular kaeshi-waza (counter technique) and anticipate its return in one of the less-famous-but-no-less-essential Kiyoshi Tamura/Tsuyoshi Koshaka encounters that we should get to in just a couple months (blog time, not the primary-world's time of history). Woah have there ever been a lot of rope escapes! I have not kept up with all of them for you here but that is not the precise nature of what I offer here. IPPON ZEOI from Masayuki Naruse, but Mitsuya Nagai rides it out and this time finishes his hadaka-jime for the win! This is the so much like the finish of a match between two of my finest students at a tournament we all went to I guess four or maybe now almost five years ago (and at which I actually competed, despite my absurdly advanced age even then, and I lost and then won and then lost after nearly winning [I really should have held on]; I felt this all to be extremely true as judgement, and have not competed since and may never again, realistically) and I note this because unlike in some other græppling sports (actually just one), in judo when people from the same club or team meet in a tournament they just have a match, because it is a sport, and that's what you do ("have matches") in those ("sports") in my view, you don't refuse to compete and instead decide between you who the victor should be and then just say. I will say no more on the matter but you know who you are and you know both what you've done and what you continue to do. Let us also note that Naruse went for the hiza-tori-garami that saved him from Nagai's previous hadaka-jime, but this time it wasn't there; that's outstanding. Naruse either feigned going all the way out or went "shoot" all the way out in service to his art on that choke and I would believe either without reservation.
A BATTLE OF BITSADZES as Tariel (our favourite one) takes on Ameran (he's fine). Not a whole lot here aside from the sheer number of Bitsadzes, a pretty low-key karate affair that Tariel takes by knockout at 5:13.
Volk Han and Hans Nyman/Nijman get what I believe are the first full ring entrances on this show; such is their stature and hard-won rank. Immediate kata-guruma (shoulder wheel) from Volk Han, like literally immediate, and Hans Nijman is down a rope escape to a double-leg-lock only seconds in. I would suggest Hans Nijman get used to it maybe! A standing gyaku-ude-garami (reverse arm entanglement) is straightened to the point of ude-hishigi-ude-gatame (arm-crushing-arm-hold) for a rope escape and then the exact same thing happens seemingly an instant later. You would think Nijman would be on the run at this point but rather than being that he has instead punched Volk Han insanely hard in the guts for a knockdown. This is good! Han fails an ura nage (rear throw, but you know what an ura nage is without me saying, please forgive my pedantry) but don't worry he goes low from the clinch for a kuchiki taoshi (朽木倒, dead tree drop), another technique that will earn you naught but shido (guidance) in tachi-waza under current IJF rules and yet holds its place in the transition to ne waza and so in modern shiai and of course certainly in judo's broader economy aaaaaand it is the straight-Achilles-hold of kata-ashi-hishigi that wins the day for VOLK HAN who is now a '94 Fighting Network RINGS Tournament finalist!
But who will he face in those finals, will it be MAEADAAAAA AKIRAAAAAAA or YAMAMOTOOOOO YOSHIIIIHIIIIISSAAAAAAA as I believe they are pronounced; I say that we should watch and find out. Yamamoto has raised (risen?) the level of his robegame significantly for this:
As well he should: tournament semi-final main events against Akira Maeda are rare gifts to be savoured. His trunks and pads are of that same glorious hue, too, look:
It would be unreasonable not to love him. He comes out palm-swinging! The crowd hwwwoooaaaahhhhs at his audacity. Maeda returns fire and these two are just pounding each other with these open hands until Maeda drags Yamamoto to the mat and attacks with a heel hook, cruelest of ashi-kansetsu (leg-bonelocking). A rope break later and they are back on their feet absolutely creaming each other with kicks and slaps. Maeda now on top on the ground in do-osae, Yamamoto in the hikikomi (pulling) position; I love this. Maeda's ude-garami (arm entanglement) drives Yamamoto to the ropes; Yamamoto's heel hook does likewise to Maeda, but the difference is the crowd goes nuts for Yamamoto's hold. And for his knockdown! They are seriously behind this young lion formerly of high-school judo and currently of Fighting Network RINGS! They are giving us the Frye/Takayama of shoot-style slaps against the ropes and Maeda is down again and YES KATA-GURUMA-SUTEMI NOT UNLIKE CANADIAN OLYMPIC SILVER MEDALIST NICOLAS GILL WHOSE ONLY LOSS THAT DAY CAME TO THE FOREVER-CHAMPION KOSEI INOUE IN PERHAPS THE GREATEST UCHI-MATA WE HAVE KNOWN BUT ENOUGH OF THAT FOR NOW THERE IS A WAKI-GATAME THE FUJIWARA ARMBAR (another former judo player, Fujiwara) and the crowd cannot believe any of this and neither can I! Ah ok Mead is going to finish with a hiza-juji-gatame knee-bar and that I can believe. No he made the ropes! Yamamotooooooo! He has also escaped a standing mae-hadaka-jime front choke! And Maeda is backed into a corner! Ah but Maeda is wily, drops low, attacks again with ude-garami, drives his young foe to the ropes. YAMAMOTO IS KICKING MAEADA'S HEAD HIS VERY HEAD but it is Maeda who drives Yamamoto to the mat with a knee (or hiza) and he answers the count at nine but an instant later Maeda is atop him with juji-gatame and this is riveting, I have no idea how this is going to go, such is the power of its art that I believe not just in possibilities but in possibility itself. KATA-ASHI-HISHIGI AKIRA MAEDA IPPON 9:47 hooooooly shit what a match
WHAT DID DAVE MELTZER SAY WAS HE SWEPT UP AND ALSO AWAY:
December 26, 1994: "Akira Maeda beat Yoshihisa Yamamoto and Volk Han beat Hans Nyman in the semifinals of Rings' Battle Dimension '94 tournament on 12/16 in Nagoya before 7,128. As expected, this sets up Maeda vs. Han for the championship on 1/25 at Tokyo Budokan Hall."
"12/16 Nagoya (Rings - 7,128): Wakaru Sakata b Minoru Tanaka, Belinsky b Grom Zaza, Peter Ura b Willie Peeters, Mitsuya Nagai b Masayoshi Naruse, Bitarze Tariel b Amilan, Battle Dimension '94 tournament semifinals: Volk Han b Hans Nyman, Akira Maeda b Yoshihisa Yamamoto"
"Tickets for Atsushi Onita's retirement match on 5/5 go on sale next week. The surprise is they are priced from $100 down to $10 bottom which is a very low bottom for a major Japanese show. Rings has also dropped its bottom price from $30 to $10."
"Lots of negotiating going on regarding the Weekly Pro Wrestling magazine promotion on 4/2 at the Tokyo Dome. There are the inherent political problems of trying to get all the groups to work on one show. Nobody knows now how All Japan, which has been an isolationist promotion since the Wrestling Summit show in 1990 with WWF and New Japan, will decide since there is talk they won't cooperate or that if they do, they'll only send a prelim match rather than the headline six man tag. Rings, which already has heat with the magazine, won't be involved. Word is both UWFI and Pancrase would agree but only if there are no womens matches on the show as both groups don't believe women have any place in pro wrestling. However, both AJW and JWP were the first to accept the invitation and will be a major part of the show. FMW, which gets a lot of coverage from Tokyo Sports and Gong, the newsstand rival of Weekly Pro, is being pressured from the outside not to send its biggest grudge match and also send a prelim match. Most likely Michinoku Pro and New Japan are going to agree to send the top guys to the show." MAGAZINE HEAT.
Not directly RINGS related but Maeda's name brought it to me and, indeed, to us:
"New Japan also announced its main event for the 1/4 Tokyo Dome show. As mentioned last week, the original plan was for a martial arts match with Antonio Inoki vs. Kimo, however Kimo and his manager Joe Son decided against doing business and apparently didn't understand what pro wrestling was all about. The K-1 martial arts promotion offered Bronko Shikatec (sp?) to New Japan, who was its champion last year, to fill the spot but Shikatec later that night announced he was retiring. New Japan has gone to a four-man tournament, with Sting vs. kick boxer Tony Palmora, who as the storyline goes, is being sent by "Monster Man" Eddie Everett, who had a famous mixed match with Inoki in the late 70s, for revenge; the other side of the bracket is Inoki vs. Gerard Gordeau, the Savate and martial arts champ from Holland who was a finalist in UFC I and also had a famous mixed match in 1989 against Akira Maeda. No doubt this leads to Inoki vs. Sting as the final main event on the show."
Alright great, tournament finals soon enough! Thanks again for your attention and for your time!
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