June 25, 1992 in Sendai, Japan
Miyagi Sports Center drawing 4,300
ANOTHER RETRO RINGS in the sense that this is another misnumbered instance of a 1992 show appearing much later in the RINGS box than one would expect, but I have skimmed through the spreadsheet that delineates all things and this is apparently well and truly the final 1992 RINGS show to found within the confines of the box I mentioned to you just a moment ago (the RINGS one). Our show opens with the striking visuals of 1992 that have never in truth been improved upon; the pre-show graphics and things are actually somewhat lower-(taste)-level in 1995 than 1992 and to be honest I hope that turns around because all the flaming stuff in the 1995 shows is fine but does not really engage me æsthetically or conceptually and it should because this is RINGS. In a fighters' meeting, Akira Maeda demonstrates when it is illegal to kick people in the face, in case there has been any confusion about when you can do that: please, please do not do it when the other fellow is on the ground, he communicates with his movements and gestures and also one assumes with his words but I can make out so few of them as to be unable to report this part of things reliably. I am not sure why a sit-down interview with Mitsuya Nagai follows, but I have always liked him and so this is a good use of time to me; then a ten-bell salute for a deceased man whose photograph I do not recognize and whose name I cannot make out (may peace be upon him; Maeda is so solemn).
Masayuki Naruse and Yoshihisa Yamamoto are in the young-lions-who-go-long-and-probably-draw position on this card, and I say none of that dismissively: I love it when young lions go long, and probably draw, to open a card. When we left 1995 to make our brief return to 1992, Yamamoto had become a full-fledged star of these RINGS, hadn't he, based on his consistently compelling matches, certainly, but also due to his appearance in Sayama's Vale Tudo Japan 1995 in which, as we have discussed, it took Rickson Gracie kind of a long time to defeat a guy who turned out to not be nearly as good at actual fighting as he was at stirringly realistic pretend fighting (I mean no disrespect, plainly, and it foolish of me to even say as much, however parenthetically, given the time and the tens of thousands of words we have spent here together, my friends [I have not checked but we must be over a hundred thousand words by now, or roughly half the length of an encyclopedic martial arts tome, let's say]). And yes, sure enough this is a fifteen-minute draw, ably fought, which leaves Masayuki Naruse's nose pretty messed up by the end of it.
Next we have Yoshinori Nishi, beloved by this Sendai crowd, against Peter Dijkman, who is down and clutching a rope to escape juji-gatame before so much as a thirty seconds have elapsed, probably. Dijkman, I believe, is there to kick and, in some measure, box, but Nishi though not averse to kicking is really looking to haul people to the mat with the minor outer hook of kosoto gake and finish with juji-gatame in but 1:51.
Mitsuya Nagai and Nobuaki Kakuta, noble undercardsmen both, take to the ring in what will surely be a fiery affair given their, like, fire; and let us hope that this fire sustains us through an inferior format because we are doing this one in rounds. The crowd is pretty into round one but really comes alive in round two when Kakuta kicks Nagai's legs out from under him and Nagai topples as though he had been swept with the down+strong kick of Ken or indeed Ryu in Street Fighter II and possibly several of the Streets Fighter that have followed (I have IV for PS3 and it was fun but I have not had plugged in my PS3 in several years and now assume it would spend the rest of my life updating its firmware were I to do so. I liked the sambo guy!). In addition to the sweeping, round two saw a fine gyaku-ude-garami/reverse-arm-entanglement/double-wrist-lock/Kimura with a hooked leg to prevent the roll that nearly ended the bout but for the proximity of all this waza to the ropes. This is a good match! Round three is largely of kicking; round four sees Nagai take Kakuta down whilst in a kata-gatame/shoulder-hold/arm-triangle grip and for an instant I thought we might see what I like to call the SHIMEWAZA TORNADO OGAWA (for I think obvious reasons) as demonstrated below by former-MMAist-turned-man-of-artsgræppz Matt Riddle:
But alas, we don't quite get that. DID YOU KNOW that many forward throws are also available to you from standing kata-gatame, not just the osoto-gari you see here? But that also you probably shouldn't throw your friends with them because it is a fall that one can scarcely breakfall from properly because of the ghastly situation you are in? Fun to play around with! Anyway, Mitsuya Nagai takes the decision win after five pretty good rounds, and bows deeply to Kakuta in all humility.
Naoyuki Taira and Eric Van der Hoeven are up now and I don't really remember either of these fellows from the first stretch of time we spent in 1992 RINGS which was I guess November of last year oh my goodness this is the sixth month of RINGS blogging, isn't it, although October was just a couple of posts at the very end of the month but even so, where do the RINGS go, friends, and also the days? Taira seems known to and is celebrated by the people of Sendai as he spin kicks through the air during his golden-jacketed introduction. These two little guys come out kicking each other super hard and I am convinced immediately that this is a straight shoot but I suppose time may tell a different tale. Van der Hooven takes Narai down but complains that he is too slippery (Narai is then entoweled) and of course one's thoughts turn at once do they not to how when Kazushi Sakuraba rightly bemoaned Yoshihiro (SEXIYAMA) Akiyama's slipperiness it was no surprise to those of us who knew of his judo days, wherein, in the final of the 2003 Japanese nationals, Kenzo Nakamura was like uh hey ref this guy's judogi is awfully slippery and the referee checks and is like hajime and then Nakamura tries to throw but he slips right off and is countered for ippon right away and Nakamura looks at the ref like wtf man seriously (see it all play out here). That of course was not the only Akiyama was accused of (because he was totally guilty of) judogi-slipperiness but it is the best one, in my view.
Nothing has happened since my initial impression of this match that it is a shoot to convince me otherwise but to be completely transparent with you I was thinking about Yoshihiro Akiyama for part of it. Van der Hooven complains again of slipperiness, and Naoyuki Taira goes to his corner, grabs a towel, and brings it over to Van der Hoeven so he he himself can wipe down his foe to his own satisfaction and all of a sudden this has taken a turn towards the erotic, a little? Taira hits a sikk (and, again, I honestly believe shoot) kani-basami flying scissors into a leg-lock broken only by the ropes to open round four. Van der Hoeven lands a definitely totally completely intentional headbutt to the the back of Taira's head, like right at he base of the skull, and he is cautioned by the referee because of how gross that was to do. Not long thereafter, Van der Hoeven lands an eye-poke, not his first of the match, I don't think, and that's it, a disqualification at 2:45 of the fourth round. This was pretty interesting, in that of all the early RINGS bouts that I think may have possibly been shoots, this is the one I am most sure was a shoot, for those of you shooting along at home.
YAAAY IT IS WILLIE WILLIAMS AGAIN, here against the ever-curly Tom Von Maurik. Highlights include Williams nearly dumping Von Maurik over the top rope after catching his kick in the corner, Williams performing something very much akin to the dreaded "oil check" whilst Von Maurik was draped across the bottom rope, and Williams knocking Von Maurik out at 5:08 with a pretty soft knee that Von Maurik sells like death (out of the respect we all share for Willie Williams).
Volk Han versus Herman Renting is about as one-sided as you can get in terms of how much I like guys; let's see how that plays out. Renting resists Volk Han's takedown attempts by adopting a bullshit stance with his hips drawn well back but the answer to that is of course the corner reversal of sumi gaeshi 隅返 and then a shitload of ne waza and do I need to specify that Volk Han excels in all of the the waza just now described? I do not, for you are lettered in his ways. So too the Sendai crowd, super into this as they are. There have been a lot of kani-basami flying crab scissors this show but Volk Han wisely does not let that deter him from pursuing it further, which is itself a shootstyling: wouldn't the most successful techniques (like say juji-gatame) be applied and attempted by all fighters, and not by just like one guy who had a special name for it? Remember when people made light of Bret Hart's "Five Moves of Doom" but he was like uhhhhh if this was a real match I would always use the moves that worked best, right? And he was right depending on how you think about the overall methods and notions of disingenuous græppz but as we discussed in our very first time here together when we considered TK/Tamura but also said kind of a lot about Leo Burke, I am so bound up in this particular way of thinking that wrestling is good that I don't even really find other ways of thinking wrestling is good all that worth thinking about, if I can be darkly open with you about my narrowness(es). Herman Renting is getting way to much in here for my tastes but really that is only to say that he has not lost in the first three minutes. He has, however, hurt his knee a little, and needs a minute? Or maybe he is just getting his kick-pad retied, that's maybe all it is. Either way, Volk Han dives at his knee a second later and that's it at 9:18 as his ankle kind of "shoot" folded in under him in a gross way there, yikes.
Masaaki Satake vs. Willie Peeters is a high-level 1992 RINGS encounter! 1992 Willie Peeters is probably peak Willie Peeters! Yes, he has thrown with a lovely arching ura-nage already, bless his heart. His ura-nage is of a piece with the sori-nage described by Shozo Sasahara in Wrestling (Kodansha), subsequently quoted by Toshiro Daigo in Kodokan Judo Throwing Techniques (also Kodansha): "The sori-nage [backwards-leaning-throw] technique in wrestling resembles judo's ura-nage. It is a technique in which one throws the opponent by lifting him from the front or from the back. There are many facets in the study of ura-nage, so this can also be of value. Tori's posture of bending the body back is worth noting." Also Willie Peeters wears a singlet so it's hard not to think this way (and why try; what reasonable end might it achieve). Aside from that lovely throw, the rest of the bout is largely kicking throughout, which clearly favours karateka Masaaki Satake, as well you know. "FIRST WAS BREAK, FUCK YOU ALL, YOU HEARED IT" is how Willie Peeters complains about a late elbow and holy shit this is coming unglued if this is real (it isn't but woah this is convincing) but order is restored and the bout ends in a draw after six rounds.
MAEDA AKIRAAAAAAAAA versus Hans Nijman is our main event although it is hard to think of anything but his murder in a Volkswagen Golf as the main event of Hans Nijman's too-short life (R.I.P Hans Nijman). Excellent kicking of genuine sharpness opens the bout and the crowd is like hwaaaaaiiiiiiiiii as Nijman sweeps Maeda's leg and then punches him hard in the gut as though this were all some glorious kata (perhaps, in the cosmic sense, it is). Maeda is Nijman's clear better on the mat; witness, if you will, his juji-gatame from the side-controlling chest-hold of mune-gatame. When returned to their feet, though, Nijman's kicks look really, really great, so Maeda had better watch out! Indeed Maeda is knocked down in the corner from those same kicks, and also I guess some punches. As he rises, the crowd's chants of MA-E-DA MA-E-DA take on renewed vigour; I love them. Maeda is downed and turtles up (ah, the kame position), and Nijman just lays into him with what we would come to know as Pride knees (were Maeda to be ended here by Pride knees just as RINGS was itself ended by Pride, it would weird me out). YES AKIRA MAEDA BY ASHI-KANSETSU LEG-BONE-LOCKING THE TRIUMPH OF WAZA MA-E-DA MA-E-DA MA-E-DA WHAT A FINISH SEE YOU ALL BACK IN 1995 THANK YOU
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