Mega Battle Tournament 1996: First Round
October 25, 1996 in Nagoya, Japan
Aichi Gym drawing 4,896
WE COME ONCE MORE to the emotional high-point of the RINGS liturgical year as MEGA BATTLE TOURNAMENT is again upon us and as if we needed anything more than that to sustain us it is made clear at once that Akira Maeda's knee is no longer exploded and so he will take his place alongside the younger-kneed men who have boldly entered their names in the lists. There is much to attend to on this day and so the preamble is slight both in the WOWOW broadcast and so, in consequence here. (As it is in WOWOW, so shall at it be in TK Scissors: A Blog of RINGS.) I SHOULD ADD THAT BLOGGER IS BETRAYING ME SOMEWHAT WITH FORMATTING RIGHT NOW AND I APOLOGIZE TO YOU ON ITS BEHALF BUT ALSO ON MY OWN ALL THE WHILE I CURSE ITS TREACHERY.
Our first tournament bout sees the large and strong Gogitidze Bakouri hoist the increasingly handsome Todor Todorov aloft in a Karelin lift (Fire Proi waza-name: Alevin's Lift) but the usually excellent Todorov, to his slight discredit here, makes too much a show of his horror at this (obviously horrific) turn of events but you've got to act like you've been there before (hoisted, which he certainly has) in order to maintain the proper air of shoot, and so although it gives me no pleasure to do so I must notes this fault. That aside, what could one find amiss here? Todorov manages to miss a seoi-otoshi (背負落 shoulder drop) more convincingly than most people can actually throw with one and please believe me when I tell you that if there is one thing I know in the many and vast realms of græppz of which we explore but a minute portion in our time together here, it is what it looks like to shoot miss a seoi-otoshi. I botched one so badly the other night against a fine young brown belt from abroad (among the great joys of the university judo club: its true internationalism) that I took what I would sworn to you was a knee to the face but which others (including the fine young brown belt himself) think was a shoulder to the back of the head and yet I remain unable to figure out what happened and how; certainly my lip was split open such a way that there was all kinds of blood and my mouth was filled with those, you know, lip strings? From what I have written you would think I had been concussed but I really don't think so, I think this remains comfortably in the category of sub-concussive trauma so please do not concern yourself overly. I will tell you more about my personal græppzjourney with seoi-otoshi another time but will for now move on to note that I also admire Todorov's tobi-juji-gatame (飛び
TSUYOSHI KOHSAKA VS. DICK VRIJ appeals to me on that all-caps level of engagement but also mores subtly in that how one is booked against Dick Vrij holds great significance and is very revealing of one's place in the broader economy of RINGS. Dick Vrij's position has been strong since the earliest RINGS and remains so here in late 1996, wouldn't you agree.
Kohsaka looks so confident and ready and I am struck at once by the contrast between his look here and Yamamoto's as he came out for Kopilov in the main event of the final Maelstrom (it was 7th). In both instances, we are looking at people coming out for shoot-style matches, not shoots, but their aspects are radically different, and I would argue in no small measure because of how they have fared in their recent shoots. This could all be foolishness, what do I know, but in the larger sense, of course, this is all foolishness, so it would be odd to split hairs at this point. KOHSAKAAAAAAAAAAA no that wasn't anyone in the crowd that was me; I would like him to win. Like our friend Dave Meltzer, I should note, I come into this Mega Battle Tournament very much assuming that all of these matches will be works, with nary a shoot to be found. Kohsaka takes Vrij down with a low morote-gari double-leg, takes the back, attacks with hadaka-jime, rides a little high, swings around for juji-gatame, fails, but woah was that all very nice! Kohsaka, on his back a little later, begins to play the open guard that is maybe what at least some people will probably mean when they will later say "The TK Guard" but even preliminary searching (or a quick check of The MMA Encylopedia, the most preliminary searching of all) will reveal that there is much disagreement over what exactly anyone has ever meant by TK Guard other than the guard(s?) used by TK. (The matter of scissors, I feel, is much clearer.) There are many hours of TK instructional videos/dvds out there, of which I have several, and perhaps in time I will go through them exhaustively with you here (wouldn't that be fun!) but certainly not before we have made our way through RINGS in its fullness. Dick Vrij gets a little excited and does some hitting that is not quite in keeping with the rules, like a big elbow to the head for a yellow card, but will not TK himself in time benefit enormously from an accidentally thrown elbow? Won't he? Hmmm? Of course. Yes. He will. Vrij knocks him down twice, though, knees playing pretty major parts both times, before Kohsaka catches a kick, encircles the neck in a mae-hadaka-jime front choke, and rolls Vrij to the side in a yoko-sutemi-waza (side sacrifice technique) to finish the choke from the safety of tate-shiho-gatame (縦四方固), the vertical four quarter hold, at 5:35. This is very similar finish to the first match but the match itself was very different and the finish felt earned.
This might not speak to you at all, but to me, Kiyoshi Tamura's entrance theme 田村潔司 入場曲 FLAME OF MIND is the most "Wild Guitar" Fire Pro-sounding theme maybe ever, and part of this is because Tamura's song's lead is actually not guitar but instead synth, so when "Wild Guitar" plays on Fire Pro it actually gives you the Tamura-feeling (or Tamuraffect) more strongly than it does the feeling of any of the actual guitar-based themes that is probably trying to give you the feeling of. In its condition of non-guitar, then, Tamura's "Flame of Mind" becomes the wildest guitar of all. Paradox? Or dialectic? Here he readies himself for Mikhail Ilioukhine, who fought well but ultimately lost to Adilson Lima in a shoot on the deeply mad and improbably perfect 8/24/96 Maelstrom: 6th.
The commentator says vale tudo, perhaps in reference to that same Ilioukhine match we have ourselves just now recalled? But here we very much under RINGS rules, don't worry. Tamura opens his shoot-style matches with more reticence than most, more caution in his opening kicking (it is always kicking), and the effect of this feigned early caution is on the whole, like, super shoot, I think. Ilioukhine takes Tamura up and over with a fine sukui-nage (掬投) or scooping throw; Tamura rolls up and out of a fine juji-gatame attempt and the crowd is of the view that clapclapclapclapclap. Tam
Next up we have Mitsuya Nagai, still opting for the looser shorts of kickboxing than the tight trunks of græppz, against Willie Peeters and I think it is maybe Willie Peeters coming out to a remix of a Black Box song that is getting some of these videos muted? This seems to be an issue that is resolved now so I will not belabour the point. Peeters throws finely, as he has so often over the several years we have enjoyed his work, and just as I reflect on this he throws again, this time with an enormous koshi-waza (hip technique). I feel like Willie Peeters was amazing in 1991 and 1992, fell off weirdly for a while, but has recently returned to form! He cracks Nagai in the groin but Nagai recovers quickly and well. I get super excited for an instant (and I cannot have been alone in this instant; surely others knew it too) when Nagai ducked under Peeters' arm and the possibility of a standing kata-gatame/shoulder-
WHAT THOUGH DID DAVE MELTZER SAY:
October 21, 1996:
October 28, 1996:
November 4, 1996:
October 25, 1996 in Nagoya, Japan
Aichi Gym drawing 4,896
WE COME ONCE MORE to the emotional high-point of the RINGS liturgical year as MEGA BATTLE TOURNAMENT is again upon us and as if we needed anything more than that to sustain us it is made clear at once that Akira Maeda's knee is no longer exploded and so he will take his place alongside the younger-kneed men who have boldly entered their names in the lists. There is much to attend to on this day and so the preamble is slight both in the WOWOW broadcast and so, in consequence here. (As it is in WOWOW, so shall at it be in TK Scissors: A Blog of RINGS.) I SHOULD ADD THAT BLOGGER IS BETRAYING ME SOMEWHAT WITH FORMATTING RIGHT NOW AND I APOLOGIZE TO YOU ON ITS BEHALF BUT ALSO ON MY OWN ALL THE WHILE I CURSE ITS TREACHERY.
Our first tournament bout sees the large and strong Gogitidze Bakouri hoist the increasingly handsome Todor Todorov aloft in a Karelin lift (Fire Proi waza-name: Alevin's Lift) but the usually excellent Todorov, to his slight discredit here, makes too much a show of his horror at this (obviously horrific) turn of events but you've got to act like you've been there before (hoisted, which he certainly has) in order to maintain the proper air of shoot, and so although it gives me no pleasure to do so I must notes this fault. That aside, what could one find amiss here? Todorov manages to miss a seoi-otoshi (背負落 shoulder drop) more convincingly than most people can actually throw with one and please believe me when I tell you that if there is one thing I know in the many and vast realms of græppz of which we explore but a minute portion in our time together here, it is what it looks like to shoot miss a seoi-otoshi. I botched one so badly the other night against a fine young brown belt from abroad (among the great joys of the university judo club: its true internationalism) that I took what I would sworn to you was a knee to the face but which others (including the fine young brown belt himself) think was a shoulder to the back of the head and yet I remain unable to figure out what happened and how; certainly my lip was split open such a way that there was all kinds of blood and my mouth was filled with those, you know, lip strings? From what I have written you would think I had been concussed but I really don't think so, I think this remains comfortably in the category of sub-concussive trauma so please do not concern yourself overly. I will tell you more about my personal græppzjourney with seoi-otoshi another time but will for now move on to note that I also admire Todorov's tobi-juji-gatame (飛び
TSUYOSHI KOHSAKA VS. DICK VRIJ appeals to me on that all-caps level of engagement but also mores subtly in that how one is booked against Dick Vrij holds great significance and is very revealing of one's place in the broader economy of RINGS. Dick Vrij's position has been strong since the earliest RINGS and remains so here in late 1996, wouldn't you agree.
Kohsaka looks so confident and ready and I am struck at once by the contrast between his look here and Yamamoto's as he came out for Kopilov in the main event of the final Maelstrom (it was 7th). In both instances, we are looking at people coming out for shoot-style matches, not shoots, but their aspects are radically different, and I would argue in no small measure because of how they have fared in their recent shoots. This could all be foolishness, what do I know, but in the larger sense, of course, this is all foolishness, so it would be odd to split hairs at this point. KOHSAKAAAAAAAAAAA no that wasn't anyone in the crowd that was me; I would like him to win. Like our friend Dave Meltzer, I should note, I come into this Mega Battle Tournament very much assuming that all of these matches will be works, with nary a shoot to be found. Kohsaka takes Vrij down with a low morote-gari double-leg, takes the back, attacks with hadaka-jime, rides a little high, swings around for juji-gatame, fails, but woah was that all very nice! Kohsaka, on his back a little later, begins to play the open guard that is maybe what at least some people will probably mean when they will later say "The TK Guard" but even preliminary searching (or a quick check of The MMA Encylopedia, the most preliminary searching of all) will reveal that there is much disagreement over what exactly anyone has ever meant by TK Guard other than the guard(s?) used by TK. (The matter of scissors, I feel, is much clearer.) There are many hours of TK instructional videos/dvds out there, of which I have several, and perhaps in time I will go through them exhaustively with you here (wouldn't that be fun!) but certainly not before we have made our way through RINGS in its fullness. Dick Vrij gets a little excited and does some hitting that is not quite in keeping with the rules, like a big elbow to the head for a yellow card, but will not TK himself in time benefit enormously from an accidentally thrown elbow? Won't he? Hmmm? Of course. Yes. He will. Vrij knocks him down twice, though, knees playing pretty major parts both times, before Kohsaka catches a kick, encircles the neck in a mae-hadaka-jime front choke, and rolls Vrij to the side in a yoko-sutemi-waza (side sacrifice technique) to finish the choke from the safety of tate-shiho-gatame (縦四方固), the vertical four quarter hold, at 5:35. This is very similar finish to the first match but the match itself was very different and the finish felt earned.
This might not speak to you at all, but to me, Kiyoshi Tamura's entrance theme 田村潔司 入場曲 FLAME OF MIND is the most "Wild Guitar" Fire Pro-sounding theme maybe ever, and part of this is because Tamura's song's lead is actually not guitar but instead synth, so when "Wild Guitar" plays on Fire Pro it actually gives you the Tamura-feeling (or Tamuraffect) more strongly than it does the feeling of any of the actual guitar-based themes that is probably trying to give you the feeling of. In its condition of non-guitar, then, Tamura's "Flame of Mind" becomes the wildest guitar of all. Paradox? Or dialectic? Here he readies himself for Mikhail Ilioukhine, who fought well but ultimately lost to Adilson Lima in a shoot on the deeply mad and improbably perfect 8/24/96 Maelstrom: 6th.
Next up we have Mitsuya Nagai, still opting for the looser shorts of kickboxing than the tight trunks of græppz, against Willie Peeters and I think it is maybe Willie Peeters coming out to a remix of a Black Box song that is getting some of these videos muted? This seems to be an issue that is resolved now so I will not belabour the point. Peeters throws finely, as he has so often over the several years we have enjoyed his work, and just as I reflect on this he throws again, this time with an enormous koshi-waza (hip technique). I feel like Willie Peeters was amazing in 1991 and 1992, fell off weirdly for a while, but has recently returned to form! He cracks Nagai in the groin but Nagai recovers quickly and well. I get super excited for an instant (and I cannot have been alone in this instant; surely others knew it too) when Nagai ducked under Peeters' arm and the possibility of a standing kata-gatame/shoulder-
Bitsadze Tariel takes to fight against Nikolai Zouev, who despite his consistently high placing in RINGS Official Rankings doesn't seem to be around as much as he used to be, maybe? He harries Tariel with no small number of rolling/Iatskevich entries into juji-gatame but in only 5:34 he finds himself bludgeoned and fallen; it's sad.
VOLK HAN VS. THE TEAM OF MASAYUKI NARUSE AND MASAYUKI NARUSE'S HAIR this could be major. In the opening moments it seems as though Naruse has decided the best defence against Volk Han's especially gnar gyaku-ude-garami/reverse-
It's a bold move. It earns him a yellow card even though Naruse is not really harmed; if anything his hair looks even better after than it had before. The yellow card though puts Han down to his last two points, and given Naruse's advantage in spinningly hitting, Han is compelled to act decisively at once, and so locks in his ever-gnar standing gyaku-ude-garami, only for Naruse to kind of flip out of it like a common wrist-lock spot, and the crowd rightly sees this is as nonsense: you can tell because not only do they not care about the escape, they care no more about or for Nagai's big koshi-waza (hip technique) throw that follows. The finish comes with another fairly wacky Volk Han hold but this one is pretty good I think, a combination ashi-kansetsu leg-
That match had its moment but also didn't have others in its 10:24 and I am not sure how to feel.
Will Yoshihisa Yamamoto have any more life in him than when he met him last in the Valley of Dry Bones? I hope so obviously but at the same time I don't know how likely it is. His foe on this day is no less a fellow than 1992 Barcelona Olympics +95kg judo champion David Khakhaleishvili (დავით ხახალეიშვილი) who you will perhaps recall from his earlier RINGS bouts or perhaps from his début RINGS demo in which he mercilessly ura-nage'd his partner to let everybody know what was up (waza was). He is roughly a thousand pounds heavier than Yamamoto, who really doesn't look better; I worry for him. Also the crowd shouts out a few YAMAMOTOOOOs but it's not like it was. So dark. If they give Yamamoto a win over Khakhaleishvili in an attempt to rehabilitate him, I will understand, but it will seem both incredible (in-credible) and unlikely to do any good, I think (though I remind you I am a fool). The bout opens realistically enough in that it sees Khakhaleishvili smother Yamamoto and toss him around. LEGITIMATELY TERRIBLE FINISH AT 2:24 as Yamamoto goes low for the single-leg takedown of kuchiki taoshi (朽木倒 dead-tree drop) and there's nothing on it so Khakhaleishvili pretty much has to do a ko-ukemi back-breakfall on his own as he kind of half indicates a mae-hadaka-jime front-choke attempt that slips off (what a mess); Yamamoto grabs a heel-hook and Khakhaleishvili flails for a few seconds before tapping; all of this happened right next to the ropes. This was quite poor. If there is a sadder RINGS tale than that of Yoshihisa Yamamoto's as it unfolds right now I dread to hear it.
THE RETURNING AKIRA MAEDA vs. ANDREI KOPILOV is our main event however it is not prefigured by the MEGA BATTLE TOURNAMENT 1996 bracket graphic in the way other tournament matches have been so is it perhaps a non-tournament bout? I am not sure why that would be or how that would work going forward but I am here to report to you not mere facts but my impressions and this is the impression impressed upon me at the moment in my confused inability to tell what things are happening. Maeda is not looking good at all, woah:
That I have recently watched a couple of 1980s Maeda matches is probably not helping the way he looks to me here in 1996, fresh off another knee injury, but I think this is just objectively the worst shape we have seen Maeda in ever, and by a lot. This match is pretty slow and sad, and it is not because Andrei Kopilov is either of those things. This is a dark RINGS. That Maeda takes the main event at 4:54 with a crafty but languid juji-gatame counter to a Kopilov ashi-kansetsu does little if anything to lighten the mood.
It's just dark.
WHAT THOUGH DID DAVE MELTZER SAY:
October 21, 1996:
To end a piece on the state of the Monday night wrsetling ratings and such:
"This is similar in some ways with the dilemma New Japan faced ten years ago when the original UWF wrestlers led by Akira Maeda returned to New Japan after the group folded to do the interpromotional gimmick. The UWF style, which was many years ahead of its time, was a hot style to the teenagers and young adults--the ticket buying public--and the right big match (which never happened because they never could get all the political problems ironed out) was a huge ticket seller. However, the general public didn't understand the submissions and matwork so TV ratings went down to the point New Japan lost its prime time network time slot within two years. New Japan survived, and eventually flourished, despite having much poorer television time slots, by running angles catering to the age group that bought the tickets and is the No. 1 promotion in the world today despite a 1:45 a.m. time slot."
October 28, 1996:
"After seeing the tape, the Kimo vs. Yoshihiro Takayama match on the August UWFI stadium show was a shoot, and a brutal one at that. On the last RINGS show (9/25), Kiyoshi Tamura and Volk Han put on a great worked shoot style match with Han going over. Takada-Anjoh was a disappointing main event for such a major show, but Takada-Tenryu was very good, basically about what you'd think it would be given the two. Saw the 9/7 Pancrase as well, which is the show that airs 11/3 on PPV in the United States. Bas Rutten vs. Masakatsu Funaki and Frank Shamrock vs. Yuki Kondo are both incredible matches. To me they were two of the three best shoot matches of the year (Don Frye vs. Amoury Bitetti in the Detroit UFC being the other) and I'm someone who prefers the ground skill above the striking and these were both mainly standing brawls. Those who have seen every Pancrase show rated it as the best Pancrase show in history."
November 4, 1996:
"Dan Severn's opponent on the 11/17 U Japan show will be Amoury Bitetti of Brazil, who is the 1996 BJJ world champion that Don Frye massacred at the Detroit UFC.
RINGS had the first show of its annual Battle Dimension tournament on 10/25 in Nagoya drawing a disappointing crowd of 4,995 to see the return of Akira Maeda after being out for several months with knee surgery. Maeda, in a non-tournament match, beat Andrei Kopilov in 4:59 with an armlock. Reports are that he didn't look impressive, and considering the size of the crowd, people weren't dying to see him return either. Since Maeda left and the younger wrestlers became the focal point, RINGS has changed and Maeda, the creator, would now look almost out of place in the ring as opposed to being in a commissioner/promoter role, even though he's obviously got more name value than all of them. On 11/22 in Osaka, Maeda will headline against Yoshiaki Fujiwara. In some of the tourney matches on 10/25, Tsuyoshi Kousaka beat Dick Vrij, Kiyoshi Tamura beat Illoukhine Mikhail, Mitsuya Nagai over Willie Peeters, Bitzsade Tariel beat Nikolai Zouev, Volk Han beat Masayuki Naruse and Yoshihisa Yamamoto beat 1992 Olympic judo gold medalist (209 pounds) David Khahareshivili (so add that name to the list of Olympians that have done pro wrestling--he'd done some matches in the past as well but we forgot him when we put together the article). Second round has Yamamoto vs. Gokiteza, Nagai vs. Tamura, Han vs. Kousaka and Tariel vs. Hans Nyman."
OK that's it! Maybe the next one will be less grim! See you then! Thanks for your time!
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