February 2, 1997 in Amsterdam, Netherlands
Sport Hall South drawing 5,300
LAST YEAR'S FREE FIGHT GALA SAW LEAN DUTCH SKIDS BATTER ONE ANOTHER IN HORRIBLE SHOOTS; what will this year's hold? The only Japanese fighters of note who competed last year were Tsuyoshi Kohsaka, who defeated Willie Peeters in the best shoot of the night for sure, and Yoshihisa Yamamoto, who was booked in an opening-match shoot-style win over Wataru Sakata. And oh yeah Mitsuay Nagai had a match too, now that I look. But for the most part it was semi-known Dutch shooters shooting and just top-to-bottom lurid and a grim reminder of my misspent youth (of being a Dutch shooter [no I never was one of those really but I mean my misspent youth of watching any and all shoots however low they may have been]). But a trip to Amsterdam is also a chance to check in with Chris Dolman, and he seems to be keeping well, so that's good to see! Also it would seem Kiyoshi Tamura made the trip:
I will note here I guess (where else would I note it) that if you are anywhere close to over the revelations of recent (RINGS-blog recent) Meltzer excerpts on the subject of Tamura/Yamamoto, then we are very different people and you are much more able to cope with complexity. December 30, 1996: "What is most interesting about the match is the report we've received that the two actually went into the ring without a finish so the result of the match was a shoot although the match itself wouldn't be a pure shoot." February 10: "[I]n the semi, there was some problem regarding the finish and the two went in without a finish and did a shoot match." WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN? The second note seems straightforward enough: they couldn't figure out how to work so it was decided (but by whom? by them? by Maeda?) to shoot, but the first, the notion that the finish was a shoot but the match itself wasn't "a pure shoot," that is just messing me up. So intrigued am I that I think I am going to write a letter to the Wrestling Observer Radio mailbag in hopes that Bryan will ask Dave about it! No time for that now though, because Bas Rutten (here for Dutch-language commentary) has arrived and is chatting with Chris Dolman:
A moment later our first bout begins as Gylbert Yvel, of whom we will see much more in the fullness of RINGS (if I am remembering things right!), beats a young man named Rob van Leeuwen to the point of a corner stoppage (a towel is shoot thrown) at 4:08 of the first round, each man attired in pants as black as this whole dark scene I want no part of and yet now behold. Will Peter Dijkman and the boxing-gloved Yuri Bekichev be able to lift my spirit? Maybe a little, as Dijkman finishes with hadaka-jime in a mere 2:27 and no real harm seems to have been done. Willie Peeters vs. Sergei Sousserov carries with it the inexplicable but inherent appeal of seeing two people you have watched pretend to fight fighting for real so it has that at least but in the end I don't know why Willie Peeters was allowed to knee Sousserov in the face after he was down. I think there is enough evidence to say at this point that it's not just a work: Willie Peeters is a shoot jerk maybe?
Next we see Hans Nijman at home with his lovely wife and three young children (one is a baby) and the best you can say I guess is that they seem very happy and we are still seventeen years from his murder (R.I.P.) but given our foreknowledge this does little to lighten the brooding atmosphere of gloom and terror. That phrase is the great M. H. Abrams' and actually it occurs to me that to the extent to which FREE FIGHT GALA 1997: THE FINAL CHALLENGE "develops a brooding atmosphere of gloom and terror, represents events that are uncanny or macabre or melodramatically violent, and often deals with aberrant psychological states" it is gothic "in the extended sense" (all this from the 7th ed. of his famed Glossary). But not in the sikk sense. Nijman defeats Lee Hasdell early in the second round (0:51) as Hasdell, whilst being choked, taps the ropes to show the referee the extent to which he is touching those same ropes and so should be freed, but the referee messes up and ends the fight. This is all terrible. Masayuki Naruse just got kneed in the face by Valentijn Overeem and he's all cut up and loses at 4:10. Mitsuya Nagai fares no better, and actually kind of worse, bludgeoned and then smooshed by the truly enormous Joop Kasteel before being kneed savagely in the groin and soon thereafter stopped. All terrible.
Kiyoshi Tamura enters the shitty fray against Dutch kickboxer Andre Mannaart, the soaring wild guitar (it is synth) of "Flame of Mind" utterly at odds with its surroundings. Tamura is attired in the red trunks and pads of his custom; Mannaart in long semi-shiny pants of a similar hue. After some early semi-tentative striking, Tamura takes Mannaart down with little trouble (except the knee he ate on the way in, I guess), rides out the Dutchman's brief, frantic wilding, and finishes with the naked strangle of hadaka-jime in 2:17. All of the previous matches have been shoots and that one probably was too? It is possible that it was not. But I think?
"Dirty" Bob Schrijber has gone nearly a full round without yet committing a foul against Toon Stelling (that name . . . that name is awesome) and so is to be commended, probably. Ah, ok, just as I say this he comes flying across the tiny ring as Stelling is being counted by the deeply ineffectual referee. Bob stops him in the second. What other nonsense do we have here, let's see, Rob van Esdonk knocks Dennis Krauweel out under "kickboxing" or "bad, to me" rules, and, in the main event, Dick Vrij and Pedro Palm fight to a fittingly shitty no-contest stopped at 1:14 after Vrij soccer-kicked Palm in the face after the (terrible) referee had already stopped the fight. Queen's "Fat Bottomed Girls" inexplicably plays over the highlights--the especially great "get on your bikes and ride" part, even--but its not enough to save any of this, nor is the high-level JWP Joshi Puroresu (JWP女子プロレス) commercial at the end; this was the worst and I hated it.
WHAT DID DAVE MELTZER HAVE TO SAY, HOPEFULLY ABOUT OTHER THINGS THAN THIS:
February 10, 1997:
"The 24-hour Samurai channel has still only been subscribed to by about 10,000 homes which is a major flop by this point. They need more like 100,000 to be stable and show life even though nobody was actually expecting to make a profit for ten years on the deal. I was told that for those of you interested in the classic matches on tape, make sure and get them early because there is no guarantee how long the station will be around and if those matches will be repeated many times.
RINGS ran a show on 2/2 in Amsterdam, Holland drawing a sellout 5,300 which will air soon in Japan. In past RINGS shows in Holland, the vast majority of the matches are shoot while in Japan, only a small percentage are. Both Akira Maeda (who was there and may have done television commentary) and Yoshihisa Yamamoto were kept off the Holland show which may indicate it was a shoot show completely or mainly, as the matches were very short for the most part and the Japanese lost to people they would beat in a worked situation. Masayuki Naruse caught a knee to the eye against Valentine Olfraim and the doctor immediately stopped their match. Big bodybuilder Joop Kasteel, who is basically a jobber in Japan, beat Mitsuya Nagai in just 1:05, while Kiyoshi Tamura was the only Japanese fighter to win beating Andrei Manatto in 2:17. Tamura may have been protected or they may have matched him with someone they knew he'd have no trouble with."
RINGS USA?
"RINGS is making noises about trying to do an American PPV show. Pancrase wasn't successful after the first show and even though RINGS, being largely worked (in regard to Pancrase, while there have been worked matches, it predominately now a shoot), would have more appeal in the U.S. and it's more dramatic, it still wouldn't make it for all the same reasons Pancrase and all the new UFC-clones aren't going to. I guess the deal is that Maeda feels that if Funaki can do an American PPV, he should be able to as well. Hey, anyone can do anything they want if they're willing to lose enough money. The idea is to start a RINGS America group with Kimo as the top star, and they'd like to get Dan Severn as a regular as well. Severn was offered $10,000 for a match with Maeda but at the time didn't think the timing was right. New Japan has lost interest in Severn because they believe his Japanese price is more than he's worth, since it's well-known he received $30,000 for the match with Mitsuhiro Matsunaga and they were looking at him as a $5,000 per week guy. It was really a deal where Inoki loved him because Inoki's into that type of thing and wanted to make him the top foreigner, but the rest of New Japan saw his shortcomings as a worker and they brought him in but did nothing to push him to get over, nor did Severn's performance in August at Sumo Hall help his cause."
The birth of PRIDE is the death of RINGS:
"The Fuji Network in Japan wants to promote a big Dome show. They are looking to find a combat sport they can ride and call their own since K-1 kick boxing has turned into such a box office and television ratings success. The idea is to have Rickson Gracie vs. Nobuhiko Takada in the main event. Gracie was offered $1 million for a worked match with Takada and turned it down. They then made a second offer where they would have three ten minute rounds and where the first round would be a work but from the second round on it would be a shoot but Gracie turned that down as well as made it clear unless the match was 100% shoot he wouldn't do it. This may actually take place since Takada wants to retire anyway and he'll get a huge payday for the shoot. Even though in his prime he was the best submission guy in the old UWF dojo in the late 80s and when it comes to form and power is awesome with kicks, although kicks are totally overrated in a shoot because a good takedown guy loves guys to try and kick them. Anyway, Takada has never done an NHB match and Gracie has tons of experience and should win handily, although Yoshihisa Yamamoto of RINGS lasted more than 20:00 with Gracie in 1995 in a shoot. There's also talk of getting new money together and re-opening UWFI which would give Takada another way to go.
Speaking of Japanese pro wrestlers, World Fighting Federation is planning a show for 3/14 (and they've delayed dates numerous times already) which is said to be taped for a delayed broadcast on PPV (with no live location given) billing Gokor Chichivyan, a transplanted Russian who lives in Los Angeles and claims a 400-0 record in NHB (yeah, like that's believable, although the guy is something of a legend in that world and was Oleg Taktarov's sambo coach), against another fighter billed as having a 200-0 NHB record and being a World heavyweight Muay Thai champion, a World judo champion and a World shootfighting champion. The punch line is his name is Akira Maeda. I'd be just about certain any match Maeda would be involved at this point would have to be a work, and there's been no pub in Japan for a match of this type and obviously Maeda headlining an American PPV would be huge news in Japan. We do know that several big-name fighters, including Taktarov and Brazilian Carlos Baretto, have been contacted to do the show and the word is that the main event will be worked but all the undercard matches will be real."
February 17, 1997:
Another WON letter from the master of the form:
"Yes, David Khakhaleishvili won the World Sambo championships, but the heavyweight division was a thin weight class and the WOWOW program even acknowledged that the toughest division was the middleweights. RINGS is always modest about their fighters' non-pro competitions including the credentials of several Olympic athletes but it is well-known that they are all real world class elite athletes which gives them a lot of credibility.
RINGS has never advertised themselves as pro wrestling and list themselves as "total fight martial arts" in WOWOW listing and in all the TV Guides. The reason Pancrase advertises itself as pro wrestling is marketing reasons. The pro wrestling universe including the mainstream magazine readership is much larger than the martial arts community so they wanted to capitalize n the fame of Minoru Suzuki and Masakatsu Funaki. The fact that Satoru Sayama's shooting promotion made the mistake to push itself only as a shoot martial arts sport may have limited the penetration and popularity of the new shooting martial art.
The reason Bas Rutten's name was missing from the top ten in the Pancrase ratings was a technical reason. The rankings have written rules in that anyone who misses a scheduled event for a reason other than an injury loses their rating. Masami Ozaki didn't know the rule initially and used it as an excuse for preparing for the worst case situation, that of Rutten jumping to K-1 or RINGS. However, Rutten's priority is truly for his first baby and his girlfriend rather than being the King of Pancrase. I think all the top ten rated fighters are very close in skill right now so fans know the rankings don't mean as much anymore.
The JD story may not be an angle. I went to see the promotion live in Osaka on 12/23. They drew 400 to 600. I predicted correctly the upset with Cooga beating Bison Kimura on 12/29. Jaguar Yokota and Lioness Asuka seemed to have a problem with the office and the show indicated that. Not only Cooga was the best worker on the 12/23 show, but also got over big among casual fans. Yoshimoto, based in Osaka, is a huge entertainment conglomerate but they don't support the JD division both financially as well as a push as compared to their other divisions.
Tadashi Tanaka"
A clarification:
"There will be a PPV show taped on 2/15 in Birmingham, AL which will air on 3/14 on Action PPV (which covers about eight million homes or less than one-third of the total PPV universe so it's chances of being profitable are something less than slim) which will be the first show of the World Fighting Federation (WFF). It's the show headlined by Gokor vs. Maeda, only now they're saying it isn't Akira Maeda (after some internet squawking about a fake pro wrestler) but a guy named Belle Maeda, who happens to be about the same height and weight as Akira. There will also be an eight-man tournament with Oleg Taktarov involved along with pro wrestler Tony Halme (Ludvig Borga)."
February 24, 1997:
"The photos in the mags gave the impression that the 2/2 RINGS show from Amsterdam, Holland was a shoot as the results (quick matches, brutal beatings, surprise results) indicated and the Japanese aside from Kiyoshi Tamura all got hammered and Akira Maeda only did television commentary."
Let's just leave it there for now, maybe? See you back in Tokyo? Thank you for your time but in my view we all could have spent it way better.
No comments:
Post a Comment