RINGS 4/4/97: BATTLE GENESIS Vol. 1

Battle Genesis Vol. 1
April 4, 1997 in Tokyo, Japan
Korakuen Hall drawing 1,888

THEY SAY SANAE KIKUTA IS ON THE MOVE, PERHAPS HE HAS ALREADY LANDED and in fact he has and this all comes as an enormous surprise to me. I had read some time ago that Kikuta had considered RINGS as a possible thing to do before he settled into his long career of high-taste-level excellence in a number of endeavours but I had literally no idea that he had ever had a RINGS match (let alone two, which seems to be the case). I am shoot surprised by joy! Sanae Kikuta, oh man, where to begin: Kikuta was a national high school judo champion who then trained at university under Toshihiko Koga (three-time World and 1992 Olympic Champion, the best pure thrower of his generation probably and arguably the greatest ippon seoi nage player ever); Kikuta entered and won both the Lumax Cup: Tournament of J '96 (Ikuhisa Minowa was in it!) and Lumax Cup: Tournament of J '97 Heavyweight Tournament (Ikuhisa Minowa was I don't think in it). Actually I guess at the time of this RINGS appearance he is between Lumax Cups (you will recall Tsuyoshi Kohsaka's 1995 win, surely, wreathed as it was in glory). After his brief time in RINGS, Kikuta will go on to fight in the earliest PRIDEs, a tonne of Pancrases (speaking of Minowa, please enjoy this wildly wild Kikuta/Minowa match), and win the Abu Dhabi Combat Club Submission Wrestling World Championship at -88kg in 2001. To win ADCC (a de facto no-gi BJJ world championship) as a judo player is perhaps the greatest of Sanae Kikuta's several great gifts to us, and to me personally, in that it makes for an unreal (and yet all too real) point of trolling betwixt me and my pals who enjoy BJJ. A five-star (I recognize no sixth) Youtube video called "【寝技世界一】菊田早苗 [World's No.1 Ne Waza]" exhibiting Sanae Kikuta's wins over Evan Tanner, Chris Brown (who had beaten Renzo Gracie the round before, so was "legit"), Egan Inoue (finalist vs. TK in the '95 Lumax), and Saulo Ribeiro (an ADCC and Mundials champion several times over, and author of Jiu-Jitsu University, an enormously worthy ne-waza tome) has tragically seen its uploader's account terminated and like a fool I never downloaded it when I had the chance. But it totally happened, Sanae Kikuta did it; he *did* it. What else might we say of Sanae Kikuta? Let's see: i) That his GRABAKA (græppling fool) gym had the best t-shirts (GRAPPLING PARTY the king of them; it served as my avatar on the boards for a time but I never ordered one; no images of it remain on the entire internet; the future is terrible); ii) that GRABAKA remains strong and has a lovely space, and that (iii) his blog is quite thoughtful (this is a google translate situation obviously, given my illiteracy):

"February 01, 2017

FIGHTING SPORTS

In earnest, I started judo since entering junior high school, so that was the start of fighting sports life.

However, at that time, I never thought that doing judo was a fighting sports, but rather intense sports, martial artis.

Unlike boxing etc, it was not intended to give pain to the partner.

However, if I think that this is the foundation of my current fighting sports and definitely helped most of my life, I think that he has been fighting fighting again.

It is because judo was there that I can live like this now.

Judo is essentially a game to be beautifully contested so as not to hurt other people. By mastering this, however, you can compete against any genre of fighting sports.

It is nourished for physical strength, sense of balance, and mental, all.

If you master Judo, then you will be transformed into a tremendous one by a shift change within yourself.

Since it was originally used for fighting, it is commonplace to say that it is natural.

So, as a junior high school, though it happened to be a judo I met, I feel like I'm doing judo all the time after all.

Since the origin is judo, its base has been continuing all the time, and only the rest is applied. So, nothing has changed."

Also--and for now, let us agree, finally--his Fire Pro name is "Mad Grappler" Kikuma Kaname and they call GRABAKA "GRANADA", I would like to get that in, too. I should probably say finally finally that for all the very real enthusiasm I have for Sanae Kikuta and all his many doings (perhaps you are already convinced of this?), maybe don't get too excited about it all because fundamentally he takes people down and lays on them. But so deftly, I love it.  

OK THEN TIME TO WATCH THE SHOW I GUESS and we open with a montage of the many sufferings enacted each upon the other in a previous Tsuyoshi Kohsaka vs. Yoshihisa Yamamoto encounter (I suppose they have only had the one thus far, MAELSTROM SECOND, Osaka, 4/26/96, Yamamoto by heel hook at 13:04 in an excellent shoot-styling) as BATTLE GENESIS Vol. 1 is superimposed over these images and it is all very compelling. We begin with a sit-down interview with Akira Maeda, who, thanks to Kiyoshi Tamura, has just had his best match in years, but I am unable to discern what he is saying in even the broadest lines of what he is talking about, forgive me. I love footage of people warming up in the ring in the afternoon before the show begins and so I am pleased to see it now. I am also pleased that RINGS has returned to Korakuen Hall for the first time since . . . 2/6/94? Can that be right? KORAKUEN EXPERIMENT: ROUND 6? I think it was a good one: it had Yoshihisa Yamamoto vs. Jerry Flynn! The crowd is a little thin, at least as the parade of fighters begins, but maybe people will trickle in, who knows. Like a lot of you (I safely wager about those who kindly join me here this evening or indeed at whatever time of reading suits you) I just like hanging around at Korakuen hall with my græpplpalz in the spirit of fellowship via the gift of tapes. 

Kaichi Tsuji I know nothing of, other than that he competed in the Lumax Cup: Tournament of J '97; SANAE KIKUTA I am familiar with to a greater degree (see above); these two shall create a moment in art and physical culture together as we behold it as an "opening bout." Kikuta strides forth in the gi-jacket or uwagi of his way (his way is judo) and atop black and white tight shorts and white boots and let me tell you this is one hekk of a look, one the camera should luxuriate in way more than it does: 

Kikuta is stout and strong at 176cm/94kg (which you might well know best as 5'9"/207lbs); his weight never really goes up from there throughout the rest of his career, if I am remembering things right, but he gets stouter and stouter looking as time goes on, I don't know why. I am reflecting on how I have seen Kikuta "shoot" I don't know how many times, but have never once seen him "work," and so I am quite hoping this will be shoot-style! I don't know, though, the energy is high and fairly severe as they come out kicking until Tsuji takes Kikuta down with the crab scissor of kani-basami. Kikuta has no problem at all working from the bottom, at least not that I have ever seen, and that does not change here as he wraps up an arm with an over-hook into the position many of us would come in time to know as "Komlock" after the very fine competitor and extraordinary teacher Koji Komuro. Just as Kikuta swings beneath a leg for an ashi-kansetsu of some kind we are re-stood. Tsuji gets the next takedown, too, a little koshi-waza hip technique, grabs a kubi-hishigi neck crank, and Kikuta drapes a foot across the ropes to break. The energy now feels shoot-style? Some hard slaps from Kikuta lead to a swarming back-take of a take-down and enough ashi-kansetsu (leg-bone-locking) to drive Tsuji to the ropes. All that saves Tsuji from an immediate kouchi-gake (minor outer hook) once they are stood up is an arm wrapped around the top rope and while Yuji Shimada is not breaking out the yellow card about it, neither is he thrilled with it. OUCHI-GARI the major inner reap positions Kikiuta well in the ne-waza (ground technique) he loves best and he is just brutalizing Tsuji's poor little face (he is, like, choking the face) working for the hadaka-jime naked strangle; Tsuji grabs a rope. Kikuta seems convinced this waza is the way forward, for he attempts it again, this time standing: Tsuji grabs a rope but looks totally harried at this point. KIKUTA HEEL HOOK and I was sure that was going to be it but Tsuji rolled to the ropes in such a way as to suggest to me that this really is maybe shoot-style rather than a shoot? I am not at all sure though! Perhaps the finish will tell the tale? Tsuji uses a rope escape to break not a submission attempt but a bad position, which you don't see very often but which makes a lot of sense--is that evidence of work or shoot? The finish comes at 8:33  from a Kikuta juji-gatame and I don't know what I was watching but I liked it! (Probably shoot-style!)

Lee Hasdell and Sean McCulley are burdened with the impossible task of following Sanae Kikuta competing in RINGS (while it would be an overstatement to say that this knowledge changes everything, at the same time it pretty clearly does) but I have every expectation that they will do well! So engrossed was I in the Kikuta match that only now do I notice that for the first time in kind of a while, there's no commentary on this show, as though this were the glorious season more than a decade ago when a technicians' strike (lockout?) kept the CBC from airing commentary on the Stanley Cup playoff games so all you got was crowd sounds and also of course hockey sounds. Jose Théodore was very good against the Bruins! I like judo without commentary, too, if we are here to reflect on what things we like better without commentary (virtually all things, is probably the number of things). McCulley taps to Hasdell's mae-hadaka-jime front choke despite standing right up against the ropes and I don't get it at a mere 3:59.

IT IS TIME FOR KIYOSHI TAMURA against the able Christopher Haseman and both of these fellows have shown themselves very much capable of shooting but also of working and so here lies the mystery before us.

Let us speak freely and frankly about the uncommon physical beauty of 1997 Kiyoshi Tamura. It is real; only a fool would deny it; open yourself to it. The people shriek as he is introduced and his genre-best entrance music blares and he bows excessively in all four cardinal directions (unless Korakuen Hall is built at, like, an angle). Haseman is singleted, and true to his roots, in that it is the deep-sided singlet of the true man of wrestling and its internationalism, not the more modest singlet of, let's say, Mr. Perfect (may peace be upon him, let us cherish his memory). At this point I do not need to tell you how Tamura is attired (red boots, red trunks, near-ideal lean muscularity). COME ON CHRIIIIIIIIS is bellowed by, one assumes, another Australian. The energy thus far is strictly shoot-style as Haseman shrugs off a kick and ducks under for the form of ura-nage (rear-throw) that most closely resembles sori-nage (rearward-learning throw) which is to say it is a tidy little German suplex, followed neatly by an attempt at juji-gatame. A rope break later they are up again and Tarmura snaps in those little kicks. Hasemen entangles the legs in a way I imagine has either a French or deeply mid-western name as so many things seem to hold in the realms of wrestling (largely alien to me, though certainly I have had students who wrestled, and also I enjoy to watch it in the Olympics [also if you are like "the Olympics were foolish for dropping wrestling and then bringing it back as a lower-tier sport" I will not argue with you but I will suggest that you should read about who was even more foolish {it was FILA, which doesn't exist under that name anymore}). Tamura and Haseman are doing such a good job! Haseman enters with a kani-basami crab scissor but ends up on his back; Tamura ascends such that he may apply omote-sankaku-jime (the triangle choke you think of when you think of triangle chokes) and roll to his back for the finish. A fine little match! There was a low-key excellence to Tamura's work here that was subtler than the hyper-real transitional flash with which he is most closely associated (by me, at least, but I think it is fair that I do it).

Masayuki Naruse faces Valentijn Overeem in a rematch of when Overeem crushed Naruse's face with a knee in the grim spectacle of FREE FIGHT GALA 1997: THE FINAL CHALLENGE, probably not the worst thing to happen to peoples' bodies in Amsterdam the night of 2/2/97 but the only one I have tape of (this is not a veiled plea for other such tapes, TOM, thanks as always though). Naruse finds a measure of listless shoot-style vengeance for his shoot loss with a weird stoppage off a spinning backhand (what else?) at 12:05 and I would maybe not characterize this bout as a complete success?    

I AM PRETTY READY FOR TSUYOSHI KOHSAKA VS. YOSHIHISA YAMAMOTO THOUGH. 

Yamamoto, you may recall, was recently granted a victory over the enormous Hans Nijman (R.I.P. on this Good Friday) as, one supposes, a partial gestures towards rehabilitation following his extremely shitty departure from the MEGA BATTLE TOURNAMENT 1996 one can only assume he was initially intended to win, before Kiyoshi Tamura emerged first as the obvious new glory and secondly as the guy allowed to "shoot" beat him in a tournament consistently of entirely worked bouts otherwise (that was weird, and Dave did not answer my mailbag question on it the other night, but I will not yield in the asking). That Yamamoto was bested also in the third-place bout by Bitsadze Tariel is to me perhaps the darkest part of the entire tale. Kohsaka, on the other hand, continues to roll along having the best match on pretty much every RINGS show he has been on (and it is a lot of them at this point); in addition to winning every shoot he has yet been in (a run like that can't last forever so let us savour it all the more for that), he very recently shoot-styled his way past that same Bitsadze Tariel mentioned only moments ago. And so it would seem that what we have before us now is a contest between Japanese number twos (in that Tamura is so clearly the Japanese number one, Maeda now in the rôle of Japanese number one emeritus [although clearly still the big star and top draw and all of that kind of thing, please do not mistake me]) headed in different directions, and the fact that the early energies of this bout are so clearly shoot-style rather than shooting proper makes the outcome here more intriguing, in my view, not less. (Were it a straight shoot, I think we will agree Kohsaka would likely smother Yamamoto figuratively until it became literal, whereas the shoot-style outcome is much more in doubt.) The pace to begin is pleasing, the positional work of a high calibre, the kansetsu (bone-locking) and shime (strangulation) waza (techniques) well-enacted and received as genuine threats to finish by the small but excellent Korakuen crowd, and I feel like I am totally getting what I had hoped for both in the immediate instance of this match and in the broader condition of the RINGS box itself; this is completely what I signed up for in 2007 with my pals. There is a brief break in the action in the ring though not in the feelings in my heart as Kohsaka is I believe checked for a cut and I will remind you as I did the last time Kohsaka was all cut up (the first Volk Han match) that in time Kohsaka will benefit greatly from a cut stoppage, won't he (yes; yes he will). HOLY HEY OK so TK just cartwheeled out of a juji-gatame attack, circled around to the far side and applied his own juji-gatame with so much alacrity just so much of it and yet a very real heaviness that the crowd goes nuts for it and Yamamoto grabs the ropes and the crowd is like HAAWOOOOAAAHHHH and Kohsaka stands up sort of smugly and points to the crowd that is approving of him so hard and it is a major moment in art. Perhaps the moment where it is totally clear that Kohsaka has overtaken Yamamoto, if we needed a single moment where it happened? Just before all of that splendour unveiled itself, Yamamoto had kind of fumbled his way through a standing pass, slipped off of the arm for a juji, and just kind of dropped down into a mune-gatame chest hold, and it was like, well, it wasn't too good, really, but I wasn't even going to mention it, but that it was followed almost immediately by so major a moment of waza and of waza-reception I have to retroactively point it out I think. 

But to rejoin the present, the match-present: so much a part of my interior græppling life is Fire Pro that every time Kohsaka does a rolling sumi-gaeshi/hikikomi gaeshi (corner reversal/pulling reversal) into the strong (Kashiwazaki says strongest but it's not for me probbaly because of my many flaws!) top position of tate-shiho-gatame and applies a mae-hadaka-jime front choke I think "just like he does in Fire Pro" and that's not in any way useful to think but we are who we are. THIS CROWD IS GOING WILD as the rope breaks and knockdowns escalate, like this is easily among the "hottest" crowds for any RINGS match yet and we are, what, in our seventh year of this? And there have been a lot of Maeda matches in those years? And he is, I think we can safely say, well liked by the Japanese? But this is right there with the best of them. I don't know how long this match has been going on but it has to be more than twenty minutes (the time limit, I probably do not need to remind you, is thirty). OK there's the bell, actually, as Yamamoto struggles to untangle Kohsaka's arms to finish a juji-gatame but he cannot; your winner by decision on points is KOHSAKAAA TSUYOOOOSHIIIIIII KORAKUEN HAS SPOKEN YAMAMOTO IS THE PAST KOHSAKA IS THE FUTURE WHAT A MATCH WHAT A TIME WE HAVE HAD.

WHAT DID DAVE MELTZER SAY: 

April 14, 1997:

"Rings ran on 4/4 at Korakuen Hall before 1,688 with several interesting results. In the main event, Tsuyoshi Kousaka won via decision after going 30:00 with Yoshihisa Yamamoto, which has to be considered a major upset. Valentine Ofraim of Holland lost to Masayuki Naruse in 12:05. This was a rematch of their match on 2/2 which was a shoot match where Naruse was expected to win but got his eye busted open by a knee and the match had to be quickly stopped. Don't want to speculate on this until seeing the tape. Kiyoshi Tamura beat Christopher Hazemann of Australia, who has been recently on the MARS PPV and also the Australasian UFC where he went to the finals losing to Mario Sperry. Mick Tierney will be debuting for this group on the 4/22 show. Tierney wrestles pro for Billy Anderson as the Irish Assassin, but has trained Olympic judo name Leo White [what?--ed.].

4/4 Tokyo Korakuen Hall (RINGS - 1,688):Kikuda b Tsuji, Leo Hasdell b Sean McCulley, Kiyoshi Tamura b Christopher Hazemann, Masayuki Naruse b Valentine Ofraim, Tsuyoshi Kousaka b Yoshihisa Yamamoto"

April 21, 1997: 

"Caught the 3/28 RINGS show. Whatever has been written praising Kiyoshi Tamura goes double after his match with Akira Maeda. He carried Maeda to a very heated good match which is the first good match Maeda has been in for a long time. The one thing seeing the two in the ring together is that Maeda really had to win, because Maeda came in at a shoot 253 pounds and Tamura, even with the bodybuilder physique, was only 187 and they worked a good match with Tamura on offense most of the way but in the end due to the size difference and the fact Maeda is still the drawing card with this group at least until his retirement, he really did have to win this time. The magazines are even praising the match as one of the best matches of the year, which I wouldn't go quite that far. The other highlight was the knockout that Tanaka did to Todor Todorov in the opener which was about as devastating a kick knockout as you'll ever see [I don't think that fight was real though--ed.]"

Ctrl+F "RINGS" also brings us further news of Naoya Ogawa's début:

"The pro wrestling debut of Naoya Ogawa, a national sports hero in Japan for being the country's No. 1 heavyweight judo player for much of the past decade, was considered a major success.

The 4/12 Tokyo Dome, the show originally added to the schedule because of the belief it was going to be the largest gate in history almost automatically with a Shinya Hashimoto vs. Ken Shamrock IWGP title main event. Ogawa was to debut on the undercard. The show changed its face with Shamrock signing with WWF and Ogawa moved to the main event. While Ogawa's name wasn't as strong with the ticket buying pro wrestling fans in Japan as Shamrock's, he was far better known to the general public. New Japan garnered tons of mainstream publicity which led to a crowd announced at 60,500, which everyone was thrilled with since the show's advance wasn't promising at all. This would probably be a gate around $5 million which will make it wind up as almost surely the second biggest money show of 1997 behind only the 1/4 Dome show when it comes to total revenue. The show wasn't sold out but was fairly close to capacity and we're told that announced figure sounded about right. More than 50 magazines and 250 press photographers covered the main event, and a photo of the finish appeared in color on the front page of a few sports newspapers the next morning. Stories of Ogawa training with Antonio Inoki and Satoru Sayama for his pro wrestling debut ran daily in many newspapers all week leading up to the match, and it spurred enough general public curiosity interest that the television show airing on tape the next afternoon with the main matches from the Dome drew a 13.0 overall rating (Hashimoto vs. Ogawa itself drew a 13.6 rating), making it the highest rated pro wrestling television show in Japan in many years.

Ogawa used the same choke sleeper that was his main finisher in winning seven national titles and three world titles in judo in what was billed as a martial arts match, in 9:25, and referee Masao Hattori stopped the match. This was a disputed finish in that Riki Choshu and Kensuke Sasaki immediately hit the ring screaming that Hashimoto hadn't tapped out. Ogawa then Inoki at ringside. Hashimoto then after the match asked for a rematch, putting up his IWGP title, which will headline the 5/3 Osaka Dome show. Hashimoto also requested to be pulled off the house show schedule for April so he could train uninterrupted for the rematch. For those interested in "what would have happened" trivia, the plan originally if Shamrock was there was for Hashimoto to pin Shamrock on this card, but for Shamrock to capture the title in the rematch in Osaka. It was pretty well known by insiders that Ogawa was going to win the non-title match to set up the title match, and put him on the map from the start of his career as a big time player in Japanese wrestling.

Ogawa, now 29, was the youngest world champion in the history of judo at the age of 19 in 1987. He followed it up with world title wins in 1989 and 1991. In 1992, he won the silver medal at 209 pounds at the Barcelona Olympics losing to Russian David Khakhalesheivili, who currently works for RINGS and is the current heavyweight world champion in Sambo. He placed fifth in the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, and officially retired from competitive judo last September and began negotiating first with All Japan which didn't come close to meeting his money figures, and later New Japan, which did, to go into pro wrestling.

There was great intensity in the match since New Japan wrestlers Choshu, Sasaki, Satoshi Kojima and Takashi Iizuka were all in Hashimoto's corner doing the gimmick of representing their world champion in the battle against the top judo star in the country, who had Inoki in his corner, which guaranteed heat. It's the gimmick the New Japan promotion has specialized in almost from the inception of the company, and really the direction WWF should have taken Shamrock, as the outsider challenging the champion of the WWF, for maximum initial impact and value.

The wrestlers were screaming at Hashimoto to throw kicks, which he did, but Ogawa snatched him in a cross armlock and Hashimoto made it to the ropes. Hashimoto came back with hard chops and thigh and chest kicks but Ogawa caught a kick and took him down going for an armlock but Hashimoto escaped. Hashimoto, who was a high school champion in judo before getting into pro wrestling, did some judo spots of his own but Ogawa ended up on top in "his" game catching the arm again and Hashimoto again went for the ropes to break it. Hashimoto unloaded with the hard kicks and finally knocked Ogawa down past the 6:00 mark and did his chops to the shoulder and kicks to the stomach and Ogawa rolled out of the ring. Hashimoto got his trademark bloody nose at this point. Hashimoto unleashed more kicks and knocked Ogawa down for a count of seven. Ogawa made the comeback using a judo throw which will become his trademark pro wrestling winning move called the STO (Special Tornado Ogawa) and clamped on the sleeper with a body scissors on the mat for the finish. The match was said to have been successful in that it accomplished what it set out to do, appear believable and come off real looking and get Ogawa over to set up his career and the impending rematch. Obviously Ogawa in his first pro match didn't have a classic good match.

In other results:1. Hiroyoshi Tenzan beat Manabu Nakanishi in 14:29 with a diving head-butt and a variation of a boston crab submission. Said to be so-so; 2. El Samurai pinned Shinjiro Otani in 13:51 with a reverse DDT and pin. Said to be about what you'd expect from these two. In other words, really good; 3. Chris Benoit, with Woman in his corner, pinned Kevin Sullivan, with Jacquelyn in his corner, in 9:17 after a head-butt off the top rope. Fans didn't get into this match at all; 4. Kojima & Junji Hirata beat Kazuo Yamazaki & Osamu Kido in 10:18 when Kojima pinned Kido after a stretch bomb. Said to have been okay; 5. Shiro Koshinaka pinned Takashi Ishikawa of the Ishikawa Ikka promotion in 11:16 with the flying butt bump. Said to have been disappointing; 6. Jushin Liger pinned Great Sasuke in 20:08 to retain the J Crown. Said to have been really good. They did a major angle after the match where Liger and Sasuke were in a room talking to reports about the match when the Kaientai heels (the heels in the match at ECW plus Hanzo Nakajima and Shoichi Funaki) jumped both of them. The angle wound up with Liger and Sasuke agreeing to form a tag team to battle Kaientai. Kaientai then got New Japan's Koji Kanemoto and Otani to join their side in the feud; 7. Antonio Inoki beat Tiger King (Satoru Sayama) in 6:46 by submission with the cobra twist. This would make the first job Sayama has done since his comeback and the first job since the 1970s Sayama would have done in New Japan rings. Said to have been a so-so match; 8. Great Muta pinned Masahiro Chono in 14:09 after a moonsault. However, after the match, Muta shook hands with Chono, keeping the storyline going as to whether or not Muto/Muta is going to wind up joining the NWO; 9. Choshu & Sasaki captured the IWGP tag team titles from Tatsumi Fujinami & Kengo Kimura when Choshu pinning Kimura in 15:39 with a lariat. Said to have been a good match; 10. Ogawa beat Hashimoto.

At press time, what has been announced for the 5/3 Osaka Dome besides Hashimoto vs. Ogawa for the title, is Choshu & Sasaki defending the tag titles against Nakanishi & Kojima, Tokimitsu Ishizawa (Inoki's protege who has been studying Brazilian Jiu Jitsu) vs. Kazuo Yamazaki, Koshinaka vs. Kimura in a grudge match and a ten-man match that should steal the show with Sasuke & Gran Hamada & Samurai & Norio Honaga & Super Delfin vs. Kanemoto & Otani & Dick Togo & Mens Teoh & Nakajima. There will be five other matches on the show, and appearing from WCW will be Sting, Lex Luger, The Giant, Rick & Scott Steiner, Kevin Nash, Scott Hall, Syxx, Marcus Bagwell, Scott Norton and Imposter Sting. The matches involving the WCW wrestlers weren't announced at the press conference because New Japan and WCW haven't come to agreements on exactly how the wrestlers will be used.

The general belief is that the Osaka Dome show will be an easy sellout because it's the first pro wrestling show in the new building and the biggest show ever presented in that city.

Although the most famous pro wrestler vs. judo matches were the two worked 1976 matches and the 1979 rematch between Inoki and former Olympic gold medalist Willem Ruska of the Netherlands, Japanese mat history lists the first pro wrestling vs. judo match in 1921 with pro wrestler Ad Santel, noted as one of the all-time hooking (submission) masters and later the submission coach for Lou Thesz, facing Hiko Shoji, a Japanese judo champion, in a match that ended in a draw which was likely also worked but going back that far there is probably nobody alive that knows for sure."


OK THAT'S IT FROM KORAKUEN HALL FOR NOW but I hope we return to it soon and I hope too that you will join me when we do as I once again thank you for your time! This show was great!