RINGS 9/5/00: BATTLE GENESIS VOL. 6

Battle Genesis Vol. 6
September 5, 2000 in Tokyo, Japan
後楽園ホール Kōrakuen Hōru

AS RAY OF LIGHT AT THE END OF THE DARKEST TUNNEL WE FIND BATTLE GENESIS VOL. 6 後楽園ホール KORAKUEN HORU tucked away in remotest regions of the 10/8/00 WOWOW broadcast of the RINGS U.S.A. nightmare out of which we try to rouse ourselves anew each day (I think I am coming closer). For a moment just now it occurred to me that this might well be the final RINGS Korakuen Hall but don't worry, I checked, and there's one more next year (by which I mean 2001), and then of course there are none after that at all for sure, are there. So let us savour these twenty fleeting minutes of BATTLE GENESIS that are nearly all that remains of our beloved RINGS in this our dearest hōru. 

We begin with Naoyuki Kotani's forty-two-second punching of Kiyohito Sugata, whose gym is listed as RODEO STYLE (I could easily have this backwards, and if so, please forgive me), and who has been quite badly cut. It seems like he is otherwise totally okay, and it also seems like he was getting punched an awful lot in ways that seemed likely to continue, so having the match stopped on a cut is perhaps best received as mercy and maybe even grace, I don't know. We are at once onto a tremendously foreshortened presentation of Tashihiro Nishiuchi's decision win over Tomotsugu Fujiwara. It seemed spirited!

Hey, look who's here:

It's our friend Фёдор Влади́мирович Емелья́ненко/Fyodor Vladimirovich Yemelyanenko/Fedor Vladimirovich Emelianenko! Isn't it nice to see him! We are all well aware of who Fedor would become -- the greatest heavyweight mixed fighter in the world, and also a deputy of the Belgorod Regional Duma who publicly expressed his support for the annexation of Crimea (the Russian Federation is touchy about calling it an "annexation," so I guess we should teach the controversy?) -- but who was he then, by which I mean now, if we are speaking of 9/5/00 in Korakuen Hall for this the sixth volume of BATTLE GENESIS? For starters let us note that this is not Fedor's first RINGS bout but in fact his third, as he had previously faced (and defeated) first Martin Lazarov and then Levon Lagvilava on RINGS Russia shows dated 5/21/00 and 8/16/00 that did not find their way into the RINGSbox and of which tape may or may not exist, who can say (I am not checking). But it was only a few short months before that that twenty-three-year-old Fedor was still a member of the Russian National Judo Team! In April, he had done well in the Dutch Open Grand Prix Rotterdam:

That's a good showing! He got by Daniel Rusitovic (AUS) and Keith Davis (GBR) before a loss to Ivan Vega (ESP) sent him to the repêchage, where he bested Alexander Liethof (NED) before losing finally to Radu Ivan (ROU). Pawel Nastula, the winner that day, a great Olympic and world champion whom you may also know of (because of kakutogi), was no longer on the 312-match win-streak (near-Rickson levels of verifiable international success!) that he enjoyed as a -95kg player but which proved unsustainable when the division was changed to -100kg (also he was just getting older) but he was still really very good at judo. (I just checked and as best I can tell, Teddy Riner is at 99 consecutive wins right now, and he keeps a very minimal competition schedule, so I don't see how he'll ever get to Yamashita's 203, let alone Nastula's 312.) At this point Fedor had medaled at two World Cup/A-Level tournaments (bronze at Moscow 1/24/99 and Sofia 2/7/99) and two Russian national championships (bronze in both the -100kg in 1998 and in the open in 1999), and it seems like there was every indication that that was going to pretty much be his level: good enough to have a place in the Russian national program (this is not nothing), and good enough to medal at solid international tournaments (also not nothing), but there was no reason to think he would go beyond that. His head-to-heads at judoinside.com, though maybe not complete (they are often not), give you a sense of things (the names themselves don't even especially matter):

         
(For a second I thought that the provincial technical director here finished seventh in his division at Sofia the same year Fedor took bronze in his but no, it's off by a year, that's too bad.)

So yeah he had hit his ceiling at -100kg, there wasn't any room for him to move up to +100kg because that spot belonged to the great Tamerlan Tmenov (a photo of Fedor and Tmenov training together used to be on the internet but is now 404ing because the future [present] is not as good as we had hoped), and he was out of the army and, by his own accounts, really very broke. "What about sambo?" you ask, well, sambo, sikk though it may be (and plainly is), is functionally a Russian judo "B" league in the sense that there is really one big pool of judo/sambo athletes except the sambists can't expect even judo-levels of funding (consider the differences in potential international glory), like it is barren, and combat sambo, the pretty-much-MMA sambo-variant that Fedor is a champion of (and nearly all of those titles come after the moment we are now discussing), is like the four ludicrously hard guys who stay late after sambo practice to wail on each other, and that's about it. 

AND SO HERE WE FIND HIM IN FIGHTING NETWORK RINGS punching Hiroya Takada maybe three times in twelve seconds.

WELCOME FEDOR I DON'T KNOW IF YOU'RE RIGHT ABOUT CRIMEA. In their discussions of him, Kenichi Takayanagi and Hideyuki Kumakubo say both "judo" and "sambo" which are definitely two words I would use in any such discussion.     

I guess there is a little tournament going on here because Naoyuki Kotani, who we saw earlier, has just defeated Tashiro Nishiuchi, who we saw similarly, by juji-gatame in thirty-two seconds. He is awarded a fine trophy by Akira Maeda.

Takehiro Murahama, who would in time be a tag team partner of Jushin Thunder Liger (there could be no higher honour) throws Gabe Lemley with a lovely 内股 uchi mata early in their match . . .

. . . and then nearly hits 背負落 seoi-otoshi! Think ippon-seoi-nage, but totally down, like down and you have a pretty full understanding of that waza (it is probably my best technique in both shiai and randori though I am not certain it is my favourite! there are so many ones that are neat!):

And though he does not finish the throw, nor does he relent, as you can see in that final image, wherein he secures the gyaku-ude-garami with which he will finish the bout a moment later. As Lemley chooses not to tap to this kansetsu-waza (bone-locking technique) but instead just let it keep happening, the official ruling is a TKO, rather than a submission at 7:13.

I see now that the "young boy" I described helping the injured Tsuyoshi Kohsaka make his way to the Nogueira's corner after their exquisite bout of græppling when last we spoke was in fact Wataru Sakata with his hair cut short and died and I did not recognize him, forgive me. Here, Sakata is cut on the tippy-topmost of the head by Gustavo Ximu and the fight is waved off by no less an authority than the red-jacketed Akira Maeda himself, and Sakata retires to the locker room in tears, steadied by Kiyoshi Tamura in all his handsomeness.

When next we meet it will be time for KING OF KINGS once more! Can you even believe it? Let us look forward to it together as I thank you once more for your time.   

IN TIME THE EXCERPTED WORDS OF DAVE MELTZER WILL CLOSE THIS POST BUT AS OF THIS DAY HIS ARCHIVE IS NOT YET TO THE POINT OF THIS BATTLE GENESIS VOLUME ALAS.