June 24, 1999 in Tokyo, Japan
Korakuan Hall drawing 2,020
WE BEGIN WITH AN EXTREMELY HIGH-TASTE-LEVEL OVERVIEW OF PREVIOUS ENCOUNTERS BETWIXT KIYOSHI TAMURA AND YOSHIHISA YAMAMAMOTO which is to say Tamura's 9/21/98 shoot-style win by mae-hadaka-jime front choke and his utterly baffling (in that how could it have been allowed to occur) 12/21/96 shoot win by 飛び十字固め tobi-juji-gatame before we are shown both athletes training in preparation for this their third meeting. Tamura's work at the U-File Camp involves a good deal of skipping (or jumping) rope and then throwing super hard kicks. You will recall, I am sure, Frank Shamrock saying that Kiyoshi Tamura kicks harder than Bas Rutten? I don't know where that puts him on the scale of how hard all guys kick and I am sure there are many higher in that ranking but at the same time kicking harder than Bas Rutten seems notable? Speaking of ranking, here is our RINGS Official one: 10. Kanehara 9. Overeem 8. Vrij 7. Kasteel 6. Han 5. Ilioukhine 4. Kohsaka 3. Yamamoto 2. Yvel 1. Tariel and our champion is once more Kiyoshi Tamura as well you know. We are told of but not really shown Yvel's victory over Pancrase giant Semmy Schilt in Holland, which I think marks the first time there has been a RINGS Holland show whose filth has not been inflicted on us in a much more immediate sense so I hail this bold move in the right direction.
WILLIE PEETERS IS SUCH A DUMB CHEATER I CAN'T BELIEVE I USED TO LIKE HIM as he faces Ryuki Ueyama who is lean and lithe here at Kōrakuen Hall (後楽園ホール Kōrakuen Hōru), that most storied of all roughly-eighteen-hundred-seat venues constructed for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics (it hosted the boxing!). Time is extremely trimmed from this contest but we rejoin the action with Willie Peeters clearly grabbing and wrenching on Ueyama's nose to try to open him up for a choke, and when referee Ryogaku Wada stops the match to penalize Peeters, he tries to get the choke on again. He's such a jerk. We see a couple of rope escapes before we cut to Peeters being penalized once again at 18:05, this time for striking his downed opponent whilst standing,and unlike Frank Shamrock who took a much more borderline (though still correct) call for the same foul in a light and winning spirit, Peeters is just a big dumb jerk about it. Peeters had no more points to give, so Ueyama is awarded the TKO on points lost. We saw maybe five minutes of that one, lots of "wipes" and jumping ahead by several minutes.
Next we have Yasuhito Namekawa, whose work is always high level, against Minoru Toyonaga, who I believe to be new to us here? As new as the New Japan Pro Wrestling white and red ringer t-shirt on a young fellow maybe four or five rows back. I have the same shirt! It was a gift from my wife! It is so timeless and pure! Toyonaga loses here by mae-hadaka-jime front choke in 9:51 but again this match was trimmed with great severity. Let's see what we can find out about him real quick, okay he was a Takada Dojo fighter who had previously lost to Daisuke Ishii and Kosei Kubota in Pancrase, and Egan Inoue in Pride; he would go on, after this, to defeat Daisuke Ishii and even beat Genki Sudo in Pancrase before losing to Ikuhisa Minowa, and that was it for his professional kakutogi career as a fighter however he became a very notable referee! You can see him here bearing mute witness to the horrors of Quinton Jackson's 抱上 daki-age (hugging lift or super literally "hug up," I think; please do not hesitate to correct me) of Ricardo Arona (everyone look away):
Wataru Sakata and Boris Jeliazkov could be totally good! Sakata comes close to an ashi-kansetsu (leg bone-locking) win a mere thirty seconds in but Jeliazkov made the ropes. Jeliazkov throws and pins well and these are both traits that I admire. Sakata sets up a juji-gatame from underneath by reaching across, hand to far shoulder, and I have really been enjoying that approach as well lately in my own græppling and so I am of course excited to see it here. Jeliazkov stands up and lifts and staggers back into the ropes and so a break is called and a point charged for the escape. This is really good! Also I should note that it is the third shoot in a row, it would seem. Sakata yearns for juji-gatame with an intensity I think we all share but at present he is being pinned so crumpledly and horribly with his own knee trapped at his ear that he needs a rope break to ease the pressure and none could fault him. Jeliazkov has him down whenever he would like him down, and brings steady pressure from the top but Sakata is not just doggèd but indeed super doggèd in his pursuit of juji-gatame and at 6:49 fruit is borne:
Great little match! And the first one that has not needed clipping.
HIROMITSU KANEHARA WHO IS YOUR FAVOURITE AGAINST MASAYUKI NARUSE has me pretty interested in both the questions of work/shoot and also of which/guy. I have not yet mentioned that this 後楽園ホール Kōrakuen Hōru crowd is awesome but it is really so awesome. One would assume heading into this match that it would probably be shoot-style but had one assumed that one would have been disproven by its earliest energies but then wonder for a moment when Masayuki Naruse fires off his signature spinning backhand but then settle back into a steady feeling of shooting after all. A yellow card for Kanehara at 2:10, but why? Oh I see, he kneed Masayuki Naruse directly in the groin; Ryogaku Wada is right: you can't allow that. A great exchange unfolds not long after as Kanehara secures a waist-lock and attempts the valley-drop sutemi-waza (sacrifice technique) best known as 谷落 tani-otoshi but Naruse keeps his feet until he decides to roll through for a hiza-juji knee-bar in very much the mode Alexander Iatskevich advocates in Russian Judo, one of the crown jewels of the Ippon Books Judo Masterclass series (they vary in quality from quite good to utter exquisiteness and Iatskevitch's is very much the latter), but that doesn't really do it either, and Kanehara just pushes down hard on Naruse's entangled leg like Kyuzo Mifune does at one point in his esoteric Canon of Judo, let me see if I can find it and then take a picture of it with my phone and then email it to myself because the future is weird . . . and yes:
It's from the section on 足絡 ashi-garami (leg entanglement)! Here's what Kanehara does:
It's the same idea! He goes so far as to grab an ashi-dori-garami grip for an entangled ankle-lock but it slips off in an instant and we are into dueling ashi-kansetsu (leg bone-locking broadly) until all is deemed too tangled to reasonably be continued with and our græpplers are restood. Katame-waza, græppling technique, I am pretty sure Kenichi Takayanagi says. We skip ahead what seems like a lot of time to a point where Naruse, who is eating forearms and elbows to the side of the head, is charged with a yellow card for countering with a closed-fist uppercut, and so it would seem he is down two points to one at about the twenty-eight-minute mark? Not that we have seen all of it, but this looks to have been grueling, and the Korakuen crowdshouts are operating at a very high level of Korakuen crowdshouting. As the thirty-minute time-limit expires, Kanehara had been working towards the same sort of ashi-dori-garami entangled leg-lock we have spoken of already, and as the bell rings and Naruse stops fighting, Kanehara leans back into a playful hiza-juji knee-bar with a lovely goofy smile and Naruse is like ahhaha tap tap and Ryogaku Wada is like guys come on:
This is a very genuine moment of græppling fellowship that is very easy to identify with and I am gladdened by it (and I came in pretty glad). Kanehara on points!
So we are I think so far quite plainly at four shoots in four matches, but can this trend continue in Grom Zaza vs. Volk Han? If Grom Zaza knows, he's not telling:
Now there's a guy who is clearly a lifelong græppler whose ears are really not bad at all. He's one of the lucky ones. A fine opening here as Zaza takes Han down and works his standing kata-ashi-hishigi single-leg-crush only to be ashi-garami entangled and forced to grab a rope. The next exchange starts pretty similarly but Zaza manages to squish his way out of the ashi-garami this time and end up on top . . . though he is soon reversed! I don't think this is a shoot but I do think the work here is excellent as Han grabs the rope to get out of a wrenching kesa-gatame scarf hold (I think he gets a yellow card for kind of clawing the face, inadvertently?). Zaza counters Han's ever-gross standing gyaku-ude-garami arm entanglement by hucking him down and sinking in a hadaka-jime strangle until Han seeks once more the rope's refuge and solace and yes this is totally for sure shoot-style rather than a shoot. Han is up to four points lost less than five minutes in when he finds himself kubi-hishigi neck-cranked. This is going very well and the crowd is way in. This time it is Zaza who must find comfort in rope-grasp as Volk Han comes pretty close with his gyaku-ude-garami! He just grabs it and rips, it hurts me to see it; safety first, Магомедха́н Аманула́евич Гамзатха́нов, safety first. These guys are getting a lot of mileage out of just a totally fundamental kesa-gatame scarf hold: Grom Zaza applies it with such conviction that it is a totally plausible finishing technique every time, and every time the crowd is like hwwwwaaaaaaa and one cannot help but reflect once more on the extent to which shoot-style professional wrestling is not only vastly æshetically superior to all other forms of it but also so much safer than all of the lesser kinds, even allowing for people's shoulders not necessarily enjoying the way Volk Han applies gyaku-ude-garami (though maybe I am the only one that really minds its horrors), and so there is really no reason other than æsthetic cowardice (or I guess "business reasons" but it is a legitimate disgrace to care about those) preventing everyone from switching to shoot-style this instant, just in time, for example, for an all-shoot-style Best of the Super Juniors final, right? (I saw a pretty good article on twitter today about how contemporary, very much non-Inoki New Japan is pretty much never really strong style [with notable exceptions with which/whom we are all familiar], so don't just call it strong style because it's New Japan, have a little more sense than that, this article rightly pleaded). Hey the page in Mifune's legitimately weird Canon of Judo (a masterpiece) right after the one I showed you a moment ago has the standing kata-ashi-hishigi that Zaza so enjoys:
Stop at step three, and you're there! Or continue on to steps four and five to finish like a Young Lion permitted to perform no other finishing holds in your black trunks and boots and no knee pads. I think Volk Han has lost six points thus far, and Grom Zaza five? We are well into it, like eighteen minutes' worth. It continues to be good. This match gets clipped for time a little, too, but Volk Han has just now gone down as though shot by a gun off of a palm-strike that sounded, well, also like a gun. It was definitely the best Volk Han knockdown ever; I have been critical of his cartoonish "selling" of knockdowns for some time but this was flawless and the best. We jump ahead again, and I really do grow quite sure that heel hooks are illegal under RINGS rules now, as Volk Han begins one, is cautioned by Ryogaku Wada, and relents before a penalty is assessed. Just like our previous really good match, this really good match goes the full thirty minutes and Grom Zaza is its winner on points. This is an upset!
Bitsadze Tariel, in his first match since the end of his weird title reign that began because Kiyoshi Tamura lost a shoot (not to Tariel) and continued for as long as it did because Tsuyoshi Kohsaka was hesitant to sign a full-time, exclusive contract because of his desire to train and compete abroad, shoot-style loses to Joop Kasteel by ude-hishigi-te-gatame (arm crushing hand arm-lock; a hammerlock would do) at 6:01. Another dark day for enormous Georgian kyokushin but the Korakuen crowd is more into this than anyone has ever been into anything Joop Kasteel has ever done. It's pretty wild actually!
I am in fact pretty sure this is among the best RINGS crowds ever as they ready themselves for Yoshihisa Yamamoto's challenge to Kiyoshi Tamura's openweight championship (if it is indeed a title match; I could easily be mistaken [there is no ceremony; it is not a championship match]). TA MU RA TA MU RA TA MU RA is the steady cheer that melts away into rapturous yells and applause when Tamura declines Yamamoto's extended hand and instead slaps him in the face, like the crowd delights in this; the energy is nuts. The way-too-quick græppling exchange that opens the match reveals this at once to be shoot-style but at the same time reveals this to be awesome. Once things slow down enough to even say things about it really, we have Yamamoto working a gyaku-ude-garami reverse arm-entanglement into a juji-gatame attempt which he is unable to finish but he does end up very much pinning Tamura in tate-shiho-gatame, right up top. Once there, he throws these zero-hearted little punches to the body and to the legs to indicate where he could be punching were it permitted under these rules; this is a supremely dikkish move, and deliberately so, I'm sure. Tamura is very much on the defensive until he hits a nice little go-behind and grabs a waist-lock aaaahhhh but Yamamoto stands, breaks the grip with gyaku-ude-garami, and then throws sumi-gaeshi with it as though he were Masahiko Kimura (Kimura no mae ni Kimura naku, Kimura no ato ni Kimura nashi):
It really is pretty much all Yamamoto so far, so much so that even though he loses the first point, it is because of how he was punching the grounded Tamura whilst standing, so he was on the better end of even that, really. I have put headphones on so as to better discern the excellent yellings-forth of this maybe unparalleled RINGS crowd as they lean around the heads of those in front of them for a better view of the slightest transition. When Tamura makes his best effort yet at juji-gatame only for it to slip away and into a Yamamoto hadaka-jime strangle the crowd shrieks as Tamura grabs the bottom rope this is so good. Another juji-gatame is not far off, though, as Tamura uses his idiosyncratic rolling entry that bears as much in common with the rolling shime-waza/John-Wick-choke/John-Wick-jime entry as any other rolling juji you are liketly to see (rope break, Yamamoto).
And now the slapping, my goodness the slapping, and also kicking. There can't be much time left, like maybe six or seven minutes? Tamura punches his way out of a mae-hadaka-jime front choke and then just keeps unloading on Yamamoto's abs as though to punish them for being less sikk than Tamura's own. A kata-ashi-hishigi leg-lock sends Tamura to the ropes so it is I think two points lost on either side as we are into the seventeenth of twenty scheduled minutes. The crowd is pretty fired up by all the exhausted hitting going on now! Tamura is down! But up at eight! But down two points with only a minute and a half to go! And now Yamamoto is down! Four points aside with a minute to go! This is intense! Tamura refuses to græpple and insists on hitting (I reject this)! Okay he is more open to græppling in the final seconds but the bell rings and that's it! It's a tie on points! It goes to a judges decision and your winner is . . . no wait they are just calling it a draw! The crowd chants RINGSU RINGSU RINGSU and I mistakenly had that as "the crows chant" and it was better and I should have left it like that.
Great show!
WHAT DID DAVE MELTZER SAY:
June 14, 1999:
"OTHER JAPAN NOTES: 6/24 RINGS show at Korakuen Hall has Kiyoshi Tamura vs. Yoshihisa Yamamoto, Bitzsade Tariel vs. Joop Kasteel, Volk Han vs. Grom Zaza, Hiromitsu Kanehara vs. Masayuki Naruse, Wataru Sakata vs. Boris Jeliaskov, Minoru Toyonaga vs. Yasuhito Namekawa and Willie Peeters vs. Ryushi Ueyama. On paper it's kind of an interesting show. The main event is interesting since Tamura is coming off winning the World title but Yamamoto is being primed to represent the company in the interpromotional match in August against Naoya Ogawa [again this hurts me--ed.]. Toyonaga vs. Namekawa is a rematch of a 1998 shoot match at Korakuen Hall which got little pub was one of the most amazing shoot matches ever"
A reader writes:
"I think I'm about fed up with the American wrestling scene. I'm better off reading about WWF and WCW than even fast-forwarding through the shows. It's all soap opera with no athletics at all now. I'm lucky if there are five matches a month suitable to save. Looks like I'm going to concentrate on Japan only. Do you know where I can find Pancrase and RINGS tapes?
Bill Otani
Cupertino, California
DM: While I haven't been there, I know there are Japanese video stores in San Francisco that carry them."
June 21, 1999:
Ctrl+F "RINGS" brings us news of Randy Couture:
"At one point UFC did have a rule that fighters wouldn't be used for 90 days after a knockout, but the latest rulebook is more vague regarding a time limit, simply stating that the President has the authority to suspend an athlete who has been injured in competition for 30 to 90 days. It appears that matchmaker John Perretti wants to keep the Smith vs. Ruas match, and at this stage of the game, it would be difficult to find a main event calibre opponent (although with Randy Couture splitting from the RAW team after the contractual dispute that left him out of the last RINGS show, and with the RAW team being at odds with UFC being the reason Couture never came back to defend his title, Couture as a former champion could be a possibility) that would both agree to face Ruas and that Ruas would agree to face. Smith would still have to get a medical clearance to fight before the show and be approved by the Iowa Athletic Commission."
and
"OTHER JAPAN NOTES: Antonio Inoki is now talking about promoting a big show late this year at the Tokyo Dome. This is in the very preliminary talking stages and nowhere close to reality. His idea is for it to be a joint show with UFO, Pride and RINGS and among his ideas would be to have a Wallid Ismail vs. Royce Gracie match on the show since Gracie is looking for revenge against Ismail for losing via choke last year and Ismail is holding out for a big payday for the rematch. It's not certain how relations between UFO and RINGS are this week. Naoya Ogawa is still scheduled to face Yoshihisa Yamamoto of RINGS in August on a RINGS show. However, Ogawa was to face RINGS veteran Dick Vrij for the NWA title on 6/29 UFO show in Osaka, but things fell through and neither Vrij or Hanse Nyman will work the UFO show, leaving UFO will basically nothing. UFO announced its line-up as Ogawa vs. Gary Steele from England for the NWA title as the main event, plus Kazunari Murakami vs. Billy Scott (former UWFI and Kingdom wrestler out of Nashville), Dan Severn vs. Justin McCully (don't be surprised to see a heel turn for Severn to build up for an Ogawa rematch), Gerard Gordeau vs. Fredrik Hjelm (who faced Ogawa recently in New Jersey), Dai Kyojin (which is not a name but basically means The Giant in Japanese) vs. Erik Ulrich, Yuki Ishikawa of Battlarts vs. Lee Younggun, Jason Bress vs. Taro Obata and Sean McCully vs. Ikuto Hidaka. With Satoru Sayama gone, taking the fourth Tiger Mask with him, and no Alexander Otsuka, there is basically little shot at much of a quality of match on this entire card and it's a terrible line-up from a name standpoint s well
The biggest indie show in a very slow week was the Masami Soranaka Memorial show put on by Battlarts at Korakuen Hall drawing an announced 1,682 on 6/9. The show honored the late son-in-law of Karl Gotch who was a coach and booker for both the first and second incarnations of the UWF along with the early days of the Pro Wrestling Fujiwara Gumi group (which spawned both Battlarts and Pancrase) and was actually the person responsible for booking Ken Shamrock into Japan as a worked shooter which led to him doing actual shoots. Soranaka passed away in 1992 at the age of 47 from cancer and was very well liked by everyone in the wrestling community both in the Japanese offices he worked for as well as in Tampa. Several of the Pancrase wrestlers who were with Soranaka came to this show to greet Soranaka's wife and children, among them were Masakatsu Funaki, Yusuke Fuke, Katsuomi Inagaki and Kiuma Kunioku. K-1 fighter Mitsuya Nagai also came to the show. Joe Malenko also returned to Japan and Carl Greco, who we raved about in last week's issue, was given a new name as Carl Malenko and they formed a tag team beating Yuki Ishikawa & Daisuke Ikeda in 14:25 when Carl made Ishikawa submit, so Carl is getting a push. Yuhi Sano retained the FMW jr. title, which is no longer recognized in FMW, beating Katsumi Usuda while Satoru Sayama also appeared on the show beating Ikuto Hidaka, so Sayama hasn't given up pro wrestling yet."
June 28, 1999:
"In a very interesting and intriguing match on 6/20 in Amsterdam, Holland on a RINGS show, Gilbert Yvel of RINGS scored a TKO over Semmy Schiltt of Pancrase in a match which drew a lot of attention in Japan because of the promotion vs. promotion situation. The match should air in a few weeks on Japanese TV and was interesting because Yvel is a tremendous striker and an exciting fighter and Schiltt, because of his reach being 6-11, is very dangerous standing particularly with knees. It wound up with Yvel dominating the standing even giving up the reach, but Schiltt able to take him down and outmaneuver him on the ground. It was under RINGS rules in which a rope break was one point and a knockdown was two points and five points were allowed. Yvel was when he scored his third knockdown, although at the time Schiltt had five rope escape points, so if this was under Pancrase rules where they only allow three points and knockdown and rope escapes count equally, Schiltt would have won the match. It has also been noted that Yvel fought the match wearing shooting gloves and was allowed to punch with closed fist, which is usually against the rules in RINGS Japanese matches while Schiltt, going without gloves to help his grappling, had to keep his hands open."
and
"As of the latest listing, the UFC line-up for 7/16 in Cedar Rapids, IA remains Marco Ruas vs. Maurice Smith as the main event (there was some internal movement to change the main event for all the reasons suggested last week but the decision was made to stick with original plans), Pat Miletich vs. Andre Pedernairis for the lightweight title, Tsuyoshi Kohsaka vs. Tim Lajcik, Ebenezer Fontes Braga vs. Paul Jones (this match could be in jeopardy since Braga is facing Kazushi Sakuraba on the 7/4 Pride show and there are rumors he's going to pull out of this show since Pride is the better paying gig), Royce Alger (a former college wresting star out of Iowa who was won several MMA matches in a row for Extreme Challenge after losing his debut to Enson Inoue in about 90 seconds on a UFC show) vs. Eugene Jackson, Jeremy Horn against someone, apparently from Japan, and dark matches with Ron Waterman vs. Andre Roberts (who has done some indie pro wrestling for Ed Sharkey) and David Dodd vs. Travis Fulton. Lajcik has a 7-0 record with all wins coming via tap out, and is a former AAU national champion in wrestling, a two-time NCAA place-winner in amateur wrestling and was 9-1 in amateur boxing. Jackson is 13-2, with all wins coming via knockout or tap out and his two losses were to Vanderlei Silva via knockout and Tito Ortiz via decision and won his weight class in the recent Bas Rutten Invitational."
July 5, 1999:
"6/24 Tokyo Korakuen Hall (RINGS - 2,020 sellout): Ryeuki Kamiyama b Willie Peeters, Yasuhito Namekawa b Minoru Toyonaga, Wataru Sakata b Boris Jeliaskov, Hiromitsu Kanehara b Masayuki Naruse, Grom Zaza b Volk Han, Joop Kasteel b Bitzsade Tariel, Kiyoshi Tamura d Yoshihisa Yamamoto. RINGS ran 6/24 at Korakuen Hall drawing a sellout 2,020 for a show in which the top three matches all went the time limit. Masayuki Naruse beat Hiromitsu Kanehara via points after 30:00, ditto Grom Zaza beating Volk Han via points in 30:00 and Kiyoshi Tamura going to a 20:00 draw with Yoshihisa Yamamoto as the main event. It'll be interesting to see the tape of this show. Han's matches in the past are never shoots. Joop Kasteel upset former champ Bitsadze Tariel in 6:01 with an armbar and the rematch from last year's super match with RINGS' Yasuhito Namekawa against Takada's Minoru Toyonaga saw Namekawa win in 9:51 with a front guillotine in what was almost surely a shoot."
and
"OTHER JAPAN NOTES: UFO ran 6/29 at Osaka Furitsu Gym before a poor crowd of 2,000 (it was reported as 4,800 but it was nowhere close), and even that was significantly papered. This show aired world wide on the internet live on both Antonio-Inoki.com and the NWA web site in the United States. Because the technology isn't advanced enough, the sound quality was so-so and the picture quality was not even that, but apparently it drew 62,000 hits on the NWA web site so from an interest standpoint it was considered a success but as a live event it was considered poor both from a show quality standpoint and due to the poor crowd. The main event saw Naoya Ogawa retain the NWA title beating Gary Steele via a new spinning octopus submission in 8:05 which he supposedly developed while training in Okinawa. Gary Goodridge, who Ogawa faces on the Pride show on 7/4, was at ringside and gave interviews to build up that match. After Ogawa won, he grabbed the house mic and started screaming about why Yoshihisa Yamamoto of RINGS wasn't there and said he's going to have to go to RINGS to get him. Inoki did not announce a return date for the promotion, only saying the next show would probably be in either England or The Netherlands. The UFO Big Van Vader (Sylvester Terkey) debuted beating Erik Ulrich in 2:10. Brian Johnston of New Japan jumped Vader which again shows there is more to the relationship than people are letting on, setting up a feud between the two. Dan Severn beat Justin McCulley with a front guillotine in 8:00."
July 12, 1999:
"We haven't seen the tape yet but reports from Japan are that the 6/24 RINGS show at Korakuen Hall was a contender for best major show of the year and that the crowd went crazy for the Yoshihisa Yamamoto vs. Kiyoshi Tamura main event, with loud chants for both men and chants of "RINGS" after the conclusion of the 20:00 draw. The report we got compared that match favorably to the Misawa vs. Kobashi match held two weeks earlier at Budokan Hall."
and
"RINGS announced its schedule for the rest of the year as an 8/18 show at Yokohama Bunka Gym (with the Naoya Ogawa vs. Yoshihisa Yamamoto proposed main event), 9/15 at Korakuen Hall, 10/28 at Tokyo Yoyogi Gym II and 12/22 at Osaka Furitsu Gym. This announcement shows the decline in the company as traditionally they book major arena monthly shows from October through January for the annual Mega Battle tournament, which is what the company traditionally peaks every year with. Last year they switched from the traditional 16-man tournament to a team tournament, which ended up being a total flop and this year it appears there won't be a tournament at all."
July 19, 1999:
Dave
gets
tape:
"6/24 RINGS: This was a weird show because it was a four-hour show. It was said to be easily the best RINGS show of the year, but because the matches were so long, a lot of the early matches were edited on television. Main event was one of the three or four best matches in the history of the company. 1. Ryuki Ueyama upset Willie Peeters in 18:05 of a strange match which was a shoot. Peeters, who is the far bigger name, had a 33 pound weight edge. The match kept going to the ground and Peeters would keep it near the ropes and kept grabbing the ropes when Ueyama would begin to get him in trouble. The rules of this match were six total points allowed before it was stopped. Ueyama was ahead 5-0, when Peeters surprisingly got a side choke but Ueyama made the ropes to make it 5-1. Peeters lost the match throwing a punch while he was up and Ueyama was down for a yellow card in 18:05. Peeters pretty flagrantly did it but acted like he didn't understand why it was called; 2. Yasuhito Namekawa beat Minoru Toyonaga in a rematch of probably the best unheralded shoot match of 1998. This was also a shoot. Namekawa got a front guillotine in 9:51. Only a few minutes aired on television and it seemed to be a good match, but nowhere close to last year's match; 3. Wataru Sakata beat Boris Jeliaskov in 6:49 via tap out after Sakata was ahead 2-1. Also a shoot and also good; 4. Hiromitsu Kanehara beat Masayuki Naruse 2-1 in a match which went 30:00. Naruse was down 20 pounds from usual and this sure appeared to be a shoot as well. Naruse picked up a lot of speed dropping weight and was beating Kanehara to the punch on their feet early. Kanehara lost a point at 2:05 for a low kick yellow card. At 7:32 he got it back getting a rope escape point. This wasn't super exciting because it went so long and both guys were clearly exhausted by the end, but it was a tense match that the crowd really liked. At about 28:00, Naruse was throwing forearms at Kanehara in the corner and one of them was ruled an illegal elbow, which on the replay, it clearly was, and a yellow card was awarded which turned out to be the difference. Very impressive performance by both guys going so long and the crowd appreciated it; 5. Grom Zaza beat Volk Han 9-7 after going the 30:00 time limit. This was worked as you can tell by a match with 16 points being scored. It was weird to have them work a 30:00 draw coming right off a shoot 30:00 draw. The points came a lot faster. The first 10:00 were really good with a lot of points scored as the crowd loved Han's reversals. Zaza was this almost clueless worker who knew very little being carried by an experienced worker [what on earth--ed.]. However, by 10:00 in, both guys were really tired. The points were coming fast enough that the crowd stayed interested. Judged as a worked match I thought it was really bad because between points, Han was so tired he just laid there to set up the next spot, but the crowd loved it because the point spots themselves were good and they just appreciated seeing two guys do a 30:00 match as a shoot, even though this actually wasn't a shoot. Fans gave the two a pretty huge reaction after the match ended. *1/4; 6. Joop Kasteel beat Bitsadze Tariel in 6:01 of another worked match. This was good, which is a surprise because neither of these guys would qualify as good workers. It got over because it looked real, with huge Tariel's blows not looking good, but with his size, people believed in them. Kasteel's offense was totally believable. Actually this could have passed for real until the finish, with Tariel throwing a terrible looking spin kick that missed badly and Kasteel getting a choke immediately. **1/2; 7. Kiyoshi Tamura drew Yoshihisa Yamamoto in 20:00. The match started out good, slowed in the middle, and built to one of the best finishes of any match you'll ever see. It was clearly worked as they did the Tamura high spots with all the quick moves and maneuvers in between slow spots. Yamamoto got a yellow card in 7:24 for throwing a blow while on his feet and Tamura being down. A few more cool high spots. Yamamoto tied it getting a rope break after a choke at 11:05. Tamura got an armbar at 13:57. At this point I was wondering what the fuss was about this match because it was good, but there were only 6:00 left and it was nothing great and almost disappointing because there was very little striking [this is the opposite of disappointing imo--ed.]. The rest of this was like the 15th round of a Rocky movie, with great stand-ups and great submissions. Yamamoto tied it in 16:24 with an ankle lock. They were on their feet trading kicks, slaps and knees and Tamura's selling of almost going down and being stunned was incredible. He finally went down at 18:20 giving Yamamoto a 4-2 lead. Tamura made the big comeback and knocked Yamamoto down at 18:55 to tie the score. They traded blows till the end. The crowd started chanting "RINGS," like an ECW crowd after the draw was announced. ****3/4"
and
"Got a chance to see the last three-and-a-half matches from the Pride show, and it probably belonged more in the Japanese pro wrestling section. Saw probably the last 8-9 minutes of Guy Mezger vs. Akira Shoji, which went via split decision to Shoji after they went 25:00. It was a very close fight with nobody, at least based on what I saw, gaining a clear advantage. It appeared Mezger was the better fighter of the two, but it also appeared he got the more tired of the two as the match wore on. There is no question that was a shoot. Naoya Ogawa vs. Gary Goodridge, if it was a work and it probably was, was a damn great one. They gave each other shiners and Goodridge never seemed to be holding back on his punches to the head, which is the usual giveaway. This fight really put Ogawa over the top as a wrestler/martial artist in Japan because it was really exciting. It did look like a very good RINGS match except with closed fist punching and some great exchanges. Worked matches usually are more exciting than shoot matches anyway. Match had super heat and Goodridge was bleeding all over the place by the end of the first round, and Ogawa won with an entangled armlock in :38 of round two."
and
"We've gotten a live report and seen photos of the Gilbert Yvel vs. Semmy Schiltt match which was a match of a top contender for the RINGS title against a top contender in Pancrase held in Amersterdam, Holland on a RINGS Holland show. Our original reports were incorrect regarding the point scoring as Schiltt didn't get five rope break points, he actually only had two, while Yvel had two knockdowns before winning with a second round knockout. From the photos, Schiltt's left eye was swollen totally shut and he looked like a guy who had just taken a real pounding."
OKAY SEE YOU AGAIN SOON but not before I thank you once again for your time.
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