MY FRIENDS HELLO do you remember when wrestler/judoka/boxingist Don Frye won at UFC 9 in Detroit and in his post-fight interview said he was pleased to be in Detroit because he is a union man himself? HAPPY LABOUR DAY! That is the ultrathin pretext under which we will undertake together this undertaking of watching three DON FRYE vs NAOYA OGAWA NJPW matches! Never mind that Don Frye would fall out pretty hard with the firefighter's union when he got word from the union president to stop badmouthing John McCain (timely) and Don Frye was like hey I'm a union member and I pay my dues you should be telling him not to badmouth me but they didn't agree on that in the end. I HAVE NEVER SEEN THESE BEFORE AND THEY CAME UP ON YOUTUBE LESS THAN A WEEK AGO LET US GATHER OUR GRÆPPLINGZ WHILST WE MAAAAAAYYYYYYYY
NJPW FINAL POWER HALL IN TOKYO DOME 1/4/98
Oh man oh man oh man oh man oh man! OK first of all I am not going to try to embed this only to fail and have everything delayed intolerably in clear violation of my policy of taking nearly exactly the same amount of time to write about these things as it takes to watch these things and so instead here is the humbler alternative, a mere link for you. The uploader of this video, Nande Daro, to whom much praise is due, has understandably subtitled this "JUDO silver medalist vs. UFC fighter" but Ogawa, as well you know, is a seven-time All-Japan Openweight Champion, a four-time World Champion, and an Olympic silver medalist at Atlanta 1996 and Don Frye, himself a nidan or second-degree black belt in the noblest art of Kōdōkan jūdō, has as good a claim as anyone to being the first truly well-rounded fighter of the debased modern age of mixed martial artistry (so debased). Also my dear old friend Miguel aka Mike aka HARPO ran into him at a Strikeforce show if I'm remembering this right and asked him about judo and Don Frye was like "judo saved my life man" so this is all extremely high-level, is what I mean to suggest to you. Also a really useful thing that Don Frye said about judo one time is that, at the risk of oversimplification, wrestling is pushing and judo is pulling. No of course that's not the whole story and Don Frye himself knows it so how dare you even start how dare you even start with Don Frye. Highlights of the build to this bout (respective little buddies getting trounced) reveal what all of us no doubt knew well enough: the New Japan crowds were insaaaaaanely hot in the 1990s, there's nothing like it. HARAI GOSHIIIIIIII DE-ASHI BARAIIIIIIIIIIII JUJI-GATAMEEEE DESUUUUUUUU holy moly this is already a feast of waza and we have only just begun! I see on the venerable "cagematch" site that this bout was billed as a DIFFERENT STYLE FIGHT and rightly so. Don Frye is attired in wrestling shoes and a nice red singlet and his hair is pretty long and curly in a way I don't remember but that I like. He's wearing fingerless gloves, whereas Ogawa is ungloved utterly. No judogi, I should note, because sometimes he did wear one for New Japan matches, didn't he; yes; certainly; he did. Ah and now it is Don Frye who himself attempts the arm-crushing-crossmark-hold of ude-hishigi-juji-gatame only for his foe-man to find comfort and coolness in the holt-eaves and wood-hems of . . . the ropes. Hey guess who just took Don Frye down exactly like Masahiko Kimura does in this gif I made and have subsequently posted in like 80% of the writingz here:
That's right Ogawa! This is really enjoyable!
Don Frye gets booed and HWAAAAAHHHHH'd quite soundly when he refuses to break a hold and instead punches from it (this is the opposite of breaking) and oh my goodness now he is refusing to break a choke and the people are so against this. When they are at last separated and enstood, Ogawa unleashes a massive ura-nage or BACKDROPPPPUUUUUUUUUU as it is here called (I do not object) and then just tosses the hekk out of Frye with really any number of harai-goshi until pretty much out of nowhere Don Frye applies a hadaka-jime (naked strangle) from an odd angle and Ogawa goes out! (For fake, don't worry.) This was weird but kind of great!
NJPW IN BUDOKAN HALL 2/15/98
From the Tokyo Dome our scene shifts to 日本武道館, the Nippon Budōkan, a site specifically constructed for the express purpose of hosting the (quite sikk) judo tournament of the 1964 Tokyo Games, and so one assumes a home judoing advantage for Ogawa, whose many All-Japan titles would have been won precisely here. It's unfortunate but understandable I guess that despite his many achievements in that most daunting of openweight contests, what gets remembered most about Ogawa's time at or near the top of them is the year Hidehiko Yoshida beat him, and the time Toshihiko Koga took him deep despite being like unbelievably tiny next to Naoya Ogawa. (Naoya Ogawa is losing his edge to younger judoka with better waza and better ideas who are better liked and smaller and who are actually pretty nice.) Frye, lustily booed, has donned black tights, no shirt, and really it would be folly to wear a shirt after going to all of the trouble of taking bodybuilding drugs and lifting heavy. A lot of horrendous punching opens this match, and not just horrendous in that it is punching (a view I hold; let us end hitting, together) but horrendous even beyond that. Perhaps it is the very throwing of punches I find objectionable, and not the connecting? The triangle choke or sankaku-jime that Ogawa has just now applied and which Don Frye escaped by touching the ropes was pretty ghastly too though so who can say. A nifty rolling sutemi-waza or sacrifice technique from Ogawa! But no sooner do I set down these words than do we find Don Frye on top bodyblowing him (what that's how you say it). At opportune moments throughout this really very shabby match, Don Frye delivers what have come to be known as "Pride knees" and they look awesome. HWUUUUUUUUUUHHHHHH is the Tokyo crowd's response to Frye's refusal to relinquish juji-gatame not once but indeed twice once ropes have been grasped. He's gone full scoundrel! HARAI-GOSHI TO JUJI-GATAME DO IT NAOYA OGAWA but no it is yet another rope break (they do not track or score these). Nice yoko-otoshi or lateral drop from Don Frye! But then a hard slap and flurry of throws from Ogawa! Ending in a rolling sankaku-jime! And that's it it's over! But then Don Frye pops back up and jumps Ogawa! That's not fair! Many track-suited seconds and guys hit the ring! AND ANTONIO INOKI HIMSELF HOLY MOLY THEY LOVE THIS GUY THOUGH!
NJPW THE FINAL INOKI TOURNAMENT IN TOKO DOME 4/4/98
lol aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand literally as I loaded this video up to enview it was removed due to a copyright claim by New Japan! I am not kidding! So I would suggest to you if you're at all interested in the other two (above) matches you maybe watch those real quick! For more on both Don Frye and Naoya Ogawa please join me in the coming months and indeed probably years as I am now really pretty sure I'm going to go through all the PRIDE shows and there are actually kind of a lot of them, if you do literally every one, which I plan to do but at a pace that will certainly be "at my leisure" (please pronounced it "leh-zhure" in this instance, thank you). Anyway Don Frye won a five-minute match by TKO and then got to lose to Antonio Inoki in 4:09 (an honour, obviously).
THANKS EVERYBODY LET US ENJOY AUTUMN
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