QUINTET (クインテット) 10/5/18: QUINTET.3

QUINTET (クインテット): QUINTET.3
Orleans Arena
Las Vegas, Nevada

HELLO FRIENDS QUINTET 3 DEBASES US BY BEING FROM LAS VEGAS A CITY THAT TELLS YOU RIGHT UP FRONT IT IS FOR IDIOTS and yet here we are, every one of us, welcomed to the broadcast by Sean Wheelock who perhaps you will recall from other martial arts commentatings and also by Meisha Tate who was oft-bested by Ronda Rousey's 腕挫十字固 ude-hishigi-juji-gatame (that's normal) but who also seemed way more together than Ronda Rousey just like as a person (that's normal too). Not only are we offered in this gathering several five-against-five contests in the かちぬきせん kachinukisen 【 勝ち抜き戦 】mode which has fast become our custom, but also there will be several s u p e r f i g h t z as well such as for example have you heard about this it's a real thing 石井 慧 SATOSHI ISHII vs.  フランク・ミア FRANK MIR and regarding this bout in particular Meisha Tate notes that as Mir is a well-known leg-lock specialist (is this true? I think of him more with arms? I will have to check) one has to wonder if Satoshi Ishii, a man of judo, will be comfortable with him in ne-waza. I guess we will just have to see about that won't we, Meisha Tate, with whom I have utterly no quarrel. Okay I have checked though and Frank Mir has only ever won two of his (mixed martial arts) matches by leg-lock, the hiza-juji-gatame knee-bar against Brock Lesnar and an ashi-dori-garami (some call it a toe-hold) against, if you can believe it, Tank Abbott, who Dave Meltzer weirdly outed on the Wrestling Observer Radio from right after Kevin Randleman died (r.i.p.) of pneumonia (it could take any of us at any time, please do not be heedless about colds). Lenne Hardt gets the people (such as they are, I am not sure there are that many) going with her artful shoutings atop the PRIDE theme, a dark reminder that the UFC owns all that stuff, although I guess we might also wonder aloud about who really owns, like, anything, you know? There is a parade of græpplerz, as well there might be, and a lot of them (though certainly not all) seem kind of like dikkz.

Yes, a small crowd on hand, I think, but maybe I heard that the McGregor/Nurmagomedov press conference went really late and it hurt the walk-up, or something? Because McGregor showed up really late on purpose to show how much more important he is than other people and then Nurmagomedov just left and so McGregor didn't end up getting to be super racist to him in person on that day but he had for sure done so previously so he probably still got a good amount of being super racist in if you take the broad view? I wonder how all of that turned out in the end; it is weird that we'll never know. First up we've got the venerable Hideo Tokoro, who at forty-one years of age is somehow even older than me, against Nicky Ryan, a sprightly young man of seventeen. Much is made of how he is seventeen and yet very good but why wouldn't he be? Have you trained with these kids getting ready for Canada Games? Some of them are killers! Also there is the very recent case of Daria Bilodid (Дар'я Геннадіївна Білодід) who won Paris and Zagreb and Europe and then also the World Championships at Baku in the -48kg division all at the age of seventeen. She too is very good, look:

   

I get the gimmick, obviously (here is a very young man against a very old one! how marvelous!) but if you know anything about anything you will be familiar with how seventeen is not too young to be very good at a sport and also with how at forty-one it is in virtually all instances too old to be very good at a sport. Tokoro, whose best win is probably a draw against Royce Gracie (or maybe his actual win over Royler Gracie, depends how you approach it I guess), says a wonderful thing that will totally go at the very top of this post in screen-cap form when he goes, "I started watching UWF as a fan, and started martial arts. Before I knew it, it was twenty years." The Long UWF is upon us, or perhaps we might better say that it is upon him; or that, though dead, The Long UWF is visited upon us through Hideo Tokoro, its vessel; or maybe wherever two or three are gathered together in its name, there we find the spirit of The Long UWF in the midst of them? Big questions, no real answers here at tkscissors.blogspot.ca. Leg-lockery or at least its attempt begins immediately, and Meisha Tate is quick to note that this is a high-level technical situation to be in because it is a 50/50 one (ah but the modern systematization of the ashi-gatame [that just means leg-locks] positional hierarchy spear-headed by the very John Danaher people [and Danaher himself of course] under whom Nicky Ryan trains has made that extremely not the case for those who grasp its intricacies, though, right, and that is the technical development that totally underpins the ascendance/re-emergence of leg-locks in no-gi submission grappling, is it not? let us not belabour the point though). Our referee for this and all three of the evening's Special Singles Matches is Yuki Nakai! Everybody loves him! He has an orange necktie! Nicky Ryan has taken Hideo Tokoro's back and secured a fine sankaku do-jime (body triangle) en route to a hadaka-jime (naked strangle). I did not note the time but it was just a few minutes. Good job! 

After the match a UFC advertisement afflicts us, a reminded that however illicitly we might obtain our tapes (or "files" aka "electronic tapes") we never truly escape their tyranny (also it says UFC FIGHT PASS in the corner of the screen the whole time). And then it is time for Sakuraba's team against Urijah Faber's team! I listened to Urijah Faber do about fifteen minutes with Bryan and Dave and he was stoked (the man's own word) to be facing Kazushi Sakuraba, who was his favourite martial artist when he started his own training so many years ago. I like Urijah Faber even though his gym, Alpha Male, has a dumb name that has not kept up with the research surrounding wolves and their packs and behaviours that has brought the term "alpha male" to utter irrelevance in that field of study (maybe his team is named after gorillas or something, I don't know really anything about gorillas [also it is self-evidently whack and grasping that a demonstrably little fella named his team Alpha Male but that is neither here nor there {except for right here}]). But he seems nice; I like him. Kazushi Sakuraba just said something lovely about Daisuke Nakamura, look: 

An eight-minute bout, then, between Sakuraba and Faber to begin this 団体戦  dantaisen. Interestingly, in the interview I mentioned a moment ago, Faber told Bryan and Dave that the penalty system in QUINTET means that training for a wrestling pace rather than the pace of a jiu-jitsu tournament made the most sense to him, and in fact just as I relate this to you, shidos (guidancez) are visited upon both able græppzmen because they are not doing enough to seem able. Submission only grappling is so weird! Urijah Faber is floating around all over the place from position to position on top of Sakuraba but Sakuraba is just like "whatever, this is fine" and it seems very strange! There is a paradox here and I am not at all the first person to speak of this but I will mention it: you hear "submission only" and you think at first ah, such grappling purity but in practice it is totally not that, or I guess you might say that maybe it is that, but it is so purely grappling that it is rendered, like, fully æsthetic and artificial to the point that in a weird way it almost isn't even exactly what you would expect in a martial art anymore (this is not to say the competitors are not themselves martial artists or anything absurd like, that; do not be absurd; these are sikk martial artists; I am talking about rules weirdnesses and nothing else), and by that I mean (and others have meant; again, this is not new ground) you see submission-only matches contested with no regard to being in objectively horrendous positions (because there are no points awarded for position) from the perspective of just, like, martial arts: "this guy is sitting on my chest and postured up but it's okay as long as I keep my arms tucked in tight, we can stay here all day!" You probably shouldn't! That's a really bad idea! But under these rules it doesn't matter in the least so by all means proceed. This kind of thing is at least as old (and probably much older, what do I know) as Kano criticizing fairly-early judo competitors who grappled from a lower posture than he favoured ("guys guys guys, that's a real good way to get kicked in the head if we were gonna fight for real here; let's straighten up a little; you guys" he pretty much wrote) and continues into our own time with the submission-only vs. people-for-points debates in jiu-jitsu, a debate of which I remain only dimly aware but slightly interested. Points awarded for position simulate, however imperfectly, the martial-arts-hitting-advantage earned by that new position, were martial-arts-hitting permitted! Which of course it should not be, do not mistake me; I never want anyone to hit or be hit (and yet I like boxing and karate is rad; I am a mess of both ideas and feelings). But literally every martial arts competition has things like that, and it is always only ever a question of degree, isn't it: like, in a mixed martial arts bout, if one dude or indeed lady is atop another, and pummels them in accord with the darkest traditions of hitting, and the person on bottom rolls to their front and exposes their back in their flight from the hitting we mentioned only moments ago, why can't you keep hitting the back of their head? Well it is because we are trying, however tenuously, to have a civilization here, is of course the answer. Anyway and in conclusion, rules shape contests in ways that are both predictable and unpredictable, and sometimes the outcomes can be weird! Sakuraba and Faber was a draw, by the way, as was Nakamura against the enormous Jaoude, and everybody seemed to try hard. Please forgive my digressions but I am not backing up; time is an arrow.

And now it is Josh Barnett against Team Alpha Male's late replacement, Gordon Ryan. I know exactly enough (and not one whit more) about this world of no-gi subgræppz to know that they might as well have said that Team Alpha Male's late replacement would be A Gun. Hey guys, late replacement for our low-key dantaisen in judo class today, it is time-machine 1964 Isao Okano, he's just gonna work in with the group, try and grab him for a round after if you don't get him in the draw yourself aaaaaaand hajime. In the little I have seen of and heard from Gordon Ryan he seems fully a dikk but maybe he is just in a part of his life where he is a hot-headed young competitor and he will settle out into something else as he ages; we can't rule that out, and if he lives a full life in the martial arts there will be time for him to explore many aspects of it, and one aspect is for sure being a hot-headed youth when in one's tai period. Please allow me to quote at length from the Judo Canada Dan Grading Syllabus published in 2017:

"PRINCIPLES OF JUDO:

 Seiryoku Zenyo (maximum efficiency with minimum effort)

 Jita Kyoei (mutual welfare and benefit)

PRINCIPLES OF GRADING

Grades in judo are attributed with regard to elaborate principles by Master Jigoro

Kano, the founder of Kodokan Judo, and as stipulated in the regulations of the

International Judo Federation (IJF).

These grades, as in all the "budo", must show a certain technical progress, a larger

understanding of the discipline and a certain "elevation" of the individual who is

promoted. This is the shin-ghi-tai in its entirety.

SHIN: moral and intellectual value

GHI: technical value

TAI: corporal value 

Each period of the Shin Ghi Tai principle must be accomplished during the correct

period of the practitioner’s life in order to reach higher dan ranks.

The Tai period corresponds to the physically austere. The introduction to and

practice (shugyo) of the global learning of judo must be done in the early years of

the judoka’s life. This learning must be expressed through randori and shiai, for

this period is the harshest. In other words, the tai period is the period when the

training is physically at its hardest. This period typically is when the judoka is a

teenager or a young adult.

Only results accomplished in the U18, U21 and Senior Age divisions are

recognized as valid contribution towards the period of corporal development (Tai)

of Judoka.

Candidates eligible for promotion based on meritorious contribution to

development of Judo in Canada, may be exempted from this grading limitation and

considered for higher dan grade promotion.

The Ghi period concerns the mastery of mechanical skills, the quality of the

strategies and the variety of the practical knowledge of judo. It shall occur when

the judoka already has sufficient judo experience to allow him to express a logical,

efficient and fluid Judo in complete accordance of the statement of Jigoro Kano’s

maxim: Seiryoku Zenyo - maximum efficiency with minimum effort.

The Shin period, which concerns the moral and intellectual aspects, must reflect

Master Kano’s second maxim: Jita Kyoei - mutual prosperity and benefit. The

Yudansha has proven his fighting skills, and thus shares his technical ability with

his judo community.

Some elements are obviously more tangible, more measurable than others. This is

why the role of the “sensei” is of capital importance. At the time of the candidate's

application, no one else is better placed to judge these elements." 

I mean, all of this might play out a little differently in a martial art that has no core ethical teaching and has seen a proto-fascist capitalist individualism rush in to fill that void, but it is very difficult to say. 

Returning though to the matter at hand, and the matter of Gordon Ryan's youthful ways, I have definitely encountered whispers (this is to say, utterly unsubstantiated internet writings [not unlike our own]) about performance enhancing drugging after he put on like thirty seemingly very good pounds in a pretty short time period in an exxxtremely untested sport but at this very moment he is about to compete against multiple-drug-test-failer-even-when-nobody-was-failing-cuz-the-tests-were-a-total-joke-and-yet-somehow-he-managed Josh Barnett and who knows what he's got going on these days. About twenty seconds in, Gordon Ryan loses a contact, and I have never understood how anybody can græpple with contacts even though my man N I C K did so for years and years. Ryan seems to want to just work from the bottom rather than try a takedown so he just sits down (I cannot help but always think this super lame; I get it tactically and everything I just really, really dislike it æsthetically and probably also, in ways I definitely can't articulate let alone defend, in terms of virtue?). Barnett grabs around the neck for a can-opener but Ryan is playing an active butterfly (or dare we say . . . TK) guard so what can is there even to be opened AHHHH HAAAA a nifty butterfly sweep from Gordon Ryan and there was nothing remarkable about it (over/under grips, lovely lift, teach this to your beginners early) other than that it totally just worked on Josh Barnett. Ryan goes from half-guard to the side to tate-shiho-gatame lickety-split. As he scooches-up ever higher, Barnett tries to bridge up out of it but Ryan grabs a neat little sankaku-jime on the way over and that's it, a triangle choke finish in just a little over two minutes. Gordon Ryan is really very good!

He sticks around, then, for Marcos Souza. There is a great energy to their match! They are fighting hard for takedowns, which changes the whole feel of things (for me anyway). And once they hit the mat, things are very dynamic! It looks like Gordon Ryan might finish with a kata-gatame arm-triangle for kind of a while but then the match is restarted standing and both are given shidos for inactivity? I don't get it: Gordon Ryan was doing a tonne to finish but it just didn't happen. Weird, but these rules (and their enforcements) remain a work in progress I guess. An inopportune camera shot reveals a lot of empty seats as we begin anew. Ryan's passes are lovely, and then once he gets to where he'd like to be his pressure looks to be guuuuuhhhhrosssssssssss (no diss, but rather praise) and he just squished his way to a hadaka-jime win over Marcos Souza so it is only Marcos Souza's brother Roeberto Satoshi Souza who remains. Ryan is way way bigger than this other Souza and so the match will be a mere four minutes. After shidos, Gordon Ryan just sits down, which I do not doubt will work out for him, but against a much smaller opponent looks especially lame. In time he hits a fine morote-gari, to his credit, and he really should just be able to smoosh this little fella from her. It sure looks like Ryan is taking it easy and playing for the match-ending draw in the final minute, which you can't fault him for, really, in his third straight match. This does earn him another shido but the draw, seconds later, puts Team Alpha Male (lol it really is a bad name) into the second and final round. Sean Wheelock mentions that Gordon Ryan's goal is not to be the world's best grappler but instead a UFC champion which is weird to me because he doesn't even fight MMA (it's right there; you can just fight it) so he is probably at least a little bit sad all the time. 

The other first-round team match is between Team Polaris, which I am still not sure about three events in (in terms of what even are they) against Eddie Bravo's squad of 10th Planet guys. The first bout is betwixt the smallish: PJ Barch (of 10th Planet) and Vitor "Shaolin" Ribeiro! Remember him? He beat Kawajiri one time! In SHOOTO! After a well-paced two and a half minutes, both dudes are enshido'd and restarted, so they are really unusually serious about action, these referees. Barch ends up in pretty much the shiba lock position working with an arm entanglement, hold on I must have a .gif of the shiba lock for you somewhere at letsplayjudo.tumblr.com; I will be right back . . . okay actually just go right here and enjoy several. It's a neat position! I saw it first emerge out of Japanese collegiate judo but now it has made its way to the IJF World Tour and so it belongs to us all. Barch and Ribeiro seem headed to a draw but the action has been intense and I have just been proven a fool as with seconds remaining PJ Barch has finished an inverted ude-hishigi-juji-gatame off an Iatskevitch roll which is this one (thank you 小室 宏二 Komuro Kōji [I hope you enjoy Montréal when you teach there next month):

Gregor Gracie, a Gracie with whom I am unfamiliar, is in next against PJ Barch, who has to be pretty tired after all of his many attacks. Gregor Gracie is quite a bit bigger, too, so it's a lot. They spend much of their fairly brief contest weirdly pretzeled before Barch yields to a triangle double-knee-bar that I've never seen before but which has a deeply Volk Han feel to it and so I approve immensely:

Amir Allam, a professor of seismology, is in next for 10th Planet, but they don't specify his academic rank so I will have to check. "Assistant Professor, Geology & Geophysics, University of Utah" well okay I hope his application for tenure is well-received by first his department and then the dean; my sincere best to him in this; it is a grind out there. While I was looking that up they had a really nice match that Gregor Gracie finished with a totally classic application of 逆腕絡 gyaku-ude-garami that I bet I have a .gif of Masahiko Kimura doing also. 

Little Geo Martinez, who is an excellent breakdancer, is next up for Gregor Gracie, who is on quite a tear! Geo spins in for a leg-lock and, I mean, he totally looked like he was breakdancing, I don't know, it was just wild. He is all the way up into tate-shiho-gatame before you know it and he wastes no time before attempting an ude-hishigi-juji-gatame armbar which Gracie rolls first with and secondly out of but it was a legit threat for a little bit. OMG FLYING KNEE TO THE GROIN GEO NO NOT LIKE THIS:

  

Things have taken a dark turn. Protective cups are not mandatory, Sean Wheelock explains, and in my view should not be permitted, even in light of the atrocities exhibited above (the juji-fulcrum is too strong). When they get back to it, Geo finishes quickly with a gyaku-ude-garami from the shiba lock position we have already talked about (it really is neat). Marcin Held is the next Polaris fighter and he does like eighty knee-bars in 1:06 so that's it for Geo (great job though, Geo). His big brother Richie fends off the ashi-gatame (leg-lock) barrage and comes pretty close for a moment with a kagato-jime/gogoplata (a waza with an intriguing history) which is a real crowd-pleaser. He doesn't get the shime-waza (strangulation technique) but finishes with an ashi-sankaku-garami/omoplata and that is a combination I looooove to do from the position many have come to know as コムロック

 K O M L O C K 5 6 6 9.

What a lot of action! Craig Jones in next for Polaris! Who just sits down and scoots in (booooooooo) and wins by kata-ashi-hishigi, a straight ankle lock, in no time. Geo limps off and Adam Sachnoff lumbers on and then he and Craig Jones both sit on the ground at the exact same time BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO (all booing my own, the crowd seems fine with everything). Highs and lows here at QUINTET3. Some really interesting hand-fighting for hadaka-jime ends with Craig Jones setting up the finish with all kinds of hand-over-the-mouth smothering which has no place in sport and so Team Polaris advances. 

A great team contest! All finishes!

And now for a Special Single Match between the thicc Marcelo Nunes and the lanky Haisam Rida of Ghana but largely of Japan in terms of his training AAAAAAHHHHHHH this is crazy rolly action right away at once with such rolling! That settles out in about thirty seconds or so, for they are only human, but things remain good. In time, Marcelo Nunes accidentally blasts Rida in the face with his shin, and Yuki Nakai gives Rida time to recover, which you might think Yuki Nakai would not be all that inclined to give, in that he could easily be like so is anybody gauging your eye out before you have to fight Rickson Gracie after? no? then you're good; trust me; you're good but no he is not that way at all for Yuki Nakai knows mercy, knows compassion. Marcelo Nunes by 肩固 kata-gatame head-and-arm choke from 縦四方固 tate-shiho-gatame! Good stuff!

It is perhaps worth noting at this point if I have not already that the Wheelock/Tate commentary team is not at all unpleasant! 

SATOSHI ISHII vs. FRANK MIR THIS IS THE MAIN EVENT OF THE EVENING IF YOU ARE MEEEEEEEE and although you are obviously not it is of course the case that a crucial feature of lyric poetry is the identification that occurs between reader and the speaking "I" of the piece and I mean honestly what is that we are doing here together if not literally that exact thing but not of poesy as such but of 固技 katame-waza (græppling techniquez). Remember when Frank Mir got tosssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssed (払腰 harai goshi / sweeping hip) by Fedor in Bellator a little while back? I heard Mir talk openly and honestly (one might say "frankly" haha) about how getting so tremendously thrown didn't actually hurt him physically but it hurt his feelings and embarrassed him, and led him to rashness thereafter, which led to him getting clubbered unto the symbolic death of seemingly actual death for a minute there (this sport is a mistake). I bet the whole fight is up on Youtube and yes in fact it is (in Russian [obviously]). Hey, that Fedor/Chael Sonnen match was pretty wild too, right? I made .gifs of two particularly interesting moments of judo therein, and I will share them with you now, the first of 内股巻込 uchi mata makikomi . . .

. . . and the second, the very rarely seen (in the wild) 浮落 uki otoshi, because rarely does one encounter a foe who just comes straight at you as one does in the first movement of 投の形 nage no kata (the kata tells the tale of an increasingly savvy and thus increasingly cautious uke being thwarted again and again by increasingly technical judo) and anyway here you go: 

Please watch this final .gif as many times as it takes you to be convinced that this is neither koshi-waza (hip technique) nor ashi-waza (foot/leg technique) but indeed a te-waza (hand technique) and specifically, bafflingly, uki otoshi, which in actual judo shiai is far more likely to look more like this . . .

. . . or indeed this:

But we have digressed from the true matter at hand and that is the ongoing weird ordeal of Satoshi Ishii's life ever since winning the +100kg gold medal at Beijing and just making these decisions, like, these decisions that make you wonder whether or not that old post on The Underground Judo/Sambo board (since renamed the Train Judo forum, R.I.P. Quincy Rice) from a guy who trained with him and created the impression of a man with the mind of a child and the waza of an angel, as my friend Andrew (初段 shodan) once summed up my summary of a guy's summary of what it was like to train with Ishii (quite possibly, if I am remembering this right, during the weekend over which Ishii was awarded a jiu-jitsu brown belt for his first weekend of doing jiu-jitsu though obviously being an Olympic champion judo player gave him a head-start over most people doing their first weekend [he has to my knowledge {and I would like to think someone would have told me} never been awarded a black belt in jiu-jitsu]). I do think though--and maybe this is unfair of me, I don't know, but I do say this with love in my heart--that Satoshi Ishii's post-Olympic sporting and professional life is utterly encapsulated in this picture taken just after he met with UFC representatives about possibly having matches for them, years ago:

Lovable and weirdly heartbreaking, right? He is a singular figure, I think. Also it's like, if that's how he came out of the meeting, where are the clothes he wore going in? And the answer is, of course, in his new gym bag.  

Ishii is very excited to compete against Frank Mir! Frank Mir offers a few thoughts, brief and to the point (he is from all I have seen an excellent teacher) about the differences between grappling for mixed fighting versus grappling for submission-only grappling: in MMA, there are positions you don't worry about passing, because you can strike well from them, and there are positions you would never stay in in MMA (because of being hit in them) that are totally available to you in an on-going way in submission grappling; we have discussed all of this before, haven't we, friends, but Mir just says it all very clearly and concisely. Mir thinks Ishii is very good, and that "obviously anyone who wins a gold medal is on a different level" but he also notes that tonight they will not be competing "with judo tops on" which I do believe to be a failing of both this event and also of all non-judo events broadly, and he notes further that the fight is not over should Ishii throw him, but rather the true fight only begins should Ishii throw him. Mir is good at low-key hyping up a match while remaining respectful of his opponent! Ishii says he has been working on a lot of grappling everyday in the gym (omg me too) and "training like animal" (omg me too [to the extent that we are all of us the human animal]). Ishii says he does feel good about how nobody can take him down, and that he can take everybody down (man that must feel pretty great!). This really very compelling video package (if, again, you are me) ends with Mir saying that given his own reputation as a submission-fighting heavyweight (one of the best ever in MMA, I think we would all agree), should Ishii so much as last the eight-minutes with him, it would be "a dent" in Mir's reputation. I AM SO READY FOR LENNE HARDT BEING WEIRD ABOUT THIS and she certainly is as Ishii comes to the mats in a Cro Cop hoodie of some kind! Was it not Mirko Cro Cop himself ("I don't want your viewers to get offended; I am not the creator of any anthropological theories, but you can tell by [Chael Sonnen's] face that the man is slow--that he is stupid and he has the IQ of a children's shoe size. You can tell this by his face.") who defeated Satoshi Ishii to claim from him the Inoki Genome Federation championship? And yet now they are bros? Training together at CRO CROP SQUAD GYM? It occurs to me that I would like very much to see the life of Satoshi Ishii told in a many-volumed manga by 小池 一夫 Koike Kazuo and 小島 剛夕 Kojima Gōseki if that is at all possible and as Kazuo Koike yet lives I think it is fair to say that this remains no worse than half-possible. 

I mean no disrespect to any of the competitors in the final team match that will deservedly serve as this evening's main event when I say that I don't care even slightly what happens in it compared to how I care about this Ishii/Mir contest even though I have absolutely no doubt that several of the people in that later match possess skillz far better suited to this undertaking than either of these two before us now but the heart wants what it wants, right? And it wants 107.5kg/237.0lbs of Satoshi Ishii against oh no oh Frank 127.8kg/281.8lbs what have you done to yourself; how has it come to this; is there anything we can do to help. Mir comes out to "Amazing," still a strong 808s and Heartbreak track despite all that has occurred in the many years since. Meisha Tate says she thinks Frank Mir's approach that he acknowledges he may be thrown, and he is ok with that, is sensible. Man oh man he looks big here though: 

I am not here to heavyweight-shame (or at least not exclusively here for that reason) but yiiiiiikes. 

The referee is of course Yuki Nakai. The bell sounds! If there is no winner in the eight-minute round, there will be a timeless overtime period. As soon as they tie up, Ishii starts low-key stepping in and just flashing the subtlest turn of the hips, as though he is thinking thoughts that run along the lines of osoto-gari or harai-goshi or -- and this is pretty serious, get ready -- osoto gari *to* harai goshi (such a lovely little combination that you can teach people really quite early on and which, if truly mastered, means you have probably won the Olympics, so congratz to you for that). Yeah ok by the end of the first minute Ishii looks like he's got a decent feel for how much resistance he's going to get on a left-side osoto-gari and let me tell you this is pretty neat to see. I don't know who's cornering Mir but he is advising Mir to change levels and get in there which is a very optimistic thing to even say but there is no reason to have a nay-sayer as your second, is there. Shidos of guidance are offered to each competitor with seven minutes to go. A little kouchi-gari as Ishii continues to feel out the throwing situation or throw-sitch. Sean Wheelock notes that the weight disparity is so immense here that under QUINTET(O) rules this should be but a four-minute bout but those strictures have been waived in this instance. Mir shoots in for a little double-leg but Ishii sprawls back out of trouble and takes the back. Ishii just rides him from here, no hooks or anything, just a strong waist-lock and leaning, just leaning. Meisha Tate thinks Mir should roll through for a leg-lock but I don't know, that sounds pretty dynamic for a guy north of 280 whose shirt is riding up. As Mir tries to stand, Ishii puts him right back down with a 小外刈 kosoto-gari (it is osoto-gari's little pal!) and Mir pops up with a smile on his face that I think is not a good smile to have, it's like a covering-my-embarrassment smile; this is a little like the Fedor match except he will not have to worry about hitting (even under mixed-fight rules, Ishii would be very unlikely to hit). Tate says that Ishii "flat-backed Mir right there" and that's true, Ishii did visit upon him the symbolic death of ippon, for sure he did. 

And yet the match continues; so weird. (Remember how great it was when Karo Parisyan threw somebody in a UFC match one time and you could see Karo's buddy in his corner signal the ippon? I should find that one sometime.) With four minutes to go, Yuki Nakai again offers the guidance of shido as a kindness. Ishii feints the major-outer reap of osoto-gari and throws instead with the major-inner reap of ouchi-gari and that has got to be ippon number two, somebody stop this thing. Meisha Tate rightly notes that Ishii realized he wasn't going to be able to get all the way across Mir's hips and so settled for a low, inside attack. She's good! Mei Yamaguchi 山口 芽生 was really good too when she wasn't getting Scotsplained by Stuart Fulton on the earlier shows, though, so I don't know who I prefer in this rôle but either way I am content. I will take Sean Wheelock over Fulton in a heartbeat though. And now it is Satoshi Ishii looking for a wheel-lock of his own haha there is no such lock. Tate is like "ah ok now this is what I want to see" with regards to Frank and his Mirrings but Ishii is just squishing him, and staying well clear of Mir's dangerous legs, transitioning between 横四方固 yoko-shiho-gatame (the side!) and 上四方固 kami-shiho-gatame (north/south! which Renzo Gracie and John Danaher say in their book is best considered a variation of side control! weird, right! also never order the salmon kami as an appetizer even though it's cheap unless all you want is the head and neck! I have probably told you this before! also salmon sushi wasn't really a Japanese thing, they had to be convinced by Norwegians! it's a neat story!). Two minutes to go now, and Frank Mir has his near-side knee up to help keep Ishii from moving from the side to 縦四方固 tate-shiho-gatame (right up on top) and it's a funny little quirk when people from other græpplingz join us at judo and do that same thing with their knee to prevent you coming up on top because either way in judo it's a pin and the osaekomi clock is running, new friend! And your new friend is like haha oh ok I guess I'd better start moving then haha! and everybody is having such a nice time together as friends at judo. Yuki Nakai stands them both up, and offers them further guidance through shido, but also decides on the fly that a double hansoku-make in a bout of such sikkness would be a crime against waza itself and so the match must continue. OH HEKK YES so last time he threw, Ishii flashed the osoto and finished inside with ouchi gari, but this time he flashes the ouchi, reaches across for the osoto, and, as Mir retreats, finishes on the far leg at the edge of the mat with nidan-kosoto-gari, the two-step-minor-outer-reap we know and love so well. 

That's a third ippon and yet the match continues, this time once these two large fellows have been safely returned to the centre of the mat. They are restarted in yoko-shiho-gatame (the side) and Mir's second seems to think Mir has a chance to shrimp to half-guard from here but there is no evidence of this. And now overtime! Golden score! Unlimited time! Wheelock notes with great delight that on the bout sheet this is indicated by the infinity symbol ∞. Yuki Nakai is like "guys plz, one more shido and I've got to call this thing, give me something here" and he says all of this with his eyes (his one good one, I guess, R.I.P. to his eye [also he says some of this with his words]). Mir flops to his bottom, and is passed and pinned in kami-shiho-gatame as Ishii attempts a half-hearted choke as Mir's shirt rides up higher than ever, exposing his tummy-tum for all to behold. Perhaps this is what has at last convinced Yuki Nakai to impose the match-ending shido on Frank Mir (who does not object in the least) AND SO OUR WINNER BY GLORIOUS SHIDO IS SATOSHI ISHII in a bout both commentators agree would have been scored a lopsided 10-8 in the context of mixed fight.     

Our main event then (although this is to me very much like how there was a match [or two {I am not checking}] after Hulk Hogan vs. The Rock at the Wrestlemania I went to with my brother that one time as we looked down upon the action from our semi-obstructed seats in the 500s purchased for prices commensurate with my loathing of getting and spending as a guy memorably wrote in a sonnet one time) sees PAGANS SUCKLED IN AN OUTWORN CREED vs TEAM WREATHÈD HORN lol no that is not true but is instead Wordsworth bursting forth from the parenthesis that contained our reference too him and now here he is in the principle moment of our writing as Team Alpha Male bows in (I like that they do that! but of course I do!) against Team Polaris and we are shown the lists of who shall hold the positions of senpo, jisho, chuken, fukusyo, and taisho for each (that is really what it says on screen, this is not just me being difficult) but as they will become clear during the unfolding of things I will not list them. Let's see then! 

Quite sensibly, if you did not appear for your team in the opening round, you must begin on the mat for the final one. Dan Strauss of Team Polaris is around 205lbs and Dustin Akbari is around 160lbs (hey me too) and so this will be but a four-minute match just as soon as this advertisement for bitcoins airs (not kidding). I cannot tell why but Dustin Akbari receives a shido before the match even begins and the crowd boos but I even backed it up and don't know what it was about, forgive me. Ah, ok, Meisha Tate explains that it is because he had junk in his hair that they had to wash out -- this happened last event with some other guy and Kazushi Sakuraba was so mad at him but it was mostly just funny because of Sakuraba's inherently comic way. Akbari pushes the pace and Strauss disgraces himself by just kind of laying around despite being forty-five pounds bigger; æsthetically and probabaly also morally this is an abomination. Akbari plants Strauss with a strong ouchi-gari but perhaps no small part of that enplantening resulted from Strauss grabbing a mae-hadaka-jime/front choke/guillotine on the way down. Akbari pulled his stylishly-coiffed head right out of it, though, no big deal. Akbari keeps up a great pace for the remainder of the four minutes, trying all kinds of stuff up to and including a 飛び十字固め tobi-juji-gatame (flying armbar), all the while making Dan Strauss look like a big dummy. There is great peril, I think, for a great big guy (either in absolute or relative terms) when competing against someone who is not one, to end up looking like a big dummy, and I do sympathize with this plight even though it is one I will myself never know unless a bunch of people who weigh like a hundred pounds start coming out to the club. The match is a draw, and both are eliminated, as Meisha Tate notes that the clock is the true winner of this bout which is a haunting thought if think about its broader truths. 

Marcin Held and Mansher Khera, now. Khera is a Marcelo Garcia black belt, much like Dilllon Danis, a big jerk who (I'm not saying it's right) got dealt with in the Khabibtermath, and who is so much of a jerk, in fact, that Garcia kicked him out of his club. Imagine it! Marcelo Garcia is by all accounts a lovely guy, but he simply could not sanction DIllon Danis' foolishness (or maybe because he is such a lovely guy, he could not sanction it). Exiled from the dо̄jо̄ by one's own sensei is a grim fate. Mansher Khera seems nice, though. This match is another good one, with Marcin Held looking for leg-locks as Meisha Tate talks about how in mixed martial arts you don't see a lot of them because people will hit you in the face while you do them (true, I've seen that happen). I really like Khera's classic ne waza style AND HOLY MOLY he came super close to a gyaku-kata-gatame in the mode of Joe D'Arce as time expired! Another draw but no problem, lovely stuff. 

I think Stuart Fulton is doing the non-Lenne Hardt portion of the ring announcing and I reject it.

Craig Jones drops to his seat immediately against the deeply huge Antoine Jaoude, who wrestled for Brazil at Athens 2004, but who in only a minute or so is standingly hadaka-jime'd on this day. And so it shall be Craig Jones against Gordon Ryan, which sounds like it could be good: and it is! Gordon Ryan has a pretty awful tattoo that just says "JIU-JITSU" on his forearm but it does not prevent him from grinding Jones out, passing, taking the back, and finishing with a hadaka-jime that was actually more of a choking of the face (illegal in judo because it is gross, but undeniable in its efficacy). All he needs, then, is to take Vitor SHAOLIN Ribeiro to a draw to win the match for his team and that seems like it will not at all be a problem to do (I mean no disrespect to the rugged lands of Shaolin). Well, Ribeiro did very well to defend as long as he did but Gordon Ryan transitions to a nifty juji-gatame from the back. Oh and I see that I have been totally mistaken in that Team Polaris still has a guy, and that guy is Gregor Gracie, who did very well earlier but who may be injured of shoulder, Meisha Tate believes. GREGOR GRACIE HAS HIT TK SCISSORS I REPEAT GREGOR GRACIE HAS HIT TK SCISSORS as Gordon Ryan crept ever higher in his tate-shiho-gatame as he quested, I believe, for juji-gatame. Have I gone this entire show without mentioning that the no-closed-guard rule is really great for this kind of event? If so forgive me; if I have not, then forgive for repeating myself; either way please forgive me. A draw ends this final round and so Team Alpha Male (lol that name though) wins but really it was just that Gordon Ryan, a guy so good at this that I have heard of him, ran through like seven dо̄ödz. 

I would like to close by saying that the real winner tonight is in my view FRANK MIR and I will tell you why: when he was waiting to walk out for his match against Satoshi Ishii, a camera low-key caught a production assistant (or something like that) doing an obviously pretty bad job of communicating to Frank Mir whether or not it was time for him to actually go out, and it was super awkward, like, I don't know anything about how any of this kind of thing works but it looked like a weirdly cumbersome mess, but Frank Mir, just a moment before he was set to compete, totally gave her a kind smile and gentle nod and treated her nicely in a way that in my view revealed character. As Kazushi Sakuraba grabs the house microphone and simulates a trumpet fanfare (lol this guy) before handing out medals to the winners and requesting that the public follow and support QUINTET from now on, I feel like this was their best show yet! Let's keep watching them! Thank you for time, friends! OH NO SOMEBODY BROUGHT A LITTLE TODDLER OUT ONTO THE MATS THIS IS CUTE BUT DANGEROUS HE'S GONNA GET STAPH COME ON REF GET IN THERE oh man Satoshi Ishii has a shirt that says CATCH AS CATCH CAN and it has a three-eyed owl on it. ALRIGHT FOR REAL THIS TIME I AM GOING, GOD BLESS YOU ALL.