PRIDE.6
イベント詳細
シリーズ PRIDE（ナンバーシリーズ）
主催 DSE
開催年月日1999年7月4日
開催地日本
神奈川県横浜市
会場 横浜アリーナ
試合数全8試合
放送局スカイパーフェクTV!
入場者数 12,580人
THE SWALLOW (燕 tsubame) FOLLOWS NOT THE SUMMER (夏 natsu) MORE WILLING THAN WE YOUR LORDSHIP is what I guess 12,580 people or so still wanted very much in their hearts to tell Nobuhiko Takada despite the rough waters encountered as he sailed out of the safe harbour of unusually vraisemblant (truth-seeming) fake-fighting into the roil and tumult of 挌闘技 kakutōgi (かくとうぎ : "1. a combat sport, such as boxing, judo, or wrestling" [挌: strike/hit/fight, 闘: fight, war, 技: waza] and indeed 総合挌闘技 / 総合格闘技 sōgō kakutōgi ( そうごうかくとうぎ, in which 総合 sōgō is synthesis, integration) or 異種格闘技戦 ishu kakutōgi sen (いしゅかくとうぎせん, in which 異種 ishu is heterogeneous, different kinds) until the swallows who followed his summer found Takada entomb'd upon the very hem o' the sea which is to say fighting The Smashing Machine Mark Kerr for some reason. One might well assume, given all that we have seen, that a match between Nobuhiko Takada and Mark Kerr would fall along the lines of Nobuhiko Takada's bout against the similarly superjacked American wrestler Mark Coleman, which is to say one round of closely contested, impressively worked shootfighting, followed by a brawny American hand (handbrawn is tough to train, too) tapping theatrically to a somewhat-applied 足関節技 ashi-kansetsu-waza (leg-bonelocking-technique). But I don't think so! And here's why! I have definitely watched this match before (I have seen, at one point or another, very nearly all of these shows), and yet have literally no memory of what happened in it, which means it for sure does not end with Mark Kerr obviously fake-losing, because I would totally remember that, either from the event itself or from the HBO The Smashing Machine documentary or just, like, from general lore. So I think this was probably on the up-and-up! But why! How could this be! Why would anyone do this to Nobuhiko Takada! I thought they loved him! Like swallows! Why would they follow him only to see him hurt badly! But as graves only be men's works and death their gain let's just see how it goes I guess; how bad could it be (possibly awful).
BUT NOT QUITE YET as first there are several other matches like for instance this one between Egan Inoue, two-time-racquetball-world-champion turned guy-who-had-a-match-on- the-last-Pride, and Carl Malenko, an Amercican-flag-shorts'd fake Malenko (well they were all fake Malenkos, but Carl even more so [no diss, I am just trying to tell you who is and who is not a fake-Malenko by blood; I wish him, and all fake-Malenkos, regardless of provenance, only the best) that follows hot on the heels off a parade of fighters, the first we have seen in any of the Pride tapes to which we have access through the torrent that gives us access to them though I assume that parades such as these were probably also happening on the earlier shows just not our tapes of them. The chief thing revealed to me in this one is that Nobuhiko Takada remains, like, insanely loved, though Kazushi Sakuraba is already not that far behind (just wait!). To return to Carl Malenko, though, the Personal Life section of his Wikipedia page reads thusly: "Pulled off the streets by Boris Malenko as a youth, Carl Contini was transformed into a top flight worker like his stepbrothers Joe and Dean. Using the name Carl Greco during his formative years, when Carl Malenko was born he became the top gaijin for BattlARTS in its later years, mainly pushed as a tag wrestler.[1]" where [1] is "'oocities profile'.[permanent dead link]" and I have extremely never heard of oocities. He has Inoue down in the corner early on but remains quite content to stay low and safe inside Inoue's guard rather than work towards anything but very occasional hitting. I am struck by how sweaty both guys are only a little bit into the match, and I wonder if it was maybe a hot day? Egan Inoue has good hips; you can see this just by his merest twitchings and scootings towards the 腕挫十字固 ude-hishighi-juji-gatame armbar he seeks but is not his before the bell sounds ending what I feel like must have been a ten-minute first round that one would have to give to Carl Malenko were we scoring things in that mode but I assume the Pride judging criteria of evaluating the fight as a whole (which inevitably, and I would for sure say rightly, privileges how things are at the end over how things were earlier) is already in place but this may not be true.
I'm not totally sure it's the same corner that Malenko has Inoue pinned down in (in the mode of dō-osae or "trunk hold" as Malenko has not passed Inoue's legs) to start round two as it was to end round one, but it might as well be. They are stop-don't-move-stop-don't-move'd to the centre in this same position, and from there things get pretty interesting between Malenko's little attempts to pass and Inoue's sprightly hips. Will he finish this 表三角絞 omote-sankaku-jime/front-triangle-choke with them? No, but it got tense for a second! Malenko is doing really well, staying low and safe but with steady pressure, and Inoue is playing off his back with his feet on Malenko's hips to facilitate various sikknesses and I am totally engaged despite Quadros and Rutten being lame about it. I am not sure how explicit I have been about this so far (probably totally sufficiently, and yet here we are), but I have been disappointed to find Bas Rutten (re: Quadros, with all due respect, who cares) such a complainer in these first shows (indeed these first years). I remembered him, I guess wrongly, as a pretty relentlessly positive enthusiast whose brow clouded only when people refused to explode right here. Maybe that Bas is yet to come? Maybe by like 2003 that's totally the way he will be? I hope that's the case; I would hate to think I have been carrying in my heart these many years an untrue Bas (ah but maybe I have carried with me the Bas I needed; who can say).
These first two rounds are (ad)judged a draw, which seems fair, and so a third round is called for, and everybody goes like hekk in it: dynamic græppling exchanges, lovely transitions, and just an overall energy to things that was a pleasure to behold. Of the specifics I can say no more, as I was having soup (also tea) during it rather than writing things down, but it was really good! Carl Malenko is given the win in a fair and fine decision, and Egan Inoue is genial in defeat in a way that seems real, and revealing of him. Great job, guys!
Hey look who's next:
It's Carlos Newton! Let's have a look at all the things it says on the screen here and see what we can do with them -- it might be fun! Ok so down at the bottom we have 〘ローニン〙rо̄-ni-n ah yes "The Ronin" Carlos Newton, that's something we've heard before! And just above that that's gotta just be his name right let's see so カーロス・ニュートン kaa-ro-su ni-uu-to-n yep that checks out, Carlos Newton! Learn the kana my friends, it takes a weekend and you're up and running! Up above that we've got some kanji (and a few busy ones towards the end, at that) so we're in pretty deep but let's see what we can do: okay 色 isn't too bad, that's shoku which means colour, so we can just kind of search around for the right one . . . seems like we're looking at 褐色, kasshoku, "dark brown; colour of tanned skin," so we're already getting a little uncomfortable with where this one could be headed, sure, okay, so next we just have the possessive particle の no to connect some nouns, that's easy enough, and then one of the last four is 本 hon or moto as in 日本 Nihon (日 sun 本 origin and so "sun origin" or "land of the rising sun," neat right?) so at least we've got that much! I'll scroll through the Kanji Study program on my phone until I find the one before it, it's probably just a little compound . . . well that was actually a tonne of scrolling and it didn't work out so let's search by radical (little constituent parts of the kanji) which I would have done to start were I not a fool and ok there we go it's 宮 kyuu or miya which can mean "Shinto shrine, constellations, palace, princess" so this is kind of puzzling unless it's just the sounds being used phonetically for a proper name (the kanji in names are so tricky!) wait 宮本 miya-moto oh dear lord no they're calling him Dark Brown Miyamoto Musashi aren't they . . . yeah 宮本武蔵, that's Miyamoto Musashi alright; they're calling him 褐色の宮本武蔵 Dark Brown Miyamoto Musashi; my god. I mean I guess I can see it though:
A quick stop-off at his Japanese-language Wikipedia page to see if "Dark Brown Miyamoto Musashi" (it does not even feel good to type it) caught on at all reveals Carlos Newton's ニックネーム ni-kku-née-mu listed there as simply「褐色のサムライ」Dark Brown Samurai (with "samurai" just spelled out phonetically) which seems better in its lack of specificity somehow? Maybe? It's a super comfortable topic so we should all talk about it a bunch more. Look at that utterly magnificent Mizuno Eurocomp judogi, though, the old kind with the "M" logo one first encountered on one's baseball glove in 1989, as opposed to the "Run Bird" logo one enjoyed on one's baseball cleats in probably 1991. Ah, the Mizuno Eurocomp: not at all the heaviest of the heavyweight, armour-like judogis that got so out of hand (quite literally I guess in that the worst of them bordered on ungrippable) that strict regulations regarding fabric weight (no more than 750 grams per metre-square! seriously! you guys!) were in time brought in for specific makes and models to receive IJF approval (there's a special little tag), but the one that became synonymous with that broad trend due, I suppose, to its ubiquity; ah, the Eurocomp. Oh man is he really going to spend the rest of this paragraph talking about the different judogis he has had and enjoyed over the years just because there's an old picture of Carlos Newton in a Mizuno Eurocomp well listen up, pal, I basically *started* this blog to have a venue in which to spend the rest of a paragraph talking about the different judogis I have had and enjoyed over the years, prompted by an old picture of Carlos Newton in a Mizuno Eurocomp so buckle-up; also I apologize for the confrontational tone just now; there was really no call for it; please come back; I'm sorry. Eurocomps were the best! The fit was intentionally quite slim and well-suited to the limby westerner (hence the name; they stopped just short of calling it the Mizuno Limby Westerner but you could tell they wanted to) than the cut of Mizuno models aimed primarily at the Japanese domestic market (my thoughts turn to a Hiroshi Tanahashi interview where he referred admiringly to Shinsuke Nakamura's "western" proportions, and spoke self-deprecatingly about his own "traditional Japanese" build, and how I was then, as I am now, like "lol woah I don't necessarily want to get too deep into whatever that's about") and I loved those judogis. My first judogi, like so many (people in Canada) was a single-weave Toraki that was just fine, and then when I started to compete I got a couple of absurdly thick Toraki Golds (including my only blue judogi ever! I thought all competitors needed a blue judogi! this is not true unless you are at nationals or like the Québec Open or something! so I didn't really ever need it but at the time it was very important symbolically to me!) that weighed, and I swear this is true, twelve pounds when wet. Twelve pounds. And I was (and remain [all praise is due to God alone, Allah the most merciful]) but a -73kg guy, and it was twelve pounds. They were super thick and durable but there was just a tonne of fabric involved so the slimmer Eurocomp was a welcome change, and a change so welcome, in fact, that when they were discontinued as we entered an era of much more sensible judogis overall (if you [by which I mean the jiu-jitsu guys who made a shime-waza {strangulation} instructional I saw more than a decade ago who were like "if your partner is wearing a Eurocomp, forget it, this will not work"] thought Eurocomps were bad, what of the utterly absurd Dax Moskito, or the Gill Sports with the extra thick collar and seam, just that that weird seam, that meant your Georgian/Russian grips needed to get all the way to the belt for sure because mister [and missus] you weren't getting anything on the back if you came up short), I used probably the whole of an ECW Press check (it really would have had to have been the whole of it) to buy three more Eurocomps to go with the two that I already had in use. And this was not nothing, because, like the Old Man (that's really all they call him) in Timon of Athens, "I am a man/That from my first have been inclined to thrift" in that buying things is disgusting. Anyway my plan was to ration Eurocomps as though they were Today Sponges (and I, of course, Elaine); I thought I could possibly make it through my thirties with those five that I ordered in late 2009. But they [time; entropy] fooled me, Jerry; they fooled me, Jerry: I train so much that even the most famously durable judogis break down for me pretty quickly; like, I train way more often than many people who are much, much better than me, which does not speak well of how good I am at judo (really not very), but it does speak to my true desire (to train [judo]). And just recently, an old friend who returned from his travels abroad only briefly (for his travels take him abroad again anon) found amongst his old things a Mizuno Eurocomp that no longer fits him, and in his kindness he gave it me, and in a deeper kindness still told me that he associates Eurocomps so closely with me that when he found it at once he was like I must bring this to him. What a thing to be associated with, in a dear friend's mind: the finest discontinued judogi of a generation. Somehow, my life has been full of such blessings, each more than I deserve.
Knowing, though, as he surely does, how much the Mizuno Eurocomp has weirdly come to mean for me, I cannot help but feel slightly wounded that Carlos Newton has chosen to take to fight without one here against, let's see . . . oh it's DAIJIRO MATSUI! I am going to start checking the Japanese Wikipedia sometimes to see about ニックネーム/ni-kku-née-mu/nicknames and this decision pays off immediately with 炎のグラップラー/honno no gu-ra-ppu-ra/FLAME GRAPPLER and also I see that in this instance I could have just checked his English-language Wikipedia page that totally also says just "The Flame Grappler" but I will continue doing it this way too I think. And so we have Carlos Newton, man of 柔道 jūdō (amongst many other things certainly [also Moni Aizik, his one-time sensei, is of controversy]), against Daijiro Matsui, also of 柔道 jūdō (amongst other things certainly [the 国際武道大学 Kokusai Budō Daigaku/International Budō University/IBU is however not of controversy) and I am always very pleased to see either of these guys so my eagerness to at once see both of these guys is really quite high. Matsui is listed at 5'9" 199 lbs, Newton at 5'9" 169 lbs, and I can't see how Matsui could be thirty pounds heavier than Newton but what am I, a Roberval balance? Plainly I am not. Matsui comes out swinging! As does Newton! Realizing at once though that hitting is terrible, Matsui and Newton choose instead to græpple beautifully, as Matsui's low 双手刈 morote-gari is sprawled atop of and soon thereafter Newton works towards 腕挫十字固 ude-hishigi-juji-gatame from an impromptu 地獄 jigoku or H E L L position (also often called the crucifix position [please reflect on this]) but not only does it not take, but it does not take to such an extent that Matsui stands up and stomps on him a bit. Things settle in after that a little. For a while, Matsui hangs out in the 亀/kame/turtle position, and Newton throws only a few hesitant knees from there. Bas, with whom Newton had been training of late, and so working quite a bit of striking, says that its almost like Newton doesn't want to do it, because it isn't nice. "Well, there are some people who think that striking may be barbaric compared to submissions," Stephen Quadros suggests, and that is for sure what some people think, that's true; I wonder where they would have gotten that idea (the devil knew not what he did when he made men strikers). 裏投 URRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA NAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGEEEEEEEEE:
As you can see in the first of these several sikk images, Daijiro Matsui had secured the 逆腕緘 gyaku-ude-garami grip that has come to be most closely associated with Masahiko Kimura from a position that has come to be most closely associated with Kazushi Sakuraba (Pride 10 is not that many more Prides from now! [then!]), but Newton employed the kind of hips I call ura nage hips to my students regardless of whether or not we are doing ura nage at that moment because there are a BUNCH of throws where you need hips like that, please believe this. Since we are talking ura nage and only a moment ago mentioned Masahiko Kimura, I would like to tell you one of the little things Doug Rogers mentioned about Masahiko Kimura when he taught a class at my old sensei's club years ago (like seven years ago? eight?): despite his reputation for rough training, Kimura did not allow ura nage in randori; like not even slightly. His grounds for this were apparently two-fold: i) somebody's gonna get needlessly hurt (and not even necessarily the person being thrown (great big throws in which tori is throwing blind on crowded mats are a bad idea), and ii) ura nage is not a math problem: you get low and dig with those ura nage hips, and then that's all there is to it; the kake or finish of the technique isn't even really a thing; you just do it. So in the club, even if your club is the 拓殖 大学Takushoku Daigaku/拓大 Takudai university judo team, there's no reason to finish ura nage in randori; just lift. Your partner will absolutely know what just happened, and will be grateful for your mercy. "But nothing emboldens sin so much as mercy!" you reply, eyes ablaze, just before you are asked to settle down; which you do at once; and we are all again glad.
"Beautiful suplex by Carlos Newton from the back!" is Stephen Quadros call which is entirely correct. And now juji-gatame! One's thoughts turn to wee Demetrious Johnson's similar sequence so very many years later as illustrated in this animated gif I found (and did not make):
Newton's throw was much more spectacular, but his juji-gatame less successful, in that it ended up like this:
BUT NOT QUITE YET as first there are several other matches like for instance this one between Egan Inoue, two-time-racquetball-world-champion turned guy-who-had-a-match-on- the-last-Pride, and Carl Malenko, an Amercican-flag-shorts'd fake Malenko (well they were all fake Malenkos, but Carl even more so [no diss, I am just trying to tell you who is and who is not a fake-Malenko by blood; I wish him, and all fake-Malenkos, regardless of provenance, only the best) that follows hot on the heels off a parade of fighters, the first we have seen in any of the Pride tapes to which we have access through the torrent that gives us access to them though I assume that parades such as these were probably also happening on the earlier shows just not our tapes of them. The chief thing revealed to me in this one is that Nobuhiko Takada remains, like, insanely loved, though Kazushi Sakuraba is already not that far behind (just wait!). To return to Carl Malenko, though, the Personal Life section of his Wikipedia page reads thusly: "Pulled off the streets by Boris Malenko as a youth, Carl Contini was transformed into a top flight worker like his stepbrothers Joe and Dean. Using the name Carl Greco during his formative years, when Carl Malenko was born he became the top gaijin for BattlARTS in its later years, mainly pushed as a tag wrestler.[1]" where [1] is "'oocities profile'.[permanent dead link]" and I have extremely never heard of oocities. He has Inoue down in the corner early on but remains quite content to stay low and safe inside Inoue's guard rather than work towards anything but very occasional hitting. I am struck by how sweaty both guys are only a little bit into the match, and I wonder if it was maybe a hot day? Egan Inoue has good hips; you can see this just by his merest twitchings and scootings towards the 腕挫十字固 ude-hishighi-juji-gatame armbar he seeks but is not his before the bell sounds ending what I feel like must have been a ten-minute first round that one would have to give to Carl Malenko were we scoring things in that mode but I assume the Pride judging criteria of evaluating the fight as a whole (which inevitably, and I would for sure say rightly, privileges how things are at the end over how things were earlier) is already in place but this may not be true.
I'm not totally sure it's the same corner that Malenko has Inoue pinned down in (in the mode of dō-osae or "trunk hold" as Malenko has not passed Inoue's legs) to start round two as it was to end round one, but it might as well be. They are stop-don't-move-stop-don't-move'd to the centre in this same position, and from there things get pretty interesting between Malenko's little attempts to pass and Inoue's sprightly hips. Will he finish this 表三角絞 omote-sankaku-jime/front-triangle-choke with them? No, but it got tense for a second! Malenko is doing really well, staying low and safe but with steady pressure, and Inoue is playing off his back with his feet on Malenko's hips to facilitate various sikknesses and I am totally engaged despite Quadros and Rutten being lame about it. I am not sure how explicit I have been about this so far (probably totally sufficiently, and yet here we are), but I have been disappointed to find Bas Rutten (re: Quadros, with all due respect, who cares) such a complainer in these first shows (indeed these first years). I remembered him, I guess wrongly, as a pretty relentlessly positive enthusiast whose brow clouded only when people refused to explode right here. Maybe that Bas is yet to come? Maybe by like 2003 that's totally the way he will be? I hope that's the case; I would hate to think I have been carrying in my heart these many years an untrue Bas (ah but maybe I have carried with me the Bas I needed; who can say).
These first two rounds are (ad)judged a draw, which seems fair, and so a third round is called for, and everybody goes like hekk in it: dynamic græppling exchanges, lovely transitions, and just an overall energy to things that was a pleasure to behold. Of the specifics I can say no more, as I was having soup (also tea) during it rather than writing things down, but it was really good! Carl Malenko is given the win in a fair and fine decision, and Egan Inoue is genial in defeat in a way that seems real, and revealing of him. Great job, guys!
Hey look who's next:
It's Carlos Newton! Let's have a look at all the things it says on the screen here and see what we can do with them -- it might be fun! Ok so down at the bottom we have 〘ローニン〙rо̄-ni-n ah yes "The Ronin" Carlos Newton, that's something we've heard before! And just above that that's gotta just be his name right let's see so カーロス・ニュートン kaa-ro-su ni-uu-to-n yep that checks out, Carlos Newton! Learn the kana my friends, it takes a weekend and you're up and running! Up above that we've got some kanji (and a few busy ones towards the end, at that) so we're in pretty deep but let's see what we can do: okay 色 isn't too bad, that's shoku which means colour, so we can just kind of search around for the right one . . . seems like we're looking at 褐色, kasshoku, "dark brown; colour of tanned skin," so we're already getting a little uncomfortable with where this one could be headed, sure, okay, so next we just have the possessive particle の no to connect some nouns, that's easy enough, and then one of the last four is 本 hon or moto as in 日本 Nihon (日 sun 本 origin and so "sun origin" or "land of the rising sun," neat right?) so at least we've got that much! I'll scroll through the Kanji Study program on my phone until I find the one before it, it's probably just a little compound . . . well that was actually a tonne of scrolling and it didn't work out so let's search by radical (little constituent parts of the kanji) which I would have done to start were I not a fool and ok there we go it's 宮 kyuu or miya which can mean "Shinto shrine, constellations, palace, princess" so this is kind of puzzling unless it's just the sounds being used phonetically for a proper name (the kanji in names are so tricky!) wait 宮本 miya-moto oh dear lord no they're calling him Dark Brown Miyamoto Musashi aren't they . . . yeah 宮本武蔵, that's Miyamoto Musashi alright; they're calling him 褐色の宮本武蔵 Dark Brown Miyamoto Musashi; my god. I mean I guess I can see it though:
A quick stop-off at his Japanese-language Wikipedia page to see if "Dark Brown Miyamoto Musashi" (it does not even feel good to type it) caught on at all reveals Carlos Newton's ニックネーム ni-kku-née-mu listed there as simply「褐色のサムライ」Dark Brown Samurai (with "samurai" just spelled out phonetically) which seems better in its lack of specificity somehow? Maybe? It's a super comfortable topic so we should all talk about it a bunch more. Look at that utterly magnificent Mizuno Eurocomp judogi, though, the old kind with the "M" logo one first encountered on one's baseball glove in 1989, as opposed to the "Run Bird" logo one enjoyed on one's baseball cleats in probably 1991. Ah, the Mizuno Eurocomp: not at all the heaviest of the heavyweight, armour-like judogis that got so out of hand (quite literally I guess in that the worst of them bordered on ungrippable) that strict regulations regarding fabric weight (no more than 750 grams per metre-square! seriously! you guys!) were in time brought in for specific makes and models to receive IJF approval (there's a special little tag), but the one that became synonymous with that broad trend due, I suppose, to its ubiquity; ah, the Eurocomp. Oh man is he really going to spend the rest of this paragraph talking about the different judogis he has had and enjoyed over the years just because there's an old picture of Carlos Newton in a Mizuno Eurocomp well listen up, pal, I basically *started* this blog to have a venue in which to spend the rest of a paragraph talking about the different judogis I have had and enjoyed over the years, prompted by an old picture of Carlos Newton in a Mizuno Eurocomp so buckle-up; also I apologize for the confrontational tone just now; there was really no call for it; please come back; I'm sorry. Eurocomps were the best! The fit was intentionally quite slim and well-suited to the limby westerner (hence the name; they stopped just short of calling it the Mizuno Limby Westerner but you could tell they wanted to) than the cut of Mizuno models aimed primarily at the Japanese domestic market (my thoughts turn to a Hiroshi Tanahashi interview where he referred admiringly to Shinsuke Nakamura's "western" proportions, and spoke self-deprecatingly about his own "traditional Japanese" build, and how I was then, as I am now, like "lol woah I don't necessarily want to get too deep into whatever that's about") and I loved those judogis. My first judogi, like so many (people in Canada) was a single-weave Toraki that was just fine, and then when I started to compete I got a couple of absurdly thick Toraki Golds (including my only blue judogi ever! I thought all competitors needed a blue judogi! this is not true unless you are at nationals or like the Québec Open or something! so I didn't really ever need it but at the time it was very important symbolically to me!) that weighed, and I swear this is true, twelve pounds when wet. Twelve pounds. And I was (and remain [all praise is due to God alone, Allah the most merciful]) but a -73kg guy, and it was twelve pounds. They were super thick and durable but there was just a tonne of fabric involved so the slimmer Eurocomp was a welcome change, and a change so welcome, in fact, that when they were discontinued as we entered an era of much more sensible judogis overall (if you [by which I mean the jiu-jitsu guys who made a shime-waza {strangulation} instructional I saw more than a decade ago who were like "if your partner is wearing a Eurocomp, forget it, this will not work"] thought Eurocomps were bad, what of the utterly absurd Dax Moskito, or the Gill Sports with the extra thick collar and seam, just that that weird seam, that meant your Georgian/Russian grips needed to get all the way to the belt for sure because mister [and missus] you weren't getting anything on the back if you came up short), I used probably the whole of an ECW Press check (it really would have had to have been the whole of it) to buy three more Eurocomps to go with the two that I already had in use. And this was not nothing, because, like the Old Man (that's really all they call him) in Timon of Athens, "I am a man/That from my first have been inclined to thrift" in that buying things is disgusting. Anyway my plan was to ration Eurocomps as though they were Today Sponges (and I, of course, Elaine); I thought I could possibly make it through my thirties with those five that I ordered in late 2009. But they [time; entropy] fooled me, Jerry; they fooled me, Jerry: I train so much that even the most famously durable judogis break down for me pretty quickly; like, I train way more often than many people who are much, much better than me, which does not speak well of how good I am at judo (really not very), but it does speak to my true desire (to train [judo]). And just recently, an old friend who returned from his travels abroad only briefly (for his travels take him abroad again anon) found amongst his old things a Mizuno Eurocomp that no longer fits him, and in his kindness he gave it me, and in a deeper kindness still told me that he associates Eurocomps so closely with me that when he found it at once he was like I must bring this to him. What a thing to be associated with, in a dear friend's mind: the finest discontinued judogi of a generation. Somehow, my life has been full of such blessings, each more than I deserve.
Knowing, though, as he surely does, how much the Mizuno Eurocomp has weirdly come to mean for me, I cannot help but feel slightly wounded that Carlos Newton has chosen to take to fight without one here against, let's see . . . oh it's DAIJIRO MATSUI! I am going to start checking the Japanese Wikipedia sometimes to see about ニックネーム/ni-kku-née-mu/nicknames and this decision pays off immediately with 炎のグラップラー/honno no gu-ra-ppu-ra/FLAME GRAPPLER and also I see that in this instance I could have just checked his English-language Wikipedia page that totally also says just "The Flame Grappler" but I will continue doing it this way too I think. And so we have Carlos Newton, man of 柔道 jūdō (amongst many other things certainly [also Moni Aizik, his one-time sensei, is of controversy]), against Daijiro Matsui, also of 柔道 jūdō (amongst other things certainly [the 国際武道大学 Kokusai Budō Daigaku/International Budō University/IBU is however not of controversy) and I am always very pleased to see either of these guys so my eagerness to at once see both of these guys is really quite high. Matsui is listed at 5'9" 199 lbs, Newton at 5'9" 169 lbs, and I can't see how Matsui could be thirty pounds heavier than Newton but what am I, a Roberval balance? Plainly I am not. Matsui comes out swinging! As does Newton! Realizing at once though that hitting is terrible, Matsui and Newton choose instead to græpple beautifully, as Matsui's low 双手刈 morote-gari is sprawled atop of and soon thereafter Newton works towards 腕挫十字固 ude-hishigi-juji-gatame from an impromptu 地獄 jigoku or H E L L position (also often called the crucifix position [please reflect on this]) but not only does it not take, but it does not take to such an extent that Matsui stands up and stomps on him a bit. Things settle in after that a little. For a while, Matsui hangs out in the 亀/kame/turtle position, and Newton throws only a few hesitant knees from there. Bas, with whom Newton had been training of late, and so working quite a bit of striking, says that its almost like Newton doesn't want to do it, because it isn't nice. "Well, there are some people who think that striking may be barbaric compared to submissions," Stephen Quadros suggests, and that is for sure what some people think, that's true; I wonder where they would have gotten that idea (the devil knew not what he did when he made men strikers). 裏投 URRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA NAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGEEEEEEEEE:
As you can see in the first of these several sikk images, Daijiro Matsui had secured the 逆腕緘 gyaku-ude-garami grip that has come to be most closely associated with Masahiko Kimura from a position that has come to be most closely associated with Kazushi Sakuraba (Pride 10 is not that many more Prides from now! [then!]), but Newton employed the kind of hips I call ura nage hips to my students regardless of whether or not we are doing ura nage at that moment because there are a BUNCH of throws where you need hips like that, please believe this. Since we are talking ura nage and only a moment ago mentioned Masahiko Kimura, I would like to tell you one of the little things Doug Rogers mentioned about Masahiko Kimura when he taught a class at my old sensei's club years ago (like seven years ago? eight?): despite his reputation for rough training, Kimura did not allow ura nage in randori; like not even slightly. His grounds for this were apparently two-fold: i) somebody's gonna get needlessly hurt (and not even necessarily the person being thrown (great big throws in which tori is throwing blind on crowded mats are a bad idea), and ii) ura nage is not a math problem: you get low and dig with those ura nage hips, and then that's all there is to it; the kake or finish of the technique isn't even really a thing; you just do it. So in the club, even if your club is the 拓殖 大学Takushoku Daigaku/拓大 Takudai university judo team, there's no reason to finish ura nage in randori; just lift. Your partner will absolutely know what just happened, and will be grateful for your mercy. "But nothing emboldens sin so much as mercy!" you reply, eyes ablaze, just before you are asked to settle down; which you do at once; and we are all again glad.
"Beautiful suplex by Carlos Newton from the back!" is Stephen Quadros call which is entirely correct. And now juji-gatame! One's thoughts turn to wee Demetrious Johnson's similar sequence so very many years later as illustrated in this animated gif I found (and did not make):
Newton's throw was much more spectacular, but his juji-gatame less successful, in that it ended up like this:
"And nature, as it grows again toward earth, Is fashion'd for the journey, dull and heavy," as once was written of the hugging high lift of 抱上 daki-age, a waza forbidden in judo randori and shiai for like a century, last deleted from the Kodokan syllabus in April 2017 and yet we do our students a disservice if we do not allow them to hoist one another aloft and send them crashing to the (crash) mat in the mightiest of powerbombs at least once a year or so in the dual names of history and waza; and so it yet lives. Newton actually holds the juji for a while after that, but punches and knees to the head ("If the fighter's on his back, you can knee him to the face." -- SQ) force him to relent. Only for a moment though! Carlos Newton would really like to get this juji-gatame! But does not.
He does put Matsui on his back with a tidy 双手刈 morote-gari (double-leg) and passes briefly through the floating hold of 浮固 uki-gatame before achieving the really-very-good position of 縦四方固 tate-shiho-gatame; he throws like a punch from there and takes Matusui's back, rolling for the choke or arm-bar, whichever may present itself. This is a really, really good fight, and both Bas and Quadros acknowledge this frequently, especially when someone goes for something but slips off (as Newton just did); they applaud this disregard for staid position in favour of sometimes fairly wild stabs a submission. HIP BUMP SWEEP DAIJIRO MATSUI and it is always a great pleasure to see the fundamentals executed well (when Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira hip-bumped Randy Couture it was probably the greatest moment in UFC history aside from all the moments in Bas/TK before the stand-up). Carlos Newton throws knees and AX-KICKS to the turtled-up body of Daijiro Matsui, who really does seem like a poorly little turtle for a heart-rending moment or two. What a round! One of the best Pride ones yet! *ding*
Matsui has a fierce look in his eye and a tremendous eagerness to continue this excellent match. He's super aggressive with punches and throws a tonne of them, several of which land true enough, but as soon as Newton connects with one of his own, Matsui wants to get to the ground, which is where Carlos Newton attacks once more with juji-gatame, as is his habit. I see only now that Newton's white trunks say R O N I N down the side in a font as tight as the shorts themselves (they are very tight [as they should be]). As Matsui drops lows for another 踵返 kibisu-gaeshi/ankle-pick a few minutes later, Bas says that this fight is for sure one of his ten favourite ever. CARTWHEEL GUARD-PASS except he didn't pass, did he; nevertheless everybody likes Daijiro Matsui! Perhaps inspired by Matsui's earlier hip-bump sweep, Newton tries one too, but Matsui knows the counter (squishing down on a guy). Matsui really isn't much of a passer, I guess: Newton's guard is open for literally several minutes, and Matsui doesn't even really try to get outside it, like it's not even an aim of his, and not because he's laying in heavy shots from the guard or anything. It's curious! The round ends with Newton on Matsui's back, seeking holds.
THE JUDGES DECREE that a third round must be fought and so they (Matsui, Newton) fight it as fightingly as they are able. Bas speaks well of Newton's hip movement right before a 逆腕緘 gyaku-ude-garami attempt that might have been aimed more at the hip-bump sweep than the kansetsu (bone-lock) itself. Matsui gets lit up, in time, from hitting, but the 踵返 kibisu-gaeshi/ankle-pick is there for him seemingly whenever he needs it, which is lots (that is also the amount he needs it). Oh ok that's it, and Matsui comes to the centre of the ring for the decision looking pretty broken emotionally, like he is arriving sad, and sure enough it's a unanimous decision for Newton after that third round. The comforts of fellowship await him, though:
As he Dragonballs (this is I believe the verb) and back-flips into a Bruce Lee pose and does both of these things as earnestly as anyone has ever done anything ever, one's thoughts turn to just how much Carlos Newton loves the martial arts. I believe at this point in his life he was still taking shifts as a lifeguard at the City Centre pool in North York. God bless him.
Kind of lost in thought for a bit after all of that and so I have comparatively little to tell you (comparatively nothing, I suppose) about Igor Vovchanchyn's split-decision win over Carlos Barreto other than that Igor is still winging those big hooks in and also his thighs are thick as men. There is also a Hiroki Kurosawa and Nobuaki Kakuda kyokushin karate-rules match, which is to say no punching to the face but otherwise they are just pounding the hekk out of each other, bare-fisted, and really all that happens when you accidentally punch the face as part of a sikk karate punch rush is that the referee is like "hey hey hey" and then the dudes bow to each other and get right back at it. It is an insane sport. This match would seem to be a draw, and I am, as ever, totally impressed by karate, and if you are like "isn't that weird given your overall fairly hard-line stance re: hitting?" I would be like "oh it for sure is, yeah." Kurosawa and Kakuda exchange their black belts after the match, which is awesome of them to do.
AKIRA SHOJI, LOVED BY ALL, is in next against against Guy Mezger, who we probably don't have any problem with that I can think of. Mezger was a Ken Shamrock/Lion's Den guy who had already had about a million matches in Pancrase at this point, and had won, defended, and vacated (the big three!) the King of Pancrase Openweight championship before heading off to the UFC to lose to Tito Ortiz, a man it is hard not to think of as just an enormous doofus, but one who fought very well (Mezger had previously beaten Ortiz at UFC 13 to win a little tournament they had there [little tournaments can be big fun!]). INTERESTINGLY Guy Mezger is wearing his Pancrase(sque) kickpads, and both Quadros and Rutten argue that this will make his kicks less effective, precisely the point wise old-timey wrestling grump Rip Rogers made on Twitter recently and upon which he was resoundingly corrected (Lance Storm and Paul Lazenby did a whole podcast about it for the Observer [Paul Lazenby's appearance on Fumi Saito's podcast was really good by the way]) by all sorts of people who were like no when I wear the pads I can really fire the kicks in there without worrying about it so the kicks will be kickier not less kicky but Rip just dug in and waited for it to all blow over, I think. I don't have a position on any of that because I don't know about kicking, I just listened to it all. 宇野薫 Uno Kaoru aka CAOL UNO is in Shoji's corner and looks especially elfin this midsummer's eve, even for him:
Wild, right? As is the amount of clinching in this Shoji/Mezger match so far, but I do not utter those words of artful transition in complaint nor yet in praise but rather as barest fact neither leavened by approbation nor unleavened by disapprobation ("approbation" sounds bad, but is good; I find this sneaky). Not a tonne going on in this first round, though, and whilst both Rutten and Quadros think it was probably Mezger's round (no argument here: Mezger kicked Shoji in the face this one time), it was on the whole pretty even.They praise Mezger's use of what they call a karate-style kick that can be quicker to its mark than the obviously-also-good Muay Thai style . . . of kicking (this is their analysis and not my own). "Right now, I think Mezger has this fight won," Quadros says well into round two as Akira Shoji lies atop him hitting him a little (not much). He sure does pass and start wailing on him in a scramble just as I say that though! And that's how the round ends; and so there shallst be another. "Ironically, Mezger has his face more scratched up than Shoji," Quadros weirdly notes as the final round begins. Shoji has a really nice 大内刈 ouchi-gari! It's not just an inside reap, but a major inside reap, like this:
That's Doug Rogers! Anyway Mezger looks just about done as the final round ends and while you might say that's pretty much perfect timing, Shoji is ready to go another round, this little firecracker. Shoji takes the split decision win in an okay fight. Mezger is clearly upset by the decision but, if I may play coach for a moment here, he probably shouldn't have gotten taken down and passed and hit and then run out of energy like that if he was gonna get all mad about people thinking that meant he didn't win at fighting.
小川 直也 OGAWA NAOYA vs. ゲーリー・グッドリッジ GARY GOODRIDGE is our next bout and it is truly the greatest of the PRIDE worked-shoots, nothing is anywhere near it to such an extant that
I will say of it,
It tutors nature: artificial strife
Lives in these touches, livelier than life
and I will mean it so hard. It seems so real! So real, and yet so unreal, and yet so real, that I actually wrote Dave Meltzer an email maybe fourteen years ago about it to ask him if he knew definitely whether or not it was a work, and it's probably still in my emails since I never really delete anything . . . yes, at 7:40 PM on Saturday, July 22, 2006 I wrote Dave an email asking him this question and saying nice things to him about how much I liked the Observer (which I did then, and do now), and at 8:02 PM that same night he wrote back (I don't feel like I'm telling any tales out of school here), "Yes, it was a work." Please do not think for a moment that I left it at that: at 9:31 PM I wrote, "Thanks, Dave." And yet Gary Goodridge, who admits to all kinds of shenanigans, I believe, in his autobiography, apparently maintains that this match was not in fact a work! The previous sentence is based entirely on hearsay; I have never myself read this sad tale of how he gave up good work welding at that Honda plant (I assume that is the overarching narrative). And yet and yet when Ogawa retired from pro-wrestling for good, a little while ago, returning to a quiet life of judo instruction/helping Paralympian-hopefuls displaced by the Fukushima nuclear disaster/coaching his huge son (more on that below), Dave got a little weird on this subject, prompting me to write through the nascent medium of "Twitter" (this was actually just last year; I am being lighthearted):
"Hi Dave -- in the Observer this week (and last night with Bryan) you seemed to speak of Naoya Ogawa's match with Goodridge as though it were a real fight. You don't think it was a work?"
to which he did not reply, but my friend Cory did (hi Cory!):
"it was a work"
to which my rejoinder:
"I think so too"
to which TOM:
"work and the best wres match possibly ever.
idk much of this new star controversy now but this is 1/2* better than whatever is currently highest"
Unsurprisingly, TOM is correct in this assessment. I am not worried even slightly that I am overselling this. I love it. It is the best and the greatest. Before we get properly into it, I would like to add only to the notes towards a preliminary understanding of Naoya Ogawa (that made up a goodly portion of our previous post) that on the deeply wonderful show where Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, our lovely RINGSfriend who will soon enough become our lovely PRIDEFCfriend, goes to Japan to spend time with the 東海大学 Tōkai Daigaku/Tokai University judo team (they are very good), he runs into Naoya Ogawa, who looks tremendous, and they have the following exchange:
Here in fact is video of their lovely encounter that I loved, please enjoy it. If you are wondering about Ogawa's huge son, as I am pretty sure you probably are, let us address that excellent topic the next time we, like Nogueira, are lucky enough to happen upon our old friend Naoya; let us speak then, too, of how he once felled Shinya Aoki with s p a c e t o r n a d o o g a w a so mightily that Aoki was stretchered out but it was all fake so don't worry.
AND SO TOO IS THIS PROBABLY LET US SEE ABOUT IT
THEY KEEP SAYING TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO WHICH IS ABSOLUTELY TRUE AS FAR AS IT GOES BUT LET US NEVER LOSE SIGHT OF HOW THIS IS A DUDE FROM BARRIE as the crowd is utterly wild for this situation. The match opens with enormous, wild, looping punches and knees from Goodridge and it is only after repeated viewings (if you were me) that you notice that although these huge blows are coming in constantly and at all angles, the only ones that land are to the body, never the head, or tender face. "Unbelievable! What a brawl! What an exciting match!" Bas Rutten exclaims with true glee as Ogawa takes Goodridge to the mat with a low 大内刈 ouchi-gari (major inner reap) and attacks with first 腕緘 ude-garami (arm-entanglement) then, once reversed, 三角絞 sankaku-jime (the triangle choke) and 逆腕緘 gyaku-ude-garami (the reverse arm-entanglement colloquially known as Kimura Masahiko's arm-lock that was good); from that grip, Ogawa looks for a hip-bump sweep. "I love this sweep." Me too, Bas; me too; Bas. Gary Goodridge goes for a 膝十字固 hiza-juji-gatame knee-bar! How unlikely! And thrilling! Ogawa slips out and atop and an interesting exchange betwixt commentators happens where Bas suggests that Ogawa should turn one-hundred-and-eight degrees and apply 腕挫十字固 ude-hishigi-juji-gatame to the far side (I now teach this to people eeeeearly in their time with us because it is entirely within the scope of a beginner and yet very, very satisfying for them [because of how sikk it is]) and Quadros thinks Ogawa is just too big to make a quick motion like that, and Bas is like no he's a judo guy he knows how to do this, and Quadros is like well we don't know how he won his judo fights, judo does have submissions, for sure, but you can be a great judo champion using only throws and sweeps, and Bas Rutten is like that's true but Neil Adams is a master of the armbar, and he shows him this animated gif from a 1989 instructional:
And Quadros is like oh yeah for sure but at the same time Neil Adasms is not 6'5 and 253 lbs and Bas is like "well that's true." Both guys made great points in their friendly conversation, and were open to hearing what the other had to say! As this fine and fair exchange unfolds, Ogawa hits Goodridge with just the hardest hammer-first to the face you have ever, ever seen. He is apparently not of the view that "small hammer-fists are fine" but in fairness to him that view was not properly articulated until several years later and in a tongue in which Ogawa is capable but not fluent. "For sure that key-lock was available," Quadros concedes to Bas with regard to Ogawa's apparent knowledge of arm-locks, "and he was ready for that," but he maintains a far-side juji is just maybe not a thing he does and Bas is like "yeah maybe!" and Quadros concludes by saying "We don't really know his submission ability; we can assume he knows all these submissions, like other judo players know, but maybe his judo . . ." and then he loses his train of thought because of action but man: I found all of that so pleasant and thoughtful of these guys, and I wanted to tell you about it.
Goodridge is mostly turtling up and getting flattened and punched at and græppled and TOM is right, this is the best wres match possibly ever. Ogawa, I should note, is in such amazingly lean excellent shape for this, a totally different physique that chubby yung open-weight Ogawa (and yet each Ogawa holds its place in the divine economy). There's a lot of Gary Goodridge's, like, face-blood smeared all over Ogawa's thigh as Ogawa begins to work towards the juji-gatame and then oh dear Goodridge just ate a pretty rough knee and then an illegal head-butt as Ogawa looked again for ude-garami. This is a hard night's work for Gary Goodridge but art is difficult. Thirty-six seconds into the second round, Ogawa finishes the long-sought ude-garami, and mere moments after that 村上 一成 Murakami Kazunari straps the NWA World Championship belt around his unchubby waist as the demonstrably evil Gerard Gordeau smiles from the corner; what a match crew. And what a match!
After all that, why even go through with the main event! What need these feasts, pomps and
Here we go, then, Nobuhiko Takada against Mark Kerr in a match I can make no sense of unless it is going to be a work but which cannot be a work or else I would remember it and I don't so instead it absolutely must be a shoot that makes no sense, there is your recap of what I think this must be, and why. Takada comes out firing! Good for him! And now a clinch! Good work so far, Takada! Knees! And he stood right back up out of a takedown! To throw some really hard kicks! But Mark Kerr caught one (like with his hands) and that's another takedown. Kerr doesn't look too good here to be honest but I don't think he's necessarily working the match to make Takada look good so much as succumbing to the events detailed in The Smashing Machine. 逆腕緘 gyaku-ude-garami/reverse arm entanglement/double wrist-lock/Kimura is your finish at, well, I guess 3:04 is really very quick, isn't it, and this is pretty much a series-wrap on Nobuhiko Takada not in terms of hanging around (he will be here for all time) but as a guy anyone could believe would win at fights, if indeed that had been the view of him previously (it seems to have been), and so it seems fair of us to say now that
Takada has made his everlasting mansion
Upon the beached verge of the salt flood;
Who once a day with his embossed froth
The turbulent surge shall cover: thither come,
And let his grave-stone be your oracle.
Lips, let sour words go by and language end:
What is amiss plague and infection mend!
MAY DISEASES LICK UP THEIR FALSE BLOOD,
WHAT IS IT THAT DAVE MELTZER SAID:
"Battlarts pro wrestler Carl Greco, going by the name Carl Malenko, will face Egan Inoue on the 7/4 Pride show at Yokohama Arena in the opening match. They also announced officially the Igor Vovchanchin vs. Carlos Barreto match we wrote about last week."
Alright great! More PRIDE soon! But first some QUINTET (クインテット) I think probably! Thank you as always for your time; I am having a lot of fun and hope you are too.
Upon the beached verge of the salt flood;
Who once a day with his embossed froth
The turbulent surge shall cover: thither come,
And let his grave-stone be your oracle.
Lips, let sour words go by and language end:
What is amiss plague and infection mend!
MAY DISEASES LICK UP THEIR FALSE BLOOD,
WHAT IS IT THAT DAVE MELTZER SAID:
May 24, 1999:
"No matches have been announced for the Pride 6 show on 7/4 at Yokohama Arena but announced as fighting are Nobuhiko Takada, Kazushi Sakuraba, Ensen Inoue, Akira Shoji, Mark Kerr, Gary Goodridge, Igor Vovchanchin, Vitor Belfort, Marco Ruas and Naoya Ogawa."
May 31, 1999:
"There are a lot of negotiations ongoing between RINGS, Pride and UFO. At this point UFO is negotiating with both groups but nothing is going on with RINGS and Pride. Antonio Inoki and Akira Maeda were scheduled to have a meeting this week to finalize the deal for Naoya Ogawa vs. Yoshihisa Yamamoto on a RINGS show. RINGS will also send Dick Vrij and Hanse Nyman to be foreign talent for the 6/29 UFO show in Osaka. It isn't known who Ogawa would face in the main event but Dan Severn vs. Kazunari Murakami looks like a likely match. Inoki is trying to put together a major show for later this year with both RINGS and Pride's cooperation. Gerard Gordeau will apparently promote a UFO show in The Netherlands."
and
"It appears there will be a Alan Goes vs. Kazushi Sakuraba rematch on the 7/4 Pride show in Yokohama."
June 14, 1999:
"In addition, Dream Stage Entertainment announced four matches for its 7/4 show at the Yokohama Arena which includes two likely worked matches on top. The originally proposed Nobuhiko Takada vs. Naoya Ogawa match isn't going to happen. An angle was shot for it after Takada's worked victory over Mark Coleman at the last show. However, there apparently was a problem of Takada's backers not wanting him to go down so instead it'll be Takada vs. Mark Kerr and Ogawa vs. Gary Goodridge. With both Takada and Ogawa being politically well connected and largely protected, one would expect going in both matches would be worked. It will be interesting because Kerr, who is ranked in most listings as the No. 1 heavyweight in the MMA world, has never done a worked match before and if he were to agree to put Takada over, as Coleman did, it probably indicates he recognizes his future is more in pro wrestling than MMA. Goodridge may have done one, in Brazil against Cal Worsham a few years ago. Originally Kerr was to face Ensen Inoue, however Kerr missed the first scheduled meeting due to elbow surgery. Inoue broke his hand training for a second scheduled meeting between the two, so instead Kerr was to face Takada. In addition, two more matches were announced with Guy Mezger vs. Akira Shoji and Ebenezer Fontes Braga, coming off a draw with no judges under Vale Tudo rules which he dominated on the last Pancrase PPV facing Masakatsu Funaki, facing Kazushi Sakuraba on this show. There are also reports on the IVC internet site that Carlos Baretto, considered in many circles as the top heavyweight in Brazil, will face Tom Erikson, undefeated in MMA including a quick knockout of Kevin Randleman a few years back."
June 21, 1999:
"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 as well."
and
"Two matches have been added to the Pride show on 7/4 at the Yokohama Arena. Nobuaki Kakuta, the K-1 referee and sometimes competitor who is 38-years-old, faces Hiroki Kurosawa, who had a really weird match on one of the early Pride shows; and Carlos Newton, who has a good reputation for fights in EFC, Pride and UFC among others, faces Shunsuke Matsui, a Takada team member who had done pro wrestling with Kingdom. The Tom Erikson vs. Carlos Baretto match on that show has already fallen apart since it is expected Baretto will instead face Igor Vovchanchin on that show which would be an interesting match since it's Vovchanchin's highest profile opponent in years if not ever."
June 28, 1999:
"Battlarts pro wrestler Carl Greco, going by the name Carl Malenko, will face Egan Inoue on the 7/4 Pride show at Yokohama Arena in the opening match. They also announced officially the Igor Vovchanchin vs. Carlos Barreto match we wrote about last week."
July 5, 1999:
"Some notes on the pro wrestler from Battlarts who is now billed as Carl Malenko, 29, formerly known as Carl Greco, who faces Egan Inoue in the Pride 6 show on 7/4 from Yokohama Arena. He's not the son of Boris Malenko or brother of Joe and Dean, although he's being billed as such in Japan. His real name is Carl Ognibene from Winter Haven, FL and trained largely with Dieusel Berto, a former pro wrestler and later MMA fighter and trained very little under Karl Gotch. He's got a 2-1 record in legit shoot matches in the U.S. for the IFC. The Pride show may be the most looked forward to MMA show of the year largely because of the curiosity involving both Nobuhiko Takada and Naoya Ogawa facing legit MMA stars in Mark Kerr and Gary Goodridge respectively. One would presume both matches to be worked. We've been told Goodridge's price for a job was too high and his match with Ogawa will be a shoot, but this makes absolutely no sense to risk Ogawa in such a situation with so many big money matches on his horizon."
July 12, 1999:
"The reality of reality (both the reality of reality in the ring and reality of business) reared its sometimes ugly head on several fronts at Dream Stage Entertainment's Pride Six show, a Japan-only live PPV event under rules very similar to UFC, on 7/4 at the Yokohama Arena.
DSE's biggest drawing card, pro wrestling legend Nobuhiko Takada, was put into the ring with Mark Kerr, who many feel is the best heavyweight at this in the world. It didn't last long, with Kerr overpowering Takada winning with a chicken wing armlock in 3:04 before a crowd of 12,580 (said to be a legitimate figure which is really impressive for a shoot show, a lot attributed to Ogawa's debut with the company). The fact DSE put Takada, 37, into that position with a fighter that nobody on the inside would have given him any chance with but not a so-called legendary Gracie, says something about their plans for the future, if they even have any, and in particular their feelings about Takada's drawing power long-term. There were some reports with the feeling that Kerr "took it easy" on Takada before beating him. Still, this result and the ease that Kerr won apparently severely damaged Takada's reputation even among the wrestling fans. There seems to be the sense that Takada was put in this position partially as punishment for his refusing to job for Ogawa in what was originally the idea to main event this show. There are also reports that on 6/24, Antonio Inoki had a meeting with New Japan officials and got Takada pulled from the 8/28 Jingu Stadium show for the same reason where it had been talked that he would face Shinya Hashimoto (the next day at the New Japan show, officials talked about the printed rumors of such a match on the show and blamed the press for leaking them out before the deal was finalized and that because of that, negotiations fell through). Takada headlined the two biggest shows of this promotion, both on October 11 of 1997 and 1998 respectively losing to Rickson Gracie. He was also given bought-and-paid for wins on Pride shows, including most recently against UFC star Mark Coleman, a sometimes training partner of Kerr's. After his loss to Kerr, in his post-match press conference he said he'd like to face Royce Gracie, but the marketability of such a match was said to be damaged greatly.
The next show is scheduled for 9/12 at the same Yokohama Arena with largely the same cast of characters. Perhaps the idea is that Takada was going back to pro wrestling anyway and had to be so protected that to insiders he had become an embarrassing joke to the company, so they just let natural law take its course.
Now the company seems to be protecting another pro wrestler, Naoya Ogawa, either grooming him as the big heavyweight drawing card if they survive, or protecting him for pro wrestling if they don't. Ogawa is much bigger, younger at 31, a better legitimate competitive athlete, witness his impressive judo credentials, and has the backing of the Antonio Inoki manipulation machine. Bottom line is there was too much money at stake to risk Ogawa losing, because a loss would greatly damage the proposed New Japan October Tokyo Dome main event (which may be on 10/11) in the grudge match with Hashimoto. Ogawa on this show defeated Gary Goodridge at 36 seconds of the second 10:00 round when the referee stopped the match that was said to be the most exciting on the show. Very strong indications are this was a worked match, which would explain why it was so exciting. It is generally regarded as such already in the inside martial arts world. We should have a full report probably next week after seeing the tape.
It was a mixed bag for the pro wrestlers on this show, with the biggest name lighter weight pro wrestler, Kazushi Sakuraba, remaining unbeaten within his weight class (he lost a match to Kimo, who was probably 60 pounds heavier, many years back) beating Ebenezer Fontes Braga of Brazil in 9:25 with an armbar. This appears to set up Sakuraba, who weighing just 185 pounds won a UFC heavyweight tournament at UFC Japan in late 1997, to face Frank Shamrock, which would be legitimately the toughest test probably both men have ever faced at least under these rules in their careers. Shamrock was at the show and mentioned wanting to face Sakuraba, Enson Inoue (who Shamrock defeated in an almost legendary match in November of 1997) and Akira Shoji, who defeated Shamrock's one-time Lions Den stablemate Guy Mezger in a very close decision that a lot of people felt Mezger won earlier in the show. Shamrock had been in negotiations again of late with UFC and had verbally agreed to defend his middleweight title against Tito Ortiz on the 9/25 show in Montreal. UFC remains pretty insistent on him signing an exclusive deal and there was talk that Shamrock appearing at the Pride show could result in the 9/25 match with Ortiz being canceled and Shamrock being stripped of his title. It appears if Shamrock does a match with Pride, it likely means he'll be stripped of his title and it will constitute the official break of the relationship but at press time Shamrock talked with SEG officials upon returning from Japan and said he was still looking to face Ortiz. At this point in time, losing another star due to insistence on exclusivity on a show lacking stars may not be the best for business.
But the reality of the show is fights under this style with evenly matched up opponents are often slow moving and end without decisive finishes, making for long shows. This eight match show lasted four-and-a-half hours, with the first five matches all going the time limit, which, according to our reports, were for the most part but not all boring matches. Overall it was considered the best Pride show to date. Pride has, for the most part, the best "high-profile" match booking in the mixed martial arts world, but its shows have all been major disappointments because of problems inherent with even matches, matches held in rings as opposed to cages, and lack of stand-ups when stalemates take place on the ground. The fact Pride has worked matches has tainted the shows to purists, but it's that manipulation that has kept people with drawing power like Takada and Ogawa strong, and the worked matches have, since they are worked, generally gotten a far more enthusiastic crowd reaction than the true shoots since its still the pro wrestling audience that supports the shows, even if it renders the end results meaningless and the legitimacy of the operation as a whole questionable when judged from a sports perspective.
1. Carl Malenko (Carl Ognibene, who formerly did pro wrestling for Battlarts under the name Carl Greco) scored a major upset winning a unanimous decision over Egan Inoue after 25:00. Greco managed to take Inoue, a big name in the world of Jiu Jitsu, down and hold him there for most of the match enroute to winning a unanimous decision. This was a big win for the Japanese pro wrestling world and Battlarts group coming on the heels of Alexander Otsuka's upset of Marco Ruas.
2. Carlos Newton won a unanimous decision after 25:00 over Daijiro Matsui, a Takada protege who had done pro wrestling for the Kingdom promotion and fought many times in this competition under the name Shunsuke Matsui. Daijiro is his real first name. This was said to have been fairly exciting for a long match.
3. Igor Vovchanchin of Russia won a split decision over Carlos Baretto after 25:00. The crowd was heavily booing the lack of action in this match. I'd presume Vovchanchin, a kickboxer by background, wanted to slug and Baretto, with his Jiu Jitsu background, was reluctant and defensive and apparently it made for a poor fight.
4. Hiroki Kurosawa drew Nobuaki Kakuta over two 3:00 rounds under full contact kickboxing rules in a match where both fought with gi's. Kakuta is best known in Japan as a sometimes fighter and oftentimes ref for the K-1 promotion. Full contact rules eliminate leg kicks, which meant the match was geared toward Kurosawa's sport then Kakuta's.
5. In something of an upset, Akira Shoji won a split decision over Guy Mezger after 25:00. Mezger, well known in Japan as a former King of Pancrase, apparently fought hard with Shoji for the distance. Our initial reports were that this was a very close fight that could have gone either way. Pride was actually hoping for Mezger to win this match to build him up for a match with Sakuraba.
6. Ogawa, in his first MMA fight, beat Goodridge. When the bell rang, Goodridge exploded with hard punches but Ogawa stayed up. Ogawa responded with punches. Goodridge scored a take down and a mount, going for a leglock. Ogawa reversed him and mounted him, punching from the top many times and going for an armbar and keeping the mount during the remainder of the first round. In the second round, Goodridge again started throwing punches, but Ogawa timed him, took him down, threw some more punches from the mount and grabbed the armbar and the ref stopped the match. Ogawa ran around the ring doing his bird motion that he did in the Hashimoto match and held up his NWA title belt. After the match Ogawa said that he wasn't interested in a match against Takada.
7. Sakuraba beat Braga with the armbar. Braga gained a reputation in Japan since he went to a draw, with no judges but that had there been judges he'd have won, against Masakatsu Funaki, who has a big name in Japan, on the April Pancrase PPV show. The crowd got really into this show seeing pro wrestlers Ogawa and Sakuraba score clean wins in succession. The fact Shamrock was there to issue the challenge lends some suspicion, but Sakuraba, coming off handing Vitor Belfort an embarrassing defeat, is also as highly regarded a fighter as there is of his size. The loss may result in Braga being pulled from the 7/16 UFC show as the company wasn't happy about him doing this match to begin with. At press time, no replacement had been found and Braga indicated that he still wanted to be in the show for his scheduled match with Paul Jones.
8. Kerr beat Takada with the chicken wing armlock. Takada had his elbow and shoulder heavily taped going in. This probably sets up Kerr, who is unbeaten in MMA, against Enson Inoue, coming off a 90 second submission win in October against former UFC heavyweight champion Randy Couture. Kerr-Inoue is a match Pride has put together twice but has fallen through when each respectively had gotten injured in training."
July 19, 1999:
DAVE
GETS
(PARTIAL)
GETS
(PARTIAL)
TAPE:
"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. Braga vs. Kazushi Sakuraba was a shoot match and also very good with Sakuraba looking very impressive winning in 9:22. Surprisingly, I'm pretty much certain Mark Kerr vs. Nobuhiko Takada was a work, which is funny only because Kerr would have killed him in a shoot. For one, Takada was surprisingly calm going in, which he wasn't going into past shoot matches. Two, the fact he taped up one shoulder, and Kerr went to that shoulder for the hammerlock submission isn't necessarily a giveaway to give him the out for tapping, but wound up being it. A few years back in another so-called shoot organization, they had booked Dan Severn vs. Mitsuhiro Matsunaga, a pro wrestler who Severn would have easily handled in a shoot. The night before, Severn was contacted and told he'd go over in one minute but it was a work because they simply didn't want Matsunaga injured and that's what I think this was as well. Takada over the past week talked about wanting a third match with Rickson Gracie in September. Takada doing the job may have been Kerr not wanting to lose, punishment for Takada not doing the job for Ogawa or the company when he refused to put Ogawa over, basically putting him in with a guy he can't beat as punishment figuring Takada is fading and Ogawa can be built into the new top star anyway since he's undamaged goods. Kerr's hamstring was pretty red as he took some wicked leg kicks before putting Takada away. An irony pointed out to be about shooting is that when Takada faced the guy who is pretty much a myth as the best fighter in the world, the match was reality, and when he faced the reality of the best fighter in the world, the match appeared to be more of a myth
Most people considered this the best Pride show to date. The press coverage focused far more on Ogawa's win than Takada's loss. Now that Ogawa's rep as a shooter was made, he won't be appearing on the 9/12 Pride show in Yokohama, claiming a shoulder injury in the Goodridge match, which may be legit, and also may be a way of having to pay another opponent big money for put the guy over and it would be difficult for a more memorable match than the Goodridge one. They've served their purpose and now it's time to keep people with that fresh memory of him leading up to the Hashimoto match."
July 26, 1999:
DAVE
GETS
(FURTHER)
TAPE:
"Dream Sports Entertainment held a press conference this past week which was thought to be an announcement of some matches for the next Pride show on 9/12 in Yokohama, but instead it was simply a 30th birthday party for Kazushi Sakuraba. At the party, Nobuhiko Takada talked about wanting to face Royce or Rickson Gracie (again?) on that show but said he wasn't interested in facing Ogawa. The promotion gave Sakuraba the MVP award at the press conference. Still haven't seen the complete 7/4 show, but did see the first three matches. Carl Malenko vs. Egan Inoue saw Malenko use his wrestling to take Inoue down and most of the match saw them trade a few strikes and grapple a ton while on the ground with Malenko on top and he won the decision in 25:00. It was pretty good technically for what it was but not really much of a spectator match. Carlos Newton vs. Daijiro Matsui was a really good match. Newton is about 180 (he's apparently going to trim down to 170 to do the lightweight class) and Matsui seemed to have him by 20 pounds but Newton was a better competitor. Size matters and they went back-and-forth throughout the 20:00 regulation. Newton had the advantage with some good punches standing in the overtime to get the decision. The Carlos Baretto vs. Igor Vovchanchin match was pretty boring. Baretto is about 6-5 and Vovchanchin is 5-10. Most of the match was standing and Vovchanchin is the more experienced kickboxer, but Baretto had decent skills standing and all that reach so they largely nullified each other. Vovchanchin bled from under the eyes in the first round. Second round was a stalemate. It was ruled a draw after that round and sent to overtime. Overtime saw Baretto on top in the guard and not much happened there. How Vovchanchin got the decision (a split decision) if they were even after regulation is beyond me."
July 26, 1999:
DAVE
GETS
(FURTHER)
TAPE:
"Dream Sports Entertainment held a press conference this past week which was thought to be an announcement of some matches for the next Pride show on 9/12 in Yokohama, but instead it was simply a 30th birthday party for Kazushi Sakuraba. At the party, Nobuhiko Takada talked about wanting to face Royce or Rickson Gracie (again?) on that show but said he wasn't interested in facing Ogawa. The promotion gave Sakuraba the MVP award at the press conference. Still haven't seen the complete 7/4 show, but did see the first three matches. Carl Malenko vs. Egan Inoue saw Malenko use his wrestling to take Inoue down and most of the match saw them trade a few strikes and grapple a ton while on the ground with Malenko on top and he won the decision in 25:00. It was pretty good technically for what it was but not really much of a spectator match. Carlos Newton vs. Daijiro Matsui was a really good match. Newton is about 180 (he's apparently going to trim down to 170 to do the lightweight class) and Matsui seemed to have him by 20 pounds but Newton was a better competitor. Size matters and they went back-and-forth throughout the 20:00 regulation. Newton had the advantage with some good punches standing in the overtime to get the decision. The Carlos Baretto vs. Igor Vovchanchin match was pretty boring. Baretto is about 6-5 and Vovchanchin is 5-10. Most of the match was standing and Vovchanchin is the more experienced kickboxer, but Baretto had decent skills standing and all that reach so they largely nullified each other. Vovchanchin bled from under the eyes in the first round. Second round was a stalemate. It was ruled a draw after that round and sent to overtime. Overtime saw Baretto on top in the guard and not much happened there. How Vovchanchin got the decision (a split decision) if they were even after regulation is beyond me."
Alright great! More PRIDE soon! But first some QUINTET (クインテット) I think probably! Thank you as always for your time; I am having a lot of fun and hope you are too.
Frank fought enson at vale tudo japan 99 or 97 it was a hell of a fight but probably too much hitting for your tastes
ReplyDeleteAh ok thank you, I certainly could have looked that up but did not; also I appreciate your consideration of my stance re: hitting.
Deleteeven Egan thought the hitting was too much and jumped in the ring leading to the match being a dq loss for Enson rather than a tko/ko
Deletelol well then this I have to see
DeleteIt was Vale Tudo Japan 97, and it was a great match. Frank had knocked out Enson just seconds before the end of round 2, and just as the ref was tying to seperate Frank to do a standing 8 count, (such were the ways of Shooto), Egan ran into the ring and forever put himself into the Kakutogi hall of shame.
ReplyDeleteHistory is so rich
Delete