PRIDE.18（プライド・エイティーン）2001年12月23日

PRIDE.18

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 2001年12月23日

開催地 日本

福岡県福岡市

会場 マリンメッセ福岡

開始時刻 午後3時

試合数 全8試合

放送局 フジテレビ（地上波）

入場者数 9,391人

"ALMOST COMES ACROSS AS A THROWAWAY SHOW" and "WEAKEST LINE-UP IN A LONG TIME, MAINLY BUILT AROUND PRO WRESTLERS THAT ARE GOING TO GET KILLED" are but several of the comfortable words through which Dave Meltzer guides us towards PRIDE.18（プライド・エイティーン）IN マリンメッセ福岡 MARINE MESSE FUKUOKA (one of the three separate buildings that together comprise 福岡国際会議場 Fukuoka kokusai kaigijou [the Fukuoka Convention Center]). And who knows! Maybe it will be good! How else could we even known but by opening ourselves to it? I am pretty much ready to do that probably! I am also ready to be a little put off! And frankly you've got to be; I really think that you've got to be.  

"Hi everybody, I'm Stephen Quadros, and welcome to Jerpan" is not a reading for which I fault Quadros (everybody misspeaks on occasion [I am lecturing a spring semester course right now and am speaking so much with these long classes that I probably say "Jerpan" like five times a day even though it is Introduction to English Literature and I don't even need to be saying Jerpan]) but it is remarkable that that's the one they went with for this pre-taped segment about how neither Stephen nor Bas nor yet the fighters assembled at their little Christmas party are able to win the favour of any of The PRIDE Girls because of a shared lack of "mojo." It's not great.

I believe (perhaps erroneously?) that the little skits and comedy pieces of this kind become less frequent as we move along through these our many tapes (though they are files on my computer, they remain tapes in my heart [Cassette Futurism/Formica Punk]). To me, this is for the best: it's not that they're egregious (though none of them will make you laugh, certainly), but coming down, as we have, from the high-level æsthetics of Fighting Network RINGS, to this, I don't know, it's just not very WOWOW, you know? Like, WOWOW would never; they would literally never. (It occurs to me to also say "they WOWOWdn't" but that's not a good enough thought to have outside of parentheses [it's safer in here {all comfers cozers, as we are}].) 

The クリスマス / Kurisamu / Christmas vibes carry through Kei Grant's opening address to the Fukuoka crowd and let us recall together all that we know about Christmastide in the secular Japanese context (let us set aside, for instance, the disproportionate number of Japanese Prime Ministers who have been of Christian faith, and how 三船 敏郎 Mifune Toshirō was a Methodist [his parents were missionaries!]): there are romantic implications, not unlike the Feast of St. Valentine, right? And somehow also fried chicken? Which all sounds great if true, no question (I think Jesus would want those things for us), but let's see if we can solidify this half-remembered lore with a quick trip to Wikipedia: "Encouraged by commerce, the secular celebration of Christmas is popular in Japan, though Christmas is not a national holiday. Gifts are sometimes exchanged.[62] Christmas parties are held around Christmas Day; Japanese Christmas cake, a white sponge cake covered with cream and decorated with strawberries, is often consumed and Stollen cake, either imported or made locally, is widely available. Christmas lights decorate cities, and Christmas trees adorn living areas and malls.[62] Christmas Eve has become a holiday for couples to spend time together[62] and exchange gifts. A successful advertising campaign in the 1970s made eating at KFC around Christmas a national custom. Its chicken meals are so popular during the season that stores take reservations months in advance.[63]" Okay that's much more specific! Good!

Well, well, well, would you look at this: if it isn't one of those "pro wrestlers that are going to get killed," 松井 大二郎, Matsui Daijirō, and it would seem that he has in fact defeated Quinton Jackson in a scant fourteen seconds and all it cost him was a truly tremendous knee to the groin (DQ R1 0:14). "Yeah, this is very bad for a fighter, because . . ." Bas Rutten begins a sentence I would have liked to hear the ending of, but it never comes (nothing is finished, nothing is perfect). "That was right up the middle," Stephen Quadros adds solemnly; "That was a knee to the groin. A great self-defense move." Hey man: no question.

Jackson clearly takes no delight in any of this, and looking back at the haunted aspect he carried with him to the ring, one cannot help but wonder if he somehow foresaw it? Still on the subject of that entrance, I would like to note also Jackson's fine 鉢巻 hachimaki, bearing the slogan 闘魂 / とうこん / tōkon, "fighting spirit." One's thoughts turn too to that most famous hachimaki-wearing North American mixed-fighter/sensitive-little-guy Georges St-Pierre (please be careful of him, and of his feelings), who favoured 必勝 / ひっしょう/ hisshō,  "certain victory" (there is even a little toy where he has both cloth hachimaki and 稽古着 / けいこぎ / keikogi).  

Okay then, Allan Góes—a jiujiteiro you may well recall from his thirty-minute draw with Kazushi Sakuraba, his wins over Carl Malenko and Vernon White, or his more recent, indeed almost immediate loss to Mark Coleman—is next to join us, and finds as his opponent this day young Alex Stiebling, a fighter I must admit I do not recall at all. Ever. Even a little. This despite a パンクラス PANCRASE bout against TK Scissors-favourite 菊田 早苗 Kikuta Sanae (we spoke of the great Kikuta at some length in the context of RINGS 4/4/97: BATTLE GENESIS Vol. 1 some time ago) and four PRIDE bouts (of which this is the first) that I have definitely seen at some point. This is strange to me! I am not suggesting that he is somehow an especially forgettable fighter: on the contrary, he seems good! And has some neat moments in this, such as an escape from a  逆腕緘 / gyaku-ude-garami / reverse arm entanglement / Kimura that was on every bit as deeply as hekk itself:

Right? That's really something! And later, when Allan Góes decides (to his peril) that it's a good plan to sit on one's seat (of the human bottom) and simply beckon one's mixed-fighting foe to join them in 寝技 newaza (rather than, say, compel them to join you there by means of "a takedown" or "a throw") Stiebling finishes with stomps and kicks and knees that are really quite memorable indeed. So it is just one-hundred percent totally on me that I did not remember Alex Steibling; he did everything he could.

And here is another fighter I must admit I do not recall: Alex Andrade, of the Lion's Den gym (cornered by Guy Mezger and Tra Telligman as evidence!), a gym I have forever been incapable of finding interesting (forgive me). He has taken this bout against Murilo "Ninja" Rua on just fourteen-days' notice, which probably does not auger well? Or maybe it means Andrade will feel unencumbered by the weight of expectation? And thus his 技 waza will flow forth freely, all loosey goosey? Who can say! The opening moments are super dynamic, Rua tossing Andrade around, first with the minor outside hook of 小外掛 kosoto-gake and then with a series of 後腰 ushiro-goshi lifts until Andrade threatens very threateningly with 逆腕緘 gyaku-ude-garami in the manner of 桜庭 和志 Sakuraba Kazushi breaking Renzo Gracie's arm in the transition from 立ち技 tachi-waza to 寝技 newaza at PRIDE.10 (perhaps you recall it). That the remaining eight-and-a-half minutes or so of the ten-minute first round cannot sustain that pace is understandable, and it would not be right of us to mind it. Rua controls not just the rest of the round but indeed the rest of the match, and takes the unanimous decision, but hey good job Alex Andrade sticking it out! 

山本 宜久 Yamamoto Yoshihisa (here Yamamoto "Norihisa" in the title-card graphic), whose exploits we have long chronicled (most recently he was knocked out in eleven seconds by Assuerio Silva!), sees as his opponent on this day Johannes "Jan" Nortje, a six-foot-eleven South African kickboxer of not a tonne of distinction, it would seem? Nortje's boxing record is 9-0, his mixed fight record 2-6, and his kickboxing record 9-16 (the final fight of his career seems to have occurred in 2013 in literal Grozny). A mixed bag! Five three-minute rounds in this PRIDE vs. K1 affair. As the fighters meet in the middle of the ring to receive referee 島田 裕二 Shimada Yūji's final instructions, I begin to doubt these clams of six-eleven, even if we accept without reservation the notion that Yoshihisa Yamamoto is six-three:

I am by no means a height-truther and will not dwell on this issue but it announces itself; it insists upon its utterance. Oh hey Yamamoto! By way of 腕挫十字固 ude-hishigi-juji-gatame in no more than two minutes! Good for him, man; he really needed that one. Nortje had him a little worried early, I think it's fair to say, as Yamamoto took a seat on the very seat of the human bottom in response to just a probing little Nortje jab (and fair enough; I would have gone not just to my seat but indeed all the way to my home) and seemed reluctant to engage for a moment before he decided (after Robert Frost [in "A Servant to Servants," specifically]) that the best way out is always through, grabbed a 朽木倒 kuchiki-taoshi of a single-leg takedown (oh hey I've got something to say about those in a just a sec here if I remember!), and before you know it, despite Nortje's second's urging to be careful Jan be careful, juji-gatame, slick as you please. The people love it! They are relieved for Yamamoto, whom they have always wanted to like! 

IN THE INTEREST OF FULL DISCLOSURE (what other kind can there be, between us) I must note that a little more than a month has passed between the composition of the previous sentence and the one that I am concluding just now. I cannot even really say why: yes, certainly, I taught a spring semester course, but it didn't make me all that busy (nor did it even give me much of a busy feeling); I engaged in my several other hobbies, but no more so than usual; and the exquisite art of 講道館柔道 Kōdōkan Jūdō unfolded along lines not unknown to me during this period. Can't really account for it! It's a good thing blogspot saves drafts! Anyway, let us return to the matter before us by noting that IGOR VOVCHANCHYN vs. VALENTIJN OVEREEM seems like a pretty good idea for a martial arts match in late 2001, doesn't it? It only takes like four-and-a-half minutes but has an awful lot of neat stuff in it, not limited to Overeem's fairly thunderous 小外掛 kosoto-gake (outside hook), nor to Igor rolling and rolling to evade Overeem's 足関節技 ashi-kansetsu-waza (leg locks [or, in the mode of my favourite mid-century {mid-our-previous-century} translation, leg bone-locking technique), nor yet to Igor's really quite shocking finish with an 足関節技 ashi-kansetsu-waza of his own! I would never have guessed! But there it is, an outside heel hook (at least it's not an inside one, I tell myself often when in this dark company). A good win for Igor!

Next we have the crowd-pleasing 小路晃 SHOJI AKIRA and the perpetually-fighting JEREMY HORN, who is in his ninth fight of 2001, this Jeremy Horn is. That's plainly too many! Horn, a very fine 寝技 newaza player, spends a lot of time on his back in the bout's opening round, and though he seems to be in very little danger there, it is notable that Shoji keeps putting him there fairly effortlessly with fairly tidy 足技 ashi-waza (foot techniques). I am reminded of something one of my senior students shared with me recently after he enjoyed a training opportunity with a notable member of the John Danaher scene: under ADCC rules (I claim no expertise in that format, certainly, but let us agree that it is a no-gi submission grappling), the Danaher people, my student was told, are no longer attacking with double-leg takedowns, as the double-leg takedown invites the form of 前裸絞 mae-hadaka-jime all of us except for wrestlers have agreed to call the guillotine (that term means something else to wrestlers [and fair enough]), as there are quite simply too many specialists in that nimble waza to chance it (you may have detected a very light pun on "chancery" just now). How about the single-leg takedown, then, you might well ask? Too easy to pull out of, given the absence of wrestling shoes! And so what remains? Judo ashi-waza remains; often, I am told, as a means to develop 崩しkuzushi (unbalancing) for body-lock takedowns, a kind of takedown favoured under ADCC rules as takedowns are only scored should they result in a brief period of control upon impact. The result of all of this, my student reports, is that John Danaher's students have started to play—and expect to see others play—in an upright, judo-like stance. Is every bit of above mere hearsay? Oh, necessarily: I do not know any of that at all. And yet I find it all really very interesting to think about all the same! Please feel free to share any insights you may have as they relate to any of this hearsay! I invite friendly correspondence from friendly readers at all times (in all sincerity, thank you so much for it). I must admit, reluctantly, that Shoji vs. Horn has been largely unremarkable (this is not to say "bad"), aside from Shoji's strong base, and from Horn's admirable ease and poise in all newaza positions. Also Horn, unsurprisingly, proves himself the stronger striker in the brief exchanges of that kind (hitting). The unanimous decision victory is rightly awarded to Jeremy Horn, who will probably accept and contest no fewer than three professional bouts on his way back to the hotel. He has fought so many times!

アレクサンダー大塚 ALEKSANDER OTSUKA who loses more or less always and forever, but who does so in a spirit that genuinely pleases, has the honour/horror of facing WANDERLEI SILVA in what I suppose must be the semi-main of this low-key but honestly fairly enjoyable card of Pride Fighting (I have reached this tentative conclusion based on how much time remains on the file I have loaded in VLC Media Player presently). The one thing everybody knows about Wanderlei Silva is that he is scary looking, so why even note it, and yet:

It sort of never stops being notable, at least to me! Also I cannot help but notice that he is quite well built, as far as physiques go (consider "The Centaur"); indeed, I think this is the most jacked up he has appeared in any bout thus far? I wonder if Kazushi Sakuraba, who has joined the Japanese commentary table at ringside, is psyched to maybe fight him again? 

I bet he could go either way on that one, honestly. I just checked Wanderlei's wikipedia page in order to see how many times he failed drug tests (the answer: it's complicated, and involves a lifetime ban for failing/refusing to provide samples that was eventually reduced to a four-year penalty) and things took an especially dark turn when I read the following: "In 2018, Silva admitted that he has been bearing symptoms consistent with chronic traumatic encephalopathy, and has expressed a wish to donate his brain for research.[62]". I am very sorry to hear that. Silva has a wife and children and is only a few years older than me. I hope his symptoms are tolerable.  

To return to the present moment (the past), Silva is really putting a pasting on Alexander Otsuka, who holds fast throughout a one-sided opening ten-minute round. "Wanderlei really likes that right hand," Stephen Quadros rightly observes about Silva's fighting style (I am no striker but even I can see that much). Through the first, this has the feel of a match in which the losing fighter must bear the curse of their own toughness, and rather than lose quickly against their clearly superior opponent, must be creamed endlessly. You see it a lot! Late in the second, though, Otsuka scores a tidy 双手刈 morote-gari, enters the 押さえ込み osaekomi-waza of 横四方固 yoko-shiho-gatame, and lands a pretty solid knee to the bean just before the bell sounds. One might expect Otsuka to start the third round emboldened by his success late in the second, and perhaps that is what he felt in his heart, but his body is that of a worn-out guy, one whom Wanderlei stops by way of TKO at 2:22 (the painkilling hour): if Otsuka's nose isn't broken, it sure looks like it is. Wanderlei is very nice to him after, which is important. Siva checks in with Muhammad Hussain Inoki on the way out, which is the right thing to do also. 

Only one bout remains and it is that of SEMMY SCHILT who is so tall against 高山 善廣 TAKAYAMA YOSHIHIRO who is really very tall also but let's be serious here guys; let's stop kidding around:

   

Given the fundamental, inescapable fact of Yoshihiro Takayama—that we can only ever be sad about him—it should come as no surprise that he is punched utterly to bits just three minutes or so into the first round, having, by that point, already been menaced by both 表三角絞 omote-sankaku-jime and 腕挫十字固 ude-hishigi-juji-gatame. It didn't go well. Takayama is a tough and spirited fellow for sure, but I am uncertain that his background of rugby, 剣道 kendō, and lifeguarding prepared him adequately for anything he was asked to face here. I knew that I was going to be a little sad during this one, and also after, and now I am. "Weakest line-up in a long time," Dave Meltzer cautioned us, "mainly built around pro wrestlers that are going to get killed." He was not far off! One wonders what else he might have said? 

APPARENTLY A TONNE LIKE I ACTUALLY CAN'T BELIEVE HOW MUCH THIS TIME:

January 7, 2002:

Not PRIDE, strictly speaking, but the lead story of the first Observer of the new year is plainly vital to our concerns all the same: 

"The closing moments of the worst year in the modern history of pro wrestling ended with the creation of a most unlikely star.

Antonio Inoki's New Years Eve special was built around the creation of a comeback storyline for Tadao Yasuda, a 38-year-old former sumo. Not a wrestling comeback, but a sentimental life comeback. The television show built up his life-long problem with gambling, and that he started pro wrestling at the age of 31 to pay back debts, and then, when he continued to gamble, piling up debuts of about $760,000, his wife left him, taking his daughter with her. On 3/25, Yasuda became something of a pushed pro wrestling star with an unlikely win in a dreadfully boring Pride match over Masaaki Satake, that proved once again, you can never fully predict what will happen in a shoot. The story of Yasuda, with the idea he had to fight in Pride to pay back his debts, and after his win, reuniting at the show with his wife and daughter that he hadn't seen in a long time, made him a major sentimental babyface coming out of that show. Despite his offense in the fight consisting of nothing but bulling Satake into a corner and holding him there, which bored people to death that night, his decision win that was considered at the time one of the biggest upsets in the history of MMA, with that tactic managed to get him and that spot over as his trademark spot in pro wrestling matches, and resulted in him being a bigger star than ever before.

The TV special showed Yasuda living in his cheap one room apartment, openly talking about all his financial problems. They showed him meeting his daughter once again before the 12/31 show at the Saitama Super Arena in Tokorozawa at a coffee shop in a pre-tape, promising her he'd score an even more improbable upset against K-1's knockout artist, the 6-4, 273-pound Jerome LeBanner in the main event. When the show ended, Inoki had tears in his eyes, Yasuda held up his daughter on his shoulder and vowed to the cheering crowd he'd put his family back together and win the IWGP heavyweight title. From a general public standpoint, the feeling was that Yasuda's win saved the show, which after opening with four straight draws, was looking real bad. From a wrestling standpoint, it definitely did.

Just a few minutes earlier was an apropos sign for the finish of what in many ways was the worst year in the modern history of pro wrestling. Yuji Nagata, just four days before being in the singles main event of the traditionally biggest pro wrestling event of the year this side of Wrestlemania, at the Tokyo Dome, took a high kick to the side of the head and his career was knocked for an even bigger loop when he lost in just 21 seconds to K-1 star Mirko Cro Cop (Mirko Filipovic).

That's why it's a gamble. There is always the chance with a wrestler against a striker, that they get the blow in before the take down. The gamble was to take Nagata, one of the best workers in the business, but not a big drawing card, and give him that something to hang his hat on and make him a legit drawing card. Due to the odds, and the fluke win Cro Cop scored on Kazuyuki Fujita on 8/19, Nagata was given the greatest opportunity of his career. The risk is that it wouldn't happen. Was it disastrous for pro wrestling? Hardly. In a world of soap opera, and the real vs. fake aspect is missing the big picture, it's the story that really counts. People believing the story helps out, but if they are willing to convince themselves they believe it, even if they know better, it's just as effective, as much of the hundred year history of pro wrestling shows. All this does is set up another gate with a pro wrestler chasing Cro Cop, who was given the nickname before the show as "The Pro Wrestler Hunter," and lets someone else step to the plate and take the same gamble. Nagata up until winning the G-1 Climax tournament in August had always been a great worker who was used to carry lesser workers and put them over strong in big matches, most notably with Kazuyuki Fujita and Mark Coleman. In Japan, a culture very different from the U.S. and difficult to understand, losing doesn't make one a loser, but not trying does and not coming back does. Whether that means Nagata gets a bigger push in pro wrestling to rebuild him, or a lesser push and he's forced to take a greater risk by trying this again, the latter being more likely, is unknown. Nagata refused to talk with anyone after the loss and was said to be very depressed, as one usually is when a momentary mental lapse leads to losing a gamble when the odds are in your favor. Yasuda, older, less athletic and with no practical wrestling experience, was able to take the much bigger LeBanner down at will. There is always the story of what happened to Tokimitsu Ishizawa (Kendo Ka Shin), whose career was buried after losing a shoot match, but also ended up as a bigger star than ever when he saved face in a rematch. But few would argue that in the long run, playing with these unpredictabilities isn't beneficial to a business that is based on long-term building and promotions being able to control the significant variables, such as match finishes. When people are put in a position that you can't plan long-term or control with any certainty, long-term planning is impossible and you are stuck with week-to-week booking. If there is a lesson, with the exception of the politics of booking for ego, that defined this year, it's the problems with that concept.

New Japan wrestlers came out strong in the end, winning two of their four matches against the K-1 fighters with submission wins by Yasuda and Don Frye. Tokimitsu Ishizawa also dominated a one-sided match that went the time limit.

Forgetting about the wrestlers, from a television standpoint, the show itself was also a major gamble that paid off at least as far as public interest. Going against the traditional New Years Eve concert on NHK, the attempt to link up pro wrestling, Pride and K-1 in mixed matches as counter programming had potential disaster written all over it, not so much due to interest, but uncertainty over what could happen. The mix itself should have drawn well. We don't have anything but a final breakdown, but the show, airing from 9 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. on TBS, did a 14.9 rating and had about 21 million viewers, a huge success for New Years Eve. The number makes it a lock the station would attempt a similar format show in the future, with August the current plan. There was also the symbolism of the station getting the stars like Mike Bernardo and LeBanner who were made and are closely associated with the Fuji Network along with names like Inoki and Nagata who are associated with TV-Asahi, in the case of Inoki, with TV-Asahi way back when it was NET in the late 60s. New Years Eve is dominated by a Super Bowl level popularity program on NHK that usually does between a 40 and 50 rating, and that did a 48.0 this year. Most of the rest of the country is out partying. No television show in modern times aside from the traditional NHK show had ever topped an 11.0 rating on New Years Eve, and every major station has tried every kind of television special to compete with it unsuccessfully for years, so this was being trumpeted as something of an all-time record breaking event.

On paper, all of the matches should have been short, making the show risky with two-and-a-half to three hours of TV time to fill. The match-ups themselves were mostly announced less than two weeks before match time. Others were announced just days before. They were constantly changing, literally until the afternoon of the show. The K-1 fighters were all given ground training, although hardly enough to be more than just at the beginner level in a new environment. Nagata had never done a Vale Tudo match, nor had competed in wrestling itself in nearly ten years. And the loophole in the rule of having no decisions that allowed the Nobuhiko Takada vs. Cro Cop fiasco on 11/3, wasn't closed up. The result was a show which started with a repeat performance by Takada and without judges, four consecutive time limit draws.

The crowd, announced as a sellout of 35,492, a unique number in a building that only holds 27,000, ranged from excited, to bored, to mystified at various times. For the most part, it could be classified as a huge disappointment with the early draws and the biggest match going 21 seconds, the match featuring the most famous mainstream names being a total disaster, at least going into the final match. But with a lack of blow-outs or one side winning, it could lead to further big gates for similar match-ups in the future rather than blowing the concept that is clearly huge for business off.

In the days before the show, several changes took place as Antonio Inoki and Kazuyoshi Ishii played their game of last minute chess. Yasuda was announced as LeBanner's opponent, which, by the way they matched up, seemed like the closest thing to a sure win for K-1. There had been some thought of putting Yoshihiro Takayama in that spot, but Takayama took far too much of a pounding on the 12/23 Pride show to come back this soon and take what on paper would be a worse pounding. Takada, who was originally going to face Sam Greco, nearly pulled out of the show days before, with the old training injury excuse. Instead, his opponent was changed to Mike Bernardo, a bigger name K-1 star, but one with far less ground experience. Ray Sefo, who had been training with Royce Gracie, pulled out after a torn abdominal muscle. Rene Roze, who knocked Yasuda into a new area code on 8/19 in a similar mixed match in the same building and was scheduled for a rematch with him, was then switched to facing Gary Goodridge, a much tougher opponent, who originally was scheduled to face Sefo. Then the day of the show, Goodridge got word that Roze wasn't going to face him, claiming a family illness. Wouldn't you know it, there and ready to go for the K-1 side, was Ebenezer Braga, who had fought in K-1, but was far more experienced in Vale Tudo, the old last second ringer. Greco was instead matched with Masaaki Satake, a former rival from their days in K-1, who Greco had beaten in the past under those rules. The matches were all made for five three-minute rounds, with the exception for some reason for Takada-Bernardo which was three rounds. Just as well.

Atsushi Onita, as threatened, came to the building for his latest grandstand challenge of Antonio Inoki, bringing about 100 fans with him. He said he would buy a ticket and come to the building, but apparently, when he showed up, he had no plans of going in the building because he didn't buy a ticket and they wouldn't let him in, and all tickets were gone, so he ended up leaving. And a guy like that is involved with making national policy decisions?

1. Takada drew Bernardo to open the show with a fiasco. Takada had Kazushi Sakuraba (who worked as a TV announcer for the rest of the show) and Daijiro Matsui in his corner. Nothing happened in the first round. Both were standing and Takada wouldn't get near Bernardo. Second round saw Takada go for a takedown, take a hard punch, and then went to his back ala the Cro Cop fight. Like with Cro Cop, Bernardo wouldn't go to the ground, and just kicked at Takada legs. Fans hated this. Third round saw Takada try a takedown again, and when he didn't get it, laid on his back once again until the round ended. The only explanation I can come up with for this stupidity is that the network probably insisted on having Takada because of his name value and because of the belief he'd sell tickets and draw ratings. Takada clearly had his stips for doing it. After the match, Takada, who turns 40 in April, once again said he was going to retire. He said he wants to do a retirement match against Sakuraba. As with the last show, fans went crazy for Takada until the match started, and ended up booing the hell out of him when it was over.

2. Satake drew Greco over five rounds. Very good first round with both exchanging punches and Greco twice catching Satake in a front headlock, but clearly didn't get the guillotine sunk in as the first time, Satake was never in serious trouble and escaped. The second time Satake stayed in the hold until the bell ended the round. Both stood and fought standing until Satake took Greco down and began punching him in the head. Bout slowed in the third and fourth round. Greco let loose with a flurry late in the fifth round, but couldn't put Satake away.

3. Goodridge drew Braga over five rounds. Braga, who dominated Masakatsu Funaki years ago in Pancrase but lost via submission to Kazushi Sakuraba in Pride, got a mount on Goodridge in the fifth round and started punching down but Goodridge survived till time ran out. Said to be an even fight up until that point.

4. Tokimitsu Ishizawa (Kendo Ka Shin of New Japan) drew with Shingo Koyasu, a Seido Kaikan karate fighter who was about the same size over five rounds. Very little of this match aired on television. Report we got is that Ishizawa totally dominated Koyasu, taking him down and punishing him the entire fight and it would have been a one-sided decision had their been judges.

5. In an unannounced pro wrestling match, Antonio Inoki came out to greet the fans. A guy in a red and white mask (a parody on the NHK concert going head-to-head, believed to be Ikuto Hidaka) came out of a casket and attacked Inoki. He had attacked Inoki during the opening ceremonies off television before the live crowd. Inoki beat him up and threw him out of the ring. Then Giant Silva came out. This is likely to get Silva big-time television coverage as a freak. Silva put Inoki in the corner and hit a running lariat. He went for a second lariat, but Inoki moved. Sasuke and the masked guy did a few Lucha Libre spots. The masked guy had Sasuke pinned when Inoki made the save, whipped him into the ropes, and caught him with the dreaded octopus submission in 4:02.

6. Don Frye defeated Cyril Abidi in :34 of the second round in what was said to have been a very exciting match. Abidi had Frank Shamrock in his corner. Frye immediately took Abidi down and was punching his face, cutting up Abidi's right eye. They traded knees on the ground. Frye got a full mount and went for an armbar, but Abidi escaped and got the top position but the bell sounded to end the round. Frye took him down immediately in the second round and went for a shoulderlock (pro wrestling hammerlock) and then switched to a choke and the ref stopped it.

7. Cro Cop beat Nagata in 21 seconds. Cro Cop came to the ring with Royce Gracie. Cro Cop threw a high kick to the right side of Nagata's head, sending him down. Cro Cop threw punch after punch before it was stopped. It didn't appear Nagata was seriously injured as he was able to get up immediately.

8. Yasuda beat LeBanner in 2:09 of the second round. LeBanner had Ken Shamrock in his corner. Yasuda rushed in, and ate some punches, but managed to quickly take LeBanner down. Apparently he improved his wrestling a lot, because Roze, who is much lighter and at least visually nowhere near as strong looking as LeBanner, he had a much more difficult time putting down. LeBanner escaped. Yasuda bulled him into the corner and then took him down a second time. LeBanner actually grabbed a pro wrestling headlock and started punching the top of his head while holding it. Yasuda couldn't escape the headlock and LeBanner somewhere in here actually took him down with a flying mare as Frank A. Gotch roared with approval from wherever he was watching from. LeBanner shoved him into the corner and started punching him as the bell rang to end the round. LeBanner was being treated for a bloody nose between rounds. In the second round, Yasuda (it should be noted that when Yasuda came here to San Jose to train, a local college wrestler was throwing him around like it was nothing and Yasuda never came back after the first day) took LeBanner down again and was punching him from the top. He went for a forearm choke and a shoulderlock. LeBanner tried to head-butt his way out, which was illegal, which showed his desperation. Yasuda managed to put his weight behind a forearm choke and LeBanner tapped out."

. . . and what's more: 

"RINGS, the first pro wrestling company to start out as a worked promotion and end up as a 100% shoot promotion, officially folded with the announcement of the company liquidation at a press conference by CEO Akira Maeda on 12/27.

The folding, effective after the company's final show, the traditional annual tournament finals on 2/15 at Yokohama Bunka Gym, may also spell the end of Maeda, one of the most influential pro wrestlers in history when it comes to influence on the evolution of the business. Due to that, the legacy of Maeda, 42, perhaps the single most important person when it comes to the popularity of both shoot style pro wrestling and actual shooting in Japan, will continue to shape the future industry. It is expected this will spell the end of Maeda's career in the pro wrestling and MMA world due to his unpopularity within both worlds in recent years, but stranger things have happened.

In its nearly 11 years, RINGS created the popularity of many of the biggest stars in today's Pride such as Antonio Nogueira and Gilbert Yvel. Before going to an all-shoot format in late 1999, the company had promoted some of the greatest technical pro wrestling matches in history, largely involving Kiyoshi Tamura in his various battles with the likes of Volk Han, Ilioukhine Mikhail, Tsuyoshi Kohsaka and Yoshihisa (now Pride fighter Norihisa) Yamamoto. It also created its own stable of pro wrestling stars, and while switching formats, forced all of them to go into shoot matches to defend their reputations, with both good and bad results.

The closing of the promotion was hardly unexpected. In fact, just last week in the year in review, it was noted that the company was on the verge of closing down. After WOWOW, its television network, a Japanese version of HBO that used its house shows for prime time specials, cut back its sponsorship money to the company last year, it was forced to scale back what it could pay to fighters and had to cut several of its fighters from contract. The company had already suffered a major blow when its biggest star, Tamura, quit in May, largely after being overworked, and the resulting injuries destroyed his career as he was losing match after match. It was a double edged sword as the company needed him on the shows to draw, even though the reality was he wasn't, due to a number of reasons, timing, a bad loss at the wrong time, size, the draw hoped for. But by overworking him and him losing so frequently, he lost whatever was left of his drawing power. Due to its financial problems and better offers, RINGS continually lost the stars it created to the Pride promotion.

There were numerous factors that caused the once hot promotion to fall in popularity over the past three plus years, far beyond the problems with Tamura. Its ultimate demise was, like most major chapters in the history of this industry, decided upon in a television board room, not that unlike the demise of WCW and a very different but equally revolutionary ECW. The death of RINGS, just weeks after the death of Battlarts (a descendent of Pro Wrestling Fujiwara Gumi) leaves just Pancrase as the last active descendant of the UWF movement of the late 1980s, although the worked shoot style it revolutionized really died with the death of Battlarts, since RINGS had abandoned it for good more than two years ago.

One of the major network executives responsible for supporting RINGS had left the company and was replaced by a new director who didn't see RINGS as important to the station, and earmarked the company's sports budget more in the direction of other sports, soccer in particular. WOWOW used to promote RINGS in its infancy as one of its prime sporting events, very much similar to how HBO does its big boxing events. But once Maeda retired, the mainstream appeal was gone, and with the audience dropping, it had become an afterthought on the station. Maeda was informed earlier this month that the new director of sports programming had decided against renewing the contract when it expired on 3/30, and privately told the six fighters left under contract of this and that it spelled the death knell for the company on 12/21 at their show in Yokohama. It was the WOWOW sponsorship money that not only kept the company afloat for nearly 11 years, but allowed it to expand, running shows in places such as Holland, Georgia (Soviet Georgia), Russia, the United States (largely unsuccessful all shoot events in Iowa and Hawaii) and Australia largely as television specials for the station. Much like WCW, there were a lot of problems, not all related to loss of popularity, and perhaps even more due to the feeling it was a corporate embarrassment, that played a hand in the decision.

The hot-tempered Maeda was known for violent outbursts in public from the early days of his pro wrestling career in New Japan Pro Wrestling, where he was booker Hisashi Shinma's hand-picked successor when found as an 18-year-old karate star in 1977 as the biggest star in the Japanese wrestling world when Antonio Inoki would step down. He had his fights outside the ring. He all too often would lose his temper at reporters, which played a part in killing him at the end. His violent outbursts alienated many of his former supporters and eventually led to him being considered something of an embarrassment as the head of a sports organization, none of which helped him when it came time for his contract to be renewed. He was arrested this past year in the United States on a domestic violence charge against his secret wife. He also allegedly attacked Pancrase President Masami Ozaki when he thought Ozaki was trying to steal Jeremy Horn in a civil case which is still pending. He was also sucker punched backstage at a UFC event by Yoji Anjo in front of tons of media, to the point many were initially suspicious it was just a pro wrestling angle, although clearly it wasn't and Anjo was arrested. Anjo worked with him in the second UWF but later split apart as Maeda would constantly knock everyone publicly and many times challenged Yuko Miyato to fight (UWFI booker, another former UWF wrestler who had knocked RINGS) and always knocked rival promotions. Tokyo Sports, like many in the martial arts world, who didn't like Maeda by this time, considered, due to his history, this sucker punch being a case of poetic justice and not the cowardly act it also was. In its coverage, the newspaper blamed Maeda for getting what he deserved, noting some of his past indiscretions. Maeda was furious at the coverage and punched a reporter from the newspaper in full view of numerous members of the media in August after a meeting with New Japan to set up interpromotional ideas that he was hoping would save his company. Due to the incident receiving so much negative coverage, New Japan refused to work with Maeda. The newspaper, the largest sports daily in Japan, then refused to cover RINGS events, which greatly hurt the group's popularity.

In October, there was another embarrassing story in Weekly Friday, a popular businessman's magazine with huge circulation, which was somehow given possession of a videotape shot three years earlier backstage at a show in Kagoshima. Maeda, upset at Wataru Sakata for his performance in a match, beat the hell out of him and practically tortured him in the dressing room after the match. The combination of these type of stories and the promotion's fading popularity combined with a non-wrestling fan put in charge of the sports budget at WOWOW were the death blows to the organization.

Maeda being the biggest star in Japanese wrestling never materialized, as Inoki, like so many before and after him, had no intention of stepping down before those who were hungry for his spot became frustrated and fans at the time tired of him. But in other ways, he became far more important because of the industry changes he brought. When Shinma was ousted from New Japan in 1983 for numerous financial improprieties, he formed a new promotion in early 1984, called the UWF. After Inoki backed out on a promise to join him, Shinma used Maeda, then 24 and already a major player in New Japan, as his big star. Maeda, through the influence of Karl Gotch, the original coach of all the top stars with the new promotion (Maeda, veterans Yoshiaki Fujiwara and Osamu Kido and future stars Nobuhiko Takada and Kazuo Yamazaki), changed the face of wrestling by popularizing the term shooting, building a wrestling style around suplexes, submissions and kicks. While the first UWF was not a shoot, it looked more realistic, and most of the audience believed it to be the real deal. UWF gained a large cult following in Tokyo becoming the hottest show at Korakuen Hall in 1984-85, particularly when it lured Satoru Sayama out of retirement (which ended up forcing Shinma out of the promotion he formed when Sayama did a he goes or I go power play), but couldn't draw on the road. Maeda would frequently do interviews during this period insulting Inoki, an idea very similar to Paul Heyman's for Shane Douglas on Ric Flair, only with 100 times the impact since everyone knew about it. Amid a major news scandal involving Sayama and financial problems, and a final event which saw a Maeda-Sayama match turn into a real shoot after the two were at odds for control of the group, for a few minutes (the much-smaller Sayama, recognizing he was in trouble, kept trying to kick Maeda in the groin to get disqualified), the promotion folded. To great fanfare, Maeda went back to New Japan as a hotter star than ever. During his UWF days, Maeda frequently knocked American pro wrestlers (which haunted him later as most of the Americans didn't cooperate with him when he had to return to New Japan, giving him the rep that while he was great wrestling Japanese, he couldn't work with Americans, which was partially his fault as he came across to the Americans as having an attitude that he was above them), would get enraged at fans at house shows what would make a comment that the new style was boring.

The 1986-87 period with New Japan changed pro wrestling in that country forever. The feud with Maeda, Takada, Fujiwara and Yamazaki against the New Japan wrestlers was huge box office, and created a hardcore awareness of submissions like armbars, kneebars, Fujiwara armbars and half crabs as finishers. But the less spectacular submissions, while building up great heat and selling tickets for a hot feud, also was apparently so technical that it hurt casual fan interest and TV ratings in prime time started falling, which eventually resulted in New Japan's TV show being taken out of prime time and moved to Saturday afternoons. Years later, it was moved to Saturday nights past midnight, a death time slot, although it still did very strong business with the bad time slot. But it was a style years ahead of its time, and while older fans didn't understand it, when the kids who thought it was cool got older, it spawned the education and understanding of a new form of realistic pro wrestling, and later actually real pro wrestling, which led to the MMA boom that changed Japanese wrestling forever.

There were several incidents both in and out of the ring that defined the period. Maeda was a hothead with a shooter rep, and had steadfastly refused to put anyone over except Fujiwara, who his audience considered "real" and his equal, leading to booking problems since the big money Inoki vs. Maeda match couldn't be booked. In fact, it never took place (they did end up resolving some of their differences and worked in tag matches, but neither would ever put the other over). He once punched out Keiji Muto, another of the company's rising stars, in a bar. He had the infamous 1986 shoot with Andre the Giant, which was someone in the company's attempt rile up the Giant to humiliate Maeda and kill his shooter rep by not cooperating with him. The result backfired. Once Maeda figured out what was going on and it turned into a shoot, Maeda's quickness and leg kicking ability largely humiliated the aging and possibly drunk Giant, who most in wrestling thought to be unbeatable in a street fight. Maeda took him down at will and Andre could never touch him, and by the end, couldn't even stand up because his legs had taken so much punishment and he was blown up.

Maeda's rep grew on October 9, 1986 when he defeated a world champion kickboxer, Don Nakaya Neilsen, in a worked mixed match which was a classic at the time, as the semi-main event on a show headlined by a disastrous match with Inoki against Leon Spinks. With the largest audience to watch pro wrestling in ten years (drawing a 28.9 TV rating), since the Ali-Inoki match, the general public saw Inoki struggle in a disastrous match, while Maeda shined in what was called at the time the greatest mixed martial arts match in history. Although the term hardcore was later changed by Heyman and used to describe a very different style, Maeda was actually during that period the first ever king of hardcore, with cult fans thinking he was really the toughest of all the pro wrestlers. One night at Korakuen Hall, he was booked in a singles match with Kerry Von Erich, an American superstar. The place was packed with Maeda supporters longing to see their hero humiliate a fake U.S. star, but instead, when booked as an evenly-fought double count out, fans were furious, and not in a heat building way, leaving Maeda was even more frustrated with how he was being used. This led to a later date in the same building and rumors were out before the show that something was going to happen. And it did. In a six-man pitting a UWF team against New Japan, Riki Choshu, New Japan's most popular wrestler at the time, held Kido in a scorpion deathlock, which tied up his hands and left him defenseless. Maeda came in for the save, and kicked Choshu, full force, in the eye, breaking Choshu's orbital bone and his eye began swelling up and bleeding. The blow actually didn't knock Choshu out, or even down and you can imagine how furious he was, but Masa Saito managed to calm everything down before it got out of hand in the ring, although Choshu did do a number on Maeda's belongings when he got to the dressing room.

Maeda was suspended immediately for the unprofessional act. New Japan was willing to bring him back if he agreed to several stipulations, including six months of having to wrestle in Mexico (doing Lucha Libre or American style would be the ultimate insult because of everything he had said) as well as put Choshu over clean in a singles match because in its own bizarre way the incident had hurt Choshu's reputation with the fans. Instead, Maeda got backers, and in 1988, the second UWF was formed. While the first UWF was only a success in Tokyo, Maeda's name had grown from the two years of New Japan TV, and mainstream fans understood the style better from its television exposure. Not unlike Vince McMahon, and Rikidozan before him, the man who perpetrated the unprofessional and cowardly act benefitted by their business growing to greater heights than anyone could imagine. Maeda, in the eyes of many fans, was the guy so hardcore he wanted to fight for real and New Japan fired him for it, and now he was going to have his own company where the pro wrestlers fought for real.

It immediately become the hottest wrestling promotion in the world, selling out every show in minutes behind Maeda, who was voted 1988 Wrestler of the Year, still the only wrestler in history not in one of the big four historical promotions of this generation (NWA/WCW, WWF, All Japan or New Japan) to win the award. The peak was on November 29, 1989, when Maeda became the first wrestler ever to sellout the Tokyo Dome, drawing the largest gate in wrestling history up to that point ($2.9 million) for his match with European judo champion Willie Wilhelm. But due to mismanagement with finances, that company folded barely one year later, leading to the three top stars, Maeda, Takada and Fujiwara, going their separate ways. And all having a hand in changing pro wrestling forever.

Fujiwara formed Pro Wrestling Fujiwara Gumi, which had the least success of the three, but ended up leading to the most revolutionary move of all, when the group's three top younger stars, Wayne Shamrock (who later became famous as Ken Shamrock), Masakatsu Funaki and Minoru Suzuki quit, largely frustrated at the aging Fujiwara's refusal to pass the torch to them. In 1993, they formed Pancrase, the first attempt at doing legitimate pro wrestling matches. Takada formed UWFI, which was hot as hell for several years, but collapsed rather quickly for a number of reasons, part of which was Takada's never facing Rickson Gracie after the incident where Gracie destroyed Anjo in a dojo fight. But Takada's fame from that period led not only to the hottest feud up to that point in pro wrestling history with the New Japan vs. UWFI feud and Takada's string of record breaking houses against the New Japan stars in 1995-96. Years later, when the Takada-Rickson Gracie matches finally took place, it put Pride on the map.

Maeda went his own way, figuratively turning his back on pro wrestling, by teaming with WOWOW to do an offshoot of the UWF, only claiming it to not be pro wrestling, even though it was, and claiming it to be a new sport they were going to invent called RINGS. His first goal was to avoid all ties with pro wrestling, by not using any North Americans or Mexicans, even if they had experience with only so-called (worked) shoot promotions. His talent instead came from contacts that gave him access to Eastern European Olympic athletes, Russian sambo champions and big real fighters, street fighters and bouncers from Holland. The idea was not to use anyone with a taint of pro wrestling in them, a doctrine they didn't always follow. Many of his hardcore followers were mad, when years later, Maeda brought in Fujiwara to be his opponent on a big show, but it ended up being a major financial success. A modern day James Naismith was his new goal.

Because Maeda was such a big mainstream name and draw, RINGS, which opened in May 1991 was drawing huge crowds for monthly shows to see Maeda face largely unknown fighters. The shows were built around Maeda as the big draw, and a famous karate fighter named Masaaki Satake, an aging Holland Sambo legend named Chris Dolman and his stable of fierce Amsterdam street fighters and bouncers, most notably Dick Vrij, Maeda's first major opponent, and Hanse Nyman. One of his leading promoters was a Seido Kaikan karate studio owner named Kazuyoshi Ishii, who learned about the promotion of pro wrestling, brought it to the martial arts world, and two years later, created K-1 with Satake as his first major drawing card. The original Battle Dimension tournament in 1992, a worked format which led to the popularity of similar tournaments in the shoot world, featured future K-1 stars Satake and Nobuaki Kikuta doing worked pro wrestling matches. In a first round match on October 29, 1992, Maeda beat a reputed sambo champion from Russia named Volk Han. Han would go on to become his greatest in-ring rival, one of the most popular foreigners athletes of the decade in Japan and the 90's great innovator in submission and worked shoot wrestling.

RINGS would often do shoot matches on the undercard, although that wasn't revolutionary because UWF had done some shoots as well, although never with any of the big names. The ultimate Maeda irony was that his dream was to create a sport, not pro wrestling organization, where they would fight for real under pro wrestling rules. RINGS started with points for knockdowns and rope breaks, and with no closed fist punching. As UFC style fighting gained popularity, rope breaks and points were eliminated and finally, fighters started wearing gloves and punching was legalized. The only difference RINGS maintained to the end as compared to a Pride, Pancrase or UFC, was no closed fist punching or knees on the ground, leading to more of an emphasis on submission technique as opposed to brawling and ground-and-pound. With more frequent stand-ups, it created a cleaner and faster-paced and less brutal looking sport. But it was also one less marketable, particularly in countries that had seen UFC or Vale Tudo first like the United States. In the end, Maeda temporarily did achieve his goal. But he himself had to retire to do so, because he himself was never willing to risk his reputation in a shoot.

Maeda and Han largely carried the promotion through its most successful box office period through 1996. After Yamamoto, who had been a jobber up to that point, went 21:00 in his first shoot match ever, against none other than Rickson Gracie, he started getting pushed as the guy who would replace Maeda on top. But it was a struggle, as Maeda's bad knees forced several operations, and business was always weak during his time off using Yamamoto on top. Finally, when Tamura, already something of a big star as Takada's No. 2 star in UWFI, who started with the original UWF as a teenager and was injured in his first match by Maeda, refused to participate in the New Japan vs. UWFI feud, he chose RINGS above Pancrase and was an immediate big hit. Tamura largely carried the main events in 1996, and even though he was just 185-pounds, his ability to make worked matches look real and combine pro wrestling psychology with shoot tactics made him an in ring phenomenon. Some would say he was the best performer in the entire business, and he became an immediate drawing card as every wrestler who jumps promotions with a name should be when handled correctly. With Maeda out, Tamura and Han saved the 1996-97 tournament and had a classic final match on January 22, 1997 before 11,800 fans at Budokan Hall with Han winning. Maeda, whose knees and conditioning had gotten so bad by this point he was a shell of his former self, knew retirement was near. He put Tamura over by submission in the semifinals of the 1997-98 tournament and Tamura, in spectacular fashion, won the tournament to become officially the group's No. 1 star.

But despite Tamura's skill and charisma, the promotion was never the same after Maeda retired on July 20, 1998 on what up to that point was the group's biggest show in its history, selling out the Yokohama Arena with 17,000 fans. When Maeda retired, the promotion started doing more and more shooting matches, to where it became 50% of most cards. This led to a few exciting pro wrestling matches mixed in with slower and duller shoots involving a lot of heavyweight Olympic style wrestlers with little experience in either striking or submissions, a recipe that led to falling gates, although the loss of Maeda was probably more important to the popularity going down. Another match of huge impact was when unheralded kickboxer Valentijn Overeem from Holland, who had waxed undercard fighter Wataru Sakata in a shoot match on a RINGS show in Holland, was brought over for a shoot match to get eaten up by the more skilled Tamura. While Overeem had Tamura by 30 pounds, Tamura had beaten people like that in the past, usually in the blink of an eye, because he was an expert for real at submissions. Even though it was only three years ago, it was a generation ago from a fighting standpoint, as the overall skill level of fighters hadn't evened out enough to where a weight disadvantage like that couldn't be overcome by greater skill. However, Overeem showed up with submission knowledge that nobody expected, and the unknown totally embarrassed Tamura, injuring him in the process, and badly hurting his rep. Ironically in Tamura, they had the real deal, as he proved with shoot wins over the likes of Renzo Gracie (Renzo's first ever professional loss), UFC champs like Maurice Smith, Pat Miletich and Dave Menne, as well as UFC stars like Elvis Sinosic and Jeremy Horn. He even had a 30:00 draw with Frank Shamrock which remains the only blemish on Shamrock's record in the last six years and to this day Shamrock says Tamura was the best kicker he was ever in the ring with. But Tamura's drawing power was never the same after the first Overeem match, even when he managed to get revenge via submission in a worked match a year later. The frequent shoot matches after the change in format led to him being overworked and broke his body down. After Tamura won the RINGS world heavyweight title, at 185 pounds, in a worked match against 320-pound Bitszadze Tariel (the one RINGS major star who was totally exposed when they went to shoots), he took a horrible beating when he lost the title as a shoot to Yvel, who had him by probably 35 pounds. Tamura could have won the match as he could take Yvel down at will, but due to the frequent stand-ups ordered by the ref, took terrible punishment as he couldn't hang with him standing. He was never the same in the ring, and after a series of losses, quit the promotion in May, which signalled publicly that the end was likely near.

From a notoriety standpoint, the company's biggest event ever was on February 21, 1999, when Maeda came out of retirement for the first and only pro wrestling match of Alexander Karelin. Karelin, who, with more than 250 consecutive wins in Greco-roman wrestling dating back 12 years and three Olympic gold medals, was considered by many to be the single greatest wrestler who ever lived. A ripped to shreds 296-pound Karelin beat Maeda is a very believable looking (so believable that to this day within the amateur wrestling world, Maeda's getting a submission rope break point on Karelin in the match was used as evidence that even the mighty Karelin could have been beaten in UFC) pro wrestling match. Karelin won via points, and gave Maeda quite a beating even though it was worked, before 17,048 paying $2,479,000 at Yokohama Arena--the largest gate ever for a pro wrestling match in an arena setting. While Karelin was the most famous, he was hardly the only Olympic level competitor brought to RINGS to do what amounted to pro wrestling matches. In fact, more Olympic athletes worked for RINGS likely than any pro wrestling promotion in history. The list includes Hank Numan (1980 bronze medal in judo for Holland), Dan Henderson (1992 and 1996 U.S. Olympic wrestler), Kiril Barbuto (Bulgarian 1992 Olympic wrestler), David Khakhalesshvili (Georgian judo player who beat Naoya Ogawa to win the 1992 superheavyweight gold medal), Pieter Smit (1992 Holland judo), Svilen Russinov (Bulgarian boxer who was 1992 bronze medalist), Zaza Tkeschelaschvili (1996 Georgia freestyle wrestler who became something of a cult favorite as Grom Zaza), Zaza Turminadze (1996 Bulgarian freestyle wrestler), Gogitidze Bakrouri (1996 Bulgarian Greco-roman wrestler) and Georgi Kandalaki (Bulgarian boxer).

In 1999, Maeda changed the annual tournament, and thus the promotion itself, to an all-shoot format, with an outstanding tournament won by Henderson. But by this time the company was being picked apart by Pride, which immediately raided Henderson. It also raided Yvel right after he won the world heavyweight title from Tamura.

Things had come full circle for the group, which in 1998 promoted some of the best pro wrestling matches in the world, when on February 24, 2001 at Sumo Hall in its final hurrah, before a near sellout of 10,260, it promoted perhaps the best shoot tournament ever in terms of excitement and easily the most underrated show of the year. Future UFC champ Menne had an incredible match with pro wrestler Hiromitsu Kanehara. Past the age of 40, the groups' most famous foreign star ever, Han, in a shoot format, lost via decision to Nogueira, and he turned out to be the most competitive of any opponent Nogueira faced all year, which showed that Han's reputation as a shooter that he brought to RINGS in the early 90s was legitimate. Nogueira later beat Kanehara and Overeem (who had tapped out UFC heavyweight champ Randy Couture in the semifinals in 56 seconds) to win the tournament. But Nogueira and Overeem were then snatched up by Pride.

Finally recognizing the mistakes they made by putting Tamura in with much bigger guys, who he was almost always competitive with but his body was breaking down, they created a 198-pound division for Tamura to win, but by this time his injuries were such that he wasn't even competitive with top guys of his own size. Instead, Ricardo Arona won the tournament, and immediately thereafter, was the next to jump to Pride."

There's just so much in this one! Several smaller items follow.

"Actual attendance for the 12/23 Pride show was 9,391."

and

"Most likely Carlos Newton will get a title match with the Hughes-Sakurai match. Newton was originally to get the shot on 3/22 but a deal had been worked out some time back when Newton got the title shot at Pat Miletich, which at that point he still had one fight left on his Pride contract. Pride agreed to let him fight for the title and he wouldn't have to return until losing the title. Since he lost on 11/2, Pride wanted him for 2/24, and UFC didn't want to risk giving him a title shot on 3/22 in case he were to lose to get injured on the Pride show. Pride has agreed to let Vovchanchyn face Rizzo, but it is still far from a done deal. UFC had tried to bring Vovchanchyn in to the U.S. in the past (long before he became a star in Pride) without success." 

and

"Pride is planning on doing a third Inoki festival in August. Promoter Naoto Morishita confirmed they were working on a deal with Pancrase to get Sanae Kikuta, Yuki Kondo, Yoshiki Takahashi and Ikuhisa Minowa as new Japanese stars. They are also likely to bring in pro wrestler Hiromitsu Kanehara, since RINGS went under. Kanehara, 31, was one of those really underrated pro wrestler/fighters (his worked match with Sakuraba is probably the greatest match in history when it comes to a worked match looking real) in RINGS matches is one of those guys who has had the knack for having really exciting fights, and has beaten some good fighters legit, but by this stage has probably done too many fights and taken too much punishment so we'll probably wind up in a Matsui, Shoji, Otsuka like role. DSE recognizes with Sakuraba and Fujita both hurt that they need to create new native draws. Problem is that Kikuta, who probably has the best shot at being competitive with Silva, is not very charismatic. Minowa, who is the most charismatic, doesn't have a good shot. Kondo is probably the best mix of the two."

and

"On one of the TV shows in Japan they did a tale of the tape with Semmy Schiltt and Yoshihiro Takayama, and actually measured Schiltt at 212 centimeters, which is 6-11 1/2. Takayama was 6-5 1/4. That 12/23 Pride show airs 1/19 on Viewers Choice Canada after airing in the U.S. on 1/5 on the dish networks PPVs.

One practice that I'd never heard of before regarding making weight and rehydrating that is apparently going on (no doubt this must take place in some form in amateur wrestling where it is also hidden or other weight sports) is after dehydrating down to make weight, you actually hook yourself up to an IV to replenish your fluids and enables people to actually gain back 20 pounds before the competition

Guy Mezger was on the Kid Rock Fan Club show on VH-1 talking about what a big fan he was of Kid Rock. They showed a clip from Pride of his win over Alexander Otsuka from December 23, 2000. In the clip, it was claimed that Otsuka was the "World Free Fight Champion" and that Mezger won the title from him in the clip. It was actually the opening match on the show."

January 14, 2002:

2001 Observer Awards! I'll post any category where PRIDE (or our matter broadly) figures even a little.

WRESTLER OF THE YEAR

1. KEIJI MUTO (459)2,966

2. Steve Austin (231)1,819

3. Kurt Angle (18)706

4. Yuji Nagata (10)373

5. Jun Akiyama (2)216

6. Rock (1)183

7. Toshiaki Kawada (1)167

8. Chris Jericho (5)133

9. Kazushi Sakuraba (3)120

10. Kaoru Ito 116

Honorable Mention: Antonio Nogueira 97, Vanderlei Silva 71, Kazuyuki Fujita 64, Jushin Liger 63

BEST BOX OFFICE DRAW [I have never understood why this was a category that could be voted on—surely this is just a math question?--ed.]

1. KAZUSHI SAKURABA (272)2,001

2. Steve Austin (227)1,835

3. Rock (83)1,292

4. Keiji Muto (55)740

5. Naoya Ogawa (29)362

6. HHH (1)113

7. Kazuyuki Fujita94

8. El Hijo del Santo (2)91

9. Kurt Angle46

10. Undertaker31

FEUD OF THE YEAR

1. KAZUSHI SAKURABA VS. VANDERLEI SILVA (214)1,371

2. Old Infernales vs. New Infernales (191)1,210

3. Rock vs. Chris Jericho (82)824

4. Steve Austin vs. Kurt Angle (40)676

5. Rock vs. Steve Austin (73)518

6. All Japan vs. New Japan (35)371

7. Chris Benoit vs. Kurt Angle (26)336

8. Steve Austin vs. HHH (32)242

9. Crazy Max vs. Toryumon vs. M2K (34)239

10. Emilio Charles Jr. vs. Shocker (10)144

MOST CHARISMATIC

1. ROCK (473)3,216

2. Steve Austin (206)2,108

3. Chris Jericho (16)642

4. Keiji Muto (34)611

5. Rob Van Dam (17)415

6. Kazushi Sakuraba (32)379

7. Kurt Angle (8)223

8. Ric Flair (22)187

9. Tito Ortiz (2)145

10. Antonio Inoki (25)134

Honorable Mention: Masahiro Chono 127, Magnum Tokyo 125, La Parka 106, Naoya Ogawa 88, HHH 67

BEST TECHNICAL WRESTLER

1. MINORU TANAKA (199)1,571

2. Chris Benoit (129)1,146

3. Kurt Angle (130)1,112

4. Yuji Nagata (100)1,070

5. Osamu Nishimura (47)406

6. Black Tiger (1)195

7. Keiji Muto (10)142

8. Jun Akiyama (8)137

9. Blue Panther (21)122

10. Takehiro Murahama (2)107

Honorable Mention: Toshiaki Kawada 105, El Hijo del Santo 97, William Regal 86, Carl Malenko 85, Tiger Mask 85, Tajiri 82, Naomichi Marufuji 71, Lance Storm 70, American Dragon 70, Jushin Liger 69, Sanae Kikuta 62, Kazushi Sakuraba 60, Shinjiro Otani 60 [lol I would argue that Sanae Kikuta and Kazushi Sakuraba are probably better technical wrestlers than many on this list but the results are the results I suppose--ed.]

BRUISER BRODY MEMORIAL AWARD

(BEST BRAWLER)

1. STEVE AUSTIN (455)2,663

2. Kazunari Murakami (169)1,226

3. HHH (29)778

4. Chris Benoit (26)440

5. Rob Van Dam (20)356

6. Jun Kasai (39)216

7. Masato Tanaka (18)214

8. Rhyno (19)211

9. Raven (1)180

10. Mad Man Pondo (17)179

Honorable Mention: Bubba Ray Dudley 161, Toshiaki Kawada 160, Kintaro Kanemura 142, Gedo 129, El Satanico 123, Kurt Angle 122, Rock 111, Bradshaw 88, Igor Vovchanchyn 79, Undertaker 71, Nick Mondo 71

MOST OVERRATED

1. UNDERTAKER (208)1,516

2. Big Show (20)427

3. Shane McMahon (51)400

4. Scott Norton (12)335

5. Kane (8)322

6. Chyna (26)321

7. Test (19)228

8. Kazuyuki Fujita (11)214

9. Naoya Ogawa (29)165

10. Manabu Nakanishi (14)156

Honorable Mention: Rob Van Dam 155, Kevin Nash 132, Rock 110, Tadao Yasuda 109, Chris Jericho 102, Billy Gunn 98, Buff Bagwell 82, Diamond Dallas Page 79, HHH 70, Albert 70, Masahiro Chono 62, Lita 60, Rayo de Jalisco Jr. 60

PROMOTION OF THE YEAR

1. PRIDE (244)1,764

2. World Wrestling Federation (174)1,330

3. New Japan Pro Wrestling (95)1,171

4. Toryumon (71)984

5. EMLL (119)979

6. Pro Wrestling NOAH (12)483

7. Ultimate Fighting Championships (1)280

8. All Japan Pro Wrestling (2)239

9. All Japan Women (10)184

10. Ohio Valley Wrestling (11)137

Honorable Mention: Osaka Pro Wrestling 121, Gaea 116

BEST NON-WRESTLER

1. PAUL HEYMAN (269)1,908

2. Vince McMahon (116)1,482

3. Ric Flair (122)969

4. William Regal (80)672

5. Mick Foley (34)508

6. Kenny Bolin (48)414

7. Stacy Keibler (17)393

8. Jim Cornette (37)366

9. Antonio Inoki (38)308

10. Shane McMahon (7)239

BEST TELEVISION ANNOUNCER

1. JIM ROSS (444)2,924

2. Paul Heyman (122)1,896

3. Jim Cornette (160)1,494

4. Jerry Lawler (8)696

5. Stephen Quadros (6)281

6. Arturo Rivera (7)197

7. Yoshinari Tsuji (30)185

8. Bas Rutten179

9. Jeff Blatnick (6)147

10. Mike Goldberg (5)125

Honorable Mention: Scott Hudson 111, Tazz 74

BEST MAJOR WRESTLING SHOW

1. WWF WRESTLEMANIA 4/1 HOUSTON (322)1,841

2. New Japan 6/6 Tokyo Budokan Hall (45)492

3. All Japan 6/8 Tokyo Budokan Hall (31)489

4. WWF No Way Out 2/25 Las Vegas (7)487

5. New Japan Wrestling World 2001 1/4 Tokyo Dome (21)472

6. WWF Royal Rumble 1/21 New Orleans (25)382

7. UFC High Voltage 11/2 Las Vegas (36)314

8. Toryumon 7/1 Kobe (39)266

9. New Japan 12/14/00 Osaka (11)225

10. WWF SummerSlam 8/19 San Jose (8)208

Honorable Mention: Zero-One debut 3/2 Tokyo Budokan Hall 191, EMLL El Juicio Final 3/30 Mexico City 191, WWF No Mercy 10/21 St. Louis 164, Pride 17 9/24 Osaka 145, Pride 12/23/00 Saitama 122, WWF Invasion 7/22 Cleveland 70

READERS PERSONAL FAVORITE WRESTLER

1. KEIJI MUTO107

2. Chris Benoit95

3. Kurt Angle53

4. Chris Jericho50

5. Rob Van Dam38

6. Cima37

7. Momoe Nakanishi36

8. Toshiaki Kawada35

9. Steve Austin29

10. Yuji Nagata25

Honorable Mention: Minoru Tanaka 22, William Regal 18, Ric Flair 15, Kazushi Sakuraba 13

BEST BOOKER

1. JIM CORNETTE145

2. Paul Heyman95

3. Ultimo Dragon81

4. Vince McMahon63

5. Mitsuharu Misawa49

6. Negro Casas48

7. Masahiro Chono37

8. Genichiro Tenryu36

9. Antonio Inoki27

10. Riki Choshu23

Honorable Mention: Chigusa Nagayo 18, Joe Silva 14, Great Sasuke 10

PROMOTER OF THE YEAR

1. ANTONIO INOKI240

2. Vince McMahon235

3. Naoto Morishita109

4. Ultimo Dragon61

5. Paco Alonso25

6. Mitsuharu Misawa21

7. Dana White18

8. Takeshi Matsunaga14

9. Jacques Rougeau12

10. Jim Cornette11

SHOOT FIGHTER OF THE YEAR

1. VANDERLEI SILVA295

2. Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira225

3. Tito Ortiz93

4. Kazushi Sakuraba61

5. Randy Couture34

6. Pedro Rizzo16

7. B.J. Penn13

8. Sanae Kikuta11

9. Caol Uno7

10. Matt Hughes6

Jens Pulver6

SHOOT MATCH OF THE YEAR

1. RANDY COUTURE VS. PEDRO RIZZO 5/4 ATLANTIC CITY197

2. Kazushi Sakuraba vs. Vanderlei Silva 11/3 Tokyo117

3. Antonio Nogueira vs. Heath Herring 11/3 Tokyo101

4. Matt Hughes vs. Carlos Newton 11/2 Las Vegas65

5. Kazushi Sakuraba vs. Vanderlei Silva 3/25 Saitama49

6. Pedro Rizzo vs. Josh Barnett 2/23 Atlantic City39

7. Yoshihiro Takayama vs. Kazuyuki Fujita 5/27 Yokohama32

8. Daijiro Matsui vs. Pele 5/27 Yokohama25

9. Kazushi Sakuraba vs. Quinton Jackson 7/29 Saitama22

10. Daijro Matsui vs. Murilo Ninja 9/24 Osaka16

Honorable Mention: Igor Vovchanchyn vs. Masaaki Satake 7/29 Saitama 14, Don Frye vs. Gilbert Yvel 9/24 Osaka 13, Matt Lindland vs. Phil Baroni 11/2 Las Vegas 13, Kazushi Sakuraba vs. Ryan Gracie 12/23/00 Saitama 12

This is a non-PRIDE 1/4 Tokyo Dome recap but it is inescapable, given our concerns:

"With its popularity at its lowest level and coming just a few days after a far more publicized show, what had been the Japanese version of Wrestlemania had several question marks coming in.

To a degree they were answered positively with what most were considering a good turnout and a very good show for "Wrestling World 2002" on 1/4 at the Tokyo Dome. But the TV ratings told a different story.

Just days after his quick knockout loss to Mirko Cro Cop, Yuji Nagata was set to headline by representing New Japan against Pro Wrestling NOAH's Jun Akiyama in their first ever singles match for the latters' GHC title. It was also the first time either man headlined a Dome show as a single. Unlike with Kendo Ka Shin, who couldn't get heat with a blow torch after losing in Pride to Ryan Gracie (and became a bigger star than ever when he avenged that loss), the crowd was behind Nagata as much as ever as the two had what was reported as an excellent main event match before 51,500 fans. The bad news came a few days later when the television version of the show airing in prime time from 7 to 9 p.m. drew only an 8.2 rating. Those who favor old-style great wrestling over the shoot style direction got knocked for a loop when once again the highest rated match was the Naoya Ogawa vs. Kensuke Sasaki match, which did a 13.2. Last year the show aired after midnight and still did a 9.3 rating, but had the big hook of the IWGP heavyweight title tournament with Toshiaki Kawada plus the return after several years of Riki Choshu, which led to TV-Asahi broadcasting the rest of the Dome shows in prime time.

This year's line-up didn't have general public appeal as it was a line-up of good matches, but nothing stronger than you would expect for a major arena show aside from the main event, let alone the biggest show of the year. Akiyama retained the title with two offshoots of his favorite exploder, likely setting up a rematch later this year. The bad news coming out of the match was that Akiyama suffered a dislocation of the AC joint (shoulder) and actually it was recommended he be out of action for a few months. However, after missing his bookings on the first two NOAH shows of the year the next two days, he is scheduled to return on 1/9. Kendo Ka Shin also tore ligaments in his left knee in his match against Pride's Daijiro Matsui, and will miss the first few shows of the next tour, but is scheduled to be back in action on 2/1 when they run a big show in Sapporo.

Although it was actually the smallest announced crowd ever for New Japan at the Tokyo Dome, live reports indicate that unlike most of the Dome shows of late, the crowd announced was accurate looking. In reality, it was the biggest crowd they had put in the building since selling it out last year on 1/4. Still, it was only the second of the 11 annual shows starting off the year at the Dome not to sellout and was the smallest Dome crowd ever on the traditional day. The only other time they failed to sellout the Dome on 1/4 was in 1994, when this was hardly the tradition it is now, but in other years they didn't have another huge show that got so much mainstream attention in the same area four days earlier.

The only strong negative on the show was the Kensuke Sasaki vs. Naoya Ogawa match, which was said to have been an absolute travesty. Behind the scenes, Ogawa had refused to do a job, which should have come as no surprise and they should have had a better back-up plan than coming up with an idea sure to ruin the show coming off the fact they did a non-finish last year with Riki Choshu and Shinya Hashimoto that the crowd hated and that was after what up to that point had been an incredible match. Sasaki and Ogawa ended up doing a short no contest when half the world interfered. The reaction was so negative with fans booing and throwing bottles at the ring that ring announcer Hideki Tanaka was unable to get in the ring to announce the next match for more than five minutes. The Ogawa problems remain in that the network loves him because he's the biggest ratings draw New Japan can put on, but he's uncooperative and the company has had a problem with him since he stunk out the joint on the 5/5 Fukuoka Dome show when he refused to sell and made Choshu and Manabu Nakanishi look bad. He's impossible to book because the time has come after four years to job. But either he can't because they are saving him for Rickson Gracie (the plan for years has been to work to create a new-age Inoki in Ogawa for the showdown with Gracie, which was supposed to take place last year, but Gracie wouldn't fight because his son died, and there have been attempts to put the fight on later this year) or he simply won't do business on his own. The Fukuoka Dome match, the first Choshu-Ogawa confrontation ever in a tag, didn't draw particularly well live, but the match itself drew a 21.1 TV rating, the largest audience to watch a pro wrestling match of 2001. New Japan hadn't wanted to use Ogawa after that match, but ran an angle on the 10/8 Dome show where he did a run-in and challenged Sasaki, Nakanishi, Kazuyuki Fujita and Tadao Yasuda to set up this match.

After the success of last year's 1/4 Dome show on TV-Asahi, New Japan's other Dome shows last year aired out of the midnight time slot and most pulled good numbers. The 4/7 Osaka Dome did a 10.7 in prime time, peaking with a total New Japan style match with Masahiro Chono & Hiroyoshi Tenzan & Satoshi Kojima vs. Muto & Taiyo Kea & Jinsei Shinzaki which did beat out Fujita's IWGP title win over Scott Norton. The 5/5 Fukuoka Dome did a 12.3 in prime time, with the giant peak for the horrible Choshu-Ogawa fiasco. The 7/20 Sapporo Dome show, which aired live from 3-5 p.m. on a national holiday Friday afternoon did a 6.2, again peaking for a shoot style Nagata vs. Mark Coleman match. The G-1 Climax tournament airing live on a Sunday afternoon from 3-5 p.m. did a 7.9, peaking with the Muto vs. Nagata final. The 10/8 Tokyo Dome airing head-to-head with a major K-1 show on a Monday night from 6:30-8 p.m., did a 10.2, peaking with Fujita vs. Sasaki. Inoki publicly blamed New Japan for its poor line-up for the rating, noting against much tougher competition, his show four days earlier did a much better number.

It was announced the next Tokyo Dome show will be on 5/2, which will be the company's 30th anniversary show. The idea is to bring back legends from the past for the show including attempting to get Inoki, Hulk Hogan and Seiji Sakaguchi to wrestle. Kazuyuki Fujita is also scheduled to return from his achilles tendon surgery, ahead of the recommended recovery time, on this show.

1. Masahito Kakihara & Masayuki Naruse beat Wataru Inoue & Katsuyori Shibata in 10:50 when Kakihara pinned Inoue with his Kakki cutter (same as Ogawa's STO). Kakihara is being built up for the next shot at Ka Shin. Said to be a decent opener but a little disappointing.

2. Minoru Tanaka & El Samurai (Osamu Matsuda) beat Koji Kanemoto & AKIRA (Akira Nogami Saeki) in 12:31 when Tanaka pinned AKIRA after a backslide. Said to be a good match. Kanemoto & AKIRA dominated.

3. Kazunari Murakami & Yuki Ishikawa beat Hiroshi Tanahashi & Kenzo Suzuki in 8:07 after a trade of punches and kicks and Murakami got a knockout win with a kick to Tanahashi's head. Finish in particular said to be really exciting. Tanahashi & Suzuki have a lot of potential about three years down the road as a tag team.

4. Tiger Mask & Great Sasuke (Masanori Murakawa) & Jushin Liger (Keiichi Yamada) beat Gedo (Keiti Akiyama) & Jado (Shoji Akiyoshi) & Dick Togo (Shigeki Sato) in 20:12 when Liger pinned Jado after a brainbuster. Michinoku Pro, with its guys playing before probably their biggest stage of the year, tried to shoot a Tiger Mask vs. Togo angle during the match. Said to be the second best match on the card.

5. Manabu Nakanishi beat Giant Silva (Paulo Silva) in 6:49 via count out. Both were fighting outside the ring and Nakanishi jumped in to beat the count. This is the kind of finish fans traditionally hate, but they were okay with it. Match on paper sounded horrible, but it was considered a huge success because the whole idea was to build for the spot where Nakanishi got Silva (legit 7-3 1/2 and 460 pounds) in the rack. They teased it once that he couldn't do it, before he did it the second time. Lex Luger had gotten Big Show racked, he may have been heavier than Silva at the time, but Silva has even more of a leverage problem because he's more than four inches taller.

Antonio Inoki came out at this point dressed up as a homeless guy. Inoki and Roddy Piper think the same way and it's just a different way as just about everyone else. He brought out Fujita, who apologized for not being able to wrestle and said that he was returning his IWGP heavyweight title belt. He then introduced Yasuda, who got a huge reaction. Yasuda did a promo saying that he wanted to win the IWGP title. Boy is pro wrestling ever scary at times.

6. Kendo Ka Shin (Tokimitsu Ishizawa) beat Daijiro Matsui (Shunsuke Matsui) in 5:43 to retain the IWGP jr. heavyweight title. Ka Shin worked this match as a heel, as he low blowed Matsui as a heat spot right away, since everyone knew Matsui on 12/23 took a vicious low blow against Quinton Jackson on the Pride show. Matsui ended up punching from the mount. Ka Shin came back with his new move that can best be described as something like a tarantula but a reversed version of it and then got the pin with a roll-up.

7. Hiroshi Hase & Keiji Muto defeated Tatsumi Fujinami & Osamu Nishimura in 16:44 when Muto pinned Nishimura after the shining wizard. Muto got the biggest pop of the show. As expected, a good old-style technical wrestling match.

8. Kensuke Sasaki no contest Naoya Ogawa in 4:02. Match was quick and super heated. Sasaki attacked Ogawa at the bell, took him down and was punching him from the mount. The finish saw Murakami run in and knocked Sasaki off and Nakanishi then ran in to attack Murakami. Four refs hit the ring as did a bunch of wrestlers. The place was cleaned out and Sasaki and Ogawa exchanged punches outside the ring when Murakami pulled Ogawa off and took him to the back. Sasaki challenged him to come back out, and when he didn't, fans went crazy and started throwing bottles. Sasaki then sprinted to the back as if he was going backstage to get Ogawa. That only got the fans more upset. Remember when WCW would get this reaction and think they were doing good? Thankfully, everyone recognized here that wasn't the case. Fans started chanting for a finish.

9. Hiroyoshi Tenzan & Satoshi Kojima beat Masahiro Chono & Giant Singh (Dalip Singh) in 10:47. Told Tenzan & Kojima made this a good match but I'll have to see that to believe it. Finish saw Giant Silva do a run-in and ended up colliding with Singh. Kojima did a lariat on Singh and Tenzan cradled him for the pin. After the match, Singh and Silva went at it and this is eventually going to build into a program.

10. Akiyama pinned Nagata in 19:58 to retain the GHC title. Started on the ground. Match was really stiff. Both guys at one point used front guillotines for near submissions. After Nagata escaped Akiyama's guillotine, he hit two brutal high kicks and got an armbar. He also used an enzuigiri and back suplex finisher, but Akiyama kicked out. Akiyama did Misawa's emerald frosien with the symbolic deal that even though Misawa and Akiyama are rivals in NOAH, that Misawa was behind Akiyama attempting to beat New Japan on its biggest show since a New Japan vs. NOAH program will move forward this year leading to Misawa vs. Muto. At another point, Akiyama delivered the shining wizard to Akiyama, but landing, somehow jarred his shoulder. Akiyama got the pin after two offshoots of his exploder finisher. After the match, Akiyama slapped Nagata, and then Nagata slapped him back.

Okay here we go, back on topic directly:

"PRIDE COLD FURY II: Thumbs up 25 (31.3%); Thumbs down 11 (13.8%); In the middle 44 (55.0%). BEST MATCH: Vanderlei Silva vs. Alexander Otsuka 19, Semmy Schiltt vs. Yoshihiro Takayama 16. WORST MATCH: Quinton Jackson vs. Daijiro Matsui 28

The biggest news from the Pride PPV is that the 2/24 show will air the same day on tape delay (actually, they said live, but it'll be about 19 hours or so later) in the U.S. with Don Frye vs. Ken Shamrock announced. That show will start at 9 p.m. Eastern, which means it'll go head-to-head with the live WWA PPV from Las Vegas. What was weird is they broadcasted the entire show with no mention of a future date on PPV for an upcoming show (they've been good of late about pushing the next date). Then, literally as the credits were rolling to end the show, they announced the next PPV would be live and mentioned the main event. No interviews with Frye or Shamrock or an explanation of a back story. I'm presuming it will air on that day in Canada as well. In Demand will only be carrying the WWA show, but there will be head-to-head PPV on all the dish networks as well as on AT&T Broadband and Cablevision (for customers, usually those with digital) and all other cable companies that get Action PPV. While this is not the first head-to-head PPV in history (technically, the 1987 Starrcade and 1987 Survivor Series both took place on Thanksgiving night but a McMahon power play prevented companies from carrying Crockett's show which is actually important historically because it put Crockett was expecting big PPV revenue and without it was about to go bankrupt and had to sell to Turner) it is the first where companies apparently will offer two new shows simultaneously.

Frye-Shamrock is still an intriguing main event if they can get the word out because they were two of the biggest UFC stars when it garnered a lot of coverage and drew some big buy rates in 1995-96, but as we've seen in wrestling, in pop culture, that's a long time ago. The two did an angle on December 31, 2000 at the Osaka Dome after doing a pro wrestling tag match where they were partners and split up, but that's ancient history now and most Japanese fans, even though that show was a big deal at the time, don't even remember it. Still, it's a very intriguing match-up and in many ways for their legacy, the most important one of either man's career. Shamrock will turn 38 two weeks before the match and Frye is 36. Pride is going to take Shamrock and Frye on a five-city press tour in early February to hype the show. Will be very interesting, because Shamrock and Frye probably can't help but be pro wrestlers when it comes to hyping a fight.

Pride announced that their first show outside Japan would be in Honolulu outdoors at Aloha Stadium in late July. That's one hell of a risk in a new country where the company doesn't have the media penetration and acceptance of the sport that Japan provides, plus none of the names are mainstream in Hawaii and the place holds 50,000. If this show goes off, it would likely be as a live PPV in the U.S. RINGS died when running indoors at the Blaisdell Center in Honolulu, although there have been successful SuperBrawl shows for many years. They talked about having Sakuraba and Fujita headline that show.

The English show was one time where the show was probably the same or less enjoyable watching than the Japanese version. Don't know. It was a so-so show but everything seemed flat because with so many fights thrown together for no real reason with only a few weeks, a lot of the fighters (Murilo Ninja being the notable exception) weren't in their best shape. Because they had some long matches and the most colorful foreign fighters (Goodridge, Frye and Mezger) weren't on the show, they only did one interview, with Quinton Jackson, who does have some cult babyface potential if anyone actually saw these shows. All he really does is swear and he wasn't funny like he's been in the past (unintentionally). They opened the show doing a skit where all the foreign fighters and the announcers were having a Christmas party and waiting for the girls to arrive, and then the Pride girls arrived and blew off everyone in the room and left with some other guys. This was right out of EMLL. The Semmy Schiltt-Yoshihiro Takayama main event was very exciting in a brutality way but Takayama, who had lead time to train, came in out of shape, was out there primarily to entertain, and blew up very fast, leaving him a sitting duck for Schiltt's reach and Schiltt actually knocked him out cold with a left jab. Igor Vovchanchyn-Valentijn Overeem was also very exciting. Stephen Quadros and Bas Rutten even remarked during the Jeremy Horn-Akira Shoji match about how it was boring during the first round. It did get better. Ninja looked tremendous in systematically destroying Alex Andrade. The Alex Steibling vs. Allan Goes match with some back-and-forth ground action with the announcers seeing the tap by Steibling and not knowing how to react when the fight continued (they kind of clumsily didn't mention it). Goes got tired and Steibling took over to win. It was one of those matches that is interesting to insiders but would mean nothing to casual fans, but they did try and hype the idea of Steibling vs. Ninja as a future match. Goes is out of the hospital and back home, but his career is in jeopardy because of the brain hemorrhage from the knees to the head. Vanderlei Silva, who has box office written all over him, looked very human and was even in trouble briefly against Alexander Otsuka, who seemed to gain confidence with each minute he was in the ring and remained in one piece after going to the ring with the lamb being led to slaughter look. They were hyping Silva wanting Tito Ortiz in a rematch (it will never happen unless Ortiz loses his title in UFC first) and how he'd do better with Ortiz under Pride rules. Bas Rutten also pushed the idea of wanting Silva himself, saying he'd like to see the handsome guy from Holland (he always talks about how good looking he is) get a shot. Actually, when they fought, Ortiz kept taking Silva down, so the kicking a guy when he's down rule difference would have had no bearing on that last fight. It could in a future fight. Show came across very much as something thrown together, with no real reasons for the matches and announcers talking about how guys were taking fights on two weeks notice.

Takada said that because of his injuries, while he wants to do one last match, he may not be able to and the Bernardo fight may have been his last. At this point it doesn't appear that Sakuraba will be ready to return until June. They are trying to create a new star this year from the Takada dojo in 2000 national freestyle champion at 213 pounds, Kazuhiro Hamanaka. The idea is to try and push him as a Takada trained fighter making a name in Pride and also representing Japan in the 2004 Olympics in Athens, Greece. What's interesting about this is if Kurt Angle really does go back and can make the U.S. team, they would be in the same weight class.

Enson Inoue is coming out of retirement and may fight on the next Pride against Vanderlei Silva or Antonio Nogueira. Pride wanted him to face Antonio Nogueira, but he asked for Silva. Talk of Silva vs. Sanae Kikuta from Pancrase as well."

And finally, at least for this week's Observer:

"NEW JAPAN: Pride announcers Stephen Quadros and Bas Rutten did commentary for the 12/31 show in English, but it won't be on PPV in the U.S., but they are going to release an English language home video. Regarding the New Years Eve show, the 35,492 attendance at Saitama Super Arena was legit. The arena has an expandable seat layout. Pride has used the 27,000-seat layout for its shows, but used the larger layout because there was more interest in this show. Considering what the ticket prices were ($760 ringside), the gate was likely very large."

January 21, 2002:

I grant you this is like an unsane amount of Dave to be posting, but there is just so much relevant to our interests here! This is his discussion of the previous week's awards issue.

"In looking at the Wrestler of the Year award, the first thing that came to my mind most of the past few months, is how different this was than last year.

Last year there were really four candidates for Wrestler of the Year who in a typical year had the credentials to win, Kazushi Sakuraba, Rock, Toshiaki Kawada and eventual winner, HHH. If you look at the year everyone had this year, I don't think anyone based on this year would have cracked that top four. I think everyone knew this year was coming down to Keiji Muto and Steve Austin, since the vast majority of ballots had them 1-2, usually with Muto as 1. HHH and Chris Benoit missed too much of the year due to injuries, and Rock was absent for too long making the movie and had less impact than expected upon his return. Sakuraba had the drawing power and impact, but he lost his two big matches. Kurt Angle and Yuji Nagata were awesome in the ring, but both were in the role of putting others over in the big matches most of the year and only having a taste (two short WWF title reigns for Angle where he was portrayed except for the very short second one as not being one of the top stars even with the belt, and a ridiculously short WCW title reign; G-1 tournament for Nagata) of the brass ring. From a shoot standpoint, Sakuraba was the biggest star, and in a pro wrestling sense, when it comes to drawing power and value to a company whose popularity increased throughout the year, he has the credentials to win. But he only did five matches during the calendar year, and lost his two biggest matches. I considered Angle, Vanderlei Silva and Antonio Nogueira for third. From a shoot standpoint, Nogueira had an incredible year with wins over Volk Han, Hiromitsu Kanehara, Valentijn Overeem, Gary Goodridge, Mark Coleman and Heath Herring, plus won both Pride's world heavyweight title and the RINGS tournament. Realistically, nobody has ever accomplished as much in a one year period since shooting was popularized in 1993. Silva, in a Wrestler Observer sense when you throw in charisma and value to the promotion, plus winning the title and going unbeaten (two wins over Sakuraba plus wins over Dan Henderson and Shungo Oyama), doesn't have as many wins, but the quality of his wins are probably better overall. Angle inside the pro wrestling ring was awesome, but his face turn flopped and he wasn't a draw, and his character limits him to being a foil rather than a true threat.

As for first, I went with Austin. Granted, his heel turn was part of the reason business went down. But he did headline the biggest show in history with Rock, and consistently had great matches. Austin headlined virtually every major WWF show of the year, something Muto didn't with New Japan. Muto did keep All Japan's big shows alive and interesting when by all rights, they should have and would have died in Budokan much sooner. He was a huge surprise that was made by the fans, in that he was scheduled to be a one-month transition champ, only so Toshiaki Kawada could get the Triple Crown over the summer and not beat Genichiro Tenryu to do it. Instead, Muto as Triple Crown champ got over so big, he was a landslide winner for Wrestler of the Year in Japan, ended the year with six different belts and holding both the All Japan and New Japan tag titles simultaneously. And the Kawada win was held off seven months further. But if you took Austin out of the WWF this year, they'd have gone down a lot faster as well. In the ring, Austin was probably more consistent, although Austin never had one performance that could match Muto's big match performances against people like Genichiro Tenryu and Steve Williams. Muto in the ring has far more limitations, both in style because his matches have to be more realistic and he can't rely on gimmicks like table breaking, chair shots, the blade or fighting in the stands to have a great match. Also, physically, he's in worse shape. While doctors at times have suggested Austin should retire since 1997, Muto heard the same stuff since early 1990. Bottom line is Austin was a bigger star and was more consistently good. He was a bigger ratings draw and a bigger draw overall. Muto picked his spots due to his knee problems. But his ring psychology is far ahead of everyone else in wrestling. WWF, New Japan and All Japan went down this year in terms of popularity. All also had pockets of upswings. Overall, WWF was a tons bigger company in more of the spotlight. Muto's win was under 80s criteria where belts meant something, and in Japan, his winning all those belts and holding them at the same time I'm guessing was part of it. I can't say I was surprised he won, but I was surprised it was so one-sided.

If he hadn't been injured, I think Benoit was on his way to an easy win in Most Outstanding. His injury left it wide open, but the consistency of Angle made him a deserving winner. Nagata is more versatile and carried some bad people to good matches, perhaps better than Angle. But it seemed that Angle came through regularly on television and almost always on PPV. Nagata also did, but not to quite the extent. The one name really underrated was Momoe Nakanishi, who probably should have been near the top.

Best Box Office draw is also very difficult on a lot of levels. Austin and Rock drew that monster Mania number, but both of their drawing power was a disappointment after that point. Sakuraba, who won, was a big draw, but only had a few fights. If Austin or Rock each did five shows over the year, they'd be huge draws for those five shows. From a TV ratings standpoint, Ogawa blows everyone away. Austin and Rock couldn't dream, even in prime time network, against each other, of doing a 21.1 quarter and that wasn't his only big number. On every major show he appeared on, he was the big ratings draw on the show.

Feud of the Year was so weird because the top seven were all so totally different. Sakuraba vs. Silva was two matches, one building the second, which took both the promotion and MMA to heights it had never reached as far as money drawing in history. It also had a very different emotion to it, because of the reality, more than any other feud could have. Infernales vs. Infernales was a total old school group vs. group territorial feud. They worked with each other several nights per week for most of the year. They had good matches, although in most cases not as good as their WWF counterparts. But the program did create new headliners in Ultimo Guerrero & Rey Bucanero and increased business. Rock vs. Chris Jericho was the most entertaining from an interview standpoint, and they had some really great matches, the most memorable being the No Mercy match which came a finish away from being Match of the Year. Austin vs. Angle was built up all summer when they were partners in a too short lived Odd Couple deal and had the great match at SummerSlam and a few others also very good. But they were miscast. Angle had been a total geek far too recently to be an effective face. Austin wasn't an effective heel. And the program was short. Rock vs. Austin I figured all year on being No. 1. Their Mania match was the biggest grossing match of all-time, and they had a sensational match to boot. They did a great angle to send Rock off (the follow-up, where Rock was suspended as opposed to injured, was lame) in as far as people couldn't wait for him to come back on Austin. Then he came back. And never mentioned Austin. When they did the matches at house shows, because TV had gone in another direction, they didn't do well. I couldn't pick this one largely for that reason. One special match, even record breaking, isn't a feud. You need the series and this one peaked with that first match and went down. A good feud should send interest picking up from the first match. All Japan/New Japan wasn't done well, although there were some great matches early in the year. Benoit vs. Angle wasn't a main event program, but they had the best series of technical style matches in the U.S. in years, so it deserves consideration. For match quality, Nakanishi vs. Kumiko Maekawa deserved much better. They were up there with anyone, and both were elevated with the program. I guess when you throw everything out there, Sakuraba vs. Silva seems to be the best pick.

Tag team of the year was a landslide for Hiroyoshi Tenzan & Satoshi Kojima. I think you have to go back to the great teams of the 80s for a team this good. All the All Japan teams of the 90s didn't team together as frequently, although they had better matches when they did and the guys making up the team were better wrestlers. Tenzan & Kojima were very much like a Stevens & Patterson type team that went for years on top and was clearly the best tag team in the world. The booking of New Japan was such that house shows were going to hurt because the guys brought in on the big shows always beat the guys that had to draw money on the house shows. But Tenzan & Kojima week-after-week were carrying the shows and carrying some very limited workers to great matches. They became the longest reigning IWGP tag champs in history, before doing the losing streak gimmick and the split tease. Perhaps the tease, and not going through with it, was a good idea, because everyone was given the program and probably realized how bad it would be to break them up. Guerrero & Bucanero as far as value to the company may have been even more, since they carried the entire year. But in the ring they weren't as good. Gedo & Jado were consistently good in the mid-card for New Japan and charismatic as well. It's tough for mid-card teams to win, although Shinjiro Otani & Tatsuhito Takaiwa and Edge & Christian both have in recent years. In both cases the competition was different, lacking that blow-out winning team, and also Otani & Takaiwa had much better matches consistently than Gedo & Jado and Edge & Christian's best matches when they won were better. Dudleys were the best of the WWF lot. Usually good (and the exceptions, like with Kane & Big Show or Undertaker & Kane, it's understandable). Hardys faded once HHH destroyed Jeff. Edge & Christian broke up. Muto & Taiyo Kea had all the belts, but didn't team as often. If Benoit hadn't been hurt, and he and Jericho would have stayed as a team the rest of the year, they probably would have finished in the top two or three.

Muto winning Most Improved was an obvious pick. He looked to be a year or two past retirement in 2000, and he wins Wrestler of the Year in 2001. Nobody in the 23 years of the poll has ever made a turnaround like that. If anything, he should have won by a greater margin, although he did nearly triple the number of votes for second place Van Dam. When I look at spots two through ten, I was more perplexed. Van Dam didn't do anything this year as good as his matches in 1999 and 2000 with Jerry Lynn. Only thing is now he's in WWF getting a big pop aside from ECW. Maybe most improved fan reaction since he's been appearing before larger crowds, but in the ring I don't see a big difference. That's just location, not improvement. Kea was more focused on as a star, but he's been a good worker for years and he didn't improve to any shocking degree. Angle got better, but his real improvement was in his first two years. Test improved, but not to any great degree. Jericho actually got worse. His work most of 2001 couldn't touch his work in 2000 for a variety of reasons, until the Rock program kind of revitalized him. If people remember, he was struggling in the mid-card until October and had some great matches and some disappointing matches. Granted, the San Jose tag match was off the charts, but that push quickly was dropped and the payoff match on PPV in the three-way with Austin and Benoit, most felt he was the weak link. Probably people were swayed by him being mid-card for much of the year and ending as the only world champion in WWF. Black Tiger clearly deserved second. To go from WCW jobber that nobody noticed to one of the top ten workers in the business. Granted, unlike Muto, he was more held back and a victim of people who couldn't see talent if the word "talent" was rubber stamped on the best performers' foreheads. But it was still a night and day transition. American Dragon improved a lot. So did Osamu Nishimura, and the fact he was recovering from cancer made it all that much more impressive. Prototype's improvement over a very short period of time was remarkable. I can't comment much on Low Ki because I never saw him regularly until this year, but what I saw of him in 2000 compared to 2001, he made great improvement.

Best on Interviews? It's more acting in sketches than interviews to draw money. Austin, Rock, Angle and the McMahon family dominated the interview time (and even so, the McMahon family was nowhere to be seen on the list). I always found Rock more creative than Austin. Both come across better due to delivery and charisma. Heyman, Ric Flair, Mick Foley and Jim Cornette were all able to do those emotional interviews that take things to a different level. Rock did a few so entertaining they were close. I can't recall Austin doing one at their level, but every interview he did got over huge because he's Austin. Heyman did the most memorable, but he didn't do enough to win an award. Flair did a few, but was gone most of the year. Foley also was rarely around. Cornette's best stuff wasn't seen by many, but when he did the injury angle (largely to build around him getting legit hernia surgery), his work in making the injury legit and tying it into wrestling was better than any interviews this year aside from Heyman's two memorable promos. But like Flair and Heyman, he didn't do enough to win, which leaves Austin, who was in the top spot all year, and Rock, who was in the top spot most of the time he was around.

Rock and Austin were most charismatic, in that order, by a landslide, unless you consider Antonio Inoki. Inoki is actually at a level well above either of them, but he's not around in that focal point as a competitor level. I'd rate Sakuraba third, in that he had that superstar aura about him. Van Dam is far more charismatic than Jericho. Jericho was given a bigger push at the end of the year, but when both were pushed at the same level, the crowd responded far better to Van Dam, even though Jericho was both the better worker and superior interview. From a crowd reaction standpoint, Tito Ortiz actually is right up there with Rock and Austin, but his lack of a mainstream name took him out of the running. Muto and Jericho both belonged in the top ten, but not as high as they finished. Angle also finished too high. He has good charisma, but really, considering his talent, it should be better, but that can be easily explained due to his role.

Best technical is another category that Benoit was running away with before going down. I can't argue with any of the placings. Blue Panther to me seems a little low, but it's not surprising because he's one of those guys who is so great you almost don't notice it. That isn't good by the way. This is a business about being noticed. Being so good you don't notice him may be great for an offensive tackle, but not a pro wrestler.

Austin was very deserving of the Brody award. Murakami was too hit and miss, and Austin was out there with a more difficult schedule since Murakami wasn't full-time. But Murakami's brawls were far more believable in his good matches. HHH and Benoit had injuries thwart them. Both probably would have been top contenders if not. HHH may have won. Van Dam I don't buy. Because they gave him the hardcore title and he's billed as a hardcore wrestler, I think he's way overrated as a brawler. He's a unique acrobat. He has a few cool kicks and he's willing to take some bumps from high places, but his punches and forearms are below average. Kasai is just insane, and not in a good way. Actually, Raven isn't underrated as far as where he finished, because he didn't do any serious brawling the last few months of the year, but he really was the best hardcore wrestler WWF had because he came up with new spots instead of that kind of repetitive style the hardcore division usually is. He was, based on what he did early, underpushed as a brawler.

Dragon Kid was also my pick as Best Flier. He's nowhere near the overall worker Rey Misterio Jr. was in the years he won, but he's very close when it comes to moves and far above the pack. Van Dam is a pretty amazing flier because he's 230 pounds, but can't match Dragon Kid or Ricky Marvin. Where Marvin loses to Dragon Kid is that even though both miss spots, Marvin misses a higher percentage, although he also works with a wider variety of foes. As far as a high flier who is an awesome worker, Cima, Black Tiger, Tiger Mask and Nakanishi are the best. Really, if you throw in age, Santo should be in there, because he's 39 and in big matches, flies with the best of them, and is a better worker than virtually all.

For Overrated, I've got a lot of thoughts. Undertaker is overrated. No question. But the effort is there. I can't say that for Show, who isn't in shape and is about ten years younger. Show doesn't get the push Undertaker does, though. Watching New Japan so much, I can only say Scott Norton should have won. He was IWGP champion during the year who pinned every top Japanese guy at one point and makes Undertaker look like Kenta Kobashi in his prime as a worker. Chyna and Naoya Ogawa are good candidates. Ogawa at his best is marginal and totally stunk up the Fukuoka Dome show. Of the others mentioned, Kane is overrated of course, but not to the degree of the top guys. Bagwell on the other hand, is ridiculous overrated within the profession because years ago he had potential to be a great worker, but it went to his head or something because he blows. I can tell you that within the business I've had people all year describe him as an average worker with an attitude problem, and he's been nowhere near average for years. He can get a pop, but he can't draw. He can get a reaction because he has a unique ring entrance, but can't keep it during a match. I still remember Vince Russo telling me Bagwell was going to be as big as the Rock. My eyes rolled then and they roll now whenever these new groups think he's a main eventer. Lita is overrated in that people think she's a good worker, when she's really just got a cool huracanrana and some charisma. Yeah, Rayo totally sucks and is usually a main eventer. He may be Norton level. Universo 2000, as perennial world champ, belongs in that category. As for Kazuyuki Fujita, a lot of people resent him being made world champ and he certainly didn't have world champ talent or charisma. But unlike Norton, he had good matches. His title match with Nagata was great, granted more due to Nagata. His match with Frye was good. His match with Takayama was one of the most underrated big matches of the year in that shoot fans refused to accept it even though it sold out a major arena and was one of the best bouts of the year. His match with Sasaki was better than most Sasaki matches. His match with Norton wasn't good, but it was better than Norton's matches with a lot of people considered a lot better. Granted, he held the IWGP title, which was the No. 2 belt in the world for most of the year, so in a sense, I can see the overrated tag, but not top three.

Actually, I think Lance Storm is talked about so much as underrated that he's really overrated by a lot of fans. Don't get me wrong. He could handle a lot more of a push than he gets because he actually has a unique charisma if it's focused on. And he is a good worker. But that lack of charisma being charisma can only get you so far. Not as good as some when it comes to timing, but better technically than most in WWF. But Hayashi was probably the best in-ring performer in WCW this year, and after the sale, got one try-out dark match, stole the show, was then shipped to HWA and never heard from again, to the point I almost expected him cut. Daniels is ridiculously underrated, particularly because he's such a great promo. Hopefully one of the upstart groups will give him a chance this year. American Dragon is a very talented wrestler who ended up losing his job so I guess he belongs on the list. I think this year proved Black Tiger was probably the most underrated as Silver King in all wrestling for years. Seriously, Jericho won the award the past two years, and Black Tiger is a better wrestler, and got no push at all.

This was a real bad year for Promotion of the Year. Of the three big ones, WWF and New Japan both went down in popularity this year. It'll be interesting to look at New Japan annual figures, but WWF's will show a big decline, particularly after April. WWF is the biggest because they've been the biggest, but no way I could consider them even with the talent, production and big show quality. WWF is a company built, for better or worse, on writing, and it wasn't good for much of the year. They were lucky that they started with so much popularity, and have such a great crew of performers and generally delivered in the ring on PPV, or they'd have declined a lot worse. New Japan's booking was catastrophic. Both companies had times where they had excellent work rate, and other times not so good. Pride, because it's popularity increased so much, has to be No. 1. It's so difficult due to limitations for a shoot group to be at the popularity of a worked group, but Pride has surpassed New Japan. Also, with the exception of the lackluster December show (which doesn't count in our awards until next year anyway), they lucked out (because in booking shoot, there is a lot of luck involved) in that all of their shows were good. While there are cultural reasons why this is easier in Japan, it's still equivalent of UFC surpassing WWF, and if that happened, UFC would win Promotion of the Year as well. Toryumon also increased popularity a lot this year and provided probably the most all-around entertaining ring product. UFC had all very good to great shows but one, and made great strides by clearing PPV and had a great quality of fighters and match-ups, but the year was still a mixed bag because they didn't make a mainstream breakthrough. The importance of that first show is something that it will take them a long time to undo.

Best TV is tough. I think I'd go with Smackdown. Unlike Raw, it usually wasn't overbooked. It had a lot of good wrestling. Some weeks it was flat. There were some great episodes of Raw this year but there were also a lot of really bad ones. New Japan had some great shows but a lot of bad ones as well. There was a period it was downright awful, but like last year, came on strong at the end. EMLL has had consistently good matches, but unlike the WWF's bad matches with the women, their matches with Porky, Rayo and the Dinamitas were 2/3 falls and went forever. Their booking was generally good. Good feuds and they made new stars. I really enjoyed OVW this year, but not enough for top three. It's good for what it is.

I'm not going to get match into Match of the Year. It's all a matter of preference. I saw every match in the top ten and all were tremendous in their own way. All the honorable mention matches were as well. I couldn't put Nagata vs. Fujita at that level, although it was excellent for its style. My favorite was Nagata & Iizuka vs. Kawada & Fuchi, but any of the top ten in any order I wouldn't give much of an argument.

I'm just glad El Hombre sin Nombre or El Hijo del Rayo de Jalisco Jr., was Rookie of the Year. For whatever reason, it seems like a deserving candidate from Mexico has to be better to win, and he was better, and I was afraid he wouldn't win. The most intriguing name is B.J. Penn. I guess if he's to be considered, he probably could have won and you'd make the apples to oranges comparison. But people like Takashi Suguira (who is very good) and Randy Orton (who will be very good some day) aren't in Hombre's league and in that sense, probably finished where they should have but came closer than they deserved.

I was shocked Paul Heyman won best non-wrestler, which is kind of the remake of Manager/Valet of the Year. What he did was deserving. He saved two dying PPVs (Invasion and Survivor Series) with his mic work, but aside from that, he didn't do much in that role. Ric Flair is ridiculous to have finished that high. He arrived on 11/19. Even if he was the greatest from that point forward, you can't win an annual award on 11 days of time. Realistically Vince McMahon or William Regal should have won. I was glad to see Kenny Bolin in the top ten, because as a traditional manager, he was the best I saw all year. Then again, he was just about the only one I saw regularly who was any good.

Best TV announcer was going to Jim Ross. It was a foregone conclusion. I will say this about Jim Cornette. I think he was the best this year as far as being able to get me interested in matches that were really pretty bad. He also did a good job of getting all the key storyline points across, which is easy since he's the booker and he knows where he's going. Ross' job in that sense was harder because he was neither the booker, nor did he or anyone else most of the time know where anything was going. Very interesting comparison of the votes for Lawler and Heyman. I can almost guarantee if this was done in August, those results would be very different. For some reason, Bas Rutten cracks me up.

Worst announcer. Seriously, does anyone watch Excess? Okay, I know. I was the only one. And I only saw it a few times. Trish Stratus was horrible. Except for Tony Schiavone, how can anyone even be considered from the major promotions? I mean, Tazz. Is he that bad? Compared with Schiavone? No way. Poor Arn Anderson. He was thrown on the air at the last second because Lawler didn't come, had never done it before, and managed to crack the top ten. Luckily people didn't see Bert Prentice. Michael Cole hardly looks bad after that. Actually I think the idea of Cole, this kind of pretty-boy looking guy thrown out there who really doesn't know much, giving these moves silly WWF gimmick names like edge-a-cution for a DDT that Jim Ross won't lower himself to using, and sometimes calls them wrong so everyone can make fun of him once a show, is worse than Cole himself deserves. Maybe it's the idea of people like Cole and Stratus that's most annoying. Nobody cares whether the announcer is good looking or not. Trish on Excess was a flop, and they learned so much from it, that they put Terri on, who comes across even more nervous in front of a mic. The flirting with Coach really drew ratings, didn't it? It's so funny when they think it's important to have pretty people as hosts that know nothing, when the best announcers ever were Jim Ross, equally as good if not better after Bells Palsy, and Gordon Solie. I think if anything what we've learned this year is that announcers don't draw ratings. Announcers being able to get over issues that people care about, draws ratings. Having big implants or nicely moused hair is irrelevant because the ones who need to look like cosmetic stars are the performers.

Best show? Because it was so big and had so many great matches and overall delivered on just about every level, I agree with the consensus for Wrestlemania. Even if other shows could equal its wrestling quality, none had its atmosphere and its wrestling quality. Having seen both the June 6 New Japan and June 8 All Japan (which highlights of both aired on the same two-hour TV show on TV-Asahi and that was the best wrestling television show of the year), one thing I can say for sure. The All Japan show was much better. Not that the New Japan show wasn't really good. If I had to pick a third place, it would be the 12/14/00 New Japan PPV show because the Kawada & Masa Fuchi vs. Nagata & Takashi Iizuka match was my pick for Match of the Year, and two excellent undercard matches. 1/4 Tokyo Dome tournament could have challenged for first because from a wrestling standpoint it was even better, if it wasn't for the Choshu-Hashimoto finish. It had better wrestling and nearly the atmosphere as Wrestlemania, but that finish took it out of the running. One excellent match after another with a main event that was one of the most underrated big matches of the year. The WWF No Way Out show on 2/25 in Las Vegas is up there as well. HHH vs. Steve Austin went 39:27 in what was one of WWF's best matches of the year, and Rock winning the WWF belt from Angle wasn't far behind. One thing that is clear looking back on 2001, is that as bad as many aspects of the year were, when it came to great major shows and top matches, there really were a lot of both. When people complain about the quality of wrestling these days, they're full of it. The problem is often everything but.

We'll follow up on the rest next week."

and

"It's being reported that the Ken Shamrock-Don Frye match on 2/24 at the Saitama Super Arena will be the biggest combined payday for fighters in the history of MMA. There is talk that the winner of this match would face Antonio Nogueira for the heavyweight title in July at the Honolulu show. Realistically, Ken, who has been fighting at about 211, should trim down to 205 and face Silva rather than Nogueira. Also announced for the show at a press conference this week were Vanderlei Silva defending the middleweight title against Kiyoshi Tamura and Antonio Nogueira facing Enson Inoue in a non-title match. Tamura is a good opponent for Silva, who has the chance to become a Superstar Graham type of heel draw as champion where the new super face comes in to try and challenge him and there is already a lot of buzz in Japan on this match since it's Tamura's first match in a long time and debut with Pride. While a zillion guys have played that role since Graham as a long-term heel champion with them rolling out new top babyfaces to challenge him constantly (WCW based its promotion for years around that concept), I bring Graham up because none could match his record as a draw, partially due to them not compromising the value of the belt in those days. I can see them throwing charismatic Japanese at Silva and him knocking them down and packing buildings until someone comes along and beats him, who will instantly make themselves a superstar. Tamura is the perfect opponent in that he's well known by wrestling fans and has quality wins, but stylistically should be someone Silva should beat. The question with Tamura is how much have his injuries healed as he was really banged up the last year of his career, largely since losing his RINGS world title to Gilbert Yvel in late 1999. At his best, Tamura's strengths are submissions and kicks. Silva has never been submitted, and in a stand-up war, his kicks won't hold up to Silva's punches, and Tamura isn't great at blocking punches since RINGS rules were such that he didn't have to worry about closed fists until late in his career. His takedowns are good, but not as good as people like Dan Henderson and Mike Van Arsdale who weren't able to ground Silva. He can't match Silva standing. With Yvel, who stylistically is similar to Silva standing (but not as good overall because he can't block takedowns as well nor get off his back once taken down as well), Tamura took tremendous punishment, probably way too much, in his title loss. Inoue has been retired since losing to Heath Herring on December 23, 2000. He largely comes across as a somewhat of a name fighter than Nogueira should handle. He's talked about enlisting in the army after the fight. Herring, Carlos Newton and Igor Vovchanchyn were also announced for the show. Some talk of Newton vs. Pele, a tremendous match on paper, but that's not announced at press time. The Gracies have announced Rodrigo Gracie debuting on the show. The announcement of Vovchanchyn at this point circumvents the UFC's planned Pedro Rizzo vs. Vovchanchyn match scheduled for the 3/22 show. They are looking for a new opponent to face Rizzo."

and

"Royce Gracie is saying that he'll fight in Pride in September, which will be the first round of a planned tournament. Pride is looking at doing a four-man tournament with Gracie, Sakuraba, Silva and a fourth fighter, although Sakuraba has publicly stated he doesn't want to do a tournament because of how difficult it is physically. He may mean a one-night tournament as opposed to a four-man where he'd only have to fight one fight a night, however."

and

"Pride schedule for the rest of the year is a 2/22 minor show at Korakuen Hall where they will debut an octagon ring (not a cage like UFC but an eight-sided ring). This will feature mainly lesser names with the idea of making stars on these "B" level shows to bring to the major shows. They'll likely have more "B" shows throughout the year. The rest of the "A" level shows after 2/24 are 4/29 at Yokohama Arena, 6/21 at Saitama Super Arena, 7/22 at Nagoya Rainbow Hall, an August or September show in Honolulu outdoors at Aloha Stadium which is tentative for 8/23 (as one fighter noted to me this week, given the luck MMA has, you can almost bet it will rain that day), the beginnings of both a heavyweight and middleweight tournament in September at the Osaka Dome, the finals of the tournaments in November at the Tokyo Dome, and a December show back in Fukuoka."

January 28, 2002:

Muto, Kojima, and Ishizawa have all given notice to New Japan and are headed to All Japan, which engenders reflections: 

"Ishizawa, 33, was a personal protege of Hase when he broke in with New Japan in 1992 after failing in his bid to make the Olympic team in Greco-roman wrestling. Ishizawa was a big wrestling fan from childhood, with a huge wrestling collection of magazines and masks, who noted upon jumping that he'd be able to achieve one of his childhood dreams in All Japan, if he could form a tag team with Abdullah the Butcher. It was Butcher's matches with Inoki in the early 80s that got him interested in pro wrestling, which is why he went into amateur wrestling and was so successful. Ishizawa said that he decided on 1/3 that he would leave and said it wasn't a money issue. There were hints that Softbank, a billion dollar Japanese firm which holds a minority interest in SkyPerfect TV, the company that airs New Japan PPV events, was behind the jumps after an early report in Tokyo Sports. No other media in Japan seems to have followed up on it. Other reports are that all three wrestlers will be earning less money since All Japan has a lower salary scale than New Japan, but left because they would have the ability to own a piece of the company and be able to market their own ideas as to what pro wrestling should be, as each had frustrations with the direction, or probably more perceptively, the scattershot directions, that New Japan was taking. Ishizawa said as junior heavyweight champion, he would always have a low position in New Japan. He said once his contract expired he would explain more on why he was leaving. He said he knew All Japan was in trouble and did note he went through Hase. He said he made the decision that no matter what he would have been offered by Baisho in contract negotiations this week, it wasn't going to matter. It is believed that Ishizawa didn't like doing shoot matches, particularly since the first one with Ryan Gracie in 2000 nearly destroyed his career. Of course, the rematch made his career. He felt he had to do it since Inoki had taken him on as a protege and because he was such an awesome amateur wrestler, Inoki thought he could represent New Japan well in shoot matches. All Japan has no interest in locking up with companies like Pride or K-1, as that's more Inoki's elusive dream about getting mainstream sports respect for pro wrestlers as legitimately the best fighters around. This dream has done a number on New Japan, because unlike mixed matches in years past that were worked for the wrestlers to go over, the type of matches that built Inoki's mainstream popularity in the 70s, the wrestlers are being put in non-worked matches and legitimately risking their reputations. Ishizawa had better hope that Muto & Hase get immediate booking power, because All Japan has never done as good a job with junior heavyweights or submission wrestlers as New Japan. Unless they strengthen relations with a promotion like Toryumon and actually push the guys as anything but an undercard novelty, All Japan doesn't have any depth whatsoever when it comes to name opponents for him."

and

"Michiyoshi Ohara, who put on a poor performance in a shoot match against the much smaller Renzo Gracie on the 9/24 Pride show, to the point New Japan wouldn't even bring him back on tour for the rest of the year, was offered a new contract with a pay cut, and didn't sign."

and

"Pride is attempting to put together not only a Carlos Newton vs. Pele Landi match (still not official) as well as a Heath Herring vs. Igor Vovchanchyn match for the 2/24 show. We've heard reports that the latter match is already signed, which on paper is a hell of a match."

February 4, 2002:

"Former New Japan CEO Hisashi Shinma has been writing for about a month in a low circulated porn magazine called Asahi Zeno (no relation to TV-Asahi which broadcasts New Japan TV), largely doing stories that have gotten little response that Inoki was never the best fighter or even best worker, but they would pay the best fighters and wrestlers to lose to him to create his legend type of thing. Stuff that everyone deep down knows but probably most don't like to admit. Shinma was booker during one of the company's most successful periods ever in the early 80s and was Inoki's right-hand man from the 70s through the early 90s when they had a split because he claimed he could no longer sit back and watch Inoki do his works as a Senator that he was doing as a wrestler. He wrote this week about the story and claimed Muto left because he didn't agree with so much mixing with Pride. He said that Chono hated Inoki's ideas and it would be much better for the company if Chono wound pu in control. He said Fujinami changes his mind too often to be President, but he does so because he'll speak his mind one day, then have to reverse himself because he has to ultimately cater to Inoki at the end. He said that Yasuda was mad at Inoki because he only got half of what he was promised for the 12/31 match. It said when he went to Inoki's house in Los Angeles, he found out that Inoki and his brothers were living a lavish lifestyle while he was living in a one bedroom apartment. Shinma stated that Kanji Inoki (the real life person) was a bad guy who uses others' money but admitted that Antonio Inoki is and would always be a superstar national idol inside the ring and he wished Inoki would turn into the Antonio Inoki that everyone wants him to be."

and

"Pride officially added three more matches to its 2/24 line-up at the Saitama Super Arena. New matches are Igor Vovchanchyn vs. Heath Herring, Carlos Newton vs. Jose "Pele" Landi, both as mentioned in last week's Observer, and Daijiro Matsui vs. Rodrigo Gracie. With Don Frye vs. Ken Shamrock, Vanderlei Silva vs. Kiyoshi Tamura and Enson Inoue vs. Antonio Nogueira already announced, this is one loaded line-up. On paper, the Vovchanchyn and Newton matches look to be tremendous. The Vovchanchyn match looks on paper to be a slugfest. When it comes to throwing fists, Vovchanchyn should have the advantage but he is giving up reach. On the ground, Herring looks to have the advantage with a wrestling background, but Vovchanchyn has surprised people of late submitting Valentijn Overeem and Gilbert Yvel in recent fights. Landi should have the stand-up edge on Newton, but Newton is very talented with the submissions. Haven't seen Rodrigo Gracie, but Matsui is kind of a designated pro wrestler undercard jobber in this group. This Gracie is said to be an excellent grappler but untested under MMA rules. Another match that has been talked about but not signed yet is Guy Mezger vs. Renzo Gracie, which matches up two big names. Mezger on paper should have the edge because he's a better striker and is bigger and stronger and should be able to keep Gracie from taking him down. A big question in the Silva-Tamura match besides how fully Tamura has recovered from being overworked in RINGS, is Tamura's adapting. Tamura is a "sport fighter" if you get my drift, used to fighting within certain rules. His punch defense isn't strong because he learned fighting open-hand style where you didn't get as much damage from the blow. He's great at submissions from a work pro wrestling standpoint, but has never shown it against top level fighters. His kicking, particularly to the body, is excellent. He's never been in a match that allows punches to the face or kicks to the face on the ground, and that's Silva's style."

and

"Pancrase drew a real sellout announced at 2,350 to Korakuen Hall on 1/27 with Yuki Kondo over Mitsuyoshi Sato in :32 of the second round with punches from the mount. The 4/29 Pride show from the Yokohama Arena will be a Pride vs. Pancrase theme like a best-of interpromotional show similar to the K-1 vs. Inoki show on New Years Eve that was such a business success. At the Pancrase show they announced that Pancrase fighters would be going to the Pride show but said it hasn't been formally decided who would be going but they expected the decisions to be finalized within two weeks. They did announce Sanae Kikuta as the headliner going. There is an attempt to try and lure Royce Gracie in to headline that show as they believe Kikuta can beat him and that way Kikuta can get a rep for that win as a way to chase Silva, and beating both would make him a superstar. Kikuta at the Pancrase show specifically mentioned he wanted Royce, Silva or Mirko Cro Cop."

February 11, 2002:

Still dealing with the awards issue!

"Antonio Inoki as Promoter of the Year is a very interesting pick. He was very influential. As important as Vince McMahon is to the WWF and pro wrestling in the U.S., his power begins and ends with his own company. Inoki manipulates the entire industry not only in wrestling, but has a hand in kickboxing and MMA. Inoki's mixing up New Japan, Pride and K-1 led to tremendous live gates and TV ratings success. In the long run, was that good for K-1? I'm not sure. Was it good for Pride? Probably. Was it good for New Japan? No. I'd eliminate McMahon from consideration this year for the same reason as in the booker award. Was the WWF in better shape at the end of last year due to McMahon's actions as promoter than it was at the beginning? No. Were the moves McMahon made those that strengthened the company over the course of the year or weakened it? Vince got and deserved the award when he built the company. Being the only major promoter in the U.S. during a year of attrition is not a good qualification. Naoto Morishita lucked into some things, as mentioned, but they did sign up the best fighters, put on great shows and the company strengthened itself and increased business as the year went on. In a comparison, after watching the WWF and Pride shows immediately after 9/11, that while Don Frye and Bradshaw may have given almost the exact same interview and there were some excellent interviews on the WWF show (Lance Storm, for example), Pride handled the situation with so much more class, and it wasn't even their country. Jacques Rougeau and Ultimo Dragon both deserve major praise for being so successful with smaller groups. I would consider Cornette much stronger as a booker than a promoter. Dana White deserves some credit in that the profile and popularity of UFC was tons higher at the end of the year than at the beginning and the cable breakthrough was a huge advancement. Still, they spent so much to make progress and it's too early to ascertain if they made as much progress as they needed to. And besides, that Carmen Electra as spokesperson idea made the Lex Express seem like the idea of feuding Austin with McMahon.

No doubt shootfighter of the year was gong to be a three-person race, Vanderlei Silva, Tito Ortiz and Antonio Nogueira. they all faced top competition in high profile matches and were unbeaten for the year. Kazushi Sakuraba may have been the biggest star, but he lost twice. Randy Couture lost once. Pedro Rizzo lost twice. B.J. Penn hadn't won a title. My pick was Nogueira because of the variety of his wins. He won both the 32-man RINGS tournament and the Pride world heavyweight title in the same year. Silva had his two wins over Sakuraba that were more high profile and a win over Dan Henderson in a hell of a fight, so you can't argue it as a bad pick. Silva was the bigger star and more charismatic, but I think what Nogueira accomplished was more impressive inside the ring.

Can't argue with the Randy Couture vs. Pedro Rizzo first match as Shoot match of the year. It was a title match with as much back-and-forth drama as any match this year. First Couture had it all but won. Then Rizzo. Then Couture again. By the end, it seemed Rizzo was on the verge of winning. The decision could have gone either way. Both guys showed guts and heart to come back from sure defeat. The second Sakuraba-Silva was more an event. It was a good fight, but it didn't come close to Couture-Rizzo. Nogueira-Heath Herring was an excellent match, with Nogueira showing some incredible skill level and versatility. But the difference to me is that while it was exciting throughout, it was evident Nogueira was winning the entire way. He was never in any serious trouble and for that matter, Herring was never that close to being stopped, whereas Couture and Rizzo were each on the verge of being stopped in their first fight. Matt Hughes vs. Carlos Newton had the best finish of the year and was a good fight. The first Silva-Sakuraba was a great short fight and ended up being the catalyst for the biggest money fight in history, but it was less than two minutes long. Rizzo-Josh Barnett was the best standing slugfest. That was one of my favorites because even though he lost, it was the fight that made Barnett's career, showing that even in shoot, sometimes the quality of the match means more than the outcome. Kazuyuki Fujita vs. Yoshihiro Takayama was a great fight for what it was. It was shunned by a lot of people ahead of time because it was two pro wrestlers, and even afterwards it was dismissed even though it was very exciting. The reason it was an exciting fight is you had two guys with no stand-up defensive skills that were pounding on each other. But it was still a tremendous main event on one of the best Pride shows ever."

and

"Numbers for Pride were almost identical comparing this year with last year. In 2000, Pride averaged an estimated 25,050 per show, figures that were inflated by running two events at the Tokyo Dome. This past year the figure was 24,532, nearly identical but probably slightly more impressive because they ran one Tokyo Dome event. If you include the New Years Eve shows in the averages, which were affiliated with Pride through Antonio Inoki, it ups last year's average to about 26,186 and this year's to 26,132."

and

"In Weekly Pro Wrestling's shoot readership awards poll for 1999, Muto was voted MVP nipping Misawa by a slight margin. It was actually the magazine readers that led to the Kazushi Sakuraba MVP award in 2000, since they voted him third in 1999, opening those awards by fans choice up to Pride. Sakuraba was also voted rising star of the year. Misawa vs. Vader from the Tokyo Dome was voted Match of the Year over two different Muto vs. Tenryu matches, a Misawa vs. Kawada match and Sakuraba vs. Royler Gracie. Kobashi & Akiyama vs. Hansen & Taue was named Tag Match of the Year. Lioness Asuka vs. Chigusa Nagayo was named womens match of the year and Ayako Hamada & Akino vs. Etsuko Mita & Mima Shimoda were womens tag match of the year. Vader won by a landslide as best foreign wrestler over Hansen, Curry Man (Christopher Daniels), Frye and Semmy Schiltt."

and

"After the first round of the Pride Grand Prix tournament, a balloting was held among the eight winners for bracketing in the Grand Prix finals to take place that May at the Tokyo Dome. The leading vote getting match by the fans was to match up Royce Gracie and Sakuraba, who wound up in a match with Sakuraba winning in 90 minutes which is now an all-time martial arts classic."

and

"WWF talks of doing a joint promotion in Japan with Dream Stage Entertainment (Pride) broke off."

and

"Mammoth Sasaki of FMW announced he would be fighting on the 2/22 Pride show at Korakuen Hall against Kim Jong Wan, who fought in the original days of Pancrase and wasn't very good at the time. This is basically a Pride try-out type of show for new fighters."

and

"The final two matches for the 2/24 Pride show will be Tim Catalfo vs. Tom Erikson and Alex Steibling vs. Wallid Ismail. Catalfo was Bill Goldberg's original Vale Tudo trainer in Atlanta and also worked with me in UFC in judging a show. He's an ex-college wrestler who has to be about 45 years old, but is a very tough old guy. Erikson, who isn't young himself, has so much size on him has so much on him. Catalfo did beat former UFC star Dave Beneteau but lost to Bobby Hoffman at King of the Cage events over the past year."

and

"Both Pride and King of the Cage have applied for licenses in Nevada."

and

"Pride garnered a little bit of publicity early in the Ken Shamrock-Don Frye publicity tour when p.r. head Jackie Kallen made a grandstand challenge to Mike Tyson to fight in their ring. The five-day tour around the country opened in Kallen's home city of Detroit, and while there was a decent amount of local pub, it did little to push the 2/24 PPV show itself. The Detroit Free Press story was about Kallen, a former boxing manager and trainer who is having a movie produced on her life called "Against the Ropes," where she is played by Meg Ryan, which, is quite a stretch from a looks standpoint as they look absolutely nothing similar. The movie is accurate about her life. Well, other than that besides herself, every other character in the movie is a fictional character. And in the movie, she's single, without children, when in reality she's married with two children. The story noted Pride is popular in Japan, and Thomas Hearns, who was at the press conference, said he was in particular a fan of Dan Frye, to which Frye had to respond by saying, "Uh, it's Don." Toward the end of the story it was mentioned that Frye is facing Shamrock on 2/24, although it doesn't say where, or mention that it's a PPV match. But it does say Kallen has claimed the Pride promoters are prepared to offer Tyson more money than he's ever earned in a boxing match (yeah, right), to face the Frye-Shamrock winner."

February 18, 2002:

"The week-long press conference tour Pride had with Ken Shamrock and Don Frye has to ultimately be considered a flop. The only media story out of five press conferences was the Detroit story we wrote about last week. With all the thought that Shamrock is going to mean something in the U.S., it's been too many years and even though he had WWF stardom, he's been off that TV for a few years now as well, plus, he was a star in the WWF at the beginning, but was never portrayed that much as a bad ass by the end. He had cooled off a lot, partially because they knew he was leaving and there was no need to keep him hot. There was almost no press interest in the names, and whatever press came were largely connections Jackie Kallen had because of her experience doing p.r. for big boxing matches, and the boxing press will never accept MMA or do anything but make fun of it. They saved the pro wrestling angle for the final stop of the tour, on 2/8 in Los Angeles at the Hard Rock Cafe at the West L.A. Beverly Center. The angle started with Frye doing his interview, saying that he and Shamrock were supposed to fight at Ultimate Ultimate in 1996 when Shamrock broke his hand and couldn't continue in the tournament after his win over Brian Johnston. Frye said he didn't think Shamrock really broke his hand, but instead lacked testicular fortitude (well, somebody is getting some use out of those Mick Foley interviews). Actually, Frye was right as Shamrock damaged his hand, but X-rays after the fact did show there wasn't a break. Frye claimed that Shamrock had talked shit about Dan Gable (never heard that one) and amateur wrestlers. Frye said he's been wanting to fight Shamrock for five years but Shamrock would never fight him. Actually, there's some truth to that, as a few years ago when Frye challenged Ken (a really messy situation, when Ken and his father had a falling out and actually Bob was going to be in Frye's corner, although Bob and Ken later made up and Bob regretted his actions, and you thought the McMahon family soap opera was a bit much). Ken had refused to face Frye, saying he wouldn't give him the benefit of a big payday. Now, since Ken likely needs the big payday, that has changed. Finally Shamrock grabbed the mic and yelled, "I'm not going to sit here and listen to this punk ass bitch here talk crap." He said he would beat Frye's ass right there. Frye stood up and they did a staredown and Shamrock called Frye a chicken, but luckily there was a glass of water conveniently there for Frye to throw in Shamrock's face. Shamrock went after Frye, with Antonio Inoki trying to separate them. They rolled around with no punches thrown, although Shamrock's face was marked from a scratch. After it was broken up, Shamrock challenged Frye to take it outside. Kallen grabbed the mic at that point and said that now both fighters would be available for interviews. Apparently that was unintentionally hilarious. And just as funny, both Frye and Shamrock then sat down for lunch a few tables apart. Kallen then said that the winner of the fight will challenge Tyson. In reality, the plan seems to be for the winner to face Mark Coleman, and the winner of that match challenge Antonio Nogueira for the title. Not surprisingly, this all got virtually no mainstream press in Los Angeles. More surprisingly, it got very little coverage on most MMA websites which shunned it as a pro wrestling angle, and got no coverage at all in Japan even with Inoki being in the middle of things."

and

"In the Vegas and overseas odds on Pride, they are Vanderlei Silva (-500) vs. Kiyoshi Tamura (+350), Carlos Newton (-115) vs. Pele (-115), Igor Vovchanchyn (-130) vs. Heath Herring (+100), Wallid Ismail (-165) vs. Alex Steibling (+135), Rodrigo Gracie (-150) vs. Daijiro Matsui (+120), Tom Erikson (-220) vs. Tim Catalfo (+180), Antonio Nogueira (-340) vs. Enson Inoue (+260) and Frye (+125) vs. Shamrock (-155). Funny to see Shamrock the favorite because I have yet to speak to one person within the fight world who thinks Shamrock will win, which is kind of amazing considering the people I speak with. So here goes, Silva, Pele, Herring, Steibling, I don't know (have never seen this Gracie in MMA and don't feel like picking blind), Erikson, Nogueira and Frye. Dan Henderson vs. Ricardo Arona, which is on paper a very competitive match-up, is scheduled for the 4/29 Pride show at the Yokohama Arena."

February 25, 2002:

"Akira Maeda was arrested on 2/14 on aggravated assault charges stemming from a May 25, 2000 alleged attack on Pancrase President Masami Ozaki at the Keio Plaza Hotel in Tokyo. The timing of the arrest as being the day before the final RINGS show was not a coincidence. The incident stemmed from Maeda seeing Ozaki talking in the hotel restaurant with Jeremy Horn, and, believing Ozaki was trying to steal Horn from his promotion, he attacked him. Maeda had a reputation in Japan of having a terrible temper and punching people, almost always smaller than him, when he got mad, and because of his celebrity status, it came without reprisals because nobody would ever press charges. He had punched other wrestlers, although them pressing charges would come off badly, as well as innocent reporters. The show ended up drawing a packed house of 4,280 at Yokohama Bunka Gym and Fedor Emelianenko became the final annual tournament champion and last world heavyweight champion beating Chris Haseman in 2:50. They had two worked matches with RINGS' all-time biggest foreign star Volk Han going over Andrei Kopylov (his rival as the biggest foreign star in the early days, and both were legit Russian submission masters) and Tsuyoshi Kosaka and his good-friend Caol Uno did a 5:00 exhibition draw. The Han match was billed as original RINGS style with rope breaks, points, no closed fists and more old UWF-style pro wrestling. Uno's match was billed as an exhibition for five minutes. Maeda got in the ring and thanked the fans for supporting the company for ten years plus. He said that he was hoping to re-organize and start the promotion back up later this year. The RINGS dojo will be closing this week while the company office will remain open until 3/30, at which point the office staff will all be let go and the few fighters contracts will be done. There was no word about the future of the eight foreign RINGS gyms that the company had. To show the sign of finality, even the dojo ring is being sold. The other top match was Hiromitsu Kanehara go to a draw with long-time regular Mikhail Ilioukhine (some said the draw was a gift). Of the top guys, Kosaka will likely fight in UFC soon. Kanehara will most likely wind up in Pride. UFC is looking for Japanese stars because they've got ideas of doing something there. Kanehara, who has been around so long he's almost be considered a pioneer, would probably have to drop to 185 to be competitive and with his thick build and short arms, his body structure may have betrayed him now that others have the same level of experience and athletic ability. Kanehara is one of those fighters who had a lot of talent and was in many exciting fights, often with people much bigger than him, but that has now worked against him because of all his injuries. He said after the show that he needs a few months off to rest, but he'd fight if he got an offer, and talked about Pride or Deep."

and

"Yuki Kondo beat Eiji Ishikawa by unanimous decision to headline the 2/17 Pancrase show in Osaka. After the match he talked about going to Pride and issued a challenge to both Vanderlei Silva or Kazushi Sakuraba in Pride."

and finally!

"Pride on 2/22 at Korakuen Hall in their first attempt at doing a smaller show, besides having the Mammoth Sasaki (FMW) vs. Kim Jong Wang match we reported on, will also include former Pride and Battlarts fighter Giant Ochiai, former UFC early days fighter and long-time MMA vet Anthony Macias (he was the then-skinny guy that Dan Severn suplexed all over the place in Severn's UFC debut), Daijyu Takase (who has fought in UFC and Pancrase before), Amir Rahnavardi (who was destroyed in Pride by Gary Goodridge) and the infamous Joe Son, who was Kimo's manager for his famous match with Royce Gracie, and later fought in UFC on his own and took shot after shot to the groin from Keith Hackney back in the early days."

WHICH BRINGS US VERY MUCH UP TO THE POINT UP TO WHICH WE NEED VERY MUCH TO BE BROUGHT and hey even for me that was an awful lot of old Observer bits in one go. Incredible! But these are fascinating times of which we speak (the most fascinating in the history of this, our weird pursuit), and Dave is as ever and always an able guide (indeed the ableist [not like that; Dave's cool]) amidst and among these fascinations. I am kind of keen to watch the tiny 後楽園ホール Kōrakuen Hōru show that is next! I have certainly seen some of it before but quite possibly not all of it! Until then, I hope you are well! I even hope that for you after then, honestly. Thank you once again for your attention. We'll talk soon!