PRIDE.11（プライド・イレブン）2000年10月31

PRIDE.11
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2000年10月31日
開催地日本
大阪府大阪市
会場 大阪城ホール
試合数全8試合
放送局フジテレビ
入場者数13,500人

AFTER THE TWENTY-THOUSAND-WORD PRIDE 10 MEGA-POST WE ARE BACK NEARLY AT ONCE AND THIS TIME MUCH MORE SUCCINCTLY as that last one got away from us a little, didn't it; thank you for your patience. On this day, this Hallowe'en of twenty years past, we find ourselves in the relatively cozy confines of 大阪城ホール Ōsaka-jō Hōru, which is a a good-sized hōru for sure but, at the same time, plainly no SEIBUドーム / Seibu Dōmu, I am sure we can all agree. The copy of this PRIDE I have offers no preamble but immediately parades its fighters before the lore-wise Osaka crowd, and it is interesting to see who(m[st]) in particular that crowd, so lore-wise, welcomes most enthusiastically. They are pretty big on 谷津嘉章 Yatsu Yoshiaki! And 桜庭 和志 Sakuraba Kazushi is riding pretty high off of, you know, all of the things. It is notable, I think, that though the crowd roars for the announcement of 小川 直也 Ogawa Naoya against 佐竹 雅昭 Satake Masaaki, which we might very well expect to be on something less than "the up and up", only Satake comes out for the merry little parade; Ogawa totally big-times it. None of this is surprising, necessarily, and yet it is all the same, I feel, notable. Our commentators this night are, as they were for Pride 10, Stephen Quadros and Eddie Bravo, and I will again endeavour to keep my commentary-commentary to a bare-minimum, having been duly chastened by my friend Joe for having strayed from that path (somewhat egregiously, maybe?) last time out. 

Before we properly begin, I would also like to apologize to those of you who had left comments on various posts throughout this blog in recent months that I did not respond to until just the last few days. I had not been checking the email account associated with this blog (it is not my main one), which is really the only way I become aware of comments on, say, an ASTRAL STEP show from years gone by (both in the primary world of our experience and the secondary world of subcreation or I guess even in the tertiary one of emotion recollected in tranquility [order these however you like of course]), and so I missed them. I do thank you in all sincerity for reading and for writing, and hope that you'll continue to do both. I'll get better! At checking for comments, at least. Again, thank you.

TOM ERIKSON is demonstrably huge and an excellent wrestler (also demonstrable) and so is a fitting challenge for young Heath Herring, who we last saw getting the best of
"Very Short-Notice" Willie Peeters (a sobriquet-rouge or nom-de-guerre of my own coinage for how he was on very short notice). And indeed Erikson has Herring down the merest moments in, and is pretty steady on top with his 腕緘 ude-garami (arm-entanglement) and 首挫 kubi-hishigi (neck-crush) attacks. Herring's best attack from the bottom comes when he swims his right arm in and around in hopes of swinging towards a 膝十字固 hiza-juji-gatame knee-bar, but it only gets so far ("not all that" is a kind of far). After several minutes of this, none of them bad, the fighters are restarted standing, and when they are, Herring is ALL FIRED UP and indeed raring to go, and a few nifty kicks later he has Erikson down and finishes the match with the naked strangle of 裸絞 hadaka-jime at 6:31. 

WANDERLEI SILVA AND GIBERT YVEL are next and however violent we might expect that to be, those expectations are met and perhaps even exceeded only seconds in:

The sound this makes, which I assure you was horrific, leads to speculation betwixt our commentators as to whether Yvel is wearing a plastic protective cup or a metal one, which is I suppose a line of inquiry worth pursuing, but either way Gilbert Yvel's groin is at present a ruin, perhaps the kind of ruin that offers true and lasting testament to a once-great civilization, but a ruin all the same (round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away). Wanderlei Silva has been yellow-carded for this seemingly unintentional but extremely real foul. In time, Yvel's trainer makes his way across the ring towards Wanderlei, grabbing his groin (his own groin I mean; that was inelegant) and wincing all the while as though to indicate to Wanderlei that what Gilbert Yvel's problem is right now, you see, is his groin. 

Yvel's trainer also makes a kind of book-opening hand-gesture to indicate, I hope, what the problem is with the cup right now (one shudders to think what is up if that hand gesture did not refer to the cup). Silva, who has no reputation as a dirty fighter that I am aware of (aside from, like, pharmaceutially), is contrite. Yvel gets on the "house mic" and winces out an entirely unnecessary explanation, saying to the crowd (lore-wise; Osakan) that he always wants to fight for them, that if it was a broken finger of something he surely would continue, but, in this instance, "it is so pain," and he kind of turns his head to the side as he says this in a way that is relatable even to those of us who have never experienced pain at the level of having Wanderlei Silva blast us in the groin. I'm sure there are plenty of painful experiences that exceed it (childbirth continues largely unabated) but you look at this and you are just like "this . . . this is not my kind of thing." What makes this all the sadder is the stark contrast we see between Gilbert Yvel's condition here and his earlier, parade-of-fighters "Streetwear" Gilbert Yvel, jaunty as you like:

It's sad.

THE AFOREMENTIONED 谷津嘉章 YATSU YOSHIAKI IS NOW BEFORE US and what can we say of him, in brief: Japanese wrestling Olympian at the 1976 Montréal Olympics, a games notable for being low-key æsthetic, first of all, but also for being the games competed at both by my first sensei Jorge Comrie (-93kg draw here) and "Bad News" Allen Coage (+93kg draw here); and later Yatsu tagged with Jumbo Tsuruta in All-Japan as a team called "The Olympics" (that's so great). There is a Meltzer bit from one of his Olympic-specials that I should just repost here, shouldn't I:

"Montreal, 1976: [. . . ] Yoshiaki Yatsu, at the time only 19 years old, represented Japan in the unlimited weight class in freestyle wrestling but failed to place. Yatsu turned pro after the boycotted 1980 Olympics, debuting in Madison Square Garden on December 29, 1980 against Jose Estrada. After a few years in the United States, he returned to Japan in 1984 a top worker. At his peak in 1985, he was probably one of the top five workers in the entire business. Because Yatsu was considered by Japanese amateur wrestling officials as the greatest superheavyweight the country ever produced, but his timing was bad, as he was too young in 1976, was expected to medal in 1980 but Japan boycotted the Olympics, and he went into pro wrestling without achieving his goals in amateur, he made a somewhat risky move going back into amateur wrestling in 1986, and easily captured the Japanese freestyle tournament breezing through the competition. However, in preparing for the Asian games and the 1988 Olympics, the International Olympic Committee struck him down, ruling that pro wrestling was a sport and by the bylaws at the time, he was ineligible for amateur competition. While Yatsu remained a star in All Japan, first as Riki Choshu's regular tag team partner and later as Jumbo Tsuruta's regular tag team partner called "The Olympics," the latter team holding the All Japan Double World tag team titles on five occasions over a two-year period as well as beating Bruiser Brody & Jimmy Snuka for the 1987 Real World Tag League tournament, he was never the performer in the ring he was before being struck down by the IOC. Yatsu quit All Japan in 1990 to join Super World Sports, and when that group folded, largely worked indies and a few New Japan matches, largely as part of Masa Saito's final run, after that point. In 1992, the IOC reversed its ruling and allowed pro wrestlers to compete in the Olympics (which is why Russia allowed Svetlana Gundrenko and later Aleksander Karelin to do pro wrestling in Japan and why Dan Severn, who still had Olympic goals at the time, went into pro wrestling), but by that point, Yatsu had suffered health problems and was 35 years old. Yatsu still wrestles and is the owner of the indie group, the Social Pro Wrestling Federation."

That's from the September 4, 2000 Observer (the Pride of our present writing is only the next month after! weird!). To wikipedia, now, to bring us up to speed on the years since:

"In recent years, Yatsu has been the president of a transportation company.[2] On November 30, 2010, he returned to the professional wrestling ring to wrestle his retirement match.[2] The match took place in front of 500 fans at Shinjuku Face in Tokyo, and saw Yatsu and Koji Ishinriki losing to Tatsumi Fujinami and Tiger Mask, when Yatsu submitted to Fujinami.[2] In September 2015, Yatsu came out of retirement and began competing for smaller promotions. In April 2019, he debuted for Dramatic Dream Team (DDT), but after a show on June 2, Yatsu's career may have ended a second time."

and:

"In 1991, at the age of 35, Yatsu was diagnosed with diabetes. On June 25, 2019, Yatsu underwent an operation to amputate his right leg below the knee, as bacteria had entered his bloodstream and his right toe was progressively necrotic.[3]"

and indeed:

"In December 2015, he became a supervisor for DEEP."

That's neat!

I would add to that only, as my friend Cory shared with me (and I believe I may have in turn shared with you previously), that Yatsu now has a wrestling-specific prosthetic and, according to DDT Pro, is ready to go! As soon as things are able to once more go! 

In addition to all that, I would reiterate once again that this forty-four-year-old Yoshiaki Yatsu is very much loved in 大阪城ホール Ōsaka-jō Hōru circa October 2000 as he steps in the ring to face Gary Goodridge carrying, as Stephen Quadros rightly notes, a somewhat fatalistic look on his face. It quickly becomes apparent that Yatsu has no idea about striking at all (I say this in all sympathy, without an ounce of condemnation) and his only hope, if he can be said to have one, is to take Goodridge down, which he doesn't come especially close to, but when he ducks in (a little) and grabs a leg (a little) the crowd is so happy for him. Yatsu is felled by a low kick, but while down there grabs an ankle as though he were young Sakuraba (he is not). What a gamer though! The crowd just loves him, and if I may be so bold as to speak for the group for a moment, so do we. Yatsu, we're told, has trained three months for this match, and the first six weeks of that was all just cardio, no technical work. The uppercuts Yatsu is absorbing and walking away from right now are just shocking, and the crowd, as you might expect, are like HWAAAAAIIIIIIII. YATSU WITH THE SINGLE-LEG TAKEDOWN! HE DROPS BACK FOR SOME MANNER OF ASHI-KANSETSU THAT MAKES MAD THE GUILTY AND APPALLS THE FREE and nobody knows what kind of leg-lock it could actually be; the commentators are unclear on it and so am I (it may not be a thing). Oh dear, Gary Goodridge has escaped and delivered an illegal knee to the head (when did they bring those in permanently?); this is the last thing Yoshiaki Yatsu needs. That's a yellow card and a restart standing, and Goodridge unloads on Yatsu's poor bean (the bean of the human head) until the referee has no choice but to finally call it at 8:51. Wikipedia has this one down: "After spending multiple years out of the spotlight, Yatsu, aged 44, received a big money offer to fight for mixed martial arts promotion Pride Fighting Championships.[2] On October 31, 2000, Yatsu faced Gary Goodridge in Osaka.[2] Yatsu, who hadn't had any stand-up training at all and hadn't wrestled in 13 years, was defeated at 8:58 in the first round.[2] Despite being dominated, Yatsu received a standing ovation from the crowd due to the amount of damage he absorbed without quitting, even trying a leglock at a point.[2]" The cheers as he leaves the arena are moving to me.

Just ahead of the match between Alexander Otsuka (loved by all) match against Mike Bourke (as-yet-unknown to us but our hearts are open), three-time Olympic judo gold-medalist 野村 忠宏 Nomura Tadahiro is introduced to the crowd:

Nomura had just won his second -60kg gold a month earlier in Sydney, and would go on to win in Athens, too. That's wild, both for the obvious reason that three straight Olympic gold medals is absurd (no one else has done that in judo), but especially so at a weight division where speed is super important and so competitors tend to have much less longevity. For a heavyweight to remain competitive at the highest level later into his or her twenties and into the thirties is one thing, given the way heavyweights play (we'll see if Teddy Riner is able to win a third straight gold medal in Tokyo -- hopefully soon!), but for a lightweight to have done this is, as the guy who gets Flute-of-the-Fallen-Tiger'd towards in both Shogun Assassin and on Liquid Swords (same guy) tells us, "ridiculous." Nomura's uncle won gold in Munich, and his father coached 細川伸二 Hosokawa Shinji to a gold medal in 1984, so it was just all judo all the time for those guys. He remains a major sports figure in Japan, like I'm pretty sure I am remembering this right to say that he was one of a couple of people who were supposed to welcome the Olympic flame to Japan a little while ago. He has handled other crucial roles as an emissary for the sport, too, like awarding an honourary 講道館 Kōdōkan black belt to John Wick at the Tokyo premier, as seen here:

I had known about this for a while before I was able to read any kana but once I could I was delighted to see that the honourary black belt, though presented to Keenu Reaves, was in fact awarded to ジョン・ウィック . . . ok let's see Ji-yo-n U-i-kku . . . John Wick! Tell me that is not delightful to you as well. We recently had occasion to revisit the John Wick series in its great entirety, and chose this time to watch them in reverse chronological order, which felt, in certain ways, revealing. My wife noted how close this experience was to that old joke about what you get when you play a country song backwards: you get your house back, you get your wife back, you get your dog back. It's true! I had been, and I think remain, pretty sure that the second one is the best, as it functions as an unlikely meditation on radical orthodoxy in the overall context of judo/sambo-abetted revenge-murder, with the first movie close behind in its ability to impress upon us a complete world of judo/sambo assassins/hoteliers through subtlety and suggestion rather than exposition, and so the third must be I suppose the least great of the bunch and yet I love it so much especially all the fights towards the end! One wonders how many of them Tadahiro Nomura has seen, now that he and Keanu Reeves are, as you see from the above, totally best friends. The English-language PRIDE broadcast doesn't tell us who Nomura is, and if you didn't recognize his face or make out his name when spoken by the ring announcer in the background, you'd never know, and this was (and remains) a shortcoming of these PRIDE tapes: I wouldn't say "pretty much anybody watching," but I think a lot of people watching these Japanese martial arts shows would be at least passingly interested in who the Japanese celebrities at ringside were, right? If only in an Iron Chef, "things must be very busy at the prefecture!" kind of way if nothing else, right? I really don't think I'm alone in this, but who knows. Whenever it's a judo person, which happens now and then, I know who it is, but they show all kinds of other people, and I have no idea, unless it's Eric Clapton (that was just a couple times). I don't blame Quadros or Rutten or Bravo or Ranallo or Trigg (who am I forgetting?) for this; it seems like a production thing. 

IN ANY CASE THE TIME OF OTSUKA IS UPON US and Quadros mentions the time Otsuka had a FIGHTING INVESTIGATION TEAM BATTLARTS 格闘探偵団バトラーツ Kakuto Tantei-dan Batoratsu match in the afternoon and then a Pride match against Igor Vovchanchyn that same night -- what a character! Otsuka's opponent, whom he has just dropkicked, Mike Bourke, fights in a tank top and long loose shorts. He is not unskilled; it's just that his overall vibe is very King of the Cage. I am patting myself on the back about that bit of analysis (that is what brings the people back to TK Scissors: A Blog of RINGS, the analysis) after I check his "Tapology" page (as he has no wikipedia entry) and see that no fewer than twenty of his twenty-eight professional matches are King of the Cage! Including a loss to 大山 峻護 Oyama Shungo (!!!) (of whom my friend Russell Mac once sent me a neat little figure [thank you once again!]) at King of the Cage: Wet and Wild (!!!). I see too that Mike Bourke's final match came in 2010, again for that venerable promotion, a first-round win over Ken Shamrock, who you may recall from his Peteyward exhortations in our previous post. That KOTC match is available on Youtube in it's entirety here; to date, it has thirty-seven views, thumbs neither up nor down, and this lone comment: 

Young Gab

2 weeks ago

that was plain awful to watch

Otsuka vs. Mike Bourke is anything but, though, as Otsuka has secured the rarely-seen double arm-bar!

Mike Bourke taps with his knee against Otsuka's bottom, which is new to me: in my experience, when you apply this technique (in the chaos-taking of 乱取り randori, I mean -- I never came anywhere near this technique in competition), people just say taptaptap, which is no less valid. I'm trying to think of the first place I encountered this technique, whether it was on the mats, or as depicted in the great Syd Hoare's A-Z of Judo, an exceedingly useful text that attempts a catalogue and demonstration of all named techniques in the IJF and 講道館 Kōdōkan syllabuses (useful enough) but of all major judo reference texts, as well. I couldn't tell you how many ikkyu and shodan gradings I've lent this one out for! (Actually I could probably figure out pretty quickly but who has the time.) Hoare lists this one as "ryo-hiza-gatame" (double-knee-hold/lock) and credits it to Ma Méthode de Judo, Mikinosuke Kawaishi (1956), which is very much posted in its entirely at the Let's Play Judo tumblr here (I invite you to explore its intricacies!). What a finish for Alexander Otsuka!     

And now 小路晃 SHOJI AKIRA, whom I believe was announced in the parade of fighters as "The Last Real Japanese" or something to that effect, which seems needlessly essentialist to me. His foe this day shall be the loathsome Herman Renting, known well to us from his many RINGSappearances. Unreal Fire Pro World-uploader CARLCX, whose write-ups about his edits are as great as the edits themselves (and they're great!), has this to say about Renting here:

"Tales from the MMA jobber file, #9: This one doesn't even feel particularly fair, honestly. Herman Renting was one of the numerous students of the legendary Chris Dolman, and as with a number of said students he spent most of his career--nearly a decade--in the shoot-style wrestling promotion Fighting Network RINGS in primarily worked matches.

His time in MMA, by contrast to a lot of his peers, was a brief curiosity. He only had four matches in his career that are generally agreed not to be works, and even though they took place over six years their timeline is extremely brief: The first two happened within three weeks in 1995 and the latter two within three months half a decade later in 2000/2001. He went 1-3, with his only victory coming in one of those 1995 proto-MMA style-vs-style matches, using his Dolman-honed sambo skills to take a decision over wing chun loyalist and former Rickson Gracie victim David Levicki (who would also retire at 1-3, funnily enough). His most notable loss, and the reason he's included in this collection, was his appearance at Pride 11 against the elemental spirit of Japanese MMA, Mr. Pride himself, Akira Shoji--and as was Shoji's job at the time, despite being visibly outsized he bounced Renting by armbar in just under four minutes.

Renting has his place in history, but that place is much more in the annals of RINGS than in MMA itself, and unfortunately, RINGS is sort of doomed to obscurity, a thing known primarily to hardcore tape traders and older-school puro enthusiasts. If you want to read more about him, or it, check out the TK Scissors blog, a fascinating and incredibly dense watchthrough of one man's insane tape collection: http://tkscissors.blogspot.com/

Moveset, stats, logic and four attires (RINGS Battle Dimensions '92 vs Satake / Pride 11 vs Shoji / RINGS Holland vs Levicki / RINGS Holland Heroes Live Forever vs van Gammeren)."

My thanks to CARLCX for the very kind words! Let me say, looking at Renting's "Pride 11 vs. Shoji" ring attire right now, as he who is attired therein taps to 腕挫十字固 ude-hishigi-juji-gatame at 3:48, the CARLCX edit is totally spot-on, as always. I am not sure why the commentators both speak of this as a juji-gatame "from mount" when it was from the back: Shoji attempted one from 縦四方固 tate-shiho-gatame/the mount a few moments earlier and Renting escaped; the commentators are suggesting he came back to the same technique from the same position and this time got the details right, but it's not the same position, which makes certain details a little different, though the fundamentals remain unchanged. That's what is so great about them! Others of course feel that fundamentals are a crutch for the talentless (easily the best Kenny Powers joke to me). Akira Shoji matches are always a pleasure, and this one was certainly no exception. 

高田 延彦 NOBUHIKO TAKADA VS. IGOR VOVCHANCHYN is enough to make all but the most trusting among us wonder whether or not something might be up. I do not remember anything at all about this match, but one assumes there is simply no way Nobuhiko Takada, said to have made arrangements in his worked bouts that people leave his handsome face alone (it is, in fairness, quite handsome, his face), would expose what is mortal and unsure to all that fortune, death, and danger dare, right? I am thinking here of the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to. I guess we'll see! Takada comes out in a stance that is either legitimately terrified, or convincingly shoot-style terrified, his handsome face (we have mentioned already that it is handsome) held as far from Igor's fists as seems at all viable. It is awfully similar to the Fire Pro "mysterious" posture, now that I take a moment to reflect:

Say what you will about Takada (we could never say as much as Tadashi Tanaka did in that one letter that one time; we have examined it more than once but most recently on the occasion of PRIDE 1 here), but his kicks to the leg rarely land without a satisfying *snurp*, and one does so here. HOLY MOLY IGOR IS THROWING IGOR FISTS KNOWN IN THE REALMS OF FIRE PRO AS RUSSIAN HOOKS AND THEY MIGHT EVEN BE REAL as Takada scurries away . . . and then succeeds in his application of the 朽木倒/kuchiki-taoshi/dead-tree drop! This is to say he single-legged Igor! Right to the mat! Vovchanchyn hugs him tight from here, just as one would expect Igor to do. There is a mighty bruise taking shape where Takada's kick so ably snurped in some time ago, look:

Takada lands several knees to the coccyx, which you don't often see. The crowd greets each with an enthusiastic HWWAAAAIIIII which should not surprise us, I suppose, but it remains remarkable the extent to which Nobuhiko Takada remains their guy. In fairness, I guess, what all has really happened to their guy, if we take the broad view? A nearly five-minute and then a nearly ten-minute loss to Rickson Gracie, neither of which is a big deal at all if Rickson Gracie is truly the great martial artist he is wisely celebrated as; a couple of shoot-style wins over Kyle Sturgeon and Mark Coleman that were credible enough if one were of a mind to wish to credit them; a quick loss to Mark Kerr when Kerr was the consensus best heavyweight in the world; and a decision loss against Royce Gracie in which nothing at all happened. And all of this occurred between the Takada-ages of thirty-five through thirty-eight (or nearly thirty-eight), when he is already old enough for you to convince yourself he has lost a step (which I'm sure he had), were you so inclined. What I mean to say here is that if you came to PRIDE 1 with Nobuhiko Takada as your absolute favourite guy, there's still plenty left to cheer for by the time you get to PRIDE 11. I had never really thought about that before, and had been low-key mystified by his enduring appeal. But not anymore, I don't think. Also, I'm sure that for those devoted still to Takada, the several triumphs of his student Kazushi Sakuraba have no doubt taken a lot of the sting out of the losses that so led the Takada-skeptic to be like "woof" about his martial endeavours (if I am using that term of the kids incorrectly, please forgive me). 

A restart standing has got to be bad news for Takada, and yet it is an ill wind that blows someone good (that someone being Igor). Takada high-kick! This is wild! Some nice low-kicks! Alas, Igor sprawls out and squishes down upon Takada's attempt at the two-handed reap of 双手刈 morote-gari, and now he is hitting him a good deal. Takada tries to stand, but Igor has a good grip around the waist, and squishes him down once more, this time onto his side, then his back, and before you know it Igor has attained the firm side control of 横四方固 yoko-shiho-gatame, at which point the camera displays to advantage the effects of Takada's earlier butt-knees:

      
Not long after Igor moves right up on top into 縦四方固 tate-shiho-gatame, which seems like a nightmare, the announcement of but one minute remaining in the round is met with a huge HWAAAAAIIIII. Takada holds on tight and makes it out of the round! Ricco Rodriguez is among Takada's seconds for this bout (a surprise to me for sure), and insists that Takada is one good takedown and some serious laying away from a win here. He might be right! 

Igor opens round two with a solid kick to the lead leg and then throws that Fire Pro RUSSIAN HOOK which causes Takada to kind of self-fell as he staggers back away from the punch in terror (I say this in sympathy, not disrespect). They are all tangled up in the ropes and so are restarted more centrally. An instant later, Igor is back to the 縦四方固 tate-shiho-gatame in which he ended the first round. Takada remains game, mostly hugging close but sometimes popping his hips up to attempt an escape. Igor traps Takada's arm in the manner of Fire Pro's CRUEL MOUNT but cannot maintain this cruelty; all the same, a few punches make their way through Takada's "shieldy-arms" and that's enough of that, Takada rightly figures, and taps the mat at 3:17 of the second round. If this was a real fight, and it may well have been, I actually think he did great! And if it was not a real fight, he actually did even better, in a sense, in that he created an entirely plausible simulation of a real fight. Either way, let's hear it for Nobuhiko Takada, who I am doing a better job of understanding now, I hope.  

If that last one had us wondering at the beginning (though far less so at the end), here comes 小川 直也 OGAWA NAOYA VS. 佐竹 雅昭 SATAKE MASAAKI, so look out! Every time he comes up I want to write a few thousand words on Ogawa (a figure of such rich complexity that, in response to a simple listener question many months ago, Fumi Saito said he would not even begin to offer a "mailbag"-style answer about Naoya Ogawa but would instead have to someday make him the subject of a complete Pacific Rim podcast episode [I await it eagerly! {I bet he forgot}]) but perhaps it will suffice to point you towards our PRIDE 5 and PRIDE 6 writings and hope that they will serve as notes towards a preliminary understanding of Naoya Ogawa (of what could that even consist?). Karate-hero Masaaki Satake is of course known to us as well, but let us remind ourselves of just what we have seen so far as concerns his efforts in PRIDE specifically: he lost quickly to a Mark Coleman neck crank (ah, but who among us), did improbably well against Guy Mezger, and recently defeated Kazunari Murakami in a bout that I think I would characterize as a strong shoot-style work, a credit (of its kind) to both participants (rather than competitors). I wonder what this one will be! Let's see let's see let's see! 

"OSSU!" is Quadros' correct comment here; "Karate vs. Judo!" is Bravo's (no less correct). As the camera tightens on Naoya Ogawa's about-to-fight-for-real-or-for-pretend-who-can-say face (such is the genius of this face he makes), the 大阪城ホール Ōsaka-jō Hōru crowd is the loudest it has been all night (for what has been a totally good show!):

O-GA-WA! O-GA-WA! O-GA-WA! is their cry as Satake fires in a bunch of stuff in a fulsome (in the sense "marked by fullness," not any of the bad ones) effort to make this look as real as he is able without actually by accident landing a clean one and knocking anybody out for real. I am convinced moments in that this is "all for show" but also that it is quite a show! Ogawa is leaning and ducking down in strange ways, which the commentators note is a lot like how Ogawa moved against Gary Goodridge (that's certainly true!). Satake is throwing big arcing punches that I am sure are unpleasant when they land but they are landing mostly in the, like, trapezius-zone; he hasn't really thrown a thing down the middle, and there hasn't been a single hard kick aimed at either the legs or the head. If that wasn't enough to convince us what this is, Ogawa hasn't clinched once yet (halfway through the round?), which would be inconceivable if he needed to win, let us say, "conventionally" (like "through winning"). There's a clinch! But nothing. The leg kicks have definitely picked up, I must say. Satake is cut up a little under the right eye, because Ogawa's punches, unlike Satake's, are coming in pretty straight so far, and landing stiffly. This is looking realer the deeper it goes as everybody gets bruised up and super sweaty (key elements of both vraisemblance AND verisimilitude), but it must be said that the crowd has reacted as though they have accepted it from the get-go, or at least been wiling to participate as though they accept it, willing to play along. That's the first round. I liked it! I wonder how exactly they'll "get to the finish." The second round begins just as the first, with loud chants of O-GA-WA! O-GA-WA! O-GA-WA!, but is soon extremely different because of how Ogawa grabs a leg for 朽木倒 kuchiki-taoshi but finishes it with a nice little 小外掛 kosoto-gake / minor outer hook and from there it is 寝技 newaza time: the entangled arm-lock of 腕緘 ude-garami doesn't do it, but once Ogawa moves from 横四方固 yoko-shiho-gatame to 縦四方固 tate-shiho-gatame, from the side to up top, and Satake gives up his back, it is the short-choke variation of 裸絞 hadaka-jime from there. Good finish! The commentators say that this was a great fight and I agree! Although it does seem that they maybe think the match was for real? So we might not agree on that part. But where our enjoyment is concerned? Complete accord! 

The main event, 桜庭 和志 SAKURABA KAZUSHI vs. SHANNON "THE CANNON" RITCH, cannot really match it, but that's okay. Shannon Ritch is a guy who fought a tonne but didn't really win much, and now that I check his record I see that I am understating both parts of that with radical severity: in 151 professional matches, his record is 58-89 with four no contests, and he most recently fought in January of this year (a calf-slicer loss to Glenn Sparv in Moscow [Russia]), which is shocking to me. Here's some good info (you know where it's from):

"Acting career

Ritch has been featured in two episodes of Walker, Texas Ranger as a Biker Gang Member and a character named Knight, Choke in 2011 as an extra, CSI Las Vegas as Thug #2, an episode of iCarly as a MMA Fighter, an episode of Numbers in 2010, an episode of Ultimate Soldier Challenge on the History Channel representing a military contracting company and most recently in 2017 the direct to DVD film, directed by Robert Parham and Warren Foster, Bullets, Blades and Blood and upcoming in 2018 No Way Out directed by Jeffrey D. Parker, distributed by New Vision Films. In 2017 Shannon started filming of a biopic centered around his mixed martial arts career, through HBO films, titled The Real Last Samurai and to be released exclusively on HBO in late 2019.[9]"

I don't know that that last part ending up happening but I have also learned that Shannon Ritch is an avid and proficient golfer! So good on him; he's doing all kinds of things and I hope he is well. Here, he loses in about a minute to the single-leg-crush of kata-ashi-hishigi, an Achilles-lock that you don't see end too many mixed fights necessarily but it kind of looked like his knee fared poorly in that hold, so it is understandable. Disappointingly, we are told that Sakuraba made his entrance wearing two different masks but we don't get to see it; this is like the Tadahiro Nomura situation described above but worse. 

But a really fun show! You know something, I think I actually enjoyed PRIDE 11 more than PRIDE 10, despite the many resonances both personal and historical that latter PRIDE (in this sentence, not in chronology) carries with it. Sakuraba vs. Renzo Gracie honestly feels far less significant to me now than it did when I first saw it or as I had remembered it (this is perhaps inevitable), as the context of the Kiyoshi Tamura KING OF KINGS loss a few months earlier and a better sense of what Renzo's previous Pride matches meant changes the experience of that PRIDE 10 match for me now, and yet it of course remains tremendous, so I do not wish to overstate any of this, but merely to state it. I really liked PRIDE 11 all the way through, and the prominence of the Naoya Ogawa match gave me occasion to think once more about how, in contrast to the sporting achievement of PRIDE, which, to oversimplify (but not really), was to take RINGS heavyweights and SHOOTO lightweights and put on some of the best bouts possible against the enormously compelling backdrop of Japanese network television arena/stadium spectacle, what they did promotionally (as we have been in mind of since the beginning of our examination of PRIDE and even before that, in the true RINGSblog era) was to sell first Takada, then Sakuraba, then Yoshida as national sporting celebrities, with Naoya Ogawa in there too whenever they could get him (but Inoki made things tricky). There is nothing new in any of what I have just said, but, I mean, that's about the size of it. I do not mean to suggest one part of this is more or less awesome than the other, the sporting PRIDE (always complicated) vs. the spectacle PRIDE (never complicated), in that both were indispensable, and the greatest, and I would like us to talk about all of it, so far as we are able. As surely we shall continue to so do when next we reconvene! Let's make that soon! Ah but where would we be (utterly adrift, in my view) were we not to first consult the works of Dave Meltzer TO SEE WHAT HE MAY HAVE SAID:

November 6, 2000:

"It was a mixed bag regarding the performance of the pro wrestlers in the Pride 11 Japanese only PPV show on 10/31 from Osaka Castle Hall. [I disagree, I think everybody did great! -- ed.]

A sellout crowd of 13,500 paid was drawn by using so many pro wrestlers, as well as the promotion of the Naoya Ogawa vs. Masaaki Satake match as the first ever mixed match involving Japanese mainstream superstars, one being a former world champion in judo and pro wrestling, against former world champion in karate and a K-1 superstar.

From most accounts, that match also appeared to be a work, which was what most insiders expected given that Ogawa has to be protected as Antonio Inoki's personal protege, with Ogawa scoring the expected win with a choke at 2:01 of the second ten minute round. Initial reports didn't indicate any of the other matches, including Nobuhiko Takada's loss to Igor Vovchanchyn, appearing to be obvious works. There were a lot of next day suspicions considering how long Takada lasted and how much offense he got in against the man generally rated as the No. 2 heavyweight in the world. It could have been a situation similar to the Mark Kerr match, which was not a "fixed" fight or one with a pre-planned ending, but an understanding that Takada isn't in their league and to take it easy on him while beating him to keep him credible since he's a drawing card who basically was the one the company was originally built around.

The show was considered a huge success both at the gate, as it sold out well in advance in Osaka, which is traditionally a tough market, and in the ring. There were said to be no boring matches on the show. The only negative is that the match which insiders on paper expected to be the best of the show, and potentially of the year, matching two of the best and most exciting stand-up fighters in the MMA world, Gilbert Yvel vs. Vanderlei Silva, ended quickly when Yvel was unable to continue after an accidental low kick and it was ruled a no contest.

Kazushi Sakuraba, the former pro wrestler who has been the MVP of the Pride organization with his wins over Royler, Royce and Renzo Gracie, was actually put over Ogawa vs. Satake, in the main event position, rare both because Ogawa has such a bigger national name from judo and pro wrestling, and because Sakuraba is junior heavyweight size. Sakuraba was also given what figured to be an easy touch in Shannon "The Cannon" Ritch, an American with an unimpressive record. Sakuraba wanted off the show due to him fighting so frequently over the past year, but in a compromise, was given what amounted to an easy opponent on paper, which turned out to be the case as he won in just 1:08. The highlight of the Sakuraba fight wound up being his ring entrance, to honor childhood hero Mil Mascaras. Sakuraba came out to the music "Sky High," a 70s tune that in Japan has long been associated with Mascaras, the biggest name Mexican wrestler ever in Japan. Sakuraba came out wearing a Mascaras mask, and one of his seconds, Minoru Toyonaga, who had done some pro wrestling and fighting in Kingdom, RINGS and Pancrase, came out wearing a Dos Caras mask. [It is *brutal* that this didn't make the English-language version!--ed.]

During intermission, Inoki came out and announced he was looking at putting together a return show on New Years Eve at the Osaka Dome. This technically would be a show with Inoki as the promoter and with Pride helping Inoki out, as opposed to a Pride show. New Japan was only able to draw about 25,000 fans in that building in May. Inoki, who got a bigger pop than even Ogawa and Sakuraba, said that he wanted to usher in the New Year with his famed, "Ishi, Ni, San, Daaa!" catch phrase (actually he's been doing that for decades before there was even a term called catch phrase). The Osaka Dome has in the past booked successful concerts, such as Aerosmith last year, for New Years Eve, but instead contacted Inoki to put together a fighting show.

1. Heath Herring of the United States, who began his career with Steve Nelson's USWF, scored a huge upset over previously unbeaten Tom Erikson, the aging former U.S. freestyle wrestling champion in 6:17. The match was one-sided in Erikson's favor, as he immediately took Herring down and went for several submissions including a key lock and a neck crank. Erikson also landed some punches in the first five minutes and Herring got a bloody nose. Erikson also appeared to be cut. When the action slowed, the ref ordered a stand-up. Herring became a new fighter at this point, landing two kicks, which put Erikson down, and Herring got behind him for a choke. Erikson grabbed the ropes like a pro wrestler, perhaps not realizing there are no rope breaks in Pride, but when he realized no break was going to be called, he tapped out.

2. Silva no contest Yvel in 28 seconds. The crowd was pumped for this match, popping big just for the stare-down. After one punch by Yvel, Silva kicked Yvel hard square on the groin, which appeared to be accidental. Yvel was in terrible pain, crumbled to the ground, and couldn't get up. Silva had no reaction to this, which is unusual for a fighter in this situation who would appear to have concern for an injured opponent. Yvel was on the ground receiving medical attention for about five minutes. It was announced to the crowd that they would come back and fight later in the show, but Yvel never fully recovered enough to do so. It is believed the two will be rematched on the 12/23 Saitama or 12/31 Osaka Dome show.

3. Gary Goodridge defeated 44-year-old pro wrestler Yoshiaki Yatsu in 8:58. Yatsu, who was a Japanese national amateur champion and two-time Olympic team member in 1976 and 1980 before being one of the top five workers in the business by the mid-80s, at which point, due to a number of factors including injuries and politics, he gained weight and his pro wrestling suffered although he was still a major star through the 80s and has worked mainly indies in recent years living off his old name as sort of a Japanese Greg Valentine type. As expected, Yatsu took a major beating, but the match was said to be a surprise as it regarded Yatsu's ability to take a punch and the great crowd heat. Yatsu's pro wrestling highlights before his ring entrance got a big pop, and he seemed relaxed in there, although once the bell rang, he played the role of a punching bag. In the first round, Goodridge pounded on Yatsu's head and delivered leg kicks. Yatsu only threw one punch the entire match. The crowd was into Yatsu for his ability to take punishment, and popped big when he went for takedowns, although he was never successful at them as he actually hasn't done amateur wrestling in 13 or 14 years since a 1987 comeback, when as a pro wrestling star, he competed in the Japanese national freestyle championships and won the heavyweight division, which, if you think about it, is one hell of an accomplishment. Yatsu went down once after a series of leg kicks, but Goodridge let him back up. Goodridge knocked him down again after a knee to the head and a hard punch. This time Goodridge pounced on him on the ground, but Yatsu went for a kneebar. While Goodridge wasn't in any trouble, the crowd went nuts. Goodridge got Yatsu's back and started punching, then hit a big knee to the head on the ground, which was illegal and he was given a yellow card and a stand-up. Goodridge came back with one low kick and several wicked uppercuts that were jolting Yatsu's head, the last one knocking his mouthpiece out. After a few more blows, the ref stopped the match late in the first round. Yatsu received a tremendous ovation from the crowd in losing.

4. Alexander Otsuka of Battlarts defeated Mike Bourke via submission in 2:37. Bourke came in at 270 pounds, so Otsuka probably was giving up about 80-85 pounds. About 90 seconds into the match, Otsuka surprised Bourke with a pro wrestling low dropkick to the knee, but that wasn't too effective even though it connected as Bourke was able to pounce on him and get a side mount and threw a few punches. Otsuka, from the bottom, went for a triangle choke, but Otsuka maneuvered it into a double armbar, tying him up so well that Bourke had to tap with his knees in about 3:00. After the match, Otsuka got on the house mic and talked about Battlarts' big November show in Tokyo.

5. Akira Shoji defeated former RINGS pro wrestler Herman Renting in 3:48. Shoji took Renting down, got the mount, threw some body blows and went for an armbar. He failed the first time, allowing Renting to get on top, but from the bottom in the guard [not at all--ed.], Shoji got the armbar for the tap out in about 4:00.

6. Igor Vovchanchyn defeated Takada in 13:17 a match that Takada had said if he lost, he would retire. Takada got the huge crowd pop and connected with some low kicks. Vovchanchyn got on top in the guard, and his leg turned an ugly shade of purple from Takada's early leg kicks. The match slowed and a re-start was ordered. Takada got a high kick, but Vovchanchyn wasn't hurt, as well as a few low kicks, but then went down and Vovchanchyn got his back, then side control and finally a full mount. Vovchanchyn pounded him at the end of the round with solid punches, including one that knocked his mouthpiece out, but Takada survived the round. Takada was bleeding from the ear by this point. In the second round, Vovchanchyn knocked Takada down with a punch and got on top, landing hard head punches from the mount. Takada went for an escape, failed, took a few more punches, before finally tapping out. The finish was anti-climactic to the audience, because Enson Inoue took tons more punishment from Vovchanchyn (a totally sick amount) without tapping so the crowd didn't expect the tap, but Takada did give a respectable showing.

7. Ogawa beat Satake in 12:01. Ogawa's mystery corner man turned out to be Keisuke Kawata, a member of the popular Japanese band the "Southern All-Stars," and he sang a new ring entrance song written for Ogawa before the match which got a huge reaction. [IT IS CRIMINAL THEY DID NOT SHOW THIS --ed.] One of the biggest noodle companies in Japan sponsored this match. Satake dominated the first round with leg licks [yikes! --ed.], turning Ogawa's right leg purple, described as looking like a spoiled vegetable. Satake was cut after a stuff jab under the eye by Ogawa. Ogawa never took Satake down the entire round. A lot of Satake's punches looked "half-power," combined with Ogawa never making a serious attempt to take him down, made it appear to be an obvious work. Crowd was chanting for Ogawa big time in the second round, as he caught a kick and got a mount. Ogawa threw a few punches from the mount leading to Satake quickly turning over and giving Ogawa his back, in a spot which is said totally exposed the match, and Ogawa got the choke for the tap out. After the loss, Satake popped right up with a smile on his face doing the "I did the job, but so what" attitude [An interesting read!--ed.]. Ogawa then talked about the UFO promotion that he's the big star of, that for all real purposes doesn't exist, asking fans to support the show. From a business perspective, the match served its purpose as Ogawa got another win in a highly publicized match. From the standpoint of Pride's credibility, that is another question.

8. Sakuraba beat Ritch with an achilles tendon submission in just 1:08. Ritch had a good look. Actually Sakuraba and Toyonaga came out wearing Machine masks, then took those masks off when the Mascaras music played to reveal Mascaras & Caras masks. [DAMN IT--ed.]"

and

"Since Onita is running angles in All Japan and Pride, he's got a bit of a New Japan one as well. Onita is transferring from Meikai College to Meiji College, studying economics. Onita passed the oral board on 10/21 to transfer. Meiji College is important since Seiji Sakaguchi, Naoya Ogawa and Masa Saito all graduated from there and many TV-Asahi execs from the 70s were from there. Sakaguchi's power in the company and influence on the history of Japanese wrestling has much to do with college classmates in power in the TV network and the relations from that [Fumi Saito has said that any professional wrestling hall of fame that does not include Sakaguchi for his historical importance -- that is to say, getting New Japan on television -- is incomplete and simply in error --ed.]. Most feel Onita is switching colleges to build a future storyline with New Japan."

and

"In the dressing room after his match on 10/31 at the Pride show, Alexander Otsuka issued a challenge to Giant Ochiai, who fought on the 8/27 Pride PPV show, for a pro wrestling match on the 11/26 Battlarts big show at Tokyo Komazawa Olympic Park Gym. Ochiai is well known for having this giant Meng like afro, which, quite frankly, is all he really has. Otsuka said that if he wins, Ochiai would have to shave his head, but if Ochiai loses, than Otsuka would have to agree to grow hair."

and

"The line between pro wrestling and MMA grew a lot less recognizable as Dream Stage Entertainment ran an angle on 10/29 to set up the bizarre match with Atsushi Onita vs. Antonio Inoki. Onita came to the Pride office to meet with promoter Naoto Morishita and issued the challenge to meet Inoki, who retired as an active pro wrestler in 1998. Morishita said that Pride would not promote Onita's trademark explosive barbed wire match, but they would promote an Inoki vs. Onita match under Pride rules. Onita said that he needed to retire and that his final match would be against Inoki. However, it is considered a given in Japan that Onita won't retire, but would wrestle more for XPW in the U.S. Inoki never addressed the challenge when he did an interview before the fans on the 10/31 PPV, but did backstage to reporters, basically saying that he was retired. Onita on 11/1 told reporters that he still wanted the match with Inoki, and rumor has it he'll appear at the 12/31 Osaka Dome show to work the program."

November 13, 2000:

"Yoshiaki Yatsu was hospitalized after his match with Gary Goodridge on the 10/31 Pride show. He'll be back in action for a 20th anniversary tour for his own Social Pro Wrestling Federation from 11/28 to 12/3. Yatsu's pro debut was December 29, 1980 in Madison Square Garden against Jose Estrada."

and

"Pride announced it would be running World title tournaments in both the middleweight (under 198 pounds) and heavyweight division starting with an early 2001 show at the Tokyo Dome. Sakuraba won't be entering the middleweight tournament, so basically they'll have a tournament to create a natural opponent for him for later in the year. Sakuraba at this point is scheduled to fight on both the 12/23 Saitama Super Arena show, most likely against Ryan Gracie, and Antonio Inoki's New Years Eve show at the Osaka Dome. Inoki's 12/31 Osaka Dome show will apparently include singles matches with Tokimitsu Ishizawa (Kendo Ka Shin--hopefully they've learned and it'll be a work), Nobuhiko Takada and Masaaki Satake and he's also talked about using Shinya Hashimoto."

November 20, 2000:

"While there is all sorts of newspaper speculation regarding Hashimoto doing shoot matches, that would be career suicide at this point and is highly unlikely to happen, even though his appearing on a Pride show would be a gigantic draw. Hashimoto himself has denied the stories but it makes for good copy so the stories will likely continue."

and

"To show how over the Naoya Ogawa vs. Masaaki Satake match was with the judo world champion vs. karate world champion hook, the Fuji Network ran a 90 minute taped edited replay of the 10/31 DSE show on 11/5, airing at 4 p.m., and drew amazing numbers, a 12.6 rating and the Ogawa vs. Satake match did an 18.7 rating, which is 22.5 million viewers. For however one wants to knock Ogawa, he's the mainstream star in Japan. He drew a 24.0 and 18.7 peak ratings in his two major matches this year and a match with Rickson Gracie would be the biggest potential match of 2001, even if he's never beaten anyone in a legit match since the 1996 Olympics.

The success has led the Fuji Network to consider putting major Pride shows in prime time next year as a second combat sports special to go along with the success Fuji has had for years with K-1. The current plan is for two Tokyo Dome shows next year, one in March and one in May, to crown Pride world champions in both heavyweight and middleweight divisions. The March show would feature four singles matches in each weight class, while the final four in each class would meet in semifinals and finals on the same night on the May show

DSE at a press conference on 11/8 officially announced Kazushi Sakuraba vs. Ryan Gracie and Mark Kerr vs. Igor Vovchanchyn for the 12/23 Saitama Super Arena PPV show (which airs in January in the U.S.). It has been reported here previously than Ken Shamrock vs. Mark Hall would also be on the show. Others announced as being on the show was Kazuyuki Fujita, Mark Coleman, Enson Inoue, Masaaki Satake, Alexander Otsuka, Renzo Gracie, Akira Shoji, Gilbert Yvel, Gary Goodridge and Ricco Rodriguez. They are considering a Fujita vs. Yoshiaki Yatsu match as well."

November 27, 2000:

"Tatsumi Fujinami left Japan on 11/18 for the United States for his meeting with Antonio Inoki to discuss the Shinya Hashimoto situation. Fujinami didn't quit as President, and came back saying that the wise man Inoki told him to always look to the future and you'll see that all your problems are really small problems. Inoki wants more New Japan guys to work Pride. It's funny, but they sell so many more tickets if they're on Pride than if they wrestle for their own company."

and

"Pride added Enson Inoue vs. Heath Herring and Alexander Otsuka vs. Guy Mezger to its 12/23 show which at last word was scheduled for a PPV in January. They are trying to put together a rematch with Gilbert Yvel vs. Vanderlei Silva from the bout which had all that potential but ended in seconds the first time due to Silva kicking Yvel low. A NHB TV show in Brazil reported two other matches attempting to be put together are Vitor Belfort vs. Dan Henderson, which has a lot of intrigue since Henderson won the 32-man RINGS tournament last year and is one of those ringwise guys who somehow always seems to win, and Belfort is a super talent who doesn't seem to have Henderson's mental toughness; and Allan Goes vs. Akira Shoji."

December 4, 2000:

"Battlarts also had an impressive turnout of about 3,500 at the Tokyo Komazawa Olympic Park Gym on 11/26 using some Pride grapplers. Kazunari Murakami headlined against Battlarts President Yuki Ishikawa, putting Ishikawa over with a choke sleeper. In a battle of Pride wrestlers, Alexander Otsuka beat Giant Ochiai. Ochiai did pretty good in his first pro wrestling match, and got a big pop copying the Funks' spinning toe hold. Otsuka won with a boston crab, and then Pride President Naoto Morishita came to ringside to declare him the winner and Ochiai demanded a rematch on Pride. Tiger Mask pinned Naoki Sano while Katsumi Usuda won the Independent jr. title over former K-1 fighter Naoyuki Taira. Another Pride fighter, Daijiro Matsui, won an undercard match."

and

"Pride added Johil de Oliveira of Brazil vs. Carlos Newton of Canada, Vanderlei Silva vs. Gilbert Yvel and Akira Shoji vs. Alan Goes officially to the 12/23 show in Saitama. Nobuhiko Takada is now saying that he wants a rematch with Royce Gracie in February and would then retire from Pride."

and

"Black Belt magazine named Ken Shamrock it's 2000 Full Contact Fighter of the Year, which went heavily criticized in the fight community. From a business standpoint, putting Shamrock on the cover because of his WWF and early UFC notoriety, probably was the best bet for selling magazines. But to take his in-ring success for the year ahead of either Sakuraba or Coleman is pretty much impossible to justify." [Frankly I expect a higher standard of editorial integrity from Black Belt magazine and am saddened to learn this --ed.]

December 11, 2000:

"There were rumors in the martial arts world this past week of a Mark Coleman vs. Ken Shamrock match taking place on the 12/23 Pride show, but that is not going to happen. Shamrock won't be fighting on the show. There is still talk of a match with Mark Hall for sometime next year but it fell through as it regards the show. Shamrock is being talked with about appearing on the Inoki New Years Eve Osaka Dome show, but that would most likely be as a pro wrestler as his next shootfight is scheduled for February for Pride. He is considering, but has not yet accepted an invitation to compete in the Pride World championship tournament. He may want to trim down to 198 (he last fought at 211) and go for the middleweight division where his strength would be more of a factor than going against the bigger, stronger heavyweights. The 12/23 show will air on 1/6 in the U.S. on PPV, but only for those with DirecTV or a dish. Vitor Belfort suffered a broken hand in training so he's also off the show. While not officially announced by Pride, there also rumors of a Dan Henderson vs. Vanderlei Silva match for that show."

December 18, 2000:

"

Antonio Inoki announced at a press conference on 12/9 in Los Angeles that the main event of his New Years Eve "Inoki Bom Ba Yae" Japanese PPV show from the Osaka Dome would be Great Muta & Nobuhiko Takada vs. Don Frye & Ken Shamrock in what has to go down as the weirdest big show main event of the year.

It is being pushed as a five plus hour PPV show, starting at 7 p.m. and ending after midnight. There will be seven or eight pro wrestling matches, scheduled to end at about 11:30 p.m., and other attractions to take the show up to midnight, when Inoki will close the show right after midnight with his catch phrase at midnight as a post-show celebration.

As Keiji Muto, with Takada, they are two of the all-time great pro wrestling workers of their day are both. Due to wrestling such a physically demanding style for so many years, they are well past their prime at 38. In Japanese wrestling history, they will always be linked together like Rogers and O'Connor, Misawa and Kawada, Funk and Brisco, Hogan and Savage and Flair and Steamboat, because of their two matches at the Tokyo Dome.

The first, won by Muto to defend the IWGP world heavyweight title against the top star of the dying UWFI promotion, on October 9, 1995 which drew 67,000 fans paying $6.1 million, at the time the all-time record live gate for pro wrestling anywhere in the world and largest crowd ever to witness pro wrestling in Japan. Their rematch, in which Takada won the title, took place on January 4, 1996 before another sellout of 64,000 fans, making it the first time the same match had sold out two major stadium events in succession in the history of pro wrestling and made it even to this day the biggest money singles program from a live event standpoint in pro wrestling history. It was the success of this program that Eric Bischoff saw that spawned the NWO vs. WCW feud that put WCW into the top spot in the United States a few years later. After their second match, the two were never matched up again, as Takada, after the New Japan program ended, veered off from traditional pro wrestling to become the big drawing card for Pride. They have never teamed up. There is consideration of gimmicking up the match with Great Muta teaming with Takada, with face paint, as Great Nobu.

Even weirder is the pairing of Shamrock and Frye, whose roots as top stars with UFC spawned success in pro wrestling with WWF and New Japan, respectively. In fact, Frye's lucrative New Japan contract may have been partially because New Japan had a verbal deal with Shamrock in 1997 to do a program with Shinya Hashimoto and win the IWGP heavyweight title, which Shamrock backed out when WWF made him a stronger money offer, and New Japan then approached Frye for the spot. Frye actually was in the main event on the show that broke the Muto-Takada record, although it wasn't his doing, as he won a tournament to do a job for Inoki in Inoki's retirement match on April 4, 1998 which drew 70,000 fans and nearly $7 million. But the strangest part of the match is that there has been legit bad blood between Shamrock and Frye for years. The root of the bad blood is that Shamrock was, along with Royce Gracie, the UFC's original superstar and biggest draw. Frye, who won two tournaments including the Ultimate Ultimate in 1996, never got the recognition Shamrock did, even though Shamrock never won a tournament.

The bad blood from Frye's standpoint was such that he badmouthed Shamrock in the MMA world, almost in the form of pro wrestling interviews over the past year. There were also very tense situations between the two at recent Pride shows where Frye worked as a second for Kazuyuki Fujita and Shamrock fought. Whenever Frye's name was brought up, Shamrock always maintained he would never fight Frye because Frye brought Shamrock's family into the promos and said he'd never give Frye the opportunity to make a big payday from a match with him because of how he went about it. Frye got a measure of satisfaction in August as Fujita's second when he upset Shamrock at the Seibu Dome show on 8/27.

From a pure pro wrestling standpoint, the idea of them splitting up in an angle on this show and building to a match, either a pro wrestling match or a legitimate match, makes sense. It really gets strange if an angle is shot that is clearly a worked pro wrestling angle to build for a match on a Pride show, because people should then question the legitimacy of the match, particularly since it matches up two men with big reputations in pro wrestling, although it's clear at this point that whatever the match would be, and it could be either way, people are going to believe what they want to believe and pure credibility means zilch when it comes to selling tickets as compared with good wrestling hype and angles. But Pride has in the past done pro wrestling angles to build up real matches as well, most notably Shamrock and Alexander Otsuka did a clearly staged angle in California, put on television in Japan, to build up to their Pride match. While Naoya Ogawa and Masaaki Satake did a clear stare-down angle to build up for a match at Pride, which wasn't legit, the fact of the matter is the match did sellout business live and did a monster television rating, which tells you all you need to know about what pure sports credibility means in this marketplace.

The idea behind this, and everything relates to Inoki and public image, is that as the century ends (because technically the century ends at midnight), Inoki, who was the pro wrestler who was the pioneer of MMA with his matches with Muhammad Ali, Willem Ruska, Willie Williams, Chuck Wepner (all were actually pro wrestling matches except Ali, but the legend took on a life of its own), is joining the two sides together. It has been announced that Mark Coleman, Mark Kerr, Gary Goodridge (who from a look, interview and charisma standpoint may be the most suited of the bunch for pro wrestling although that depends on how well he can adapt to the in-ring side) and Bas Rutten (who also has a lot of charisma) will all be making their worked pro wrestling debuts on the show, which will also include several wrestlers from New Japan, although Kendo Ka Shin is the only one announced thus far. Dream Stage Entertainment (Pride), which is involved with this show, is believed to be using this event as something of a test to get into the pro wrestling business, going back in time to the early part of the century when the top pro wrestlers were real shooters as opposed to entertainers. The feeling is that the reality is that an athlete's drawing power peak and his physical ability peak are entirely different, and that when it comes to fighters, by the time they are top draws, they are usually already past their physical prime. Pro wrestling takes advantage of this because it manipulates outcomes and storylines so that a past-their-prime performer who can still draw can still be pushed to the top. Among the ideas is to use Pride as a company to do shoots and be the "star makers," and when new stars are created but physically start to break down, they can use their shooter reputation within pro wrestling. This was in some ways the mentality behind UFO, which the reality was, couldn't sell tickets, because inexperienced men, shooters or not, doing pro wrestling match after match, makes for a really bad pro wrestling show. As with any gimmick, one person doing it can draw based on the novelty, but an entire show of the same gimmick means the gimmick won't mean anything. Pride in a press release positioned this show as a trial event for starting a new pro wrestling promotion that would give the company the ability to provide a better and more stable financial environment for fighters once their shootfighting careers are over.

The show is an Inoki concoction with the Osaka Dome, as the first New Years Eve PPV ever in Japan. In the United States, both Howard Stern and UFC taped shows years back did very good numbers for New Years Eve shows. From a live standpoint, it'll be Inoki, at midnight, ushering in the new year with his "Ishi, Ni, San, Da!" catch phrase.

Although Inoki has yet to announce it, Shinya Hashimoto has said in interviews that he would be appearing on this show. Apparently Mitsuharu Misawa is against it because it's so close to Hashimoto's debut on 12/23 for NOAH."

and

"Pride is at least starting to work on promoting in the United States, targeting approval in Nevada for a potential Las Vegas show as the first step. UFC made much publicized attempts to get into Vegas but never could get the votes necessary from the Nevada State Athletic Commission so never went as far as a public presentation and asking for a vote. The prospective rules that Pride is looking at for this country is to hold matches in a cage as opposed to a wrestling ring as they do in Japan

Pride officially announced two more shows to the 12/23 Saitama Super Arena PPV card, which will air on 1/6 on DirecTV in the United States. As speculated on in the last issue, Dan Henderson vs. Vanderlei Silva was added. Henderson was originally scheduled to face Vitor Belfort, who pulled out due to injury, and Silva was scheduled against Gilbert Yvel. Yvel will now face Kazuyuki Fujita. Both are classic wrestler vs. striker matches. Yvel vs. Fujita is basically who gets to who first. Fujita has no punch defense and Yvel is the best striker in Pride, but Yvel can't get off his back and can be taken down pretty easily by smaller guys, and Fujita is not only the best wrestler he'll have ever faced, but the biggest one as well. I anticipate either a long boring fight with Yvel on his back not able to do anything, unless Fujita tires and I don't expect that, or a quick fight if Yvel can tag him before being taken down. In other words, he has the punchers chance. At one point they were trying to put together a Fujita vs. Rulon Gardner match, but that went nowhere. Henderson vs. Silva has the potential to be a great match. If Henderson can tie Silva up and wear him out, he can beat him, but he'd be best served to take him down. Silva has put the hurting on some great wrestlers in the past including Mike Van Arsdale because he's tough to take down, although Tito Ortiz did manage to neutralize Silva in kind of a boring UFC title fight by always taking him down

Rickson Gracie is in Japan negotiating with four different promotions for a match in the fall. Gracie said that since he's working on a movie in Las Vegas in February, he wouldn't be available until fall. Groups he's talking with are Coliseum 2001, which is the promotion he worked for most recently in his Tokyo Dome match against Masakatsu Funaki, New Japan, Pride and a new group that TV-Asahi is attempting to put together. All four groups are most likely looking at matching him with Naoya Ogawa since that's the big money and big TV ratings match-up, in fact probably the biggest money or ratings match-up possible next year for Japan. Gracie was on a network talk show on 12/7 when Sakuraba called in and challenged him to a match next year."

December 25, 2000:

"In something of a major surprise, New Japan announced on 12/20 that Riki Choshu would wrestle Shinya Hashimoto in a no time limit match on the 1/4 Tokyo Dome show. While this would indicate and make virtually everyone believe that the Hashimoto firing was a total worked angle to build up to the Dome, some are not certain. Apparently the match-up is the brainchild of Antonio Inoki, who right now appears once again, because of the success of the Pride shows based on his input to matchmaking by using pro wrestling angles to build, to be the most powerful individual in the Japanese scene as he's able to mix and match pro wrestling and shooting, as well as use existing problems to create shoot angles. It was Inoki's suggestion for Choshu to come out of retirement for big shows this year, and that Hashimoto would make his best drawing opponent."

and

"The annual Japanese Sports Media awards for pro wrestling were voted on 12/18 and from a tradition standpoint, the pick as Most Valuable Player (Wrestler of the Year) would have to be a surprise. The surprise is that Kazushi Sakuraba won the award, not that he didn't deserve it.

It breaks tradition in two ways. First, at about 180-193 pounds, depending on which fight you are talking about, Sakuraba is a junior heavyweight sized wrestler. No junior heavyweight in history, not Jushin Liger or even Tiger Mask were ever given serious consideration for MVP awards. Satoru Sayama in many ways was one of the most influential wrestlers in history because of opening the door to pro wrestling in Japan, which years later spread to the United States, for wrestlers in the 170-pound weight category as well as his strong influences on later styles. Second, many wouldn't even consider Sakuraba as a pro wrestler, and clearly it was nothing in that one would call traditional pro wrestling that won him the award.

Sakuraba got the award for his win over Royce Gracie on 5/1 at the Tokyo Dome in their 90:00 classic, as well as other wins over big names such as Guy Mezger (in a controversial decision), Renzo Gracie and showing so much heart in coming back the same night as the Gracie match and being competitive while giving away close to 50 pounds in losing to Igor Vovchanchyn.

The idea that a pro wrestler clearly established himself as the biggest star in the world of mixed martial arts in a match that no doubt will become legendary in the history of two different industries is a strong point in his favor. In my mind, the award came down to only two candidates, Sakuraba and Toshiaki Kawada. Without question, Kawada saved All Japan, which would not exist without him. While Pride would be nowhere near as over in Japan without Sakuraba's wins establishing the groups shows as arguably the biggest shows of the year to a pro wrestling audience based on TV ratings, even if it isn't traditional pro wrestling, it is doubtful he alone made the difference in the organization surviving. Still, the argument has always favored the successful players on the successful teams in MVP voting, and while Kawada saved a failing team, Sakuraba was the backbone of a group that had struggled a lot to draw until late 1999, but became hot all through 2000. In addition, Kawada was the winner in the biggest ticket selling pro wrestling match of the year in his 10/9 match with Kensuke Sasaki, which was voted Match of the Year. I'm not sure if Kawada for that reason wasn't more valuable than Sakuraba, even if you accept Sakuraba as being eligible for such an award. There is something of a precedent in shoots being eligible for awards as people in Pancrase when it first started out and was the hot new deal in pro wrestling, there were Pancrase wrestlers that won awards such as Yuki Kondo winning Rookie of the Year in 1996 for knocking out Frank Shamrock, and Kazuyuki Fujita and Sanae Kikuta got votes in different categories and two shoot matches were considered for Match of the Year. There is a difference because Pancrase was totally marketed as pro wrestling, and its stars all came from pro wrestling in the first generation as it was pro wrestlers doing generally shoot matches (not all, but most), whereas the second generation of Pancrase now is comprised mainly of people who never did pro wrestling first. Pride's headliners, like Sakuraba, Naoya Ogawa and Nobuhiko Takada are all pro wrestlers, but Pride itself never claimed to be or billed itself under the category of pro wrestling, but instead as Vale Tudo fighting, even though it recognizes as a company its audience is drawn mainly from pro wrestling fans who support the wrestlers in shoot and occasional worked shoot matches.

Sakuraba received 15 of the 22 votes, with Kawada receiving three, Genichiro Tenryu receiving two and Sasaki receiving two.

As for the Match of the Year, while it was probably not the best match of the year, because of the aura surrounding the match, and the fact it was an excellent match, the venue and the crowd, it seemed to me a given that it was going to win. The match got ten votes in the first ballot, while the Sakuraba vs. Royce Gracie match got seven, the 4/7 Shinya Hashimoto vs. Naoya Ogawa match got three and Gilbert Yvel vs. Kiyoshi Tamura on 4/20 in Tokyo and Yuji Nagata vs. Takashi Iizuka on 8/9 in Hiroshima as part of the G-1 tournament each got a vote. In the run-off, Sasaki vs. Kawada beat out Sakuraba vs. Gracie by a 15-7 vote. Guys with Toryumon were putting on better matches at spot shows) than many of these, but they seemed to pick realistic matches that were either real, or were worked shoots with heat. Ogawa vs. Hashimoto, because of the heat, interest and impact (and drawing a peak 24.0 rating speaks loudly and clearly) would have likely won before this match stole its thunder.

Hiroyoshi Tenzan & Satoshi Kojima were voted Tag team of the year in a very weak year first getting 11 votes to five for Yoshihiro Takayama & Takao Omori and one for Yuji Nagata & Manabu Nakanishi. Generally speaking in the Observer balloting, Japanese teams, and usually All Japan teams, are dominant because of their quality of matches. With All Japan split up and NOAH's only real pushed tag team being Takayama & Omori, it has totally opened the door when it comes to awards for WWF teams, which this year are probably the most deserving. My pick would have been Koji Kanemoto & Minoru Tanaka, but they had the junior heavyweight bias thing going against them. It ended with Tenzan & Kojima winning a third playoff over Takayama & Omori by a 13-9 vote.

Kawada was named Most Outstanding, probably as a consolation prize for not getting the MVP award. There are a lot of great in-ring workers in Japan, although most of the best are junior heavyweights who have that bias going against them in these awards. Of the heavyweights, probably Kawada and Jun Akiyama were the strongest picks, and Akiyama was given the Fighting Spirit award, basically hardest worker, probably in the same way as a consolation.

In a strange one, Fujita, who didn't do any traditional pro wrestling after the early part of the year (his biggest match was on the 1/4 Tokyo Dome against Kimo), but did three shoot matches, winning over Hanse Nyman, Mark Kerr and Ken Shamrock, nearly won the award, as in the first ballot he got seven votes to four for Kawada and Tenryu and two for Nagata. However, in a third runoff, Kawada won 13-9 over Fujita. I can't come up with any explanation as to why Fujita was even considered. Anyone watching can see his only claim to fame is that he happened to be in the ring when both Kerr and Shamrock had their bodies short-circuit on them and couldn't function, and the only positive thing is he took a ton of punishment from both before they died and he was left standing.

Takashi Iizuka was named Best Technical Wrestler. While his gimmick is the submissions on the ground, I'd have gone with Yuji Nagata on that one. Nagata actually got seven first round votes to four for Iizuka, three for Minoru Tanaka (actually a better pick but he has the junior heavyweight bias against him), two of Fujita and Sanae Kikuta (Pancrase) and one for Masahiro Chono, Naomichi Marufuji (NOAH prelim wrestler), Koji Kanemoto and Sakuraba. However in the runoff, Iizuka beat Nagata 12-10.

Takeshi Rikioh and Kenzo Suzuki tied 11-11 for Rookie of the Year. Suzuki of New Japan is terrible, even for a rookie. Rikioh of Pro Wrestling NOAH is at least decent. There are probably many independent wrestlers starting out who are better picks, but the awards are tradition based and smaller companies with their limited exposure, especially to the veteran reports who pick these things, aren't going to get strong consideration. As far as the match picks, Rikioh would be my choice. Takehiro Murahama of Osaka Pro Wrestling, who is actually a far better pick but he's handicapped by being from a smaller company, also received consideration with four votes.

Etsuko Mita & Mima Shimoda were named Most Valuable women, for working on top as a tag team on big shows of so many different promotions, beating Chigusa Nagayo & Lioness Asuka as the Crush Gals by a 15-5 vote.

Also honored in Special Prizes, which are basically equivalent to lifetime achievement awards, were retiring New Japan wrestler Kuniaki Kobayashi, retiring All Japan legend Stan Hansen, retiring Pancrase star Masakatsu Funaki and the late Jumbo Tsuruta. They also gave awards to three amateur wrestlers, Katsuhiko Nagata, Yuji's brother, who won the Olympic silver medal in Greco-roman, and women world champions Seiko Yamamoto and Hitomi Sakamoto."

and

"Allan Goes pulled out of the 12/23 Pride show against Akira Shoji and will be replaced by Ricardo Almeida. Almeida is a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu guy said to be on a par with Goes on the ground. They also added a final match to the show in Ricco Rodriguez, who is one of their favorites because he's got the matinee idol look, against John Marsh."

And that's that! See you soon! Thank you once again for reading. Please take care.