THE BEST（ザ・ベスト）2002年2月22日

THE BEST

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シリーズ PRIDE（THE BEST）

主催 DSE

開催年月日 2002年2月22日

開催地 日本

東京都文京区

会場 後楽園ホール

開始時刻 午後7時

試合数 全6試合

放送局 スカイパーフェクTV!

東海 テレビ 

"OF COURSE," wrote 猪熊 功 Inokuma Isao in the "Never Give Up" portion of his "Fighting Spirit" essay in the "Judo and I" chapter of the 1979 Kodansha classic Best Judo (you may know it better still as ベスト柔道 / Besuto Jūdō), "I cannot deny that you may feel anxiety or uneasiness before the fight. Feelings like 'I don't want to be beaten,' 'I just want to run away,' or 'I'm frightened' are always felt to a certain degree. Also there is loneliness." The extent to which these four final words guide us toward the true heart of all things is nearly unprecedented in human utterance, and so, on account of that, they are at once profoundly beautiful and utterly devastating. Don't feel so bad, though; it gets better: "But what is important during these times is not to be afraid of loneliness, anxiety, or weakness of the will but to overwhelm these feelings with a fierce fighting spirit and confront your opponent with your intention to defeat him." Don't feel so good, though; it also gets way worse: "Inokuma died by suicide by seppuku in 2001, possibly due to financial losses suffered by his company.[3][5]". From happier times (how much happier, though?), here are two wonderful images of Inokuma, first contesting the gold medal final of the heavyweight (then +80kg) division of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics against the great Doug Rogers (of whom we have spoken more than once in these pages), and later in fellowship and ease with that same man:

Inokuma's words from Best Judo have been with me even more than usual of late (who can say why?), and this is a volume, I assure you, that never feels far away. (It is convenient but also a little funny that when students at the club ask what the best judo book for them to study might be, we generally answer that for a beginning or intermediate player, the best judo book is actually a book called Best Judo—for a moment that seems silly to say! but it's a really good one!) What intersections might we find between Best Judo and PRIDE: THE BEST? Perhaps many; perhaps few; perhaps only the loneliness of which Inokuma spoke. Maybe not even that! Who can say! I guess we'll just see!     

I am certain that I have seen this show before, and that a bootleg copy of it still exists (but does it still function?) in a basement bin filled with discs and tapes of similar provenance (I really, really need to do more about the basement [parts of it are fine but on the whole it could be much better {since the time of this sentence's original composition I have utterly reclaimed the basement and we have firmly established a basement dōjō therein—ed}]). My recollection is that I was not wild about it at the time? So much has changed in the many years that separate me from that initial viewing, though, that there's really no telling, and I choose optimistic uncertainty/uncertain optimism. It occurs to me just now that it is entirely possible that this was the first show I ever even saw from 後楽園ホール / Kōrakuen Hōru / Korakuen Hall, maybe? So that's something? A little?

TO PRIDE JAPAN AND THE WORLD NEWCOMER is a succinct statement of the ethos of this PRIDE: THE BEST VOLUME 1 event (and indeed of the PRIDE: THE BEST VOLUME 2 that will follow soon enough) delivered in a graphical style that is entirely decorous with the era from which it now speaks to us which is to say that if you have never played バーチャファイター4 /  Bācha Faitā Fō / Virtua Fighter 4 (or indeed Virtua Fighter 4: EVO) nor any of the first five 鉄拳 Tekken games (by which I do not mean Tekkens one-through-five, but rather Tekkens one-through-four and 鉄拳タッグトーナメント Tekken Taggu Tōnamento / Tekken Tag Tournament), well, now you pretty much have:

Legitimately thrilling highlights from PRIDE bouts contested between fighters of a calibre we are perhaps unlikely to see in this particular show soon follow those bold words, as does the fairly upsetting image of the eight-sided ring which will bound the exploits of the guys of our present encounter:

I much prefer a regular old ring! This one of course invokes the UFC®'s Octagon®, and so trends towards the gross for this reason; it is also lightly suggestive of a particular era of Impact(!) wrestling with which I can claim no real familiarity (only the dimmest awareness). It would be reasonable to have assumed, had you cared to speculate (I can't imagine you would have; I suppose I am speaking figuratively), that as a man of grappling/græppling I would favour the cage over the ring, but I actually think it looks so stupid that I cannot (favour it)! I find unpersuasive the common argument that the cage is to be preferred to other possibilities for the benefit of grappling: I think everybody should just be on mats, and that the athletes should fight towards the centre, and be offered the caution and guidance of 指導 shido where and when necessary, just like we see all the time in like (for example, such as) the Olympic Games, where lots of very nice grappling occurs without a cage or ring or anything. Just mats! Let's go! 

It is perhaps fitting that, having said all of that, our first match sees the journeyman Anthony Macias (you will recall perhaps his bouts against Dan Severn and Kazushi Sakuraba?) face 光岡 映二 Mitsuoka Eiji, who is known too as 金網の申し子 Kanaami no Mōshigo, "The Heaven-sent Child of the Cage." Serves me right! For holding forth about cages and such! One final #CageThought I would like to share with you at this time comes from one of my students (of 柔道 jūdō [rather than of English language and/or literature]), and it is so grisly an image of such dark poetry that I have not uttered it aloud to another living soul since he shared it with me some weeks ago [now months ago, still unspoken—ed.], but I feel as though I must unburden myself of the sheer weight of it now: this student, whom I treasure, telling me about how the cage at one of the gyms he trains at does not quite make it all the way up to the mirrored studio wall against which it largely rests, described the several inches between the outer limits of the cage and the base of that mirrored wall as consisting of nothing but "Band-Aids, pubes, and broken glass." I am legitimately sorry. And what makes all of this so unnecessary, really, is that the bouts on the show we are watching together right now are not at all contested in a cage, but merely a ring that lightly evokes one. More's the pity.  

In the first of three scheduled five-minute rounds, Mitsuoka looks just great: a tidy 大内刈 / ōuchi-gari / major inner reap to bring Macias to the mat; a smooth entry into a strong 縦四方固 / tate-shiho-gatame pinning position; and a flurry of 関節技 kansetsu-waza / joint-locking techniques (first 腕緘 ude-garami, then 腕挫腕固 ude-hishigi-juji-gatame and 膝挫十字固 hiza-hishigi-juji-gatame) to close the opening frame. It's really something! The vastly more experienced Macias, to his credit, holds, but that is all he really manages in any of this bout's . . . wait okay it is just two rounds? Has a round been clipped? Ah, I see: these are listed as three-round bouts in English-language resources, but the Japanese wikipedia entry for this event concurs with our video evidence: it's just the two. And Mitsuoka, the clear better in both, is judged the victor by unanimous decision. That was really good!

OH WOW IT HAPPENED AGAIN and by "it" I mean that thing that happens where I begin writing a post in the summer and then set it aside until the first week of the following year. Oops! That's something I would like to get better at (better at not doing [and so I guess I mean worse at]). I distinctly recall that the next thing I was going to say at the time of original composition was that my low-key robust informational ecosystem had brought to my attention a bout at 2023年 8月4日 両国国技館「GLEAT VER.MEGA」betwixt young 井土徹也 Izuchi Tetsuya and the legitimately ancient (older than me! and I'm so old!) 郷野聡寛 Gōno Akihiro that ended with a decision win for our old friend Gōno but also a legitimately horrific broken jaw for him, as well. The reason this is not just of minor interest to us but rather central to our concerns is that Gono entered 両国国技館 Ryōkoku Kokugikan bearing the mark of Fighting Network RINGS upon his nice t-shirt, as did his corners—our favourite guys 高阪 剛 Kōsaka Tsuyoshi and 菊田 早苗 Kikuta Sanae—upon theirs: 

 

As if that weren't enough (it totally is!), Izuchi was himself cornered by no less vital a figure (to our study) than 田村潔司 Tamura Kiyoshi, dressed on this night (as one assumes on most others) in a rad/red U-FILE CAMP tracksuit:

Amazing! I feel that I must apologize for the low resolution of these particular captures; I am reminded once more of Infinite Kung Fu-author Kagan McLeod's extremely correct observation that low resolution is the new bad tracking. Also I would like to note that this brief digression has offered me the most concrete example I have yet encountered of the serious decline in the quality of Google search results over the last year or so: 

I just don't think that's right!

Anyway, after much delay (please forgive me), it is time at last for 第2試合 dai-ni shiai (the second match), which sees Pancrase mainstay Jong Wang Kim against 佐々木 嘉則 Sasaki Yoshinori better known as マンモス佐々木 Manmosu Sasaki which is to say yes this indeed MAMMOTH SASAKI of FMW (formerly the sumo wrestler known first as 若佐々木 Wakasasaki and later 浪速 Naniwa) althouhh it is amazing to think what it might mean to be Man-Moth Sasaki (what a poem [Elizabeth Bishop could be as good as anybody], and one that arose from a newspaper misprint for "mammoth"—circles within circles!). Here he is, repping Frontier Martial Arts to the fullest:

He is bested by Jong Wang Kim's 前裸絞 mae-hadake-jime/front-choke/guillotine in a mere twenty-five seconds, but as I have lost (by my imperfect recollection) two judo matches even more quickly than that, when I say now "who among us?" about this occurrence, I say it as an appeal for your generosity towards not just MAMMOTH SASAKI but for me personally and also for all of humanity and indeed all living things too, probably.  

Johil de Oliveira is a venerable martial artist, one of the great luta livre exponents of his day in addition to also being a skilled jiujiteiro. Wikipedia tells me (though does not source the claim) that Oliveira's current métier is dog training, which is important work (so I hope it's true): those pups have got to learn, man, or they'll end up a big problem for everybody, including themselves. I'm glad somebody's out there doing it! A round-and-a-half into his perfectly fine bout against the easy-to-like 高瀬 大樹 Takase Daiju, OIiveira's on the wrong end positionally, but both guys are working hard and doing a good job. I see here that Takase is actually coming off of a Pancrase win (by submission! 三角絞! sankaku-jime! triangle choke! good for him!) over LaVerne Clark, and I am reminded that Laverne used to be a much more common man's name, but as my primary experience of the name is Laverne & Shirley (which I loved when I was small; R.I.P. both Penny Marshall and Cindy Williams), it is difficult for me to incorporate this knowledge into my lived reality, try as I might. Takase takes the decision; a good win for him.

Our fourth bout offers us Giant Ochiai, whom we first encountered at PRIDE.10（プライド・テン）, and about whom we then wrote kind of a lot: " . . . Takayuki Okada, billed here as GIANT OCHIAI, who I don't actually remember even a little. Let me see about him: okay I have learned that he is a Fighting Investigation Team Battlarts (格闘探偵団バトラーツ Kakuto Tantei-dan Batoratsu) guy, which is a rightly exalted kind of guy to be, who also worked for Riki Chosu's Fighting of World Japan Pro-Wrestling, so okay his taste-level is high; that much we can say with certainty. Oh my goodness, though, this is terrible news: 'After an August 2003 "training accident" while training with Kenzo Suzuki[4] at World Japan's dojo, Okada suffered an acute subdural hematoma and entered a coma from which he never recovered.[5] Okada died on August 8, 2003. Okada's August 13 wake was attended by Masaaki Satake, Nobuhiko Takada, Kazushi Sakuraba and World Japan Management Director Katsuji Nagashima. A moment of silence was held in PRIDE Grand Prix 2003 in his honor.' A subdural hematoma is what ended Katsuyori Shibata's career, was it not [it was, but he's back!—ed.]? He was spared the fate met by Giant Ochiai, mercifully. R.I.P Takayuki Okada aka Giant Ochiai. Here's some more about him: 'As a student, Okada won the All Japan Industrial High School Judo League Championship four times. After graduating from college, he would went to train at the Seidokaikan Tokyo Bom-Ba-Ye dojo [that of K-1 promoter 石井 和義 Ishii Kazuyoshi, who learned his craft at Fighting Network RINGS, as we have discussed—ed.] with Naoyuki Taira. He also joined the amateur division of Shooto, placing second in its All Japan Amateur Shooto Championship in 1998 and 1999. In 2000, after Seidokaikan mainstay Masaaki Satake tried his luck in PRIDE Fighting Championships, Okada followed him in order to do his own debut. He gained the ring name of "Giant Ochiai", sporting shades and a large afro wig over his actual afro hair during his entrances, which drew popularity among the fans. The origin of the name would be found in his large height and weight and his mother's maiden name, Ochiai.'" 

Now that we're all pretty sad about Giant Ochiai, let's see how he makes out against Soichi Nishida, who lost quickly to Enson Inoue at PRIDE.5（プライド・ファイブ） by means of 裸絞 hadaka-jime whilst wearing truly tremendous pants:

Here, Nishida wears no such pants, and is stopped in the first once more, this time to punching.

A surprisingly (to me) enthusiastic crowd welcomes long-forgotten (also by me) Wajitsu Keishukai prospect Sokun Koh, and it occurs to me that I neglected to mention that Wajitsu Keishukai great 宇野薫 / Uno Kaoru / CAOL UNO was Daiju Takase's second earlier, a glaring oversight on my part. Koh is wearing tight braids, which leads to a stirring call of "HAIRSTYLE!" from the Japanese-language commentary. His opponent is the ever-game Amir Rahnavardi, who you may recall from his spirited loss to Gary Goodridge as a last-minute substitution at PRIDE.3（プライド・スリー）. He is cornered by Bas Rutten, who is just now consoling Amir after his second-round KO loss, and looks to be doing a tender and fine job of it, honestly:

Amir has a big hug for Koh a few moments thereafter, and it's all smiles all around. I don't really know much of anything about Amir Rahnavardi, I must admit, but he seems like a pretty lovely guy, possibly? 

The final bout sees Takada Dojo's Yusuke Imamura defeat Joe Son (TKO, Elbow Injury, 0:33 R1). Joe Son will likely be in prison for the rest of his life because of the horrible crimes he committed and I have nothing to say about this one beyond that.

I WONDER THOUGH WHAT DAVE MELTZER MAY OR INDEED MAY NOT HAVE SAID and actually just before we get to that I will post a picture of this evening's victors, some of them fresh from the fight, some already changed into their nice sweaters:

March 4, 2002: 

"Pride did their first minor show on 2/22 in Tokyo before 1,500 at Korakuen Hall. Joe Son, who did a UFC back in 1994, but got over in the early days as Kimo's manager in the famous Royce Gracie match, fought on the show losing to Yosuke Imamura of Japan in 33 seconds.

2/22 Tokyo Korakuen Hall (Pride - 1,500): Eiji Matsuoka b Anthony Macias, Kim Jong Wan b Mammoth Sasaki, Daiju Takase b Johil de Oliviera, Giant Ochiai b Shoichi Nishida, Sou Kun Kou b Amir, Yosuke Imamura b Joe Son."

And that's literally it, as Dave's attention was understandably focused principally on the PRIDE.19（プライド・ナインティーン）show at さいたまスーパーアリーナ Saitama Super Arena that followed just two days later. So too shall we attend! In due course! In parting, I would like to thank you as always for reading, and to wish you a Happy New Year. あけましておめでとうございます! Akemashite omedetō gozaimasu!