PRIDE GRANDPRIX 2003 開幕戦（プライドグランプリにせんさん かいまくせん) 2003年8月10日

 PRIDE GRANDPRIX 2003 開幕戦
イベント詳細
シリーズ PRIDE（PRIDE GRANDPRIX）
主催 DSE
開催年月日 2003年（平成15年）8月10日
開催地 日本
埼玉県さいたま市
会場 さいたまスーパーアリーナ
開始時刻 午後3時
試合数 全7試合
放送局 フジテレビ（地上波）
スカイパーフェクTV!（PPV）
入場者数 40,316人

HEY IS ANYBODY ELSE PRETTY STOKED ABOUT PRIDE GRANDPRIX 2003 開幕戦 which is to say PRIDE GRANDPRIX 2003 KAIMAKU-SEN and indeed also to say PRIDE GRANDPRIX 2003 OPENING ROUND, commonly known as the opening round (naturally) of the 2003 Pride Middleweight Grand Prix? (I hesitate to even offer its nonsensical English-language title, "Total Elimination" in that, were the elimination "total," wouldn't the tournament be over? instead of just getting started? I object, and wish to have my objection noted in the record as though I were the foremost scholar of the poetry of Al Purdy weighing in on a contentious matter in a department meeting [don't laugh, it can really happen]). I can say with some confidence that ġeāra-dæg/yore-day Dave Meltzer joins us in what I am going to just assume (I think quite safely) is the shared enthusiasm of our whole glad band of TKSCISSORSists, in that the Observer notes and excerpts (notable excerpts [excerpted notables]) that followed our brief recapitulation of PRIDE.26 REBORN（プライド・トゥウェンティシックス リボーン）were like, "sources indicate that the 2003 Pride Middleweight Grand Prix will rip like few if any things have ever ripped before, and likely more than anything that will ever rip hereafter" (quoted roughly from memory plus also from vibes). My own recollection of the event is that it is for sure one of the greats, in that its seven-match programme consists of four exceedingly compelling Middleweight Grand Prix pairings supplemented by three bouts showcasing the three finest heavyweights of their era. Could be good! Let's get right into it! 

As Pride.Total.Elimination.2003.DVDR.cd1 loads in our preferred early-Kraftwerk-pyloned media player, we are met at once with a stark reminder of the fleeting nature of all things: where we would expect to see Bas Rutten and Stephen Quadros welcome us with a lightly-cringy but good-natured and largely harmless skit of some kind, it is instead Bas Rutten and Damon Perry—of whom I have literally no memory, but whose coming was foretold in the Observer excerpts mentioned above—who here have us cringing lightly. And so it is goodnight to the Stephen Quadros era: there are good things and bad things you can say about the commentary of Stephen Quadros, and I think we have said both in their fair measure within/upon these electronic pages, but it seemed clear throughout that he and Bas were true work pals, and, as we are only blessed with so many such pals throughout our working lives, the loss of a work pal can only ever be a sombre affair; an ambiguous loss, and one to be respected. Bas' new colleague has just now said "WHAT'S UP MIXED MARTIAL ARTS FANS" and has identified himself as "The Dog" and neither of those utterances is super duper promising. But we shall see! I will note that I have no intention of dwelling on the commentary in a qualitative way, good or ill, but I'm afraid I do sometimes end up doing so néanmoins. 

I wonder just how quickly  Фёдор Влади́мирович Емелья́ненко / Fyodor Vladimirovich Yemelyanenko / Fedor Vladimirovich Emelianenko will dispatch with paradigmatic heavyweight mixed-fight gatekeeper Gary Goodridge, who left behind what seemed like promising work as a welder at the Honda plant in Alliston for all of this oh no it has already happened in that Fedor came out hitting just so hard, and then lightly tossing (he has a way of essentially shrugging 受け uke to the mat with the floating drop of 浮落 uki otoshi in a way that, I mean, it's just really something), and then, once Goodridge is on his back, hitting once more, just so hard, this time punctuated also by kicking. All Goodridge could manage throughout any of it, really, was to cover up, and I am left thinking of just how much it must hurt your arms to have Fedor punching them. It is not nor it cannot come to good! But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue (that's of course not at all true as we are entirely free to discourse openly on such matters here).

Hey it's Chuck Liddell! Isn't that weird? He is here specifically as a contracted representative of the UFC, and he is accompanied by his dark overlord, the legitimately horrendous Dana White, who has placed a $250k bet on Liddell to win the entire tournament. Hey remember when, upon his retirement, Chuck Liddell was given a position in the company that White himself publicly described as a job for life? But then when White and his little buddies cashed out of their ownership stakes (though White himself stayed on in largely the same role) Liddell was let go immediately? Sure seemed shitty! And yet it ranks fairly low on the gross list of the many gross failings of a man I find entirely gross ("This guy," as Frank Costanza once quoted an unnamed Korean father, "this is not my kind of guy"). Chuck Liddell, though, in his way, has always seemed nice, and I think the entry I wrote on him in the large(ly) commercially published text I now largely renounce was perhaps the fondest of all in terms of its tone? Had to be up there, at least, in terms of tone-fondness. I wish him well! I am unable to wish him especially well in the particular endeavour that lies before us, though, given the overall context, and especially given that Dana White has joined Rutten and Perry on commentary. 

If you're wondering where, exactly, we are in the overall Chuck Liddell story at this point, he is at this moment but two months and four days removed from his loss to Randy Couture, only the second loss of his already-really-quite-good career (his first loss had been to Jeremy Horn, a grappler known well to us amidst these pages due to his RINGS exploits [RINGSploits]). Liddell's foe this day shall be the still-slim (relatively speaking) Alistair Overeem, who holds victories in each of his last twelve fights, and has not lost since a pair of RINGS bouts three years prior. This is a really good match-up! Overeem does well enough in the earliest exchanges that Liddell actually tries (though does not succeed) to take Overeem down, a rare(ish) instance of Liddell using his (not inconsiderable) wrestling prowess in service of actually wrestling a guy down rather than wrestling his way back up (from a guy). Is he worried about this lanky Dutchman's reach? And also his hitting broadly conceived? He's already cut above the eye, Liddell is, and this time finishes the double-leg takedown all this hitting hastens. Overeem attacks with the particular 前裸絞 mae-hadaka-jime front choke we often refer to as the arm-in guillotine, but Liddell, untroubled, passes to the safe side, and delivers several true "Pride knees" very much to the bean (indeed, to the Alistair Overbean). Overeem has enough of this almost right away, and works his way back to his feet. This is a good one so far! Hey also remind me to tell you about the 前裸絞 mae-hadaka-jime suite we have worked our way through at the club recently! Perhaps if one of the later bouts drags a little we will get into it! But this one moves briskly: Overeem seems to me to be getting the best of things standing, in particular with some really sharp knees to the body, but no sooner do I say this than Liddell semi-lands with an only-partially-blocked overhand right (you are familiar, I am sure, with Chuck Liddell's overhand right), which staggers Overeem. The next one gets through entirely, and Overeem lurches against the ropes, eats a few more shots that seem somewhat less bad but definitely also very bad, and that's that in just over three (pretty interesting) minutes. Overeem's eyes look glassy throughout his walk to the back, which seems bad too. A quick note on the commentary: Damon Perry is awful.  

Our next bout offers the PRIDE début of the very fine jiujiteiro Murilo Bustamante, of whom we will see lots and lots going forward (lucky us! he's great!) against Quinton Jackson, to whom we are already accustomed. Although Jackson tends to play a fairly broad, cartoonish character in his prefight interviews, he answers a silly question about streetfighting quite thoughtfully: "Once you learn a martial art, it's kinda like, teach you discipline, and you're not afraid anymore. Most people that fight, it's because they're afraid, you know what I'm saying? I'm not afraid. So I know I could whoop a motherfucker's ass, but I try to talk out of whooping his ass. I'll backpedal." His words call to mind a portion of the beautiful National Film Board of Canada short Judoka (1965), directed by Josef Reeve, in which 1964 Tokyo Olympic heavyweight silver medalist the late Doug Rogers (with whom I was enormously fortunate to train once) says, "I was brought up to turn the other cheek, so to speak. It's funny, but I think I went into judo at one time trying to be tough. I wanted to be strong. But I found as you get more and more skillful, the desire to act big and tough sort of works the other way. I know I have the skill now. I don't have to talk about it. I'd still rather shy away from any physical demonstration of what I can do. Of what I know I can do." Perhaps it comes out in different idioms depending on if you're born in Memphis, TN or Truro, NS, but either way, it ends up sounding an awful lot like (at least a portion of) the way, doesn't it? (Hey, fun fact: about twenty years ago I ordered a DVD copy of Judoka directly from the NFB in Montréal, and although I was initially disappointed to learn that it was only fifteen minutes long despite costing what I remember to have been quite a lot, I of course loved it, and uploaded it to Google Video [remember that?] to share it widely, and it was that relatively low-resolution Google Video copy that was disseminated to all the other streaming sites and torrent places and so forth until the NFB thankfully uploaded their own super high quality version a number of years later [UPDATE: I have found the receipt! I ordered it Saturday, July 8, 2006, and the total avec frais de transport came to $26,74 {notez bien la virgule}, which would be $39,40 in our current situation. Yikes!]). Anyway! Murilo Bustamante is here as a last-minute replacement for Ricardo Arona, whose ankle betrayed him (perhaps he betrayed his ankle?) just five days before the scheduled bout. 

Here we go! Oh dear, okay, almost immediately, Murilo Bustamante understandably decides he would rather not box with Quinton Jackson (who could fault him?), but the way he goes about this desired avoision is to jump to guard; note that I do not say pull guard, as he is unable to pull Jackson anywhere, but rather merely to jump up and be carried about as though he were a wee one in a parent-facing front pack; it's pretty undignified, and results in Jackson simply walking back to his corner as though it were the most leisurely of strolls, and then dropping to the mat. Bustamante is going to look pretty silly if he doesn't end up with potentially match-ending attack from here! Which of course he does nearly at once, as he enters into 腕挫十字固 ude-hishigi-juji-gatame totally conventionally (no surprises in his approach at all) but with such exquisite execution that Jackson is, for a time, in real trouble, though it does not prove to be lasting trouble, as he keeps his head (figuratively [also I suppose literally, in that he does not expose himself to the 表三角絞 omote-sankaku-jime that so often follows]), and calmly works his way around. Close one though! Bustamante threatens, too, at one point with an arm-in guillotine of a 前裸絞 mae-hadaka-jime, and Bas, as we know, remains largely skeptical of this technique (not me!). Once things eventually work back (or are worked back) to a standing position, it is Bustamante, perhaps surprisingly, who scores the next takedown, a fine 小外掛 kosoto-gake (although I know that Bustamante holds judo rank, I do not know which judo rank specifically; otherwise I would totally be saying so right now; this is not the kind of thing I would keep to myself). What a good first round! It favours Bustamante, I think it is fair to say, but lots of good back-and-forthness.    

The second round is not quite as compelling, and has the crowd lightly jeering at Bustamante's reluctance to stand coupled with his inability to throw (try the kosoto! you did a great job with it before!), and now that things have slowed down a little, I will expand slightly on the 前裸絞 mae-hadaka-jime suite that I mentioned earlier, if you will permit me (thank you for this indulgence [both in this particular instance and of course broadly throughout hundreds of thousands of words at this point): after reviewing the fundamental mechanisms of both 裸絞 hadaka-jime and 肩固 kata-gatame (we're gonna need both!), we begin with a standard 前裸絞 mae-hadaka-jime (both the "long choke" and "short choke" variations), chest-to-back with our partner in the 亀 kame or turtle position; from there, we apply the form of 海老絡み ebi-garami (lobster entanglement! [please spare a thought for lobsters {it can't be easy for them}]) known variously as the arm-in guillotine or half-guillotine (I remember fondly an especially pleasant Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu brown belt [long since promoted to black; this is an old story] who trained with us for a good while and who was relieved to learn that arm-in, open-guard guillotine chokes are entirely in keeping with current IJF guidelines on the 肩三角 kata-sankaku [literally "shoulder triangle"] position; he was like "oh okay great—what more do you need?" [this is how I feel too]). Next up, we apply the 逆肩固 gyaku-kata-gatame variation known (variously) as the anaconda choke or gator roll (a 絞技 shime-waza about which we will have much to say when Antônio Rodrigo Nogueira wins consecutive bouts with it next summer! [or twenty summers ago, depending on how you want to play it]). Then, combining principles of the previous two techniques, we work to the seated 肩固 kata-gatame, sometimes understandably called the "cross-arm guillotine," though this is one instance where the Japanese term seems to have stuck across disciplines; click here for a first-rate comparative study of this technique (and indeed this principle!) in several closely related but importantly different sporting contexts. Our first night of this technical suite (and what is a 道場 dōjō, I suppose, if not "a technical suite" haha) ends with the 肩三角 kata-sankaku attack most closely associated with 松本 薫 Matsumoto Kaori, -57kg Olympic Champion, two-time World Champion, ice-cream shop proprietor (last I heard anyway!), and mother of two (there was a great moment ahead of the birth of Matsumoto's first child wherein Kayla Harrison joined the IJF commentary team for an event, and in their discussion of the shape of the -57kg division in the months to come, Sheldon Franco-Rooks said something like ". . . and of course Kaori Matsumoto won't be around for a year or more" and Harrison was like "really, why?" and Loretta Cusack-Doyle was like "omg haven't you heard?" and Kayla was like "no, heard what, what is it?" and when the hosts shared the happy news that Matsumoto was expecting, Harrison's response was perhaps the mightiest "eeeeeeeeeeeeee!" that has ever been eeeeeeeeeeeeee'd). If you, like me, very much want to see four-plus-minutes of the fearsome Kaori Matsumoto ploughing through some of the best judo players in the world with what has come to be known as the Matsumoto Roll, one may do so here (it rules). As you may well have yourself already noted and observed, these are all 肩三角 kata-sankaku attacks that see 取り tori's dominant arm encircling first 受け uke's head and neck, and only afterwards trapping the far-side arm; this leaves for the remainder of our study those 肩三角 kata-sankaku attacks in which the dominant arm encircles first the near arm, and only thereafter the head and neck, such as, for instance, the Miklós Ungvári Roll (ably demonstrated here by the ever-ready Emil Montes), the various (and varied!) D'Arce, Brabo, Gerbi, and neckties both Peruvian and Japanese (in the mode of 青木 真也 Aoki Shinya, as demonstrated here) that arise naturally therefrom; and finally who, of course, could forget the Clerget strangle (known too as the French necktie) and its several related sweepings and finishings. Tonnes of interesting stuff! And I am here to tell you that all of this can be accomplished in a mixed group ranging from near-beginners to wizened members of the 有段者基 yūdanshaki. There you go, a whole week's worth of material for you (assuming you are still running your four-minute rounds of 寝技乱取り newaza randori and four four-minute rounds of 立ち技乱取り tachiwaza randori each session, too; you could maybe get through this in one long session with no rounds but that is too high a price and also how much of it would really stick? and what's the rush? I'm so glad we agree that there is no rush).

To return to Bustamante and Jackson, though, let us agree that neither rounds two nor three offered as much to consider as the first, and further (I hope!) that this minimally-cheered Jackson win by split decision could have reasonably gone either way, which is quite an achievement for Bustamante, who appears here, I would remind the group, on five-days notice against a younger, larger, stronger man who is also just excellent at mixed fighting. The highlight of the bout is probably its immediate aftermath, in which Jackson playfully scoops his foe right up, and they share a nice little laugh. Great job keeping it friendly, guys! That's what we like to see!  

Ricco Rodriguez—a peripheral but memorable Smashing Machine character and former UFC heavyweight champion (having beaten Randy Couture only to lose soon thereafter to Tim Sylvia)—is up next against the great Antônio Rodrigo Nogueira, who has only recently lost his own heavyweight championship (it was, as you may well recall, the PRIDE one). Are these guys both pretty sad? It would be understandable if they were. And yet, "[p]aradoxically, the man who has failed and one who is at the peak of success are in exactly the same position. Each must decide what he will do next, choose the course that will lead him to the future. The teachings of judo give each the same potential for success, in the former instance guiding a man out of lethargy and disappointment to a state of vigorous activity." (Kodokan Judo: The Essential Guide to Judo by its Founder, Jigoro Kano [1986 translation, quoted from the 1994 edition]). If you are looking for a quotation with which I couldn't agree more, I would direct your attention to the one that precedes this current sentence, because that, to me, is a good example of that. And here we go a-grappling! Ricco's opening "superman" punch is evaded, as Nogueira slips under attacks (successfully!) with the minor outer hook of 小外掛 kosoto-gake. As soon as Nogueira makes it to the half-guard if 二重絡み niju-garami, he exploits Ricco's underhook (a good thing for Ricco to have in this position, as it offers a path to the back, to the sweep, and to a scooching out and right back up to standing) by attacking with the arm-in guillotine of a 前裸絞 mae-hadaka-jime (our technique of the day, it would seem!). As Nogueira rolls to his back, and Ricco escapes the hold, Bas again expresses his skepticism regarding the technique broadly. I couldn't even guess how many times I've noted these arm-in objections as we have made our way through these PRIDEs, but I am sure it is an amount that I owe you an apology for. But it is just so wild! The skepticism I mean! Only the oldest guys at judo remember this strange feature of early-aughts grappling! 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Nogueira looks dangerous off his back, attacking, in a preliminary sense, with 腕挫十字固 ude-hishigi-juji-gatame, 表三角絞 omote-sankaku-jime, and 足三角絡み ashi-sankaku-garami. Ricco Rodriguez is no one's 寝技 newaza fool, of course, and stays safe throughout it all, landing the occasional right hand through the tangle of Nogueira's legs. Rutten and Mark Coleman (thank you for joining us at the commentary table, Mark Coleman; よろしくお願いします / yoroshiku onegaishimasu / let's do a good job together!) are quite emphatic in their shared view that Ricco is getting the better of things thus far, but I don't really feel that way? He's doing well, certainly. Late in the first round, after the fighters are restarted standing (I object to the referee's call in this instance!), it is Rodriguez who succeeds with a 小外掛 kosoto-gake of his own. Good round! Round two is just as even, highlighted by Ricco's two-handed reap of 双手刈 morote-gari, and Nogueira's persistent 足三角絡み ashi-sankaku-garamiISM. At the end of the second round, Rutten and Coleman are even surer of Ricco's advantage, but I guess it comes down to how you weight submission-hold attempts versus submission-hold escapes? Maybe that's the issue? The third round opens with another fine Rodriguez 双手刈 morote-gari, but Nogueira then comes closer with a 逆腕緘 gyaku-ude-garami than he's come with any attack throughout the sixteen or seventeen minutes we've seen so far. And here's a triangle! Of a choke! 表三角絞 omote-sankaku-jime! Ricco is out once more. This has really been pretty good, especially for a match I have no distinct memory of. "Ricco has been getting everything he's wanted in this" is a wild take, but it is Damon Perry's, and both Bas Rutten and Mark Coleman agree, which is wilder still (to me). "There's just no way, Bas, Mark, that this could go any other way." Of course it does, in that Nogueira takes the unanimous decision in a closely fought bout.  "Maybe they take the attempted submission holds and weigh them heavily?" Mark Coleman wonders, as, for my part, I wonder what the alternative would be in a closely contested fight characterized (thankfully) by (mercifully) little hitting? "I have to disagree," Coleman concludes, but I find myself in disagreement with that disagreement. Good match though! I admit that I very much lost track of Ricco at a certain point in his career, and I am a little dismayed to see that he kept fighting right up until 2019. I see too that "Rodriguez has appeared on season one of the VH1 reality television show Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew, which documented his struggle with substance abuse[23]", and I hope that's all going much better for him these days.

An announcement of the coming PRIDE BUSHIDO series (yay!) is marked by a brief ceremony in which Antonio Inoki, wearing the world's most beautiful powder blue suit (please forgive me if I have mischaracterized its precise hue), absolutely slaps the heck out of SHOOTO-great 桜井 速人 Sakurai Hayato, which sounds strange, but when you see it, it feels like literally the only way this could have gone down (it's a fighting spirit issue, primarily). ICHI NI SAN DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA remains a thing everybody wants to say together. I am reminded of how wome people made sport of Tony Khan as his own ichi ni san da fell flat when he appeared with two of Inoki's grandchildren at WRESTLEDREAM [so named in tribute to Antonio Inoki, whom Khan has characterized as "wrestling's greatest dreamer"], but honestly I feel embarrassed not for Khan but for the people of Seattle and their ignorance in this important matter ("bro do you even WRESTLEDREAM?" I feel like asking of them). "Tony Khan is such a dork," one poster had it, "but I fw his spirit." Hard same; hard same.

In advance of his fight against the stalwart Ukranian Ярославович Вовчанчин Igor Yaroslavovych Vovchanchyn, Mirko "Cro Cop" Filipović is shown playing cards with his guys in the dressing room. It's a great way to pass the time! In order to confirm the spelling of Cro Cop's "shoot" last name, I have made my way to his Wikipedia page, and I feel compelled to share this information I am quite sure I have shared before: "After seeing Jean-Claude Van Damme's performance in the film Bloodsport, he began training in his parents' garage with his father's boxing equipment and weights. His father, who worked as an electrician for a railway company, fashioned his son a crude but effective punching bag filled with sand and cotton, and would bring home track scraps for Mirko to use for weight training.[11] Filipović began formal training in taekwondo at the age of 7 and later studied karate.[12]" This, of course, rules (I would note, too, that there are really an awful lot of Van Damme movies on Tubi [the people's streaming service] is you are so inclined). Cro Cop wins with left high-kick in just one minute and twenty-nine seconds (poor Igor), and then politely says, "I hope the next fight will be title fight against the champion, Emelianenko Fedor," which leads our commentary team to be like oh man he is calling him out and talking smack and smack-talkingly calling him out! while a close-up at ringside reveals Fedor to be smiling and nodding politely at his fellow polite sportsman's polite sporting wish. Damon Perry makes roughly half of what feels like it is going to be a racist remark about Hong Kong, for some reason (I have no idea how he got there from where we are right now), but ends up thankfully talked over before he get the whole thing out; it is impossible to feel good about it, even with the (inadvertent?) save.   

HOLY MOLY it is 田村潔司 TAMURA KIYOSHI and 吉田 秀彦 YOSHIDA HIDEHIKO and this is a thing the prospect of which this Saitama crowd is very much into, let me assure you. 

What might we even say of these two central guys of our whole thing here that we have not said before, other than let us go? I will say that the best way to enjoy this match—and this I say with the utmost certainty—is not through Pride.Total.Elimination.2003.DVDR.cd2.avi and its deeply impoverished English-language commentary but instead at the this link, which offers prefight interviews avec les sous-titres français, full entrances and introductions ("Flame of Mind"! who could resist it!), and a commentary-free, crowd-rich experience of the bout itself. There's really no comparison. I implore you; I am imploring you so completely right now. That fair and fine file (the streaming one [please go to it]) begins with highlights of Yoshida's 1992 Barcelona Olympic triumph over the spectacularly-haired Jason Morris (another triumph, this footage suggests pretty hard, is simply having been near the great 古賀 稔彦 Koga Toshihiko [R.I.P.]—perhaps next time out I will share with you some of what Yoshida has had to say in recent years about his deep admiration of and indeed love for his late friend; I have found it all quite moving) before moving to the disaster of Sydney 2000, in which Yoshida's attempts to step off of the 内股 uchi-mata of Cuban great (and Olympic silver medalist) Carlos Honorato and avoid the score led to a badly broken arm. The narration— somewhat discernible to me in Japanese, but perfectly clear in French subtitled-form—positions mixed fighting as an interesting new challenge for Yoshida, certainly, but primarily as a welcome change of pace to the extent to which it is an escape from the pressures that follow an Olympic gold medalist who chooses to remain in that world (what's the big deal though: you just direct every single aspect of your life over the course of each four-year period towards a single day of competition that, if that single day [which could easily end up a single match] goes anything less than perfectly, will be understood as not only a personal failure but also one which will also figure, however briefly, as a nationally-noticeable disappointment; what's not to like!). Tamura, positioned in the subtitles as Le Génie Solitaire, certainly has some subtitled things to say: "Le judo n'est que le judo," dit Tamura comme provocation. "Il a gagné une médaille d'or au judo, mais le combat est une autre histoire." Judo is judo, certainly, and it is no less certain, surely, that fighting, broadly considered, is indeed another story, just as Tamura says here, and yet there is also an element of careful, I'm gonna smesh your boy (Khabib is arguably his mixed-fight generation's most effective pro-judo troll [many examples, but those that comes foremost to mind are here and here ) that cannot but come to mind when one encounters Tamura's bold words here (and Tamura's French, it must be said, is frankly excellent). The Tamura highlights that follow, and that position Tamura as a leading exponent of the UWF not just as an on-again/off-again assemblage of various promotional moments, but instead, after a fashion, as its own discipline (for more, consider everything we have ever written here), are nothing short of exquisite. Hey only recently someone uploaded a fair copy (in the bibliographer's sense [not really]) of Bad News Allen vs. Kiyoshi Tamura UWFi 4/3/94 in which Allen (I am pleased to hear introduced as "Canada's," having totally settled in Calgary by that time) is chopped to bits by kicks to his weary old knees; it's a great finish.

The ring entrances are as exciting (if you're me) as you'd expect (if you're me): Yoshida accompanied by both 高阪 剛 Kōsaka Tsuyoshi (under whose auspices we gather here at TK Scissors) and 中村和裕 Nakamura Kazuhiro; Tamura by no one as exciting as that but by "Flame of Mind" waaaaaait a minute: I spoke too soon! This isn't "Flame of Mind" at all! But it is a piece that is in a similar spirit, and certainly no less ファイヤープロレスリング Faiyā Puro Resuringu of a one in its æsthetic (some quick searching turns up nothing on the title, I'm afraid, but it does reveal an upload of the entrance itself with the irrefutable description "Tamura's theme going up against Yoshida, notably different from his usual entrance music"). As is his custom, Tamura bows with exceeding depth and pause in each of the four cardinal directions, and after some mid-ring cordiality during referee 島田 裕二 Shimada Yuji's instructions, we are ready to go. 

The crowd is so stoked for this one, with chants of YO SHI DA contending with the chants of TA MU RA that certainly overwhelm them, and it's not even all that close, honestly. Tamura's stance is that of a left-handed striker, whereas Yoshida's is that of a right-handed striker because of how he is a left-handed judo player and not one who is about to switch stances after thousands upon thousands of hours spent with his left-foot forward. That lead leg must look pretty juicy to the snappily kicking Tamura (was it Frank Shamrock who said Tamura's kicks were the snappiest he'd ever encountered in mixed fighting? I believe that it was), especially given Yoshida's noted knee-weakness (the broken arm ended Yoshida's final Olympics, but the state of his knees is what made training at that level for another four years unthinkable [no doubt strong players coming up behind him in the Japanese system made it impossible for him going forward even with pristine knees, which they very much were not]). Could Tamura be thinking "shoot" thoughts along the "worked" lines he explored in the Allen Coage match noted parenthetically above? Will kicking an aging Olympic judo medalist's poor old knees be as effective in this shoot context as it was compelling in the worked? This is kind of a wild thing that is occurring! If you think about it! Along certain lines!    

Yoshida enjoys a brief and arguably unwelcome respite from having his knee kicked super hard as he is floored with a left hand (I've got some good news, and some bad news . . .). Tamura tries as Sakuraba-esque leap through Yoshida's legs (would Tamura accept that comparison? or would it irk him?), which does not work; Yoshida looks to get ahold of something and start working towards 腕挫十字固 ude-hishigi-juji-gatame, or, as Tamura backs out and the pair work back towards their feet, either a low 朽木倒 kuchiki-taoshi or 踵返 kibisu-gaeshi (hey: any 手技 te-waza in a storm), but the thing Yoshida gets ahold of specifically is Tamura's glove, and just as Shimada comes into the fray to indicate that this particular (a)holding is not allowed, Yoshida eats a pretty good knee to the side of the head, though one he seems unbothered by. This is something that will of course become perfectly clear when we get to his first Wanderlei Silva match (soon! soon!), but even before that, all indications are already that Yoshida just naturally has a really good chin (in the synecdochic sense [pretty sure this is synecdoche?], which is really very fortunate for him, because there was of course no way of knowing that just from, like, all the judo. (One's thoughts turn here to Dave Meltzer's undying enthusiasm for young Aaron Pico, a mixed-fight prospect it seemed could not miss [and has certainly not totally missed or anything], except for how he turned out to not respond well physiologically to being hit super hard [nobody's fault]).     

Does the crowd remains stoked? Yes, the crowd remains stoked. I recall all of a sudden that friend of the blog and valued friend to me over decades DAVID SMITH was in attendance for this bout! Like actually at the very さいたまスーパーアリーナ Saitama Super Arena! If I am not mistaken! I hope he is having a great time there, and also in our present moment! Yoshida, for his part, is having only an okay one at best, as he "mixes it up" with Tamura, strikingly, but is largely getting kicked really a lot of times, and also sometimes hit. Tamura has his hands down in characteristic arrogance, and I find myself wondering where exactly this longstanding arrogance, or more precisely Tamura's longstanding communication of arrogance, sits on the work/shoot spectrum? A more complex question perhaps than the moment allows, as Tamura fires in kicks not just to the knees now but also to the body (honestly just stick with the low-kicks, bro; you are killing him with those), the crowd totally going WAIIIIIII with each one that lands even a little (and some land more than that). One of these kicks to the body comes in just high enough for Yoshida to scoop it right up, and attack Tamura's supporting leg with a crisp 大内刈 ouchi-gari, which is pretty exciting! No less exciting: in the brief scramble that ensues, Tamura is able to take the back! He is doing what light hitting he is permitted while Yoshida ties up his other hand, but before you know it, Yoshida just stands right up and, despite Tamura's active "hooks," heads out the back door like *boop* (I will note again here my gratitude that the turtle [indeed 亀 kame] position is, in our contemporary period, more widely understood in the grappling community at large as being one movement away from standing up [among its several other virtues]; I feel like the turtle [indeed 亀 kame] position took a lot of grief for a while there in ways that were, to me, just silly). 

Immediately thereafter, Yoshida clinches and grabs just a hell of a headlock in the corner, as though to throw with a form of 腰車 koshi-guruma, but Tamura first bails to his knees to prevent a clean throw that would put him on his back, then stands back up into the hold, and at last slips it. Throughout, and as the fighters now retake the centre of the ring, the crowd is thoroughly bananas about all of this. Tamura mixes low-kicks (insanely successful) with head-kicks (less so) until Yoshida, having had enough of both, charges in behind some pretty wild punches, and clinches in the corner. Tamura is makes a mistake right away by cutting his hips as though to throw, which is obviously not going to happen; I think he would be better served by squaring up as best as he's able, so at least Yoshida will have to fully turn through for a forward throw, and then, I mean, who knows, right? But if you're setting up a situation where Hidehiko Yoshida (of all people) only has to make a quarter turn to throw from a snug 喧嘩四つ kenka-yotsu (cross-grip), that seems bad! Unless of course you are Hidehiko Yoshida, and you step through for something that may have had to have been a fully committed 内股 uchi-mata or 払腰 harai-goshi or 体落 tai-otoshi had your partner squared up, but instead, given present hip realities, needs only really be the merest 浮腰 uki-goshi (the floating hip favoured by 嘉納 治五郎 Kanō Jigorō himself). It's an ill wind (the hip configuration, I mean) that blows someone (Yoshida) good. Stepping forward with his right foot, thus changing the angle of his hips by several crucial degrees, has cost Kiyoshi Tamura just about everything here, which seems out of proportion, but that's the game. In the first image that follows, Tamura's okay; as soon as the second one, where he both looks and probably feels like he's in a good, active, aggressive position, he's actually in a really, really bad situation (as far as getting thrown goes—there are for sure many worse things that can happen to a person than that).

  

From there, it is the sleeve-wheel strangle of 袖車絞 sode-guruma-jime, and a neat detail here, I think, is that even though the left-handed Yoshida first has his right arm encircling and totally controlling the head, he takes the time to dig left underneath there, and finish the choke with righty. It really does feel more natural to have your dominant arm as the encircling one in sode-guruma, which is weird, because it looks like a technique that should be reasonably ambidextrous for most of us, and yet in practice it does not seem to be. Anyway, the crowd is rapturous, on account of how this ruled. A triumphant Yoshida offers gun fingers towards his cornerman Tsuyoshi Kohsaka, and is hugged right up for it.  

Even as the referee raises his arm in victory and whatnot, Yoshida is already having a hard time putting weight on what had been his lead leg, the kickèd-most one, and by the time he is announced the victor to the delighted audience, he is on his back, Kohsaka et al. taping bags of ice to him. Tamura, for his part, kneels and cries. He is an emotional guy.

Well I just loved that! As one might well expect, I suppose. Yoshida addresses his supporters in perfectly idiomatic French.

That's going to be a tough act to follow! I can't even totally remember what could be left oh no it is Sakuraba vs. Silva again isn't it. Potentially upsetting! Although I am coming into this one pre-upset, I don't actually recall, exactly, where this rates among the all-time Sakuraba drubbings, but it can't be a good scene. This is an impossibly minor concern given the overall human cost of what is about to occur here, but man it is no fun to be returned to the commentary of Damon Perry after our YouTube excursion for Yoshida/Tamura. Is no good my friend, as a visiting Brazilian coach offered about my blue-belt approach to 内股 uchi-mata (he was right!). Sakuraba's Road Warriors entrance comes complete with an extended tongue affixed to his mask which perhaps makes him more Hawk (R.I.P.)? Quinton Jackson, who joins us on commentary, spots the reference.

Well okay, let's see. Well okay, I have seen: the entirety of the bout was contested standing, and it has left Kazushi Sakuraba laid out like a mermaid, in the vivid phrasing of Joe Budden's old friend Mal. No fun!

With that final unpleasant matter behind us, after so much preceding pleasantness, one cannot help but wonder (as one so often does, in such moments) WHAT DAVE MELTZER MAY HAVE SAID ABOUT IT:

August 18, 2003:

Dave's tape-getting is immediate:

"PRIDE TOTAL ELIMINATION POLL

Thumbs up 297 (92.8%)

Thumbs down 0 (00.0%)

In the middle 23 (07.2%)

BEST MATCH POLL

Hidehiko Yoshida vs. Kiyoshi Tamura 86

Chuck Liddell vs. Alistair Overeem 75

Quinton Jackson vs. Murilo Bustamante 41

Ricco Rodriguez vs. Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira 40

Vanderlei Silva vs. Kazushi Sakuraba 39

Mirko Cro Cop vs. Igor Vovchanchyn 23

WORST MATCH POLL

Ricco Rodriguez vs. Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira 74

Quinton Jackson vs. Murilo Bustamante 40

Vanderlei Silva vs. Kazushi Sakuraba 37

Emelianenko Fedor vs. Gary Goodridge 25

Hidehiko Yoshida vs. Kiyoshi Tamura 11

The scariest men on Earth did battle to determine just what man, bare handed, is the most ferocious human on the planet on 8/10 at the Saitama Super Arena in Japan for the most loaded line-up for an MMA show in history. [Easy, big fella—ed.]

Pride’s Total Elimination drew what was announced as the largest crowd in the history of the building. While the announced number of a sellout 40,316 fans can be dismissed, taking 5,000 off that figure and you’ll have a more accurate number since the arena maxed to capacity with the expanded seating holds less than 36,000. The live gate of approximately $5 million was the largest for either a pro wrestling or MMA event in history that was held anywhere outside the city of Tokyo.

There were many storylines. There was the final match of one of the biggest money feuds of all-time, Kazushi Sakuraba vs. Vanderlei Silva. There was the first round of the toughest tournament in history, a 205-pound weight limit tournament that builds to an 11/9 show at the Tokyo Dome. There was also a three match UFC vs. Pride series, which featured three very different style matches, including two tournament matches and a battle of each group’s most recently deposed champion in each ones first match back. And to add to that, perhaps the three best heavyweights in the world were on the show, Pride’s world heavyweight champion, Emelianenko Fedor, the current scariest man on the planet, Mirko Cro Cop, and the greatest heavyweight submission master of modern times, Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira.

When the dust settled after one of the better shows of all-time, there seemed to be three men left standing as totally frightening. Silva, Pride’s reigning middleweight champion came back after double knee surgery, and looked quicker and more explosive than ever in taking out Sakuraba. Silva, nicknamed the axe murderer, is the only one of the three who looked the part, looking like a throwback to the caveman era–if men in the Paleozoic Era actually existed–and had access to copious amounts of steroids. The other two, apparently headed for a heavyweight title showdown, look totally unthreatening at first. Cro Cop looks like Lance Storm, but may be the scariest of them all. But if you saw Fedor walking down the street, you’d never notice him. He’s a normal looking Russian guy with no body and no tan, living proof that what people think of as “bad” and what really is are two entirely different stories.

The show aired in prime time on the Fuji Network, drawing a Pride all-time record 16.0 rating. It was the second highest rated MMA special in history in Japan, slightly behind the 12/31 Inoki Bom Ba Ye show with Bob Sapp vs. Yoshihiro Takayama as the main event. The highest rated match was Kiyoshi Tamura vs. Hidehiko Yoshida with a 21.9 rating (about 30 million viewers), which also breaks the all-time TV audience record for a Pride match of 18.7 for a Naoya Ogawa vs. Masaaki Satake match that aired on November 5, 2000, and would be the second highest rated MMA style match of all-time in Japan.

The show had its controversy. In the Pride vs. UFC battle, which the American version of the PPV was built around (in Japan, that was not pushed as a significant issue, as in that country the interest was on Silva vs. Sakuraba and Yoshida vs. Tamura), UFC scored a major win when Chuck Liddell rebounded from his loss to Randy Couture, and from being knocked around like a ping pong ball in the early going, to knock out Alistair Overeem of Holland with an overhand right to advance to the final four. The other two were a little closer. UFC’s middleweight (185 pound) champion Murilo Bustamante, who has not actually fought in UFC since May 10, 2002, neutralized the brawling and slamming of pre-tournament favorite Quinton Jackson. However, Jackson’s punches, knees and low kicks in the second and third round gave him a split decision.

In the battle of former heavyweight champions, it was more controversial. Officially, Nogueira won a unanimous decision over Ricco Rodriguez, giving Pride two of three wins. It was an interesting tactical battle that many thought was the best match on the show, and even more thought was the worst. Rodriguez was able to take Nogueira down in the second and third rounds and have a majority of the first round on top doing minor damage while in the guard. Rodriguez was in the top position on the ground most of the fight. He stayed relatively busy throwing shots to the head and body while caught in the guard. Nogueira kept going for submissions, but Rodriguez knew his game, and was always for ready his moves only once was in any danger of losing. It was living proof why nobody will ever be unbeatable, because when people have fought enough, their tricks are scouted. Rodriguez was a stronger and better wrestler, and knew enough about submissions to neutralize Nogueira’s ground game, and kept Nogueira off his feet enough to neutralize his superior stand-up. However, Nogueira’s unimpressive performance seems to take him out of the title chase, which is coming down to Fedor vs. Cro Cop, which looks to take place on 11/9. There is talk of matching Nogueira with another former UFC champion, current New Japan wrestler Josh Barnett on the same show.

Many people were upset at the decision, particularly since announcers Mark Coleman, Bas Rutten and Damon Perry all were vocal toward the end that Rodriguez was winning. Based on UFC rules of judging, which favor doing damage and controlling the fight, Rodriguez won. Based on Jiu Jitsu teachings, since Nogueira, on the bottom, held guard and kept trying for submissions and Rodriguez didn’t try at all to finish, Based on wrestling teachings, Rodriguez won since he outwrestled Nogueira on the ground. Based on Pride judging, it was a close call and really it was anyone’s game. Neither deserved the win or the loss, and Nogueira happened to get lucky, but calling it a robbery was laughable. It was simply a judges decision in a very difficult fight. The fans in Japan, where Nogueira is a big favorite, still booed the decision. Pride rules state the most important criteria is who is making the most effort to finish the fight by knockout or submission. That was clearly Nogueira. Rodriguez was just trying to keep his position and score enough points with baby punches, but never tried a submission the entire match. The second criteria is damage, which Rodriguez won. Third is standing combinations and ground control, also going to Rodriguez because his edge in ground control offset what was fairly even stand-up. Takedown and defense also goes to Rodriguez. Aggressiveness was Nogueira, both standing and on the ground. In addition, if two competitors are more than 22 pounds of difference in weight, a judging advantage by the books goes to the lighter man. Nogueira weighed 234, and Rodriguez weighed 263.

Watching the fight the first time, I thought Rodriguez won. Watching it a second time, I thought the commentary, and in particular Damon Perry, was terribly biased. Nogueira would land a few jabs standing and they’d talk about how Ricco is dominating the standing (which at no point was the case). Throughout the fight Perry was talking about how Rodriguez was easily winning, and he did have the top position, but that was about it. In the scorecard of the fight, in punches standing, Nogueira had the edge 9-4 (based on the commentary you’d have thought Rodriguez dominated that facet). In submission attempts, Nogueira tried 11 submissions to 0 for Rodriguez. In takedowns, Rodriguez had a 3-1 edge. In reversals, each had one. Rodriguez did two knees on the ground. In kicks while standing, Nogueira had a 3-1 edge. In knees standing, Rodriguez had a 2-0 edge. But most of the fight was on the ground, and was Rodriguez’ 84-66 advantage in what I’d call baby punches on the ground, as none the entire fight on either side were significant or damaging, enough to offset 11-0 in submission attempts?

While this may have been Pride’s greatest moment, because its popularity is so much greater now than three years ago when Sakuraba beat Royce Gracie in the company’s most legendary match, its future isn’t as bright. The success of Pride has been built largely on the back of Sakuraba, who suffered yet another knockout defeat in a wild slugfest. While he looked good before taking a brutal right to the chin that knocked him flat in a way he’s never been obliterated before, at 34, it is time for him to move on. Both Sakuraba and DSE gambled that Silva coming back from the double knee surgery earlier than his doctor suggested, combined with the stress of a new house, and a pregnant wife being just about due (she gave birth two days before the fight) and there was the feeling he couldn’t possibly be at 100% due to all the outside stresses. Well, he was. After going to the hospital and checking out okay, Sakuraba was already talking about fighting on the 11/9 show. Cro Cop said that he respected Sakuraba so much as a fighter, but his stand-up right now is a weakness, and that he wants him to train with Cro Cop’s kickboxing coaches to up that aspect of his game.

At his size, Sakuraba should no longer have been put in with guys who are naturally so much bigger, and if he does continue, he should be the star of the new Pride Bushido (a new offshoot trying to take from the success of the K-1 middleweight shows, by having shows for lighter weight fighters) which debuts on 10/5 at the same arena. The plans are to do three lighter weight major shows per year. The idea is to make those shows into theme shows, such as Japan vs. Gracies, Brazil vs. Russia best-of-five type of deals. The head of Deep, Saieki (don’t know first name), is expected to be named assistant director of the Pride Bushido group. This puts the future of Deep, which has one show left on its schedule, a 9/15 date at Tokyo Ota Ward Gym with Brad Kohler vs. Dos Caras Jr. as the main event, in question. Many feel if Pride gets into booking smaller fighters in high profile shows, that other shoot groups that rely on smaller fighters like Deep, Shooto and ZST will be weakened and fall to indie level perception.

When the Sakuraba era is over, and as a top fighter it is, but he is still a draw and will be pushed into that era is over, Pride doesn’t have the Japanese drawing card essential to draw consistent crowds like this. The attempt to put Yoshida in that spot is bound for failure, because he doesn’t have the charisma, and as this show proved, doesn’t have the all-around ability.

Yoshida vs. Tamura, while scoffed at by some, was the most heated fight on the show live. Tamura schooled Yoshida standing. He took a lot of hard shots, and was unable to combat the punches or the leg kicks. While Americans who only saw Tamura lose to Silva (a knockout in a very competitive fight) and Bob Sapp (where he was giving up 190 pounds), don’t take him seriously, he was, by far, the best kicker of the eight in the tournament. However, Yoshida managed to tie him up, and it was Yoshida’s Olympic judo gold medal winning world at that point, throwing Tamura and using his gi for a choke. There was a lot of suspicion going into the fight because Tamura is a pro wrestler (then again, Goodridge, Overeem, Rodriguez and Sakuraba have all done worked matches in Japan as well). And the hardest part is that Tamura is probably the single greatest pro wrestler that ever lived in being able to make a match appear to be legitimate. However, Yoshida has no experience in doing so. In Tamura’s worked matches in RINGS against inexperienced guys, you could see holes in them after 2:00 or less, and those were guys with a lot of experience in working matches. Also, Tamura was never as aggressive when it came to punches and rapidity of kicks in any of those matches, and in particular when he had his back and was throwing punches, he was not taking anything off his punches. Quite frankly, if you watch something that looks like a worked match on that show (and it wasn’t, because the guys wouldn’t be good enough to pull it off), it was Rodriguez vs. Nogueira because nobody threw any hard blows the whole fight nor made a serious attempt to hurt the other guy.

For a guy supposed to lose, he was trying far too hard to hurt Yoshida with his punches and kicks. Tamura nearly took Yoshida’s legs out from under him, and knocked him down legit with a hard punch that came close to ending the fight. In a worked match, you take something off your punch right before it lands, which he didn’t do. Still, the ease Yoshida got the choke on a fighter who put on a clinic in avoiding submissions against the much bigger Nogueira a few years back can be questioned, but having watched the replay several times, it all happened so quick and you can see Tamura wanted to part of a ground game because of his fear of unfamiliarity with the gi game. But this violated every precept of a worked match. Having seen every Tamura pro wrestling match and real match of the past nine years, he was never as intense or aggressive in any worked match, where he always had spots where he caught his breath and relaxed between flurries, and these were against guys like Volk Han and Tsuyoshi Kosaka who were almost at his level in making things look real, not a total amateur worker like Yoshida would be. How could a Yoshida be more convincing than either of them? Also, there was more of a struggle by Tamura to block everything Yoshida tried, and in a worked shoot, the whole key is, you don’t block. If it would have been a work, Yoshida’s final judo throw would have been clean and spectacular to set up the choke. Instead, Tamura blocked it, it didn’t look good at all, and Yoshida was so quick in getting the choke it was over before you knew it. Tamura had little or no experience fighting someone with a gi, which presents different dimensions, and avoided the ground like the plague more than any fight he was ever in (where he was always comfortable on the ground, even with a master like Frank Shamrock). Clearly, if Yoshida is a joke on the ground, nobody clued Tamura in on it. After the win, Yoshida went down, selling his leg huge. Yoshida claimed he didn’t feel any pain during the fight, but as soon as it was over, the knee locked and he was in major pain. The leg took some serious punishment including a few very hard kicks to the inside of the knee, which is another spot you avoid kicking in a worked shoot. Not only that, but Yoshida’s left knee had been injured in judo and most concede ti was his knee and elbow injuries that took him down from being a world champion level in that sport. The last thing you would ever do is kick someone’s previously injured knee if you were trying to protect them in a worked fight. Tamura was aiming at the knee, not making a mistake. In a work, you would instead go for the thigh because it’s got more muscle to protect it, plus it makes a better sound. Yoshida had 40 ccs of blood drained from his knee the day after the fight, and his doctor said it would be two months before the knee totally heals and he doesn’t want him training until then. That would give him one month before the finals. Yoshida said that he would be ready, and that he had similar knee problems in judo and competed through them. Promoter Nobuyuki Sakakibara has said he is looking for an alternate just in case he’s not.

Still, based on the first round, Silva looked the best and certainly in Japan is the favorite, since to Japanese fans, he and Yoshida were the favorites going in. Jackson, who most fighters favored, looked quite mortal as Bustamante was able to counter much of his arsenal to survive without being hurt, but not enough to win. Liddell was pounded on and bloodied up, and it was almost a desperation punch that saved him. His lack of standing defense, particularly against guys who come straight up the middle, was exposed for the second fight in a row. Yoshida is easily the best submission guy of the four, but his lack of standing defense makes any of these opponents scary. While nobody left, including Silva, can kick like Tamura, they are all bigger men and harder punchers. Tamura knocked Yoshida down right away with a punch. That same punch from any of these guys will end the fight. Bracketing is to be announced, but there are three possibilities. Yoshida vs. Silva and Jackson vs. Liddell at least guarantees a draw, as the Japanese trying to stop Silva is still money. There was a fans poll already held and this was the top choice of the three possible brackets, and Pride had said it was going to bracket the final four based on what the fans want. The second choice was Silva vs. Jackson is a grudge match that has had an angle shot and people have waited for since early in the year, which would put Liddell vs. Yoshida. That, at least, would make Dana White happy, as they claim he has bet $250,000 that Liddell will go all the way, and the feeling is whomever gets Yoshida in the first round will have the easiest path to the championship, which judging from this show, looks to be the case. The third, and I’d think, least likely possibility, is Yoshida vs. Jackson and Liddell vs. Silva, because there is no ready made Japanese interest in either of those two fights.

Pride also announced its schedule for the next several months before the show. The 10/5 show was announced on the U.S. PPV broadcast, but it was never made clear if it would be on PPV or not. The 11/9 show was announced as a PPV, but the 11/9 date (a Sunday and there is no pro wrestling PPV that date) was never said on the show, as it was only referred to as the finals in November. The scheduled U.S. debut in Las Vegas was moved to 3/13. The next major show after the Tokyo dome is a February show at Osaka Castle Hall. The big plans for 2004 are to build around a heavyweight Grand Prix tournament, with the first round in April and the finals in July.

The final bit of controversy was the debut of Detroit radio sports talk host Damon Perry as play-by-play announcer, replacing Stephen Quadros. To his credit, Perry, when talking about background and previous fights, can either recite prepared material in a way where he sounds knowledgeable, or actually has some background knowledge in the sport. He was already in that sense far superior to Jonathan Coachman, who people were waiting to tag him as, and even Michael Cole, since Cole works hard but is clearly transparent when talking about things he’s ready and doesn’t really know. However, Perry also was more annoying in his skits, in trying for comedy, than either Coach or Cole. Bas Rutten has charm, but didn’t work as well with him. On the flip side, this was the best produced Pride show to date, and with so many short fights, there was far more out of the ring backstage vignettes than usual. That wasn’t good, and there should have been more post-fight interviews to build to upcoming matches, none of which were done, rather then the endless skits with Rutten and Perry coming across as the Vince, Stephanie, Bischoff and Sable in the middle of an intense show.

1. Emelianenko Fedor destroyed Gary Goodridge in 1:09. Goodridge had Maurice Smith and Mark Coleman in his corner. Fedor came out smoking, landed some punches, took Goodridge down and threw some punches, three soccer kicks to the head and four more punches before it was stopped. Goodridge’s mouth was bloody when it was over.

2. Chuck Liddell beat Alistair Overeem in 3:09. Both Liddell and Rodriguez came out to the UFC theme song. Dana White was doing commentary for this match. White noted that Liddell was going to win because he has an angel in his corner, noting that the late Alex Gong trained Liddell for four weeks before the fight. While it didn’t air on PPV in the U.S., they did have a ceremony for Giant Ochiai to open the Japanese PPV show. Overeem befuddled Liddell early, as at 6-5, he had a reach advantage Liddell wasn’t used to, and seemed to have quicker hands. He was rocking Liddell, and Liddell wanted t take it to the ground. Liddell hit some knees on the ground, but Overeem escaped and threw some knees. Liddell ended up cut. Overeem hit an awesome knee, and had Liddell backpedaling, when Liddell threw a great overhand right that knocked Overeem silly. He landed a punch and knee before the ref stepped in. A great match.

3. Quinton Jackson won a split decision over Murilo Bustamante after three rounds (20:00). Bustamante weighed in at 198 to Jackson’s 203, although by match time there was a lot more than five pounds of difference. Bustamante looked slick early, nearly getting an armbar early. He nearly got a second one, but Jackson power bombed to break it. Jackson kept going for his trademark slams, but Bustamante countered them by hooking the ankle and removing his power base. Bustamante went for a guillotine but Jackson powered out. At this point Jackson’s trunks came down. The fight was stopped for a minute or two to take care of this issue. This seemed to change the fight because Jackson was never in trouble again. Jackson would take him down, and then try to avoid being down and getting up and striking. He didn’t do much damage in the first round, which went to Bustamante, although Bustamante developed a mouse under his eye. Bustamante’s lack of long-term training probably made a difference as well. Second round saw Jackson take Bustamante down, but easily escaped when he went for an armbar, and countered with knees. Jackson connected with a lot of punches and low kicks while standing to win the round. Third round saw Jackson connecting with knees and punches standing. On the ground, he punched his way out of an armbar. Jackson was on top delivering body shots as the round came to a close. Even though he lost, you’ve got to give a lot of credit to Bustamante, at 38 and with no notice, for neutralizing Jackson’s strengths and making him look like anything but the dominant man at his weight that most figured him to be. With full training, he may have won.

4. Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira won a unanimous decision over Ricco Rodriguez after three rounds (20:00). Rodriguez also came out to the UFC theme song. At 263, he had a huge gut and it looked like he was going to tire out fast, particularly in the summer Japan heat and humidity. His gut was deceptive, because he went the distance and conditioning was not a factor. The announcers went wild when the English announcer did her famous announcement of Nogueira. It’s awesome. I think Bas Rutten called her a witch. She’s the coolest ring announcer in the world. Nogueira took Rodriguez down right away, but Rodriguez ended up reversing. Nogueira kept going for armbars, triangles and uma platas. After a standing exchange, Rodriguez took Nogueira down and kept him there until the end of the round. Rodriguez took Nogueira down in the second round and avoided every submission attempt. There was a double reversal and Nogueira again went for an uma plata, but Rodriguez was never in trouble. Third round was more notable for Mark Coleman’s commentary. He noted, it’s not about winning or losing, it’s about being brought back and entertaining the fans. As Jeff Osbourne has always said, the only people who actually understand the MMA business are those who first understand the pro wrestling business. Rodriguez took Nogueira down again. Nogueira went for a Kimura which gave Rodriguez the chance to reverse. Rodriguez used G&P to apparently pile up points while avoiding Nogueira’s attempts at triangles from the bottom . I thought this was a very good match for someone who is into actual wrestling, because it was two guys who were very good on the mat neutralizing each others’ strengths. For those who want explosive action, well, there wasn’t much of it. I thought Rodriguez won the first time I saw it. I thought Nogueira won the second time I saw it.

Intermission saw Antonio Inoki come out. He talked about both the 10/5 Pride Bushido show and the 12/31 Inoki Bom Ba Ye show, both of which take place at the arena, which has kind of become the home arena for K-1 and Pride. Inoki brought out Akira Shoji, Kazuhiro Nakamura, Hayato Sakurai, Donojonsuke Mishima and Shungo Oyama as some of those they are going to feature in the Bushido show. Kazuyuki Fujita came out and said he would fight both at the Tokyo Dome on 11/9, on 12/31, and enter the heavyweight tournament next year. He got a pretty big pop. Inoki then did his Ichi, Ni, San , Da deal.

5. Mirko Cro Cop (Mirko Filipovic) beat Igor Vovchanchyn in 1:29. Vovchanchyn quickly realized he didn’t have the hand speed and went for a take down. That didn’t work. Cro Cop cut him right over the eye with a punch, and then came out of nowhere with a left high kick in one of the most spectacular knockouts ever. It should be noted that nobody in nobody knows how many fights (probably well over 50) has ever knocked Vovchanchyn out. Cro Cop then challenged Fedor for a title match on 11/9. Fedor didn’t look particularly anxious as he was at ringside, and never responded, staying totally stoic while this was going on. Of course, he challenged in English and Fedor doesn’t know English, which at that time in his life was probably helping his peace of mind a lot.

6. Hidehiko Yoshida beat Kiyoshi Tamura in 5:06. This was the most heated and exciting fight of the show. Fans went wild for Tamura, more than anyone except Sakuraba. Tamura decked Yoshida with a punch right away. He brutalized him standing with the crowd going wild for him. Yoshida had no defense for the combination of punches and both low and middle kicks. Tamura missed a kick and was taken down, but quickly escaped. They had a great exchange standing, with Yoshida throwing back, but Tamura got the better of it. Yoshida then tied Tamura up and took him down with a sloppy throw and applied a gi choke. After the match, Yoshida collapsed selling his left knee from all the kicks. He kind of looked like a soccer player trying to get a foul call.

7. Vanderlei Silva knocked out Kazushi Sakuraba in 5:01. Sakuraba came out dressed like the Road Warriors (Animal in particular, as Road Warriors were huge in Japan when Sakuraba was growing up). As usual, the English announcers didn’t know the significance of it. After something like 20 fights doing this ring entrance, you’d think someone would ask someone what pro wrestler is Sakuraba going to dress up as in his ring entrance. It was funny because Perry clearly thought he was dressing up like a Road Warrior, but seemed to have no clue it was the pro wrestling Road Warriors and thought it was from the old movie. By the way, with Jerry Millen replacing Michael Braverman as producer, the ban on the term pro wrestling seems to have been lifted because it was mentioned at least once, although it’s not like the term was ever used to describe Sakuraba or Tamura. This was an explosive match and Sakuraba stayed with him. Silva looked quicker than ever and Sakuraba looked better than he’s looked in a long time hanging in. It was all action with great heat, but Sakuraba knew he had to take it down and Silva was able to avoid it. Silva just had a baby born two days before the show, and fatherhood did not make him any more civilized. Sakuraba’s nose was busted right away. Sakuraba was leaning on his heels when Silva caught him with a right that knocked Sakuraba out."

and

"The Fuji Network, which aired the 8/10 Pride show, signed away this year’s Inoki Bom Ba Ye show, which is becoming a Japanese New Years Eve tradition, away from TBS. Last year the show drew a 16.5 rating for the two-and-a-half hour special. Last year’s show was paced by a Bob Sapp vs. Yoshihiro Takayama main event, which pit the winner and runner-up in the Tokyo Sports Wrestler of the Year awards in a shoot match, and drew a 24.5 rating for the main event, which translated to 43 million viewers, making it the highest rated match since the 1990 pro wrestling debut of sumo legend Koji Kitao at the Tokyo Dome."

and, from a preview of Observer Hall of Fame candidates:

"

VOLK HAN

Strengths: One of the best mat wrestlers of all-time, and with the exception of Kiyoshi Tamura, the best submission worker in the history of the industry. He was the top foreign star for RINGS, and drew some huge gates against Akira Maeda, for almost its entire run from 1993 – 2002. He was Maeda’s top opponent, and the two are synonymous, as he carried Maeda to some great matches when Maeda was past his prime due to injuries. The first legitimate Soviet athlete who became a long-term pro wrestling main eventer. Among the most popular foreign wrestlers in Japan for much of that time period. And to show his working skill wasn’t limited to show, competed in shoot matches when he was well into his 40s, including knocking out ranked kickboxer Lee Hasdell, beating highly regarded Bobby Hoffman, and losing a decision to Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira that was, at that point in time, Nogueira’s toughest match of his career.

Weaknesses: RINGS is dead, so its history largely dies with it. While RINGS drew some good crowds, particularly early in its run, it was never mainstream to the point where its stars were breakthrough superstars. Very few followed his career and understand the context, and many simply think of him as a guy successful in shooting who did some pro wrestling, when he was actually almost all-time great as a worker. I believe if he had the same kind of matches in All Japan or New Japan, he’d be considered superior to Billy Robinson and be in.

Verdict: I’m torn on him. There is a part of me who believes he should be in, but I see Frye as having accomplished more and being a bigger star when comparing the two. He will never get the votes to be in, and I’m thinking he will disappear from the ballot once Tamura gets on. Tamura, his frequent foe in some classic matches., is really the far stronger pick from that style, as he was a better worker, bigger draw, had bigger wins in shoots, and was a bigger star. This year I’m not voting for him, and I can’t see voting for him next year, but do consider him someone that should get more consideration than he gets."

August 25, 2003:

"It is official that the Deep promotion is folding after the 9/15 show, as its president, Shigeru Saeki, has joined the Pride organization to work on the Bushido shows."

and (R.I.P. 岡田 貴幸, Okada Takayuki aka ジャイアント落合 Jaianto Ochiai):

"Nobuhiko Takada, Masaaki Satake and Kazushi Sakuraba all attended the wake for Giant Ochiai on 8/13. WJ General Manager Katsuji Nagashima also attended. About 200 people attended his funeral the next day, including most of the wrestlers from WJ and many wrestlers and officials from Pride. Both Riki Choshu and Kenzo Suzuki, who were in the gym when he was injured, were at the funeral, but they wouldn’t talk to anyone about the circumstances of his death. Pride did a major ceremony for him before the show, which aired on PPV in Japan, but was edited off the U.S. broadcast and his name was never mentioned on the show. New Japan, even though he had never worked for the company, did a ceremony honoring him before the 8/15 G-1 Climax show at Sumo Hall."

and

"MMA got probably its most positive mainstream publicity ever in the 8/18 Newsweek. It had a small chart talking about MMA, saying it was “More fun that boxing, more real than wrestling–MMA competitions are selling out nationwide. A look at the three biggest fight clubs.” It then has thumbnails on Pride, UFC and K-1. The person who put it together didn’t seem to know much. For Pride they listed it has “elements of judo, wrestling, karate and kickboxing.” For UFC, it was listed as “Similar to Japan’s Pride, but also with jujitsu.” It notes the difference between the ring and cage. For K-1, it notes “fighters must stay on their feet.""

and

"The 8/10 Pride show was the second highest rated sports show of the week in Japan, trailing only an international soccer game, which means it beat all the Yomiuri Giants baseball games that week."

September 1, 2003:

"Nobuhiko Takada, the figurehead G.M. of Pride, said they would be interested in using Tyson. He said that it would be more exciting for Tyson to fight with their rules, because under K-1 rules, he could be chopped down by low kicks, which would make for a boring fight (as opposed to being taken down and outmaneuvered into a submission I suppose). Takada said he’d love to book Tyson against either top draw Kazushi Sakuraba, heavyweight champ Emelianenko Fedor or middleweight champ Vanderlei Silva. That sounds to me more like Takada is looking at getting his organization pub than anything that has any serious chance of really happening."

and

"There is talk about arranging a battle of the younger brothers as one of the matches on the 10/5 Pride show at the Saitama Super Arena. This is not confirmed, but I’ve been led to believe this will be airing in the U.S. on PPV, since Bas Rutten is scheduled to go there and work as an announcer. This bout would be Antonio Rogerio Nogueira, the younger twin of the former Pride world heavyweight champion, facing Alexsander (whose last name has been billed as both Fedor and Emelianenko, although the two are called “The Fedor Brothers”), the younger brother of the current champion. Anderson Silva and Carlos Newton have mentioned they have signed for that show. Rumors have it the top Japanese draws (or attempted draws would be Hayato Sakurai, Kazuhiro Hamanaka and Dokonjosuke Mishima.

There has been newspaper speculation of a match between Dan Henderson vs. Murilo Bustamante on the 11/9 Pride show, with the idea that it would be an alternates match. That would mean if the winner of either semifinal on 11/9 in the tournament was to get hurt, the winner of this match would advance to the championship. That’s a pretty good idea, because the odds of a winner being hurt in the first round match are pretty good. Just having an alternate who doesn’t fight gives the alternate a huge advantage, and if nothing else, nobody will argue with the quality of the alternates other than it’s sort of a double chance for Bustamante. Bustamante probably deserves that in taking the Quinton Jackson fight on such short notice, and if his cardio was stronger, he may have won the match. It’s also been mentioned that Murilo Ninja may be put in the slot against Bustamante. Either way it’s an awesome fight on paper. Also talk of Kiyoshi Tamura against either Ryan or Renzo Gracie as a potential alternates match on the show. This at least gives them the Japanese pro wrestler vs. Gracie angle, which has been a great draw over the years but has probably run its course by now. Tamura faced Renzo once before in a famous match where Tamura won via decision. There is also talk of Kazuyuki Fujita vs. Mark Coleman. With Josh Barnett having two fights scheduled in the next month, the odds of him facing Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira on the show seem to have lowered."

September 8:

The tenth anniversary of PANCRASE occasions lead-story reflections:

"On September 21, 1993, pro wrestling changed. Perhaps forever.

Up to that point in time, pro wrestling had been 99.9% worked matches (All Japan Women in the 80s and 90s used to run one shoot match per card at Korakuen Hall and even had a shoot championship) since as far back as anyone can remember, and probably, even farther back than that. In the minds of nearly everyone in the industry, shoots and pro wrestling were diametrically opposed. For as long as anyone could remember, there were all the reasons why you couldn’t do them. They were boring and nobody would pay for a ticket. It was always noted that amateur wrestling, with rare exceptions, is not a spectator sport. People would get hurt too often and you couldn’t work the traditional 20-30 shows per month. And worst, if you don’t fix outcomes, you can’t protect and build stars. One major promoter told me a few years into this, when UFC had its initial U.S. success, that it would be huge, until someone died, and then it would be shut down forever. The shoot-oriented promotions in Japan like UWF, UWFI and RINGS did have occasional legit matches, usually on the undercard, but usually they were under karate or kickboxing rules, and almost never put established stars in a shoot situation or at risk of hurting their reputation.

Three major young stars of Japanese pro wrestling’s Pro Wrestling Fujiwara Gumi promotion, probably the No. 5 or so group in the country at the time, were frustrated. Masakatsu Funaki was a very charismatic wrestler who was considered better than Jushin Liger or Chris Benoit when they all started out in the same New Japan system. Minoru Suzuki was a former college wrestling star that New Japan was grooming for a top position years down the line, but quit because he didn’t like the theatrics and was offered stardom in the cooler UWF if he jumped. Wayne Shamrock (the name Ken Shamrock was known by in Japan at that time) was at the time one of the five most popular foreign stars in the country, at least among magazine readers. They were caught in politics. All had trained heavily in shooting under Karl Gotch, Masami Soranaka or Larry Simon (Prof. Boris Malenko). They had gone from the UWF, a super popular promotion that had folded due to egos and mismanagement a few years earlier, to Pro Wrestling Fujiwara Gumi, a smaller group that didn’t have nearly the popularity or exposure. Shamrock had even been tested in a high profile shoot situation as on October 4, 1992, he defeated a former world kickboxing champion Don Nakaya Neilsen (the greatest kickboxer ever to cross over into pro wrestling years earlier) in a shoot match in just 45 seconds at the Tokyo Dome, using the tactics all wrestlers had been taught would work in a mixed encounter. He took him down right away, and Neilsen, with no training off his feet, was a sitting duck for a leg submission. Suzuki had plenty of confidence in his own ability, and sometimes infuriated the pro wrestlers in Japan with his comments alluding to being real when they weren’t. For example, after All Japan stopped booking the Malenko Brothers, Joe Malenko came to work for PWFG. After Suzuki beat him in a main event, he did an interview noting that Joe Malenko, who had the reputation of being the best shooter of just about all the pro wrestlers due to his years of hands-on training as Karl Gotch’s best pupil, was rusty because it was his first real match in years. The day before the Shamrock-Neilsen Tokyo Dome match, he had a training session to work out his pro wrestling match with 1988 Olympic superheavyweight gold medalist David Gobezhishvili. While the 286-pound Russian threw him around like a rag doll, Suzuki was able to hook him and make him tap in a real life situation. Not knowing anything different, they believed their skills, submission wrestling, could beat athletes from any combat sport in a real situation. Certainly everyone who had been trained by Gotch had believed that to be the case, even though it had never been tested, other than the occasional easy win in mixed matches against pure kickboxers, gym workouts with pure amateur wrestlers and basic logic of combating a pure boxer.

They were upset that they were being kept down below group owner, Yoshiaki Fujiwara, who was past 40. They also wanted to test out what did and didn’t work. While underground Vale Tudo did exist in Brazil, few in the pro wrestling world had ever heard of it, and everyone had a different idea of what it should be. Gotch himself didn’t believe in kicks, making note that it wasn’t a soccer game, but a wrestling match. None of them believed in punches, since they grew up in a demonstration sport based on kicks, suplexes and submissions, and thought punches removed the skill level.

The first show was an amazing deal. A sellout crowd of 7,000 fans came to NK Hall in Tokyo to see what was purported as the real deal, a show of all shooting matches, billed as “Hybrid Wrestling.” The term mixed martial arts didn’t even exist then. There had been other shoot oriented promotions. Kickboxing had been big in Japan in the 80s, but died out, and was about to be resurrected on a major level with K-1. Satoru Sayama, in the late 80s and early 90s, created a sport called shooting, but, like shoot boxing, it was a combination of kick boxing with takedowns, similar to Chinese boxing or San Shou, and none of those groups had garnered any significant appeal. Sambo wrestling had existed, which was a Soviet version of judo, and it was well known among Japanese wrestling fans because Sambo king Chris Dolman (and later Russians Volk Han and Andrei Kopylov in RINGS) was an early UWF opponent of Akira Maeda. But none used established pro wrestlers and billed themselves as pro wrestling, and attempted to use the pro wrestling rules they had grown up watching. Of course, UWF, UWFI, PWFG, RINGS and others had also advertised themselves as shooting, but were all, for the most part, just a more realistic and serious form of worked pro wrestling, so those in the know were skeptical at first. Nobody knew what to expect, but were amazed to see Funaki, Shamrock and Suzuki come out in a ceremony before the show, all down 15-20 pounds, and ripped.

Five matches were held that night. The first four lasted a combined 7:00. Suzuki opened, quickly submitting Katsuomi Inagaki. In the second match, they learned there was more to fighting than submissions on the ground. A Dutch kickboxer named Bas Rutten, who at the time had no ground training (well, he had four classes and had learned nothing but a guillotine), knocked out pro wrestler Ryushi Yanagisawa with a brutal kick to the head. George Weingeroff, a second generation U.S. pro wrestler (son of famous 60s and 70s pro wrestling manager Gentleman Saul Weingeroff), and a former college wrestling star, an established indie wrestling name for many years with people like Randy Savage, Ronnie Garvin, Lanny Poffo, Bob Roop, Bob Orton and others in the old ICW, was up next. They established that a so-called shooter pro wrestler would look like a deer in the headlights taking strikes and quickly being blown out by Yoshiki Takahashi. In the main event, Shamrock choked out Funaki in 6:15. People loved it, but immediately fans, reporters and the promotion itself questioned how long fans would pay $135 ringside to see such short shows.

The original Pancrase was very different than today. Since it was formed by pro wrestlers, it was basically the “rules” of pro wrestling, strictly enforced. Punching was not allowed to the head or face, but was allowed to the body. Slaps were allowed to the head. Kicks were legal. And if someone got a submission on, and the guy in it made the ropes, like pro wrestling, it would be a rope break. These guys were in the infancy of submission learning, and the top guys could lock them on quickly, so rope breaks could prolong short matches. It was a learning experience as time went on. Eventually, points were awarded for rope breaks in the advent of them going the time limit, which as the fighters got better, started happening with more frequency. Judges were later added. After several fighters needed surgery due to heel hooks, the move was banned for many years. UFC started two months later, and Shamrock became the crossover star in both, under two different names. Shamrock, Funaki and Suzuki, who were the early stars, often would carry opponents for several minutes without beating them in order to give people a longer show. Occasionally, there were set up spots during the body of matches, but finishes were not predetermined, with a few exceptions. There were a few early works in Pancrase, most notably Shamrock’s win over Matt Hume, and his King of Pancrase title loss to Suzuki.

They still had the old pro wrestling mentality regarding the world championship, and if anything, being legitimate, felt they needed to protect its credibility even more. The idea was, and as silly as this sounds now it was very valid reasoning at the time, that your world champion can’t do jobs outside the promotion or it basically renders the title, which is the money, of no value. Shamrock had a match with Dan Severn on a July 14, 1995, UFC show. Severn held the NWA title, which was defended on indie promotions in the U.S. He got the title largely due to Dennis Coraluzzo, with nobody to turn to, asking me what he could do as he had a title, and had nobody of world championship caliber to put it on. I suggested going in another direction, since Severn was far more famous at the time than any indie wrestlers because of his success in UFC. In fact, Severn had become the hero at the time to high school wrestlers around the U.S., as they saw a pure wrestler beat all the martial artists in an almost no rules situation. But the idea that a Pancrase champion could lose to a fake world champion from pro wrestling wasn’t acceptable, and would defeat everything they were trying to present. It should also be noted that Severn had been a known commodity in Japan, doing worked shoots for the UWFI for several years, and while he once main evented a sold out Budokan Hall losing to Nobuhiko Takada, from a pro wrestling hierarchal standpoint, he wasn’t on Shamrock’s level. Shamrock was asked to lose his title to Suzuki beforehand if he took the Severn match, and because UFC had become his primary income at that point, he agreed. Many at the time favored Severn to beat Shamrock, since he was both bigger and the better wrestler of the two, but Shamrock won in just 2:15 with a guillotine choke on a show that was viewed on PPV in the U.S. by almost as many people as had purchased Wrestlemania a few months earlier.

You can point to seven months earlier, on December 17, 1994, as the date pro wrestling had its first recognized major male world champion won in a legitimate sporting competition (the women’s world title in 1954 changed hands in a shoot match with Mildred Burke losing to June Byers), in at least 75 years, and probably longer than that, in “Wayne” Shamrock. While there have been many double-crosses in title matches over the years, the idea of two men going into the ring without a planned outcome and doing a legitimate championship match dates back so many years that nobody is alive that would really know the last time it happened. In a two-day tournament to determine the first King of Pancrase, that drew sellouts of 11,000 fans each night to Sumo Hall, he defeated Alex Cook, Maurice Smith, Funaki and Manabu Yamada. He blew out his knee in the Funaki match and didn’t want to come out for the finals, but was talked into going out, and basically just out wrestled and rode the smaller Yamada for a boring 30:00 decision in an anti-climactic title match. When the championship was held by Shamrock, Minoru Suzuki, Frank Shamrock and Bas Rutten, an argument could have been made that, due to the skill level of Pancrase, this was as legitimate a title there was, at least within its weight division, and the early champions and title matches are far better remembered than the recent ones. Pancrase, in order to maintain the speed of the fight among other things, and because its top Japanese stars were all junior heavyweight size, rarely booked big men, and when they did, they were invariably unskilled giants like European pro wrestler August Smisl and early UFC name Paul Varelans, until the emergence of Semmy Schilt. Although by the late 90s, within the MMA world, the King of Pancrase title wasn’t taken nearly as seriously, as it was considered just another in the multitude of organization belts that were routinely vacated when fighters got bigger money offers from the larger groups.

Pancrase was marketed briefly in the U.S. by SEG on PPV, as a sister event to UFC in 1996. The first show, headlined by Frank Shamrock beating Suzuki for the championship, drew 60,000 buys. It was more than UFC usually does today, and more than Pride has ever done in this country, and on par with what ECW was usually doing in its heyday. However, the second show fell to 25,000 and third, a tape of the September 7, 1996, considered the company’s best ever show (featuring Frank Shamrock’s only knockout loss of his career, to Yuki Kondo; as well as the first match in Japanese history to be considered a match of the year candidate in both pro wrestling and the martial arts world, Bas Rutten’s Pancrase title defense over Funaki via knockout), was an awesome show that almost nobody bought. American fans weren’t going to support a fighting sport where closed fist punches to the head weren’t allowed.

UFC and Pancrase were very different. Pancrase was considered by its combatants as a civilized “game,” which was physically far harder, particularly on the joints, because it was submission experts constantly ripping on the body, then the less skilled UFC brawls. Because the fighters fought every six weeks and were always injured, but always training and fighting around injuries, it burned out careers in rapid speed. But UFC was considered more unruly and brutal, like a legalized street fight. At first, Funaki hated UFC, even though he was in Ken Shamrock’s corner for his early matches. Shamrock even waved a Pancrase flag at early UFC events. Eventually, rules for both changed, and today, with the exception of one using a cage and the other a ring, and a few minor modifications, they are largely the same.

Pancrase spawned some of the best fighters of the early era, most notably the two Shamrocks and Rutten, as well as Funaki, Guy Mezger and later, Semmy Schilt. Eventually, almost all the major names left, largely because they could earn more elsewhere. Some, like Rutten, remained on great terms after leaving. Others, like Ken Shamrock, wound up involved in a bitter lawsuit with the company. As Pride gained in popularity, Pancrase survived on a much smaller scale, usually running shows at 1,800-seat Korakuen Hall in Tokyo, or the 800-seat Umeda Stella Hall in Osaka. When the rules merged and Pancrase started promoting what were at first called Vale Tudo rules matches, Funaki was never able to have major success. Suzuki had too many concussions and was already a shot fighter. None of the younger fighters turned into world beaters nor did any of them have the charisma to draw fans like the original ones who were major pro wrestling stars at first. While still covered as pro wrestling, they stopped using established pro wrestlers for the most part, and by 1997, the promotion was believed to have been 100% shoot, but its popularity declined greatly. But over the past year, partially due to the pro wrestlers vs. pro wrestling haters feud, the gates have increased.

Unlike UFC and Pride, which have lost big money and changed ownership, Pancrase has been run by Masami Ozaki from day one. They don’t pay anywhere near what the other groups pay, and lost all their major stars from the early days, either to other organizations like UFC and Pride, or to injury-fueled retirements.

It came full circle on 8/31, for the 10th anniversary show at Sumo Hall. This was built largely around New Japan vs. Pancrase in three matches, one of which New Japan figured to win. It resulted in the company’s biggest crowd in five years of about 7,000 (announced as a near sellout of 10,500) fans for a show that also aired live on PPV.

In the main event, and what was reported as an excellent match that saved a lackluster show, Josh Barnett joined the two Shamrocks and Rutten as the only men in history to hold world titles in both Pancrase and UFC during their careers.

The former UFC heavyweight champion, who was stripped of the title after a positive steroid test, won the open weight King of Pancrase title that was vacated by Schilt, beating Yuki Kondo in 3:26 of the third round with a choke. Barnett had a 59-pound weight advantage and used it, but it was said that Kondo got over bigger in losing because of lasting so long against a much bigger man. The first round was a wild exchange of knees, kicks and punches. Barnett’s size took over in the second round, as he took Kondo down and G&P’d him. In the third round, Barnett did the same thing, used two german suplexes, and more G&P until Kondo was bleeding from the eye, and eventually maneuvered into a choke.

After the match, Yoshiki Takahashi, who holds the KOP heavyweight (209-pound weight class) title, and was doing commentary, challenged Barnett. The two shook hands and, while not announced, it looked to be a set-up for a match on the 10/13 New Japan Tokyo Dome show as one of the proposed five shoot matches on that card. Although New Japan was built for 30 years on the idea of it being real, Barnett would be the first real shooting world champion to defend his title on a New Japan show. It’s an amazing journey over ten years.

Pancrase took the other two matches over New Japan. In a submissions only match, Suzuki beat much bigger Takashi Iizuka in what was said to have been a boring 10:00 match via unanimous decision. Little happened in the first round, but Suzuki dominated the second round and went for a heel hook and a choke, but never got it. Jushin Liger was at ringside, and openly stated that the match was boring. Suzuki confronted him in what was clearly a planned set-up, probably for a singles match under traditional pro wrestling style for the Tokyo Dome. Suzuki squashed Liger in less than 2:00 in a shoot match last year. Liger even said it was ridiculous that Suzuki was to challenge him after putting on such a poor show.

In the other, Pancrase veteran Osami Shibuya beat New Japan prelim wrestler Toru Yano, a former star college wrestler, in 2:25 of the second round with an armbar. In other big matches on the show, Sanae Kikuta won a unanimous decision over Elvis Sinosic, Crosley Gracie won a unanimous decision over Kiuma Kunioku, and Yuki Sasaki won a unanimous decision over former U.S. Olympian Heath Sims. Sims, who took the fight on only a few days notice when Evangelista Cyborg had to pull out due to an injury, was on the U.S. Olympic team in the 2000 Olympics in Greco-Roman wrestling at 152 pounds. While he didn’t place, he did score an early win over eventual silver medalist Katsuhiko Nagata of New Japan."

September 15, 2003:

In which Dave addresses the matter of Hidehiko Yoshida:

"With the finals of the Pride middleweight Grand Prix coming on 11/9 at the Tokyo Dome, there are three established fighters and one question mark left. The question mark is former Olympic judo gold medalist Hidehiko Yoshida. While not official, the most likely scenario is that he’ll take on Vanderlei Silva. Silva takes a 43-month unbeaten streak into the finals, along with win after win over Japanese competitors since being made into a superstar in Japan with his first win over Kazushi Sakuraba on March 25, 2001.

But while Silva, Chuck Liddell and Quinton Jackson all combine great striking ability with wrestling ability and have proven themselves against the top competition in the world, Yoshida is a different animal.

There are two different versions of Yoshida, the Japanese and the American. The Japanese version has Yoshida as a submission expert, one of the best judokas of modern times, anywhere in the world, using that skill to stop some of MMA’s biggest names, like Royce Gracie, Don Frye, Masaaki Satake (while not a good MMA fighter, he is very well known in Japan from the glory days of K-1 and even in the early 90s as a karate star) and Kiyoshi Tamura.

In the U.S., while not universal, there is a common theme among many people. He’s a fake. A cheater. Someone who has never won a real match. A creation of Pride, which needs a Japanese top star because Sakuraba has taken too many beatings. The arguments are that three of his wins came over people who have done pro wrestling (Frye, Satake and Tamura). While the Gracie win is often misrepresented as a work and a cheat, it was controversial nonetheless. If you want to pick things apart and look hard enough, you can convince yourself of work in any situation. There are people who will even try to convince you that last year’s Frye vs. Yoshihiro Takayama match, because it involved two pro wrestlers, must have been a work, even though it was among the most brutal matches in history with both suffering serious physical damage. They said the same about Frye vs. Shamrock, despite Shamrock’s face looking like hamburger meat and Frye’s legs destroyed from submissions, even though clearly Frye hasn’t been the same fighter since. And as we will show, this isn’t the first Japanese fighter this has been said about.

Yoshida, 33, came to MMA after winning the gold medal in judo at 172 pounds in the 1992 Olympics. The gold medal only tells part of the story. Yoshida won all six matches via submission, fighting just 16:21 total. More impressive was that in 1992, when he competed at 172, he once faced Naoya Ogawa, who ended up winning the silver at 286 pounds in the same Olympics. Giving up more than 100 pounds, he defeated Ogawa. In 1996 in Atlanta, moving up to 190 pounds, he placed fifth, competing with a bad knee. However, the idea that this guy is some judo guy who peaked more than a decade ago wouldn’t be fair, since he was world champion in 1999 and a gold medal favorite in 2000. He ended up suffering a broken arm in the Olympics that year and was unable to continue in the tournament. With the next Olympics not until 2004, he retired from judo, and quickly was offered a $250,000 signing bonus by Pride, looking for a national sports hero to add to its stable.

Yoshida’s debut match was on August 28, 2002. It was actually the semifinal, higher on the card than either Don Frye vs. Jerome LeBanner in kickboxing, or Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira vs. Bob Sapp (in fairness it should be noted that the Sapp phenomenon stemmed from this match and hadn’t hit yet, although he was starting to garner a good deal of popularity already), on Dynamite show at National Stadium in Tokyo, the MMA version of Wrestlemania III, the biggest live attendance in history.

His opponent was MMA’s original legend, Royce Gracie. Gracie was 35, and hadn’t had a high profile match in more than seven years. It was a limited striking match. Body blows were legal, but head blows weren’t, and there could be no striking on the ground. The match would have a 20:00 time limit, and there would be no judges, so a time limit match would be a draw. The most controversial rule, insisted upon by the Gracies, was the referee didn’t have the power to stop the match. The Gracies were still upset at the ref stoppage when Sakuraba beat Royce’s little brother Royler in 1999 in the match that really made the Pride promotion.

As history shows, ref Yuji Shimada stopped the match in 7:24, awarding it to Yoshida. It either got Yoshida off to a great career start, or a bad one. Great in Japan because he established himself with a win over a legend, albeit one whose time had certainly passed. Bad, because the choke was not fully locked in, and Shimada’s stoppage was premature, and quite frankly, not allowed in the agreed upon rules. Pride officials in the U.S. informed us after the fight that the result should be labeled a no contest, and that a rematch would likely take place. Days later, embarrassed, they ruled that the Japanese officials had decided it was a win for Yoshida. And there was no rematch.

People who don’t know the difference between works and shoots, tried to label it a work. A work is a cooperative effort by two fighters, and this was anything but that. Was it a bad call? Yes. Was it a bad call because the ref was protecting Yoshida? No. While Gracie was on the bottom, holding guard for the first several minutes, in the last minute, Yoshida overpowered him and had him pinned to the mat and it looked like Gracie was going nowhere. The big question, that we will never know, is whether Gracie would have ever gotten up from that position without eventually being choked out. From the looks of things, he was pinned and barely defending against a stronger guy. My own feeling was that Yoshida had the match won, but just not yet. Was Shimada, from his call, protecting Gracie was being choked unconscious, figuring Gracie wouldn’t tap (which is very likely), or was he protecting Pride’s investment, and ready to call the match the first time something came close? Only Shimada knows the answer. That is absolutely possible. Refs give breaks to stars, and I’ve seen drawing cards in boxing get beneficial calls for as long as I’ve been a fan. But this was not a work, and Yoshida does not deserve any blame for the controversial finish. The only real argument is that Yoshida should not have accepted the win, but there is little doubt in that position, he fully believed the match was his, and would have been only a matter of seconds. And it’s unfair to blame him for not doing so, because can anyone come up with one instance in UFC or Pride where a finish may have been called a little early and the winner then refused to accept the win?

Controversy No. 2 came on November 24, 2002, at the Tokyo Dome. Yoshida was expected to be destroyed by another legend of fighting, Don Frye. A pure judo guy going against someone who had only lost once and was the second most popular foreign fighter of the modern era. The result of this was Yoshida winning in 5:32 with an armbar in a relatively one-sided match. Once again, the referee stopped it, but this was not the slightest bit controversial. Frye didn’t tap, but instead got his elbow dislocated and ended up needing surgery, which doesn’t happen from a fake armbar. This was a huge upset at the time, and things really got out of hand. Pure judo guys had not done all that well at MMA in the past. The out was, that Frye was a pro wrestler, and that this was a work. In the U.S., the talk spread like wildfire, without as best as I can tell, any evidence at all. Frye has joked about flying back home and landing in Los Angeles, with his arm in a sling, ready for surgery, and being told by fighters that he heard he just did a worked match. It was actually reminiscent of another story, which we’ll get to later. The key was, how come Frye, a former pro boxer, didn’t punch Yoshida out? Watching back the tape, one thing is very obvious. Frye was taken down and schooled from the opening bell. He threw two weak jabs to establish a stand-up game, but was then taken down by Yoshida’s judo skill. There was no opportunity to throw a punch. That’s as silly a comment as saying how come Tank Abbott didn’t punch out Frank Mir in their recent fight. On his first fall, part of his body went numb from his neck problems that he wasn’t aware of, which likely stemmed from the brutality of the Takayama match. It’s hard to punch someone out when you’re being schooled on the ground. Later in the fight, Frye did reverse things and was on top. Frye threw a lot of body blows, none of which were particularly brutal, but he was in a tight guard, and he did have to respect his foe. The first time he went for a punch to the head, Yoshida moved and grabbed the armbar, and it was all she wrote.

Frye, when asked about Yoshida, said he was totally outclassed when it came to skill and said he felt Yoshida and Mark Coleman were the two greatest athletes ever in MMA. The gi changed the dynamics on the ground and was a hell of a weapon in his favor. Frye will admit that he took him too lightly in training. In fact, one of the reasons this was so stunning, was the word going into the fight was, why would Pride risk their big investment so early against someone of Frye’s toughness? Frye himself had told friends before the fight he thought Yoshida was basically being given to him for an easy but high-profile win, because he was owed a favor after taking the kickboxing match with LeBanner that he had no chance in, and getting knocked out “for the team” so to speak. Frye also privately told Pride officials he was willing to give up $50,000 of his purse to Yoshida get a rematch. Pride officials weren’t willing, because Yoshida had his win and there was no business point in them letting him lose to someone he’s beaten. If this was for public consumption, one would say it’s great posturing. The fact it was never hyped strongly to the public (although it was reported here) seems to indicate Frye wanted to avenge a real loss, just as he tried for years to put together with Coleman. The argument that Frye never punched him that is still being used is stranger, if only because, in his next match, with Coleman, it took Coleman longer than Yoshida to take Frye down, and Frye never had a chance to punch Coleman out either. Nobody has, and rightly so, accused that fight of being a work, even though it was slower moving, less exciting and less intense.

Nevertheless, Frye does believe Yoshida should take advantage of his injury and not fight in the Tokyo Dome, because Liddell, Jackson or Silva hit harder than Tamura, who nearly put Yoshida away. Even more interesting, is that Frye has been given the impression from Pride officials that Yoshida will not be fighting in the tournament, and he himself is starting to get ready, with the idea that he’d diet down to 205 pounds and face Silva. Frye is saying he saw a faith healer, who put him on the table, and most of his pain and the tingling in his hands are gone on that the herniated disc in his neck is gone

Upon rewatching the tape, this fight looked nothing like Frye’s numerous worked matches in New Japan rings. Frye’s style in New Japan was to do matches that looked real, with nothing involved that wasn’t legitimate. While they did look “more real” than a standard Japanese pro wrestling match, they still didn’t have the intensity of a Pride match. Almost no fighters in the world can masquerade one thing. It’s the intensity and probably the fear that you get in a shoot match (although Sakuraba vs. Hiromitsu Kanehara and Kiyoshi Tamura vs. Tsuyoshi Kosaka have come very close). When you are working, there are moments, because you know you aren’t in danger, that you relax. You can probably make it look real for a minute or two, if you are excellent at it, but even the best can’t do so for much longer. The match had no holes, and when they were on the ground gripping, there was full intensity on both sides. There was no relaxation and letting up. Frye’s surgeries after the match were real. While you can get hurt in a worked match, I’ve never heard of somebody getting a dislocated elbow and ripped out shoulders from a worked armbar, and there have been thousands of them done in pro wrestling. There is still the argument that he could have gone into the fight injured, so his real injuries did not come from the fight. Frye went into a fight with Gilbert Yvel two weeks after tearing his quad.

Fight No. 3 came on December 31, 2002, against Satake. This was the semifinal to the Sapp vs. Takayama match. This lasted :50, with Yoshida winning with a guillotine choke. Satake walked right into it. Anything can happen in a fight, but did this look fishy? Absolutely. Again, with a trained kickboxer, nobody punched Yoshida in the face. Still, even in a shoot match, Satake, as a kickboxer and karate guy, was only dangerous until he was controlled and would have been a heavy underdog. It was also Satake’s retirement fight. A few days later, just hours before he killed himself, Pride president Naoto Morishita ripped on Yoshida after the fight. He said that Yoshida didn’t understand the idea of being a professional fighter, saying that as a professional, you have to entertain the fans, who paid big money for tickets and deserved a longer match. Some have said the comments had nothing to do with a worked match, but that since everyone knew Yoshida could win at almost any time, he should have been professional enough to carry it for several minutes. But it is very easy to take it as meaning Yoshida was given a win, but ended it far faster than they would have liked.

While some would say that the former scenario sounds fake, and by the strictest definition of the word it probably is, that is not all that unusual in fights. In the early days of Pancrase, both Ken Shamrock and Masakatsu Funaki, in non-worked matches, did carry opponents for several minutes. While there is no proof of this, I’ve always been under the assumption the Igor Vovchanchyn vs. Nobuhiko Takada match in Pride fell under something similar. Everyone knew Vovchanchyn, at his prime, could take Takada out almost at will, so they did an entertaining first round, and then in the second, Vovchanchyn brutalized Takada for the win. Muhammad Ali frequently did that in his boxing matches when he faced someone he had no fear of. At times, he did this to give paying customers a show. He is not the only top boxer to do such a thing. At times he did this for other reasons. People look back in the record book and praise Chuck Wepner for going 15 with Ali, not realizing that Ali was so mad at Wepner for both things he’d said and for his dirty tactics, that he refused to knock him out and kept letting up, so he could punish him until the 15th round.

When Tamura was announced as Yoshida’s first round opponent for the Grand Prix on 8/10, bells and whistles went off immediately. They were feeding Yoshida another tomato can, and screwing Renzo or Ryan Gracie, so-called better fighter who wouldn’t take a dive for Yoshida, out of the tournament by bringing in this pro wrestler, who would have, of all things, sold a lot of tickets to the show and helped the TV ratings and PPV. It was totally unfair. Of course, Tamura actually had beaten Renzo in the past, and beaten far tougher opponents then Ryan ever had, and would have to be considered a better fighter than either. His w/l record didn’t look as good, but that’s because his entire career was based on fighting much bigger guys. The story was, weeks before the fight, that Tamura would never hit Yoshida, that Yoshida would get this fake win, get injured, and drop out of the tournament, never having to face Silva or one of the others.

Of course, this made no business sense. What would be the point of having a Grand Prix at the Tokyo Dome without a Japanese fighter in the final four? But few MMA fans understand the first thing about business. In the television special that drew the 16.0 rating, it was entirely based on two fights, Silva vs. Sakuraba and Yoshida vs. Tamura. The hardcore fight fans cared about the rest of the show. The casual TV fan in Japan did not.

As it turned out, Tamura not only punched Yoshida in the face, but did so repeatedly. He nearly knocked him out in the first minute. He kicked the hell out of his legs, including Yoshida’s bad left knee. And he was wearing wrestling shoes, allowing him to kick harder than his bare feet. His kicks were harder and faster than anyone in the tournament. After watching that fight again, and watching Tamura’s last three fights in his own U Style promotion, which does worked shoot pro wrestling, it is so ridiculously different. Tamura throws kicks in U Style, but is clearly taking something off every kick, even the ones leading to knockdowns. Again, even though Tamura may be the best wrestler in history at making a worked match look real, there was no doubt, in seconds, after watching U Style, that his matches there were worked. And all of his U Style matches have been against others with far more experience than Yoshida in doing realistic looking works. I know of fighting experts who expected the Tamura-Yoshida fight to be a work, and had to admit, it looked far too real, at least until the finish, which was the only thing suspicious. The funny part of this is the same people who claimed work, also claimed this proved Yoshida had no stand-up defense. If it was a work, it proved nothing about stand-up defense because he would have been selling. I think it did prove he had no stand-up defense, because Tamura’s intensity level and lack of relaxation were different from even his most classic worked shoot matches against Kosaka. Yoshida finally clinched, and attempted a judo throw. Tamura blocked it, so it looked bad, but ended up on his back anyway. When Yoshida finally got Tamura down, he got the gi sleeve choke on immediately. Tamura did nothing to defend it and made no attempt to get out, and tapped immediately. That is a carotid artery choke, which means it takes several seconds to work. Tamura had no history of tapping fast in previous fights. This only proved to make arguments even stronger when it comes to Yoshida. Those who believe his match with Frye was real, point to the fact he did get nailed in the head in the Tamura fight with hard punches. Those who believe it wasn’t point to the fact he did get nailed as to say Frye didn’t do it and Frye is a better striker than Tamura, which actually makes no sense because Frye never had the opportunity. Those who believe he’s been a work from the start say this made four fights that were all controversial. Yoshida then went down after the win, holding his knee. He said that it locked. Did he put on a performance? I don’t know. I do know that in many legitimate sports competitions, athletes exaggerate legitimate injuries, and sometimes make up fake ones.

But the injury was legit, which also doesn’t mean he didn’t exaggerate by collapsing afterwards. Photos showed the knee all purple, and there is a rule of thumb that you don’t kick a guy’s bad knee in a worked match to that level. There was significant blood drained from his knee after the match. The only time I can recall in a worked match seeing the knee discolored to anywhere close to this level was Andre the Giant, against Akira Maeda in 1986. By that time, the two were as close to shooting as probably was in almost any major worked pro wrestling match of the 80s. Still, it was eerie that the predictions half came true. Well, Tamura did punch to the face, and did kick the hell out of him, which those who had it figured ahead of time said would never happen. Of course, the charge that he really wasn’t kicking hard, which was said by those trying to cry work afterwards, was laughable. Also, if the idea was to make Yoshida looked great, Tamura, who is not just a pro wrestler but one of the best workers ever, would have failed. Even the last throw didn’t look good, which those who cried work claimed was proof, when in actuality, it was far more evidence, but not proof, of it being legit. We have to assume that if it was a work, Tamura, who has no history for being unprofessional, and who legitimately knocked out his teacher in his last real fight, all of a sudden turned into the most unprofessional asshole, making his foe look as bad as could be, blocked his set up for the finisher, and just laid down for him at the end.

But, Yoshida did win, and did pull up lame. Of course, have Japanese pro wrestlers taken ungodly real punishment to get over the legitimacy of a worked match. Holy Takayama, remember the Misawa match, or Mick Foley vs. Vader in WCW? Of course they have. But Yoshida is still a competing athlete whose knee is his weak point. The idea of him agreeing to that is insane. Of course, insanity is not that unusual if you follow this business for any length of time.

Taking that argument one step farther. If he withdraws from the tournament due to a knee injury, and it was a work, he would have to allow Tamura to kick the hell out of his knee. Even stranger, after first announcing an injury that would keep him from training until October, word this past week came that not only is his knee fine and he’s back in training, but he’s just started doing road work. What would kill the theory is if he fights and he stated this past week he is fine and ready to go. If that knee injury was a work that was going to cause him to pull out, he’d neither be training nor running, because now they’d have to come up with a training injury. Also, if Pride were to have arranged it, Tamura was more popular than Yoshida, and while he may not have the mainstream sports name among the prime audience that watches this stuff, due to pro wrestling, he is the bigger name of the two. The idea that Pride would want Tamura to expose Yoshida in a work and then lose, makes no sense. But again, making no sense is certainly no evidence something isn’t a work, as any study of wrestling booking shows.

If Yoshida does pull out, it makes no business sense for the company to kill 85% of the general public interest in the tournament. However, Frye would make an interesting personality as a replacement, but judging from his recent fights (albeit he’s been hurting bad), he doesn’t seem like a guy who should be facing guys the caliber of the three men left. If Yoshida does pull out, those who predicted it would seem to have one hell of an argument.

Bas Rutten, when asked about Yoshida, said he doesn’t think he’s the slightest bit overrated. But like almost everyone, he also expects Silva to knock him out, but said that Silva has to change his usual game plan. The Silva Chute Box training is to grapple using upper body power and a leg trip. That is the one position against Yoshida that would play right into his strengths. Silva needs to be patient on the outside and use his striking skill, as his usual balls out aggressive style would probably allow a clinch, and once in that position, the advantage switches to Yoshida.

But what is most interesting about this is the similarity with a period not all that many years ago, with the current most beloved of all fighters, Sakuraba.

Sakuraba was an undercard pro wrestler who worked in the old UWFI group starting in 1994 after being a very good college wrestler. He worked prelim matches in New Japan in 1995-96 during the New Japan vs. UWFI feud. He moved on to the Kingdom promotion, where he had a match with Hiromitsu Kanehara that was so brutal it would fool almost anyone.

He was Takada’s top student. On December 21, 1997, he did his first high-profile MMA match. It was on a UFC PPV show called “Ultimate Japan.” He was in a four-man heavyweight tournament. There were no weigh-ins. Sakuraba weighed about 180, but he was billed at 201 pounds so he could be a heavyweight. UFC wasn’t run very sport like in those days, and in Japan, it was even more of a mess. In the first round, he faced 243-pound Brazilian powerhouse and later alleged ecstacy dealer, Marcus “Conan” Silveira. Silveira had only one loss in his career up to that point. Early in the fight, as Sakuraba was going for a takedown, Silveira punched him. Ref John McCarthy, erring on the side of caution, stopped the fight. Sakuraba was furious. It turned into a major scene. The punch didn’t even stop Sakuraba, who was still going forward with the shot when it was called. As it turned out, in the other half of the bracket, Tank Abbott beat Yoji Anjo, but busted his hand in the process. Sakuraba vs. Silveira were brought out in the only rematch later in the same night in UFC history, for the tournament championship. Sakuraba armbarred Silveira in 3:45 to win. Immediately, the cry was work, and I was one of the first to believe it. How could this fake pro wrestler outmaneuver a BJJ superstar who had him by more than 60 pounds? And why didn’t Silveira punch him out like he tried the first time. Well, there was no evidence of a work other than we knew little Sakuraba couldn’t possibly submit this more skilled and much larger guy. Years later, some truths have come out. Silveira wasn’t that good. And Sakuraba was.

Sakuraba came to California to train a little later. At the gyms, the word was this guy was nothing short of amazing. He could tap everyone out. Still, he wasn’t physically impressive, and he was, after all, a pro wrestler.

On March 15, 1998, Sakuraba beat Vernon White of Lion’s Den via submission in 26:53. White was not considered a big name, and this wasn’t all that big a deal at the time because it was just a prelim match among pro wrestling shoot guys who were not considered top stars. On June 24, 1998, Sakuraba tapped out Carlos Newton in 15:19. Newton was a legitimate UFC star and considered a top contender for Frank Shamrock at the time. The match was tremendous, but was almost all both guys going for submissions. In hindsight, the irony is that today this is considered a classic. At the time, I remember hearing how wasn’t it strange that Newton never threw any punches, and that Sakuraba was Takada’s protege. Most of the time when stuff like this happens, the fighter who lost loves it, but Newton vehemently denied anything was up afterwards, but at the time people were as suspicious because it was Pride (and Pride, by having worked matches, particularly at that time, does open itself up for this kind of speculation). That didn’t stop rumors.

On October 11, 1998, Sakuraba went to a 30:00 draw with Alan Goes, who was 20 pounds heavier and a genuine Vale Tudo star. There were no judges at the time. Goes laid on his back, and Sakuraba wasn’t prepared for that tactic. His running double foot stomp and cartwheel guard pass were created in training after Goes’ stalling left him stymied. Sakuraba was actually, in tears at not being able to do anything in the latter stages of the match). But it was a very weird match. On April 29, 1999 came Sakuraba vs. Vitor Belfort. Again, Sakuraba was giving up at least 20 pounds to perhaps the most feared fighter in the game at the time. When Sakuraba won a one-sided decision, all I heard was that it had to be fixed. Why? Well, because Belfort is that good. After watching the fight, it was clear that was the last thing it was. Nobody says that anymore, because even though Belfort is that good, time has erased any stigma from Sakuraba.

He scored another couple of wins without controversy, and people were accepting that he may, after all, be the real deal. Then came the match that made Pride, on November 21, 1999.

This time, Sakuraba had the edge. He was facing Royler Gracie, who was giving up 40 pounds. In the days before the fight, all kinds of battles took place. The Gracies insisted on no judging. They asked that if Royler could last the 30:00, that he be declared the winner since he was giving up so much weight. Pride ruled they could have the no judges, but if it went the time limit, no matter what happened, it would be ruled a draw. Sakuraba’s idea was to pound him standing. Royler’s idea was to lay on his back so Sakuraba couldn’t have a chance to do that. Sakuraba kicked Royler’s legs to death but the Gracies, having never lost under these rules in decades supposedly, weren’t going to throw in the towel. Finally, Sakuraba got a submission shoulder lock on as time was running out. The ref stopped the match at just under 29:00. This stoppage was every bit as controversial as Yoshida vs. Royce. Actually more, because it is conceivable Royler could have held on for a minute, whereas Royce had to escape and had to go another 12:00.

In fact, it was almost exactly the same. Royler looked trapped and the ref called for the bell, but at the moment the bell was called, he didn’t appear to be in danger. But he also didn’t appear to be getting out. The stoppage made Sakuraba a national hero, because it was the first time a Gracie had lost clean, but the Gracies cried robbery. Sakuraba’s next fight was no less controversial, on January 30, 2000, at the Tokyo Dome against Guy Mezger. Again giving up size, they went 15:00 to the time limit in a very close fight. A draw was the fair decision (Mezger may have had a very slight edge, but it was close enough that it could have gone either way) and it would be decided in overtime. Unknown to fans, Pride had made a deal with Mezger. Because Mezger had taken the fight late, and his cardio wasn’t up to par, he said he could only go 15:00. Even in a close fight, the judges would then decide and that would be it. When they said draw, Ken Shamrock, Mezger’s coach, felt double-crossed, and walked out. Mezger then forfeited the match, Sakuraba advanced in the tournament. On May 1, 2000, at the Tokyo Dome, Sakuraba faced Royce Gracie, beating him when the towel was thrown in at 90:00 of a no time limit match. With that win, every previous controversy involving Sakuraba was forgotten.

And in hindsight, all the accusations of fixed fights were unfounded. There were controversial politics in the Mezger fight, and there was a premature controversial stoppage in the Royler Gracie fight. The irony of Sakuraba’s first several fights and Yoshida’s is almost amazing in hindsight. Sakuraba was thought a fake because he beat guys like Silveira, Newton and Belfort, who people knew were the real deal, and it took a long time before people accepted Sakuraba was actually more of the real deal than they were. Yoshida’s fight with Royce was similar to Sakuraba’s with Royler, except Yoshida got Royce in the position far quicker. His fight with Frye was really almost the same as Sakuraba’s with Belfort. Quite frankly, Sakuraba’s July 29, 2001, win over Quinton Jackson in many ways, from being pounded on and coming from behind with a submission out of nowhere, wasn’t all that much different than Yoshida’s win over Tamura. And I expect Yoshida’s first loss to Silva won’t be all that much different than Sakuraba’s matches with Silva. Yet, if Silva wins, people will jump on that as proof he was fake all along. Fortunately for Sakuraba, he answered his questions, had far more charisma, and became the biggest star in the game, before he ran into Silva.

None of this proves or disproves anything about Yoshida. But what it does show is that if you look hard enough, you can find controversy with anything. In fact, with all the talk in this direction, Rutten noted that if you decide in advance that any fight is a work, you will find something in the fight to convince you that is the case. And that looking back with Sakuraba, all of the suspicion, at least when it came to worked matches at least in Pride, ended up being totally without merit."

and

"Pride announced numerous names for the 10/5 Bushido show, which will air on PPV in the U.S., but on a delayed basis and there is no confirmation of a date yet. Announced so far are Hayato Sakurai, Daijyu Takase, Akira Shoji, Kazuhiro Hamanaka, Dokonjonsuke Mishima, Kazuhiro Nakamura, Lyoto (Inoki’s protege), Carlos Newton, Kevin Randleman and Aleksander Emelianenko (that’s the new name they’ve used for him this week). They are charging $400 ringside and they’d better have some intriguing matches at that price. The main gimmick is going to be a best-of-five series with Gracies vs. Japan. Royce Gracie will be the heel manager (and I’ll bet he doesn’t even know what the term means) for a team of Renzo, Ryan, Rodrigo, Ralph and Daniel Gracie. Renzo, Ryan and Ralph are all brothers, who are first cousins of Royce. Rodrigo is a cousin and Daniel is a fighter (and a good one at that) who is a cousin whose real name is Daniel Simoes but has used the Gracie name in Japan before, most notably beating New Japan’s Shinsuke Nakamura [hey hey!—ed.] with an armbar on 12/31."

September 22, 2003:

"The Deep promotion, which is a shoot group that uses pro wrestlers, ran its final show on 9/15 in Tokyo at Ota Ward Gym before a sellout of 4,800 fans. Ryuki Ueyama (of Kiyoshi Tamura’s U-Style promotion) went to a draw with Masanori Suda in a middleweight title match as the main event, so Ueyama retained his title. Hayato Sakurai, who is one of the top rated 170-pound fighters in the world, lost to Ryo Chonan of U-Style via doctor stoppage for blood due to a cut under the eye at 2:10 of round three. Chonan was said to look too strong for him. I was told this was an awesome match. The idea was that Sakurai was to face one of the Gracies on the 10/5 Pride show, but with the loss and injury, fighting again in a few weeks doesn’t seem likely. The funniest story was based around the AAA’s Dos Caras Jr. vs. Brad Kohler match. This was the, “If you are a pro wrestler doing shoot matches, it really pays to keep your subscription updated,” match. Kohler was told his opponent was Dos Caras Jr., the son of famous Luchador. He mistakenly thought Dos Caras Jr. was Brazo de Plata (Super Porky of CMLL fame), who he saw a tape of. At 5-4 and 300 pounds, Kohler hardly figured he was in any trouble. So he got to Japan and some reporters were talking with him about his fight. He wasn’t concerned at all and they asked why and he described his opponent. He was then told he was describing Porky, but his opponent was Dos Caras Jr., who is about 6-5 ½ and 235 pounds and a multi-time Mexican national Greco-roman champion. Needless to say, Kohler freaked out and appeared to be looking for a way out. Caras took him down and Kohler started selling his right shoulder and tapped at 1:25. It was noted it was the second straight match Kohler tapped out quickly claiming a shoulder injury after a take down, as he did the same thing against Greg Wikan in a Minnesota match. Fans were very unhappy with this bout."

and

"Mirko Cro Cop vs. Ikuhisa Minowa was talked about for the 10/5 Pride Bushido show at the Saitama Super Arena. The last word we got is that Cro Cop is looking at fighting on the show, but his opponent is not determined. He’s looking for one last tune-up match before his match with Fedor on 11/9, but that’s a needless risk."

September 29, 2003:

"The 10/5 Pride show won’t be airing on PPV in the U.S. until 12/21. With Hayato Sakurai having lost to Ryo Chonan at the 9/15 Deep show, his scheduled main event against Renzo Gracie was changed to Carlos Newton (who speaks some Japanese and is very popular there because of it) being added to Team Japan against Renzo. The other matches announced were Dokonjonsuke Mishima vs. Ralph Gracie, Kazuhiro Nakamura (who is the top protege of Hidehiko Yoshida) vs. Daniel Gracie, Daijyu Takase vs. Rodrigo Gracie and Kazuhiro Hamanaka vs. Ryan Gracie. Royce Gracie will be the manager for Team Gracie. Four more matches will be announced. Takase vs. Rodrigo looks to be an excellent technical match on the ground, as both are very good with submissions. Hamanaka vs. Ryan is your wrestler vs. BJJ battle. Hamanaka is a strong amateur wrestler, and has been training of late with Randy Couture. Mishima is a small but charismatic fighter who is good with submissions. Ralph was an early star many years ago in EFC, but has never fought anyone of any quality, so is really an unknown in modern MMA. Other matches are Ausserio Silva vs. Aleksander Emelianenko (Fedor’s brother who is said to be stronger than Fedor), Mauricio “Shogun” Rua (21-year-old brother of Murilo Ninja) vs. Akira Shoji, Sergei Kharitonov (from the Russian Top Team) vs. Jason Nobunaga (a kickboxer from New Zealand) and Mirko Cro Cop vs. TBA."

October 6, 2003:

From a UFC report:

"A big surprise on the show was not only the acknowledgment, but pushing of Pride, as well as setting the stage for more interpromotional matches. They showed the clip of Liddell knocking out Alistair Overeem on the 8/10 Pride show on several occasions. They even had a face-to-face interview with Liddell and Quinton Jackson, talking about their match in Pride. Jackson, who WWE is missing the boat on huge, managed to do an entire interview without swearing. The basic gist is Jackson said Pride was superior because they slam guys all over the place and can kick them in the head. Liddell said that he knows going to Pride’s finals that he’s going to need two knockouts to win because he knows he won’t be getting a decision. They mentioned that Dana White had a $250,000 bet with Nobuyuki Sakakibara of Pride that Liddell would win the tournament. Then they brought out Nobuhiko Takada, who announced that Kazushi Sakuraba and Kazuyuki Fujita would be sent to UFC. That makes no sense from Pride’s standpoint. Sakuraba is on borrowed time already, and whatever fights he has left, Pride needs to have them in Japan so they can take advantage of his drawing power, because his body is wasted on a U.S. show. Fujita’s drawing power is because of the pro wrestling connection. He’s not that great of a fighter, although he does have the capacity to take unreal punishment. But in the U.S., he wouldn’t have that drawing power. Unless Pride is going to buy the thing, cross pollinate it and do a brand extension marketing the UFC brand in Japan, I don’t understand these decisions."

and

"Pride has also offered [Josh] Barnett a slot in its 2004 heavyweight Grand Prix tournament."

and

"Pride announced on 10/1 that it is official that it’s Hidehiko Yoshida vs. Vanderlei Silva and Quinton Jackson vs. Chuck Liddell as the semifinals for the 11/9 show. They held a press conference and said they had done a lottery, where the winner of the four-man lottery (Yoshida), would choose his opponent. Reports we got indicated the way it was done appeared to be predetermined. It makes it mighty coincidental that these were the brackets the fans wanted and everyone has assumed from the start, and even more, than on the UFC show five days earlier, that Jackson and Liddell did a face-to-face promo and talked about fighting each other."

and

"Mirko Cro Cop’s opponent on the 10/5 Pride show at the Saitama Super Arena, in what is now the main event, will be Dos Caras Jr. They’re going back to the Mirko as “pro wrestler hunter” angle. Caras Jr. has a chance to make himself a Japanese wrestling superstar with a good showing, but the odds are not in his favor. Cro Cop has done well against Kazuyuki Fujita (two wins) and Yuji Nagata (one quick win), who were Greco-roman specialists with similar level credentials. There is a difference in that they were in their 30s and out of top competition for a decade while Caras Jr. is 26 and was competing at the international level in wrestling three years ago before he turned pro. He’s viewed as a mid-level heavyweight fighter (3-2 record, although one loss was via DQ for stomping the hell out of his opponent). He scored a big win over KENGO in his debut on a Pancrase show to make his rep, and now gets booking largely because his father and uncle are Japanese wrestling legends. Pride was attempting to get a Japanese fighter to face Cro Cop, but almost nobody was interested. Nobuhiko Takada was vocal about how mad he was, saying he was giving anyone a golden opportunity to become a superstar in one night. He was particularly critical of New Japan, saying Yoshihiro Takayama, Yuji Nagata and Manabu Nakanishi all were being given chances to show something and turned it down (for good reason, as they’ve got a Tokyo Dome a week later and what good would it do any of them to go in without any training time and get KO’d). He noted one pro wrestler from All Japan, whose name wasn’t said, but it was rookie Masayuki Kono, did ask for the match, but was rejected because he had never done MMA match before and had no wrestling or kickboxing in his background (he played baseball and basketball before joining the All Japan dojo). The show will have 12 matches, as also added this week were Chalid Arrab vs Rodney Faverus (both said to be good young strikers from Holland) and Eiji Matsuoka (Pancrase) vs. Chris Brennan (an MMA vet who goes back many years). Pride also announced that Hidehiko Yoshida would be the coach of Team Japan in the best-of-five series against Team Gracie, coached by Royce Gracie (Renzo Gracie vs. Carlos Newton, Ryan Gracie vs. Kazuhiro Hamanaka, Rodrigo Gracie vs. Daijyu Takase, Daniel Gracie vs. Kazuhiro Nakamura and Ralph Gracie vs. Dokonjonsoke Mishima. Mauro Ranallo, a Western Canada based long-time pro wrestling announcer (very good at pro wrestling, he did the TV for the current remake of Stampede Wrestling but has done shows on-and-off for years) will be doing the announcing of the show with Bas Rutten. Ranallo was just contacted a few weeks back and told it’s a one-time thing, so perhaps he’s just a fill-in because Damon Perry can’t go. Ranallo has done kickboxing in the past on Canadian TV."

And that's that! I am stoked for PRIDE 武士道 -其の壱-（プライド ぶしどう そのいち）which is to say Puraido Bushido Sono Ichi known too as PRIDE BUSHIDO ONE. Which is the next one! Could be good! Until such time as we reconvene, please take care. I will leave you for now, as I sometimes do, with a haphazard assemblage of photos I have come upon in recent weeks that may be of interest to the group. Okay see you!