Kakutogi Road: The Chronological History of MMA
Chapter 20: RINGS ASTRAL STEP FINAL BLAZE UP 12/7/91 Tokyo Ariake Coliseum
By Michael Betz & Mike Lorefice 9/20/20

It has been about three months since we last witnessed RINGS with their threadbare group of hired mercenaries, and many unanswered questions have been left to us. Will Akira Maeda recover from his knee injury? Will his budding career as a prestigious interviewer/commentator take him away from the shoot-realms, for good? And perhaps the most pressing question of all, will Kazuyoshi Ishii and his ensemble cast of Sediokaikan Karate stars be able to save the day, and give purpose to this worthy endeavor? The moment for these truths to be revealed is upon us, as the 1991 RINGS ASTRAL STEP FINAL BLAZE UP is about to start, and we will either witness a fiery crescendo taking us into greater realms of unobtained glory, or we will merely witness dying embers, where a mighty structure once stood.

It is 12-7-91, and the action is set to take place within the Tokyo Ariake Coliseum, in what is sure to be an electrifying evening. The Ariake Coliseum is a large 10,000 indoor arena, most famous for being a preeminent tennis venue (slated to host the 2020 tennis Olympic games) and is one of the only tennis venues to boast a retractable roof. Things open off with a wonderful montage that introduces the various matches that will be seen later, and as I'm watching this, the tawdry graphics make me momentarily forget where I am, and I'm getting that sense of impending doom that I will soon be whisked away to the Mega-Man level selection screen, where I will once again have to do battle with my old nemesis Cut-Man.

After I snap back to reality, I begin to realize that this will surely be a make-or-break evening for this outfit, as out of the three shoot-style promotions that we have been covering so far, Maeda has had the most grandiose concept, but the last three events saw the execution fall short of the vision. Using established martial artists in worked shoots was an innovative idea, and having them hail from different countries and fighting backgrounds, solidified the illusion of credibility and sport-like atmosphere more so than his contemporaries, but so far this reliance on rookie foreign talent (who had no experience working matches up to this point) and only one native star in Mitsuya Nagai (who had a background in Shootboxing, before moving to pro wrestling) has put this entire operation in a state of peril, where the promotion is completely dependent on the drawing power of its founder, Akira Maeda.

ML: The difference between RINGS and the other two U.W.F. off shoots is Maeda has followed the format of the big U.W.F. shows using foreign martial artists who are good to exceptional in their real fighting discipline but have little to no training working matches while PWFG & UWF-I have followed the format of the small U.W.F. shows, trying to run a monthly promotion that mostly relies upon solid bouts between the natives, with a couple foreign regulars sprinkled in. RINGS, right now, is not capable of running even small shows without Maeda, which PWFG has done without Fujiwara and UWF-I could do without Takada, because these promotions have a number of other more useful natives, but those promotions don't seem to have the guts Maeda does to promote something major. Though in retrospect the case could be made that Volk Han is the greatest shoot style worker of all-time, sambo isn't a sport that has a worldwide following, or is really even practiced in Japan, so no matter how great a champion Han was in that discipline, he's still some dude that literally no one in the arena has seen fight in any style, meaning Maeda is literally responsible for selling lets say 95% of the tickets on his own.

The ring announcers spend several minutes talking about sambo before segueing to a pre-recorded interview between Akira Maeda and Mike Tyson. For those that have been faithfully following this column, you will know that we have reported that for the last few months Akira Maeda has become a bit of a celebrity interviewer and analyst for the Japanese WOWWOW network (similar to HBO in the United States) and if this wrestling thing winds up not working out, at least Maeda seems to have a comfortable career parachute waiting for him in the broadcast world. Surprisingly, Maeda seems to have excellent English when he thanks Mike Tyson, but still asks questions to him in Japanese, while they have an interpreter repeat it back to Tyson. A question (presumably about his recent loss to Buster Douglas) is presented to Tyson from Maeda, and Tyson offers up a somewhat poignant response about how he isn't mad that he lost, but is having trouble dealing with that fact that he didn't prepare properly or give his best. Who knew that Tyson, in his own simple way, would be tapping into the ancient Greek philosophical concept of akrasia , which loosely translated, means a weakness of will, or lack of self-control?

After this we are next taken to another interview, this time between Maeda and Evander Holyfield. We only get the Japanese form of the question, but it appears that Maeda asked Holyfield about his thoughts on Karate, to which he responds that he was in tune with Bruce Lee and karate when he was younger, and currently his kids are showing an interest in Karate, due to the Ninja Turtles. Then if that wasn't enough, we get an absolutely hilarious clip of George Foreman saying that when he got into shape, he was going to add Ahh-kee-dah Mah-eee-dah to his training style, and this simply has to be seen to be believed.

ML: The Foreman interview was more '80's pro wrestling than almost anything you've ever seen in pro wrestling, though the funniest part was contemplating Foreman actually getting into shape some century.

We are finally taken to our first fight, which will be a THUNDER BOUT between Koichiro Kimura and Grom Zaza. This will be the RINGS debut for Zaza, and the first recorded Rings match for Kimura, who previously had a untelevised dark match at the inaugural Rings show against future FWM midcarder Hideki Hosaka, who had just debuted with the W*ING promotion. Before Rings, Kimura was working for the FMW and W*ING promotions, and had even competed for the FMW light heavyweight title. To a modern MMA fan he is known (if at all) for his segments in the 1999 documentary Choke, where he gave an emotional interview after his loss to Rickson Gracie at VTJ 95, stating that he was now convinced in the power of BJJ. Before this loss, he simply thought it was a mixture of judo and wrestling, but now came to understand that it was more than that. When he is occasionally mentioned on MMA forums, it's usually by people trying to downplay Rickson Gracie's MMA career, where they will list him as an example of an inferior opponent, but truthfully he was a man of greater credentials then what he is commonly given credit for. He was a former S.A.W. champion going into VTJ 95 (S.A.W. being an acronym for Submission Arts Wrestling, which is form of no-gi submission grappling started in the 80s by Hidetaka Aso, who was a student of Karl Gotch) and he was also a pioneer in women's combat sports, as he started both the Japanese WMMA promotions AX and G-Shooto.

ML: I'm all for downplaying the paper career of the sandbagger Rickson, who beat a small assortment of pro wrestling based newcomers, hasbeens, and never weres, none of whom really won any matches afterwards, with his crowning achievement being taking out a fighter who had already been rendered half blind. Sure, someone had to win those VTJ matches, but they already knew what worked for Royce Gracie in the UFC, and still stacked the deck even more massively in his brother's favor, to say the least. After that, he only took a couple fights that both paid huge and were even more obvious wins given Takada was arguably the worst MMA fighter in history & Funaki was totally broken to the point he promptly retired after his bad knee gave out during the fight, leading to the finish, though Rickson still had to get as many different strikes as he could get away with rendered illegal, just in case Funaki might still be healthy enough to get lucky.

On the other hand, Zaza "Grom" Tkeshelashvili is a Georgian freestyle wrestler that was good enough to be included in the 1996 Olympic games in Atlanta, and wound up holding shoot wins over Ricardo Morias, Travis Fulton, and possibly Volk Han (from a late 1999 match in Georgia who's shootiness I can't confirm or deny at this time). This match will take place about 8 months into Georgia's independence from the Soviet Union, so it's fascinating to see this early example of eastern European integration into international sporting endeavors, outside of an Olympic context. The match starts off with a young, and very lithe looking Kimura quickly moving around, while rocking his S.A.W. attire. Right away, we see Kimura moving well and getting a takedown off of some very weak pitter-patter kicks from Zaza, who got much better as his career went on, but here is still probably unsure on how hard his strikes are supposed to be. Right away we see an interesting technique from Kimura, who attempted a Kani-Basami (scissors-throw) off a single-leg attempt from Zaza, and having failed that, he instantly shifted it into an inventive kneebar entry. Zaza keeps a fast pace with many throws and takedowns, but only seems to have a tenuous grasp of submissions. Kimura, on the other hand, looked good throughout, and I'm left with the impression that had he chose to continue to continue his career in the shoot-style world, he could have been known as one of its major players, but he only stuck around Rings until the end of 1993. He spent the rest of his career afterwards, mainly working in less realistic leagues, most notably as Super Uchu Power in the DDT promotion before passing away at just 44. The match ends at the 24:46 mark, and this was way too long a match time for two rookies, especially Zaza, who kept a fast pace, but never allowed the match to breathe, or really allow Kimura to get much offense in, as he kept spamming takedowns/throws. Still, not a bad showing for two novices.

ML: Worked shoots aren't really meant to go 25 minutes, and while the very best guys can pull them off, even their intensity and speed are somewhat diminished. These are rookies, and Maeda should know better that even in traditional pro wrestling, which is much more conducive to padding, rookies are going 5 or 10 minutes. There were some good moments here such as Kimura countering the takedown by dropping down into a scissor and elevating Zaza over into a kneebar, but how many times did we need to see Zaza punching his way inside then dropping into a single leg? We also saw what I believe is our first and second STF's before Zaza won with a shoulder lock. I don't want to make this sound bad, these guys did quite well, especially given the booking they were strapped with, but the match would have been better if it was even slightly competitive and much shorter, especially because the former didn't play well with the later. Kimura was crafty, but he was almost always on the defensive, trying to counter the shot with some sort of leg scissors.

Next, we have an AQUA BOUT with Nobuaki Kakuda vs. Herman Renting, and this will be contested as five 2-min rounds, as opposed to one 30 minute round. Kakuda is a welcome addition here, as he is coming into this as a sediokaikan karate champion, and has a reputation as fan-favorite who always gives 100% in every one of his fights. It remains to be seen how he will fare here in this kind of environment, but this is the kind of talent infusion that has the potential to add some welcome verve to the proceedings. This will be Renting's 4th Rings bout, and he has been getting a little better with each outing. Both fighters merely circled each other in the first round feeling each other out, with hardly any strikes being thrown from either fighter. Renting is the first to engage halfway through round 2, when he barges over to Kakuda and puts him in a variant of a guillotine choke, but quickly finds himself entangled in the ropes. The ref calls for a break, and Renting refuses at first, but eventually lets the hold go. I couldn't tell if he was penalized for this, as it appeared that the ref was saying something to the judges table, and he did look like he was searching for a penalty card, but didn't actually pull one out, so I'm not sure what to make of it.

Not much happened in round 3, and round 4 saw the first rope escape when Renting attempted another Guillotine off of a single-leg attempt from Kakuda, where they wound up immediately falling to the ground, and Kakuda twisted away from the choke, into the ropes. Shortly afterwards, Renting came charging in again, this time with a simple rape choke against Kakuda's throat, which saw him get reprimanded by the referee, but again, it doesn't seem like he is actually getting any real penalty for this. In round 5, Kakuda starts to offensively press Renting for a brief moment, but quickly goes back to a more tentative approach, throwing a kick, and then quickly backing off. In one such exchange, Kakuda threw a kick, took a couple of steps back, and wound up taking a palm-strike from Renting that looked like it hit way harder than Renting probably intended. The ref does not call for a knockdown, seemingly knowing that something was wrong about this, and allows Kakuda to recover in his corner. The fight is over shortly afterwards and is ruled a draw. This was quite disappointing, as I had high hopes for Kakuda. This match would have had great potential for a shoot, in the sense of a classic grappler vs striker setup, but even if you insisted on working this fight, five 2-min rounds was not the way to do it. In every round, just when it seemed like something was about to happen, the round ended, so we actually got very little here, in what should have been an entertaining showing. Also, these two guys were in good enough shape that having a standard Rings match shouldn't have exposed any cardio limitations, so this didn't wind up making a lot of sense.

ML: This was one of those fascinating, technically excellent fights we would eventually get from karate fighters such as Lyoto Machida in MMA. They fought this very very realistically, with both fighters using a lot of fakes and feints and paying close attention to their footwork and balance, which really surprised me because while that's Kakuda's style as a karate champion, Renting managed to be almost equally disciplined even though his strategy was to merely avoid getting his legs chewed up & find openings to rush Kakuda so he could wrestle him. It was the sort of hard gym sparring we'd later get from Pancrase, really close to being a shoot even though they didn't have much impact on their strikes. The way they moved, defended, and attacked with aggression and urgency though, there was nothing you could say was outwardly or obviously fake here. Some people will hate this match, but I would say that it's one of the best I've seen when it comes to footwork and maintaining a realistic and intense striking environment. If you're looking for actual action, the match was certainly rather lacking. While I enjoyed this bout, the problem was they never actually lit the wick. The first three rounds could have stayed the same, but Kakuda needed to bait Renting into a mistake and lay him out with a high kick or step knee at some point. Instead, the only big spot was an illegal punch to the face by Renting in the 5th, RINGS rules only allowing for open hand strikes to the head at this point. As it stands, while it was incredibly promising and really light years ahead of what was going on in UWF-I & PWFG at this point (outside of Ohe's kickboxing shoots), it also never actually delivered on its promise, which was odd given that Kakuda was both a big enough name in Japan within his circle and obviously an actual native who could have been a draw on his own or opposing Maeda. It seems like Maeda wasn't willing to commit at all to these Seidokaikan guys, at least not yet, because he didn't control them.

The aqua sources that we just ingested were akin to the renowned springs flowing out of Flint, MI, so hopefully this heaping dose of Earth will settle our stomachs. We now have renowned judo ace, Chris Dolman facing Tiger Levani. As of press time, I have been unable to find out much about Levani other than he is apparently of Greek descent, and it does not seem like he did much outside of two Rings matches. The match starts off with some laughably weak strikes, possibly the lightest that we have witnessed so far, which makes me wonder if Tiger was possibly a student or acquaintance of Dolman and didn't want to risk actually hitting him. Thankfully, it wasn't long before the grappling started as Tiger attempted an ippon-seoinage (one arm shoulder throw) and Dolman executed a beautiful counter where he simply attempted a rear naked choke from the standing position, and makes me wonder if we should be seeing more variations of this, as a way to negate throws in a modern MMA context? Tiger fell to the ground after this, and Dolman wasn't able to finish the hold. Tiger seemed to be extra careful not to hurt Dolman (strikes are still legal on the ground) as he transitioned around him to attempt an armbar on a turtled Dolman. The inevitable dueling leg-lock battle soon followed with both men failing to destroy the footsies of the other. The rest of the match followed in the same pattern with one of them gaining a takedown, preceded by some truly awful punches/kicks, and then usually a leg attack. It finally ended with Dolman taking Levani repeatedly to a corner and kneeing him until he left himself open to a sloppy guillotine choke for the victory.

I find this putting me in a situation where it is hard to assess the ability of Levani. He clearly shares the same Sambo/Judo style as Dolman, and moves like he has a repository of knowledge and experience, but his refusal to put anything behind his strikes (even by pro wrestling standards) really ruined any chance for him to shine. From what I can tell, his other matches in Rings were against Masayuki Naruse in '93, and then they brought him back in '98 seemingly only because the show was in his home country of Georgia to face Chris Haseman on a show no one seems to have, so he never had the opportunity to grow or get any rhythm, but from what I saw, I would imagine him being more useful than a Tariel Bitsadze, who was the living embodiment of molasses, and still was heavily used by Maeda in the years to come. Dolman did not help matters here either, with his unusually soft strikes also, but that may have had to do with respecting Levani's comfort level. This could have been a decent match had they attempted to put some more realism into it.

ML: The striking in this match was so soft if was farcical. It was so bad that it felt like you were watching a spoof that was designed to finally, once and for all, prove pro wrestling was indeed fake. The only saving grace is they didn't do that nonsensical Kurt Angle bobblehead selling. Dolman getting a knockdown in the corner with a 2 inch low kick to Tiger's kick pad was definitely the most shameful moment of the night. Dolman is almost certainly the worst shoot wrestler working in '91. In his prime, he theoretically might have been one of the best in an actual shoot, but at this point he moves like an 80-year-old who had both knees replaced a few times. The grappling in this match was passable, and luckily there was more of that than the striking, but Dolman just moves so slow that it's just painful to watch.

Now it is time for an AIR BOUT with everyone's favorite cheatyface, Willie Peeters, and Dick Vrij. Peeters has been one of the most interesting Rings characters so far, for his willingness to really go hard against an opponent, even when it was arguably inappropriate to do so. This trait may have been uncouth, but at least you felt like you were in a fight when watching Peeters work, so this match against Vrij should be entertaining. Peeters digs deep into the tae kwon do well, when he opens things up with a flying reverse turning kick, which fails to connect, and causes Vrij to respond by tossing Peeters like a collegiate weight discus. Not long after, Peeters lands another spinning kick to Vrij's ribs, and after a moment of wincing the human cyborg kicks Peeters up high, near the head, which scores a knockdown. About eight more minutes of zaniness ensued, and despite not being the least bit realistic, this may be the most entertaining Rings match that we have witnessed so far. Peeters was all over the place, almost resembling a Warner Bros cartoon at times. His strikes would oscillate from not connecting at all, to possibly being too stiff, and the evil henchman cyborg vibe that Vrij gives off really played into the theatrical value of it all. There was one funny moment where Peeters had Vrij on the ground, and after a liver kick, he followed up with a downwards punch that missed by a mile, but the Japanese audience thought it connected and started going crazy over it. The match ended with a loss of points for Peeters, who suffered one too many knockdowns.

ML: Peeters was really psyched up here, and had the place rocking. This wasn't one of his better performances though, as he backed down from the stiffness against the more powerful opponent the way bullies tend to do, and was really lacking discipline and just all over the place. I liked that he was trying to pounce on any opportunity to catch Vrij prone to the point he had to stop himself in the midst of several blows that would have been illegal, but whereas previously it could have been argued that he hit too hard, today he was barely connecting too often. The big problem was that they were doing really overexaggerated pro wrestling selling, with Peeters even jumping when Vrij kicked him so it would supposedly look like he was blown off his feet. Vrij just did his thing, as limited workers tend to do. He was more on his game than Peeters, but there's really nothing to his game. At least Peeters, goofy as he was, was interesting because, for better and worse, he was making things happen, while Vrij was just doing his shadowboxing against a live opponent.

Ric Flair used to call himself the dirtiest player in the game, but that's surely because he never knew about Gerard Gordeau. Truly one of the most reprehensible characters (at least inside the ring) in the history of MMA, due to his various scummy antics (most notably eye gouging one of Yuki Nakai's eyes at VTJ 95, thus causing permeant blindness) this will be our first time covering him, though Gordeau himself was quite experienced at this point, having been the 1991 World Savate Champion, a highly experienced Kyokushin karate practitioner, and a fixture within the Dutch kickboxing/martial arts scene. He even had at least one professional MMA fight in 1989 (which we will cover later) where his ability to cheat was so profound, that he somehow managed to get disqualified in a "No Rules Fight". Here he will be facing Mitsuya Nagai in a UNIVERSE BOUT which will consist of seven 3min rounds, which on paper sounds like a good matchup due to Nagai's background in Shootboxing.

ML: Ric Flair thought the G1 Climax was the G-Eye Climax even while he was competing in it, so his credibility is as suspect as the believability of his matches where he did that corny faceplant every time, yet the useless ref never stopped it. While we are on the topic of Rickson Gracie's easy tournament wins, I guess we should point out that it was Gordeau's antics in handicapping Nakai that ultimately cemented Gracie's reputation. While, in fairness, Gracie would likely have defeated Nakai anyway, WCW's top shooter, the dreadful Sgt. Craig Pittman, who on top of everything else had 100 pounds on Nakai, still managed to fall prey to an armbar.

The fight starts off with Gordeau throwing a very crisp kick to Nagai's midsection, but is quickly taken down, and scrambles to the ropes as if his life depended on it. They get back up and feel each other out, when Gordeau engages again, and at one point in the midst of the barrage, Nagai starts to complain to the ref about getting a close fist punch to the face, but Gordeau simply took this time that Nagai was spending to attack him some more. The ref wound up breaking it up, but way after the fact, and did not penalize Gordeau for this either. Round 1 ended shortly afterwards, and while I'm still keenly using my shoot detector to try and assess this fight, nothing in round one so far has looked fake to me.

Round 2 sees Gordeau slowly try and back Nagai into a corner, and after eventually succeeding starts briefly unloading on Nagai which opens up an opportunity for him to sink in, what appears to be a deep guillotine choke, but for some reason the ref calls for a break, which serves to confuse both Gordeau, and myself, as I can't tell what could have been illegal about this. Nagai took a walloping for the rest of the round. He was able to take Gordeau down a couple of times, but it only led to restarts from the ref for getting entangled in the ropes in one instance, and Gordeau just opting for a quick rope break on the 2nd . This is continuing to look like a shoot, but I am reserving judgment until this is over.

Round 3 was more of a beating to Nagai. At this point his only defense seems to Gordeau's striking seems to be the takedown, but he can't manage to accomplish anything useful once the fight hits the ground. A very lopsided round against Nagai.

Round 4 sees Gordeau win at the 34 second mark, by countering a weak takedown attempt from Nagai with a guillotine choke. The ref once again broke the guillotine for an unknown reason, but this one seemed to be completely sunk in. After the break, Nagai just crumpled to the ground with a nosebleed, looking completely exhausted, and the ref called the fight. I am now completely convinced that this is the first shoot that we have witnessed from Rings, and I admit that I am surprised. I had a suspicion that this would be a good fight on paper, but was fearful that it would be another hokey work, but this turned out to be an interesting early example of MMA, although I would have guessed that Nagai would have been a tougher opponent than he was. Not the best fight in the world, from a modern perspective, but in the context of its time, entertaining, and historically interesting.

ML: Gordeau is definitely shooting on Nagai. Nagai seems to be in the mode we saw from Kakuda & Renting of approaching things as a real fight, but at the same time not really putting much on his kicks. Nagai quickly sees that Gordeau has a big power advantage, in addition to obviously having more technical skill on his feet, and becomes increasingly tentative to commit to his strikes, which could account for his wimpy leg kicks, settling for just going for takedowns. The fight is all one-way traffic for Gordeau, as Nagai can't keep him down for more than seconds. Nagai still seems to be doing some pro wrestling selling, and just gives up early in the 4th, refusing to get up even though the ref again breaks Gordeau's guillotine choke, as apparently they are illegal for some reason.

Now, we get to learn that fire is somehow of a greater nobility than the universe in the great pantheon of Rings dimensions, but the esoteric secrets don't stop there, as we are also able to glean from the preceding picture that Hans Nijman could have been one of the zombie extras in Return of the Living Dead . This will be Nijman's debut in Rings, and we should all enjoy his work while we are able, as he was to meet a very saddening end in 2014 when his life was cut short by automatic fire while sitting in a car parked outside of his gym, in what was presumed by local Dutch authorities to be gang hit. His opponent will be Masaaki Satake, a Seidokaikan Karate powerhouse that went on to be one of K1's huge stars in its early years, and is here now, thankfully on loan to us from the mighty Kazuyoshi Ishii. Round 1 saw Satake attack Nijman (or Nijman as his spelling is now more commonly known) from a variety of angles, where Nijman only seemed to have a strong push kick as a response. This was still a feeling out round for both men, but Satake is looking sharp, but it remains to be seen how his ne-waza skills will fare.

Round 2 saw Satake fight a textbook Sediokaikan style, by entering into phone booth range, and just wailing away with body shots. Nijman was able to hit an occasional push kick, or punch to the body, but he simply doesn't have the tools to be competitive with Satake in the stand-up arena, which puzzles me, as to why he hasn't really tried to take this fight to the ground.

Round 3 starts, and I am starting to realize that I'm not watching a match with normal Rings rules, but rather a straight up karate match. This is basically playing out like any Sediokaikan match, but instead of splitting the rounds up into Gi, non gi, etc, it is simply a straightforward karate bout, sans the gi. Needless to say, Nijman spends the rest of this round getting beat up, as he isn't in the same league as Satake. The rest of the fight was no different, but was strangely ruled a draw. I was excited when I was under the pretense that this would be a standard Rings bout, but am now disappointed, as this really only served to be an exhibition, where a shoot, or even a worked-shoot from someone like Satake during this stage of his career, would have been welcome, and interesting. This wasn't bad as much as it was pointless.

ML: This was probably the most ass Satake has ever kicked, or at least I hope so. He kept a high pace here against his slow, not particularly athletic opponent, mostly landing kicks that I'm not sure whether I should call middle or low given they connected to to the upper thighs or glutes, in other words the places you would never target that happen to have the most padding. Satake had a surprisingly high output, but nothing either fighter was throwing had any real impact, not even to just mix things up and make it seem like something actually scored big. Or I guess I should say that nothing Satake was throwing, because while Hans was able to hold off Satake briefly with his front kick, once Satake got inside he had such an advantage in handspeed, despite never being a heavyweight who was known for quickness, that Nijman basically gave up even trying to get any strikes off, and would instead try to either upend Satake or push him back but without throwing the front kick or anything that would maintain distance behind it, so Satake would just walk back in and continue to plug away at him. While way better than Dullman's match, this was pretty bad.

Now, for the moment that will forever change the course of Rings, and have an incalculable affect on all things in the shoot-realms for many ages to come, yes we are about to witness the professional debut of Volk Han (real name: Magomedkhan Amanulayevich Gamzatkhanov) who wound up being one of the greatest professional wrestlers of all time, by helping to cement the shoot-style's status as being the very apex of what professional wrestling could achive as an art form. Han had a background in collegiate wrestling before joining the Russian military, which is where he began learning sambo, and was even a three-time Russian sambo champion in the '80's. At some point in 1991, Akira Maeda discovered him, and in what was surely one of his shrewdest moves, he convinced him to come over and compete in his promotion. I have to wonder how that initial scouting session went down, as Han is right away thrust into a main event spot, despite this being only his first match, so surely Maeda saw something special in him, right from the get-go. An encyclopedia size volume of books could surely be written about him, so we will let it suffice to say that we will continue to talk more and more about him in the days to come.

Han's arrival couldn't have happened a moment too soon, either, as Maeda has been hurting for not only some depth in his roster, but other legitimate stars outside of himself, and while no one could have known to the extent that Han would be a great asset to this company in the years to come, looking back we can see that Rings may not have made it to its best years of 96-99 had he not shown up when he did. Here he is set to face Akira Maeda, who's knee condition is still an open question, so this may have an effect on his performance. Han starts to come out to the Ring, and we can see that he was being groomed for greatness right away, as they gave him one of the best theme entrances of the era, with a grandiose synthesizer intro, that sounds like what would happen if you were to mix the Phantom of the Opera with something from Brad Fiedel's work on The Terminator soundtrack. Maeda comes out next, and the crowd is absolutely in total rapture. Maeda could be wrestling a mongoose tonight, and I don't think it would affect how over he is with the crowd at the moment.

The fight has started, and the first minute is quiet, with some feeling out between the two men, before Han hits a tobi-juji-gatame (flying armbar) well before it become the cool thing for Carlson Gracie students to do. This breathtaking maneuver may not be the best opener for the purposes of realism, but it is done with such verve, that we must allow its indulgences. This leads to an instant rope break, and the fight is back on the feet. Maeda then throws some high kicks, forcing Han to distance himself a bit, before stalking his way up to Maeda and hitting the 2nd kani-basami of the evening, which is now banned from judo competitions for its perceived riskiness, and whenever I think of this, I can't help but remember how Joey Styles would incessantly lie to the ECW audience everytime Taz would show up, and say that the kata-ha-jime (Tazmission) was "Banned in judo, but legal in ECW!!!!!" Han attempts a heel-hook off of this, but Maeda was successful in rolling into the ropes, prompting a restart.

The next several minutes see Han attempt just about very leg attack one could think of (and perhaps many that no one has thought of) and also marked the debut of his infamous rolling kneebar, that we have all come to cherish. Maeda winds up pulling a win out of nowhere by securing a toe-hold while tangled up in a human leg-pretzel with Han, and serves to remind me why I gave up my Twister addiction a long time ago.

ML: I remember reading an old movie review where Roger Ebert talked about asking the all-time great actress Isabelle Huppert how she got into cinema, and she simply stated "I walked up to the studio door in Paris, knocked, and said, 'I am here.' " You didn't know whether to believe her, which made the comment all the more intriguing, but it spoke to her innate self confidence that the world would be forever improved because she would always find ways to do atypical and special things. It made me think of Han, this exotic, Spock-like Russian coming out to the ominous, spine tingling pipes of Jean-Michel Jarre's Second Rendez-vous, and rather than singing the Cara Mia and getting pelted with boos if not objects as Russian wrestlers were theoretically supposed to do, carrying one of the handful of top stars in Japanese wrestling to his best match in quite some time in his own debut. Han's debut may have been the best pro wrestling debut ever up until that point in time, and arguably has only been surpassed by Megumi Fujii's debut against Mariko Yoshida on 5/24/03, which is one of the greatest quasi shoot style matches ever, again just a super special talent who did things her way rather than the way they were supposed to be done.

In one match, Han already proved himself to be one of the couple best performers in the genre, and he was just getting started. What made Han special is he somehow seemed to understand how all the styles of actual MMA worked despite there being little to no actual MMA yet, but he also brought a really flashy and innovative version of sambo, a style almost no one other than practicioners had seen outside of Russia, rather than trying to assimilate to the accepted chicanery that passed for shoot wrestling. Han was super exciting, with a vast array of submission holds that relied on large and/or small joint manipulation. He was either going to move you himself, for example his rolling leglocks, or twerk on your wrist or ankle until you were forced to move into an obvious position to alleviate the pressure, which he was ready for, and could thus adjust quickly or switch off to another submission. The whole chaining of submissions is something that would eventually form the basis of the Japanese shoot style in the no ground punching era, but we hadn't really seen it yet in pro wrestling, where they preferred to do a lot of corny struggling under the false notion that people couldn't recognize the danger of a submission unless the fighter in trouble was bawling like a 5 year old.

Though Han's background was in submission, we immediately see him putting his energy toward employing actual, legitimate kickboxing footwork and feints that are maybe not quite up to the level we saw earlier from karate legend Kakuda, but otherwise set him apart from the pack, even though this isn't what he's been doing all his life. While Maeda is theoretically the better standup fighter, he can at least knock you out if you are expecting him to be working with you rather than taking a cheap shot, the artist formerly known as Kwick-Kick Lee can't manage to touch the nimble Han, who is able to back away from his kicks with ease, as well as get in & out of range quickly enough to incite him with slaps to the face and his own low kicks without taking counterfire. Of course, Han's real plan is to grapple, and while it's true that hitting a flying armbar as the first move of a match may not be the most realistic, it certainly speaks to the self confidence, guts, and out of the box thinking of Han to go out there and do this not only as the start of the match, but of his career. I had never seen a flying armbar before this, it was a jaw dropping what is this, and more importantly who is this kind of moment.

While it's important to focus on what Han was doing, what's actually more telling is how that was forcing Maeda to step up his game in so many ways. Maeda was forced to use more footwork, to be quicker with his attacks, and to try to chain them together because Han wasn't just going to stand there for him like a doofus. Sure, the match was a work, but there's really varying levels of what the opponent is going to allow you to get away with, and Maeda not only saw that Han's standard was high, but just being a proud athlete who wants to win because he's better not because he's running the company, he was pushing himself to earn some and get some over on Han. Suddenly, we saw a great sequence from Maeda where he isn't merely content to land a snap suplex, but was up like lightning trying to grab an appendage and drop into a submission, in this case an armbar, before Han could stabilize. This was the first time all year that Maeda looked good.

Han's matches are built around the high spots, which are plentiful, but he is able to get away with that more than others because he doesn't half-ass the basics of fighting, the positions, or the execution of the moves. In addition to understanding spacing on his feet, he's already using the mount and the guard on the ground, and chaining his submissions to try to catch the opponent off guard or just beat their defenses by being proactive and reacting quicker. Han may be selling because he still reacts quickly when Maeda does something, but used to 5 minute sambo contests, he appeared completely out of gas down the stretch, holding his hands on his knees the way Mark Coleman would go on to make famous in his historic loss to Maurice Smith at UFC 14. This allowed Maeda to get a spinning wheel kick in for a knockdown. Han was able to answer with a suplex to set up one of his rolling cradle sort of leg locks, but Maeda was able to stop the roll and use his left leg to block Han's lock, thus getting the better position on the mat to crank on the ankle, with a desperate Han realizing he's left with nothing but to tap in disgust then cover his face with his hands in embarassment and shame. ***1/2

Conclusion: While this wasn't anywhere close to Han's best match, it was a remarkable debut for a rookie, and also served to show that Rings had a new major player on the scene, and gives us hope that there are a myriad of new possibilities for this promotion leading into 1992. Taking this match and viewing it in isolation, it wasn't as good as the top flight stuff we have been seeing in the PWFG and UWFI, due to it being overly flashy, and possibly with Maeda being able to do so much. But in the context of its time, this was a much needed breathe of fresh air, and is possibly the best match Rings has put out so far, if you are ok with its over the top sensibilities. As for the rest of the card..it was a mixed bag. It was the best Rings card we have seen so far, with a fun match between Peeters and Vrij, and with a full shoot between Gordeau and Nagai, also added an interesting, and historically important element to it, but really squandered the debuts of Satake, and Kakuda, along with the poor match that was Dolman/Levani. Still, this was a major step up, and shows us, that despite the flaws, and despite the fact that they aren't close to the overall output of their rivals, they still feel like they have the most potential, and that is saying something.

ML: Han vs. Maeda was actually quite a bit better than I remembered. I would rank it as easily the best RINGS match of the year, and more or less above anything that doesn't involve Tamura or Suzuki. That's really secondary though to the arrival of Han giving people a much needed reason to watch RINGS, which, had it continued along the lines of their 1st two shows or what we saw on the undercard, would have remained mostly, if not completely skippable for anyone beyond completists such as ourselves.

*Kakutogi Rewind*

We mentioned the MMA fight that Gerard Gordeau had in 1989, and now we will dig through our vaults and give this rare gem, some much needed coverage. There had actually been a smattering of NHB/MMA fights throught the 80s in Holland, all of which were connected to Chris Dolman and his gym, and some of them wound up on the early Panther Productions: Ring Wars series. In fact, there is supposed to be a Pankration tournament that Chris Dolman held in 1981, that was a NHB tournament won by one of the bodyguards of Klaas Bruinsma, a famous Dutch drug lord. Supposedly this event made its way to the Panther catalog, which hopefully we at Kakutogi HQ will be able to track down one day. To make matters more intriguing, some of these old Dutch events would have the words "NO FAKES" flashing on the screen when a legit match was going on, which probably had something to do with weird laws enacted by Holland that wanted something like that clearly labeled?

In any case, here we are in Amsterdam on 2/19/89 with Gordeau, and his opponent Dick Veldhuis, who is represented by the infamous Chakuriki gym out of Holland, whereas Gordeau will be cornered by the Vos gym, which was also home to Ernesto Hoost for several years. I am still trying to dig up more information about Veldhuis, but the only information that I've been able to learn is that he had a fearsome reputation in the village that he grew up in. Veldhuis certainly looks like he means business with a fearsome physique, and a wrestling singlet, which is considered to be a universal symbol of badassery.

Gordeau tries to start the fight by shaking hands, but is quickly pelted by a low kick from Veldhuis in response. For any chess nerds out there, this could easily be a new opening, simply known as "Sportsmanship Gambit: Declined." The rest of the fight sees Veldhuis wisely rush Gordeau into a corner, which served to smother him, and prevent him from doing much. Then the fight ended, in what may be one of the most bizarre finishes that I've ever seen in over 25 years of watching combat sports, when Veldhuis charged Gordeau into the corner again, and got Gordeau to turn his back from some knees. Veldhuis appeared to be attempting a rear naked choke when the ref called for a break. However, as Veldhuis was breaking, Gordeau hit him in the side of the head with a quick elbow, which caused an instant knockout, except Gordeau was disqualified. In full speed it simply looks like a phantom punch, and would make one think that this might be Veldhuis taking a dive, but upon watching the replay a good 235 times, one can see that Gordeau did land a clean elbow into the Veldhuis's temple. It's bizarre that the ref would call for a break in the first place, especially in a "no rules" match, and when Veldhuis was possibly about to end the fight with a choke, but perhaps the ref was going to break whenever it got close to the ropes. I can only assume that Gordeau was disqualified due to striking his opponent during the break, but I am not certain. What I am sure of though is that Gordeau was a cheater from day one, and this video helps dispel any current Zuffa narratives that MMA magically started to exist, once the Fertitta brothers bought the UFC 2001.

ML: This had a real pro wrestling grudge match feel, and was never really under control, which would have been great had they managed to manufacture this in a work, but isn't exactly what you are looking for when you are promoting one of the first shoots. It mostly just seemed like a couple punks having a street fight with a ref, who was either out of his depth and/or trying to enforce rules that didn't actually exist. Shockingly, the fighter who was being a dick from the outset was Veldhuis, who denied a surprising gesture of sportsmanship from Gordeau, and worked him over in the ropes after something of an accidental low blow then headbutted Gordeau when the ref was trying to break. Veldhuis caught a front kick on the restart, and slammed Gordeau then kicked him when he was down. Gordeau could do some things with his feet when he actually had space, but Veldhuis was much bigger and stronger, and just wanted to smother Gordeau by mauling him in the ropes. When the ref went to break them up again after Gordeau had surrended his back, this time it was Gordeau who took the cheap shot, knocking Veldhuis out with a back elbow as the ref was yanking Veldhuis off by the arm. Presumably, since the break had already been called, the knockout was nullified and Gordeau was DQ'd given Veldhuis obviously couldn't continue. Perhaps only a fighter as dubious as Gordeau could manage to get DQ'd even in a match that claimed to have no rules.

*In other news*

The upcoming match between Nobuhiko Takada and Trevor Berbick is currently getting major news coverage in Japanese media. The UWFI has even gone as far as to spin this to their native media outlets that this is a major topic of interest in the United States as well, and various networks are fighting over who will have the rights to cover this event, which of course, isn't true. The UWFI recently held a press conference in New York on 10-29-91 to announce this event, and also included Billy Scott and his scheduled opponent Ernest Simmons, a replacement for James Warring, who couldn't come to terms with the UWFI on a contract. Berbick is possibly best known, as the last man to fight Muhammad Ali, whom he defeated in 1981, and effectively ended his career. The UWFI has declined to have any live coverage of this event, as they are calculating that the profits of home video sales will exceed what they can get in television rights.

Business for the UFWI has been heating up. They were able to sell out in the first 15 minutes for their 10-6-91 card at the Korakuen Hall, and they almost sold out their 11-7-91 event with an estimated 6,200 people.