RINGS 12/21/01: 2001 WORLD TITLE SERIES ABSOLUTE CLASS TOURNAMENT SEMI-FINALS

2001 World Title Series
Absolute Class Tournament: Semi-Finals
December 21, 2001 in Yokohama, Japan
横浜文化体育館 Yokohama Bunka Taiikukan 
(Yokohama Cultural Gymnasium)

NOT ONLY IS GENKI SUDO DEMONSTRABLY PRESENT IN RINGS TO THE CONTINUED AND COMPLETE SHOCK OF EVERYONE BUT WHAT'S MORE HE IS INDEED THE FEATURED RINGSist IN THE OPENING SOFT-VOICED VIDEO THAT HERALDS THIS WOWOW PRESENTATION OF THE 2001 WORLD TITLE SERIES ABSOLUTE CLASS TOURNAMENT SEMI-FINALS and no less striking that that, in my view, is the realization that, for the fourth time in five shows (and the fifth was a noble but minor 後楽園ホール Kōrakuen Hōru, a venue which RINGS has generally treated differently than others), the main event is a Hiromitsu Kanehara match! I hope that despite the ongoing and perpetual poverty of my art I have been able to put into these pages at least a hint of what lies in my heart on the subject of Hiromitsu Kanehara; and if I have, you will recognize at once that I am in no way bemoaning six months of Kanehara firmly positioned at the top of the card. But it kind of crept up on me! Between this, and the absence of footage of Kiyoshi Tamura in the high-level opening graphics these last shows, and the fact that Tamura's first PRIDE match (his long-form bludgeoning at the blue-gloved hands of a physically [and chemically] prime Wanderlei Silva) comes only days after the final RINGS show early next year (by which I mean 2002) strongly suggests that Tamura was totally gone at this point, doesn't it? Again, we are flying blind here in the truest sense of the term (in that we do not have Observers yet), but this would seem to very much be the case. And so Hiromitsu Kanehara! Good for him, I say. And just now I have read on his wikipedia page that one of his noms-de-guerre or sobriquets rouge is "RINGS Saigo no Ace" or "RINGS' Last Ace" which, had I seen that earlier, could have helped me. But it is still edifying! 

AND SO WE BEGIN as we are welcomed to 横浜文化体育館 Yokohama Bunka Taiikukan (Yokohama Cultural Gymnasium) not for the first time (but very nearly for the last) by no-less-beloved (by me) a figure than WOWOW EXCITE MATCH's Kenichi Takayanagi and joining him as ever and always is Gong Kakutogi's Hideyuki Kumakubo. Our really very clipped opening UNIVERSAL BOUT elides the first round entirely, and shows us only the close-fought second in Hidetaka Monma's decision win over Kyosuke Sasaki, who is of U-FILE, and Kiyoshi Tamura is nowhere to be seen, so yeah he is just gone, man. Our second match, a bout no less Universal, sees Naoyuki Kotani (RODEO STYLE, his blue trunks boldly declare [one's thoughts turn to the tremendous Kazuhiro Nakamura's that once read TAKE TO FIGHT JUDO STYLE {see him against Kosei Inoue in his true judo days here}]) defeat Takahito Iida by the hallowed waza of 腕挫十字固 ude-hishigi-juji-gatame in just over three minutes. The undercard is really ticking along as we move to not a Universal Bout but one no less Official (I do not understand these designations but embrace the mystery of them) between Stephen Gillinder and shoot-boxing's Tatsuya Maeda, who wears black and red flaming tights and enters to "You Give Love A Bad Name." I am with him. And he is the victor! After boxing Gillinder up in a fashion that seems to me quite technical (please recall I know nothing of hitting and its ways), Maeda finishes with a fairly vicious 裸絞 hadaka-jime naked strangle that totally began as a crushing of the lower face: chains of love got a hold on he; when passion's a prison, he can't break free; ippon.   

And now Genki Sudo enters like this, and fires off a confetti canon:

                                       

What you can't tell from those images, but what you probably can tell with your heart if you will allow yourself to truly feel, is that Genki Sudo has a spinning light on the top of his helmet. Also the music he enters to is completely panic-inducing techno of upsetting pace and persistence. This is a very intense experience! Kenichi Yamamoto has selected a much more sedate, boxingesque entrance of wearing an excellent hooded robe whilst his second carries a title belt high (it is possibly the UFC Japan tournament title he won some time ago? I can't think what else it could be) and "Ante Up" is quite rightly played while those things happen. The first round is spirited but largely unremarkable aside from just Genki Sudo's strange and wonderful energy and also his fleeting attempt at a "rubber guard" in the tradition of (imagine please a sigh that lasts the rest of my life and yours) Eddie Bravo. The Yokohama crowd enjoyed Genki Sudo's entrance very much but does seem to have loved that first round maybe? Both fighters swing and miss wildly with spinning back-fists early in the second round as though they were Masayukis Naruse (that's the plural). Sudo comes reasonably close with an ashi-sankaku-garami (leg-triangle-entanglement, known to some as omoplata) but cannot finish it (we worked on the rolling variation of that technique at judo just today); it does cause a lot of wiggling, though, that culminates in the more staid 裸絞 hadaka-jime for the finish at 1:46 of the second round. Yamamoto presents Sudo with what I am now sure is the UFC Japan Middleweight belt he won at UFC 23, an event we discussed in some detail earlier as it was the site of Tsuyoshi Kohsaka's match against Pedro Rizzo (it did not go so great). 

I had totally forgotten for at least a minute there that we are still very much in the 2001 WORLD TITLE SERIES ABSOLUTE CLASS TOURNAMENT and indeed its SEMI-FINALS before Christopher Haseman caught Egidijus Valavicius in juji-gatame after spending kind of a while in a fairly gnar kubi-hishigi neck-crank from mune-gatame (chest hold/side control). That took just over three minutes and was quite convincing! Haseman has really had a lot of good matches. And here now in the other tournament semi-final we have Lee Hasdell against RINGS Heavy-kyu Champion Fedor Emelianenko (you can tell he is the champion because he has the title belt slung over his ensweatshirted shoulder). Fedor is smaller than Lee Hasdell, and that probably shouldn't surprise me, but it kind of does! All the same, Fedor flings him to the mat immediately. Hasdell does well enough in newaza to enjoy a moment or two on top, but they stand soon enough thereafter, and Fedor punches him so hard in the face. Hasdell is not knocked out or anything but has this look about him like what on earth was that as he is set-up for first juji-gatame and then a quick, jerking gyaku-ude-garami reverse-arm-entanglement/double-wrist-lock/figure-four/Kimura and although Hasdell is able to break the hold with a rope escape (I guess they're just back!) it is pretty clear that his shoulder is in a bad way from the hold. The next time they're down (Fedor just, like, dumped him), Fedor hits him awfully hard in the body and then grabs a mae-hadaka-jime front choke for the win at 4:10. AND SO OUR WORLD TITLE SERIES ABSOLUTE TOURNAMENT GRAND FINAL IS SET and it shall be contested between Fedor Emelianenko and Christopher Haseman. Fedor, we should note, is totally loved at this point, people crowding at the rails.

OH GOOD IT IS TSUYOSHI KOHSAKA and his moment of 黙想 mokuso before he enters the ring affords us a welcome opportunity to get a good look at his excellent TK hoodie:

tkhoodies.blogspot.ca

Unfortunately my disc is skipping around more than a little right now so I am unable to show in detail how pretty much as soon as future World Wushu Championships gold medalist Bazigit Atajev so much as touches Kohsaka's face it does that thing where all of the blood in it comes out at once; this has happened with such frequency through TK's long RINGS (and elsewhere) career that we have come to not really worry about it and instead greet it like an old friend (oh hey, all of TK's blood; I hope you are keeping well) but it is nevertheless understandable that the referee would like the doctor to have a look at it for a second maybe. When we resume, Kohsaka has Atajev down in an instant, and has no trouble getting to strong positions (mune-gatame, tate-shiho-gatame, uki-gatame, really any number of fine gatame) and using those positions for a fair amount of punching (I cannot support this) and several attempts at ude-kansetsu (arm-bone-locking [I forever support this]). That's the first round! In the second, Atajev does well resisting an early takedown, and TK bleeds profusely again as Atajev comes out on top only to be TK Scissored into an ashi-garami (leg-entanglement) as I am reminded that the foremost technical insight afforded by this RINGSbox as we near its totality and can begin to speak in such ways is that TK Scissors is itself an ashi-garami and you had better believe I am going to teach them in concert the next time it seems appropriate to teach either!  A yellow card is charged but I know not for what or to whom and I dare not go back and see because I don't know if I'm going to be able to get back to where I need to be given the scourge of disc-skipping that I am getting scourged by right now. Ah okay, it must have been to TK, because the judges' decision falls in Atajev's favour, and I think that is totally plausible if TK had a point deducted. In the post-fight locker-room interview we can see that Kohsaka's hair is starting to thin noticeably (or else how could we notice it). He's thirty-one now. This is when it begins.   

WAIT A MINUTE WAIT A MINUTE OK THIS JUST OCCURRED TO ME HEAR ME OUT so when you play ファイヤープロレスリングA/Fire Pro Wrestling A, released 3/21/01, Kiyoshi Tamura (or rather "Iron Arm Takashi Minemura") is included in the RINGS ("ECLIPSE") roster, but when you play  ファイナルファイヤープロレスリング～夢の団体運営/Final Fire Pro Wrestling: Yume no Dantai Unei!/Final Fire Pro Wrestling: Organization of Dreams/Final Fire Pro Wrestling: Dream Organization Management, released 6/19/02, Tamura is nowhere to be seen in RINGS ("GONGS") but is found instead under Freelance Japan and you have to sign him to RINGS (or to Pancrase or perhaps U.F.O. should you choose to run a wild counterfactual). Of course when you play ファイプロ・リターンズ/Fire Pro Wrestling R (9/15/05) he is merely listed as a Græppler alongside other former men of RINGS as all has fallen to ruin but my point here is that Fire Pro evidence of Kiyoshi Tamura's pre-RINGS-demise RINGS-exit has been available to me for ages and still I had not put it all together; what a fool I have been. How does all of this sit with Hiromitsu Kanehara, RINGS Saigo no Ace?

I guess pretty well! His opponent here is Paul Cahoon, about whom I know little aside from that long years after this he would lose a decision to my beloved Kazuhiro Nakamura at World Victory Road Sengoku 5. Woah look how serious Kanehara looks just before he's about to enter the arena; this is very much unlike what we are used to seeing of and from him:

You have chills, don't you; chills because of Hiromitsu Kanehara. His music is so good and I still don't know what it is, search though I might. Maybe I could use one of those programs for your phone that divines, through black witchery, what the titles of songs are? This would probably work (assuming I have not merely dreamt of the existence of such things) but realistically I will never do it. OH NO in the middle of an otherwise fairly uneventful opening round, Hiromitsu Kanehara has been radically 裏投 ura nage'd in the mode of the German suplexo but as we have seen in previous instances (all of them against Matt Hughes), Kanehara does not seem to be bothered too much when that happens? At least not during the match, while he is still warm and things don't really hurt that much, but maybe when he gets home and out of the shower it will be awful, I don't know (maybe he will shower at the gym first, actually; there are many variables). I would like to personally thank Hiromitsu Kanehara for once again sweeping someone over with hikikomi/sumi-gaeshi from a gyaku-ude-garami grip in the manner of Masahiko Kimura, which allows us to gaze upon this lovely gif once more:

Although we have attended to Kimura's demonstration of this waza very nearly each time anyone has done anything even remotely resembling it in any of the matches from any of the hundred-or-so shows we have RINGSblogged (more that, since we are on disc 127, and while there have been a number of two-disc shows, that number is probably only like a dozen) over the ten years (RINGS time) we have traversed these last eight months (time as it passes in the primary world), I think it is maybe this newfound prominence of Hiromitsu Kanehara that has allowed us to have it with us, this Kimura gif, nearly every time out of late! This is a really good match, and has such neat parts as Kanehara throwing a kick towards the head of this much taller fellow (all fellows are taller), Kanehara nearly finishing a juji-gatame in which the angle of Paul Cahoon's arm as indicated by the overhead camera convinced me it was broken (it was not; it was, instead, turned), and Kanehara getting into a near-ideal position to attempt the somehow-forgotten (not by me!) Akira Kikuchi's step-over yoko-sankaku-jime to gyaku-ude-garami side triangle choke to reverse arm entanglement (I still teach it!). Kanehara takes the split decision, and addresses briefly the 横浜文化体育館 Yokohama Bunka Taiikukan crowd, which receives him warmly. 

AS WELL THEY SHOULD FOR HE IS THEIR LAST ACE IF YOU CAN EVEN BELIEVE THAT IT TOOK ME THIS LONG TO PUT IT ALL TOGETHER but such is the dark fen of the mind in which we loom and lurk until the Wrestling Observer Newsletter archives are brought up to date in the fullness of time and in accordance with the schedule that has been set. In closing, I would like to note that today is the day of Dave Meltzer's father Herbert's passing, and our thoughts are with him in this difficult time. Dave spoke lovingly of his father on Wrestling Observer Radio last night, and described his father's devotion to family, his love of travel, and the pride he felt in the work he had done developing the Fortran programming language. Rest in peace, Herbert Meltzer; condolences to Dave Meltzer and his family.

Thank you all once again for your time and for your attention to these matters. Let us reconvene as soon as we are able so to do.