KB8

I definitely remember liking a couple Ikeda in NOAH matches a lot, though I couldn't tell you what they were now. Pretty sure there was one match on an old Schneider Comp where he either teamed with or against Rikio that I thought was pretty great. I'm sort of on an Ikeda high right now so I might do a little deep dive soon.

Herman Renting v Shtorm Koba (1/25/92) Koba looks like he’s another guy straight out of the Grom Zaza/Tiger Levani camp of wrestling. Unfortunately the google search turns up nada, so confirmation eludes us. He certainly fought like someone with a modicum of proficiency in throwing people around, though. Renting was also less about the striking in this fight and tried to match wrestling with wrestling. At one point a suplex attempt goes awry and the clash of heads gives Koba a gnarly cut above the eyebrow. Koba’s sell of a Renting knockdown was somewhat less than convincing and he left the ring at the end like a man who knew he was getting paid to show up and roll around for thirteen minutes before submitting to a toe hold. One must respect the hustle. Mitsuya Nagai v Koichiro Kimura (1/25/92) This started out in fairly drab fashion and not a whole lot happened for a while there. We got some takedowns and they struggled for position, but it was mostly a stalemate and a bit of a slog. Then we hit the last five minutes and things started to get interesting. Kimura came close a few times to locking in some nasty looking chokes and Nagai threw strikes with a little more venom. Last couple minutes were especially good as they were just wildly flinging palm thrusts at each other’s face and Kimura looked about ready to collapse, at one point quite literally almost falling out the ring. There was some clipping going on as I think we only got about half of the full 28 minutes (why is Kimura going so long on these shows?), but it built to a nice crescendo. Willie Peeters v Bert Kops Jr (1/25/92) Peeters may have been my favourite guy of the ’91 shows and this is a rematch of a pretty entertaining fight, so I was looking forward to it. I will look forward to most things Willie Peeters. I’m not really sure how good Kops is, but he’s scrappy and he’s always willing to keep things moving, so if nothing else he’s a perfectly fine shoot style Tommy Gilbert. Peeters did his usual Willie Peeters things and I think my favourite Willie Peeters thing is how it’s basically guaranteed that his temper will spill over at least once a fight and he’ll knee a guy who’s on the floor or outright jump on their kidneys. In actual fact he did both those things here, but better than that he somehow managed to his a fucking piledriver! As in a full on piledriver where he caught Kops shooting in for the double leg and planted him. He did it right in front of his corner and the best part of all came afterwards when he turned to his corner man (Vrij) and laughed like he couldn’t quite believe he’d hit an honest to goodness piledriver. I was a little surprised at the finish because Peeters is very much a guy the crowd have taken to and Kops is sort of whatever, but I guess it leaves the door open for the rubber match and who knows, perhaps Peeters will hit a Burning Hammer or whatever gets you a solid two count these days. Nobuaki Kakuta v Rob Kaman (1/25/92) I'm gonna go out on a limb and say this was very much a shoot, the rules of which seemingly having changed from Kakuta's last fight. I base this on the last twenty seconds as they wound up on the mat and the ref' didn't immediately stand them back up. So I guess it's straight MMA this time? Kaman looked super accomplished here. I figured he was either a kickboxer or Muay Thai fighter. Turns out he was a world champion in both, used to play for Ajax (the football/soccer team) as a kid and was even in a few movies. I feel like I aught to have known this somehow. Anyway, this was what it was. Kaman looked great, Kakuta was spunky and persistent. Willy Wilhelm v Igor Kolmykov (1/25/92) I'll be honest, I'm not sure what Kolmykov does. You know, what his discipline is. Maybe freestyle wrestling? This was mostly Wilhelm as aggressor and he had a few nice takedowns, but neither are the most accomplished on the ground and not a whole lot happened when the fight got there. Crowd had themselves a chuckle at Kolmykov's wobbly karate but they weren't laughing at his cross armbreaker, no they were not. Gerard Gourdeau v Masaaki Satake (1/25/92) This was another rounds fight and I think it started off as a work, but then Gourdeau went off like a nutcase and punched Satake in the face a bunch for real and the fight got thrown out. Satake was bleeding from somewhere and Gourdeau raised his hand apologetically afterwards, but the whole thing was passable. I look forward to seeing Mahershala Ali hunt down the green-eared spaghetti monster's distant cousin Gourdeau in the upcoming third season of True Detective. Akira Maeda v Dick Vrij (1/25/92) The rubber match. This was mostly fought on the feet and there was that unease lingering from the previous fight that suggested Maeda might not be smart to let things continue like that. Other than Maeda hitting one capture suplex through the first three quarters of the fight it wasn't hard to disagree. Maeda's leg is still heavily taped and it wasn't not long before Vrij paints a bullseye on it. I liked the way Maeda sold all the leg kicks, a slight limp here and there that the crowd picked up on, which of course only added to their unease. At times during this he felt like a man with little more than a prayer, half hobbled as he was with Vrij only growing in confidence. In comparison, Maeda's leg kicks had nothing behind them and Vrij let him know it, then Vrij overwhelmed him and it led to a third knockdown. And there was that sense that it was going to happen again. Vrij had Maeda's number and if it kept going the way it was then he'd only TKO him again. You could argue that the climax might've been telegraphed, but I thought it was a fitting enough way to cap off a fun series.

Re: St Louis, Blackwell v Butch Reed sometime in 1982 is really damn good as well. I certainly prefer it to any of the Flair/Brody matches that I've seen (from anywhere).

Knowing All Japan like we know them it's not totally surprising that they never brought Ikeda in to run riot on their main stars (though they should've), but checking on cagematch it surprised me how often they jobbed him out when they did bring him in. To guys like Satoru Asako and Yoshinobu Kanemaru. I think even Shiga picked up a win on him. Mossman isn't exactly the first or second or tenth name you'd pick if you're an Ikeda fan looking at who he could match up with on that All Japan roster, but he'll at least kick hard and you know Ikeda will kick him back. This started out awesome as Ikeda dropped him with an ungodly right cross (and Mossman sold it like he had the cartoon budgies circling above his head), then leveled out at okay in the body, before getting back up to pretty good in the last few minutes. Ikeda never totally let loose like you'd want but he took some big bumps, including a reverse suplex off the top rope where he landed pretty awkwardly on the side of his head. Is any of his All Japan run worth tracking down above everything else?

Probably the best five minute match there's ever been. What a preposterously violent shitstorm of a thing. Ono starts throwing grenades right out the gate and drops Ikeda with an early knockdown, and I love how they managed to work a solid narrative into four and a half minutes. Ono is a whirlwind of punches and kicks, really going hell for leather, no beating about the bush. He's here for a good time not a long time, he doesn't get paid by the hour, etc. Ikeda is Ikeda, though. There's probably only a handful of wrestlers in history who can endure a more hellish beating than him and less than a handful who can dish it out even worse in return. So Ikeda survives the onslaught and just fucks Ono in the face with a headbutt. Ikeda's riposte is truly harrowing and yet Ono won't stop coming forward. The bit where Ikeda over-commits and Ono full force knees him in the back of the head is legit one of the most truculent things I've seen in a wrestling match. I've referenced this a few times as the bar for sub-five minute matches and every re-watch of it still leaves me sort of stunned.

Wonderful little ten minute scrap. Ono was fucking incredible in this, decking Hijikata in the first couple seconds with a straight right, unleashing hell with his strikes the whole way through, finding ways to escape whatever predicament Hijikata put him in to come back and drill him in the face. At a couple different points Hijikata left a limb dangling and Ono pounced on it, first tearing at the shoulder before moving onto the knee. He also has some of the most obnoxious hairstyles in wrestling history and this time he was rocking the bleach blond Johnny Rotten spikes. This really had something cool and/or brutal happening every other second and I loved Ono grabbing hold of Hijikata's kneepad so he couldn't reach the ropes out of the armbar. That sort of attention to detail is probably second only to his attention to punching you dead in the nose as my favourite thing about him.

Grom Zaza v Koichiro Kimura (12/7/91) I guess Maeda's been on that tour of Russia then, because enter: tricked out Easter European grapplers. This was edited in parts because unless I fell asleep for a bit - and I'm certain I didn't - the post-fight graphic says it went ten minutes longer than was shown. Even the editing department in RINGS must be stellar then, because I did not notice any clipping whatsoever. This was good stuff for what we got. Zaza seemed to bring a bit of everything to this: his awesome wrestling, some judo, a solid submission game and even some passable striking. He clearly has a hell of an engine as well because he never relented for a second and he didn't seem to be sucking wind by the end (of a twenty three minute fight (apparently), of which he was largely the aggressor). Kimura looks a bit like Yoji Anjoh in the face but he's far less of an obnoxious wee shitbird. He has pretty quick hands, but I think he gassed about five minutes in because he spent most of the time either curling up like a turtle or trying to crawl to the ropes. Grom Zaza will do that to you, I suppose. The crowd weren't totally on board with it and started booing him after his fifth or six rope break (which for all I know may have been his fourteenth or fifteenth of the unedited fight -- the points system seems to have changed on this show and I haven't quite grasped it yet). Conversely they were all about Zaza and his awesome shoot style STF and sharpshooter. I don't know what the finish was exactly, but it looked like maybe a choke or some sort of keylock but I'm also wondering if Kimura never just said to fuck with this relentless Georgian man climbing all over me and tapped. Maybe we'll never know. I will take more Grom Zaza and be immediately pleased, thank you. Herman Renting v Nobuaki Kakuta (12/7/91) This was strange. Was it a shoot? I mean, it didn't always look like one, but it had a fevered sort of hesitancy to it and if it was a work then...strange. Maybe it's the rounds system. This was another one of those and there hasn't been a good one yet. The difference here, though, is the inexplicably molten crowd! Why is this place going so bananas for a Herman Renting fight? Kakuta is a short karateka who wants absolutely nothing to do with a clinch or the ground or anything that doesn't involve standing and engaging in the fighting arts of karate. For large spells they do nothing much at all besides throw a few probing kicks. It was all very tentative, though it sometimes looked like they were right on the verge of turning loose. In the end the caution to protect their own face overrode the desire to smack the opponent's. Other than a few semi-grazing kicks I think one shot landed clean the whole fight and that was a suspect/probably illegal closed fist. Renting would close at a few points and Kakuta would sort of fall into the ropes to force the break without actually using a rope escape. The ref' would then stand them up and on one of those occasions Renting refused to let go of a partial choke which set the crowd off big time. Later on he grabbed another choke, this time of the illegal hand around throat/throttling variety and they liked that even less. When he cracked Kakuda's jaw with the punch that was it, never again would Herman Renting be welcome in the Ariake Coliseum. This was kind of a waste after Renting's promising outing on the last show, but his heeling it up was amusing. And holy moly did the people get into it. Chris Dolman v Tiger Levani (12/7/91) I'd never heard of Tiger Levani before. Where does he come from? What's his discipline, his hobbies, his hopes and dreams? A google search yields answers to none of these questions. He's kitted out in the same red and blue gear as Zaza so maybe they're from the same camp? He certainly has some Grom Zaza-ish tendencies in that he'll pursue those takedowns doggedly, and he almost turned one of them into a slick wrist lock. When it did go to the ground they were both pretty determined to grab leg locks, like nearly every single time. This often led to stalemates so eventually Dolman changed tact to lots of clinching and knees to the body. One or two might've been a wee bit south of the belt, but in the end it opened the door for a front choke and Chris Dolman is now the proud holder of the best win record in all of the Fighting Network RINGS. Dick Vrij v Willie Peeters (12/7/91) What an awesome little scrap. This had a bit of everything, some great striking, big takedowns and throws, dramatic submission work, insane heat, a frantic pace, even a kick to the balls. Vrij has a real unique aura and he's already improved noticeably over his four appearances. He's not a wizard on the mat by any stretch, but it sure looked like he'd picked up a few tricks. He is of course a man of many head kicks and that remains his primary mode of attack, but it's the way he carries himself as the big dog now with the shredded physique and the buzz cut that added an extra layer to this. Peeters ruled again. He has tonnes of personality and the crowd adopted him as their underdog babyface, which is a role he turned out to be awesome in. He was always in danger of taking blows because of Vrij's length and reach, but he'd continually try and close and chip away with punches to the body. They started coming off and earned him a couple knockdowns, and the crowd were totally behind him doing the upset. He just refused to accept defeat and tried to take it to Vrij at every opportunity. This had an easily discernible story that came off as being organic, two guys that were great in their roles, and a crowd that bought all the way into it. I loved this. Mitsuya Nagai v Gerard Gourdeau (12/7/91) Another weird round system fight. Gourdeau is the guy who kicked Teila Tuli's teeth out in the very first official fight in UFC history and later in the night broke two of the only three rules of the tournament (no eye-gouging; no biting). A few years later he yolked out Yuki Nagai's eye (or at least gouged it unto a state of permanent blindness) and generally looks like the sort who pulls the legs off of spiders for a hobby. Those are not the eyes of a kind individual. Apparently he's a neo-Nazi as well so all around swell gent, is Gerard. He dominated this and Nagai never got much of a look in. I actually thought it might've been stopped before it was because there was a point where Nagai was clearly not right after a guillotine choke. Nagai looked thoroughly outmatched here and Gourdeu's striking was too much for him. Hans Nyman v Masaaki Satake (12/7/91) Alright, this was definitely a shoot. Probably. I think it was a straight karate contest as well. Satake was very much the aggressor in this and really didn’t stop through all five rounds; he was constantly active and striking. Nyman was almost entirely on the defensive for the last couple rounds, though in fairness he never looked too troubled. Nothing from either guy had the other in a ton of danger, but it wasn’t a difficult fight to watch. Akira Maeda v Volk Han (12/7/91) Has anybody ever looked as good straight out the gate as Han? It didn’t hurt that he was about as legit as any to ever do it, but I imagine shoot style would be one of the most difficult styles to do properly and Han took to it right away. I mean, this is his debut and he’s pretty much already the Volk Han we know. There didn’t appear to be many growing pains at all. This was pretty great, of course. We’ve seen a host Europeans pass through RINGS already, some of them good, some of them less so, but it’s immediately obvious that none have been quite like this unassuming Russian as he flies into a rolling armbar after about forty seconds. This is a very different kettle of fish and the closest thing to what most people would point to as ‘high end RINGS’ yet. It largely felt like kicker v grappler, with Maeda being the superior striker and Han taking him down almost at will, tying him up in heel hooks and armbars. Han wasn’t as freaky with the submissions as he’d eventually become, but some of what he was doing was ridiculous. You think you’ve managed to fend off an attempted heel hook and before you know it you’re in a kneebar, then you somehow wriggle out of that but now he’s got BOTH your legs and you have no choice but to cling to the ropes for a reprieve. Once or twice Han would catch a high kick and just throw Maeda to the mat, a sort of casualness to it. Then he started to tire and Maeda caught him with that big wheel kick he’d been aiming for. Finish didn’t feel like Han underestimating Maeda as such, but with how dominant he’d been on the mat until then you get the sense he maybe never expected Maeda to have that in his locker. A fitting way to draw the curtain on the first year of RINGS.

Mitsuya Nagai v Herman Renting (9/14/91) One of the coolest things about a project like this, where you basically follow a promotion from its inception through to its closure with all the peaks and valleys in between (you know, hypothetically), is that you get to see the progression and growth of certain folk during the journey. Case in point: these two. In their first match they were fairly tentative, acclimatising themselves to this new and bizarre world of the shoot style, and it made for a fairly garden variety scrap between two young fellas finding their feet. Both are just far more assured this time out, their kicks thrown with a little extra whip, those kicks landing with a little extra leather. Combos are faster, the cooperation aspect more negligible, as if testing to see how well the other might react, pushing the boundaries of how much of the shoot-fightin' one can get away with in the fake-shootin'. Things started to get real chippy and Renting was taunting Nagai by brushing his shoulder off and asking if that was his best shot. Of course we see signs of reckless crowbar Nagai in response as he tries to full force Wanderlei punt Renting in the head as he's lying prostrate on the canvas and I'll be damned but at some point I had to stop and ask myself if this wasn't pretty fucking awesome. And you know what, I really think it might've been! I was practically in shock a few times at what they were doing. I mean it wasn't Tamura/Han matwork or world class striking, but it was so far above what they had done before (all of that one fight together that time) that I couldn't quite believe it. Renting was super persistent with his takedowns and Nagai was having to exert a ton of energy in not just preventing them, but in escaping if prevention failed. He got dumped on his neck for a knockdown and later Renting - I'm honestly not bullshitting you - hit one of the coolest German suplexes/throws I've seen. Often when they'd be stood up they'd waste no time at all in going back to the striking and Nagai even sprinted across the ring and tried a flying knee! He also drilled Renting with an unbelievable enziguri that legit had me off the couch. I had no idea Renting had this in him. Just a total blast. Willie Peeters v Bert Kops Jr. (9/14/91) Hot damn this was really fun as well. We're getting the niggliness on this show, brothers! Kops is unfamiliar to me and a google search doesn't turn up much of anything, but I'll go out on a limb and say he's a wrestler who's maybe dabbled in a wee bit of the kickboxing. He has some awesome throws, really torquing the hips and getting some angles on them as Peeters sails helplessly through the air. Unfortunately he can't really seem to do much once he gets to the ground and Peeters is usually able to wriggle free, so I'm left to question how much of the wrestling Bert really does (more than me, I'd wager). It leads to things being a little stop-start at points with the ref' standing them back up. Peeters continues to be a favourite of mine. He's a kickboxer who wants little to do with being on the mat. If he can avoid being there he will and his first plan of action is to stand and strike, though he is able to take Kops down a few times himself when pressed (he has the wrestling background and such). He also has a sort of Murakami-ness about him where it looks like he maybe never quite figured out how to pull his strikes and so he smacks Kops really hard with closed fists. I'm not sure he ever cared about that closed fist rule the whole time he was in RINGS. Same goes for the striking a downed opponent rule because he did that a bunch as well. There was one amazing bit where Kops took him over with a German suplex but Peeters immediately rolled back to his feet and cracked him with an uppercut. Post-fight Peeters is asked about his key to victory and he answers with, "I think the knee to the face. Thank you." How can you not love this guy? Dick Vrij v Ton von Maurik (9/14/91) Cagey start to to this one as Von Maurik - perhaps sensibly after Vrij's recent slaying of Maeda - appears to be reluctant to engage. Then again Vrij doesn't seem too eager, either. And so it goes for about two and a half rounds (this is seven three-minute rounds, btw) with the highlight being Vrij dickishly mussing Von Maurik's hair. Von Maurik isn't very good nor convincing and that's kind of the killer in this. Vrij is coasting in his own right but you at least get the sense he could break out and finish it whenever he wanted. That it went nearly six rounds and didn't even end with a brutal KO does not amuse Dana White. It actually started to pick up a bit as it went on and they followed suit with the first two fights by getting pretty chippy, at one point even spilling to the floor in the most obvious "accidental" fashion ever where Vrij threw a sly knee to the ribs, but there was a lot of fluff in between the good bits (which were few and far between, besides). Vrij's first knockdown of Von Maurik was an absolute corker, though. The slow motion replays of it are truly spectacular. Akira Maeda v Willy Wilhelm (9/14/91) This had a coupe iffy moments where the cooperation aspect was fairly obvious, but on the whole I thought this was pretty enjoyable. Wilhelm is a likeable sort of fellow, somewhat oafish looking yet wholly capable of chucking mere mortals around with relative ease, which he did several times. A couple of his harai goshis in this looked especially awesome. At one point it led to a half crab right in the middle of the ring and the crowd were in a rabid panic that Maeda might actually lose for the second show in a row. He also exposed his belly like a big gorilla and dared Maeda to kick him there, which Maeda did to little effect. Maeda going to the leg kicks seemed like a pretty sound strategy thereafter and it created openings to other things, such as the head kicks that almost KO'd Wilhelm twice. Finish had one of those moments of obvious cooperation, but it's whatever.

Thought this was really good for what we got. I've been watching some Bestia in SWS lately and he looked great working opposite a green Ultimo Dragon, but it was a treat seeing him turn loose and slap Casas stupid. The early rudo mugging was pretty awesome on the whole, my favourite part being Scorpio using Olimpico's own jacket to tie his arms up while Panther beat on him. Olimpico taking the wild head first bump off what he probably thought was going to be a hip toss and Panther trying to rip his arm out regardless was badass. For a two fall rudo beatdown I liked this a bunch.

I picked up every RINGS show from its first show in 1991 through mid-1994 or so towards the end of last year and I finally started going through all of them last week. My plan was to eventually watch everything in order until it turned to full MMA, but I may jump around some. High end RINGS is maybe my favourite kind of wrestling and it's one of my favourite promotions ever during that '96-'99 run, but early doors RINGS doesn't seem to be talked about much outside of stuff featuring the likes of Han and Maeda. Hopefully we can uncover some random gems from obscure Dutch judokas or the Willie Peeters masterpieces we know he's capable of. I'll keep a running list of the stuff worth watching as well (perhaps in some instances for reasons beyond technically being GOOD). Badass RINGS You Should be Watching (Baddest of the Badass in Italics): 1991 Akira Maeda v Dick Vrij (5/11/91) Chris Dolman v Ton von Maurik (8/1/91) Akira Maeda v Dick Vrij (8/1/91) Mitsuya Nagai v Herman Renting (9/14/91) Dick Vrij v Willie Peeters (12/7/91) Akira Maeda v Volk Han (12/7/91) 1992 Akira Maeda v Dick Vrij (1/25/92) Volk Han v Gennadi Gigant (3/5/92) Akira Maeda v Ramazi Buzariashvili (3/5/92) Akira Maeda v Volk Han (4/3/92) Volk Han v Grom Zaza (5/16/92) Dick Vrij v Mitsuya Nagai (5/16/92) Volk Han v Andrei Kopylov (7/16/92) Mitsuya Nagai v Cvetan Pavlov (8/21/92) Volk Han v Dick Vrij (8/21/92) Akira Maeda v Andrei Kopylov (8/21/92) Akira Maeda v Volk Han (10/29/92) Akira Maeda v Dimitri Petkov (11/13/92) Yoshihisa Yamamoto v Nobuaki Kakuta (12/19/92) Volk Han v Sotir Gotchev (12/19/92) 1993 Sotir Gotchev v Todor Todorov (1/23/93) Volk Han v Andrei Rumenezei (1/23/93) Masayuki Naruse v Sergei Sousserov (2/28/93) Sirra Fubicha v Kalil Valvitov (3/5/93) Volk Han v Andrei Kopylov (3/5/93) 1996 Mitsuya Nagai v Mikhail Ilioukhine (3/25/96) Volk Han v Nikolai Zouev (4/26/96) Tsuyoshi Kohsaka v Yoshihisa Yamamoto (4/26/96) ----- Herman Renting v Peter Smit (5/11/91) This had some okay grappling on the ground and one or two decent takedowns (or maybe takedown attempts), but there wasn't a ton of urgency to any of it and it all mostly felt like two guys doing a demonstration. "This is how you go for an armbar..." Renting threw some okay kicks, but they were pretty light and again looked a bit like he was showing us all where you're SUPPOSED to kick someone. The winning armbar was cool, at least. Not terrible, but it won't knock your socks off. Willie Peeters v Marcel Haarmans (5/11/91) Man, Peeters was fun in this. He threw lots of nice kicks that made a smack when they landed, he wasn't afraid to lay into Haarmans with punches, and even if he wasn't much use on the mat he was certainly game to try for takedowns. Haarmans doesn't really seem to do...anything...very well. He's a big lumpy dude and he absorbed lots of body shots, but there was never much behind any of what he was doing. When it went to the mat it felt like he was fairly composed, but I don't know if he had much to offer there offensively. I've liked the limited amount of Peeters I've seen previously and he's one of the guys I'm interested in seeing more of in the early RINGS years. Bill Kazmaier v Chris Dolman (5/11/91) Jeez Louise this was rough. They work it within the rounds system so I briefly wondered if it somehow was a shoot, like Maeda was on the crystal meth one night and thought it might be fun to book that, but it didn't take long for the notion to be squashed. Kazmaier looks a bit like Arn Anderson here if Arn Anderson fell out a boat, drowned, and washed up on the shore. At times he moved like it, too. I've never seen Dolman before but he has a bit of young Glenn Jacobs about him, despite apparently being 46(!). He also has a legit judo and Sambo background so if he shows up again I guess I'd like to see what he can do with someone capable. Kazmaier threw some strangely amusing body shots and a big suplex, Dolman had one or two okay takedowns, but otherwise this was four and a half rounds of not a whole lot. Akira Maeda v Dick Vrij (5/11/91) This was almost certainly helped by coming after the listlessness of the previous fight, but on its own I thought it still managed to be pretty dang fun. Vrij is always good for a bit of banter, his taunting and horse-shitting it up usually fairly amusing. Maeda was cool as you like through all of this, never rising to Vrij's bait, content to let Vrij force the issue before he would try and capitalise. Most of Vrij's slaps were more insulting than anything, though he did catch Maeda with a few that made the crowd sit up. He threw a handful of high kicks, but again Maeda would wait, catch one, then try and go for the takedown or submission. A couple times it backfired and he found himself rocked, but in the end it paid off like he'd planned. This went like eleven minutes and I dug it just fine. Mitsuya Nagai v Herman Renting (8/1/91) Is this Nagai's debut, not just in RINGS but in all of the pretend fighting? It's certainly the earliest Nagai I've seen, as well as the least bald. This had more going on than Renting's last outing (also a show opener) and was pretty okay if largely unspectacular. Nagai's kicks look sharp enough, though none that landed were of much consequence. It's a departure from later career Nagai where he's crowbarring the living shit out of people and everything is landing eight thousand percent, often across Yuki Ishikawa's front teeth. Renting is another kickboxer but his shots were more probing than anything. There were some sparks of an alright ground struggle and at one point Nagai slickly escaped a choke attempt to gain side control, but otherwise this was fairly by the numbers. Chris Dolman v Ton von Maurik (8/1/91) This was basically a shoot style hoss fight. It wasn't pretty, in fact it was ugly and ragged, but fuck if I didn't enjoy it a bunch. Von Maurik is...well I can't find any worthwhile info on him from a cursory google search but he's a tall Dutchman with a bitchin' perm. Dolman mentions in his pre-fight interview that he needs to be careful of Von Maurik as he's fast, in good condition and skilled in both boxing and sumo! He does not look like a sumo wrestler but who am I to argue? But yeah, right from the start Von Maurik charges Dolman and they're very soon taking pot shots at each other. Von Maurik's kicks come from a very flat stance and none of them land all that clean, but it looks like he's putting some meat behind them - at least to the extent he can with no real hip torque. Dolman has a really weird guard, forearms tight around his ears, face shielded by his elbow. Not much got past it, to be fair to him, but it did leave his midriff open to a punch combo that scored Von Maurik a knockdown. Dolman then started to flex the judo muscles and take Von Maurik down pretty much at will - once with an absolutely gorgeous harai goshi - at which point he would start headbutting him in the chest. This was evidently effective as it opened Von Maurik up to some submission attempts and Von Maurik clearly wanted no part of it, scrambling to the ropes as quickly as possible. It played into the finish as well, and I liked how Von Maurik tried to claw his way to safety while Dolman pulled him into the middle of the ring, like a big monster dragging some poor fellow into a pit. I said after his last fight that I'd like to see Dolman get a run out against someone who can actually go, and while I don't know if Von Maurik ticks that box he was an exponentially better match-up than Billy Kazmaier. And I thought this was just way fun. Willy Wilhelm v Peter Smit (8/1/91) If you squint hard enough Wilhelm looks a bit like Calumet County district attorney Ken Kratz, or a Tesco brand Stan Hansen. He's a judoka who medalled in the '83 and '85 world judo championships and apparently had a match (presumably worked) with Maeda in '89 that drew 60,000 to the Tokyo Dome! He tells us he's beaten Smit a couple times in the past, back when Smit was much lighter. This time it'll be a bit more challenging, and while he knows he can't compete if it becomes a kickboxing contest he feels he'll be able to take Smit down and either put him in an arm lock or strangle him. Smit's interview is gibberish to me as my Dutch isn't for shit. Basically I wanted to transcribe the Wilhelm interview because that is pretty much exactly how the fight went from his perspective and I sort of love that he not only outright told you his strategy, but went and actually executed it. He had his gameplan, was confident enough in it to lay it out there, and followed through on it. Smit really wasn't very good at all. He would move into the clinch without ever actually trying to do anything, though there was one bit where he threw Wilhelm into the ropes and kicked him in the ribs which led to Wilhelm selling it like he'd popped a lung or something. I thought that was going to be the finish, but Wilhelm got up after 8 and came out, arms raised and roaring, like a big bear who's just happened upon a campsite. I figured a mauling was imminent. And well, he never quite mauled him but he sure did strangle him. Akira Maeda v Dick Vrij (8/1/91) Vrij is in a foul mood after taking the L - as the youths say - in their last fight and comes out immediately swingin' for the fences. He's just all knees to the body and high kicks in a flurry of neo-Nazi primary villain in a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie rage and manages to score two early knockdowns. And it's obvious pretty quick that this fight has as clear a story as any pro-style match you'll see. Maeda has barely been in competition since the UWF closure. In fact I think this might only be his second bout in nearly two years; the first being his fight against Vrij on the previous show. Vrij is bigger, stronger, angrier and is literally trying to kick him senseless. He almost kicks him clean out the ring at one point (Maeda had to basically Terry Funk teeter-totter in order to stay in and it was great). The crowd get one million percent behind Maeda and when Vrij scores the fourth knockdown there's an audible "holy fuck he might actually lose this" reaction rippling throughout the whole arena. It turns to genuine panic when Vrij just keep coming forward, and not knowing the result myself I was thinking "nah, he's not getting TKO'd in ten minutes...is he?" His knee is also pretty heavily taped and when he gets up gingerly after taking another spill (not counted as a knockdown) you're thinking there might be no way back. He's injured and one knockdown off a stoppage and Vrij is absolutely all over him. It's inevitable. But it's still Maeda and this is his newly built house. He's been in worse situations, hasn't he? I was very much a fan of this, not just for the way they went about executing the match but also of the ballsiness of the booking. Best fight so far in our short history of Fighting Network RINGS.

I started buying footage as a teenager just as tapes were giving way to DVDs, but having stuff delivered to Scotland always seemed to take forever and it's not like I had much spare cash to blow on the random sleazy Japanese indies with the lumpy little dudes most corners of the internet deemed shitty at the wrestling. So like most newcomers I mainly stuck to the heralded All Japan, New Japan juniors, etc. It wasn't until 2007 or so, when I stopped closely following wrestling on a week-by-week/show-by-show basis and took a step back to check out things I passed over before, that I truly discovered guys like Tenryu and WAR at large. I'm very much someone who is always looking for fun new discoveries and looking under rocks that had been left relatively unturned (though I think PWO as a collective has turned just about every rock there is to turn), and a promotion like WAR ticks pretty much all those boxes. This is really just a longwinded way of saying WAR was the greatest and Japan needs more indies with ugly little bruisers who kick people in the spleen rather than handsome athletes who're all shredded and less willing to kick spleen.

Who knew Tenryu working a no rope barbed wire street fight tornado death match would be this fun? Man was that guy the ultimate journeyman in the 90s. He wrestled just about everywhere in Japan, working all these different styles from King's Road to what I guess was the approximation of Strong Style at the time to inter-genre (wow that doesn't sound pretentious at all) spectacles with Takada to crazy barbed wire deathmatches in Onita's scuzzy castoff indy. And he even showed up for a couple Royal Rumbles, just because. I have no idea why they decided to clip this. It's the main event of the very fist Onita Pro card, it's Onita v Tenryu, it had a rabid crowd, and above all else it was fucking wild. Why would you not want to show that in its full and unedited glory? Stupid people. They really just go hell for leather straight away and I love how Tenryu and Onita took centre stage while the others brawled away in the peripheries. Onita was rocking a big forehead bandage and Tenryu zeroed in on it and punched and elbowed the cut (with some awesome, brutal downward elbows) until it reopened. They also sold that first Irish whip attempt like they wanted no part of the wire whatsoever, eliciting a big "oooooohhhhh" reaction from the crowd. Match was all over the place in the best way possible. Guys brawled into the seats (whereupon seats were flung everywhere and used frequently as weapons), in and around the barbed wire, just everywhere in sight. Great bit where Tenryu and Nakamaki front suplexed Okamura into the wire and Tenryu used the body as a means of smooth egress from the ring, then Asako came flying into view with a crazy tope. Nakamaki and Yaguchi wrapped Onita in barbed wire and I loved how Onita, like a crazy fuck, spent the remainder of the match deliberately wrapped up so he could use it to his advantage. He was throwing himself bodily into people and they were getting their clothes and hair and face shredded by the barbed wire, then he gave Yaguchi a piledriver while his legs were still wrapped in said wire. By the end Yaguchi looked like he'd been savaged by a panther.

Maybe it's because I only just watched this and it's fresh and unique in my memory, but I seriously thought this was fucking with the high end MPro tags of '96 (or the ones from the '96 yearbook, at least). There was a palpable sense of chaos in this with everyone throwing huge shots and getting chucked around in ugly ways, plus the crowd was rabid and totally bought into the heel/face dynamic. I don't even know who four of these guys are and I still couldn't tell you who's who, but the home team were inspired in kicking the shit out of Taru. Okamura - who I know only by the process of elimination - was potaoing everyone with crazy stomps and one wheel kick that somehow didn't splatter the nose across the face of whoever took it. Stretch run with Okamura/someone trying to tap each other out while chaos ensues around them was excellent, but I think it was the extended heat segments on Taru that really elevated this. They never went back and forth just to hit their stuff -- everything felt earned and the heat and hate was always at the forefront. I'm sort of stunned at how good this was, honestly. I fucking loved it.

Kitahara v Katayama (10/29/91) was indeed very fun. I liked how Katayama seemed to know he'd be outmatched if he let Kitahara build up steam, or indeed if it got into a literal kicking contest, so he went after him early and tried to smother him. Going after the leg felt like a sound strategy as well and the leg work itself was fine. Kitahara did of course turn it into a kicking contest, though. Good grief was he laying it in. That one kick that about took Katayama's teeth out was savage and he was punting him in the spleen for good measure. He also hit what was practically a Ganso Bomb (for a mild 2 count) and his snap suplex is easily up there with the best of them. So quick and it always looks like he's really planting them. I very deeply regret not having Kitahara on my GWE ballot now.

Man Kitahara was the best. I remember when I first got into Japanese wrestling I'd buy tapes with as much junior heavyweight stuff on them as I could find. Guys like Liger, Kanemoto, Ohtani, Eddie, Benoit, etc. I doubt I even knew who Koki Kitahara was back then and if I saw his name on a match list I probably would've skipped right over it (unless he happened to be matched up with one of the aforementioned names). It's been a while since those simpler times. My tastes have shifted somewhat dramatically since then and at this point I'm more likely to seek out obscure Koki Kitahara matches than any from those other guys (with the exception of probably Eddie). This started out with Katayama, in his leopard print tights and kneepads, jumping Kitahara at the bell and laying a beating on him. He had to try and stay on top the whole match because if he let Kitahara catch his breath he'd pay for it. Of course Kitahara caught his breath and kicked Katayama really hard in the mouth. I thought he'd literally kicked some of his teeth out and Katayama spent the back half of the match bleeding down his chest. Kitahara also seemed to be nursing a bum leg from a previous match so Katayama would go after that now and then as well, almost as a contingency plan of sorts. Kitahara hit what was basically a Ganso Bomb and his snap suplex is so, so good; easily as fast and sharp as Dynamite Kid's or Benoit's or whoever else's. Fun match.

I'm still annoyed with myself that I never went to see him when he was up here. My friend was at the ICW show in 2014 when he made his comeback and the whole thing looked pretty tremendous.

Yeah, this had a real Battlartsy recklessness to it, just fifteen minutes of uncooperative crowbarring and potatoing from all four involved. Honestly, I had no idea who any of these guys were and didn't bother trying to identify them until after I'd watched the match. Cosmo seemed fairly obvious given the mask with the big star on the front and therefore it would stand to reason that whoever he was teaming with was Sato, but I didn't put names to faces of the other two until afterwards and it's been so long since I've even thought about K-Ness that that link meant little to me. I'm not sure who you'd point to as the best guy in the match (I'm not sure you'd be bothered to), but you might point to Fujisaki (he's wearing the singlet) as the one who gave the least shits about his opponents' safety. He really brutalised Cosmo and flung him about with abandon, hitting this weird body slam that left Cosmo crumpled beneath himself in a tangle of ACLs and ruptured patellar tendons. Beyond that he was stomping him in the face and hitting lariats right around the throat and dumping him on his ear with back suplexes. Saito was throwing brutal high kicks and dropkicking guys at weird angles, across the lower spine, upper thigh, just below the shoulder, right under the chin. Almost nothing in the match looked pretty but it did look like it hurt a lot. There wasn't a ton of structure, but the messiness worked for it and the heat segments certainly made it feel like someone was in peril. Pretty much the definition of Japanese indy sleaze. The very best kind.

I watched the whole 10/30/91 SWS card it was a real easy hour and a half. Pat Tanaka v Kabuki opened and it was a fairly standard affair, but Tanaka looked solid as always and Kabuki threw a couple of his big thrust kicks. Barbarian v Nagasaki was JIP, but at some point Nagasaki went nuts again and started winging chair shots. They brawled into the crowd and I figured they were going for the double count out, but they got back in and worked to a proper finish. Kitahara/Asai v Salvaje/Orihara was half pretty good and half pretty awesome. The Asai/Bestia parts feel like they're designed to get Asai over as WAR's young juniors ace and they manage to do that just fine. But this is really about Kitahara v Orihara. Orihara couldn't have been wrestling long at this point and he has some fun, stiff exchanges with Kitahara, where Kitahara shuts him down like you'd expect while Orihara gets to fight back and try to step to the plate. Then an Orihara kick catches Kitahara flush in the nose and Kitahara spends the rest of the match abusing him as payback. It might have been the most vicious I've ever seen Kitahara. It truly was an ass stomping befitting a Tenryu fed. Sano/Takano v Warlord/Paul Diamond wasn't all that good, but it had a few neat Sano/Warlord moments. Diamond was all over the place in it, messing up spots, getting awkwardly and belatedly into position for things. At one point he hit an ugly piledriver that I half expected to paralyze Sano. Hara/Fuyuki v Yatsu/Nakano had more Nakano v Fuyuki fun and I hope there's a singles match out there somewhere. It was a tag match fulla beef and nobody was scared to throw it around. Haku v Ishikawa was indeed a fun slobberknocker. I liked all the leg work on Haku and how he sold it, then they moved past that into the part where they slabbered each other and I dug that, too. Some of Ishikawa's lariats looked killer and there was one slap/headbutt exchange that was right out of Ishii's playbook (only not ridiculous). Main event of Tenryu v Takano was a pretty subdued Tenryu performance. He gave Takano a ton, which he seemed to do a lot with opponents in SWS. Maybe it's because he's so clearly the ace and biggest star in the promotion that he feels he needs to go above and beyond to try and establish viable challengers. I understand the need to do that, but I selfishly wish he'd do more of the ass beating and face punching and so forth. He did fling a chair at Nakano's head at one point, though. That was pretty great. I've watched a solid chunk of SWS from '91 now and I think a decent argument could be made that Kitahara was their MVP that year. Sano probably has a shot as well, actually, but Kitahara in that tag pushes him ahead. It feels like Tenryu needed a fire lit under his ass and it wasn't until the following year that he got it (with SWS's closure and the opening of WAR/beginning of the New Japan feud), whereas Kitahara was being the best Kitahara he could be just about every time out. That is to say he was a nasty little bastard.

This was real nifty and at points got pretty damn awesome. The nifty came from Asai and Bestia, who ran the gamut of Asai/Ultimo's armdrag and headscissor sequences with Bestia serving as a great base for all of it. None of Asai's stuff here will be new to you if you've seen more than a couple Ultimo Dragon matches, but for the most part it looked pretty when it needed to and more importantly like it was impactful. But really, you want this for the parts that were awesome (I mean why wouldn't you?) and those were courtesy of Kitahara and Orihara. This might be my favourite Kitahara performance ever. When they match up initially they both throw a few big kicks and Orihara fights admirably, but he's a young boy and Kitahara treats him as such. It's a fun dynamic and it works. Kitahara doesn't go beyond the pale, he doesn't take liberties, but he doesn't throw feather dusters either. The balance is as it should be, all things considered. Then Orihara kicks him a little too forcefully in the nose and Kitahara just absolutely fucking mangles him. It was almost uncomfortable at points. Orihara continues to scrap and stand up for himself and Kitahara gets even more abusive. He punted him in the face and kidneys, hit a vile roundhouse kick, gave him a snap suplex on the ramp, recklessly front suplexed him across the guardrail, it was brutal. And truly in step with the values of a Tenryu fed he gave up caring about the result of the match in order to continue beating on poor Orihara. Vengeance had taken precedence over victory. This was a match where everybody looked good and the whole thing came together well, but that one moment where something went awry - horribly, for Orihara - led to things taking a murderous detour. Kitahara as vicious wee prick elevated this past the ceiling it might've had otherwise.

Tamura's last match in UWFi before heading to RINGS. I don't know if the story about him working this as a big fuck you to the company/Takada is true or not, but it was certainly a RINGS match more than a UWFi one. The matwork especially is very RINGS; super fast sprawling and tumbling and jockeying for position. They only use one rope break each and mostly work to a stalemate, but it's the kind of shoot style matwork that's my absolute favourite matwork in wrestling. It's not quite the highest of high end RINGS, but you could see they had something brilliant in them and probably would've produced it if Sakuraba went to RINGS rather than Kingdom/MMA. There was one bit where Sakuraba was shifting his weight to get into position for a cross armbreaker, trying to force Tamura's hands apart. He leaned back to break the grip, but Tamura used Sakuraba's momentum to roll backwards and essentially wind up with side control. Finish was so good. Sakuraba comes in close and throws an uppercut, so Tamura moves in to close the distance and they sort of wind up in a clinch. I'm not sure if Sakuraba tried to throw another palm strike inside or Tamura just grabbed an arm, but one second they were standing in the clinch and the next Tamura had rolled him into a perfect cross armbreaker. Tamura was about to go on a run where he legit had a handful of the best matches ever done in the style, and this was a nice way to cap off his time in a promotion he'd pretty much grown out of.

I liked this while it lasted, but it had a bummer of a finish that I assume was unplanned. There was lots of Fujiwara playing defence in this and it was pretty great, which should be unsurprising because nobody has ever been better at playing defence than Fujiwara. Takada caught him with a leg kick early and I love how Fujiwara tried to nonchalantly walk it off, but he couldn't hide that dead leg limp and the crowd picked up on it. Takada tried to force the issue on the mat and there was one bit where he almost grabbed a triangle, and Fujiwara was wheezing and drooling trying to fight it. Fujiwara went down at the end like he'd punctured a lung, but this was just starting to pick up when it happened. Going by Takada's reaction it wasn't supposed to end like that after nine minutes.

This started out great with Kakihara rifling off a big slap and Kosh dropping him with a brutal, side-of-the-head brainbuster. For the most part the match continued in that vein. One thing I've liked about this show is catching a glimpse of some shoot style guys working a bit of pro style. Sano's obviously always been awesome at it and I'd seen Anjoh work it plenty of times. Takayama had one of the best heavyweight runs of the 00s. But it was cool seeing Nakano do it, and it was cool seeing Kakihara do it too (though I suppose you could argue UWFi always had some pro style elements). He only had six minutes to work with (lot of 5-6 minute fights on this card), but he made the most of it. He threw down with lots of nasty palm strikes and lariats, so Kosh was almost forced to grab a front face lock just to contain. Kosh has been around the block more than once, his age is starting to show a bit, but he knows how to handle a young guy getting chippy. The hip attacks are still treated as a big deal even if they maybe look a touch ridiculous in a shoot style setting, but it's whatever. Finish was nasty and yet probably only the third nastiest version of it done on this show.

Anjoh cuts an amazing promo before this starts. I don't even know what he's saying but he's wearing a dress shirt and beige chinos and you can tell he's being a condescending prick to the ugly homeless WAR guys, making these "I'm soooo scared" gestures while Takayama laughs at his little buddy's mean jokes. I'm not sure it's particularly smart business practice for a shoot style fed to have this on the same card as Tamura/Sakuraba. Like, this is not shoot style at all. At times it even felt a bit like a wink wink nudge nudge comedy match. But I'll be fucked if I didn't enjoy lots of it. Anjoh and Tak started out sort of dismissive, poking fun at the tubby WAR dudes and Gedo's ring gear. Fuyuki wants a Greco-Roman knuckle lock so Tak holds his hand way up and Fuyuki can't reach it. Anjoh is one of my favourite shoot style guys but he's such an awesome smug little carny that he makes this kind of match his home as well. He and Takayama were like a pair of all-star high school receivers welcoming a ragtag secondary that could barely run the length of themselves. So the secondary started being dirty fucks and kneeing the all-stars in the balls. I love how vocal Fuyuki is in the ring. He does this shrieking thing as he goes to hit someone and it makes him sound like a wildman. Anjoh mocks him for it so Fuyuki hits him with a fire extinguisher and we get a heat segment on Anjoh who blades and everything. Fuyuki punches him in the cut and team WAR work full on heel. At one point Fuyuki brings in a pair of Y-fronts or something and puts them on Anjoh's head, and Anjoh wrestles the rest of the match with these blood-soaked Y-fronts on his head. It was...strange. As was the finish. I have no clue what that was about at all. This was basically a WAR match that happened to be taking place in UWFi. There was nothing UWFi about it other than the initials on Anjoh's singlet.

How about this for a lumpy undercard dream match? This was like some parallel universe Dark Tower shit because both guys are basically each other if their career trajectories happened to be swapped. Nakano works SWS/WAR? He's Kitahara. Kitahara does shoot style and ends up in a Takada promotion? He's Nakano. To be fair, though, I actually didn't expect Kitahara to be as fun in this environment. I mean, it isn't really a shoot style match as opposed to a pro style match with shoot style trappings, but it was a neat enough amalgamation and I liked how Kitahara handled himself. The early mat exchange was nice and solid and once again Nakano ends up with a bloody nose. It must be made of mashed potato. Pretty soon they start smacking each other in the face real hard and my Clone Wars theory is confirmed as Kitahara's nose also gets opened up, though this was at least a result of a nasty looking knee and not just breathing, which is what I assume did for Nakano. Nakano hits a German and Kitahara no sells it like "*I* am the lumpiest here!" and roundhouse kicks Nakano in the head. This was yet another fun six minutes.

Man this ruled. I don't know why, but these two do not like each other and we get an awesome start with Yamamoto charging in straight away flinging slaps and Sano pump kicking him in the face. This was more Battlartsy than a New Japan/UWFi mishmash. Naoki Sano was fucking awesome at the pro wrestling, man. He's always able to incorporate pro style moves into a shoot style setting in really cool and organic ways. In this he applied what was basically a scorpion deathlock, then transitioned into an STF/choke, then into a regular crossface. Yamamoto stood him up and planted Sano right on his neck with a backdrop, but then got ahead of himself in the stand up and Sano OBLITERATED him with a spinning back kick. This hit flush in the face and I was stunned Yamamoto was able to get up. Well, Sano just dropped him again anyway, this time with a couple ugly looking powerbombs, eventually hooking in a choke for the submission. Six minutes of badass, that's what this was.