Kakutogi Road: The Chronological History of MMA
Chapter 18: UWF-I Moving On 7th Prelude to the World Chapter 2 11/7/91 Osaka Furitsu Taiikukaikan
& SHOOTO Professional Shooting 1st Champion Decision Series #5 3/17/90 Tokyo Korakuen Hall
By Michael Betz & Mike Lorefice 9/3/20

At one point in Dostoevsky's excellent short story, White Nights , the nameless narrator muses, "But how can you live and have no story to tell?" This question is deceptive in its simplicity, as we the more we ponder how we got to where we are today, the more we realize that we must continue to mine the past in a quest to find our shared history. So, we return to the embryonic stages of modern MMA, seeking answers, hoping to one day alleviate our existential quandaries. In this case, we have arrived at the Osaka Prefectural Gymnasium, an indoor sporting area that goes back to the year 1952, and is perhaps best known for their annual sumo tournaments, though they do hold the numerous pro wrestling events, and even hosted Rizin as recently as 2019.

UWFI is flirting with disaster once more, as they insist on giving Bob Backlund a chance towards redemption. It wasn't quite two months back that we saw one of the most brazenly awful matches thus far, when Takada/Backlund didn't even last a full two minutes before Backlund collapsed in agony, feigning an injury to one of Takada's kicks. This was such a disappointment, that they somehow managed to inspire the usually reserved Japanese audience to the point of a near-riot with its ineptitude. Thankfully, this debacle set the bar so low that anything they do this time around is bound to be a stark improvement.

We are greeted to an opening montage of Takada solemnly preparing for his bout with Backlund, as a song that I can best describe as what would happen if Vangelis had collaborated with Kraftwerk for the Chariots of Fire soundtrack. This effort may have been effective had they not completely squandered any good will, or possible heat, that a matchup like this could have generated with their farce of a previous outing. After a 14min, strobe-light laden introduction, we are ready to begin our first bout between the seemingly unstoppable Makato Ohe and multiple time kickboxing champion David Cummings. This is shaping up to be a possible treat, as Cummings is the first opponent that Ohe will face in the UWFI that is already an established veteran of the sport, having started his career around 1984, and over the course of 22 years, won titles in 8 different organizations, including the ISKA, WKA, and KICK. His 7 years of professional experience is sure to be helpful here, but I'm still concerned about his chances, as most of that experience is presumably in the shiny-pants American style, where kicks below the waist are forbidden, and must only be spoken of in hushed tones.

Cummings doesn't waste any time going right at Ohe, and is predictably met with some low kicks, but they don't seem to phase him. Cummings backs up a bit from his initial assault, and tries a low kick of his own, but it is easily checked by Ohe, who is sure to have much more experience in such matters. We are seeing a good contrast in styles as Cummings is showing some good boxing combinations, and fast footwork, whereas Ohe is employing the traditional Thai Rock Em' Sock Em' Robot approach. Cummings is doing a good job dancing around Ohe while getting some punches in from a distance, but can't seem to stop any of Ohe's kicks. This goes on for a few more moments, when out of nowhere Cummings hits a beautiful jumping/spinning back kick that floors Ohe and knocks him out completely. Cummings obtains victory over the so-far undefeated Ohe, in only 1:25 into round 1.

Score this as a great win for American kickboxing. This took place in a brief era before the rise of K1 (89-93) where we were just starting to see more of the American Karate styled kickboxers fight under Japanese/Thai rules, and most of the time it would consist of the American fighters' style looking superior, until they were just demolished by the inability to deal with low thigh-kicks. Here Cummings seemed to face the same problem, but it didn't matter, as he still had Ohe's number, and pulled off a great victory. Good (albeit short) fight.

ML: Cummings isn't the usual greenhorn UWF-I feeds to Ohe, he began training in karate & boxing at age 4 and wrestling at age 5, wrestling in college even though it was secondary to his striking ambitions. Despite being an American fighter in the dark kicks above the waist era who has an extensive background in the limited art of boxing (almost 90 amateur fights), he specialized in muay thai, where he relied heavily on knees and elbows. He wound up winning something like 13 "world" titles and being inducted into the WKA Hall of Fame. To me, this whole fight was just him setting Ohe up. He knew Ohe was going to be focusing on his own offense, and trying to work him over with low kicks, so Cummings focused on using his speed and footwork to create distance then score from the outside while forcing Ohe to chase him, thus pulling him into his strikes. The first time Cummings landed the jump spinning heel kick, Ohe was stationary, but because Ohe was so concerned with closing the distance and getting his own shots in, Cummings was soon able to time Ohe coming in, and the added momentum on the jump spinning heel kick put his lights out. Cummings was really impressive here. I mean, Miyato doesn't land 2 of these kicks from a standing position in a minute and a half, and that's with the opponent just letting him do it.

Despite my many lamentations and wailings throughout the night, the UWFI continues to be a harsh mistress and insists on giving us more tag-team matches, if for no other reason then to give their roster something to do. In this case it's Kiyoshi Tamura/Yuko Miyato vs Tom Burton and Yoji Anjo, but at least this is off to a fast clip as Anjo and Miyato immediately go at each other with a sense of urgency, with Anjo giving Miyato plenty of kicks, and even a nice Ippon-seoi-nage (or one arm shoulder throw, if you prefer).

Tamura soon tagged in, and we got to see further evidence why he was a once in a lifetime talent. He wasted no time in engaging Anjo, and in one breathtaking display, shot a beautiful low single-leg takedown (the kind that Sakuraba later became famous for) and was able to convert that attempt into almost taking Anjo's back with a rear naked choke, with such a grace and fluidity that has to be seen to be believed. The rest of this match was simply off the charts in terms of entertainment value. Everyone did a great job, and even thought I'm tempted to complain that there still isn't much of a point to a tag match (within a promotion that doesn't so much as have any titles to vie for), such objections would ring hallow, as all the performers here gave a 100% intensity delivering a bout that was riveting from start to finish, and I suspect will be the match of the night.

ML: Tamura is sometimes criticized in his younger years for being too showy, but I'd counter that his flashy aspects are actually some of the most realistic moments in his matches because the scrambles are so fast and explosive that both fighters wind up mostly just reacting to one another. Take, for instance, the amazing opening sequence Tamura does with Anjo where Tamura tries to take Anjo down in stages, first getting the clinch but with overhooks, so he has to switch to an underhook, but that high bodylock takedown would now be too predictable, so he drops down after the leg instead. Meanwhile, Anjo keeps pivoting and scrambling, trying to counter with a knee to the face, but Tamura avoids by dropping down to the right, and continues scrambling until he gets behind Anjo and sweeps his leg with his arm. Other than that amazing sequence, the match has a lot of feeling out and thwarting one another early, establishing the strategies that Anjo & Miyato want to strike, while Tamura & Burton want to grapple. The action picked up during Tamura & Anjo's 2nd encounter, when Anjo got a knockdown with a high kick and Tamura got trapped in the corner because he still hadn't recovered when the ref restarted. Anjo, who already kicked Tamura in the balls, got a somewhat dishonorable knockdown out of this with a knee in the corner rather than respecting the ropes. A fired up Tamura answered with this neat hybrid between a swinging neckbreaker and a snap suplex and started stomping Anjo's face then soccer kicked him until Anjo escaped to the floor. Even though the tag match format negates some of the intensity, urgency, and believability, Anjo's shenanigans and Tamura's fire helped negate that, and this wound up being quite the heated affair. One problem with the UWF-I is in these matches where they try to start off showing it's difficult to make things work, they tend to then go too far in the other direction trying to be super entertaining in the later stages to make up for it, and certainly by shoot style standards they were kind of spamming throws in the 2nd half. Tamura vs. Anjo was great, and the other stuff was fine to good, with the interrupted flow of the tag format being more of a liability than the other guys not being Tamura. Burton doesn't have the speed or body control to work the sort of match these guys were really trying to do, but he stepped up his game as much as he was capable of. His peak level is still nowhere near that of the others, but I prefer to credit him for probably reaching it here, whereas Miyato is actually the one who could have delivered a little more than he did. The finish was pretty lame with Anjo countering Tamura's rear naked choke attempt into a sort of reverse wakigatame where Tamura was lying on his back. This might put a little pressure on the wrist or elbow, I guess, but is even that much less likely than the regular cornball version to either be a maintainable position or actually put enough pressure on an improperly isolated joint while one has the catch to force a submission. Nonetheless, while no one is going to confuse this with Ozaki & Kansai vs. Yamada & Toyota 11/26/92 or Kawada & Taue vs. Misawa & Akiyama 12/6/96, this was another strong candidate for the top 5 UWF-I matches of the year, though it's slightly below last month's tag with Nakano instead of Anjo. ***1/2

Next up, it's Tatsuyo Nakano's turn to be thrown into the giant woodchipper that is Gary Albright. Before the match starts, there is a lot of mean mugging and posturing from both men, but I'm sure that even Nakano, as big as he is, fears that he could be devoured much like the citizens of Arborville California were in 1988 when a mysterious blob ran amok, killing a confirmed 36 people. The fight starts, and Nakano is able to provide one of the first moments of successful offense against Albright, as he was able to secure a takedown from one of Albright's kicks, but it was for naught, as Albright quickly gained side mount, and proceeded to lay on Nakano while looking for a pitiful hammerlock attempt. >

The inactivity continues until Nakano is at last able to break free from the weight of the behemoth, but is quickly punished for this by a mighty slam where Albright simply chucks him over his head. As impressive as this looked, it didn't seem to phase Nakano too much, as he simply got right back up, only to have Albright take him right back down again. A funny sequence happens next, when Albright starts palm striking Nakano in the back of the neck, and a voice from his corner (manager perhaps?) starts yelling, "Hit him a couple more times! Hit him a couple in the face Gary!" and then a little later he even offered a "Do a piledriver!" Apparently, no one notified Albright's entourage that this was a work. At the 5min mark, Nakano decides he has to go after this monstrosity with some gusto, but for all his rage, he was met with a suplex from hell, and was put out of his misery only a min or so later.

I won't lie, I enjoyed this way more than I probably should have. Yes, it was all pro wrestling theatrics, but so far it's working very well, as at a tad under 7 minutes this was the right length to be entertaining without wearing out its welcome, and they have given Albright a good gimmick with strong booking to make it work. I don't know how long this act will stay fresh, but for now it gets a thumbs up from me.

ML: Well, this was as lifeless and uninspired as an Arthur Penn flick. They laid on the mat, barely moving and not seeming to put any actual energy or exertion into holding an arm or the neck for the majority of the match. Albright threw one suplex 5+ minutes in, but basically nothing happened until the final seconds where he landed an elbow and a belly to belly suplex to set up an improperly applied rear naked choke win. The only positive is Albright was less into his pro wrestling snarls today.

Speaking of stories to tell, we would be remiss if we didn't take some time out for a moment of silence for Kazuo Yamazaki, as his story would surely be in the vein of a Shakespearean tragedy if made into a major motion picture, as his last chance of being a preeminent player in the wrestling world came to an end at the prior UWFI event, due to a having to job to Takada in what was a glorified squash match, due to the bizarre insistence that Takada must be shown as an unstoppable force. Yes, he will surely be around for a few more years to come, but any real chance for him to rise to the top where his talent should have surely taken him, is now forever in the rearview mirror. Thankfully, we at Kakutogi HQ will continue to document his greatness for future generations to witness, and if their prior match is any indication, we are sure to have a treat on our hands here, as a rematch between him and Billy Scott is about to take place.

Things start off slow as both feel each other out with low single leg attempts, and some cautions circling, until Yamazaki draws first blood with a nice low kick to Scott's thigh. Scott was then able to secure some nice takedowns, including a low single leg, and a fireman's carry, but Yamazaki was simply too crafty to be kept on the ground for long. Shortly after this, Yamazaki scores two knockdowns on Scott in rapid succession, with some beautifully timed kicks, one high, and one to the midsection. The next few minutes show us that Scott is very solid with his takedowns, but is lacking some finesse in the submission department, as the only ones he seems to know are variations of an ankle lock or Boston crab. There is one amazing sequence where Yamazaki counters a belly-to-back suplex by grabbing Scott's right leg, while Scott was about to execute the throw, and turned it into a kneebar attempt. The match continues to be hard-fought by both men, until Yamazaki wins at the 20:17 min mark via kneebar.

I would rate this a solid 3 out of 4 stars, as Scott is excellent for a rookie, but needs more depth in his submission and striking games before he can really be a threat to someone as skilled and versatile as Yamazaki. Due to the skill disparity, Yamazaki had to carry Scott for a lot of this match, which starts to become more obvious in a 20 minute format, but Scott has only upwards to go, and is one of the best gaijins that we have covered so far, which is all the more remarkable considering this is only his 4th match.

ML: I wanted to like this more than I did. While Scott is a great rookie, going 20 minutes already is a tough ask. Their first match was better largely because 12:39 is a more reasonable length for a wrestler who is learning. This was good when they stuck to the obvious story of Yamazaki's kicks vs. Scott's wrestling, but mostly they defaulted to a battle of leg locks, seemingly because Scott was still learning the submission game. The finishing sequence was tremendous with Scott trying to grab Yamazaki to stop his kicks, but Yamazaki doing a go behind into a German suplex attempt. Scott resisted on the way up, so Yamazaki let him down into a schoolboy then dropped into the motif Achilles' tendon hold, but Scott stood right out and tried to go into a half crab. Yamazaki tripped him up though, and finally got the knee bar in solid for the win. The rest of the matwork was kind of kind of slow, with Scott not being at his best and Yamazaki not being at his most motivated coming off the crushing debacle last show.

Now, the finale. A rematch that absolutely no one was asking for, as the last one was such a fiasco that Sapporo almost had a riot on their hands, but that isn't going to stop Takada and Co. from trying again. The referee spends what feels like ten minutes going over the rules with Backlund, who somehow managed to run the gauntlet of human facial expressions in that span of time. Backlund's goofy mannerisms aside, this is already better than the last outing (though that's not saying much) as they spend some time feeling each other out, and Takada shows some impressive sprawling technique as he stuffs one of Backlund's double leg attempts by putting his right arm around Backlund's neck, while putting his right knee on the ground and the same time, and was really shifting his bodyweight into Backlund's neck, preventing his ability to torque, and effectively nullified the takedown.

The rest of the match was mostly both men jockeying for a toehold or ankle lock with a decent crescendo towards the last couple of minutes. This match was mostly free from strikes, until the end, which was a positive, as this allowed a format for Backlund to come off credibly, if a bit outdated. Backlund's strikes towards the end looked hokey, but he did hit an excellent double underhook suplex that sent Takada flying across the ring. The match ended with Backlund hitting a German suplex, that Takada shrugged off, and responded with a keylock for the win.

This was ok and had this been the original match between the two, I don't think too many would have complained. Backlund has the amateur wrestling chops to look decent in the grappling portions, but there is only so much you can do with him, as his lack of submission and striking knowledge, plus age, prevents him from being much more than an occasional special attraction. Still, taking away their first match out of the equation, this was a fine, if forgettable main event.

ML: Backlund is one of those guys I really want to like because his skills are based in realism, but can't because his mannerisms are based in Doinkism, which totally negates that. When you are just acting like a WWE clown, you are also wrestling like one whether you are doing a perfect double leg or just poking the opponent in the eyes Three Stooges style. The first Takada/Backlund from 12/22/88 was the first worked shoot I saw, it was one of those matches hyped as so great it must be seen to be believed, ending up tossed at the end of kind of an Ultimo Dragon compilation because even though it had nothing to do with juniors or lucha, it was just that good it transcended styles and genres. It didn't really capture my imagination at the time, still just feeling more like spectacle, and in that case I'd rather see more of Ultimo doing backflips. I've liked it more and less at times since then, but nonetheless, it's by far their most famous match. It's definitely the best for the crowd, which I could care less about, but it's an electric atmosphere partially because the outcome is in doubt with Takada having lost to Maeda & Yamazaki earlier that year before coming back & beating Maeda on the previous show to finally get a big win in U.W.F. Though the first half had a lot of dead spots, there's some things to enjoy in the match as they did a lot in the 2nd half to make up for it, with Backlund's bloody nose & Takada's bruised face giving it some extra aura. I just never believed in the match for a moment, as it was the same old crap with Backlund just standing there letting Takada do his bag kicking routine on him, and thus actually managing to look more stupid than usual. I'm going to take the unpopular opinion and say that this third meeting is actually their best match because they shockingly made an effort to avoid what the opponent was trying to do. One of the biggest problems with Takada is it never feels like he works for anything, but that's not the case here, there's movement, there's countering, there's even some craftiness. While there are less kicks, they are more exciting and feel more earned. There are still a lot of issues here, but comparatively speaking, there's a lot more effort put into making an attack good here, which allows the match to rise to the level of being interesting even though it's a bit slow and dry compared to Takada's most famous flashy firework showcases. The usual lazy Takada lockup instead sees Takada utilizing it to land fast body punches that open up the backdrop that he'd normally just go into naked. This is the first match we've reviewed that Takada actually seemed motivated for, and Backlund was also easier to take, as he toned down the goofiness quite a bit. The finish was even pretty good with Backlund hitting his famous doublearm suplex then barely getting Takada over for the resisted U.W.F. style German suplex only to have Takada swing into the chickenwing armlock upon impact for the submission. ***

Overall, this was a very solid event, and to my surprise the tag-match was the blockbuster of the evening. In an MMA sense, the only thing that really advanced here was Billy Scott gaining some more valuable experience, but they continue to provide the goods from an entertainment standpoint.

ML: This felt like a big show, with even Takada actually, finally showing up. Only Albright's match was a waste of time, but then it was really designed that way. Scott, though obviously losing again, showed enough to earn a martial arts match against the current IBF Cruiserweight boxing champion James Warring on the next show. Meanwhile, Mr. Bob showed enough that he was soon Repo'd to go back to annoying the hell out of me with his silly mannerisms in the circus, taking on the Repo Man who gives Alex Cox & all of pro wrestling a bad name.

*In Other News*

Lou Negila recently hosted a kickboxing event at the Christopher's Supper Club in Brooklyn NY. This night had a capacity crowd as they featured several amateur bouts, and three professional fights under the KICK (Karate International Council of Kickboxing) banner. KICK champion Dennis Schuette lost his title to challenger Henry Nieves, who was able to win by decision after a strong early lead. This now places Nieves record to 15-2-2 and drops Schuette's record to 13-3. Also, Jimmy Fusaro was able to defeat Mike Sexton and Dimitry Andreyev knocked out Al Jordan in the first round.

We are happy to report that after days of scouring the black markets of Moldova, we were finally able to hit paydirt in one of Chisinau's back alleys and were able to procure some rare Shooto artifacts. One of them was an original VHS master copy of the 3-17-90 event, and we are excited to be able to report its contents to our readership. We popped in the cassette to be greeted by this wonderfully soothing graphics title that was probably created with Abacus Software's wonderful program: Screen Graphics 64, available at fine Commodore retailers everywhere.

The event took place in the Korakuen Hall, and we are greeted to Satoru Sayama coming into the ring to give a demonstration while they suit up one of his subjects in an apocalyptic space mask and bullet proof vest. After several minutes of giving a general breakdown of this new sport of shooting, our first official match begins between Manabu Yamada and Takashi Tojo, and this will be the debut for both men. If you haven't already, you should go check out our coverage of the 7-7-90 Shooto event on the Kakutogi Road Patreon where we go into a lot more detail about Yamada's career.

Right away we can see that Yamada appears to be in fantastic shape, although he doesn't seem to be as carrying as much muscle mass as he would in later years. Yamada starts the fight by throwing some kick kicks, but is too aggressive and presses himself right into a beautiful o-goshi hip toss. They both get back up, and Yamada hits Tojo with a stiff jab, and follows up with a tasty koshi-guruma (hip-wheel) of his own. Tojo tries to get back up, when Yamada puts him in a fireman's carry (or kata-guruma in judo parlance) but instead of throwing him, he jumps backwords and slams his Tojo from this position. It looked great, but only served to make Yamada lose his position and would have probably been a major setback for Yamada if the refs in these days weren't so quick to call for a restart after ne waza exchanges.

After eating a harsh spinning backfist from Yamada, Tojo gets the fight back to the ground, and secures an armbar, but Yamada was able to lift him up and spike him on his head to counter out of it. Round 2 shows both fighters landing some nice shots against each other, and at one point Tojo almost locked in a crucifix submission which was very impressive. Round 3 saw Yamada unload some nasty strikes to Tojo, but would always be taken down to the ground and neutralized before he could finish the job. This fight was awarded a draw by the judges, and that is perhaps the fairest decision that could be rendered here. Yamada got more strikes in, but he was never able to get more then a few going before being threatened by a submission from Tojo. Great debut from both fighters, and Yamada is showing, even at this early stage, that he is a powerful and dangerous striker.

ML: We can quickly see the difference here between the wrestling & BJJ based MMA that would dominate the mid 90's, and this prototype version that was based more around judo & karate, in other words the combat disciplines that were prevalent in Japan at the time. This style was fairly entertaining because they would strike their way in then try to throw each other off the lock up, and if that worked, dive after submissions on the ground because they didn't understand/care about controlling. Yamada gave up the reach here, and had even less wrestling, so while he landed a big shot now and then, what tended to happen is he'd miss a big shot to get inside, and then if one of them didn't hit a throw, Tojo would weigh down on Yamada, especially if Yamada tried a double leg, and wind up coming down on top, with Yamada on his knees. This didn't stall the fight out though because, like I said, neither cared about control. I would have given Tojo the decision based on the way we look at things now, but these early Shooto matches tended to be ruled draws if it wasn't decisive, which this wasn't. Overall, an entertaining match with some nice throws.

Next up is Noboru Asahi vs Tomoyuki Saito. The fight starts with Asahi briefly looking like a proto-Imanari as he goes right to his back looking for a leglock, but is quickly stood back up by the ref. He then shoots in with a sloppy single-leg and finds himself in Saito's guard, and you could see Saito briefly go for a Kimura from the guard before changing his mind and deciding to attack the leg of Asahi. Now more than ever, I'm convinced that this totally blows the modern narrative out of the water that states that only in recent times has MMA been in a well-rounded advanced stage. This is 1990, several years before the first UFC, and before Brazilian Jiu Jitsu was known in Japan, and we see well-rounded fighters with proper conditioning utilizing active aggressive guards, sharp submissions, and strong judo. The only thing lacking is the positional mentality of a BJJ player, but arguably your average guy in Shooto at this stage was way more well rounded then your average BJJ blackbelt, even though that may not have translated into a win between the two necessarily.

Most of round 1 saw Asahi being a one-trick pony, as he would constantly shoot in with a low single leg, and then try and go for a leg attack off of it. He finally mixed it up, and after another low single, he baited Saito with a leglock, but quickly transitioned to an armbar, and caught Saito completely unaware. Slick tactic from Asahi.

ML: Asahi has a much higher level of amateur wrestling than we've been seeing from the Japanese fighters in the worked shoot leagues. What's exciting about him though is he isn't sticking to the textbook. There's a great sequence early where Saito defends his initial single leg, so instead of adjusting for the 2nd, 3rd, etc. takedown attempt as you'd see now from fighters whose goal is simply to blanket the opponent, he instead gets creative and gets off to the side, isolating an arm and trying to step essentially backwards over Saito's head to take him down into an armbar. This fails, but as soon as Asahi hits the canvas, he switches to a leg lock. This fight was one-sided, but Asahi's persistence and perhaps innovation in setting up the arm & leg submissions was impressive.

Now we have Kenichi Tanaka vs. Tetsuo Yokoyama. This will be Yokoyama's third bout as he lost to Kazuhiro Sakamoto at the 5-18-89 event and drew with Tomoyuki Saito on 7-29-89. Yokoyama threw a kick and was quickly taken down by Tanaka who immediately pulled off a nice reverse Achilles hold for the win.

Next is Kazuhiro Kusayanagi vs. Kaoru Todori. Sadly, Kusayanagi is probably best known, if known at all, for his losing effort at Vale Tudo Japan 94' to kickboxer David Levicki. This would be his third match in Shooto, and he is coming in to this with a 1-1-0 record. Kusayanagi quickly took Todori down and although he fought the attempt valiantly, he eventually succumbed to an armbar, and was never seen in an MMA fight ever again.

Lastly, we have Kenji Kawaguchi vs. Yasuto Sekishima. It's mind boggling to think that this will be Kawaguchi's 5th professional MMA fight, and its only March of 1990. Kawaguchi had a long career, mostly spanning from 89-99, and was undefeated for the first 5 years of competition. It's also interesting to note that in 1990 Shooto had a similar setup to modern MMA in that normal fights were 3 rounds and main event, or championship fights were 5 rounds (although I believe these were 3 minute rounds vs the current standard of 5 minutes).

Strangely this fight was a somewhat muted affair. Both fighters played it very cautious throughout, and while Sekishima was able to get several throws off of a clinch, he could never really capitalize on them, and they usually only served as a way for Kawaguchi to lay on him, for a few moments waiting for the ref to restart them. One of the few early Shooto fights to be a bit of a dud. The fight resulted in a 5 round draw.

ML: I thought this fight was pretty good. The level here was so much higher that it was less purely exciting, but it's more interesting when the fighters really have to work to get things off, use their fakes and time things well. If there was a downfall of the match it's that Kawaguchi was the better striker, but Sekishima didn't seem to have many options in the takedown department. Sekishima knew he had to rush Kawaguchi and try to make something happen to avoid getting picked apart by low kicks that would make it that much harder for him to charging in, but that put him in the position of repeatedly trying for a belly to belly suplex. Granted, this was a lot more exciting than a single or double leg, but mostly just backfired on Sekishima, especially once Kawaguchi knew it was coming, causing Kawaguchi to come down on top. Kawaguchi wasn't really looking to exploit the position because he wanted to beat up Sekishima's lead leg some more, so the fight would quickly be restarted. Generally it was Sekishima trying to make things happen because he respected the danger of Kawaguchi's standup, but even with Sekishima doing his best to avoid exchanging, Kawaguchi had a knockdown in the 3rd. I would have given every round to Kawaguchi, but Sekishima had a lot of heart & determination.

While this won't be confused as a legendary event anytime soon, it did give us a legitimately good fight with Manabu Yamada, and it also served as a fascinating look at early MMA. It's incredible to see how much, and yet, how very little it has really changed over the last 31 years. If anything, Shooto was always on a higher plane of existence for roughly the first decade of MMA's existence, while the rest of the world played catch up, but because most of their great fighters were from lighter weight classes, and not having anyone with direct ties to professional wrestling outside of Sayama, these factors surely hurt its ability to really stand out and be given the credit it deserved.

ML: The important takeaway from this show is that it was light years ahead of UFC 1, and hell probably UFC 10, despite taking place more than 3 years earlier. There were a couple quick fights, but I still think it's fair to conclude that everyone had trained a good amount both in standing and on the ground. We saw striking, throws, takedowns, submissions, maybe not from everyone, but I firmly believe that's because there was varying skill level not so much varying skill comprehension. I didn't see one fighter here who was a Neanderthal completely out of shape barroom brawler like Tank Abbott. There was no one who was just a boxer like One Glove Jimmerson, just a sumo wrestler like Teila Tuli, just a cheater like Gerard Gordeau... These guys all came from gyms that understood training their entire concept of the game, and yes, that really didn't include BJJ, but they had their own offensive oriented system of ground fighting that, while less consistent and reliable in a real fight, was at least far more entertaining to watch.