Kakutogi Road: The Chronological History of MMA
Chapter 36: RINGS The 1st Anniversary KOHRIN MEGA-BATTLE 4th 5/16/92 Tokyo Ariake Coliseum
By Michael Betz & Mike Lorefice 3/31/21

Manifest destiny was a contested, yet widely held, belief in 19th -century American politics that American settlers were destined to settle North America, and reform the wild west into a landscape with superior social values based around agrarianism, and the nobility of the farmer. People that subscribed to this philosophy believed that an irresistible destiny drove these actions, and they were simply parts of a greater mechanism, thus their collective success would be inevitable. In a way, one can see parallels with this and where we are now in mid-1992, as the Japanese shoot-revolution is now officially a year old, and on an unstoppable trajectory that will forever change how martial arts are perceived. While each of the different figureheads of these four major promotions that we've been covering in these columns (RINGS, UWF-I, PWFG, and Shooto, respectively) had different motives and opinions of what the true essence of "shooting" was/is, all could agree that with the birth of the original UWF in 1984 there was a void in traditional pro wrestling that could not be filled by continuing with the typical flashy nonsense.

ML: In actuality, manifest destiny was simply more propaganda calculated to justify stealing the land from the original inhabitants, their displacement and internment leading to the eventual genocide of the natives who actually understood how to live off the earth without destroying it in the process. Martial arts certainly has more than it's share of gangster & Yakuza involvement, but it would thankfully be near impossible for even their shady tactics to reach that level of grand scale dubiousness.

It has now been roughly a year since the inaugural RINGS event, and almost a 1 ½ years since the implosion of the 2nd incarnation of the UWF at the end of 1990. Even in this short period, we have seen a lot of collective movements from the three shoot-style promotions, where each in their own way have been making contributions that will help move everything closer to what would later be known as MMA. This phenomenon may suggest that there is an unstoppable force moving the destiny of combat sports by turning the conventions of pro-wrestling on its head.

The date is 5-16-92, exactly one day ahead of our last column, where the rival PWFG promotion had an event in Osaka, with a reported attendance of 4,520. So far, RINGS has embodied the "Go big, or go home!" maxim, as they have almost tripled the attendance from that show, with an impressive gate of 10,369.  This will not only be the "1st Anniversary" event for RINGS. but will also mark the 4th MEGA-BATTLE event that we will witness. We are instantly greeted by a hilarious montage that wouldn't have been out of place on an episode of Highway to Heaven , where our hero, Akira Maeda, presumably reflects on the last year of RINGSness showing various clips interspersed with an ocean backdrop. Michael Landon would be proud.

Yoshihisa Yamamoto and Masayuki Naruse will be the debut of both men. Yamamoto (not to be confused with the Stanford physics professor of the same name) is only 20 years of age here, and his only notable experience going into this was being a judoka in high school. He would later go on to receive what was one of the most undeserved mega-pushes from the shoot-style years when Maeda rewarded him for going not only one, but TWO rounds at the VTJ'95 tournament, where he ingloriously clung to the ropes for dear life, until Rickson was able to eventually get him to the center of the ring for a rear-naked choke victory. Maeda's love eventually cooled off when Yamamoto got absolutely squashed in a vale tudo fight against Ricardo Morais, and instead transferred his affections to Kiyoshi Tamura, whom he had recently acquired. Naruse, on the other hand, is only 18 here, and had a background in Shotokan karate. He would later transition into more and more shoots as his Rings career progressed and was probably a better fighter than his record would indicate. Like many other Japanese fighters from his era, he was constantly thrown to the wolves and forced to oftentimes fight fighters that far outweighed him.

The fight starts with Yamamoto putting his reach and height to good use with his first notable attack being an exceptionally smooth double-underhook suplex, which he quickly converted into a side-headlock.  Naruse is showing good speed, but lacks the size to really stand and trade shots with Yamamoto, he does however show some nice waza of his own, with a slick kata-guruma (fireman's carry). The rest of this match had a good blend of judo and striking, but the two main issues were the length and intensity. Nothing they did looked cheesy, but it always had the feel of being way too polite, with only occasional flashes of intensity in some of the striking portions. Also, this was a 15min draw, which was about 8 mins longer than it needed to be. It accomplished its goal of introducing two new fighters, who both look like they could be promising prospects with some time, and at least it was half the time of yesterday's 30min showing between Berto and Ishikawa. **

ML: I wouldn't say Yamamoto's push was undeserved in any way. Arguably the biggest problem with RINGS is that Akira Maeda perpetually held the other natives back to the point the promotion had no real chance of surviving long term without him. While they were able to utilize the myth of Rickson Gracie to make more out of Yamamoto's performance in the Vale Tudo Japan match than it was actually worth, it was finally the nudge that got Maeda to actually sort of promote in Japanese fighter other than himself. Though the argument could be made that Tsuyoshi Kosaka or Mitsuya Nagai were more worthy of being the number two native at that point, but Yamamoto had some size and was a good worker and decent shooter. He was able to give good showings in worked matches, at least, that justified his push over the next few years, becoming a fighter who you would more or less expect to have a classic when he was matched with Volk Han, Kiyoshi Tamura, or Tsuyoshi Kosaka. As far as their debut went, I mostly liked what I saw. They had the framework for a good match, and the grappling was pretty good, all that was really missing was some impact on their strikes. It is much much easier to learn how to get away we have hitting harder than it is to learn how to move fluidly or transition, so I'd say these guys were off to a good start. They obviously weren't great, but they felt professional, and amazingly weren't running out of steam despite the length. Actually, Naruse was a much better in the second half, picking up the intensity and the impact on his strikes, though that did result in him accidentally fingering Yamamoto in the eye.

Next up is Georgian freestyle wrestling legend, Zaza "Grom" Tkeshelashvili vs Volk Han. It has been a completely bizarre experience witnessing Volk Han oscillate between the main event (he defeated Akira Maeda at last month's show) and jerking the curtain, but it should be entertaining all the same. Grom Zaza was a man of a considerable wrestling pedigree, and would even wind up competing in the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, GA. He had a respectable run in real MMA fights as well, with notable wins over Ricardo Morias, Volk Han, and Travis Fulton.

Zaza doesn't waste any time before giving us the 2nd fireman's carry of the evening, in which he tried to use it as a way to set up an entry into an ude-hishigi-juji-gatame (or back-lying perpendicular armbar for the uncultured among us). This doesn't work as Han's sambo-honed 'spidey sense' is triggered, and wisely runs for the hills. After fleeing for his life, Han returns to show some interesting footwork, parrying strikes as a way to sneak inside and eventually attempt a back suplex, only to be countered by a kneebar-gone-toehold by Zaza. So far, this match is hardly realistic, but top-shelf entertainment nonetheless. Han draws first blood with some kind of weird variation of the STF, deducting a rope escape from Grom. Han then follows up with a step-over armbar that morphed into a triangle choke attempt, but Zaza wasn't having anything to do with it. This match continued in its winning ways until Han went back to his bag of tricks and finished Zaza with what I can only describe as an inverted STF combined with a bully choke. While this isn't exactly the first tape you would grab if you wanted to show your buddies how realistic the 90s shoot-style was, it had to seem revolutionary in the context of 1992. Han carries himself like a man that knows counters to submissions that haven't even been invented yet, and with that in mind, the entertainment value of this cannot be denied. Also, a special mention has to be made for one of the coolest moves we've seen so far, when Han feinted his way to set up a beautiful spinning-back-slap. Great fun! ****

ML: Zaza really brought a lot of credibility and intensity to the affair, and this was the most realistic match Han had in 1992 due to him. Oddly, in a match with submission master Han against future Olympic freestyle wrestling competitor Zaza, there wasn't nearly as much ground fighting as you'd expect from Han. Zaza had a few throws, including hoisting Han like a rag doll to start the match and nearly going into an armbar, but between Zaza's wrestling prowess and his submission game being there, Han was actually forced to somewhat back off from his normal style of trying to dominate on the mat, and doing flashy and crazy submissions. He had to rely on countering and taking control after it hit the mat, but that was difficult due to Zaza's tremendous wrestling, or almost immediately going for a submission when he did manage to upend Zaza before Zaza improved position or took control. Even when Han had a reverse bodylock on Zaza and tried to throw him down, Zaza just picked his leg into an ankle lock. This led to my favorite sequence of the match, showing just how hard Han had to work here for anything, where Han went back to German suplex attempt as a way to bait Zaza into repeating the same leg pick counter, which Han was now ready to answer by breaking his clasp and flipping him onto his back into an armbar attempt. Unlike Han's previous opponents, Zaza has the speed, quickness, and footwork to hang with him in standup. Han couldn't simply slap Zaza then move out of range, no matter who led, it was basically a strike for a strike. Thus, as the match progressed, the best thing these two could do was throw combinations, with Zaza making this adjustment first, and soon dropping Han with a right front kick right palm combo. Han began showing his standup diversity, and came back with the next two knockdowns, including his discus chop. Unfortunately, the quality dipped somewhat in the last few minutes as Zaza was gassed. Han was now finally able to somewhat have his way with Zaza, and finally got the submission. While Han's previous match against Akira Maeda was more dramatic, this was clearly the best match Han has had so far from a technical and legitimately competitive standpoint. ****

Now we are in for another treat with a shoot pre-K1 meeting between Peter Aerts and Adam Watt. Watt looked very game to me in his last showing where he fought Rob Kaman at the 3-26-92 co-promoted Sediokaikan/RINGS event. He was winning that fight right up to the point that he got knocked out, but his constant aggression from multiple angles was impressive. Here he will be facing someone with a similar physique, so he won't enjoy the same reach advantages that he has had for his last two outings.

Round 1 starts with Aerts going right for a nice high/low combination, but Watt nicely counters the low kick with a straight right down the pipe. This seems to shake up Aerts, who quickly sought the safety of the clinch, but isn't allowed to hang out there for long. Other than a few big kicks that missed, Watt's timing looks great, and he really had Aerts on the defensive for the entire round.

The real Aerts shows up at the beginning of Round 2, and he presses Watt hard for about a min and ½ which even prompts Adam's corner to shout, "Adam, watch out!!" After the initial assault, Watt started to regain his composure, and began to turn the tide with some nice counters, which allowed him to start shifting the fight back into his favor. The final sequence was hard to see, but after replaying the video several times it looks like Aerts gave a short/hard shot to Watt's chin with his elbow, which I believe was illegal under these rules. (I could be wrong, but it seemed like the ref was warning the fighters in the first round about using elbows). If that's the case then this was a disappointing ending to what was, up to this point a great fight. Aerts probably would have won anyway, but that was by no means a forgone conclusion. Watt deserves a lot of credit, however, as he is still a young rookie, and he has already been giving the best in Kaman and Aerts some serious competition. Before starting this project, I didn't realize how promising of a fighter he was, having only seen some of his fights from the late 90s, I looked at him as a decent, if middling figure. Seeing him in 1992 has shown me the error of my ways and makes me wonder if personal problems robbed him, and us, of a much better career.

ML: Peter Aerts was the WMTA World Heavyweight Muay Thai champion at this point, and while I didn't see any rules listed, the way they were working out of the clinch with knees and throws/trips, it was clearly a muay thai bout. Aerts talked about winning with the elbow in his post a match interview, so clearly he wasn't trying to get away with anything. As far as the fight went, Aerts seemed to have watched the Watt vs. Kaman fight, and use a similar strategy of allowing Watt to be overaggressive until he made a mistake. Aerts is also a self proclaimed slow starter. Watt won the first round, but I didn't think he stunned or hurt Aerts at any point.

Back in 2018, there was a high school janitor named Dick Peck, who was arrested for threatening to kill students, presumably for their incessant mocking of both his name and profession. I can only wonder if the same fate could have easily befallen our resident hero, Dick Fly, that is if he didn't look like an 80s video game boss. Yes, our favorite Dutch henchman has returned for another AIR BOUT, this time against neon knight, Mitsuya Nagai.  In the early 90s, the flying jump-kick was always the weapon of choice in Beat'em'up side scrollers, and knowing this, Nagai opens the fight up with such a foray of deep wisdom. He doesn't stop there, however, as he continues to stick & move, quickly putting his sharp shootboxing skills to work on the much bigger Fly. His momentum quickly comes to an end, though, as he was stopped dead in his tracks by a thunderous dick kick, courtesy of Dick. This should have led to a DQ win for Nagai, but after a couple of mins of excruciating pain, Nagai musters all the strength he can from the spirits of his ancestors and gets back up, looking pissed. Nagai charges in, with a lot more spirit to his slaps, but is quickly negated in the clinch from the much stronger Dutchman. Nagai continues to give his all but is constantly swatted, kicked, and punched back down to the canvas, racking up 5 knockdowns, before this perverseness is put to an end. This equated to a shoot-style version of a black comedy, and was thus super entertaining, albeit for the wrong reasons. *** ½

ML: Dick finally lived up to his moniker, especially with a savage kick to the pecker that Betz insists he should have been disqualified for. Vrij gave his best performance so far here, fighting with much greater urgency and having so much more impact on its strikes because it was a shoot. That being said, because he for some reason insisted on throwing his leg kicks through the upper thighs, and the rules forced him to strike with open palms, it was actually much more difficult for him to land a big shot than expected. Most of his damage came when Nagai was caught in a prone position, against the ropes or sitting because he so desperately needed to get it to the ground. Nagai had no takedown game, so despite putting himself in bad positions trying to get it to the mat where he would have had the advantage, holding on what you should have been getting back to his feet, and even just falling into Vrij's trip, Nagai could never get the opportunity to get his submission game going. Nagai was giving up what they claimed to be 15 kg, although probably at least another 5kg, so he tried to be super aggressive, using wild, low percentage flying kicks because he knew he couldn't beat his much stronger opponent in a conventional kickboxing match. Vrij was finally really badass here, and I suppose pretty Fly (for a Dutch guy), just mauling Nagai with powerful strikes. I enjoyed this match for what it was, but it was very short, and completely one-sided.

Now it's time for a THUNDER BOUT between Willie Williams and Ameran Bitsadze. Bitsadze is the brother of the (unfortunately) more infamous Tariel Bitsadze, who would later haunt Rings for most of its duration. This appears to be under RINGS rules, only broken into rounds. You would have thought this was just a jacketless karate match until Williams somehow got Ameran in a primitive version of a D'arce choke.

The rest of the fight continued to play out like a karate fight that would occasionally break out into odd things like palm strikes to the face, or grappling exchanges by two men that didn't know how to grapple. I don't really know what to make of it, other than it felt kind of pointless, but at least the action stayed moving. * ½

ML: Bitsadze also has a full contact karate background, so this match didn't look too different from what they normally do, other than being half contact. Thankfully, this Bitsadze is at least in shape, and capable of moving. Still, except by comparison to his brother, he was pretty bad, either striking slowly and softly or trying weird flashy strikes with no setup such as a spinning wheel kick and a sort of climb up enzuigiri . There was a funny spot where Ameran grazed with an axe kick, but Williams caught his leg and charged forward, dumping him over the top a rope. Williams was hardly had his best and the most intense here. He didn't have much to work with, and just seemed kind of bored. Easily the worst match so far.

It's a sad reality indeed when the universe is centered around Masaaki Satake, but here we are with a UNIVERSE BOUT between him and the ever polite, Bert Kops, Jr. This appears to once again be broken down into a rounds format. Kops starts things off with an ever-pleasant takedown, followed by an armbar attempt, but is too close to the ropes. Kops goes for another takedown, but Satake shows some surprisingly decent sprawling technique, which would later serve him well in his short stint in PRIDE. Kops was able to sneak in a straight ankle lock just before the round ended.

Round 2 sees Satake win via KO just past the 2min mark. I'm surprised at how decent Satake is looking in the worked-shoot format. His striking looked good, which isn't a surprise, but he also showed some fine grappling, especially in the realms of takedown defense. Kops, on the other hand, was simply serviceable, as he lacks the intensity that's needed to excel in this format. Also, his strikes weren't horrible compared to some of the guys we've witnessed, but looked silly when juxtaposed against Satake's. Decent, but would have been a lot better with someone besides Kops. ** ½

ML: A boring and predictable fight. In the first round, Kops would just fall on Satake's ankle, and get the take down, but fail to really progress on the ground, except for coming close to an armbar when Satake was an inch from the ropes. Kops finally got a barely threatening leglock off the takedown to start the second round, but after that, he just mysteriously started standing around and eating Satake's shots. Satake then quickly dropped him twice for the win. Satake did seem interested, and showed some potential.

Now for the main event, an ASTRAL BOUT between Akira Maeda and Hank Newman. I know next to nothing about Newman, other than he is Dutch, had a sporadic run in RINGS and won a bronze medal at the 1980 Olympics in Los Angeles. The match starts and right away two things are clear, the first is that Akira Maeda wants you to know about his bad knee, and the 2nd is that Newman appears to know how to fight for real, but not how to really fake a fight. His movements and rhythm are very awkward, as he forces Maeda into the corner, but is thankfully taken down quickly. Newman may know something about the vertical plane of fighting, but he looked completely lost once things went horizontal. There are a lot of pitiful armbars to be found in the shoot-style, but this had to be one of the worst, not to mention the slowest, entries ever attempted.

Thankfully, this farce ended quickly afterward, as the fight stood back up and Maeda just wailed away at Newman's thighs with some slow-motion kicks that Hank hilariously sold for like he was Ricky Morton. This was bad, but ended quickly, and shows that Maeda needs a much stronger vetting system in place before just letting any rando jump into his main events. * ¼

ML: Newman represented the Netherlands in sambo at 95kg in the 1980 Moscow Olympics. His ground work may have been good, but we barely got to see any of it. Instead, we saw a lot of clueless pro wrestling overselling of Maeda's strikes, where Newman did an odd wobble or completely fell virtually every time he took a kick, leading to a quick knockout. This was truly dreadful, and serve no purpose beyond Maeda being able to say he defeated another Olympian.

Conclusion: While far from being particularly important from a historical perspective, this may be the most entertaining RINGS event, so far. Even its lesser moments were over quickly, and while the first match was overlong, it was interesting and credible. This didn't do anything to move the needle in an MMA sense, but it was a marked improvement for their overall watchability. Not something I would go out of my way to recommend, but a much better way to spend two hours than any Jan de Bont film.

ML: This show started decently, but ended terribly. Had Volk Han's match been near the end of the card where it belonged, the show might have felt a little less unfulfilling, but even if we want to try to look past the fact that the last three bouts out and out sucked, they were really thin and insignificant. The additions of Yoshihisa Yamamoto & Masayuki Naruse were good, and Grom Zaza & Dick Vrij are potentially improving, but RINGS doesn't seem like a promotion that is going to have a card with a handful of quality matches, much less an interesting top to bottom show, any year soon.

*In other news*

David Carmona, a gang member who killed Sonny Rodriguez, the son of famous kickboxer William "Blinky" Rodriguez, was recently sentenced to 37 years in prison by a San Fernando, CA, court. Sonny was sitting in his car on 3-3-90, where he was learning to drive a stick shift when he was mistaken for a rival gang member by Carmona, and was shot to death as a result.

This story at least had a touching ending as William (who is an outspoken Christian) forgave his son's killer at the courtroom. When he arrived at the courtroom, he was met by several of the killers' friends and associates. Here is a quote from him, regarding this event: "I was beat up in regard to the way my son got killed. Then we get to the courthouse and 30 guys are there supporting them. They were looking at my wife and I like WE did something wrong, like we were a piece of garbage. This hatred was trying to consume me. It was choking me. I tried to not feed it. I tried to not do war. The weapons of our warfare are not carnal. We came into an agreement to forgive."

Blinky was also allowed to stand up and address the Pacoima gang member who shot and killed his 16-year-old son where he told him, "David, we forgive you, man. You may have taken Sonny's life, but you didn't take his soul. You deal with God now."

This ordeal prompted Blinky to start working with several groups that are devoted to keeping kids out of gangs.

****

A company out of Garden Grove, CA has started production of a new style of book to appeal to martial arts fans. The name of the company is Fantasy Mountain Publishers and will be putting out a book, entitled, Target Six . This book will be personalized to each customer that buys it and will de facto make the owner of the novel the protagonist of the story. Similar concepts in literature have been marketed towards kids in the 1980s, but so far no one has tried to appeal to an adult market. The book is set to be in a hardcover format and will retail for $85.