The Chronological History of MMA
Chapter 7: UWF-I Grand Opening #3 Moving On 3rd 7/3/91 Tokyo Korakuen Hall
By Michael Betz & Mike Lorefice 2/23/20

Our next stop in our ongoing pre MMA journey leads us to the ever busy UWF-I promotion, who managed to pump out two events in a single month, whereas their two main competitors haven't been able to consistently hold one. We are introduced to a montage of calisthenic/warm-up routines from the various performers, and right away we can see that despite the holes in BJJ and other martial knowledge that may be present, cardio is not a problem for the Japanese fighters. Fast forward to the mid-90s, and I can't recall a native of the Pancrase circuit ever gassing out, while it was very common for Americans in MMA/Vale Tudo to tire out quickly in those days.

After the usual pomp and circumstance, we are underway with the first bout of the evening as Yuko Miyato squares off against the resident block of wood Tom Burton. Miyato was unusual, as he was trained by Akira Maeda in the short-lived UWF Dojo in 1985 (as opposed to coming from NJPW) and made his debut in the UWF during September of that year, but the promotion folded before he was able to really do much there. He then migrated to NJPW and was a bit player, before following Maeda to newborn UWF. Splitting from Maeda & now controlling the book, we have someone that feels like he now has a chance to be important and influential.

The fight starts off with Miyato delivering a stiff thigh kick to Burton, and Burton looking really unsure of what to do from here. Burton would try to close some distance with really weak palm strikes, only to back off, while Miyato did not seem to have any reservations about actually slapping his opponent with some decent velocity. The match held in a pattern of Burton trying to close into a clinch and throw a few half-hearted knees and Miyato backing off to fire off thigh kicks from a greater range. The fight picked up a bit of steam mid-way through when both fighters traded submission attempts before Burton won the fight with a double-underhook suplex followed by a powerbomb and a Boston crab. Yes, it would be several years, and many shoots later, before Japan figured out the harsh reality that the Boston crab wasn't quite teh deadly.

The real winner of this match was Kiyoshi Tamura, as it basically shows us that he was the Amadeus Mozart of the wrestling world. Not only was he great in legitimate shootfights (defeating Renzo Gracie & Pat Miletich), but he also wound up being one of the best workers of all time, even going as far as to debatably having the greatest pro-wrestling match of all time with Tsuyoshi Kohsaka at Rings Fighting Integration 4th on 6-27-98. Even making his credentials all the more incredible was getting a good match out of Burton, which as we saw here, is not a task suited for just anyone. About the only good thing to say about this was that it was short enough that it didn't really offend too badly, but was hardly a great way to start the show.

ML: Burton vs. Miyato was mostly notable for again showing what a miracle the Tamura/Burton match was, and making a case for Tamura as the most improved worker in 1991. It was basically a sparring contest for the 1st 5 minutes with Burton coming forward but not actually shooting, and Miyato backing to maintain the distance while working his leg over. Miyato finally took over injuring the leg with a low kick, but was unable to finish, and Burton wound up recovering enough to take him out with that crap submission from Boston.

Thankfully our next match features Tamura, and Yoji Anjo, and surely this will cleanse our palates and take us into the ethereal planes that we all seek, but that only the finest waza can accomplish. The first thing that any astute observer will notice is the overwhelming power of Anjo's zebra striped Zubaz tights, which as of this writing, is only available to the level 20 Barbarian Class. This feat in ring attire doesn't seem to faze Tamura however, and we are off so quickly it's hard to keep up. Not even 90 seconds into this and we already have stiff strikes, a slam, a double leg takedown, and a beautiful O-Goshi throw from Anjo. The pace never lets up either, as all sorts of position changes and submission attempts from Anjo occur, before Anjo is finally able to force a rope escape due to catching Tamura in a straight armbar.

Following the rope break, a beautiful sequence followed, in which, Anjo attempted a flying armbar to which Tamura counters with a cartwheel, which is absolutely genius, and shows that we are witnessing something that is truly far ahead of its time. The rest of the bout was filled with a tidal wave of transitions, submission attempts, and passionate striking, all done at breakneck speed. The fight finally ended when Anjo was able to secure a single leg crab, but to his credit, was able to quickly torque it in a way that actually came off as somewhat credible. While this fight won't hold up on the believability scale to a modern MMA audience, due to the tempo, and lighting fast fluidity, it was still truly something special, and may so far be the best glimpse of what both this style of pro-wrestling has to offer, as well as what REAL fighting may have to offer. Up to this point, it was probably just a given in the pro-wrestling world that you had to have Irish whips, clotheslines, and hokey submissions to create a product that people would want to see, but here we have wrestlers actually moving like 3-dimensional fighters (or at least catch-wrestlers) and showing that there may be something to this shooting thing after all.

ML: The man who will advance the worked game to its highest level arrives here, in just his 9th pro match. As the leading light of the next generation of shooters, the guys who debuted in one of the worked shoot leagues rather than being trained in the New Japan dojo, Tamura at least feels a lot more like a catch wrestler than a pro wrestler, and this is the most progressive match we've seen so far. Tamura may not yet be reaching new levels of believability, but as by far the most explosive grappler in shoot wrestling, he's at least expanding the boundaries of what crazy things you can get away with and how entertaining you can be without simultaneously testing the groan factor. Kakihara has more hand speed, but isn't nearly as slick or well rounded, certainly can't adjust & transition on the mat or maneuver his body the way Tamura can. Tamura is just such an amazing mover that watching him do a simple pivot to avoid a takedown, much less his more spectacular movements, is usually more exciting than watching the juniors do their gymnastic counters. There was an amazing spot where Anjo was not so much trying to set up a guillotine but just to control Tamura with a front facelock, however Tamura did this crazy counter where he bridged backwards just to get low, then when he had separated Anjo's clasp by getting under it, he changed the direction of his explosion entirely & somehow took Anjo's back into a rear naked choke. I want to say that Tamura does things that nobody can do, and while that's probably the case with this particular maneuever, generally it's more accurate to say he just does them so fast he catches the viewer (if not also the opponent) off guard, whereas with most anyone else you could see these moves coming and they might even look clunky because they aren't fast enough to disguise how they are being done and/or the cooperation or lack of opponent's reaction they entail. This was really a different match for Anjo because Tamura was already such a tidalwave that, when he had a full tank, Anjo was just reacting to him desperately trying to keep up. Anjo is known for his cardio, and normally is prone to more durdling given he's almost always in the longest match on the card, but you could see early on that when Anjo thought he was safe, the next thing he knew Tamura had his back, so Anjo could never relax & had to be proactive. While this started off sort of like a junior heavyweight match, rather than slowing after the early fireworks, it was arguably even faster & more explosive once they shifted from throws into the matwork, with some great twists, turns, and rolls to escape the opponent's submission or counter into their own. The story of the match was early on Tamura would gain the initial advantage with his blinding speed, but Anjo had a massive experience advantage, and by being the smart veteran who focused on working the body to slow Tamura down, he was able to not only get into the match, but eventually take over due to his superior striking offense & defense. As the match progressed, it wasn't so much Tamura doing circles around Anjo, but rather Anjo making Tamura pay to get the match to the canvas. It's always been a point of pride for Tamura to find the answers to what the opponent is doing and generate offense out of defense rather than grabbing the ropes, though obviously he'd get much better at this as his career progressed. Despite Tamura already being the best defensive grappler in the worked game & making a ton of great squirmy counters to save himself, there's quite a few rope escapes as Tamura is a massive underdog given Anjo has been around since '85 and is now hitting his peak. However, by doing everything he can to avoid the rope escape, Tamura generally elevates the moves that actually require them to the intended level, in other words rather than just gaming the system as we'd see the strikers do in the few actual shoots this year, these felt like moves that were deep enough they would have won had they been caught in more advantageous ring position. They exchanged advantages on the ground a lot, but one of the big differences is while Tamura would look for the immediate payoff with a submission, for instance a lightning go behind into a rear naked choke, Anjo was confident in his ability to win the attrition battle, and thus happy to take any opportunities for damage, for instance burying knees in Tamura's face. Anjo was also happy to put the youngster in his place, so when Tamura would get too overexuberant, fiesty, or nervy, Anjo would do something within the rules but slightly dickish or excessive such as the knees to take him down a peg. Tamura was already really over, and the fans would go nuts when he appeared to have a chance to win, for instance the half crab after ducking Anjo's leg caught reverse enzuigiri. He didn't have too many of those chances though, as most of his highlights were early on, and it became more of an uphill battle as Anjo wore him out beating up his midsection. That being said, it's not as if Tamura wasn't getting submissions, but Anjo was defending them better in the story sense of finding ways to get out of trouble without losing points. Still, Tamura was so impressive the match seemed a lot closer than it was on the scoreboard, which mostly isn't that relevant given points are a resource as long as you still have 1. Though Tamura's performance was the awesome one, Anjo really did a great job of both following him as well as filling in around him, and deserves a ton of credit as well. ****1/2

It was inevitable that whatever proceeded the last match, wouldn't be able to hold up, but wow..what a drop in quality. Why anyone thought that JT Southern would be a good fit here, especially after his last match with Takada, is beyond this humble scribe's ability to fathom. Southern simply doesen't understand how to work in this style, and it really shows. For the first part of the bout, Kazuo Yamazaki was being patient with him, and allowing him to try and figure out some offense (even going as far as to give him what felt like 20mins to figure out how to do an STF). The match continued to meander around for what felt like an eternity when JT Southern started to kick Yamazaki in the back while attempting some kind of weird achilles lock/Boston crab. This really seemed to irritate Yamazaki and caused him to break the hold by kicking JT in the face. He then stood up and proceeded to pepper both of Southern's legs with thigh kicks, and won the match with a heel hook, after reversing a painfully ignorant attempt at an ankle lock on Southern's part. Horrible match, which makes me wonder what kind of vetting they had for foreigners, as you would think that they would want to make some kind of effort to see if their outside help would have at least a rudimentary understanding of this kind of style.

ML: Southern simply doesn't understand shoot style. Yamazaki tried, but Southern was just totally lost to the point he was pretty much freezing out there. He basically just stood or laid around, and when Southern did finally get around to reacting, it was mostly not in proper or predictable ways. Yamazaki wanted to test himself, and went from bored to frustrated as Southern made Yamazaki look bad & the match suck by leaving gaping holes in his defense & either doing nothing or trying silly things such as the lariat & side headlock. Southern kept using this goofy tactic of stepping on Yamazaki's free leg while holding his other leg in what would be an Achilles' tendon hold if he knew how to actually apply it, and eventually Yamazaki had enough & kicked him in the face to escape. The match kind of stalled out then as Yamazaki would low kick Southern, and Southern would just stay near the ropes selling even though Yamazaki was motioning to him to come to the center of the ring & actually fight back. Eventually, Southern caught a kick in the corner & tried to drop down into another misapplied leglock, but Yamazaki got a heel hold for the win. Though Yamazaki definitely made Southern look like a fool at points, Southern mostly did it to himself for being so ill prepared for this style he shouldn't have been allowed in the ring in the first place.

Tatsuyo Nakano vs Nobuhiko Takada was better than I expected it to be, although it was far more in the vein of a standard Japanese pro wrestling match. Most of the match was on the feet, and we got to see plenty of stiff kicks from both Takada and Nakano, but the few times it hit the mat, it was quite lackluster, as Takada simply doesen't have a good understanding for how to chain shoot grappling sequences together. It was entertaining though, and leagues better than trying to watch JT Southern.

ML: Very pro wrestling oriented, but Takada at least showed up for this one. It started off as a sparring contest with Takada showing his speed, avoiding a lot of strikes. He kept urging Nakano to bring it, and eventually the impact of the kicks escalated, though I liked that there were still a lot of misses. Nakano hit a sweet snap suplex, but Takada answered with a suisha otoshi & a 1/2 crab. The problem with this match is because Takada is clueless on the mat, there was literally no control or positioning there. They either grabbed whatever hold they wanted like pro wrestling or just kind of laid there with one or both guys having some sort of hold of a limb with no attempt to isolate it or control the rest of the body, and at some point they'd indescriminantly start to apply pressure they could have been applying all along & suddenly they'd make a big deal about it, languishing in the hold for a minute even though every method of escape was readily available. If we accept that's the way these guys wrestled, then we can say it was a good effort & somewhat entertaining, but as with all U-style Takada, it has aged very poorly.

Final takeaway: This was the first UWFI card that was a net minus. The Tamura/Anjo match was one of the best we've witnessed so far, if not for the drama, at least for opening our eyes to the hidden possibilities that this new style possesses, however the remainder of the card consisted of two bad matches, and a modertatly entertaining one, by Puroresu standards. Still, this did move the needle on what would be coming up on the MMA horizon, and did show us that Tamura has all the makings of a future Rockstar. All that's left is to see how Tamura handles himself in a full shoot scenario, which we will get to witness further down the Kakutogi Road.

ML: I'd rate this show as a positive, as it contained one of the best matches of the year in any style. The rest is all skipable, but I'd much rather get 1 memorable match & a bunch of misses than a bunch of fair to good but could really have been better kind of contests. I'm actually a lot more impressed with this early UWF-I than I remember being, if only because having such a small roster is actually more conducive to the useful stuff reaching its potential than in the later years when they'd cram 16-20 guys on a show like it was a New Japan Dome show, and thus everything was spread so thin that most of it was relegated to the level of filler even before the bell rang.

In other news:

On 8-23-91 Brandon Lee (son of famous actor/martial artist Bruce Lee) will be making his film debut in Showdown in Little Tokyo, which will feature Dolph Lundgren as the main star. When Brandon Lee was inquired by the Los Angeles Times as to whether he felt any unease from having to be constantly compared to his father, he demurred, saying that his father was the standard, and all martial artists will have to be likened to him, and himself even more so.

The July issue of Black Belt magazine has a feature on some of the aspects of Shootboxing, which is a combat sport that has been going on for roughly 6 years in Japan. It was started in 1985 by Caesar Takeshi, a promising Japanese kickboxer who won the Asia Pacific Kickboxing Federation Welterweight Championship. In 1984, he met up with Satoru Sayama and became interested in the newly burgeoning shoot-style of professional wrestling. He was then trained at Sayama's Super Tiger Gym and was then drafted by Akira Maeda to be part of the original UWF roster. The promotion imploded soon after his arrival though, prompting him to start his own Kakutogi promotion instead. A Shootboxing fight is basically a kickboxing bout, but takedowns, Judo throws, and submissions from the standing position are all legal. Successful throws score a lot of points within their system and are encouraged. However, if a fight goes to the ground, it will simply be stood back up by the referee.

The following article from the July 1991 Issue of Black Belt Magazine talks about Shootboxing as well as alluding to other shootfighting promotions, although it is unclear if they are talking about leagues such as PWFG, UWFI, etc, or Sayama's Shooto.

Shootfightings Top Techniques (Everything goes in this strange new combat art) by David W. Clary

It looks like a cross between monkey-style kung fu, muay Thai, and professional wrestling. It's hard hitting, fast-paced, has swept across Japan and is currently building a ground swell of support in the United States. It's called "Shootboxing" or "Shootfighting," and its techniques are comprised of an immeasurable number of martial arts.

The first, and oldest, form of "shooting" is shootboxing, which appears similar to Thai Boxing: two combatants square off with light gloves on the hands and proceed to kick, punch, knee, and elbow each other. The resemblance ends there, however, because once one shootboxer gets close enough to the other---wham!---he applies a judo or wrestling hold and throws his opponent to the ground. Throws win points in sport shootboxing, and the shootboxer with the most points in a 20-minute match wins.

Shootfighting picks up where shootboxing ends. Once a shootfighter throws his opponent, his goal is to apply a submission hold. Any hold is legal in sport shootfighting, including choking the opponent out, but fighters generally use the tried and true maneuvers found in judo or wrestling. The painful against-the-joint locks of jujitsu are also employed but aikido joint locks are usually too difficult to execute with gloves on.

Shootfighting and its sister art are immensely popular in Japan, where thousands of people attend professional "shooting" events. The competitors are similar to those on the pro wrestling circuit; they are usually loud and rambunctious, wear skin-tight, brilliantly colored outfits, and parade about like superheros. But any relation to pro wrestling ends when the shoot match begins. When these characters fight, they fight for real.

Thanks to people like Ernest Hart, shootfighting is starting to gain a following in the United States. Hart, a four-time kickboxing champion and black belt in judo and jujitsu, says he likes the sport because it allows him to use all the martial arts he's learned, not just kicking and punching techniques. Hart also believes that shootfighting can revolutionize a traditional martial artist's training. "Shootfighting would help any martial artist prepare his art for actual combat," Hart asserts. "Getting ready for kicks and blocks is one thing, but to get ready for that and the throws and grappling that almost always accompany a fight is hard."

Shootfighting teaches a martial artist how to use his natural body weapons at a number of fighting distances, from long range to ground fighting. At a longer distance from the opponent, savate-style jabbing kicks and various tae kwon do kicks are used. At medium range, Western boxing techniques such as jabs, hooks, and uppercuts are utilized. In close, elbows and knees are delivered while each fighter tries to achieve the grip necessary to throw the opponent and grapple him into submission.

Although shootfighting sounds dangerous, Hart asserts that it teaches practitioners a necessary part of self-defense training. "I don't care who you are or what you've trained in, if you've never hit anything before, or if you've never been hit, you don't know how you're going to react," Hart states.

Hart travels across the United States teaching shootfighting to whoever wants to learn it. He teaches the style as both a sport and as a self-defense system.

Following are what Hart considers the five most effective techniques in shootfighting, either for self-defense or for the ring:

*Leg Kicks. Commonly seen in kickboxing and muay Thai, kicking the thighs and calves is the fastest way to drain a fighter's stamina. "You can demolish a fighter at long range," Hart says. "You can leave him without a leg to stand on, and he'll have no base to defend against your throws." Leg kicks can also be used to break the knee in a self-defense situation and can be instantly converted to leg sweeps if you kick under an opponent's high roundhouse kick.

*Kick grabs. "Don't think you can kick a person in the head and not get your leg grabbed," says Hart. "If you don't snap the kicking leg back, you're going to get nailed." Hart believes the diversity of techniques in shootboxing better prepares fighters for what they might face on the street. "Most karate fighters train to defend themselves against another karate person," Hart explains. "Shootfighting forces you to adapt to boxers, wrestlers, or whoever is likely to attack you on the street."

*The Shoot. This is one of the most popular techniques in shootfighting and involves circling behind the opponent and throwing him forcefully to the ground. In Japanese sports arenas, whenever a fighter maneuvers himself in position to execute a shoot, the audience screams "Shoooooota-boxing!"

*Elbow strikes. The elbow is a powerful weapon and is especially dangerous up close. Shootfighters mix elbows into their combinations to provide quick, effective strikes when in tight quarters with an opponent. A jarring elbow strike generally stuns the opponent long enough to set up a more devasting technique.

*Headlock throws. A fighter who executes a headlock throw gains complete control over his opponent from the throw's inception to the ensuing submission hold he applies once the opponent is on the ground. In a self-defense situation, the defender can apply enough force to the neck to knock out his opponent as the latter impacts with the ground.

Shootfight makes a lot of sense for the martial artist interested in self-defense, simply because of the broad spectrum of techniques it encompasses. All possible ranges of combat have been considered. If fighting an attacker from a distance, shootfighting offers a varying number of kicking techniques. If in hand range, a shootfighter can incorporate boxing maneuvers and martial arts hand strikes. In close, the shootfighter can utilize elbow and knee smashes followed by powerful throws. And if the fight goes to the ground, there are a number of locks and grappling moves at the shootfighter's disposal.

And as a sport, Hart is convinced shootfight has what it takes to be the next martial arts craze. "We have a great sport, but we need something to get it going," Hart admits. "I think shootboxing will be a very big sport if enough people get in shape to do it, because it's a lot harder than kickboxing."

Whether for self-defense or for sport, shootfighting is certainly worth looking into and can only expand your martial arts repertoire. Shoot, what do you have to lose?"