The new MMA general news, events and thoughts thread

[wandshogun09]

Yeah the Gracies vs Japan was on an early Bushido. There's a good fight between Renzo and Carlos Newton on Bushido 1 as well. Plus you get Shogun's first few Pride fights and a bit of Fedor, Cro Cop, Hendo and Wanderlei as well. Bushido was a great mix of established names from the higher weight classes and the smaller exciting fighters like Gomi, Sakurai, Hansen and Krazy Horse.

[Egg Shen]

Yeh, i'd be game for that wand.

 

For anyone that doesn't use Fight Pass but still likes to buy a DVD, the Bushido DVD sets are great value. You can get em used on amazon for a few quid each. Think there's 4-5 shows in each set. Them shows were stacked too.

[jimufctna24]

I skipped the first couple of Bushido shows, i seem to remember them being quite difficult to get a hold of back in the day. Looking back on the cards though they were brilliant shows. Bushido 9 being the one most die hard fans point too as being one of the best cards in MMA history.

They were easy enough to access when I became a fan (2005-2006)

 

Looking back, I probably should have taken more interest. Gomi, Mousasi and Gil were featured on the later Bushido shows. So it's not like there was nothing of relevance on them. 

[wandshogun09]

There was always a bit of relevance on the Bushido shows. Even on the early shows you'd usually get a Shogun or Wandy or Cro Cop fight. You had Fedor avenging his dodgy loss to Kohsaka on one of the shows. Gracies appeared fairly regularly. Hendo popped in to visit. Phil Motherfucking Baroni! And you even got the odd freakshow like Minowa vs Kimo and Giant Silva chasing his opponent with a fucking Flintstones looking club. Bushido was a marvellous show.

 

Pride were actually in talks with Vader to fight on one of the first Bushido shows as well, believe it or not.

[Shane O' Mac Version 2]

Given how much I dislike Alberto Del Rio as a pro wrestler, I took great pleasure in Cro Cop kicking his head off on the first Bushido.

[jimufctna24]

Phil Motherfucking Baroni!

Baroni's Pride run was a pleasant surprise.

 

After losing 3 on the spin in the UFC - few gave him hope in Pride. He was expected to be an opponent, much like other UFC washouts like Gan McGee. Instead, he won 3 out of his first 4 fights with the promotion, and ended with an overall record of 4-2. It was that run of form that set-up the Frank Shamrock fight in 2007, which I might add was one of the best promoted fights in MMA history. 

 

Given how much I dislike Alberto Del Rio as a pro wrestler, I took great pleasure in Cro Cop kicking his head off on the first Bushido.

 

Cro Cop was initially billed as "the pro wrestling killer". Without cheating, I think it was in Bushido that he battered Yugi Nagata (sic). Even today, that fight is considered one of the biggest mismatches in MMA history. Powerslam Magazine blew their gasket about it at the time, 

[the_mole]

Wasn't Antonio Inoki, trying to prove his New Japan wrestlers were legit hard, when most of them weren't.

 

Bushido started to become the home of lightweights (161) and Welterweights (183) and the UFC were only running 5 shows a year, so they didn't have much space for lightweights and for about 10 events they dropped the division.

 

Shooto and the likes of King of the cage is were you found most of the lightweights that went on to become the stars, regular Pride really pushed the 205 and Heavyweight divisions and the UFC had a lot of bad luck at Heavyweight, so 205 became the money division and Welterweight had decent depth to it, with some still competing at the top today.

[jimufctna24]

Wasn't Antonio Inoki, trying to prove his New Japan wrestlers were legit hard, when most of them weren't.

Yes. 

 

I think a few of them were legit to some degree (obviously Fujita) but most of them were lost in a real fight. I've never been into Japanese Wrestling, but I believe Inoki's obsession led to the formation of Pro Wrestling Noah, as a lot of names left New Japan over it.

 

Looking back I don't blame them. Putting a novice fighter in with a prime Cro Cop is mental. 

[Carbomb]

 

Wasn't Antonio Inoki, trying to prove his New Japan wrestlers were legit hard, when most of them weren't.

Yes. 

 

I think a few of them were legit to some degree (obviously Fujita) but most of them were lost in a real fight. I've never been into Japanese Wrestling, but I believe Inoki's obsession led to the formation of Pro Wrestling Noah, as a lot of names left New Japan over it.

 

Looking back I don't blame them. Putting a novice fighter in with a prime Cro Cop is mental. 

 

 

Nope, that was All Japan. Misawa took more than half the roster, including four of the "Five Aces", to form NOAH, because of a huge bust-up with Giant Baba's widow, Motoko, who owned the promotion.

 

Can't remember the details of what happened with Inoki, but I think he ended up being pushed out, and went off to set up the oh-so-hilariously-insider-joke-named IGF, which still continues Inoki's stupid policy of mixing pro-wrestling with legit fights and blurring the two so that you end up with shoot fights with worked finishes.

 

Thing is, a lot of pro-wrestlers from the Japanese "old school", as it were, were legitimate fighters, having backgrounds in Japanese collegiate judo, karate, sumo, kobudo, etc. Also, catch wrestling was and is still incredibly popular in Japan (they even have a tournament called the Lancashire Cup), because of Billy Robinson, Tony St. Clair, Johnny Saint and Karl Gotch popularising the style. And this was in an era when MMA was in its nascent period, so people didn't really know where traditional martial arts stacked up against it; based on the information of the time, it wasn't an unreasonable decision at the time to want to put up a pro-wrestler against a martial artist, because they were confident their wrestlers were trained to that standard.

[David]

Crazy to think that considering the obvious lineage of martial arts in Japan that we see so few Japanese fighters actually have any real level of success in the UFC today.

[Carbomb]

I thought that too. But if you think about it, it's mind-boggling that MMA isn't dominated by East Asians in general - between Japan, Korea, China, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines, there's a cumulative martial arts history of several thousands of years. More if you add India, which is generally cited as being the birthplace of most martial arts - Kalaripayit is cited as the world's oldest martial art at roughly 5,800 years old.

 

I was asking a friend of mine who's massively into Chinese martial arts, but not big into MMA, why we don't see any Kung-Fu practitioners in MMA. He said it's probably because Kung-Fu has largely been practised as a combat system, and resultantly the vast majority of techniques are focused on being lethal or instantly incapacitating; such techniques tend to rely on methods that would be completely illegal in MMA. Reckons it's probably the same with Kalaripayit, Tang Su Do, Hap Ki Do, Silat and Escrima. Same would probably go for Krav Maga.

 

As to the Japanese martial arts, it's probably down to the lineages that we don't see many Japanese fighters; there's a lot of snobbery regarding tradition and purity. In this regard, the Japanese are as bad as the English for not wanting to change things because "this is how we've always done it". I daresay we're in an era of flux where we might see some changes soon, though.

[David]

I've heard that argument before from fans of "traditional" martial arts, where they say that Kung Fu and suchlike is too dangerous for MMA.

 

Unfortunately, that argument got killed off during the early days of the Gracie challenge, where we saw scores of these martial arts experts take on Gracie BJJ practitioners with zero success. The simple answer I think is that they simply wouldn't work in MMA.

 

As soon as a decent wrestler gets hold of them they're going down, and staying down.

[Carbomb]

I've heard that argument before from fans of "traditional" martial arts, where they say that Kung Fu and suchlike is too dangerous for MMA.

 

Unfortunately, that argument got killed off during the early days of the Gracie challenge, where we saw scores of these martial arts experts take on Gracie BJJ practitioners with zero success. The simple answer I think is that they simply wouldn't work in MMA.

 

As soon as a decent wrestler gets hold of them they're going down, and staying down.

 

I honestly couldn't say; I'm afraid I just don't know enough. My friend was insistent that a lot of these guys would have lost in MMA simply because they couldn't even attempt the techniques they'd practiced the most, stuff like throat pinches, crotch strikes, etc. Not having seen the Gracie challenges (and I know I should have by now), I couldn't really provide him with counters to his argument.

 

I would guess that Krav Maga might suffer from the same restrictions, but given how a lot of it is based on kick-boxing, I'm still surprised there aren't more Israelis in MMA. Who knows? Maybe we'll see more practitioners of Jew-Jutsu in the next few years. Same for the Russian counterpart, Systema.

 

Would like to see more Muay Thai boxers, but am guessing they probably make more than enough cash on the Thai circuit.

 

EDIT: Actually, a thought occurs. The argument regarding Kung Fu might apply to the Southern styles, which were designed for fighting in closed spaces, but I would have thought there'd be a few practitioners of the Northern styles, which is mostly very kicky, on the scene. Northern Kung-Fu is rarer, but it should be better suited to MMA and kickboxing.

 

Ultimately, I'd hazard a guess that the main barriers to East Asians fighting in mainstream MMA are simply cultural and economic.

[jimufctna24]

 

 

 

it wasn't an unreasonable decision at the time to want to put up a pro-wrestler against a martial artist, because they were confident their wrestlers were trained to that standard.

 

It was if they did their homework properly. I forget his name, but they sent a Japanese wrestler to Gracie's gym in the late 90's. Gracie took the wrestler apart, and left him a bloody mess. Without proper preparation and awareness of the game, pro wrestlers were lost against BJJ whizzes and kickboxers with a bit of takedown defence. 

[wandshogun09]

I think you're thinking of Yoji Anjoh, Jim.

 

I can't be bothered to look up the exact details but I think he was sent to the Gracie dojo to try to bring some credibility and legitimacy to whichever worked shoot company he was working for at the time (may have been UWFi but I think this predates that). The story went that Anjoh rolled up at the gym with a gang of Japanese press watching, and he got fucking crushed and humiliated by Rickson.

 

The Cro Cop vs pro wrestlers fights were mostly on Inoki's New Year shows, I think. He battered Yuji Nagata on one and fought Fujita on another where the fight was stopped when Cro Cop cut Fujita with a knee. Then obviously the Del Rio mugging in Pride is the most well known wrestler vs Cro Cop sacrifice.

 

I always thought they were trying to recapture Sakuraba's success. Saku came from pro wrestling and went on to become a wildly successful fighter and a massive star in the late 90s. And I think they thought they could just do that again with other wrestlers but Saku was a unique and rare talent, way ahead of his time and had enough shoot/catch wrestling knowledge that he could handle himself in competitive shoot fights. Pride was built on the back of Sakuraba really. Rickson was the star who put them on the map initially but he only fought in Pride, what, three times? It was Sakuraba's personality and innovative fighting style that kept people coming back and once he started clowning the Gracies and breaking their undefeated records along with their arms, he was a god over there.