Yoshihisa Yamamoto v Masayuki Naruse
Nifty enough version of what I guess is a RINGS young lion bout. Yamamoto was never one to shy away from smashing someone in the face with the palm of his hand and this probably had more palm striking than any other fight so far in RINGS' short history. The stand up capped out at decent, but it was engaging enough and they had one or two neat moments on the mat as well. Yamamoto is a favourite of mine and he goes on to have some absolute corkers of fights, so it was cool to see him as a pimple-faced rookie in his first outing.
Volk Han v Grom Zaza
You had a feeling this might be good and I'm happy to tell you that you weren't wrong. This was almost sambo v freestyle wrestling and straight away it made for an awesome little bout. As in, literally as soon as the fight starts Zaza is hoisting Han up on his shoulders in a fireman's carry and the crowd are going bonkers. A couple of Han's takedowns were pretty as all get out, with the step over armbar perhaps being the prettiest of all, and there were points where he would maneuver himself into a dangerous position by simply dropping a knee (right into a standing triangle choke) or shifting his hips (as a standing switch of sorts). This also had a couple themes from previous Han bouts emerging again, including that susceptibility to being gut shot as Zaza drops him with a front kick to the solar plexus. Han then responds with the awesome spinning back fist and I think that might be my favourite strike in all of the RINGS so far. Han again shows that you might be able to get the dupe on him once, but if you try it again he'll make you pay. This came about when Zaza initially grabbed a kneebar by reaching through his own legs as Han positioned himself for a German suplex, but then when he tried it again later Han immediately yanked Zaza's arms to flip him over and open him up for a cross armbreaker. Some of Zaza's striking was whatever and Han appeared to have a tendency early in his career to give up his back a little too easily, but otherwise this was pretty damn choice.
Adam Watt v Peter Aerts
This was a straight kickboxing contest (presumably a shoot) and it looked okay, but I did some stuff for work while it was on and never paid it the fullest attention.
Dick Vrij v Mitsuya Nagai
If you ever wondered about the point at which Nagai decided he was going to be a vicious crowbar bastard then this might be that point. He got fucking annihilated here and yet he would not stop coming back for more. This was like six minutes long and it was mean and hasty and fulla hate and featured a full on sixty yarder to the willy. It ruled. Vrij was just destroying him with kicks to the head, the body, the legs, everywhere. At one point he reeled off an ungodly combo ending with a low kick that looked like it about Theismann'd the fuck out of Nagai's leg. Post-fight Nagai tells us he has learned a valuable lesson today and at some point in the future he will pass that teaching onto someone else in equally hideous fashion. We assume.
Willie Williams v Bitsadze Ameran
Well this was...something. I don't know if it was one of those so-bad-it's-good deals or just bad or maybe kinda somewhat good in a weird spectacle sense but it was indeed...something. It's basically two and a bit rounds of very tall guys doing clumsy, sometimes awkward karate, lots of sloppy body shots and one or two submission attempts that might've materialised purely by happenstance. Ameran tried a bunch of wild looking wheel kicks and rolling kicks and when he accidentally pulled off Williams' do-rag the crowd reacted like Williams was really going to let him have it now. Parts of it were like something from a drunken pub fight in Bristol that you maybe saw on the YouTubes. This is the longest a Williams fight has gone yet (by a fair margin), and you maybe question the wisdom in that as he's not very good, but you appreciate the effort because how could you not but ultimately decide never to watch this ever again.
Masaaki Satake v Bert Kops Jr
This was very much a Masaaki Satake fight, which meant he threw nice kicks and his opponent gave him some trouble on the mat before succumbing to the inevitable (said kicks) after several minutes of meandering-to-average shoot style. I wonder if they're actually building Satake up for something, as opposed to doing the same fight on every show for the sake of it. Kops looked alright in the first round, but you knew beforehand that he was the Barry Horowitz to Satake's 1995 Shawn Michaels, or the Pat Rose to 1984 Magnum TA, or the so on and so forth.
Akira Maeda v Hank Numan
Easily the weakest of the RINGS main events so far, as well as the weakest Maeda fight. This was five minutes of not a lot, even if Numan looked like he might've been sort of okay. It was hard to tell given the brevity. I dug how pro-wrestling his sell job for Maeda's leg kicks was, at least.
Quite a weird show. It had two really fun fights and the rest of the card was all over the place stylistically. It had variety if nothing else.
Complete & Accurate RINGS
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