Herman Renting v Shtorm Koba
Koba looks like he’s another guy straight out of the Grom Zaza/Tiger Levani camp of wrestling. Unfortunately the google search turns up nada, so confirmation eludes us. He certainly fought like someone with a modicum of proficiency in throwing people around, though. Renting was also less about the striking in this fight and tried to match wrestling with wrestling. At one point a suplex attempt goes awry and the clash of heads gives Koba a gnarly cut above the eyebrow. Koba’s sell of a Renting knockdown was somewhat less than convincing and he left the ring at the end like a man who knew he was getting paid to show up and roll around for thirteen minutes before submitting to a toe hold. One must respect the hustle.
Mitsuya Nagai v Koichiro Kimura
This started out in fairly drab fashion and not a whole lot happened for a while there. We got some takedowns and they struggled for position, but it was mostly a stalemate and a bit of a slog. Then we hit the last five minutes and things started to get interesting. Kimura came close a few times to locking in some nasty looking chokes and Nagai threw strikes with a little more venom. Last couple minutes were especially good as they were just wildly flinging palm thrusts at each other’s face and Kimura looked about ready to collapse, at one point quite literally almost falling out the ring. There was some clipping going on as I think we only got about half of the full 28 minutes (why is Kimura going so long on these shows?), but it built to a nice crescendo.
Willie Peeters v Bert Kops Jr
Peeters may have been my favourite guy of the ’91 shows and this is a rematch of a pretty entertaining fight, so I was looking forward to it. I will look forward to most things Willie Peeters, brothers. I’m not really sure how good Kops is, but he’s scrappy and he’s always willing to keep things moving, so if nothing else he’s a perfectly fine shoot style Tommy Gilbert. Peeters did his usual Willie Peeters things and I think my favourite Willie Peeters thing is how it’s basically guaranteed that his temper will spill over at least once a fight and he’ll knee a guy who’s on the floor or outright jump on their kidneys. In actual fact he did both those things here, but better than that he somehow managed to his a fucking piledriver! As in a full on piledriver where he caught Kops shooting in for the double leg and planted him. He did it right in front of his corner and the best part of all came afterwards when he turned to his corner man (Vrij) and laughed like he couldn’t quite believe he’d hit an honest to goodness piledriver. I was a little surprised at the finish because Peeters is very much a guy the crowd have taken to and Kops is sort of whatever, but I guess it leaves the door open for the rubber match and who knows, perhaps Peeters will hit a Burning Hammer or whatever gets you a solid two count these days.
Nobuaki Kakuta v Rob Kaman
I'm gonna go out on a limb and say this was very much a shoot, the rules of which seemingly having changed from Kakuta's last fight. I base this on the last twenty seconds as they wound up on the mat and the ref' didn't immediately stand them back up. So I guess it's straight MMA this time? Kaman looked super accomplished here. I figured he was either a kickboxer or Muay Thai fighter. Turns out he was a world champion in both, used to play for Ajax (the football/soccer team) as a kid and was even in a few movies. I feel like I aught to have known this somehow. Anyway, this was what it was. Kaman looked great, Kakuta was spunky and persistent.
Willy Wilhelm v Igor Kolmykov
I'll be honest, I'm not sure what Kolmykov does. You know, what his discipline is. Maybe freestyle wrestling? This was mostly Wilhelm as aggressor and he had a few nice takedowns, but neither are the most accomplished on the ground and not a whole lot happened when the fight got there. Crowd had themselves a chuckle at Kolmykov's wobbly karate but they weren't laughing at his cross armbreaker, no they were not.
Gerard Gourdeau v Masaaki Satake
This was another rounds fight and I think it started off as a work, but then Gourdeau went off like a nutcase and punched Satake in the face a bunch for real and the fight got thrown out. Satake was bleeding from somewhere and Gourdeau raised his hand apologetically afterwards, but the whole thing was passable. I look forward to seeing Mahershala Ali hunt down the green-eared spaghetti monster's distant cousin Gourdeau in the upcoming third season of True Detective.
Akira Maeda v Dick Vrij
The rubber match. This was mostly fought on the feet and there was that unease lingering from the previous fight that suggested Maeda might not be smart to let things continue like that. Other than Maeda hitting one capture suplex through the first three quarters of the fight it wasn't hard to disagree. Maeda's leg is still heavily taped and it wasn't not long before Vrij paints a bullseye on it. I liked the way Maeda sold all the leg kicks, a slight limp here and there that the crowd picked up on, which of course only added to their unease. At times during this he felt like a man with little more than a prayer, half hobbled as he was with Vrij only growing in confidence. In comparison, Maeda's leg kicks had nothing behind them and Vrij let him know it, then Vrij overwhelmed him and it led to a third knockdown. And there was that sense that it was going to happen again. Vrij had Maeda's number and if it kept going the way it was then he'd only TKO him again. You could argue that the climax might've been telegraphed, but I thought it was a fitting enough way to cap off a fun series.
Complete & Accurate RINGS
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