June 04, 2008
PANCRASE (FIGHT NETWORK COMMENTARY)
For the past year or so, I've been campaigning to be included on the broadcast team if and when The Fight Network chose to start airing Pancrase bouts from the late 1990s. I had hoped that the facts that I lived and trained at the Pancrase dojo during that time, that I am personally acquainted with most of the fighters and that I fought under the sometimes-confusing rules system might have tipped the balance in my favour.
Sadly, although the powers-that-be here at The Fight Network have finally chosen to air those fights, they did not concur that I would be suitable for the broadcast, finding John Ramdeen and JT McCarthy a more appropriate choice. And so it is with many thanks to Ramdeen, Mauro Ranallo, John Pollock and Adam Vie for their support that I very regretfully cede the microphone to "Rammer" and JT. Good luck, guys.
Since I won't be able to share my Pancrase experiences on the air, I figured that I'd bust out an excerpt from the autobiography that I've been presenting to various publishers, in the hopes that it might one day sit on a bookshelf alongside award-winning works like Craig Davidson's "Rust and Bone" and Samuel Sheridan's "A Fighter's Heart".
This chapter takes place during early 1997, when I was staying at the original Pancrase dojo in Yokohama, Japan. During the previous weeks I had fought #3 ranked fighter Ryushi Yanagisawa and reigning King of Pancrase Masakatsu Funaki, and at the time of this story I was preparing for my third fight against a yet-to-be detemined opponent.
I hope you like it.
=======================================================
I awoke feeling wearier than usual and decided to take it easy. Yawning as I sauntered out of my room into the training area where the heavy bags hung, I began half-heartedly kicking one of them at a leisurely pace, intending this to be the full extent of my training that day. But those plans went straight out the window when I heard a barely-audible voice behind me softly utter my name. For some reason the sound of that voice triggered an awful premonition--one which was quickly validated when, with a sense of creeping dread, I turned slowly around to become transfixed by the basilisk eyes of Minoru Suzuki, the second King of Pancrase.
Oh, crap.
Suzuki was the only man in Pancrase with a standing equal to Funaki's, and he was easily the best pure submission grappler in the dojo. Despite being one of the smallest men on the roster, Suzuki had already scored 18 professional victories, tearing through his hapless opponents like a Tasmanian Devil on angel dust (and along the way becoming the first man to wrest the world championship belt from Ken Shamrock's mighty grip). Tales of Suzuki's outright sadism both in and out of the ring were widespread in the fighting community, and amongst active MMA fighters worldwide you probably couldn't have found more than a handful who weren't out-and-out scared of Minoru Suzuki.
I actually would have been one of those few foolish unbelievers, during the days when my sole knowledge of Suzuki came from a picture I'd seen of him in a Japanese fighting magazine. His large ears and puckish features had made me think immediately of an Asian Keebler elf, and I'd laughed out loud at the thought of this cute little guy being a world champion fighter. But I wasn't laughing now, seeing for the first time those of Suzuki's attributes that the photograph had failed to convey. My stomach slowly folded in upon itself as I took in every awful detail: the aura of black malice that enveloped Suzuki like a shroud, the cruel intent that lived in his sadistic smile, and the distilled, reptilian evil that practically oozed from his every pore.
As I busted a last-second Kegel to avoid explosive defecation, Suzuki held my terrified gaze for what felt like a thousand eternities before finally lifting one finger and, with the air of a judge handing down a capital sentence, pointing first at me, then at himself, then at the ring.
Oh, God.
Although I was paralyzed with fear, I still knew that I had a way out of this--that if I begged off citing injury or fatigue, Suzuki would not force me to fight. But at the same time, seeing all the other fighters around the dojo watching me out of the corners of their eyes, I knew that backing out wasn't really an option. To do that would be to write off any chance that I had of gaining an ounce of respect from these guys, and I hadn't travelled thousands
of miles to only act like a little bitch at the first sign of a real challenge.
And so, against every sane impulse I had, I nodded gravely and followed Suzuki up the ring steps and between the ropes like a condemned man approaching the gallows. Once inside the ring we both bowed, and thus began the most painful thirty minutes of my life.
I barely saw Suzuki move as he lunged toward me, scooting under my left arm and coming up behind me with his arms locked together around my waist. Before I could even fully register what had happened, Suzuki wrapped his right leg around mine like a strand of clinging ivy and drove me facedown to the mat, then clambered up my back like a giant monkey to execute a vicious cross-face neck crank that cheese-gratered the inside of my cheek against my molars. Tasting blood, I slapped the canvas in submission like Tommy Lee in the midst of a frenzied drum solo.
Barely thirty seconds gone and I was already tapping. Terrific. But the worst was still yet to come.
Over and over, Suzuki took me down and attached himself to my extremities with savage, whiplike motions, bending my joints in ways that God never intended. And fighting back only resulted in more frustration and pain, since every time I reached out to grab the little bastard it was like sticking my arm into a bear trap. For twenty torturous minutes it went on as Suzuki swarmed all over me like a one-man cloud of killer bees.
Finally, feeling that I could absolutely bear no more, I allowed desperation to drive me to a foolish and ill-fated gambit. So far, I had not even bothered to try to take Suzuki down, silently acknowledging that he was too fast for me. But that fact, I figured, might make him cocky, and leave him unprepared for me to attack him with something new. As sloppy as my double-leg takedowns were, they had worked somewhat against Yanagisawa, and so Iresolved to see if maybe they would pay off here too. After taking a brief moment to mumble a prayer for luck and make a mental cross of my fingers, I launched my aching body at Suzuki's legs with my arms stretched out before me.
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
I was just getting my hands around the back of Suzuki's thighs when the black-hearted little rattlesnake grabbed my head in both hands and fired his right kneepad into my face with the force of a triphammer. For an instant the world flashed white, and I felt pretty sure that I'd seen two or three dead relatives by the time things finally came back into focus. I awoke from my stupor on my hands and knees, staring down at the mat with glassy eyes as I waged a fierce battle with an overwhelming desire to take my ball and go home.
A few seconds later I was finally able to get back to my feet, and put my hands up to prepare for the next onslaught. But instead of attacking, Suzuki stepped back and held up his own hands with palms out, wearing an expression of mild suprise. I couldn't figure out why until he stepped forward again and wiped my brow with a hand that came away dripping red. I looked down to see that I'd polka-dotted the canvas with my blood, and only then did I feel the warm red tide running down my face.
Fuck.
I left the ring to have a half-inch gash over my left eye closed with super glue by Takaku Fuke, a senior fighter who'd been observing the massacre, and as he worked I noticed Suzuki watching me very intently. I knew then that this had not been an accident; that Suzuki had purposely busted me open to see how I would handle it. As the pungent, stinging glue stemmed the flow of my blood, I realized that how I would be perceived in the dojo from that moment forward would depend entirely on what I did next. And so, with the eyes of every fighter not-so-surreptitiously upon me, I let Fuke finish his work and then marched right back to the ring to suffer through another ten minutes with my pint-sized tormentor.
Finally, after a solid half-hour of unrelenting pain had passed, Suzuki released me from what felt like his five-hundredth excruciating submission hold and sat back on his heels. "Finished", he announced, and it was the sweetest word that I'd ever heard pass human lips.
Groaning, I got up to my knees and faced the former King, then we both touched our foreheads to the mat in the ritual show of respect that always followed training. Even through my haze of pain I was secretly euphoric--I couldn't believe that I'd come through this alive, and now I wanted nothing more than to shower and collapse onto my sleeping mat.
But as I rose from the canvas, Suzuki reached out and stopped me with a hand on my forearm. Oh, God, no more, I thought, but then I noticed that Suzuki was making beckoning gestures at me. "Questions", he said simply, and it took a moment for me to realize what he meant.
Having spent the past thirty minutes murdering me, Suzuki now wanted to teach, and for the next hour and a half I received an intensive tutorial from one of the finest grappling artists on the planet.
That night, I crawled onto my sleeping mat filled with fresh aches and new knowledge, still surprised that the malevolent mini-ogre known as Minoru Suzuki had actually turned out to be not such a bad guy at all.
The little bastard.
May 28, 2008
HATERS (FIGHT NETWORK COMMENTARY)
For all of its innumerable benefits, the internet is certainly not short on downsides, one of the greatest of which is the "Board Warrior", otherwise known as the Internet Hater.
Haters are those who can be counted upon to take every opportunity to snipe from the shadows, challenging the knowledge of people far more experienced than they, refuting the talent of incredibly gifted athletes and generally just shitting all over anyone who dares to become an accomplished individual.
The phenomenon of the hater is certainly nothing new--I'm sure that as far back as man can remember there were miserable SOBs taking potshots at famous athletes, scholars and statesmen. Socrates undoubtedly had his detractors who asserted that "he ain't that smart", Spartacus surely had people complaining that "he hasn't fought anybody good in years", and after Samson was shorn and blinded I'm sure that there was more than one coward ready to punt a sandaled foot into his groin and sneer "Nice haircut, muscle boy!"
However, it seems that recently the growth of the internet has exponentially increased the power of the hater to really get under peoples' skin. For a long time it puzzled me how words on a screen could be far more bothersome than those spoken in person, especially when it is known that said words are authored by some fat loser living in his parents' basement whose grandest accomplishment to date was being promoted to assistant manager at Wal-Mart.
Finally, after much thought, I realized that the added power of internet hatred came from three things: the ability of the net to get a person's ideas out to millions of people regardless of how screwed up those ideas might be; the undeserved shot of extra courage that the net's anonymity provides; and the fact that in the format of a message board, everyone's words carry equal weight.
It's this third reason that, in my mind, plays the biggest role in making internet haters so infuriating. While a pimply-faced loser standing face-to-face with Josh Barnett and claiming superior knowledge of Japanese shootwrestling would surely be laughed out of the building (which is why it has only happened online), that same loser's opinion looks exactly the same as Josh's when it is posted on a message board. It's an unfortunate thing that internet forums provide no way to give weight to stated opinions that is commensurate with their value. Online, everybody has an equal say--whether they deserve it or not.
Because of this newfound electronic platform, haters no longer have to restrict themselves to sulky whispers and mutterings beyond the earshot of their targets. Now they can trumpet their derision to the high heavens, content in the knowledge that they will never be forced to substantiate their insults, or to personally deal with the wrath of the insulted.
It's a screwed up situation, and unfortunately there's no solution other than to stay off internet forums for good. While the early days of MMA web boards featured a plethora of professional fighters taking the opportunity to interact with their fans, the past few years have featured a mass migration of fighters away from those same boards. It's now to the point that, with only one or two exceptions, big-name fighters who post on MMA websites are as rare the sight of a polka-dotted Coelacanth mating with an albino platypus.
I like to think that one day the hater will become a thing of the past, or at least much less of a thorn in the sides of fighters and true fans. But sadly, the overwhelming preponderance of sad, miserable souls that have online access pretty much guarantees that haters will be the bane of our online existence for many, many years to come. I guess we'll have to settle for taking solace in the fact that the more time those bastards spend venting their vitriol via their keyboards, the less time they spend out in the real world bothering the rest of us.
While I was composing this article, I called a few friends in the MMA community and got their perspectives on the hater situation:
Shonie Carter: "Well for me as you know I have been hated and loved by the fans. Mostly loved, which only makes sense. There was a time a few fans out there on the forums said I was washed up and that I should retire. I responded that I ain't washed up but I did just wash up after working out (and I used Old Spice--not Hai Karate or any of that shit), and that I am not retired, just REALLY TIRED from all my damn baby momma drama. But the bottom line is this—lovers gonna love, haters gonna hate, but through it all I still look good."
Denis Kang: "Haters? I love them all, because all they really do is motivate me to get out of bed every morning and train harder than I did the day before."
Bas Rutten: "Haters. You will always have haters. 90 % of the time it's because of jealousy. They want to have what the person that they hate has, whatever it is, money, girls or fame, and if they can't have it, they can at least try to make that person look bad. Those guys will also be the guys that are nice to your face but talk shit behind you back. The ones that when they have a chance, they will have sex with your wife or girlfriend, forget about friendship and integrity. And what makes it worse is that almost all of the hating is unjustified. Like with Kimbo, what does he do wrong? Somebody said he talked bad on FC Fighter radio about the fighters in the early UFCs. Right away, everybody jumps on board and calls him an asshole but nobody, I repeat, NOBODY checked if it was true, very sad. And if they would have checked they would have found out that he never did a radio interview for FC Fighter radio. It's a shame that haters are there but it gives us at least something to laugh about. A high percentage of them who actually fight (which is a low percentage of haters overall) are the "business card guys" as we call them. They have had three fights and right away they're flashing a business card with a picture of them on it in a fighting stance, saying they are a professional CAGE fighter, not MMA athlete, no, "cage fighter", because that sounds cooler and might get them laid. For everything good there is something bad, so haters are a natural thing, but I still wish that people would CHECK things first before they hate. That means: Don't believe people because they just say something, check it first. This will make you also look smarter in the future too. Godspeed and party on!"
Mauro Ranallo: "Everyone feels omnipotent when sitting behind a computer keyboard. Having been around MMA athletes many years and seeing the sacrifices they make on a daily basis, I feel that anyone with the courage to get into the cage or ring should always command a true fan's respect. Arm chair quarterbacks will always exist and I think intelligent debate can only make the sport stronger, but at the same time, those who criticize for the sake of criticizing should be taken with a grain of salt. Those who can, do. Those who can't, either support those who can or resort to vacuous posts on the myriad online forums. With apologies to the late Andy Warhol, those people shouldn't be given 15 seconds of fame,let alone 15 minutes."
May 21, 2008
LANCE STORM DID IT (FIGHT NETWORK COMMENTARY)
With the furor over the Chris Benoit murder-suicide having died down as much as it's going to, I was at first reluctant to write an article about the drug situation in pro wrestling. After all, the whole sorry saga of substance abuse in the wrestling business has been rehashed so many times that even non-wrestling fans can recite every name on the media's "Death Lists" from memory (and thanks, by the way, to Nancy Grace for including my late wife Marianna Komlos on her list. FYI, Nancy, Marianna died from breast cancer, not drug abuse—next time do your damned homework).
But I still feel compelled to address this issue for one simple reason: for all the gory details that we heard about the Benoit murders; for all the tales of death, failed marriages and ruined lives that were replayed over and over; for all the stories of tragedy that spilled from the lips of mournful wrestlers; not once did I hear these four word--"Lance Storm did it".
And what I mean by "Lance Storm did it" is this: Over the course of his seventeen-year career, Lance was consistently acknowledged as one of the most gifted (and woefully underutilized) performers in pro wrestling history. Night after night he pulled off amazing feats of agility and wrestling skill in rings all over the world . And in spite of the toll that his acrobatic style took on his body, the myriad temptations that life on the road has to offer, the brutal road schedule that most wrestlers must face, and the pressure to keep his look and his performances up to the high standards of employers and fans, not once did Lance drop the metaphorical ball.
Even with wrestling being a business that is rife with gossip, you will never find a person who can say that Lance indulged in painkiller abuse, steroids, or marital infidelity. You will not hear a single story of Lance lapsing into a "Soma coma" in a hotel lobby, running around with "ring rats", or checking himself into rehab. You will quite simply never find any evidence that Lance did anything but wrestle at a world-class level for nearly two decades while keeping his body and his home life in fantastic shape.
So why, you may ask, has nobody brought up this particular fact? Quite simply, because it's not good television. Nobody wants to hear about the guy who did it right. Nobody wants to hear about the guy who, while never earning as much as he deserved to, still left the business with health and finances intact before the age of 40. Nope--the drooling public would rather hear the sordid details of the Chris Benoits, the Johnny Grunges, the Dynamite Kids, and then look down their noses at the wrestling business without ever hearing the other side of the story.
Not a lot of people realize that Lance was actually interviewed for the infamous CNN special on which Chris Kanyon whined incessantly about the wrestling business while carefully doctored footage made John Cena look like a duplicitous drug user. But was Lance's face shown once on that program? Hell, no--because everybody wants to glory in the spectacular failure of wrestling's burnouts, not be told that there are also wrestlers who have the strength of character to be clean, sober and successful. A cursory mention of CM Punk was all that the anti-drug wrestlers got before the program delved right back into tales of personal devastation.
I'm not saying that the wrestling business is completely blameless--in actual fact, it's quite the opposite. For years, promoters have placed unbelievable pressure on performers to ignore concussions, keep their bodies in unrealistic shape year-round, and "play through pain" in spite of having injuries that would put any other pro athlete on the sidelines. But while the promoters definitely need to be taken to task, I find it hard to believe that there was no other option for those who chose to take the heavy pharmaceutical route--especially when so many of them also chose to party as if they had a spare liver in their beer fridge.
There comes a time when one has to accept personal accountability for their own actions in spite of outside pressures, and it seems to me that there are too many whining, bitching wrestlers who want to place all the blame on the business itself. Quite frankly, with people like Lance and CM Punk providing living proof that drugs are not a mandatory element of wrestling success, I just can't summon up a whole lot of pity for most of the wrestlers who destroyed themselves.
And if you're wondering who I am to judge, I'll tell you. Since 1990 I have competed as a powerlifter, a strongman, a kickboxer and an international-level (albeit largely unsuccessful) mixed martial artist. As a professional wrestler I've worked on tours across Canada, the United States, England and South Africa. I've been dropped on my head by Dr. Luther, had my bicep torn by Masakatsu Funaki, been kicked in the face by Bas Rutten and been stretched for 30 minutes straight by Minoru Suzuki. I've torn my calf, trapezius muscle and both biceps, warped my spine doing heavy squats and deadlifts, fought a Canadian MMA championship bout with a torn ACL, and accumulated so much scar tissue in my elbows that I can no longer straighten my arms. I've also been a stuntman since 2000, and on my first day of that career I was punched so hard by a careless actor that I suffered permanent eye damage requiring several surgeries. In short, I've put my body through the wringer and I have plans to continue doing so, but despite all of the accumulated damage I have not a single problem with painkillers, steroids, alcohol or recreational drugs.
I'm not looking for credit here, nor for pity--I'm just demonstrating that I've got the experience to offer an educated opinion on this issue. And my opinion is this: in most cases, wrestlers don't need to wreck themselves with drugs, no matter what the pressure placed upon them by promoters. Does there need to be an overhaul of the wrestling business? Hell, yes--but there must also be an acceptance of personal responsibility.
So while I acknowledge that there are exceptions to every scenario, and that there are some wrecked wrestlers who do take ownership of their actions, I have but one thing to say to the "woe is me" whiners:
Lance Storm did it. So why didn't you?
