Happy New Year.
The zuuhe blog I started last year has already been going for nearly a year.
Last year I wrote about seventy posts.
Roughly one every five days.
This year will be about the same, or a bit fewer. (Still, I mean to write as many as I can. Aim for 100.)
On New Year's Eve I went with a friend to watch the combat-sports event RIZIN live.
I will write my impressions of RIZIN and a few things I noticed there.
Most of this is a fight report.
So there will be talk of combat sports (RIZIN).
If that does not interest you, it may be dull — feel free to skim the specifics.
I love combat sports, and I still do them as a hobby.
I loved RIZIN, of course, and K-1, and PRIDE back in the day.
I am not as deep as a true fanatic, but combat sports have always lifted me up.
In school I loaded MMA, boxing, karate, and jiu-jitsu videos onto the Walkman I had then and watched them the whole train commute.
Maybe because it was a fairly academic school, I had no friends there to talk combat sports with — I just dug up videos alone with shining eyes.
Now YouTube is everywhere and fighters themselves post. Wonderful.
This was my first time seeing a combat-sports event live.
Watching live was extraordinary. The arena atmosphere gets inside your body.
Especially the entrance scenes after the hype videos — every fighter looked cool enough to make you envious.
This year YouTuber Shibatar was on the card too.
At first it seemed positioned as a gag, but the hype video, the entrance, and the fight were all incredibly cool.
He was unmistakably an entertainer.
Even when a fighter I like loses, I can enjoy it — and I often end up loving the opponent who won.
By combat-sports logic, strong fighters should be popular; beyond celebrity, loving fighters who are strong (who win) is probably more rewarding for the athletes.
For example, I am a Motoya fan, but Inoue overwhelmed Motoya with the grappling Motoya is known for and won brilliantly — so I became a big Inoue fan. I look forward to his future fights.
Before the fight, Inoue entered the ring and while Motoya was walking out I happened to see Inoue shadowboxing in the ring — it was so clean and fast that it stuck with me personally.
I was also very excited for Hiramoto vs. Hagiwara. I was rooting for Hiramoto, who had beaten that Geo in K-1 — but Hagiwara dominated from start to finish, as expected.
Early on I was thinking "Hiramoto is in trouble," and sure enough he lost.
They had traded heat before the fight, so Hagiwara's post-fight performance brushing Hiramoto off, and the mic work that piled on further, were fun too.
It felt like "this is combat sports," and I was thrilled. A very compelling fighter. Domestic featherweight is not easy with Saito, Asakura, and others at the top — but I want to root for him.
Mikuru Asakura also dominated as the odds suggested. I felt his athleticism in that last high kick. It was beautiful.
Horiguchi at the end was also stunning — a fight that matched his record.
Before the fight, at least among amateurs, many seemed to tip Kai as the growing favorite — but in the arena the cheers for Horiguchi were louder, and when he won many people stood up in joy.
Probably many people wanted Horiguchi to win. My friend and I hugged when he won.
With domestic rivals again shown to be few, I want Horiguchi to challenge the UFC again and become No. 1.
I also bought and read Shinya Aoki's paid note "RIZIN fight report" — Aoki being one of Japan's top grapplers and lately something of a combat-sports commentator.
The other day I wrote a blog saying that when gathering information, asking someone who knows is best, and this was exactly that.
Talking RIZIN among friends is stimulating too, but I had been wanting to hear from someone who really knows — so Aoki's note was very welcome.
(Cream Stew's Arita, a pro-wrestling fan, once said that after matches near the venue, a famous wrestling critic would gather fans at a nearby restaurant and explain — it feels like that. Absolutely fun.)
RIZIN's commentary level is very low and unreliable, so I feel that even more.
There were entertainers in the commentary booth who did not seem very related to combat sports.
I understand the balance with terrestrial TV, but beyond commentary there was also a baffling bit where talent from the booth tossed questions at fighters after a match.
The air felt awkward for both sides — hard to watch.
Tenshin Nasukawa was so stuck that he turned it around with "How was it for you?" and ended up as the interviewer.
At the post-fight press conferences too, a campaign-girl type who did not seem interested in combat sports or like a professional interviewer sat beside the winner and asked a few questions — who benefits from that? I wish they would fix it.
Put the other way: even an interviewer who is a bit awkward with words is fine if they ask meaningful questions.
Seeing fighters have to be careful is painful to watch.
But personally I noticed something about these points.
For the main-event commentary, Sho Ayanokōji of Kishidan was there.
He was invited as a twenty-year combat-sports fan, but honestly he did not seem closely related to the sport.
Still, he was very humble, did not say unnecessary things, and had the posture of a pure fan — personally I liked him most.
Similarly, when Dominator Satoshi Yaemasu, who lost to Mikuru Asakura, said in the post-fight interview that since school he had gone alone to watch PRIDE and so on and had always been encouraged by combat sports, and teared up — I felt the same thing.
I was moved that he shared the feeling of a pure combat-sports fan, and remembering my younger self I got emotional too.
Not only in combat sports: in fan businesses, even side roles like commentary or interviewers — if they have no interest in the thing itself and no love for it, it hurts as a fan.
Just having combat-sports experience or celebrity may backfire.
On the other hand, I fully understand the logic that to reach people who are not interested in combat sports, you also need talent who are not interested.
That is all. I got a bit gripey at the end, but RIZIN was a wonderful event — one of the best memories of my life.
It really turned into pure hobby talk. Writing about what you love is fun.
© 2021 ZUUHE