FLASHBACK

The Beast Within

Japan and America have completely different versions of fighting to the pain

. . . by Alex Carnevale

This summer a masked wrestler was elected to the Iwate Prefecture Assembly in Tokyo. Masanori Murakawa, who wrestles under the name The Great Sasuke, won the largest percentage of the vote. In Japan fighting superstars are highly electable, yes, but they are also wildly popular. The Great Sasuke is still a highly suicidal performer for the Michinoku Pro Wrestling promotion—at 33 it is more than likely that he has the back problems of a 50-year-old. If his contemporaries in the world of worked (—that is, fake—) pro-wrestling are any indication, he will be lucky to avoid a wheelchair. Even -so, he does have his political career to look forward to.

In Japan, pro-wrestling is called puroresu. The linguistic difference is significant. Whereas in America Vince McMahon’s World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) is a freak show in which even the most devoted fans take the wrestler’s soap-opera antics as seriously as the California electorate, pro-wrestling and mixed martial arts are the biggest businesses in Japan. While critics of violence in the United States often focus on a sport like Ultimate Fighting’'s impact on society, Japan has never suffered such rigid, Protestant concerns. It would be a stretch to say that the worship of national icons like Kazushi Sakuraba is a leftover vestigial resemblance to samurai culture, but at the very least, the Japanese don'’t mind blood.

WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON, BOY?

Mixed martial arts (or MMA, as the sport is commonly referred to by insiders) is still a very new sport in Japan and in America. The concept under which most international fighting organizations now operate allows a range of disciplines to compete under a uniform set of rules. Despite the fact that some fighting styles like Bushido have hundreds, perhaps thousands of years of history under their belt, when it comes to the top competition in the world, it’'s often hard to predict how styles will interact with each other. This is the fun. In Japan, there are two dominant fighting organizations, Pride Fighting Championships and K-1. Pride offers a blend of different styles, whereas K-1 mainly operates under kickboxing-like rules. Both companies are making amazing box office returns that dwarf the profit of Japanese and American worked pro-wrestling (which are currently on a downtrend).

The Japanese have a different conception of the authenticity of professional fighting. There are plenty of people in the United States who think boxing is worked in one form or another, but no debate really questions its legitimacy. In Japanese culture, real fights and fake ones often take place on the same card. And while some are easy to tell apart, other fights aren’'t. Worked companies like New Japan Pro-Wrestling will often send their wrestlers to fight a real fight, with the idea that if they beat an accomplished martial artist, the win will serve as a catapult to stardom. This is a weird inversion of what Japanese in the U.S. used to call kayfabe.

The concept of kayfabe originated when worked U.S. pro-wrestling was confined to a variety of smaller, regional territories. The local product had a devoted following and for the most part, people believed that the wrestling was real. That is hard to imagine now when the only real national company in the U.S., the WWE, has storylines where one of the main characters is supposedly undead, but it is true. During the reign of these regional territories, before the McMahon monopoly began, wrestlers were strictly fined and often fired if they didn'’t live up to their reputations as tough guys outside the ring. In addition, if the good guys, or “faces” were seen with the bad guys, “heels,” all hell would break loose. Such a revelation could kill business for years.

BOB SAPP HAS A POSSE

Japanese audiences have always preferred showmanship to veracity in their worked pro-wrestling restrictive model, as long as the in-ring wrestling was hard-assed and realistic. They loved Andre the Giant in the 1970s in both real and worked fights, and now they have a new giant as a national hero: a former pro football player named Bob Sapp.

Sapp is a huge black man who once knocked out William "The Refrigerator” Perry" in FX’'s short-lived Toughman series. Before becoming one of the hugest celebrities in Japan, he considered applying to be a mortuary assistant. Now his name is plastered all over Japan, and he is known in almost every household. He is the pitchman for televisions and noodles. Originally from Colorado, Sapp has biceps like your mom has ass cheeks. He’'s like a tyrannosaurus with a sly and gracious personality who you invite on talk shows to tell stories.

Yet, in the context of the Japanese media, Sapp is presented often in a racist form. Sometimes after a match he’'ll eat bananas to cheering applause. In other advertisements, Sapp plays a pimp with some hookers, and equipped with all the subtlety of Shaft, he sells electronics. But if that were the extent of his charisma, he wouldn’'t be selling out Japan’'s largest arena, the Tokyo Dome.

Sapp illustrates the challenges and rewards of MMA and its promotion. This may help answer the obvious question: if Sapp can draw millions of Japanese fans, why isn’t he a mainstream star here in America? Even more perplexing is that Sapp has recently set up what should be an attention-grabbing match with Mike Tyson, which has gotten no notice whatsoever in the U.S. This will make big box office dollars overseas, but will probably just hit Sportscenter here and never make money.

PAY-PER-VIEW COCKFIGHTING

In the U.S., only one company, begun in 1993, has attempted to promote mixed martial arts as a sport on a national scale. The name of that organization is Ultimate Fighting Championships (UFC). Unlike boxing and pro-wrestling’s four-sided ring, UFC uses an octagonal cage. The cage is actually much safer than ring ropes, which often tie up fighters. The cage itself has reinforced a perception among politicians and TV pundits like Tony Kornheiser of ESPN’'s Pardon the Interruption that MMA is nothing more than raw, animalistic spectacle. Kornheiser, who knows nothing of what he speaks, calls UFC “human cockfighting.” In reality, MMA fighters are truly the baddest men on the planet. Their training schedules are superhuman. The legendary American Don Frye once wrestled a match with a broken neck. All but the very top fighters work second jobs to train to do what they love.

In the early days of MMA promotions, the quality of fights was low. The Gracies, a family in which most of the males trained in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, dominated the sport here and abroad. At 6’0” and 180 pounds, Royce Gracie was one of the smaller fighters, but he was the sport’s best, the toast of the fighting world. What the Gracies would simply do was pop an arm out of its socket with a wicked arm bar and occasionally break out the triangle choke, cutting off their opponent’s windpipe with a tangle of hands and feet and get the tap-out the scientific way.

American Greco-Roman wrestlers have also had some success in Ultimate Fighting, and as fighters began to study others when the sport hit in zenith in the U.S., evolution of all styles began to speed up. One of the strangest things about MMA is that its best competitors often don’t look like the bouncers on Miami Beach. The current American light-heavyweight champion, Randy Couture, looks about as unstoppable as the invulnerable Judith Butler.

The most dangerous man in the world, by the current consensus, is a former Croatian intelligence agent named Mirko Filivopic, who looks like one of your father'’s friends. —Milton, the one with yacht and crew cut. A trained kickboxer, he has given more concussions to the jaw than you have teeth to lose. No one in the business can agree on exactly how the sport will continue to evolve, but Bob Sapp’'s popularity is one barometer. He is a new kind of super-athlete that may draw the interest of a casual fan.

Pride Fighting Championships, which now promotes pay-per-view events in the U.S., has more cash flow due to its Japanese success, and now regularly features the top fighters in the world. Their upcoming PPV event, Pride Final Conflict 2003, features the semifinals in Pride’s middleweight tournament. Of the four best middleweights in the world, two are Americans. And yet the names Chuck Liddell and Quinton Jackson (who should be wildly popular just for his use of profanity) are known to only a small percentage, hardcore fans that follow the sport via the Internet or newsletters like Wrestling Observer.

BLOODY BRILLIANT

The lack of success for mixed martial arts in the U.S. comes exactly at a time when its stars should be most palatable to American audiences, given the fighter’'s skill levels and American backgrounds. Just as today’'s basketball players have ten times the talent of their predecessors from twenty years ago, the same is true in the world of mixed martial arts. And that is partly how an insane monster like Sapp can compete with the best in the world. Even though he has the stamina of a 12-year-old, his unreal athleticism makes him a competitor. He could captivate American audiences if given a chance, which depends almost entirely on whether television will allow UFC to promote its product.

A brief trial run on Fox Sports Net that went nowhere not withstanding, Ultimate Fighting has been kept off national television because its ratings potential is largely unknown, and it has, in the past, been a politically tenuous matter. Senator John McCain (R-AZ), after seeing a tape of UFC in 1993, led a campaign to get mixed martial arts banned across the country, and succeeded in several states. His objection was over the danger of the sport, though only boxing has ever killed a participant in-ring.

So here’'s to hoping that America can get past its inhibitions to the spectacle, fun, and athleticism of mixed martial arts. With boxing on the outs, and tennis still boring no matter how good looking the people who play it are, America needs a one-on-one sport. Let them have blood.

--ALEX CARNEVALE