“Pride has their own agenda,” Mezger said. “They brought me in there to lose to Sakuraba and then he’d enter the tournament to fight Royce Gracie. I was a fly in the ointment, because I beat him, and the best they could do was make a draw out of it.”
However unjust this decision may have been, every mixed martial arts fan should be thankful for it: it set the stage for the greatest marathon the sport is likely to ever see, an epic contest between the rising Sakuraba and the first hero of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, the legendary Royce Gracie.
Sakuraba’s first volume of autobiography was written in the run-up to his Pride GP bout against Royce Gracie, and, ever the professional wrestler, he does all he can to build the fight and create the impression of real antagonism. How real that emotion is, we’ll perhaps never know, but the words themselves are remarkable. “The Gracies really are fools,” he begins. “Fools, idiots, retards, jackasses, buffoons . . . No matter how many bad words I line up, I can’t express my feelings for them. I’ll take you on, with your own rules.” Those rules were certainly a matter of contention. Royler had asked for special rules, and still found himself on the wrong end of what the Gracies considered to be an unjust referee’s decision. This time, they left no room for error, as they saw it: unlike every other tournament bout, Sakuraba vs. Gracie would not be subject to referee stoppage, and it would go on for as many 15-minute rounds as it took to decide a winner. “If he comes like an adult and fights me,” Sakuraba said, “No one will have any problem. But of course they ask for rule changes and, as a special bonus, threaten to pull out if Pride doesn’t accept the changes. What social status they must have.” Sakuraba acknowledges that “it is due to expressionless Royce and his relative Rorion . . . that we have this no-rules fighting,” but suggests that “when they started to not be able to win, Royce and Rorion made some excuse and ran from the Ultimate,” and derides them both for being “that kind of weakling.”
However much of that antagonism was real, none of it seems to have survived their 90-minute Tokyo Dome struggle. As the two embraced in the ring amidst the cheers of tens of thousands of fans in awe of the singular contest they’d just witnessed, there was no sign of animosity, only mutual respect. It would be wrong to say their match was thrilling, exactly. How could it be, for 90 minutes? This was not a match defined by its incredible pace or dazzling exchanges of blows, positions, or submission attempts. Yes, Sakuraba came seemingly very close indeed to ending the match in the first round with a knee bar, and yes, Gracie had his chances with a guillotine choke, and yes, Sakuraba dazzled at times with his leaping, cartwheeling style. But this was, on the whole, a contest defined by attrition, by Sakuraba’s slow, steady dismantling of the great grappler with a series of leg kicks that Gracie had no answer for.
“In the sixth round he kicked my left instep twice in exactly the same place,” Gracie remembered. “I told [my family] about the pain. I wanted to make them understand that my leg was in so much pain that I couldn’t move as they demanded.”
When Gracie’s corner wisely threw in the towel after the sixth 15-minute round, there could be no doubt: Kazushi Sakuraba stood alone at the top of the mixed martial arts world. When he came out again later that night, and, at a mere 173 pounds, lasted a competitive 10-minute round against Igor Vovchanchyn, then the most feared heavyweight striker in the sport, it was almost too much to be believed. This time, it was Sakuraba’s corner that threw in the towel, but their man left that night in triumph, regardless of the official result.
The Gracie hunting wasn’t finished. The long-awaited contest against Renzo ultimately materialized at Pride 10 and was a classic. Caught in a Kimura, Gracie let his elbow be dislocated rather than tap out. “I believed I could win the fight without it,” he simply said. After the loss, Renzo refused to complain. “Many people make excuses when they lose,” he told the joyous Japanese crowd. “I have only one. He was better than me tonight.”
Although most expected a bout with Rickson to follow, Sakuraba had to settle for the fiery and troubled young Ryan, who fought bravely but came no closer to besting Sakuraba than his elders. That match ended with Sakuraba literally spanking the Gracie bad boy in front of the martial arts world.
Then, as with any great rise, came the great fall. By the time we rejoin Sakuraba in his 2007 volume of autobiography, again titled Me, we find a battered and baffled fighter trying to deal with the sudden revelation of his own in-ring fallibility. First, there was an upset loss to the terrifying Wanderlei Silva, who Sakuraba bravely traded with before being battered to a finish in less than two minutes, and then a better effort but another loss to the same great fighter that left Sakuraba with a grotesquely broken collarbone. Sandwiched between those two stunning losses was a spectacular win over future UFC Light Heavyweight Champion Quinton Jackson, but the tide had clearly turned: Sakuraba was no longer able to do exactly what he wanted to do, whenever he wanted to do it, against whomever he chose to do it to. The long, painful decline had begun. Before a crowd of 71,000 at Tokyo National Stadium, Sakuraba took on devastating heavyweight kickboxer Mirko Cro Cop, and, unsurprisingly, emerged from that contest with another loss on his record and, this time, a fractured orbital bone for his trouble. “Why this card was put together,” he says, “I have literally no idea.”
In the blink of an eye, Sakuraba has gone from fighting and finishing the best in the world to battling against a knee injury while struggling to finish the utterly inconsequential Gilles Arsene. He did so with some inspiration from the example of Ric Flair. “More than being strong,” he recalled, “Ric was a ‘never lose’ champion. Sometimes he would get his opponent in a cobra twist and grab the ropes, with his opponent folded up like a shrimp, he would put both legs on the ropes and increase his weight to get the three-count, or he would weave some crafty cheating into the bout while he fought.” There was nothing untoward or illegal about the unique way Sakuraba used the ropes to finally secure the arm bar that half-rescued an otherwise atrocious showing against the novice Arsene, but there was definitely a craftiness to it that would have done the Nature Boy proud. But his continued fascination with the pro wrestling of his youth would hurt him as much as it helped him: against the feisty journeyman Nino Schembri, whom Sakuraba should have handled easily, a foolhardy Mongolian Chop led to an inadvertent head butt and a TKO loss in a swirl of soccer kicks.
It’s one thing for the great Sakuraba to lose, even three times, to a fighter of Wanderlei Silva’s caliber, or to come up short against a Mirko Cro Cop, but it’s quite another to be violently pounded out by Nino Schembri. Although he went on to uninspiringly avenge that loss, calls for Sakuraba’s retirement began to be heard not long thereafter, following a savage beating at the hands of Ricardo Arona that left the once great fighter battered almost beyond recognition.
All the while, Sakuraba’s passion for alcohol and cigarettes continued unabated, which surely didn’t help. There were some major changes to his training regimen, including a trip to seriously, properly study striking with his former foes at the Chute Boxe Academy in Curitiba, Brazil, under Rudimar Fedrigo, “Lovely Fedimar,” as he calls him. This paid immediate dividends with a flash knockout against an equally tragically diminished legend of the sport, Ken Shamrock, but it was too little to late. It was all clearly coming to an end for Sakuraba. As it was, shockingly, for the seemingly unstoppable Pride FC, rocked by a yakuza scandal that cost the promotion its lucrative Fuji Network television deal. Sakuraba, no stranger to failing promotions, jumped ship to the rival K-1 Hero’s promotion, where the fading star took center stage one final time, playing a key role in an extraordinary drama.
Yoshihiro Akiyama was the hottest star of Hero’s, their new light heavyweight champion after defeating the ferocious Melvin Manhoef in a spectacular tournament final. Born Choo Sung-hoon, a fourth-generation ethnic Korean raised in Japan, Akiyama had the potential to be a top draw in two countries, and possessed both the in-ring s
kills and the natural charisma needed to reach the pinnacle of the sport. Hero’s, no stranger to pro wrestling–style promotional tactics, worked hard to position Akiyama as a babyface, going so far as to incorporate dozens of children into his elaborate, stylized ring entrance. To those that remembered the credible allegations of cheating that dogged Akiyama throughout his successful judo career — he was accused in both national and international competition of doctoring his judo gi to make it slippery to the touch and thus difficult to properly grasp and throw — this reconstructed, inspirational friend-of-children-everywhere version of Akiyama was a little hard to take. But that was inconsequential. The Hero’s promotional machine had found their new champion, and any vague memories of alleged impropriety were not about to get in the way of potentially huge business. Akiyama was booked in a New Year’s Eve contest against Sakuraba in which the only reasonable expectation was that Sakuraba would be pummeled, and symbolically pass the torch to Akiyama as the new face of Japanese mixed martial arts. This wasn’t supposed to be a competitive fight; it was the once great Kazushi Sakuraba being used as nothing more than a prop, a device, a means of getting Akiyama over.
There was, however, just enough left of the Sakuraba mystique to worry Akiyama. The younger, stronger, faster, better fighter shouldn’t have had anything to worry about. But what if Sakuraba was able to pull off one more incredible win, one more submission out of nowhere? What if, like the “never-lose” NWA champion Ric Flair he so admired, Sakuraba could snatch victory from the jaws of defeat one more time? There was just enough menace left in the veteran fighter to plant that seed of doubt in Akiyama’s mind, just enough to bring old habits to the surface. After the elaborate entrances, the lights, the children, the screaming fans, the two locked up in the center of the Kyocera Dome Osaka ring. Something wasn’t right.
“The fight had just started,” Sakuraba says. “Neither of us had been moving so much as to cause a lot of sweat. And does sweat cause this much slipperiness?” Sakuraba had spent a life on the mats and in the ring, but this was something he’d never encountered before. “It left a strange feeling in my hand, like after having grabbed an eel, adding credibility to the rumors I had heard about his earlier judo days.” Sakuraba protested to the referee as Akiyama escaped his grasp again and again. Fight on, the referee instructed. Akiyama showed no mercy for the floundering legend, and forced a first-round TKO stoppage with a relentless barrage of blows, as he escaped not just every attempted takedown but every attempted grip. The result would later be overturned, and Akiyama’s reputation utterly ruined when video evidence compelled him to confess to the illegal application of body lotion in a deliberate act of cheating.
Sakuraba, retelling this tale, can’t bring himself even to refer to Akiyama by name: for Sakuraba, Akiyama is never Akiyama; he is only a despised and unnameable “him.” “So after all, the first world really is a shady world,” Sakuraba is forced to conclude. “The MMA genre is in danger,” he worries. Sakuraba of course had every reason to be irate and disillusioned. But there was a larger significance to what had transpired. The revelation that Akiyama had cheated one of mixed martial arts’ great legends — perhaps its greatest legend — was nothing short of scandalous.
In the world of professional wrestling that gave Sakuraba his start and formed his sensibility, this was a heel turn, one that manipulated the audience’s love for their fading hero into hatred for the villain who had the audacity to cheat him, and rocketed the newly loathed Akiyama to top-draw status. Sakuraba was rightly furious: there was no question he’d been wronged, and he couldn’t be expected to see any upside in anything that had transpired. Akiyama has since reinvented himself stateside as the irresistible “Sexiyama,” and against all sense and good judgment, Kazushi Sakuraba continues to fight on, despite serious health concerns and admissions of memory loss. But that night in Osaka was, in a sense, the end — of relevance, at least — for the man who once fought to prove that “in fact, pro wrestling is strong.”
Sakuraba showed pro wrestling at its best, as a glorious art created by legitimately tough and focused men. On the other side of the world, Vince McMahon also wanted to show the world how tough wrestlers were — but to a very different response.
23
BRAWL for ALL
Professional wrestling in America made a startling return to the world of the legitimate contests on June 29, 1998, in Cleveland, Ohio. The Brawl for All competition started that night on the WWF’s flagship television program, Monday Night Raw. And in a change of pace for wrestling fans in the newsletter era, the tournament was a complete surprise.
By the 1990s it was hard to keep a secret in the world of professional wrestling. The days of being “underground” were long gone. Dave Meltzer’s Wrestling Observer and Wade Keller’s Pro Wrestling Torch had official contacts in the WWF’s office in Stamford, Connecticut, and heard whispers from the competing factions in WCW’s Atlanta headquarters on a daily basis. Little escaped their notice. But neither man had any idea what the WWF had in mind with this remarkable shift in focus.
Of course actual mat wrestling on a professional wrestling program was a thing of the distant past. Brawl for All wasn’t a plan to bring it back either. Instead, it was busy work for the WWF’s extra talent, guys kind of milling around in the back that the bookers had no plans for. They didn’t want to let anyone go; after all, their competitor down south could scoop them up and potentially make something out of them. WWF had taken a WCW castoff, “Stunning” Steve Austin, and made him the biggest star in the industry. Something similar happening would be mortifying for the proud WWF owner Vince McMahon.
Like most bad ideas coming out of Stamford in those days, the blame for the Brawl for All has been placed squarely on the shoulders of head writer Vince Russo. It doesn’t feel much like a Russo idea, as the writer’s modus operandi was to eliminate the sporting element of wrestling shows all together, preferring to focus on sexy women and raunchy trash talk. But he makes a handy scapegoat for others in the company, including Vice President of Talent Relations Jim Ross and McMahon himself, both men obsessed with double tough hombres and the kind of oversized behemoths who made up the tournament.
The matches themselves were unique spectacles. Brawl for All was a mixture of boxing and wrestling. The wrestlers wore comically oversized 20-ounce gloves and scored 10 points for a knockdown. A takedown was worth five points. In the case of a decision, landing more punches than your opponent was also worth five points. Once on the mat, the fighters were quickly stood up. Submission holds weren’t allowed and a pinfall, the signature method of ending a professional or amateur bout, was not in effect. It was a glorified toughman contest, featuring athletes who hadn’t competed in years, or in some cases, ever. To then–WWF writer Jim Cornette, it was a concept with obvious flaws.
“They were actually telling the guys to get in the ring and try to beat each other up for real,” Cornette said. “And to make sure they tried, they were giving the winner of each fight $5,000 and the chance to continue on for a big prize. . . . There were a lot of great athletes and tough guys in the WWF, but they had not been in training for competition. They had been in training for performance . . . the unathletic people who structured this had no fucking clue that’s a recipe for disaster.”
The first shoot in a major pro wrestling promotion in decades involved two of the most hyped “real” fighters in the company. Marc Mero may have played the role of a makeup wearing, bedazzled Little Richard clone named Johnny B. Badd in WCW, but in real life he was a tough former New York Golden Gloves boxing champion. Steve Blackman’s gimmick was more true to life — the soft-spoken Pennsylvanian sported black karate pants and called himself “The Lethal Weapon.” With years of martial arts training in his past, many thought it a suitable sobriquet.
But the toughest man in the ring wasn’t either participant. The legendary Danny Hodge was brought in to officiate the bout, and
even at 66 could have likely done plenty of damage. While Ross attempted to put him over strong on television, no one in the building had any idea who Hodge was. The crowd, confused and unprepared for this kind of contest, voiced their displeasure loudly, chanting, “We Want Wrestling.”
Blackman gave them what they asked for, taking Mero down over and over again. Of course, amateur wrestling takedowns weren’t what the crowd had in mind. Blackman won the fight 25–5 on the unofficial scorecard, scoring five takedowns in three one-minute rounds. Although the audience wasn’t won over by the one-sided fight, it was a thing of beauty compared to the second bout.
John “Bradshaw” Layfield was one of McMahon’s locker room enforcers, a 300-pound former football player who’d tried out for the Los Angeles Raiders. Bradshaw was noted for being a tough guy, but intimidating smaller wrestlers in the shower, allegedly a Bradshaw trademark, wasn’t going to be enough in the Brawl for All. It would require holding up your hands and throwing hard punches with giant gloves — easier said than done.
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