Redd is sending his latest column all the way from Belgium, but don’t worry, he emailed it, so it’s still fresh!

“Redd” Reddick — The Other Side of the Ropes

 When Keeping It Real Goes Wrong, Pt III

“Work or shoot, it’s still competition.” -
Bill Watts

This is a special installment  for TOSOTR. Not because it’s part three of a series but because where I’m doing it from; my tag parnter’s living room in Ghent, Belgium. Sounds pretty mundane except for the fact that it’s four in the morning and I couldn’t sleep. So thanks to having weird sleeping patterns, I’m sitting before another laptop on the other side of the Atlantic venting, and believe me, it’s a challenge doing that when you have to use a keyboard that doesn’t have QWERTY - people who live in Europe know what I’m talking about. Anyway, on with the rant…

As advertised last month. I said I would go over the world of Mixed Martial Arts - or MMA for short - in the next installment. Well, I have to be a man of my word, plus a few things I think should be brought to light anyway. First of all, the term itself is more of a blanket term. The fact that various schools of thought influence the genre is a giveaway, and anyone that ever took up a fighting discipline knows this. In hand-to-hand combat, there are four ranges of contact - kicking, punching, trapping and grappling, with kicking being the farthest range and grappling being the closest. Now if anyone followed Pro Wrestling knows that the sport gradually evolved into one that went from the grappling aspect of fighting to encompassing all four ranges, and this was long before the term MMA was coined. However, no one really ever gave wrestling the credit it was due for its contribution that helped birth MMA as we know it. Don’t believe me?

Long before there was televsion, and yes, I ‘m going that far back, there was always a contest involving pugilist versus grapplers. Since this was even prior to the days of John L. Sullivan, I’m referring to boxing of the bare knuckle variety, and yes, John L. was a bareknuckle fighter, so gloves didn’t even exist. There’s tons of documented history of wrestler against boxer that predates television and even movies, from Bruce Lee’s fictionial Enter the Dragon to Jean Claude van Dammes’ Bloodsport, which was based upon the accounts of Frank Dux and the Triad-operated Kumite. Possibly the biggest match that was hyped by the media was the Antonio Inoki vs Muhammad Ali match. The always controversial Ali squares off against one of Japan’s beloved athletes in his own backyard of the Tokyo Dome sounded great on paper but by media standards, it was a huge disaster. Inoki spent the majority of the match on his back, and Ali was the only one with gloves on. The downside? Neither man wanted to study the other’s discipline, but the match gave Inoki an idea…

A couple years later, Inoki created a wrestling promotion that allowed not just wrestlers but fighters from other disciplines. A few years later, Japan would see offshoots of submissive grappling and pugilism combine. The buzzword for the 90’s was Shootfighting - where the rules allowed a competitor to beat his opponent by either knockout or submission; and this was a couple of years before the UFC came about. The sport of MMA already existed in Japan but the States jumped on a little later. In fact, the promotion K-1 got its name from four prominent disciplines - Karate, Kung-Fu, Kenpo and Kickboxing (not Muay Thai, but the American offshoot). Believe it or not, a lot of competitors from either ring have crossed from one arena to another, usually in Japan, so the transition for some wasn’t as difficult as one would imagine. Granted the American perception of wrestling as fake, choreographed or more show oriented put a huge dent in its credibility, but it won’t totally kill it off. As long as the influences exist in Japan and other places, it will survive, but mindsets and attitudes will have to change in order for it flourish again.

I’m out. The next piece will be done back on U.S. soil, but remember, I can be online from either side of the Atlantic now. Didn’t I say two years ago that I was like human virus?

– Redd
shaka57@hotmail.com

Hey Redd

I always enjoy your column keep up the great work buddy!!!

r dubriel