Our Man in Japan
Kazushi Sakuraba’s inaugural Quintet tournament in Japan.
Briefcases! Cigarettes! Children with cauliflower ears! Newly graduated BJJ black belt Matt Benyon takes his Polaris grappling team to compete at Sakuraba’s new Quintet championship, and the memories of training in Japan come flooding back...
Kazushi Sakuraba’s car is messy, but somehow this doesn’t surprise me. There are promotional T-shirts still in their packaging, protein supplements, an old cigarette packet... it’s one of the big family cars, popular in Japan, like a living room on wheels. My business partner and I sit in the back with the bilingual fixer for Sakuraba’s new grappling show. We’re on the way to dinner with one of the producers; a man who had a hand in getting Pride off the ground many years ago. The fixer is telling us a story about when he went to China with the bosses of K1 to try to secure investment for the show, back before it folded, and I can’t help but feel I have somehow fallen into a fantasy world – a world I might have dreamed up for myself fifteen years ago, when I first started watching the UFC and Pride.
Kazushi Sakuraba welcomes the Quintet competitors to Japan.
My yearly visits to Japan are not usually this privileged. This particular trip is special; as two of the owners of the professional jiu jitsu show Polaris, myself and my business partner were invited to field a team of professional grapplers to fight in the first Quintet, and to attend the show with them. Years ago, I could not get Kazushi Sakuraba (or his manager) to reply to my emails, although that is hardly surprising. At that time I was just another fanboy, obsessed with Pride, K1, and the mythical wonderland, the behemoth, the juggernaut that was the Japanese mixed martial arts scene. To me, there was no greater spectacle on God’s green Earth than a packed-out Saitama Super Arena in full swing: the screaming Pride lady (the lovely Lenne Hardt) warbling at the top of her voice, pyrotechnics and lasers flying through the air, tens of thousands of adoring fans worshipping the testosterone-slathered Brazilian grappling supremos, the ice-cold Russian killers, the brave and honourable Japanese warriors, the gut-bustingly macho Americans... This was a world of myth and legend and superheroes and for the two or three hours I watched it, nothing else mattered on the whole planet.
Team Polaris in the gym. Writer and photographer Matt Benyon is bottom left.
That was Pride at the peak of its powers, but the scene never recovered in Japan after the so-called yakuza scandal. Everyone was happy to grab those piles of dirty money, received from hands missing pinky fingers, right up until somebody came out and said it to the papers, and at that point, they couldn’t distance themselves from it fast enough. Pride, K1 and all the others were never the same. It has taken more than a decade, and the scene is only now showing signs of life. Sure, the perennial workhorses Shooto, Deep and Pancrase have lumbered on, but nothing like the glory days of Japanese national TV broadcasting Pride on one channel and K1 on another during New Year’s Eve. JMMA’s current offering, Rizin, is Pride, in all but name, and is doing an admirable job of recreating some of the magic of that show. And now, somewhat out of left field, Kazushi Sakuraba has returned with his own creation, Quintet, a team grappling survival event in which he himself participates.
Dan ‘The Raspberry Ape’ Strauss grapples Sakuraba, ‘The Gracie Killer’.
We had no idea what to expect when we flew to Japan for Quintet. We put a team of wild men together to represent us; fighters brave enough to try a brand new format with no idea who they would face and only a murky understanding of the rules. The show was excruciatingly well managed, down to the finest detail. We hadn’t even checked in and we were signing documents in triplicate for the fighters’ per diems. The fighters, used to warming up on ratty mats in sports halls or going out of pocket to fight at amateur events, were ferried from one media obligation to the next in the days leading up to the event – photographed, filmed, poked, prodded and thoroughly looked after. In a throwback to the Pride days, some hardcore MMA fans had found out about the show and our team was accosted by enthusiastic Japanese ladies outside the hotel and showered with gifts and phone numbers. Team Polaris ended up crushing the opposition and winning the whole show, and it was one of the most surreal experiences of my life.
Team Polaris and Craig Jones (hoisted) celebrate victory at the first Quintet.
I’m just happy that I get to visit Japan each year. Ten years ago, when I left Japan after four years to return to my home in England, looking for a job that nobody would give me, I dreamed of having work that would somehow connect me to this beautiful, insane country and this scene I loved so much. Now, as founder and co-owner of the jiu jitsu clothing brand Scramble and the pro jiu jitsu event Polaris, I have that connection. And while the world of professional martial arts in Japan had flatlined and is only now being resurrected, on the amateur level, it has always thrived. I had gone from white belt to purple belt in Brazilian jiu jitsu while in Japan, under the ‘Paraestra’ banner. (Paraestra is a nationwide network of dojos started by Yuki Nakai, who you may remember as the diminutive judo expert who battled his way to the finals of Vale Tudo Japan in 1995, where he was soundly thrashed by Rickson Gracie). Sometimes it would take me two hours to get to training from my English teaching job, and I would turn up at eight or nine in the evening, but this was normal.
Tokyo, riddled as it is with grappling gyms.
Salarymen would arrive even later, setting down their briefcases and removing their ties, having come straight from the office. My favourite training partner was a dentist who must have been in his mid-forties with wild and wiry hair and large glasses. He was unbelievably dangerous in almost every position. Never got flustered, never stopped smiling, just turned up almost every day and trained and trained and trained. That is the way, in Japan. It is a country obsessed with martial arts, whether it’s kendo or judo (both integral parts of school life), karate, kickboxing, jiu jitsu or MMA. You see high school kids with fresh, purple cauliflower ears biking home from training at ten or eleven at night. You see old men with ramrod straight backs sat to attention on the train, their mangled ears old and faded but still noticeable. Training in Japan is about consistent effort, applied as often as you can, for as long as you can - for your entire life, if possible. I spent around a year going to a high school to train judo once a week, and the sessions would always start and end with sitting to attention, discussing the importance of homework, of listening to your parents, of keeping the gym tidy...
Needless to say, martial arts classes provide a social function in Japan.
One of my best memories was visiting AACC, a martial arts gym located above Gold’s Gym in Omori. I was welcomed by Abe-san, the owner, a retired MMA fighter and expert in all things grappling. We trained for hours and he twisted me up into all kinds of interesting shapes. Megumi Fujii, the pioneering legend of women’s MMA, was there, and after training, we ate Thai food. Everything about the evening was intoxicating. The grappling, the vibrant city, the delicious food, the friendly conversation... These were people I had spent the last few years watching on DVD and videotape, and now I was drinking beer with them. On my first trip to Tokyo, I could not sleep for days I was so overwhelmed by everything. The sheer vastness of the city, the people in it, the amount of things to experience, but most of all by how friendly people were, and how I could enter into the world of Japanese MMA that had previously only existed in low resolution on my computer screen. Even as I begin to ingratiate myself with the scene, as I move behind the curtain, that world remains one of magic, myth and majesty. Kazushi Sakuraba is the Wizard of Oz, and we’re driving around in his car.
Somehow his legend, his aura, is bolstered - not tarnished - by driving around Tokyo with him as he takes a wrong turn, lights up a cigarette, makes a rude joke. Later on, over shabu-shabu, he tells us how crazy Japanese pro-wrestlers are. How, at some party organised after one of the old shows, they trashed a hotel so badly it had to be demolished. We laughed, but he insisted the story was 100% genuine... the wrestlers actually caused so much trouble and so much damage to the building, they had to tear it down. I believe him, as he slings back the beers two nights before he’s due to fight at Quintet and lights up another cigarette.
Photos and words by Matt Benyon. Matt’s latest project is online BJJ training resource Techniqly Media.
