By Roger Salick

Shidokan's Slugfests Impress Gracie

CHICAGO—When a fighter like three-time Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) titlist Royce Gracie is impressed, you know it must be a pretty good tournament. Here is what Gracie had to say about the fighters after witnessing the Shidokan bare-knuckle full-contact tournament here last October: “Tough guys, very tough. In one round, those guys got hit more than (anyone at) the whole UFC. It is much more violent. You must be much tougher to do the Shidokan.”

This is the Shidokan, land of tenderized flesh, where sustained punishment is the name of the game. Many of the 2,500-plus fans at Chicago’s stately Bismark theater paid $100 to witness the carnage, and in the pain- and violence-per-minute currency of bare-knuckle combat, likely thought they had gotten a steal.

The 1995 Shidokan drew 24 fighters from 15 countries, along with several martial arts legends, including Gracie, who was teaching a jujutsu seminar elsewhere in town that weekend. Also sitting ringside was cinematic tough guy Robert Conrad native son who began boxing at the age of 6 at Johnny Coulou’s 63rd Street Gym. Conrad still has a handshake like a woodworker’s vise and looks as if he could step into the ring and make a legitimate go of it. “I love it. I just love it.” He said of the Shidokan. “Boxing is great, but this is a step up.”

There were 20 fights on the night, and by the third round of the first bout, the action had brought the crowd roaring to its feet. Lightweight Ralph Linares, a 33-yeard-old Cuban transplant, treated his Japanese opponent like a gym-worn heavy bag. Linares and Masaki Saikami had just passed beyond the two required bare-knuckle rounds, in which hand contact to the face in forbidden. Now, as they entered the third round, punches to the head are fair game, although they must wear 10-ounce leather gloves. Linares tattooed the tired face of Saikami, who went down, only to pop up like an inflatable dummy. Linares waded in again , brandishing a right hook that met Saikami’s head, snapping it around and sending it into a violent, diving pirouette as the Japanese fighter kissed the mat. Saikami rose only to absorb a stiff right cross that dropped him on his buttocks.

The bout was just one of many outstanding fights during an evening of nonstop action. Jerry Morris, a 25-year-old computer supervisor from St.Maarten in the Netherlands Antilles, took on 153-pound Kenichi Sato in the second lightweight elimination match, and although he offered only glimpses of the ring savvy that would later take him to victory against Raouf Kachroub in the lightweight finals, it was enough to defeat Sato. By the third round, Sato’s lip was bleeding and his head was wobbling like a jack-in-the-box. By the fifth round, when they had swapped their 10-ounce gloves for five-ounce open-finger models, Sato was a doomed man. Morris drove him to the canvas with a strong left hand, and when Sato came up. Morris delivered a right to the head that ended the fight.

In the first middleweight bout, hometown favorite Bo Medenica knocked out Peter Angerer of Germany in the second round with a knee to the head. Within a few hours, however, Medenica met a similar fate when he bore the brunt of a knee/left hook combination delivered by his old nemesis, Frederic Aguilar, who defeated him at the 1994 Shidokan.

In the first heavyweight fight, Frenchman Jean-Michel Lavedrine rose from the near-dead to defeat Alain Grosdesormeaux of St. Maarten. Although he was bleeding, weaving along the ropes and battered by thunderous knees to the head in the first round, two minutes later, Lavedrine’s arm was raised in triumph and Grosdesormeaux was being taken out of the ring with the help of two cornermen.

Perhaps the oddest fight on the night was Tomasz Kucharzewski’s bout against Soneybourne Ali. Kucharzewski, a Polish expatriate and winner of the heavyweight division at the last three Shidokan events, seemed mismatched against Ali, who claimed as his hometown the “Nation of Islam,” and who possessed—how shall we say this charitably?—a heightened sense of theater. How Ali made it into the ring in this otherwise classy event is a matter the promoters may want to spend some time pondering.

Although Ali lacked dignity or any understanding of martial arts courtesy, he compensated for these failings with a complete panoply worthy of World Wrestling Federation regalia: the requisite sullen, antagonistic expression, the dark shades, shrink-wrapped electric-blue Spandex tights, pendulous gold earrings, exotic belt—a girdle, really—and enough jewelry and chains around his neck to lay anchor in a harbor.

When finally bared of his earthly possessions, Ali stormed into the ring to face Kucharzewski. He danced and waved his arms, pantomiming exotic and preposterous hand techniques, and garnered a warning for striking his opponent in the face with his fingers. Ali continued to gather warnings for face contact, but Kucharzewski said nothing, although he occasionally planted knees right between where gold earrings had previously dangled.

At the end of the first round, for reasons that remained a mystery to all, Ali roughly shoved the referee and pushed his way through the ropes and out of the ring. Plainclothes security personnel intervened at this point, grabbling the indignant Ali, placing his arms behind his back as they gave him the bum’s rush down the aisle, out the back door and into the alley.

In the semifinals, Kucharzewski descended on Gerry Marketos, destroying the Quebec-based fighter in less than 30 seconds with knee smashes that dropped the 255-pound Canadian like a brained oxen.

In his final fight for the heavyweight championship, Kucharzewski stalked Akio Kobayashi of Japan, who, at 209 pounds, has already demonstrated his power by knocking out Gintaris Palechis of Lithuania in one round and Lavedrine in three. It was obvious that both fighters respected each other’s capacity to do harm. But in the end, Kobayashi’s elemental toughness was not enough against the indestructible Kucharzewski, who defeated the Japanese to win his fourth straight title.

Arguably the best—and most anticipated—fight of the night was the classic middleweight battle between 170-pound defending champion Marco London, a St. Maarten engineer, and Aguilar, the determined 22-year-old Frenchman. The pair had met twice before, including their 1993 slugfest, in which they fought toe-to-toe through a then-unprecedented triple overtime session before London emerged victorious. Neither could guess that their match this night would make their ’93 bout look like a cakewalk.

Both fighters hammered incessantly at each other as each strived to the end the match lest it go into torturous extra innings, but the rounds nonetheless began to pile up with no winner. Round six passed, and still there was no score, since a Shidokan fighter must be thrown, punched or kicked to the canvas for point to be awarded.

In round seven, the fighters strapped on the bag gloves but despite London’s desperate determination to end the match, he could not get through to Aguilar.

Finally, in round eight, London began to penetrate his opponent’s defenses. Attacking with hand flurries, he dropped a startled Aguilar to the mat to score three points.. Smelling blood, London launched volleys of hooks and uppercuts as Aguilar struggled to cover up.

Aguilar recovered in the final round, number nine, gaining enough force for a kick that knocked London’s legs out from under him. Both men were still slugging it out when the bell sounded, but London, ahead on points, was crowned champion once more.

< back