(Vidprops: YouTube/TheGRACHAN)
The Japanese MMA scene might be slumping into the second decade of the 21st Century, but the Land of the Rising Sun is still the industry leader in unrestrained mayhem and total batshit craziness. Props to MMA Fighting.com’s resident gaijin Daniel Herbertson for passing along the above video of a lightweight fight last week in the Grachan organization … and the unexpected rampage that occurs immediately following it. If we only knew word one of Japanese – instead of spending all four years in high school and two years in college studying German, which turned out to be a waste of everyone’s time – we could give you a bit more context here. Just being big, dumb white guys, we’re going to have to take Herbertson’s word for a lot of it.
Here’s the Reader’s Digest condensed version: According to DH, Grachan is a Japanese promotion that (as you can see) uses a cage and prides itself on its "hardcore" image. In the vid, the dude in tights (Takeo Shiina) gets clowned by the dude in board shorts (Jung Hyun Lee) during their prefight stare down at Grachan 5. Lee does some head-waggling and kiss-blowing and then comes out of his corner at the opening bell with a Mitrione-esque grin on his face. Shiina doesn’t take too kindly to it. At all. Just a minute or so into the fight he KOs Lee with a left and then goes absolutely ape shit. When veteran referee Samio Kimura dives into the line of fire to call for the stoppage he gets a hammerfist to the back of the head and a knee to the ribs for his trouble. Shiina is eventually restrained and in the aftermath we can’t help but notice some important cultural differences …