ONE Championship: A New Era, Kirik’s blog 1 – So Far Away

The UFC 1 on November 12, 1993, was not the first mixed martial arts event of the modern era; there was parallel development, earlier, in Japan.

A league in Japan featured real, highly-organized bouts that could end by submission on the ground, or KO from standing, or via a judge’s decision based on grappling and striking. The first professional event was in 1989. The first amateur event was even earlier, in 1986.

The organization grew out of a pro wrestling match that turned into a shoot. In 1985, Satoru Tiger Mask Sayama faced Akira Maeda in a worked, but hard bout, when Maeda started throwing real strikes and intentionally kicked Sayama in the groin. Sayama promptly disavowed professional wrestling, wrote a tell-all book exposing it as fake, and formed the world’s first modern MMA organization – Shooto.

MMA continued to develop in Japan, reaching its peak with PRIDE.

Eventually, close ties between PRIDE and organized crime elements were exposed, and national broadcasters withdrew support. MMA in Japan went into a pronounced decline, and never recovered. PRIDE never die. But it did.

Chatri Sityodtong’s ONE Championship is making its debut in Japan at ONE Championship 93: A New Era on March 31, 2019 in Tokyo. It’s the greatest event in the promotion’s history, and the goal is nothing less than restoring MMA in Japan up where it belongs. A New Era has four title fights, and the promotional debuts of Demetrious Johnson and Eddie Alvarez, and a great deal more.

This is MMA history; I couldn’t miss it. But it’s so far away from me.

At 8:30 p.m. on Monday I left for the airport, and arrived at the event hotel 34 hours later on Wednesday afternoon. The longest leg was 15.5 hours from Boston to Hong Kong. The airline, Cathay Pacific, is the Target of international ariflight – it’s a great value, without frills, and everything is clean and decent. I settled in, read, ate a meal and watched three movies, at which point I wasn’t halfway even to the hub. 

Everyone on the plane who might, possibly, have a cold was wearing a face mask, some of them designer masks, and others slept entirely under a blanket. Cathay Pacific has a clever way of dealing with a 16-hour flight – they turn the lights out. The Dreamliner windows can change to mimic any time of day. So you get on the plane in the early hours of Tuesday morning and they dim the lights until shortly before arrival on Hong Kong on Wednesday morning. It’s a lost day. The effect of the dim light and masks and cocooned passengers and no sleep had a hallucinatory quality. Didn’t help when I started watching season 8 of Walking Dead.

Upon arrival it was another 90 minutes on a bus, then a beer and salad, and finally at midnight, after over 48 hours of no sleep, I crashed. I woke up at 2:35 feeling befuddled and quickly realized it was 2:35 am – I’d had two hours sleep. I tossed and turned til 6:30 and started to get ready for the day. I have never fought overseas. I can’t imagine how fighters deal with the jet lag, as I’m struggling to remember my own name right now.

I used to buy tapes of JMMA shows from Japan, delivery took weeks, and one was once delivered by accident to some guy down the street, who had read a book with a character who shared my last name, and wanted to talk about it. Now you can watch ONE: A New Era live and free on the Super App. Things are getting better.