Voltage: A Short-Circuit Circus

TOKYO -- Living in Tokyo affords me the opportunity to see MMA events on a near-weekly basis. As Japan tends to lump all things of import in its capital city, one never lacks for choice in diversions. If anything, one might feel overwhelmed given that all major and most grassroots MMA promotions live in this one megalopolis.

As MMA and combat sports in Japan try to dig their way out of the hole of casual disinterest, more regional promotions are springing up in hopes of captivating an indifferent audience in a new or unique way. Upstart promotion Voltage put forth its best try on Saturday at Differ Ariake.

Voltage’s appeal, according to its organizers, is the fact that it has adopted not only Pride-style rules -- which allow soccer kicks, stomps and knees to the head of a grounded opponent -- but also the oft-maligned, at least in Japan, elbow strikes. The promotion calls it “the ultimate rule set.”

“We don’t think these aren’t particularly dangerous techniques. Insofar as extent of damage, we believe that to date no one can scientifically say which is more dangerous between, for example, a soccer kick that ends a fight or continuous punches on the ground for a whole round,” said Voltage matchmaker Nobuaki Nakagawa. “Recently, the Unified Rules used in the UFC have begun to be standardized around the world. But if you’re given those rules along with a cage, you get unappealing fighters and fighters who were successful in Pride failing [in the UFC]. Thus, we’re looking for fighters who shine specifically in the ring and under our vale tudo-style rules.”

Nakagawa assures me that safety is not something the promotion takes lightly. Even if Voltage had ignored the subject completely, it would not have mattered. The sparse crowd that turned up to Voltage’s inaugural event was subject to a night of hyper-conservative refereeing, which saw early stoppages in several of the evening’s seven fights, and not one fighter outside of main eventers Yasuhiro Kanayama and Ryota Masuda threw an elbow or a soccer kick.

Gimmicky Ghost Town

Differ Ariake is not a big venue, as it typically seats just under 1,300 people. It’s the perfect site for grassroots promotions like GCM’s Cage Force and Valkyrie, Pancrase, and Akira Maeda’s The Outsider. Presumably, Voltage thought it could follow in this tradition.

If only it could have drawn half -- or a fifth -- of 1,300. All told, there was somewhere between 150 and 250 spectators; “the ultimate rule set” was not enough to pull out the typical Japanese fight crowd.

Aside from the cozy audience, there was an eerie absence of staffing. I was shocked to find I could walk right into the venue, with no one to greet me at a reception desk and check my media credentials. I have endured mortal combat with event staffers in the past just to find a suitable press area.

My only interaction with Voltage staff was early in the evening, when a polite young woman asked me to temporarily move from my spot on the balcony just before the start of the main card, so the promotion could shine a spotlight on its “MMA Total Advisor,” a professional wrestling-style figurehead named Norio Maruyama, a guy with a wig of long black hair, humongous aviators and a thick horseshoe mustache.

Maruyama’s character was that of an eccentric middle-aged man. The age of the actor under the getup was difficult to discern, however, as those aviators obscured the most telling age-related features. If I had to guess, he was probably quite young.

A lot of the Voltage staff is comprised of former and current fighters that have teamed up to put the promotion together. As a matter of fact, Nakagawa himself is a fighting-fit bleached blond veteran of shows like the The Outsider. It’s my impression that the Voltage staff might have thought fans here would expect this Maruyama character -- the “crazy middle-aged guy running a fight promotion” -- it created.

“There is light and shadow in martial arts. Voltage MMA! Start!” Maruyama yelled unintelligibly.

Not a laugh or a whisper; the gimmick had fallen flat. It was a sign of things to come.

Flash K.O.’s Substance

Even the most zealous of hardcore Japanese MMA fans would be hard-pressed to place any of the names on this card, which were mostly MMA journeymen, 1-0 neophytes and sub-.500 also-rans.

The promotion’s main event was headlined by Kyoto'sYasuhiro Kanayama, who was brutalized by the knees and elbows of the man he was supposed to beat: Ryota Masuda. Kanayama has fought mostly for highly obscure regional show in Western Japan.

According to Nakagawa, however, this usage of unknowns and underdogs is by design.

“Regardless of whether the fighters are well-known, unranked or complete unknowns, we just want to support fighters that can show how appealing our rule set is,” he said, once again emphasizing Voltage’s unique rules as a key ingredient to its appeal and recognition.

But how, you ask, does Voltage hope to make otherwise anonymous fighters into stars? Video promos. Very, very long video promos.

“We hope to build interest in fighters with unique pre-fight video content,” Nakagaawa said. “The content isn’t solely aiming to be about stereotypical stuff like training, talking smack or things like that. More than anything, we want to remind people that fighters are human at the end of the day.”

Regardless of the noble intent, the three-plus minute video intros for each fighter on the card can only be described as overkill, and, in spite of the goal to “humanize” fighters, the videos were contrived and absurd.

The video vignettes of the evening informed us that Ichiro Kudo dislikes foreigners, whom he claims are dangerous. A strong right-wing conservative, he harbors an antagonistic political beef with Japan’s “foreign” Asian neighbors. He got into martial arts to “out-street the streets;” the high crime rate of his home of Ayase Adachiku inspired to him to “get tough.”

Norifumi Aihara was shown shadowboxing in the night streets, in front of a darkened lingerie shop window. His trainer runs a “funk bar” and trains him in a nearby alleyway, making him lift kegs between his shins, do push-ups on wooden stools and sidestep out of nunchuck swipes. His trainer calls him an “idiot.”

Kudo lasted less than two minutes in the ring with Tatsuya Tsuchida. Meanwhile, Aihara was choked out in 73 seconds. Their fights were half as long as their video packages.

The videos devolve the fighters into caricatures in a way I had never thought possible. Even in Japan, no other MMA promotion I had ever seen marked such a deliberate intersection of xenophobia and lunatic ambition. The “people” they depict in these videos do not really exist, apart from professional wrestling, which, crucially, is scripted.

Realistic Goals after a Short Circuit

The staff of Voltage took a gamble in not only stepping into an already crowded and ailing industry but also in crafting a product that has an eclectic identity at best and, in reality, is completely bonkers. However, one can feel that Voltage was created by a crew of people who have a true love for the sport but cannot actualize their best intentions.

It’s at least reassuring to know that, despite their product, the minds behind Voltage are at least grounded enough not to expect immediate runaway success.

“Simply put, we aren’t aiming at putting up a large event. We want to steadily do events over a time and draw a reasonable audience,” said Nakagawa, citing plans for four shows in 2011, with each hopefully drawing a modest 1,000 people. “We hope to someday host amateur events to broaden our roster. We also don’t want to just strengthen MMA but also broaden its appeal as a sport, in general.”

Voltage could be something unique. For Japan, it truly does take a progressive party of former fighters and promoters to realize that both soccer kicks and elbows can indeed coexist in the same ring. It also takes 1970s New Wave Cinema buffs to meticulously craft intricate intro videos for fighters that no one has ever heard of.

One can only hope their enthusiasm and creativity can co-exist more effectively, or at least effectively enough to half-fill Differ Ariake.