This review was commissioned by Eric T. over on my Ko-fi account.
At the height of his powers, Volk Han felt inevitable. Certainly not untouchable, but throughout 1996, we watched Volk Han become The Man in RINGS. People could test Volk, even deplete his points to a dangerously low point, but if he got you down to the mat, then it’d be game over eventually. That’s something that culminated in the Mega Battle Tournament of 1996, when he once again repelled Kiyoshi Tamura in the finals. Tamura comes in after having left UWFi, already dazzled the people in his first year in the promotion, and gets the institutional support that comes from being the favored protege of Akira Maeda. All that, and Volk still tapped him out back in January.
Tamura spends most of 1997 shaking off that loss and rebuilding himself. Despite the tie to Maeda and the fanfare for his debut, it’s not a straight line to the top. There’s the loss to Volk in January, but there’s also a loss to Maeda himself, Nikolai Zouev, and then a TKO loss to Hans Nijman in the show before this rematch. Still, he’s been a centerpiece of the promotion, with his big victory over Tariel Bitsadze in July feeling like a massive turning point in his time at RINGS, something real akin to slaying a killer giant and the confidence that might instill in him.
Meanwhile, Volk’s year is one marked with absence. After the big win in the Mega Battle Tournament, he follows up by defeating Akira Maeda, and then does little else in RINGS for the rest of the year. Because of that, his loss to Yoshihisa Yamamoto in August feels like a much bigger blow to momentum than Tamura’s lost to Nijman. Tamura’s spent the year clawing his way to the top whereas Volk feels like he’s watching the peak disintegrate beneath his feet.
What the third match between these two men captures perfectly is the tragedy of discovering you’re no longer The Man.
It’s something we’ve seen captured elsewhere in pro wrestling, just think of the finer moments of an Ace getting shaken from their position. It’s Jumbo Tsuruta in 1990, Hiroshi Tanahashi through much of the 2010s, John Cena against CM Punk and Brock Lesnar. It’s the devastating realization that the only true winner in pro wrestling, and life in general, is time itself.
Against Kiyoshi Tamura on September 26, 1997, Volk Han runs out of magic tricks.
What’s wondrous about these RINGS matches is how these stories can be told parallel and contrary to the progression of the points in the match. If we’re just looking at the points, then this match starts of about where the last bout left us. Volk scores early by forcing Tamura to burn two rope breaks in the early moments. What looking at just those points ignores though is just how fucking hard it is for Volk to even get to that point. In every match, Volk’s gone right for Tamura’s arm in the early goings, and this time, Tamura’s the slipperiest and most evasive he’s ever been. Not only does Tamura hold on and roll through with moment, his gripping of his hands together makes Volk work so much harder to pull at a limb than he has at any other point in the series.
It’s a matter of demeanor too. It used to be that even with his quickness and stunning technique, Volk Han always felt like he controlled the pace of a match. This time, he’s the one pushing, rushing even, he feels desperate in a way that hasn’t felt true in the series up to this point. It’s wearing him down physically too such that when Tamura forces his first rope break of the match, Volk looks exhausted. He lays on the mat, trying to catch his breath, clearly frustrated at himself and his own body–a Fujinami-esque moment if I’ve ever seen one.
On the other side of the coin, Kiyoshi Tamura has never felt more dangerous. Spending 1997 climbing to the top has hardened him and sharpened the talent that was already there to begin with. It shows itself in how he goes about his attacks as well. Take the kicks. Tamura finds so much more success this time penetrating Volk’s defenses with the kicks, and he does it without rushing in either. It’s both more accurate and more precise. Even when Volk catches one of the kicks to take the match to the ground, it’s no longer a winning strategy for him and just another challenge for Tamura to work his way out of. The kicks repeatedly knock Volk on his ass (a couple of which feel like they should be counted as knockdowns but Volk is granted some grace there), and when Tamura finally does land that big gut kick that’s troubled Volk consistently, it’s a perfect moment of control. This go around, he’s the one that’s cool under pressure and the reversal has happened before the match even ends. In this bout, Volk has to catch up to him, and that makes all the fucking difference.
Even Volk’s comebacks have a sense of doomed fatalism behind them. That big flurry of palm strikes that took out Kohsaka in 96, he deploys again here as he feels the fight slipping away from him. It earns him a knockdown, but watch how he takes a moment to pose and flex to the crowd. A moment that could be read as a big breakthrough, a victorious turning point, Volk instead infuses with a borderline pathetic insecurity. Taking the time to pose and address the crowd, there’s that implicit begging of, “See? I’ve still got it.” Volk Han trying to show us that time can be made to stand still.
It can’t though.
Tamura finally puts all the pieces together. He kicks Volk’s base out to chip his points away, then at just the right moment, he fights for everything he’s got to take Volk down to the mat, grabs a Cross Armbreaker, and finally taps out Volk Han. It happened before the submission, hell it may have happened before the bell even rang on this, their best match together.
Kiyoshi Tamura becomes inevitable.
IS IT BETTER THAN 6/3/94? Both matches express the emotional devastation of loss. In 6/3/94, it hurts because it feels like it comes out of nowhere. After spending years fighting to get to where he is, Toshiaki Kawada breaks new ground against Mitsuharu Misawa, before being sent crashing violently back to earth–a process he’s doomed to repeat in the years to follow. But even with all that, I’ve been adamant in saying that 6/3/94 is far from the emotional peak of the King’s Road canon.
With this third bout in their trilogy, Han and Tamura reach the emotional peaks of the King’s Road canon. I already cited it in the piece above, but seeing Volk crumble here feels like watching Jumbo quickly realizing that his time in the sun is running out. And even better? Tamura and Han capture that feeling in under 13 minutes from bell to bell. Concise while packing a whole lot of emotional power, this is an absolute classic closer to an all-time great feud. RINGS takes the win.
Rating: ****3/4
