U-Japan: The Night That Severn, Frye, Kimo and Wallid Ran Roughshod over Tokyo

The success of the first two Vale Tudo Japan tournaments in 1994 and 1995, both of which were won by Brazilian legend Rickson Gracie, inspired a Japanese promoter to invest in a new event, closer in spirit to the Ultimate Fighting Championship, complete with a chain-link cage and non-tournament “superfights.”

Debuting on Nov. 17, 1996, with a card jammed with established UFC stars and local no-holds-barred heroes, U-Japan managed to fill the Ariake Arena in Tokyo with 7,000 people. Everything seemed to be in place for the upstart promotion to become Japan’s answer to the UFC, except for one problem: badly miscalculated matchmaking. Over and over, U-Japan pitted inexperienced native fighters against some of the UFC’s best, who enjoyed ridiculous size advantages to boot. The results were predictably ugly, leaving the Japanese faithful with little to cheer about.

Kimo...Representing Jiu-Jitsu?

Consecrated at UFC 3 after his historic battle with Royce Gracie, hulking 6-foot-3 Hawaiian Kimo Leopoldo appeared at U-Japan more than 40 pounds lighter and claiming to represent jiu-jitsu. “After I started training with Joe Moreira, I could understand the fight better. Today, I go in conscious and knowing what I'm going to do,” said the BJJ purple belt, who had no difficulty in beating 6-foot-5, 360-pound professional wrestler Scott “Bam Bam” Bigelow.

Kimo took Bigelow down in the first minute, mounted, blasted his obese foe with a barrage of blows, and forced him to surrender to a rear-naked choke at 2:15. In the end, Kimo made a point of saying, “Jiu-jitsu is a family, and today I'm part of it.”

In the longest fight of the event, 230-pound Sean Alvarez, Mundials champion in the blue belt category, made his fighting debut, defeating Japanese idol Yoji Anjo, the same man who had barged into Rickson Gracie's Los Angeles gym the year before, Japanese film crew in tow, and dropped a challenge. On that occasion, Gracie had ejected the cameramen, beaten Anjo savagely behind closed doors until Anjo asked him to stop, and then sent him out in black-and-blue humiliation, all in less than five minutes. (The photos of Anjo standing outside the gym with a busted face were published in all the Japanese martial arts magazines of the day.) In contrast, Alvarez needed 34 minutes to get Anjo to tap with punches from the mount.

Severn and Frye: American Wrestlers Wreck Shop

Another UFC legend who had easy work facing a local hero was Dan Severn. With 14 fights at that time and only two defeats, to Royce Gracie and Ken Shamrock, the 255-pound “Beast” toyed with 190-pound karateka Mitsuhiro Matsunaga. After quickly taking him to the ground, the American applied a sequence of slams. The already dizzy Japanese striker opened his guard, allowing the American to get up again and throw him to the ground with a kata-guruma or fireman's carry, reaching the side mount position, from which he submitted Matsunaga with an armbar at 1 minute and 32 seconds.

Severn's training partner, Don Frye, arrived stronger and better prepared than he had at UFC 10, where he had suffered his first career loss to Mark Coleman. Facing fellow UFC veteran Mark Hall, Frye submitted him with a choke at 5:30.

Completing the foreign steamrolling of local Japanese talent, the giant 6-foot-8, 300-pound “Polar Bear” Paul Varelans only needed 35 seconds to run over Shinji Katase, whom he outweighed by well over 100 pounds. A comparable size disparity, with a similar result, came in the lone women’s fight of the evening, as Yoko Takahashi faced Frye’s strength and conditioning coach, Becky Levi, a massive judoka who tipped the scales at 215 pounds and needed barely over two minutes to pummel Takahashi into submission.

Creator and Creature

Having covered grappling and no-holds-barred fighting since 1992—even before UFC 1—it’s normal to find some of my photos enshrined as part of the sport’s history. If I had to choose, though, the most viral and enduring would be the one I took a few minutes before Wallid Ismail’s rematch against Katsumi Usuda at U-Japan, where he is sleeping on Carlson Gracie’s lap.

Ismail, who checked in at about 5-foot-8 and 180 pounds, earned a place on the card after his quick victory at UVF 1—also held in Japan in 1995—over the Greek Dennis Kefalinos, in addition to submitting Usuda in four minutes in their first meeting at UVF 2 in Brazil in June of 1996. “He was a warrior for coming to fight me in Rio, nothing more fair than me accepting the rematch at his home,” said the Amazonian.

This time, however, Ismail only needed 3:10 to take Usuda down, take his back, and lock in another rear-naked choke. Usuda resisted and ended up unconscious, completing a terrible night for the Japanese fans. “I'm impressed by how the Japanese are warriors, they prefer to go out rather than tap,” said Ismail, who would make his UFC debut three months later, losing via decision to Kazuo Takahashi in the UFC 12 under-200 pound tournament.

Obviously, the Japanese fans were disappointed with the performance of their idols, a fact that certainly contributed to U-Japan not having a second edition. But the Japanese wouldn't be without a big show for long. Eleven months after U–Japan, the biggest of them all, the legendary Pride Fighting Championships, would hold its debut event—headlined once again by Rickson Gracie.