To Beranes,

Saito fought Fujiwara when Fujiwara was almost retiring. I do not recall the detail of the fight, but all I remember is that Saito saw Fujiwara's defense was not tight and threw the his hook (right or left, I don't know) and floored Fujiwara. The damage was not severe, so he got up. However Kurosaki at the ringside told Fujiwara's corner to stop the fight. Kurosaki's reasoning is that a veteran like Fujiwara should not have been floored by an inexperienced fighter like Saito when Fujiwara should not have had carelessness for his defense. Since Fujiwara got up, he could have continued and eventually dominate and win the fight. But Kurosaki felt it would not do any good to the career of Saito, who had just started his professional career. Fujiwara himself accepted the decision of his teacher, and even congraturate his junior. In return, Saito kept showing his gratitude to the man he respected the most to the point he could not stop weeping uncontrollably.

Shinkakutojutsu was started when Kurosaki witnessed Katsuyuki Suzuki was KOed by Benny Urquidez. He always has had very low opinion on American full-contact karate, however, he found something in full-contact he preferred to the regular muay thai: the two-minute round. He thought the two-minute round is much closer to the reality of street situation than the three-minute. For example, Urquidez was decisioned by Sitternboot in the 2-minute 6-round fight.
The Shinkakutojutsu as a sanctioning body did not last long, and today, it is more of the organization for non-pro practitioners. As far as the training curriculum was concerned, it is not different from the regular muay thai.


To NOI,

Unfortunately, the majority of fights in the golden ear are not available commercially. Since the muay thai organization in Japan has continued splitting from one another, very few people know who owns the distribution rights for the fights. If the sport once again can grab the imagination of the general public, the great fights of the past will resurface in the DVD format in near future.

To ercan gürgöze,

I have to agree that the Japanese trainers often ignore the strengh for each individual fighter. This is not only the case for muay thai or other combat sports, it is the case for practically every sport as well. I, along others, have felt that the Japanese attitude toward sports in general has to be drastically changed and we are almost always having trouble competing against those of the Western countries. I guess I can say that reading and participating in this forum is one of the ways to learn about the cutting edge of the sports technology, not to mention our beloved sport of muay thai.

To Dirk,

Once again, thank you very much for the pictures you posted. I too have some of those in my old bookshelf in my parents' home. I hope I could get those and post them on here. Some of the photos I collected are those of Peter Smit's. They are not just about his fights in the ring, but the casual one as well. He and Satake got along very well with each other. Smit was certainly a charismatic fighter.

To Hector Gomez,

Kurosaki is not a kind of instructor who teach his students many details of the technical aspects of the sport. He let,or forced his fighters to figure things out by themselves and develop something from those. Fujiwara noticed that his teacher briefly mentioned the rhythm the Thai fighters fight in. He realized that in order to beat them, he had to destroy their fighting rhythm which set the fighers' pace with the traditional music. Thus, the unconventional footwork method was born. When people talk about Fujiwara's exploits in his career, his footwork always mentioned. It proved one way to fight the Thais, just as the Dutch fighters developed their patented combination skills. There are other aspects of his fighting methods which can not be considered to be the standard muay thai. The way he throws his round kicks seems to be from somewhere between muay thai and kyokushin karate. He also recommended the side kicks for stopping in-coming opponents. Some of his counter-clinch tactics look like wing chun trappings.