RIZIN LANDMARK & Snake Eyes

A new RIZIN series is announced / Fight Pizza Movie Night goes Joe

Holy shit, RIZIN’s got a new brand! 💩😇 Maybe the name sounds like a beat up shopping mall with a multiplex and a Chili’s! , but no no, this is basically RIZIN Fight Nights, but RIZIN LANDMARK instead.

RIZIN LANDMARK will be a series of no-crowd shows held in/on/near Japanese “landmarks,” not exclusively in Tokyo. Who knows if that means on the top of the Tokyo Tower or the summit of Mt Fuji or what. (The latter would be kind of cool as like an endurance challenge having to climb up there before the fight - I can say from experience it ain’t easy.) Nothing has been announced yet, but I’m guessing the reality for the first show will be a classic martial arts venue like the Ryogoku Kokugikan or Budokan.

Double Holy Shit! 💩 💩😇😇 The opening headliner is Mikuru Asakura against a younger, less-skilled version of Mikuru Asakura named Kyohei Hagiwara!

I kid! I actually really like Kyohei and he was one of my favorite fighters from the first RIZIN shows back after the pandemic. He’s super fun and brash and I think this is a great opportunity for him, but I also think he’s gonna get schooled if Mikuru is anywhere approaching 100% committed to this fight. 75% probably gets Mikuru the W. Nonetheless, I was surprised and pleased to see the fight announcement, and will definitely watch with interest.

The two other announced fights on the card are the legendary Masazaku Imanari vs Kasugai "Agar" Takeshi and Shooto Watanabe vs Soraya Ito. Imanari’s last couple fights have been horrific tragic dumpster fires of misfortune so that should be notable at least and Shooto Watanabe is a fun fighter who was unlucky to face Kai Asakura in the first round of the Bantamweight Grand Prix. A couple more fights remain to be added to the card, along with future LANDMARK events.

Now for the bad news: there’s no word on international viewing and the domestic viewing situation seems pretty shitty. CEO Sakakibara says he’s aiming these LANDMARK shows at “casual viewers” and he’s putting them on U-NEXT, yet another subscription service for RIZIN. Originally I thought I could watch on a U-NEXT free trial, which would be great, but now I am seeing RIZIN will supposedly be charging a 5000 yen (roughly 45 dollars) premium for them beyond the initial U-NEXT subscription fee. That really doesn’t seem like something the casual MMA viewer is going to be super into, especially when we have ONE Championship free on Abema and Bellator free on YouTube Japan.

Charging fees on top of fees, Sakakibara seems to be learning all the wrong lessons from his pal Dana White. Not to mention there are certainly other viewing options more associated with combat sports that could better lure in the casual fan. If not Abema (home to sumo, kickboxing and MMA) for RIZIN, DAZN Japan would be a good choice (and take care of the international component), as the service is actually quite popular in Japan as the streaming home of NPB baseball and most of the top soccer leagues.

Instead it seems we are getting a non-sports streaming option and a high PPV fee. Not a great look IMO, but RIZIN is notoriously last minute with this stuff, so it could shake out differently and with a credible international option. Let’s hope so. I questioned the business decision of the Tokyo Dome show; I question this one as well, but as I said then, what the fuck do I know.

It’s not all doom and gloom; I’m looking forward to these LANDMARK fights and before that we’ve got a helluva MMA September to enjoy with the all-WMMA ONE Empower on the 3rd featuring Japanese fighter Itsuki Hirata and the ONE debut of former RIZIN champ Seo Hee Ham, among others; the second round of the BW GP lands at RIZIN 30 on the 19th; there’s a stacked card for ONE Revolution on the 24th. I hope to be in attendance for RIZIN 30, but look out for Fight Pizza action for all three, or at least some tweets. ✌ Stayed tuned for Fight Pizza Movie Night below. 🍿🎥

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I just watched Snake Eyes: GI Joe Origins (2021) and didn’t take notes or watch it particularly carefully or closely, but overall would recommend. I mean, the script is fucking woeful, they’ve retconned Snake Eyes in a super shitty way (from what I recall of his origin story when I knew that shit literally 30 years ago), but I still enjoyed watching it. You just have to ignore the fact that the characters act completely illogically, have wavering, bizarre, incoherent motivations, and the plot doesn’t make much sense. There’s also the Robot Restaurant, taiko drum playing, we’re in Japan now!, orientalist ridiculousness.

The production however is really nice; they obviously spent some money and time on the look of the thing, and the fights are solid and even imaginative at time. I was rarely bored. The actors aren’t bad and often even Japanese, which is a plus. Some of it is genuinely filmed in Tokyo - though why the Uber driver decided to detour through picturesque Shibuya scramble coming straight from the airport is beyond me, I mean, come on, just looking for traffic! The Storm Shadow (Snake Eyes’s arch-nemesis) actor did a solid job, as did the main villain - Takehiro Hira was also in the mini-series Giri/Haji, which I legit enjoyed and not even as a guilty pleasure, check that one out. Ursula Corbero’s Baroness, the Cobra representation, was fun as well. GI Joe was represented by Scarlett, who was fine, though amusingly realpolitik in her decision to ally with a murderer and terrorist. All in all, not a terrible two hours and definitely better than the shite reviews I saw online. 🍕🍕

See you next time for some MMA. September cards below: 😁🌊