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Euro-Asian Championships at Yalta (October 2008)    

We brought 5 fighters and came home with 3 medals. Not a bad beginning in this new organization that aims to promote mixed martial arts throughout the world.  

by Ennio Falsoni  

When I was a young karate student at Milan’s Jigoro Kano gym, a well-known sanctuary of Milanese Judo, I had the good fortune of being in an environment where the judokas sometimes by doing kicks and punches, and a few karatekas like myself tried to learn their “hane goshi” or “de ashi barai”. The judokas had in their kodokan system the study of “atemi”, or mortal blows, but they weren’t much compared to the gyakutsukis and ai geris delivered by Hiroshi Shirai. Improving my knowledge of karate and starting to teach in Bergamo, in Toto Jacobazzi’s Alborgomma gym, I found myself in situations where, during the various jiyu kumite (free combat), I was grabbed by one of the judokas who had entered my courses and my experience from my time at Jigoro proved to be very useful. Knowing what to do when they try to get you into a sankaku (strangle hold), an arm or leg lock or throw you to the ground was always highly useful for me during my career, to the point where I also studied Aikido (for the tai sabaki – circular movements) for a certain period of time. In other words, after all these years, I believe that it is fundamental for a serious teacher of martial arts, who recognizes the limits of what he is teaching, to expand his horizons to other experiences, to the study of other martial arts. The more you study, the more you become aware of what you don’t know. It’s like attempting to become omniscient, which is totally impossible nowadays. You shift from one subject to another only to discover you are ignorant. In the field of combat sports, in which I have been working for 43 years, there are still those who emphasize this type of mental openness. They are those who practice mixed martial arts; in other words us. In 1977, when I approached what was then Georg Bruckner’s World All-Style Karate Organization (WAKO), the thing that struck me most was realizing that, based on relatively simple and easy rules, there were practitioners coming from Kung Fu, Karate, Ju Jitsu, Taekwondo and boxing competing on equal terms, and it was a beautiful sight. I thought, if the problem of the martial arts is one of fragmentation, this could be a unifying, rather than dividing element. At the time it was called “full-contact karate”, the forerunner of mixed martial arts, and it later became kickboxing with all its styles. For those who don’t know it, I will add that athletes like Bill “Superfoot” Wallace, a true icon of worldwide full contact, during his years in the famous PKA (Professional Karate Association) founded by Don and Judy Quine, used judo-style hip throws in addition to his extraordinary kicking and punching technique. However, later on all techniques used to throw the adversary to the mat were outlawed by rules that sought to limit this new form of karate to kicks and punches. I was so in favour of the mixed concept that in 1979/1980, together with well-known WJJKO instructor Bob Clark (who at the time was already in contact with Giacomo Spartaco Bertoletti) we launched what we hoped would become the union of kickboxing and Ju Jitsu, or Kick-Jitsu. I also recall that fighters from Bergamo like Alessandro Ortelli and Roberto Birolini, then successful full-contact fighters, twice went to the WJJKO convention in Liverpool to enter the ring under kick-jitsu rules. The movement fell apart soon thereafter, but there were some in Italy, like Patrizio Rizzoli of Livorno, who continued to believe in it and carried the idea forward, first in FIAM and later in FIKB when we entered CONI. There were many events promoted by the Rizzoli brothers (Massimo Rizzoli was also a great shoot box champion) and by others who believed, and continue to believe in the validity of these mixed martial arts. In recent years, thanks to the diffusion of Brazil’s Vale Tudo and then the rich challenges of the Japanese Pride, the mixed martial arts have exploded, but in an anarchical manner and, above all, they have been strongly associated with impressions of great violence mostly because they are tied to the popularity, in more recent times, of America’s UFC and the use of the “cage” for “free fight” matches. Owing to a series of historical events, both real and simply coincidental, since 2006 WAKO’s basic partners in the USA are those who lead the amateur MMA, Frank Babcock’s Kick International, which has become WAKO’s official representative. In the States there are over 100 events a year in which MMA and kickboxing are promoted together before thousands of spectators. In July of next year we are planning to organize a huge MMA and kickboxing event in a huge Las Vegas casino, just to give you an idea of our synergies. Furthermore, the Americans themselves officially requested that I open a new sector in WAKO devoted to MMA, but I had to refuse as their suggestion reached me after we had already submitted our application for recognition by the International Olympic Committee and it was the logical choice to avoid any possible snags. Therefore, we created a separate organization called the World Mixed Martial Arts Federation (WMMAF). It has recently replaced the World Kick Jitsu Federation which we had founded before entering CONI together with the Ukrainian Andrei Chistov, who is still its president. WAKO and WMMAF work hand in hand and they complement each other. Confirmation of this cooperation came late last year. At the same Yalta hotel where we organized the WAKO Low-kick World Championships back in 2003, the WMMAF Euro-Asian Championships were held with the Italian FIKB national team participating with 5 athletes: Marco Santi, Alberto Mesar and Fabio Ambrosini (shoot box), Armando Ciccarella and Emiliano D’Alessio (kick-jitsu). The team’s coach, Patrizio Rizzoli, FIKB sector coordinator, was well-supported by Boris Viale, his second, and Daniel Marsiglia took part as a referee. The experience was very positive. One hundred athletes came, mostly from the East, with the Russians, Ukrainians, Armenians, Azerbaijani and Bulgarians at the forefront. Only the Italians represented the West in this 2008 edition, but it was well worth the effort. The Championships called for the direct elimination formula: 3 rounds of 3 three minutes each. I must say that such a sustained fighting time underlines the athletes’ technical ability, but above all it rewarded the ones with superior athletic conditioning. Among the Italians, Ciccarella, who used to be a free fighter, should have been given the gold medal in his category thanks to his continuous action and technical sharpness, however he was denied by the usual partisan verdict from a Ukrainian judge and ultimately he had to settle for the silver medal. D’Alessio, however, after having reached the finals with ample authority and brisk, self-assured technique, had to yield to Russia’s Oleg Beshak who clearly beat him. In shoot box, Marco Santi from Prato, after starting well, stumbled into a right-hand counterpunch by Ukrain’s Bondarchuk and went down. He instinctively got up but was staggering because he hadn’t allowed himself a few extra seconds on the mat to recoup his senses. The ringside doctor intervened and rightly did not let him continue. Alberto Mesar had the misfortune of meeting the eventual winner of his category, Russia’s Vadim Klimenko, in his first round bout. The Russian is an athlete with a broad torso and thick legs who simply overpowered him physically to dominate the match. Fabio Ambrosini, the pupil of Boris Viale, won a bronze medal by beating the Russian Galyev in just 40 seconds in the quarterfinals with a nice arm lock, but he then lost on points in the semis to Russia’s formidable Cecenia Ruslan Gambetov. Given the success of this edition, the Ukrainians want to organize another international tournament in May, 2009, but I am to convince the Americans to host the first WMMAF World Championships in Las Vegas in June of next year. We’ll see what happens, but for now we can savour this success.