Inside A Real Kumite: Michael Schiavello Reports

I love Bloodsport. I really do. It's a terrible action movie which is highly entertaining and I can watch it over and over again. However, it is widely accepted that Frank Dux, the main character who the movie is based on is a complete con artist who made up all of his martial arts accomplishments, including taking part in a highly secretive Kumite which roughly means a 100 person fight. Frank Dux's story became the inspiration for the movie Bloodsport, which ends telling the viewer Frank's various accomplishments. While the movie is fake as well as the Kumite that takes place, a Kumite is real. And Michael Schiavello was on hand in 2009 to view one of them. 

He writes on his HDNet blog:

IN A GYM ON THE FOURTH FLOOR OF ICHIGEKI PLAZA IN TOKYO, Artur Hovhannisyan stands by a full-length window and looks down upon the streets of Ebisu though his thoughts are miles away. His white gi is pristine and a black belt adorns his waist with three gold bars on the tip (one for each dan ranking). With his shaved head and clean appearance, the 33-year-old Armenian could pass as a banker or an accountant. Indeed it’s not until you see his calloused knuckles and stare into the black abyss of his eyes that you realize who you’re really standing face-to-face with.

"It’s time," says a voice from across the room.

"Osu!" grunts Hovhannisyan. He slams his fist into his palm, lets out a loud breath and is led out of the gym by two officials with all the solemnity of wardens leading a death-row inmate to the chair. Hovhannisyan enters the tiny Honbu (headquarters) dojo and the wooden door slides shut behind him. The eerie thud of a Taiko drum renders the room silent. As he gazes around the dojo his eyes widen; only now does he truly comprehend the gravity of what lies ahead. On the floor sit one hundred black and brown belts, legs crossed, perfectly postured. They’re bare knuckled and hungry, like a pack of jackals ready to rip Hovhannisyan apart at the limbs.

At 13:00 Kancho Shokei Matsui, Kyokushin Karate’s global leader, addresses the dojo. His voice is soft and melodic, unbefitting of a man who twenty-three years ago steamrolled his way through the Hyaku-Nin Kumite (100-Man Kumite) with a record 76 knockouts. He directs attention to a small altar and invokes the blessing of Kyokushin’s late founder, Sosai Mas Oyama, or God. Perhaps both — though one wonders how any sort of spiritual serenity can exist in the masochistic madness that is about to unfold. Then again traditional Karate is as much a spiritual pursuit as it is a physical one. The small ceremony, precisely worded in Japanese and conducted with complete attention to detail, seems to still the ego, empty the mind, and raise the vibrational energy of the room in an almost shamanistic way.

The rest of the piece is phenomenal and I suggest reading about it. A real Kumite is a highly spiritual, highly competitive event which is very important to the Kyokushi community. They are rarely opened up to the public and it is usually unheard of for a gaijin member of the press to be invited to view one first hand. Schiavello witnessed something the rest of us will never get a chance to see and he is extremely fortunate for that. After the jump is a quick video he included in his post of Artur Hovhannisyan's Kumite, including the two final fights with Glaube Feitosa and Francisco Filho.