Peeters’ Dutch judo and karate, and really everything, meets Haarmans’ more specialized Dutch freestyle/Sambo and some shit explodes.
It is not the opener, like another great match from a post-UWF 2.0 shoot-style start up show this very same weekend, but it is something like the best possible introduction to Fighting Network RINGS.
First, it’s a great stylistic introduction.
RINGS is familiar at this point, enough like other shoot-style companies that most with a basic knowledge of the style will find it familiar, but it’s also different in a very important way. While the UWFi debut show emphasized a speed and style, RINGS feels realer than everything else, taking on Maeda’s philosophy and then some. Matches can replicate the rhythms and beats of a real fight if done well enough, and the second UWF was unparalleled at adding in the smaller details to make it feel like a sporting event (weird flukes, bad referee calls, upsets falling apart when the less experienced lose their nerve at a crucial moment, etc.), but this match feels like more of an actual fight than anything like that. Repeated attempts at a specialty, Peeters’ forward shots to the chest that never seem to show up in other shoot-style, checked kicks, and most of all, repeated throw attempts that are blocked in ways that are not at all pretty.
So much wrestling in this style attempts to create this smooth and crisp version of the “what if wrestling was as realistic as possible?” approach, getting the big things right like removing a lot of hokey pro wrestling standards, but it forgets the important part that a whole lot of real fights do not go perfectly. This match — and RINGS at large — remembers that aspect, making it all feel a little more genuine, while also still functioning in a pro wrestling way, offering up a clear and simple narrative and functioning within a system of setups and payoffs. It comes close than almost any other attempts to completely remove the seams on this thing.
The second very important part is that everyone gets a look at absolute superstar Willie Peeters for the first time.
Willie Peeters is the man in the crew cut in a black, neon green, and hot pink singlet, and he immediately has all of the things that cannot, seemingly, be taught, or at least that other rookies take years to develop. A comfort in everything he does, unique strikes (again, those forward shots to the chest, but also TONS of genuinely gruesome body blows), awesome throws, a kind of not-obvious-until-you-see-him charisma that’s hard to look away from, and most of all, a believability beyond so many others. Throughout this match, I am never totally sure to what extent Peeter knows this is a work at all. His punches and few kicks land with such visible, and more importantly, audible impact that I might believe he thought this was real or something.
Peeters was so impressive in this match that, about halfway through when I began freaking out about how great this guy was, I went on Cagematch to look through a list of his thirty two other career pro wrestling matches to see just what’s yet to come.
In one match, the guy vaulted himself onto the list of people in this project for whom I intend on seeing everything available. It’s not a star making performance in a traditional sense, so much as that Peeters was simply that great, but it’s a great enough performance to take someone from an unknown into one of my favorites. Assuming anyone out there in 1991 felt the same way I did, I think that on a debut show where one might not be familiar with most of the fighters, that feels so important.
The match also just rules.
For all the reasons above, that it was full of these great ideas and how genuine it felt and how immense Peeters was — although Haarmans has a few great shots to dole out as well — but also because it’s kind of just classic pro wrestling. It feels different, but let it in and really look at it, and it feels undeniable. Two men with a clear grudge, real violence, and a series of near-misses and attempts setting up moments when everything works. Peeters works all match for a takedown that Haarmans doesn’t counter, and near the end, he gets it. Likewise, Peeters spends all match going to his body attacks, his gross (gross gross gross gross) punches to the stomach and jabs and palms to the chest with kicks seemingly in there as feints, only to reveal at the end in SUCH a pro wrestling ass way, that he always had more than that in him.
Marcel Haarmans leaves his hands low, not even near his head, to try and catch or block the body attacks, only for Peeters to completely level him with a head kick, in a truly beautiful show.
Haarmans never even gets close to making it up by ten, and Peeters wins.
I loved this.
Willie Peeters vs. Marcel Haarmans is maybe not EVERYTHING that I want from wrestling, but it ticks off enough boxes for me to love. Violent and interesting, a wrestler I cannot look away from, genuine feeling, and efficient as hell.
This is RINGS, mother fucker.
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HANDWERK 