Awesome Toshihiko Koga (Judo) highlights clip

fooking hell Pete that is old, my guess about 1990 - 1993. Really nostalgic to see that again

Koga was the greatest fighter I ever saw at u71kg which was the weight I fought at. I never fought at world level so missed a lot of the hot Japanese fighters. However, I did at lot of Tues at LJS and Thurs at Budokwai so trained a lot with Neil Adams u78kg world champion 1981 and Kashiwazaki u65kg world champion 1981.

At the time I had videos of all the good european u71 guys and was considering a comeback. Seeing Koga finished that idea as I knew even on his worst day he would still beat me.

Changing the weight groups in Judo and the influence of Sombo ruined it as a throwing sport and Koreans started winning titles with wrestling / groundwork more like the Brazilian Ju Jitsu everyone raves about today. For me, too much submission fighting ruins the spectacle. I have a video of Koga winning his first world title, Neil Adams commentating and that to me is what Judo was all about.

Just watched it all through and it is a compilation of 1991 and 1995 world title rounds. Most of the throws are repeated 2-3 times though which confused things a little.

Had to laugh at the seoi nage comment. Koga had pretty much a full repertoire all coming from a morote seoi / seoi toshi entry. In that montage there is a big hip throw, like a late Harai goshi, an uchi mata, a tomanage plus the shoulder wheel with a front sommersault thrown in and my favorite the Co uchi gari combination with a leg grab. If he only had a shoulder throw someone would have figured out how to avoid it.