A Look Back at Choke
Posted by Thomas Hackett on April 12th, 2008
Rickson Gracie in Choke: it’s the much loved (and much hated) 1999 documentary which spotlighted the Gracie family champion’s preparation and participation in the 1995 Japan Vale Tudo. What brought this DVD back into my player? Was it all the recent excitement about his 19 year old son Kron Gracie and his gold medal winning performance at the 2008 Pan American games? Was it Rickson’ recent appearance in the (excellent) jiu-jitsu episode of Fight Quest? I don’t know, but like YAMMA it happened… and sadly, I ended up enjoying it a little less than I thought I would…
Don’t get me wrong now, there’s some positives about it and I want to accentuate them. So, here’s my attempt to flow with the go. The good in bold:
Rickson’s jiu-jitsu still looks every bit as beautiful and fluid as it did when I saw it for the first time. The brief training sequence at his academy is great, sure. But like Choke’s infamous yoga scene, stuff like that is all over the net now. The truth is that a good part of the excitement about this movie was simply watching jiu-jitsu and vale tudo on something other than a 5th generation VHS tape dubbed in Japanese. Those days are long gone — high quality video is everywhere and information in general is exchanged at a faster rate.
Rickson briefly plays with his oldest son in another of Choke’s best scenes, getting him in guard as the little guy gets upset about a chess game. But with Rockson’s tragic death in your mind it’s hard to find any humor in it.
There’s a little something to smile about, especially with Todd Hayes and Dale Cook. Actually, maybe there’s a little more feeling for Hayes, now that he actually fulfilled his dreams. Those dreams had nothing to do with fighting, but that’s OK too. In his odd Q & A on the US Olympic Team Website Todd reveals “I was pitted against a Japanese shoe-fighter and Roman-Greco wrestler and he was undefeated at the time.” Well, so much for information getting exchanged.
There’s a lot of that kind of weirdness in Choke: in addition to the shoefighter, well, we all know savate isn’t just a French word for an old shoe, it’s a martial art which has a representative in Dutchman Gerard Gordeau here. In Choke’s terrible and distracting voice over at the tournament, Gordeau is described as a five world champion (or something) in the style, but those in the know say he only fought a tournament or two and is really a karateka.
Yuki Nakai’s grit was inspirational: the smallest guy in the tournament fighting with injuries to both eyes and never looking back. But today I just shake my head at how horribly overmatched the poor little guy was and how he should have been better protected in those bouts which ended his career. Overall the fights are routinely terrible and worse than I remember, as Rickson seems totally unchallenged.
My take on Choke was always that it wasn’t so much worth watching for its fights or cast of characters, but Gracie’s philosophy and training footage made it worth a look. That’s still true. Overall it’s a fairly well made documentary, but today I’d rather watch a Kron match from earlier this year: