For those that weren’t even born in 1991, RINGS (or ‘Fighting Network Rings’ for people that will complain to me for not using the full name of the organization) was a hybrid-wrestling promotion (like most organizations during that time) and it featured notables like Fedor Emelianenko, Gilbert Yvel, Babalu Sobral, Ricardo Arona, Kid Yamamoto — basically everyone that had a prominent career in Pride FC started in RINGS. In 1997, Naxat Soft made ‘Fighting Network Rings’ for Playstation, a game that is virtually impossible to locate anywhere. It was the first MMA game to feature the use of polygons, something that was cutting-edge and mind-shatteringly awesome fourteen years ago. ‘Fighting Network Rings’ also predated the first UFC game by three years. It’s a collector’s item that no one knew about until just now, if you say otherwise then you’re just lying to yourself.
Due to the meteoric rise of Pride FC, RINGS was forced to shut down in 2002 but it was later revived in 2008 with a Japanese MMA event known as ‘The Outsiders.’ Now Nightmare of Battle is reporting that RINGS will make another triumphant return on March 2012. The first event will go down at the Korakuen Hall in Tokyo, Japan and will feature fighters from ZST and The Outsiders (but unfortunately not Grachan, bummer). Eventually, RINGS plans to incorporate Eastern European fighters into the organization and will most likely discover the next young Fedor. Well, at least we can hope so. [Source]
