Chapter 309: The Scene Heats Up

The Tokyo arena was a stadium with 55,000 seats and the home stadium for Tokyo’s professional softball league. It also hosted basketball, football, professional judo, and combat competitions, as well as K-1 races and music concerts.

To the right of the main gate was a batting range. Aside from this, there were also a few other sports grounds like the Asian MMA competition grounds and the Chiyoda district dojo.

It was almost nine when Meng Fan arrived, and he had already called Wu Tong along the way. He also received a call from Penguin Animation Networks on the way as well, but since several things can’t be discussed over the phone, they had arranged to meet upon his return. When Meng Fan arrived, Lao Hei was already waiting for him. This was a surprise.

“Meng Fan, you’re such a badass!”

Lao Hei saw Meng Fan and immediately tackled him with a hug, loudly clapping Meng Fan on the back the whole while.

The Singapore hijacking incident had blown up, regardless domestically or internationally. If Meng Fan revealed his identity, he could finally finish the [News Figure] task of being broadcasted on national and international tier media outlets.

It was such a big deal and so had been the flight from Singapore to Japan as well. Lao Hei had heard of this event the day before he arrived in Japan.

Initially, Lao Hei had seen that photo of the “nameless hero” and felt like it looked familiar. Only, he couldn’t remember where he saw him from. But once he heard Wu Ji say that Meng Fan was also in Japan, his brain spun around and immediately confirmed it!

Without recognizing the character in the photo, Lao Hei was still familiar with all the outlined features of the man in the photo as well as his strength.

“Nice job!”

Lao Hei chuckled, but he didn’t say anything further. He wasn’t going to pry more information out of Meng Fan. Tugging at his arm, he led Meng Fan inside the stadium.

“I didn’t think you’d be here! Where’s Seventh Bro?”

“I was called here temporarily. There was a limit on the number of participants, but I got lucky, hehe. So because some guy had an emergency and couldn’t make it, I subbed in!” Lao Hei sounded quite pleased with himself. “Seventh Bro is inside and preparing for the first round. Come on, he’s about to begin!”

Lao Hei walked, as he described the situation to Meng Fan.

This time, the Asian MMA wrestling camp was hosted alongside several other MMA events in Asia, which brought together hundreds of athletes from dozens of countries across Asia, including Huaxia, Thailand, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Japan, Mongolia, and South Korea. China had attended with four teams, where Wu Ji was the both the star player and the leader of one of them.

The wrestling camp this time was the largest fighting event in Asia this year and was mostly used for networking and training, in addition to friendly matches and exhibitional matches.

After the training ended that night, there were three more games. The match between Wu Ji and a Japanese wrestling star was the most anticipated and was going to be the finale.

Meng Fan followed Lao Hei inside and saw the octogonal ring. There were hundreds of people surrounding it, all easily distinguishable by the merchandise of the countries they sported. Athletes from Thailand, the Philippines, Mongolia, and Korea were all watching from the sidelines as well. Athletes from China and Japan could feel the tension on behalf of the fighters despite being in the audience.

Wu Ji was warming up. Meng Fan greeted him but did not approach to banter. It seemed like Wu Ji really cared about this match.

“Ji Bro and that Shirai could be considered rivals. They had fought three times in an official setting before. The results have been one win, one loss, and one draw. Although this isn’t a formal competition, the tension between the two is still very high.”

It was as Lao Hei was explaining this to Meng Fan that Meng Fan realized Wu Ji was one of the top wrestling experts in Asia and understood the grievances between him and the Japanese athlete, Shirai.

It sounded very exhilarating.

Soon, the match began. Based on the general rules of ONE-FC, the match would be divided into three innings, lasting five minutes each, with a one-minute break in between each inning.

ONE-FC was one of the MMA events. It was launched in Singapore eleven years ago and has developed very fiercely. It is now one of the highest ranking comprehensive fighting events in Asia.

ONE combined Pride FC and UFC game rules and allowed for kicks to the face and the use of elbows. In addition to the scoring methods, it also encouraged offense. The rules were relatively more open, and the game was definitely more exciting to watch.

There were a few ways to determine the overall winner of the fight: KO, referee termination, TKO, surrender, a contestant or his team calling stop, and verbal termination and floor tap.

The former few were easy to understand. To put it bluntly, the audience were able to 100% witness the victory. However, the judgement from the panel would take more time and would become more complicated.

The judgements were varied for each match. For ONE, the score was based on their overall performance instead of the score throughout the game. This scoring method would naturally make the scene more fired up, and the players would not be more cautious and refrain from being aggressive because of a lower score in the previous inning.

Although it wasn’t an official match, there were still ring girls who held up signs and referees for the matches.

This was Meng Fan’s first time watching an MMA match, and god it was exciting! After the first inning, Meng Fan could tell Wu Ji had been preserving his skills for the upcoming rounds. At least, he was able to conceal some of his strategies like fast punch, boxing, kicking, and so on — none of which Wu Ji had ever used on him.

Just now, the sound of punches on meat was painful to even look at!

Of course, after obtaining two combat-related achievement titles, Meng Fan was confident that even if Seventh Bro used the striking stance on him, he could avoid it and take the upper hand. He felt like the match would have been in his hands.

After the one-minute break, the second inning soon began. The second inning was much more intense than the previous one as the first inning was based on the standing technique, while the second inning contained more ground based combat.

Wu Ji braced the Japanese fighter, Shirai, and whipped him with his leg, going in to hug his leg afterward. Shirai fell to the ground, and Wu Ji immediately suppressed him with a mounted technique. Shirai lifted his torso and used the butterfly sweep to put Wu Ji back in a suppression technique, but he didn’t succeed. The two fell to the ground together and once again began the struggle.

Wu Ji put him in a lock, Shirai wiggled out of the lock. This exchange occurred back and forth, providing several scenes of anticipation. Both athletes were in top condition, and neither one could lock the opponent into a surrender. The second inning ended with a fierce battle.

After the last inning began, the fight became more intense, and stand up techniques such as boxing, kicking, and elbow kicking became even more exaggerated. The faces of the two people looked to be discolored for a while before they returned to the ground fighting technique. It was difficult to tell who had the upper hand.

The ground techniques were not just from wrestling either but incorporated strategies from judo and jiu-jitsu as well as boxing. Meng Fan watched the two as they entangled their feet and slammed into each other’s ribs. He took a few breaths. These people are freaking ruthless.

Bang.

When the time was up, a KO did not occur, nor did a surrender. At the end of the third inning, the decision would go to the three judges.

The final result was based on the fact that this was only an exhibition game. There was no obvious winner or loser, so the referees agreed upon a draw.

Wu Ji and Shirai also accepted this and stepped away to catch their breath.

Suddenly, an argument began among the crowd.

Meng Fan curiously looked over to realize it wasn’t the Chinese and Japanese athletes arguing with each other but that a Japanese athlete had begun a quarrel with a Thai athlete. They were arguing in English, and Meng Fan could tell their quarrel had to do with the outcome of this match. It seemed like one thought that Wu Ji had a superior standing technique, while the other believed Shirai’s grounding technique obviously had the upper hand.

Was it that obvious?

Of course not.

But the two began to get violent and almost started a fight.

After several more minutes of arguing, someone probably said something that triggered several of the other Japanese athletes among the audience. They weren’t scolding the Thai athlete but Wu Ji. It seemed like Wu Ji attempted an obvious foul, but the referees did not see it. In their language, Meng Fan could tell several contemptuous and discriminatory words were used against Wu Ji. Since Wu Ji naturally understood Japanese, he immediately raised his middle finger towards them.

At the same time, several Chinese athletes who understood the argument began to crowd in too and began to refute.

The screaming and arguing did not last long, for soon after, they immediately began to fight!

A few referees tried to prevent the violence, but there were twenty people on one side and thirty on the other. Athletes from several other countries had also been dragged into the mess. They didn’t dare try to break them up! They had to find someone quick before something serious happened!

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep