The Shintaro Higashi Show - Paris Judo Recap Part 2 - Are too many shidos ruining Judo?

Episode Date: August 26, 2024

Here’s Part 2 of Shintaro and Peter’s Paris Olympics Judo recap! Shintaro and Peter talk about Abe Hifumi’s dominant performance, Hashimoto’s bronze medal, brutal final between Heydarov and Gaba, Nagase’s masterclass performance, and an exciting match between Murao and Bekauri. Shintaro and Peter then look into the statistics of Judo at the Paris Olympics, exploring whether the increase in shidos is harming the sport or if it's just a reflection of the evolving strategies in high-level judo. Amazing statistics from DrSeoiNage: https://www.reddit.com/r/judo/comments/1eozopr/paris_2024_olympic_individual_stats_top/ (00:00:00) Introduction (00:00:55) Abe Hifumi’s dominant performance (00:03:54) Hashimoto’s bronze medal (00:06:59) Heydarov vs Gaba (00:07:43) Masterclass by Nagase (00:10:18) Great match between Murao and Bekauri (00:11:08) Were there too many shidos?

A little controversial, yeah. And one of the throws that Murao hit, I thought was a score, but then they looked at it and they said, okay, the back didn't hit. 18, so it's lower a little bit. Although you could even argue that it's a little lower. But what is the standard deviation? I don't know. I don't have that, unfortunately. Come on, Peter.

So why do you think people had this perception that Judo was overly decided by Shido? Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the shintaro higashi show peter you today we're going to do part two of the olympic games in paris i know it's been already weeks since it wrapped up but we just have not been able to coordinate and we're doing part one and then my kid walked in and i had to go and it was like one of those things but part part two, here it is. Part two, part two. Yeah. So we, last time we ended with Deguchi and Homimi, like the gold medal match. And won that.

But now we're going to start. Let's start with Abe, Hifumi. Abe, Hifumi and Uta also, the siblings. I mean, we talked about Uta last time. Like the heartbreaking loss. The heartbreaking, yeah. The siblings? I mean, we talked about Uta last time.

Like, the heartbreaking loss. The heartbreaking, yeah. And then I think after that, like, because Abe, Uta fought first, right? Like, so Abe, like, he had an extra, like, bit of motivation, I think. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. But, man, that's got to be brutal. Like, you're out there.

You're, like, warming up. And then, well, whatever it is. And, you know, it's like, you're there. And then your sister loses. And she's like, oh, my God. And then he whatever it is and yeah you know you know it's like you're there and then your sister loses and she's like oh my god then he's like yeah i know he like i gotta get out there too like i gotta get out there like i gotta stay focused you know i want to be there for her right and i'm sure he was but like that's got to be awkward i know and then it was i think it kind of goes to show how tough he is mentally, I guess, because it could have really affected him. Yeah, I'm sure it did.

But, man, I got to tell you, though, he is unbelievable. He is exceptional. He ripped through the division. He's at the right weight class, his size, strength, the way he does judo. His Sode Osoto combination, the way he, like, rips and takes the hands off, the way he's defensive with the hands, like, combination the way he like rips and takes the hands off the way he's defensive with the hands like pushing the hands down and then going back up he rips the hand to the siding enter like all his entries all his setups they're so on point no one can really

stop him right now with that you know what what else is there to even say about it you know yeah really like like he basically did what everyone expected him to do. I mean, he really perfected his game. It's crazy how he keeps doing that Soto to Osoro stuff even though everyone knows that he's going to do. I mean, it's that classic dilemma, right? It's like he starts setting up the wrist and starts ripping at it or defensively. He has a couple of good gripping setups.

That's where all begins. You have to shut it down before they even get to that place. And if he cannot do that, or defensively like he has a couple of good gripping setups that's where all begins you know you have to shut it down before they even get to that place and if he cannot do that he'll like wait for the hand to come

and he'll catch it and then once he catches it he steps across and then throws the arm across and now already it's like it's your best it's whoever's best guess

Osorio Osorio Osorio Osorio right you know what I mean and then he also has like the Marote off the lapel like he's very... It's not like a lot of depth.

Yeah, brings the elbow. Yeah. I think, truthfully, Maruyama has more depth, you know, in terms of, like, the way he enters Uchimaki. Yeah, yeah. He does a lot more techniques. He has a lot more patterns. You know, his techniques are... It's a very different style, right?

Yeah, yeah. It's a classic, katsuki k which is like lifting on your back and then you know lengthy you know also which is another kind of uh right right right i forgot what that style was called in japanese but uh yeah what uh i mean i'm sure they push each other up like that i mean there's water rivalry right yeah kind of feel bad for mario mario but sure yeah there's what it is so yeah he destroyed it he destroyed it he crushed everyone no one had an answer what's the next recapping point yeah so speaking of the you know unfortunate uh athlete i think hashimoto yeah because uh he was over he

was he's still an amazing judoka but he had always been overshadowed by ono in the same weight class now ono's retired hashimoto got another shot yeah and yeah now like he couldn't even make it to the olympics before because of ono but now he made it and fought his way through bronze i'm sure he probably wanted the gold you know man i saw him at worlds yeah and he gets caught a lot i'm telling you he gets caught a lot i've seen him at other grand slams and stuff like he gets caught you know gets favorable calls sometimes i mean everyone kind of does but he gets caught you know and but what i do like about uh hashimoto's style is he's not shy about forcing penalties yeah he plays the the game really well. He pressures forward pressures forward. He'll force the guy out of bounds

So look at the referee and go like this with his hands up. Yeah, I don't like has a little bit of arrogance to him Yeah, yeah Yeah, and then he has a little bit of that from Oh No I think and those two guys used to really push each other and it's like a leaked over effect It's like a residual effect you know yeah very similar style the way they look at the ref like oh what the hell is this and then when he's pushing forward and then they can't really do much and they go for a bad drop attack he'll posture up and they'll be like oh yeah yeah look at this guy dropping and flopping

you know so he does play the game really good and you know's also a great thrower, but he gets caught. I've seen him get caught with XSI. What do you think that is? Is he not focusing on his grips, or is it easier for people to figure him out? Compared to Ono. Ono doesn't get caught a lot. Yeah, Ono is so dominant. Ono is one of those guys, when he gets his dominant grip, it's over.

Ono is so dominant And Ono is one of those guys It's like When he gets his dominant grip It's over And even when you have Dominant grips Like that over the back You know

Top side Head control He puts the hand in the armpit And he does the spinning back Uchimata Or Tomonage Or Ibesa Osotogare too Yeah

And he has three or four attacks From losing positions as well That's very powerful That's not even like A bailout attack No The only thing that could Potentially be

Considered a bailout attack That he does, I'm specifically talking about right versus right when he's in losing position, is that Tomonage that he does, the crossbody Tomonage. But outside of that, he's trying to throw you from losing position. He's the master of that. You know what I mean? And I don't know if Hashimoto has that kind of a skill.

And a lot of guys don't. A lot of guys can only throw from waiting position. Even the best guys, a lot of guys, when they're losing position, they have a couple of bailout throws, and that's about it. But Ono, really, he has three or four throws that he could throw you with from losing position. So it's like, all right, damned if I outgrip him, and damned if I don't.

It's horrible. You know what I mean? Yeah, I guess Hashimoto, he goes for that one-handed sore he does it's like yes yeah but that's not really like a losing position throw yeah yeah yeah all right there was that and then i don't know if you watch this but next up is i want to talk to you about hey darov and gaba like it's a gold medal match It went it was a five minutes and 24 second golden score match That was at the end like it was brutal like they were out. That's a long time That's like a 10 minute match, you know, judo to not get stalled out, penalty'd out, but 10 minutes is a very difficult feat they were both on two shiros and never got called and until uh hey drove uh

like kind of like did like a cool kind of thing yeah like kind of push him down yeah push him down to the ground i mean gaba couldn't even stand up after that yeah yeah i yeah that's uh well but it was an amazing match um i think the next one I thought was good Was Nagase I mean Another one They're kind of Still dominant

Yeah Yeah He Did you I don't know if you watched the final But he actually went Tani Otoshi The other way

Like he It was like Yeah with the knee drop The knee that slides behind The other person's leg Extremely dangerous I don't know I had never seen him

Do that Yeah No And you know It's becoming more I've seen it three or four times And it's you know slides behind the other person's leg extremely dangerous i don't know i've never seen him do that yeah no and you know it's becoming more pop i've seen it three or four times and it's you know when you like you know you take a drop step in wrestling where your knee goes to the floor yeah yeah you're doing that into the person's leg and sliding that knee down the back of their calf so a lot of things can go wrong i don't suggest anyone in the dojo who's doing judo at a recreational level to do it because it's going to be a disaster you know not taiyatoshi already is dangerous but now you're trying to like scrape the knee and drive your way down the person's leg you're gonna have knee

issues you're gonna break someone's leg you're gonna fucking destroy their ankle you know so yeah yeah i don't really recommend it you know if you're listening to it but check it out it's pretty cool to watch. That might be sort of like the new thing that people are going to start doing internationally. Whenever an Olympic champ does something that's kind of semi-unique, the knee drop behind into the uranage

has been already popular. Everyone in Kokushikan is already drilling it. Yeah. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. But it's like this specific Taniya Toshi he did was great. Because I think it was an answer to, because I think, I forget who was in the final against Nagase,

but because Nagase is known for his ashiwaza, like he's very tall and long, so he goes osoto and ashiwaza and all that. So I'm assuming that everyone was hip checking him, so he decided to go the other way yeah you know what I like about Nagase too

he doesn't Uchimata doesn't rely on his height at all if you see his Uchimata his leg never gets above his hips oh cause he's like

he's so good with the leverage I mean he's like Ashiguruma Uchimata almost look the same I feel like yeah

he doesn't really rely on his like mobility and his leg cause a lot of when you think Uchimata almost look the same. I feel like. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He doesn't really rely on his like mobility and it's like, there's a lot of that. When you think Uchimata, you think like tall guy, long legs, you know, six o'clock, you know,

yeah. Leg in the sky kind of a thing. Not like that at all. Yeah. Which I love that. And I love that because a short guy could theoretically do it then. Yeah. Maybe you should make a video.

You probably have one. Probably. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I have short legs so I'm not very mobile so yeah I have short legs too

I had to do something like that too yeah alright so that was Nagase and then the next was that was notable

to me was Murawa and Bekauri it's kind of a controversial match a little controversial yeah I thought You know but

When they slowed down the replay Because they were Taino and Murao Yeah And one of the throws That Murao hit I thought was a score But then they looked at it

And they said Okay the back didn't hit You know Or like he got out And then came back Yeah But then at the very end Murao like

Went in for something Taino Taino Toshi And then Beka end morale like went in for something tiny otoshi and then back over he did like a half flag sasai yeah and then like caught it caught the foot and then like they gave it to him you know the referees made their decision i think it's fine but man morale's a champ both of those guys champs you know yeah and we're already one more right like in tokyo i think it took all that yeah yeah well anyway there's like a little bit of controversy there um i thought it was like a look at it it's like tons of controversy of like everyone's talking about cheetos and penalties and the referees you know yeah but you have an interesting statistic that you put yeah so i'll

yeah so now i think we kind of want to focus on this aspect, kind of like the stats. So there was an amazing post by Dr. Seoi Nage. Not me. I didn't know skills to do this. I'll look into the description, but he compiled all these very interesting stats. So let's start with this

what do you think was the top technique uh in the olympics the top top scoring technique all right all right let's do this is it katakuma sanai uchimaru did i hit it yeah you hit you hit it okay hit you hit it okay Karaguma no it was a drop Seoi, Seoi Otoshi he could have been a fighter yeah okay 39 and then the next one is Yokoshio Gatame 31 so it's not really a throw but you know I gotta tell you about some of the statistics all right so like Seoi Otoshi so anything that you drop right so yeah considered like sometimes even if it's not like a clear kataguma like ripping it it may be classified as serotoshi like if you go reverse or whatever it is and then sometimes even if it's sotetsuri komigoshi if you drop to your knees it

could be considered serotoshi did you know if you go for the triangle choke turnover the sankaku turnover some people used to call it sankaku gatame like a hold down with a triangle but that's also considered yokoshio gatame according to oh I wonder yeah I don't know

the methodology here yeah yeah so it's like the way we code certain things to trigger certain right

numerical values like those things kind of you gotta kind of look at that and the only reason why I know that is because

when I would go commentate on the IJF I would say things like oh drop senagi and you drop taiyatoshi they go no like when you're taking these statistics you can't just make up new oh they want you to use the canonical form it's got to be the canonical form from the kodokan list so if you do taiyatoshi but you're dropping and then it's like regardless of the elbow position, they're going to consider it

Seio Toshi. I see. So, a lot of things fall under Seio Toshi. So, a lot of more things fall under Seio Toshi as opposed to an Osorigari. It's a freaking Osorigari.

That's right. There's not a lot of, you know what I mean? So, you're saying the drop Taito could also be like is classified asiyuu Toshi? I'm not certain, but that's my assumption.

So that's my guess. I didn't clarify this with anyone. I'm almost certain based on my own opinion. Yeah. It's my best guess. It's my best guess. So don't quote me on this, seriously. And if you guys don't agree with me my it's my best guess it's my best guess so don't quote me on this seriously Yeah, if you guys don't agree with me, it's fine

Put it in the comments. Maybe yeah, maybe that was like a like a quirk in the How they classify things I mean yeah like Seio Toshi could a lot of things I mean it kind of goes to show the versatility of the throw right like there's so many ways to like finish it Yeah, that look completely different yeah but yeah anyway so there was that but and the next most popular throw was ochi gari and next was yeah so those things are pretty seonagi system on my higashibrand.com you can buy uchimara and you can also buy the ochi uchimata system on yoshibrand.com just so you guys know yeah i mean we'll link it down here yeah everyone's everyone's having

so much success with those throws you know so there's that and then okay now i think the meaty part the shida this is the juicy part okay the juicy part so i'm not gonna reveal the stats yet but if you look at reddit like during the olympics man like every other post was about how judo is ruined now it's all shido game and all yeah right yeah so that's a that was a perception for some yeah but now do you know like what's the Like for the worlds Yeah What the percentage Of the Wins By Shiro

Like third Shiro Do you remember I don't So I think What I heard Is about 20% Of the matches Were decided by

Third Shiro So one out of five matches Yeah Decided by the referees Or not It's like the typical I shouldn't say Decided by thees, but they were penalized. Penalized, yeah.

And guess what it was for the Olympics? I mean, you already told me, so I know. Yeah, so it's 18%, which is... 18%, okay. Yeah, typical. I thought you said 20%. Well, so that's like the average. What I heard is like about 20% of the matches on average in the international circuit is decided by Thurisito.

And Olympics, well, it's not different at all. 18%. So it's lower a little bit. You could even argue that it's a little lower. What is the standard deviation? I don't know. I don't have that, unfortunately. Come on, Peter.

You're the data guy dude but i would i would i would assume that two percent i mean the standard deviation will uh it's like it's not the difference one point eight not but let's say plus about significant yeah my educated guess is that it's not a significant difference you know to think so? to say that the Olympics was lower than other tournaments I would say it would be

because the referees are a little bit more cautious about deciding the matches oh you think? so they'll be a little bit more lenient would be my guess

you know not giving out shitos yeah I mean how much could it really range you know like what is the

I don't know I have no idea so maybe i'll i'll if you're watching this dr say you're not again maybe you are it'd be great if you could get some like more statistical like details like standard deviation and whatnot but but there's it it's about the same, if not lower. So why do you think people had this perception that judo was overly decided by Shido? It's a Shido match. I think a lot of the guys who watch it during the Olympics don't usually watch all the other international events maybe. That's a possibility.

And then when one person says it, they're like, oh yeah, now that's in your head and that's your perception. Now all of a sudden you're watching it from the right yeah there definitely is a lot more penalties now given i feel like than than it was before i'm not sure i'm guessing it's also another perception thing of mine yeah you know but with any sort of grappling sport if you don't penalize the athletes for not doing stuff they're not going to do anything you know they're going to hold off stall there's going to be a good percentage of players that are always going to try to play the game with the forcing the penalties or playing the out of bounds area you know it's a strategical thing think about it if i'm going against someone

who's a much better thrower than me let's just say they're taller and i can't get close and they're better at gripping and they're trying to do there are all these different things let's just say for instance they're good counters to like reach him out or something like that because they have long legs and they know how to counter well. And every single factor kind of matches up for me to be disadvantageous. What am I going to do? Lock up with him and try to throw him? No, I'm going to try to out-hustle him and try to force penalties on the guy.

And then maybe in the meantime, he steps out of bounds a few times. I'm up two penalties. He's getting a little bit tired. He gets sloppy. He goes for a shitty attack. i put a little bit more pressure on the ground and then he goes for a second shitty attack and i win you know yeah but if we did randori for 20 minutes maybe he'll throw me six times yeah so it's like a good strategical thing to be able to do you know i don't think it's i think it's impossible to kind of like not have any penalties because then,

you know, it's not going to be fun. It's not going to be exciting. There's a fine line of like having the penalties, not having any penalties. And then, I think, you know,

one out of five matches decided on Cheetos. I mean, is that bad? You know, maybe it should be one out of ten. You know, maybe that's a metric that they should strive for. You know? I don't know. I don't know if that's uh a lot of times if you have a number like that

even the like you end up uh optimizing for the wrong thing because there's no like who is to say one out of ten is the right number you know so what is it optimization of outcome or something like that you know uh five percent of princeton has to be of a certain demographic so what no never mind but i think a lot you see that a lot i mean my work line of work like so like in ai for example like you have a data set and then everyone uses as a benchmark and then say oh everyone just tries to hit like a higher and higher higher number and then what happens is all the models are become so specialized for that data set instead of and then the data set itself is not the best it may not represent the reality right yeah the same thing with the judo match sure like it may

not like a competition match may not be most representative of what judo is you could make a case like that but and that's what's happening all these athletes are really like sure like ideally we would want everyone to just throw each other for Ippon. Yeah. But the reality is that it's pretty impossible. Like, these guys are so evenly matched. Yeah, they're all really good. They are, like, phenomenal athletes. And I'll tell you, even the ones you guys complain about, like the, oh, you know, I don't know. Like, some guy wins by Shiro all the time.

Yeah. They will, if you go Rando with them, they will rip your head off. And you know, let me tell you something. You're not watching the first two, three rounds. Majority of the guys

are watching the final block. And the closer you get to the final block, the more evenly they are. And not only are they evenly matched, they know each other. They fought each other

six, seven, nine times in competition multiple times. They studied each other. Of course, you know,

it's, oh, I'm going against Abe. I fought him four times, whatever it is. He's going to go for Sode. I got to watch gotta watch out for it you're gonna drop your elbows and get your hips back you know i mean i'm gonna make sure that whenever he goes for so they i try to force a penalty and then from there trying to work the clock do newaza maybe he steps out of bounds i force a penalty there you know what i mean like you have to play that game a little bit because dr sar Serenaga actually had statistics about that.

You would think that, my perception was that in the prelim rounds, you'll have more throws. But the third Shido, out of all the third Shidos that happened, 82% of them were in prelim. And the final blocks was only 18% so most of the shiro batch, the third shiros happened in the prelims

which is different from what we, our perception is let me, let me, you know try to give you a couple of reasons why that may be one, the referees are a lot more lenient, more lenient. There's leniency of the referee. Especially as the tournament gets along, more eyes are on the final block, etc.

That's one idea. Two, the more uneven the matchups are, the more defensive one plays and the other person who's more skilled is capable of forcing those penalties. What we need to do is have a regression analysis i think and have many different and see which ones really kind of yeah you know what i mean like uh how many pawns in the preliminary rounds how many more

i'm talking about the prelims and then the referee and i don't know i'm just talking out of my butt here so your second explanation that the better athletes judokas are better at forcing the shiro which is true he had uh dr dr serenaga had that stats too so uh when third shiro happens i know like i i want to talk dr serenaga if you are listening to this please let contact us and we can talk to you about this. If anyone knows who he is, tag him in the thing below. Or she is. We don't know who this person is. Yeah, she.

Wherever it may be, we would love to talk to you. But then, so when the third shooter happens, 71% of the time, the higher ranked athlete won. Which is consistent with what your explanation is. Interesting. So there is not, it was hard.

Yeah, like people may like, so yeah, 30%, 29% of the time, the lower ranked player kind of had that, play that game that you just described and they eventually beat the supposedly higher seeded athlete and then just because you're higher ranked I'm guessing they went by

the IJF ranking maybe probably yeah 100% well anyway so that's like a little bit of interesting stats very interesting intrigued but yeah so I all in all of interesting stats. Very interesting. Yeah. Intrigued. But yeah, so all in all, my take is that the frequency of Shido is not, I think, yeah,

a lot of times, I think a lot of people who are not regular Judo watchers are watching the Olympics and then realizing that a lot of the matches more matches than they expected are determined by shiro's maybe they were expecting like yeah one out of ten matches and then really it's like to double that but but you know regardless i think every olympic cycle they re-examine the rules yeah and me being an ijf insider i've seen sort of the symposium style discussions that they have after every competition. They look at the statistics. They look at the data.

They have conversations about it. And all the people who are on the IJF circuit as referees, they're some of the most knowledgeable people I've ever met when it comes to these judo rules and stuff. So I think we're in a good hand for them to actually sit back and analyze all this stuff and then try to move judo forward in a positive direction. Because they're not sitting around talking about how can we do judo harm you know they're trying to make this better you know call me corporate man or whatever it is whatever you want to call me but you know if you haven't been in that room uh you know you haven't been in that room really you know what i mean and uh you know i was humbled because i was walking in there like oh i know everything and then they're quizzing me about stuff and i'm like oh boy like i don't really know the answer to some of this stuff you know yeah so like uh yeah i think uh

we just kind of got to look forward and see what rule changes they make and uh how it's going to affect the next quad and i think grappling there's always you know look at freestyle wrestling look at brazilian jiu-jitsu you know they're all they're all of them every single grappling artist still tinkering around with the rules, tinkering around with different things. You know what I mean?

Like, it's just gonna, it's just the nature of the beast. You know? Yeah. So, yeah, and then there's no,

like, why would they try to, I don't know, like, make Judo worse, I guess. Maybe just, I mean,

whatever that means, making Judo worse. But either way i think i'm excited for the new changes maybe it'll be hopefully it'll be more exciting but all in all the olympics uh i thought it was very exciting there was a lot of drama that we talked about and you know it's it's great to see these phenomenal athletes compete with each other you know so and yeah although it was a great experience how about you what are your what overall thoughts oh i love it it was very exciting i love that

you know i think nbc streaming peacock thing was not that good you know but yeah i can't do anything about that nbc or the peacock you know i just know that judo tv does a great job i think maybe they should pay for licensing rights next time to be able to stream it for us to stream it. But I don't even know if that's in the wheelhouse, if that's in the scope of something that NBC will do. I don't know if there's any incentive for them to do that. I mean, yeah, but we'll see. I mean, money, but, you know.

Yeah, well, exactly. They might want, you know, okay, give us $100 million for the rest of stream Judo. You know what I mean? And they're not going to make that money back. So I think there is a number. I think would it be worth, you know, but what I would like to see is to be able to watch Judo on judotv.com, you know, using discount code Shintaro. I mean, the interface is great.

It's great. I want to be able to click through the matches. That's the number one thing I love about Judo TV. I could go back and watch anybody's match. And I don't have to sit through a nine-minute barn burner. I can just be like, oh, he scored a Wazari at the three-minute and a half mark. Click that. Bang.

Happens. Two Shidos were giving two minutes in the goal score. Watch those. What were they? Okay. Yeah, that was definitely a fake attack. Okay. He stepped out of bounds.

Okay. That's legit. What happens next? This guy slams all the guy nine minutes in. Let's go to that. Beautiful title. All right, let's see what happens in the next match. Yeah.

So you can just pick and choose your favorites and just watch. It's just like the interface is ten times better. You know what I mean? Yeah. And you can hear me commentate. I'm going to the Cadet Worlds in Peru next week. So you guys check that out woo

alright yeah and then thank you to our sponsors who do we have now Peter Levon, Jason, Joe still

Levon, Jason, Joe thank you so much Levon, James, and Joe thank you for your your support yeah yeah next one

yeah that's right so thanks for listening guys and then thank you very much yeah we'll see you guys in the next episode