Kahuku completed a 13-0 season, winning its eighth state championship since the first tournament was held in 1999.
It handed Saint Louis (9-2) its worst loss of the season in the process, holding the Crusaders to a season-low 14 points.
Saturday, November 21, 2015
Kahuku defeats St. Louis for the title
The No. 1 seed in the First Hawaiian Bank/HHSAA State Football Championships' Division I bracket manhandled second-seeded Saint Louis on Friday night, forcing six turnovers in a one-sided 39-14 victory at Aloha Stadium.
Saturday, November 14, 2015
Rousey KO'd by Holm
In arguably the biggest upset in UFC history, Holly Holm knocked out Ronda Rousey on Saturday in Melbourne, Australia, with a kick to the head in the second round to become the women's bantamweight champion in the main event of UFC 193.
Rousey, who blossomed into a superstar with a series of spectacular finishes, was never in the fight.
A multiple time boxing champion, Holm easily won the first round by picking apart Rousey with her hands. Rousey's coach, Edmond Tarverdyan, said before the bout that he felt Rousey could outbox Holm, but that battle wasn't even close.
Holm circled, moving in and out, firing both lefts and rights, landing with great accuracy. Rousey kept moving forward, but her defense was loose and she didn't have much of an answer for Holm's accurate, precise strikes.
"I'm trying to take it all in, but it's crazy," Holm said before breaking into tears.
Rousey got Holm down one time in the first round, and went after her famous arm bar. But Holm easily escaped and that was pretty much the extent of Rousey's offense.
At one point, Holm took Rousey down before immediately bouncing up.
When the first round ended, Rousey walked back to the corner and was clearly winded, bleeding from the nose and mouth. But she didn't do anything different in the second.
She attacked again when the bell range, but Holm again belted her from range. A Holm left badly hurt Rousey and spun her around. Holm put her arm on Rousey and turned her, then fired a kick to the head and Rousey went down hard, clearly out.
Holm went after her and landed a couple big punches from the top before referee Herb Dean stopped it.
"I just had so much help with everything," Holm said, who was as high as an 18-to-1 underdog before getting a lot of late wagering action.
Friday, November 06, 2015
Wednesday, November 04, 2015
Mufi remembers 50th State Wrestling
As I was flying from Maui to Honolulu recently, I picked up on a great tip from my bud Lester Kodama. A manager in Star-Advertiser’s circulation department, Lester and I were attending the Hawaii Lodging and Tourism Association general membership meeting at Wailea Marriott, and during a break he mentioned there was a “can’t miss” article about Ed Francis in the Hawaiian Airlines in-flight magazine spotlighting 50th State Wrestling.
For anyone who has followed wrestling in Hawaii, Francis is a household name. As a wrestler and promoter, he presided over a sport — some say entertainment — scene that drew thousands of fans every week, first to Civic Auditorium on King Street and then to HIC, which eventually became Neal Blaisdell Center. The added bonus was the televised wrestling special broadcasts “live” from a studio on a Saturday afternoon that was staged to promote and hype the upcoming weekly matches. It had a huge and devoted following and enjoyed quite a run.
As a rabid grappling fan growing up in Kalihi, I wasted no time when I settled into my seat to immediately peruse photos, reading about Francis and reminiscing about the good ol’ days brought back a lot of memories. I wasn’t into wrestling as much as I was into the locker-room interviews that Francis and Lord “Tallyho” Blears would host. I enjoyed the dialogue and theatrics that ensued. They were comical and entertaining — seeing King Ripper Collins, with his valet Beauregard in tow, proclaim himself the monarch of the islands (he pronounced Kauai “Kwa”) while lecturing us (his subjects) to get off our couches cus "your kind is talking to you.” Pampero Firpo, the Wild Bull of the Pampas aka The Missing Link, had everyone imitating his inimitable “Oohhh yeaahhh.”
Handsome Johnny Barend was a hoot masquerading as Batman with the theme song playing in the background and a cigar in his mouth, and whose standard response when Francis would ask how he was feeling, would reply: “Just wonderful, Mr. Francis, just wonderful. I love those wonderful Filipinos and they just love me.”
Then there was my favorite, Curtis "Da Bull" Iaukea, who would unabashedly talk about how proud he was of being Hawaiian and his Papakolea roots. Who could forget his classic pose in front of the television cameras sitting on a bench with his back to the audience and wearing his trademark dark glasses? And when Lord Blears would approach and query, “How are you feeling today, Bull?” he would shout out, “You know, Lord, I’m feeling so good today and the sun is shining over Diamond Head."
No one was a better storyteller than Iaukea. He had me riveted to the screen every time he appeared. For instance, he would brag about being a big tipper at local dining places, and how nice he was to his upcoming opponent Chief Billy White Wolf when he first moved to the Islands. Now they were slated to do battle “at the Civic on Wednesday night with the Hawaiian championship belt at stake.”
He recalled an incident after he treated the Chief to dinner at Matteo's. Specifically, as they were leaving the restaurant, after Da Bull had laid "a few hundred dollars on the table,” which he “customarily does,” Chief Billy White Wolf said he needed to “go back into Matteo’s to use the restroom.” Instead, he witnessed Chief go back in to “steal the money off the table.” Then, without missing a beat, he removed his dark glasses and stared into the camera and asked the statewide viewing audience, “Is this the kind of man you want representing Hawaii as its champion?”
I never forgot it was Iaukea who introduced me to the words “magna cum laude.” In this particular segment, he was boasting about the fact that he “graduated magna cum laude from Punahou and Blears and UC-Berkeley." He turned to Blears and asked, “Lord, do you know what magna cum laude means?” Naturally, he doesn’t give Blears any time to respond, as he blurted out the answer, “With high honors, Lord.”
-- Mufi Hannemann, Midweek, October 28, 2015
For anyone who has followed wrestling in Hawaii, Francis is a household name. As a wrestler and promoter, he presided over a sport — some say entertainment — scene that drew thousands of fans every week, first to Civic Auditorium on King Street and then to HIC, which eventually became Neal Blaisdell Center. The added bonus was the televised wrestling special broadcasts “live” from a studio on a Saturday afternoon that was staged to promote and hype the upcoming weekly matches. It had a huge and devoted following and enjoyed quite a run.
As a rabid grappling fan growing up in Kalihi, I wasted no time when I settled into my seat to immediately peruse photos, reading about Francis and reminiscing about the good ol’ days brought back a lot of memories. I wasn’t into wrestling as much as I was into the locker-room interviews that Francis and Lord “Tallyho” Blears would host. I enjoyed the dialogue and theatrics that ensued. They were comical and entertaining — seeing King Ripper Collins, with his valet Beauregard in tow, proclaim himself the monarch of the islands (he pronounced Kauai “Kwa”) while lecturing us (his subjects) to get off our couches cus "your kind is talking to you.” Pampero Firpo, the Wild Bull of the Pampas aka The Missing Link, had everyone imitating his inimitable “Oohhh yeaahhh.”
Handsome Johnny Barend was a hoot masquerading as Batman with the theme song playing in the background and a cigar in his mouth, and whose standard response when Francis would ask how he was feeling, would reply: “Just wonderful, Mr. Francis, just wonderful. I love those wonderful Filipinos and they just love me.”
Then there was my favorite, Curtis "Da Bull" Iaukea, who would unabashedly talk about how proud he was of being Hawaiian and his Papakolea roots. Who could forget his classic pose in front of the television cameras sitting on a bench with his back to the audience and wearing his trademark dark glasses? And when Lord Blears would approach and query, “How are you feeling today, Bull?” he would shout out, “You know, Lord, I’m feeling so good today and the sun is shining over Diamond Head."
No one was a better storyteller than Iaukea. He had me riveted to the screen every time he appeared. For instance, he would brag about being a big tipper at local dining places, and how nice he was to his upcoming opponent Chief Billy White Wolf when he first moved to the Islands. Now they were slated to do battle “at the Civic on Wednesday night with the Hawaiian championship belt at stake.”
He recalled an incident after he treated the Chief to dinner at Matteo's. Specifically, as they were leaving the restaurant, after Da Bull had laid "a few hundred dollars on the table,” which he “customarily does,” Chief Billy White Wolf said he needed to “go back into Matteo’s to use the restroom.” Instead, he witnessed Chief go back in to “steal the money off the table.” Then, without missing a beat, he removed his dark glasses and stared into the camera and asked the statewide viewing audience, “Is this the kind of man you want representing Hawaii as its champion?”
I never forgot it was Iaukea who introduced me to the words “magna cum laude.” In this particular segment, he was boasting about the fact that he “graduated magna cum laude from Punahou and Blears and UC-Berkeley." He turned to Blears and asked, “Lord, do you know what magna cum laude means?” Naturally, he doesn’t give Blears any time to respond, as he blurted out the answer, “With high honors, Lord.”
Imagine the reaction of my sixth-grade teacher Ms. Thelma Takemoto when I said to her at Fern School on Monday morning that my goal was to graduate from school and college magna cum laude. She gave me this quizzical look yet commended me, but had to ask, “Who taught you those words, Muliufi?"
To her astonishment, I beamed and smiled, "Curtis Da Bull Iaukea."
I last met up with Da Bull after he had long retired and I was working for Gov. George Ariyoshi as an administrative assistant. I was given the choice assignment to help him with his beach concession permit. I took the opportunity to unveil my impersonation of his fabled locker room interviews, which made him chuckle and marvel that I remembered so many of his lines.
Members of my family were some of the biggest fans of wrestling. My grandfather, Paramount Chief Pinemua Soliai, religiously followed those wrestlers of Samoan ancestry: Al Lolotai, Neff Maiava and Gil Ane. He would be driven in all the way from Laie to go to the Civic, and if he was staying with us in Kalihi, well, you knew what some in my family would be doing Wednesday night.
One of the hilarious memories of our clan occurred after a match that Lolotai lost. No one had noticed that my grandpa had left his seat. So here we are looking for him, and lo and behold, we see that he had found his way ringside and was scolding Lolotai for being on the losing end.
Grandpa rejected the notion that wins and losses are predetermined in the world of professional wrestling, so there was no sense of even trying to convince him otherwise.
Mahalo, Gentleman Ed Francis, Lord Blears and the scores of wrestlers for the legacy and indelible imprint they have left behind.
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