Weird Judo: The Ukrainian Cat Georgii Zantaraia
Photo courtesy of YASUYOSHI CHIBA/AFP via Getty Images
This article is part of our “long article” requests through Patreon! A huge thank you to Alteroc (@crwate01) for this excellent topic suggestion.
In an effort to learn more about combat sports, Alteroc laid out an article format that covers three athletes from a specific sport:
An all-time great
A specialist
Someone “weird”
This article covers #3 for the martial art and Olympic sport of Judo
Judo is not a sport where it’s easy to be weird. The IJF (the international governing body for the sport of Judo) has continually tightened the rules throughout the first decades of the 21st century in an attempt to promote high paced matches, but many of those rule changes have also made non-traditional styles of play competitively untenable. From time to time however athletes still emerge who find ways to break standard paradigms, technical and strategic innovators injecting life into a sport that can sometimes be burdened under the weight of its own traditions. One such competitor is the Georgian-born Ukrainian, Georgii Zantaraia.
Zantaraia burst onto the international Judo scene in the mid-late 00s with his first major success being a world championship in 2009. The Cat would go on to win 5 more world championship medals, though not another gold as of the time of writing. Though he never reached the podium at the Olympics Zantaraia has won many prestigious continental championships and grand slam events, a very successful career by any measure. But watching Zantaraia has never been about whether he’d win, but rather about whether or not you’d see something amazing. His Judo is some of the most dynamic and surprising of the last several decades combining preternatural balance and quickness with unusual creativity in gripping, throwing, and defense. If his technical influence on his contemporaries has been limited, it’s only because not very many of them possess the capacity to do what Zantaraia does.
Offense
The diktats of Judo suggest that the proper sequence for throwing an opponent is to get a dominant grip, one hand on the sleeve and one of the lapel or collar, create kuzushi (a momentary off balancing of your opponent), and then enter into a throw. This is how most high level Judoka approach the game, and while Zantaraia can play in that manner he’s had his greatest success bypassing one or more of those steps. When Eastern Bloc players first hit the scene in the 60s and 70s their non-traditional gripping gave them a significant edge against their more hidebound opposition, and while not all those grips are legal anymore, Zantaraia keeps carrying the torch for throwing from almost any gripping situation. The majority of Zantaraia’s big throws are hip throw variations, and The Cat pays much more attention to the position of his opponent and the direction of his momentum for timing his entries than he does his grips. If he has one (or sometimes not even one) grip but the opportunity for entry is there, he’ll shoot his hips in finding a grip during the entry.
Zantaraia has a right hand sleeve grip and is playing hand games with his left to deny his opponent a grip of his own. As he drives his Ecuadoran opponent to the edge of the mat he feels him push back slightly towards the center. That cue is enough for Zantaraia to enter with his hips taking a grip around the head for a koshi guruma ippon.
Here we have two examples of makikomi type hip throws. In each instance Zantaraia needs only a single grip and favorable momentum to enter into the throw.
Though it’s gotten him countered in some big matches, Zantaraia retains a fondness of shooting underhooks directly into a body lock from which he’ll his kosoto gake type throws. This is very, very risky but spectacular when it works.
Having jumped into a body lock Zantaraia hooks outside his opponent’s leg. This is a very double edged position where Georgii is almost as likely to get countered as he is to complete a throw himself, but more often than not his superb balance and proprioception allow him to come out on top.
The one major stylistic innovation Zantaraia helped popularize that has become part of the standard competitive repertoire is his unique take on uchi mata. Uchi mata normally requires a strong sleeve and collar grip to generate the tremendous pull necessary to load an opponent up on the hips before turning their back to the mat. Zantaraia, with his fondness for body locks, found another way to load an opponent up before turning them: hipping in with the hips forward to lift and only then turning the upper body to complete the throw. This technique has produced some utterly spectacular ippons.
The Cat gets a waist grip, but instead of turning in for his favorite hip throw he lifts with his left leg while hipping in. Once his opponent is in the air Zantaraia whips his upper body around to complete the clean full point score.
While his uchi mata has caught on, some of his technical wizardry is simply beyond imitation. His sense of his opponent’s weight and position is not something most Judoka possess, because if they could hit throws like this they certainly would:
Zantaraia hits a lightning quick entry to a seio nage off of a sleeve grip. As his opponent loads up on his hips, he feels him start to slide too far around to the front. In response The Cat drops his body weight and reverses the direction of the throw finishing it in the style of a modern kata guruma variant.
While Zantaraia’s offense is impressive, he actually gained notoriety first for his defense. Defense in Judo tends to be very meat and potatoes with most competitors relying on gripping and hip and body positioning to keep themselves safe. But that sort of basic defense doesn’t get you nicknamed ‘The Cat’.
Defense
Zantaraia’s extraordinary defense is not a result of his lack of basic defensive tools. He prevents grips and uses his hips like any other player. And like many Eastern European Judoka, he’s very skilled at pickup counters.
Zantaraia blocks the ouchi gari attempt from his Venezuelan opponent. Getting a body lock and lifting with his right leg he spins to his right while arching for a huge ura nage ippon.
What sets Zantaraia apart and made him such a phenom during his early career was his ability to spin out of throws. Generally Judoka will block a throwing motion as long as they can, maybe try to slide their hips around to either side to avoid going over, but once in the air there’s often little resistance to ending up on your back staring up at the lights. This was a game The Cat never consented to playing. Instead of trying to block the throw on a clean entry from his opponent he’d simply ride the momentum and cartwheel out. This is rare in Judo for a couple reasons: one, it’s very dangerous. Almost any throw can be taken safely on the tatami if you land on your side and know how to fall, but once you start trying to avoid getting put on your back your risk of arm, shoulder, and neck injuries skyrockets. The second reason cartwheeling out of throws is rarely seen is simply that most Judoka aren’t athletic enough to do it. You have to recognize the direction of the throw very early and throw yourself doubly fast in the opposite direction to cartwheel out, and the sensitivity and kinesthetic awareness required is rare. If you’re one of the few Judoka who can do it and is willing to incur the risk, it can produce some amazing moments.
Zantaraia’s opponent gets in deep on a drop seio nage. Knowing he’s caught The Cat simply does a one handed cartwheel and lands flat on his feet in front of his (surely surprised) opponent.
Another seio nage, another round off to avoid a score. Part of what makes this defense difficult is that uke (the one being thrown in Japanese terminology) has to forcibly go against the normal direction of the throw. Had Zantaraia been put thrown he would have rolled over his right shoulder. Instead, he throws his entire left side forward as he cartwheels out.
One of the risks of avoiding throws in this fashion is that even when you do it right it can hurt. Here Zantaraia avoids the seio nage, but both face plants and puts his right shoulder in a sketchy position in doing so. But, no points are scored.
While pure avoidance is good, Zantaraia’s defensive acumen also leaves him in position to hit spectacular counters.
Locked in a tight double body lock, someone is getting thrown. Zantaraia’s opponent gets in fairly deep on a sasae tsuri komi ashi attempt, but The Cat is able to ride over the throw and take advantage of his opponent’s momentum to hip him over to the mat for a full score.
Georgii Zantaraia is one of a kind. His high risk style on both offense and defense has been hard to make work against elite opponents (most notably two time world champion Rishod Sobirov who kept Zantaraia from the top of the podium at both the 2010 and 2011 world championships), but his creativity and elan have made him a favorite of Judo fans around the world for over a decade. In a sport whose potentates seem determined to enforce stylistic uniformity The Cat shows there’s still a place for a little weirdness.