History Wrestling / TsuyoshiKohsaka

* ThreeAmigos: With Maurice Smith and Frank Shamrock, naturally as The Alliance. He was also part of the Japanese "B" team along with Wrestling/KiyoshiTamura and Masayuki Naruse for the World Mega Battle Tournament of 1998.

* DoesNotLikeShoes: Zig-zagged. Sometimes wrestled wearing only footguards instead of his full kneeboots, but also wore wrestling shoes in many of his MMA matches.

-->--c'''Wrestling/AkiraMaeda'''

-->--'''Wrestling/AkiraMaeda'''

->''"Shortly after Maurice Smith fought Conan Silveira, I fought Tsuyoshi Kohsaka in RINGS. It was another thirty minutes fight. It was thirty minutes of complete agony."''
-->--'''Frank Shamrock'''

->''"Technique and physical strength are for sure a factor, but Kohsaka-san taught me that mental strength is the most important aspect."''
-->--'''Yuta Watanabe''', Kohsaka trainee

* EscapeArtist: Once the fight hit the ground, Kohsaka could escape from just any hold. The most known instance was when he was surprisingly caught in an armbar by Chris Haseman, and still he could (even more) surprisingly get out of it. It also played big time in his legendary pro wrestling match against Wrestling/KiyoshiTamura, in which they locked, escaped and reversed for half an hour.

* GoodOldFisticuffs: He had a solid striking, and after training with Maurice Smith and the Yonekura Boxing Gym people, his hands became some of his most dangerous weapons on the ring. It can be even said that, despite his reputation, Kohsaka became arguably better at brawling than at his famed ground game.

* [[IKnowKarate I Know]] UsefulNotes/{{Judo}}: A judoka of level, he got sponsored by Toray Corporation since he turned pro until he had to retire by knee injury. Interestingly enough, according to rumors, he might have been a part of the remnant kosen judo competition. Kohsaka also trained UsefulNotes/CatchWrestling with Wrestling/AkiraMaeda and UsefulNotes/{{Kickboxing}} with Maurice Smith, and has a black belt in UsefulNotes/BrazilianJiuJitsu (though it was actually given to him by Yuki Nakai after an impressive roll; Kohsaka never trained the art itself).

** During his match with Fedor Emelianenko, Kohsaka elbowed him for accident and reopened a wound, which made the referee stop the match. It would have been a no contest had the match been celebrated outside of a tournament, but as they were in midst of the King of Kings league, they had to get a winner of the round, and they chose Kohsaka because Fedor could not compete.

* SpellMyNameWithAnS: His surname is sometimes spelt as Kosaka or Kousaka.

* TheStoic: A paradigmatic Japanese fighter, ready to endure any beatdown or loss.
* StoneWall: On the mat, his submission defense was ''crazy''. To date, the only guy who managed to submit Kohsaka (aside from Frank Shamrock, to whom Kohsaka voluntarily forfeited a point) was Jean-Jacques Machado, multiple world champion in BJJ, and it was at the ADCC championships, where the grappling-only ruleset restricted the rest of Kohsaka's skills.

* BaldOfAwesome: His signature buzzcut.

As usual, you can find the basics at [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsuyoshi_Kohsaka The Other Wiki]].

* GradualGrinder: Often resorted to grinding punches and leg kicks to open opportunities for takedowns.

* AchillesHeel: Though he was a superb defensive grappler with great technique, TK had a notorious difficulty to finish his opponents, and actually lost many matches for not being able to secure a submission. It was best exemplified by his ADCC bout with Rolles Gracie, as TK basically dominated it by launching a ton of submission attempts (some of them very close), only for failing them all and going to lose to Gracie through the points of a single guard pass.

** Kohsaka's career is oddly similar to the Shooto fighter Yuki Nakai: they are both skilled university judoka (Nakai in Hokkaido and TK in Senshu), both gained fame by performing well in a primitive MMA tournament (Vale Tudo Japan and Lumax Cup respectively), both were worfed in grappling rules by Jean-Jacques Machado (Shooto and ADCC) and both later became trainers of renown with important teams (Paraestra Shooto Gym and Alliance-Squared). They even started working together recently when Kohsaka was appointed consultant of the JBJJF by Nakai.

* BadassTeacher: In the Alliance-Square dojo. Among his trainees are Hirotaka Yokoi, Hiroyuki Ito, Yuta Watanabe, Katsunori Kikuno

* BrokenAce: He was good enough in mixed martial arts for RINGS to put him to shoot from his beginnings, but this factor played against him when he passed for too many shoots through the years and started feeling up the battle wear.

* [[BaldOfAwesome Buzzcut of Awesome]]

** Conversely, TK's fight against Frank Shamrock was a call forward to Frank facing Tamura two years later. The two bouts went the same way, with the RINGS aces dominating and stretching Shamrock in every possible fashion, and Shamrock amazingly fending off just everything and getting a lucky guillotine choke to score the decisive point. (In Tamura's case, it went to a draw because Frank lost the point for punching Kiyoshi close-fisted later in the match).

** Also, he defines his patented grappling style as "TK Jiu Jitsu" (before that, his groundwork had been refered by commentators as "TK no Sekai" or "TK's World", very much like Joe Rogan's modern CatchPhrase of "he is in his world now!").
* CastSpeciation: He is the least mentioned member of The Alliance in a big part because the grappler role of the cross-training they practised was already filled by Shamrock, so TK, being another shoot-stylist just like Frank, had little more to add to the mix. However, he is sometimes cited by Frank as an important contributor because TK's grappling style was significantly different from his, more specialized in defense and survival, which Frank would have benefited greatly of for his attrition fights against Enson Inoue and Tito Ortiz.

* {{Contortionist}}: Downplayed, his TK Scissors requires great flexibility for it to work.

** The match between TK and Creator/BasRutten was billed as such by UsefulNotes/UltimateFightingChampionship, which hyped Kohsaka as a "master of the TK Guard" (even if the thing was not very clear, Brazilian jiu-jitsu was booming at the time, so anything related to a new grappling position was huge) and mega-hyped Rutten as "the World's Greatest Mixed Martial Artist" (period).

** Drew with Minotauro Nogueira, who at the time had steamrolled the RINGS native team including Tamura and was thought to be able to submit just everybody. Kohsaka actually outgrappled him at the second round.
** Pulling a judo hip throw in no-gi competition is hard, but when you perform a clean one in a Pan American Greco-Roman champion like [[Creator/RandyCouture Randy Freaking Couture]], even if you end losing the match by decision, you know you are someone.

* DoNotGoGentle: With Mark Hunt. It was famous that Hunt had a concrete chin and hands to match, and Tsuyoshi knew that he would never knock him out with his modest kickboxing skills, but he tried nonetheless, and actually hit him hard in some instances. He came out throwing everything and went throwing everything.
* EscapeArtist: Once the fight hit the ground, Kohsaka could escape from just any hold. The most known instance was when he was surprisingly caught in an armbar by Chris Haseman and still he could (even more) surprisingly get out of it. It also played big time in his legendary pro wrestling match against Wrestling/KiyoshiTamura, in which they locked, escaped and reversed for half an hour.

* FishOutOfWater: Subverted. When thrown into the UFC ruleset, Kohsaka performed better than most of the ther shoot-style wrestlers who did the transition too. It was because, thanks to his judo training, Kohsaka's skills were centered around positional control and not diving for a joint lock like the boys from Pancrase, which enabled him to deal with ground and pound and strikes to the face in better way than them.

* GoodOldFisticuffs: He had a solid striking and dangerous hands, and after training with Maurice Smith and the Yonekura Boxing Gym people, he became arguably better at it than at his famed ground game.

* [[IKnowKarate I Know]] UsefulNotes/{{Judo}}: A judoka of level, he got sponsored by Toray Corporation since he turned pro until he had to retire by knee injury. Interestingly enough, according to some sources he might have been a part of the remnant kosen judo competition. Kohsaka also trained UsefulNotes/CatchWrestling with Wrestling/AkiraMaeda and UsefulNotes/{{Kickboxing}} with Maurice Smith, and has a black belt in UsefulNotes/BrazilianJiuJitsu (though it was actually given to him by Yuki Nakai after an impressive roll; Kohsaka has never trained the art).
* InformedAbility: He is often called a "submission fighter" by MMA databases, pretty much just because he knows a lot about grappling and has innovated a position. However, Kohsaka rarely finished his fights by submission, unless facing low level opponents, and he actually trusted much more in his brawling skills.

* JapaneseSpirit: Behave like a samurai on his interviews, which is right given his ascendence.

** He got a win over Gilbert Yvel in strange fashion when they had to stop the match for Kohsaka falling off the ring and getting injured. Although it should have been ruled a no contest, at the moment the ruleset didn't contain that eventuality, and it specified somehow loosely that in case of having to stop the match for a reason different to an official fight outcome, win would go to the wrestler highest in points. Through this way, the win was given to TK for having scored a submission earlier over Yvel.

* MasterOfNone: Kohsaka had good strikes, could take down and throw opponents with surprising skill, and once on the ground he was resourceful and very solid. However, he lacked enough specialization in any of those fields to make a decisive point, and he often only could aspire to control and grind his opponents for the decision.

* OutOfCharacterMoment: Kohsaka doing [[CuckoolanderCommentator color commentary]] for PRIDE Bushido with Wrestling/NobuhikoTakada of all people as his straight man was like BizarroWorld. It was even compared to Wrestling/MichaelCole and Wrestling/{{Tazz}}, only with each guy playing the other's role.

* ScrewTheRulesIHaveConnections: No official announcement was made to explain why Tom Erikson got the decision win against Kohsaka in the IWF grappling event. According to the given ruleset, Erikson won technically the first round and Kohsaka the second, and there wasn't any difference between the value of each. The entire affair was addressed in Dave Meltzer's Wrestling Observer Newsletter without coming to an answer.
* ShootTheShaggyDog: After losing to Gilbert Yvel in a quite frustrating way at their first match, Kohsaka went ballistic through the second one and dominated Yvel for long minutes. And then, when it appeared that TK was going to get his revenge, they fell off the ring in a judo throw fiasco and TK got injured against the floor, with the match being stopped. Kohsaka was given the win by lost points in a confusing application of the ruleset, but neither him or Yvel looked very happy with this outcome.

* StoneWall: On the mat, his submission defense was ''crazy''. To date, the only guy who managed to submit Kohsaka (aside from Frank Shamrock) was Jean-Jacques Machado, multiple world champion in BJJ, and it was at the ADCC championships, where the grappling-only ruleset restricted the rest of Kohsaka's skills.

* WorkedShoot: A master of them, given his career in a shoot-style promotion especialized in realistic matches, and some of them are hard to tell if they are shoot or works. The prestigious Sherdog gives his record as 27-18-2, mistakenly counting several professional wrestling matches as legit bouts, while his most accurate record would be approximately 26-14-1.

* BadassGrandpa: Upon his return in RIZIN in 2016, in which he was pitted against the ever dangerous James Thompson, most pundits predicted mercifully a hard loss for the worn, 46-yeard old TK. The Japanese fighter then proceeded to ''chew apart'' Thompson and win a CurbStompBattle in round 2.

* ColorCodedForYourConvenience: Black. He always wore stern black tights and boots.

'''Tsuyoshi "TK" Kohsaka''' is a Japanese {{Professional Wrestl|ing}}er and UsefulNotes/MixedMartialArts fighter. He started as a high level UsefulNotes/{{Judo}}ka, but a knee injury forced him to retire, and he became a trainee for professional wrestling promotion Fighting Network RINGS. His judo training and natural ability for legit shoots allowed him to climb up the scale by winning the MMA Lumax Cup representing RINGS, but he also showed a brilliant skill for worked matches, engaging in awesome shoot-style battles with guys like Wrestling/VolkHan and Wrestling/KiyoshiTamura. In a time in which wrestlers were either great workers or great shooters, Kohsaka was the rare example who could excel more or less equally in both, and he and his perennial rival Tamura were candidates to torchbearer of RINGS after the retirement of RINGS founder Wrestling/AkiraMaeda, but it was too much for them. Nonetheless, TK met some future MMA legends in the ring and was the first Japanese top player in UsefulNotes/UltimateFightingChampionship, and also was a part of the pioneer team The Alliance with Frank Shamrock and Maurice Smith. After his tenure in RINGS, he dabbled in Wrestling/NewJapanProWrestling and snatched a championship in Pancrase, and eventually retired with some last showings in PRIDE Fighting Championships. He works now as a MMA trainer, being the old master behind names like Hirotaka Yokoi and Katsunori Kikuno.

!!! "TK Tropes":

* [[IKnowKarate I Know]] UsefulNotes/{{Judo}}: A judoka of level, he got sponsored by Toray Corporation since he turned pro until he had to retire by knee injury. Interestingly enough, according to some sources he might have been a part of the remnant kosen judo competition. Kohsaka also trained catch wrestling with Wrestling/AkiraMaeda and kickboxing with Maurice Smith, and has a black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu (though it was actually given to him by Yuki Nakai after an impressive roll; Kohsaka has never trained the art).

* OutOfCharacterMoment: Kohsaka doing [[CuckoolanderCommentator color commentary]] for PRIDE Bushido with Wrestling/NobuhikoTakada of all people as his straigth man was like BizarroWorld. It was even compared to Wrestling/MichaelCole and Wrestling/{{Tazz}}, only with each guy playing the other's role.

* StartMyOwn: He started what he calls TK Jiu-Jitsu, a personal style of grappling rooted in judo and catch wrestling.

* ThreeAmigos: With Maurice Smith and Frank Shamrock, naturally.