Twist Of Fate

Tricky Werdum promises repeat performance

That's essentially the task in front of Fabricio Werdum -- perpetrator of the stunning triangle choke that threatened Fedor Emelianenko 's consciousness in June 2010 -- who apparently is ready for an encore.

Returning to action Saturday for the first time in almost a year, Werdum faces long odds and compelling stakes that have some suggesting, despite mounting evidence to the contrary, that the Brazilian heavyweight is once again in over his head.

Quite experienced in this role, Werdum isn't wasting time on what can't be done against Strikeforce champion Alistair Overeem . That wasn't part of the formula that paid off a year ago. Instead, he's embracing the fact that people in and around mixed martial arts continue to discount him and his skills no matter what he accomplishes.

"I don't like to be the favorite," Werdum said after a strenuous afternoon workout at Kings MMA, where preparations for Overeem (34-11) and the Strikeforce heavyweight grand prix quarterfinals have been under way for months. "I like to be the underdog. I like to bring surprises in the fight."

Whether Werdum defeats Overeem or not, the result is unlikely to be as stunning as what he managed against Emelianenko. After basking in the glow of that victory for as long as he has, Werdum is ready to move forward.

"What he wants is the next step," said Werdum's trainer, Rafael Cordeiro. "The next step is the unification of the title with UFC."

The spoils of the Strikeforce grand prix, including, perhaps, the chance to determine the world's best heavyweight against the UFC champion, are potentially career-defining. At the start of Werdum's efforts in MMA, he didn't come off as physical or aggressive enough be considered a serious threat to the top of his division.

That's not the case anymore, in part because the 6-foot-4, 240-pound jiu-jitsu expert has embraced Cordeiro's older, harder methods.

"My style of training is to try and get fighters to finish in the first round, for sure," Cordeiro said.

Cordeiro said he recently noticed a committed shift in Werdum's approach. The 33-year-old heavyweight is more to the point, more violent, more confident.

"He's a coach that passes to the athlete a lot of strength, and he knows how to have respect for all the team," Werdum said of Cordeiro, who settled into Southern California after rising to prominence in the slaughterhouse that was the Chute Boxe academy in Curitiba, Brazil.

“An Unnamed Navy Pilot” A Twist of Fate | Naval History Blog

“In the future, no enemy fliers other than fighter pilots, carrier base pilots and senior ranking pilots of B-29’s and other important fliers will be sent to Tokyo. Others will be suitably disposed of.” So wrote Fumitoshi Yamanaka, a former Japanese Army officer, regarding a message received on 15 June 1945 at Western Army Headquarters in Fukuoka, Japan.

Over the previous months, over two dozen American pilots and aircrew had fallen into Japanese hands on Kyushu. The vast majority of these men were Army Air Corps personnel, survivors of B-29 bombers lost to air defenses, enemy fighters and random chance during raids over the Japanese Home Islands.

The flight from their bases on Guam and Tinian to Japan was long, over ten hours, and it was not until carrier task forces began conducted repeated raids in the summer of 1945 that many Navy pilots bailed out over Japan. Starting in late 1944, when B-29 raids began out of the Marianas, all captured enemy fliers were sent to Tokyo for interrogation and ultimate processing into the formal prisoner-of-war (POW) system.

Six months later, overcrowding, interrogation backlog and a lack of useful results led to the 15 June telegram. Given the almost daily raids, many consisting of one hundred plus planes, the numbers of captured Army Air Corps bomber crews began piling up in local detention centers. In a twist of fate, the Japanese desire for as much information as possible on American carrier task force operations meant Navy pilots continued to be sent to Tokyo.

By such decisions do lives hang in the balance. For not five days after the 15 June telegram, eight of the Americans were taken out of their cells at Fukuoka and beheaded in revenge for a B-29 raid on the city. And on two other days, 12 August and then in the hours after the Japanese surrender on 15 August, the remaining twenty-five American fliers were executed without trial, victims of revenge killings and a desire to cover up the atrocities after wars’ end. The only flier to escape this fate was “an unnamed Navy pilot” captured on 9 August who was briefly held near Fukuoka before being sent on to Tokyo.

Were the perpetrators ever identified and tried for war crimes? And do not lose sight of the General Order issues from General Staff Headquarters ordering the execution of all POW’s in the event of Allied landings on the home islands. The excellent work “Hell to Pay,” D.M. Giangreco, USNI, Annapolis, MD, 2009, shreds the revisionist historians’ arguments that the use of atomic weapons were unnecessary and uncalled for in concluding the war against Imperial Japan.

A Twist of Fate

Twist of Fate

Twist of Fate, The Moirae in Everyday Psychology

Twist of Fate

Twist of Fate, Love, Turbulence And the Great War