Rip: Rena ''rusty'' kanokogi: Women's judo advocate

[Bill Mattocks]

http://www.theage.com.au/world/fighter-tossed-chauvinism-aside-20091227-lg9v.html

Fighter tossed chauvinism aside

December 28, 2009




RENA ''RUSTY'' KANOKOGI
WOMEN'S JUDO ADVOCATE
30-7-1935 - 21-11-2009
By JOSHUA ROBINSON
RUSTY Kanokogi, who was considered the mother of women's judo after fighting for more than two decades to make it an Olympic sport, has died of cancer in New York. She was 74.
Kanokogi helped create the first Women's World Judo Championships at Madison Square Garden in New York in 1980, mortgaging her home to cover the costs, and went on to coach the US Olympic women's judo team in Seoul in 1988.

 

[Bill Mattocks]

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1064627/6/index.htm

March 24, 1986
Rumbling With Rusty

She started life as Rena Glickman, and today Brooklyn's Rusty Kanokogi is the queen of judo

Gary Smith
One evening she went to a party in the kimono and high platform shoes that Japanese women traditionally wear. Unaccustomed to high heels, she pitched over backward and fell through a doorway. She left Japan swaggering like a samurai—but once back in America, she had to give up her sword, though, says Appelbaum, "There's no question that she was the best woman judo player in the world."
A small, powerful Japanese man named Ryohei Kanokogi, a black belt in judo, karate and stick-fighting who had met her in Japan, moved to New York to teach judo and began to date her. She broke her hand beating up a woman in a barroom bathroom for making a disparaging remark about the Japanese, and knew she had found her man when instead of scolding her he advised, "When you punch head, always wrap handkerchief around hand."

 

[Tensei85]

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[shesulsa]

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[morph4me]

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[Master K]

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[celtic_crippler]

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[Jade Tigress]

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[kungfu penguin]

truly a classic and one of the great ones... she will be missed
[full salute]