My Flesh and My Heart May Fail, But Yoshiaki Fujiwara is My Strength

Yoshiaki Fujiwara v. Super Tiger 7/17/85 UWF-EPIC

TKG: They air ten minutes of a fifteen minute match here but the ten minutes we get is really great. Sayama is wrestling without his mask at this point and really facially resembles Billy Joel and I think my visceral dislike of Billy Joel kind of effects the way I watch all his stuff. I don't know what I'd think watching a Pete Roberts vs. Sayama match. Who do you root for when William F Buckley and Billy Joel get into a fight?

Sayama is pretty much just all stiff kicks in this and doesn't really have any answers for Fujiwara's submissions and this is like the best possible Dick Vrij vs Volk Han match. As this really is a one man Fujiwara show. They do do a couple of Sayama gets crab on Fujiwara spots which get a big pop, and Fujiwara does a couple variations on his signature Santo style headspin escapes. When Fujiwara gets a hold on Sayama, Syama really dives for ropes. But for the most part this match is built on Fujiwara's standing defenses. Fujiwara is all about the defense, trying to catch the leg, catching Sayama in clinches, trying to dodge and feint to avoid kicks, and roll with strikes trying never to get hit cleanly.

The dodging and feinting is really neat visual and something he doesn't do a ton in the other matches. It reminded me a lot of Yosuke Nishijima vs. Mark Hunt. The story that people tell about that match is that it was the equivalent of Takayama vs. Frye where two crazy guys are just exchanging. Not accurate description.Nishijima was a journeyman pro-boxer and he's turning and weaving to avoid taking any punches cleanly while hitting his punches at will. Nishijima is over 50 lbs lighter than Hunt and really had no power behind his punches. So the story is if Hunt hits a punch cleanly he will hurt Nishijima, but will Hunt gass before he can do that.

Here you had a same dynamic of guy with knock out power vs. guy who is avoiding and turning with the strikes. Of course here Sayama is the smaller guy. So while the Hunt fight kind of exposed Hunt, this match really really puts Sayama over. As its all about Sayama having KO power if he can connect. But Fujiwara for most part is too skilled to allow him to connect.

When Fujiwara lets Sayama slip out of a takedown, Sayama is able to stand up quick and nail Fujiwara with a kick to the kidneys and its essentially over. Once Fujiwara starts taking clean hits, he's knocked off his game and less able to defend. The match ends with spectacular knock out where Fujiwara still tries to defend and catches the back of Sayama's ankle on the way down. But at this point he's been hit cleanly too many times and its too late.

PAS: Much like Tom, I truly loved this match. Fujiwara working around a kicker may be my favorite style of Fujiwara match. He has such great sense of placement in the ring, he is great at moving both too far for his opponents to hit him or too close to hit him cleanly. We got a great sense of that place here, right up until the kidney shot which slows him down. Sayama is a guy who was really over, and when he lands these wild kicks the crowd gets into it, the way crowds would get into a Tyson fight. He becomes this vicious force of nature, and Fujiwara is amazing at conveying the guys being overwhelmed by the wave. Excellent stuff.

Yoshiaki Fujiwara/Yuki Ishikawa v. Tom Howard/Sean McCully Zero One 7/13/01-GREAT

Very entertaining match. I have really started to dig early 21st century Tom Howard. He looks perfectly comfortable working hold with both Fujiwara and Ishikawa which is no small feat. He also does a great job working spots around his Dolph Lungren Universal Solider gimmick. McCully is a potbellied cross eyed midget working a shooter gimmick, but Fujiwara is a guy who can working a compelling shoot style match with pretty much anyone. Take any guy teaching Tae Kwon Doe at a strip mall dojo, and I bet Fujiwara could pull a three star match out of him. The Fujiwara v. McCully stuff was fun, but the Fujiwara v. Howard was the class. There is a great mat section where Howard is fighting for a kimura, while Fujiwara is attempting to work an ankle pick, it is awesomel to watch the different was that they parry and counter each attack, simultaneously working offense and defense. The finish was both awesome and preposterous, Howard steps on the interior part of Fujiwara's knee dropping him down, then he does some goofy looking action movie neck snap, the kind of thing Sly Stallone would do in Cobra and the ref quickly stops the match. Kind of silly, but Fujiwara sold the fuck out of it and it really got over Howard's whole Commando vibe.

Yoshiaki Fujiwara/Alexander Otsuka v. Shinjiro Ohtani/Masato Tanaka Zero One 7/6/03-FUN

This was a match which really didn't live up to it's promise. The story they were telling was that Otsuka was trying to prove himself. He refused to tag out to Fujiwara no matter how bad a beating he took. Otsuka takes a big beating, including some impressive bumps on clotheslines and suplexes and he really sold the story he was trying to sell. Still this is a Fujiwara project and this match really had minimal Fujiwara. Also we didn't get to see very much of the different things that make Otsuka so fun, as he was basically a punching bag. I get what they were doing, and they did it well, I just wanted to see something different.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE YOSHIAKI FUJIWARA