Whoever says he is in the Light and Hate Yoshiaki Fujiwara is Still In Darkness
Yoshiaki Fujiwara v. Akira Maeda UWF 8/13/89-EPIC
This is one of my favorite matchups in wrestling history, just two masters who brought out the best in each other. I had seen this match before in the 80s DVDVR Other Japan set, but that was a long time ago. Really enjoyed revisiting this. Fujiwara comes out super aggressive flying at Maeda with nasty jumping headbuts right in Maeda's dental work. Maeda responds with some nasty headkicks and the tone is set early. Fujiwara is so great at both taking and delivering body shots, they always look nasty when thrown, and he does a great job of trying to recover from getting hit in the liver himself. It slows down a bit with some matwork, Fujiwara gets locked in a bodyscissors and cranks the foot to get a near fall submission in a cool counter. This didn't have a super awesome finish like so many of the Fujiwara UWF matches, which puts it a slot below the other amazing matches between these two, but this was still great stuff, it is a bummer that this kind of wrestling is dead, because it is beautiful when done right.
Complete and Accurate Fujiwara
Labels: Akira Maeda, UWF, Yoshiaki Fujiwara
posted by Phil @ 10:00 PM
2 Comments:
I haven't watched wrestling too much at all lately, but I love these reviews (Fujiwara and Regal are 2 of my favorites). I'm curious what your favorite matchup between Fujiwara/Maeda was.
Mine is their match from NJPW 8/29/1987, haven't watched it in a while, but if memory serves me correctly, it was more strike based with the mat grappling being a real struggle. I loved when Fujiwara annoys Maeda by getting the better of him on the mat, and when he has to break the hold, he'll whack him in the back of the head. This seems like a good strategy to have his opponent get angry and lose focus, which will open him up to making more mistakes. The ending came out of the blue a little bit with Fujiwara's leglock. Still my favorite matchup between them that I've seen.
I haven't rewatched them in a while, but I am going to go with 2/5/86 which I reviewed here
http://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2009/11/there-is-no-faculty-of-human-soul-so.html
Loved the finish, and the cool restart, but honestly you can never go wrong with these two against each other
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