Yoshiaki Fujiwara Still Bears Fruit he is Forever Full of Sap and Green

Yoshiaki Fujiwara/Yoshihiro Takayama vs. Kazunari Murakami/Minoru Suzuki NJ 11/15/15 - EPIC

Holy hell what a war, you can tell Takayama and Fujiwara mustered everything they had left in them for one more rumble. I would love this match if it was just these four guys making faces at each other, but instead they really press the pedal down. This was worked like an old school Murakami brawl with he and Suzuki jumping Fujiwara and Takayama at the bell and really slapping them around. Suzuki wasn't pulling anything including unloading some liver shots on Fujiwara's surely seasoned liver. Finish was a perfect Fujiwara finish as expected, as the cocky prick Murakami got a little too cocky. Way exceeded expectations, this felt like a something from 15 years ago, shocked that it was still this good today.


COMPLETE AND ACCURATE FUJIWARA

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2015 Ongoing Match of the Year List

8. Ultimo Guerrero v. Rey Escorpion CMLL 7/17

PAS: Man was this great, this is two years in a row Ultimo comes up huge in an apuestas match. The opening was fucking bonkers with both guys unloading with over hand slaps, with Rey Escorpion slipping in a straight right hand, he then delivers some nasty stomps in the corner,  finally leading to them trading shoot punches right into each others face. It looked like Hashimoto v. Ogawa or something, and UG comes up with a bloody and swollen nose, his facial damage kind of served the same dramatic purpose as a blade job, adding some pop and pizzazz to the match. The work itself was really great, with UG breaking out a bunch of cool dives, including a stage dive style plancha off the top rope to the floor, and off the apron, and Escorpion laying in some cool powerbombs. Finish felt like UG may have shrugged off a package piledriver a bit to quick, but was otherwise very good. Great match.

ER: Sometimes things can happen during a match, that take me out of a match. This often hurts the match, but in rare cases like this it adds gobs to the match. And the shoot punches to the face in this match jarred me right out of my chair and completely absorbed my eyeballs into what was happening.  We've seen these kind of shoot punches from Escorpion before, popping Porky several times during their feud. But this...this was different. Escorpion starts taking rough shots on UG and UG starts firing back and here you have a legit Frye/Takayama situation of two guys playing zero defense and just punching each other in the worst parts of the face. It was horrifying but I couldn't look away and it immediately made me legit want UG to kick Escorpion's ass. I don't know if that says something about me, or something about modern wrestling heels that the thing that brings legit heat is punching a man several times in the face, but there it is. UG looks like he doesn't see the hard shots coming, takes him a bit to figure out just what is happening, and then BOOM it's on and it adds a level of drama to the beginning of the match that sustains all the way through. For all of the times you've seen lucha camerawork take away from a moment, the up close shots of these punches really added to things. Cameras don't get this close even in UFC. This is a fight, filmed like pro wrestling. UG added his jumping hip attack a year ago and here he threw out several variations of it, crashing into Escorpion off the rampway, apron, into the crowd, off the top rope. All of that early drama really marked it, really said that "this match is a big deal" and it hooked me the whole way through. Love these guys.


ONGOING MATCH OF THE YEAR LIST

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