Fujiwara Family: UFO 3 3/14/99

UFO 3

Tiger Mask IV vs. Jean-Pierre David

PAS: This was nifty stuff, Mask was throwing sharp kicks and punches, while David would try to grab him and take him down. There was a couple of pretty wild shootstyle highspots, including David judo tossing Mask off of the weird UFO circular ring apron to the floor, and Tiger responding by kicking and punching him off the apron on the other side. Finish had David working for an armbar only to see Mask get his back and choke him out. This had the fun choppiness of a good RINGS match, like David in this, he had some good throws and a French Canadian chippiness which made for a fun opponent. 

ER: I've never seen TM4 work any kind of shootstyle, but this had that cool shootstyle feel where things start out normal and keep escalating to a clearly unprofessional peak when one guy stops playing around. This all looked very normal, David working for armbars, TM using cool pro wrestling strikes to back him off. The finish looked fantastic, as TM just starts wailing punches at the back of David's head, and not just one or two. Tiger Mask starts using punches to the back of the head to set up his other strikes, including a cool use of a Tiger Mask solebutt and a great high kick that knocks David swiftly to the mat. Then, more TM punches to the back of the head to set up a nasty rear naked choke. 

Sean McCully vs. Orlando Wiet

ER: We at Segunda Caida are big fans of pro wrestler Sean McCully, but this is probably the first actual shootstyle match of his we've written about. And it is good! But in a different way than his pro wrestling is good. Weit had the obvious size and reach advantage, but that did not prevent McCully from charging right in and keeping things close, negating the reach, and literally dragging Weit to the mat. The ropes are really the only thing that allowed Weit to last long enough to finish, as he just kept hooking them to prevent takedowns, leading to McCully just dragging him down anyway. I loved this one moment where Weit would not unhook his arm, and McCully just punched him in the teeth. Weit has really explosive ground and pound and landed several quick shots, and he finally used that reach to drag McCully down with a nice guillotine. 

PAS: Love to see McCully, he looks like an Irish mob legbreaker who ends up getting 15 years in Framingham because he tried to knock over a cigarette truck drunk. Cool story with McCully's aggression versus Wiet's skill, and the finish made a ton of sense, as the aggression  eventually backfired and he got caught in a nasty choke for the tap.

Koichiro Kimura vs. Richard Roland Loux

ER: Mostly one-sided shootstyle squash, with some stand up leading to a dueling leglock (it was 1999-2002 MMA, so there's going to be a dueling leglock). I do like dueling leglocks though, especially when someone like Kimura adds in a couple twists to show how stubborn he is, making it look like both guys really did want to end it right there. After the stand up it doesn't take long for Kimura to get an armbar. 

PAS: Loux was a big bald fat guy in a gi, and had one great throw, but it is hard to get a sense of someone in such a short match. Weird to watch Kimura as such an overdog while watching all of the RINGS stuff where he is sort of a jobber.

Tiger Mask vs. Alexander Otsuka

ER: I liked this, even though there were some moments of disconnect that I would have roasted some unknown indy worker for doing. And I guess that makes me a hypocrite, because I like these guys (that said, Sayama had some ground and pound that looked like he was intentionally trying to not hit Otsuka). But I think the match would have been better if they leaned harder into having either a shootstyle match, or a pro wrestling match. They kind of combined the two and sometimes it worked and other times it looked a bit silly. I liked Sayama breaking out a bunch of cool Tiger Mask spinkicks, and Otsuka was great at getting his head in the way of catching them. But I also think Sayama went to them too often, and Otsuka kind of had to just keep leaning in and keeping them, and not all of them hit as well and he had to sell them anyway. If they had gone full shootstyle it would have been cool to see Otsuka take a glancing blow and then punish Sayama for missing. 

We got a weird mix of them seemingly treating the shootstyle stuff seriously, but then also mixing in their signature pro wrestling spots. We probably didn't need to see Otsuka's big swing, but I liked the realism they brought to other exchanges, like the way Otsuka looked to sandbag a Tiger suplex before getting dropped. Otsuka's rolling kneebars looked fantastic, really hyperextending Sayama's leg, and yet I was still really surprised Otsuka got the tap. Otsuka really should have made an even bigger mark in 90s/00s wrestling than he did, but it seems like his desire to control his own schedule was more important, and that just makes him cooler. 

PAS: I though this was pretty great, Sayama wasn't throwing the same level of heat as he did fifteen years earlier against Fujiwara, but he still had some big swings which landed hard, and spiked Otsuka with the dragon suplex. I also could have done without the giant swing, but otherwise thought Otsuka was brilliant. I loved his constant activity on the ground, adjusting his attacks, landing nasty body shots to readjust and move Sayama. The final kneebar was amazing, rolling it into nastier and deeper locks until he nearly ripped Tiger's leg off. Awesome shit, and a real mark on Otsuka's impressive resume. 

Kazunari Murakami vs. Gerard Gordeau

ER: This was cool, but would have been even better a year later. Murakami was totally evolved into his best self by 2000, here he was still a little bit more of a normal MMA-based wrestler. And while Gordeau clearly worked heel (including pretending he had no clue who Murakami was in a pre-fight interview), outside of one questionable eye attack he really wasn't as brazen about his heel attacks as he had been. Still, this was a cool fight made up of bizarre grappling and tumbling over and through ropes, and an apparently loose set of rules that allows for submissions to be applied outside of the ring. They kept getting tied up in the ropes, but it always lead to something weird and unique, like Gordeau shoving Murakami until Murakami flipped over the ropes to the rounded apron, or another time where Gordeau went after Murakami's eye (UFO was always really smart or really stupid to not show the eye attacks up close, never giving us the camera angle of the suspected gouge). Murakami came out of it blinking a lot, and Gordeau swung with his biggest strike attempt of the match, a high kick that would have decapitated Murakami had it been an inch or two closer. Murakami grabs a kneebar and Gordeau tries to tie him in the ropes, but they roll out to the ample, rounded apron and the ref just allows the hold to continue, and Gordeau finally has to get Murakami to drop off the apron, allowing him to pounce. This whole thing gets ruled a no contest after both men refuse to break on the floor, and it's a shame they never did a bigger rematch. I have to assume that negotiations broke down, because you do the no contest to set up the big triumphant Murakami win, but instead Murakami just beat UWFI guy Billy Scott. 

PAS: I agree that this would have been better with the terrorist taking on the nazi, but I did love it. Gordeau is awesome at bringing that out of control aura to his matches which Murakami would master later, you can almost see Murakami in this match thinking "shit I can just do this stuff for 20 years". I am a fan of the weird UFO ring with the big circular ring aprons, which allow a lot of shit to be done on the edges and off the sides, it is almost like a no ropes match but with ropes. Gordeau made a career out of cowardly blinding a guy, it is like if Invader 1 had a spot in every match where he hid a knife in his trunks, which in hindsight would rule, and this ruled too. Liked how this just ended in oblivion with both guys on the floor tied up and Gordeau trying to melon scoop Murakami's peepers. 

Dan Severn vs. Naoya Ogawa

ER: You remember that awesome match you love where the referee kept involving himself in the action the entire time? Of course you don't, because no good match can ever come from referees overly involving themselves. This match keeps threatening to get violent many different times, and every single one of those times Special Guest Referee Dory Funk Jr. literally wedges his body in the middle of these two, pulls one away from the other, grabs arms to prevent strikes, just completely breaks up any sort of conflict whatsoever. Funk was like Tirantes, if Tirantes had no charisma, shitty hair, and a ball cap that he purchased when he and his wife visited a retired aircraft carrier. Severn would grab Ogawa, back him into the ropes, fight for control...and then Funk would separate them. Ogawa would reverse Severn on the mat, get in the mount, and Funk would interject his body. The whole match was like being at your favorite restaurant, and every time the waiter comes walking up with your food he just keeps walking past you, letting you really see and smell this great food before not giving it to you. I don't think we got to see one single sequence worked to any kind of finish. At one point they spilled through the ropes onto the entrance ramp, and things looked like they were ready to unravel as they kept rolling and struggling down the ramp...and Funk comes running out of the ring with a freaking whistle, blowing it like he was breaking up a fight on an elementary school playground. Ogawa hits a nasty pump kick to the back of Severn's head and sinks a choke for the finish, but this entire match had all the guts ripped out of it. There has to be a story behind this, as this may be the most intrusive guest ref performance in wrestling history. 

FUJIWARA FAMILY