Found Footage Friday: Universal Pro Wrestling 1992~!

Bulldog KT (Gedo)/Pat Tanaka/Villano IV vs. Coolie SZ (Jado)/Lightning Kid/Jerry Lynn Universal Pro 8/18/92

MD: It's important you know that Lynn and co. come out to Don't Cry by Asia. Also that Pat Tanaka is a huge jerk in this match and I'm all for it. They did a lot in 20+ minutes over three falls. It was fun to see Villano work with Lynn (bounding fast exchanges) and Kid (hitting him really, really hard and then taking all of Waltman's karate bs). The heels worked together well, lots of setting a babyface up for a double team or single shot. There were some nice pushes by Tanaka, on a suplex to give it extra oomph and then to set up the finish by basically shoving a victory rolling Lynn and Villano out of the ring. Gedo and Jado generally worked together but their stuff looked practiced, solid, and usually pretty mean. After coming back from a relatively long, cycled beatdown, Lynn broke up a hold on Kid and they hit a tandem missile dropkick/Northern Lights. Second fall had some funnier stuff from Lynn as he tossed Tanaka into the corner and Tanaka twisted twice on the way and then got down on his hands and knees and dog barked Gedo out of the ring. But it came back together for the fireworks down the stretch. 

ER: I was pretty blown away by this, a frenetically based long three falls match where every guy is working fast and hitting harder. Everyone had standout moments, with Jerry Lynn being the guy who blew me away the most. Lynn looked ready to work any promotion in the world, breezing into Japan and working smoking hot dodging and tumbling sequences with Villano IV, throwing perfect snug execution on everything he attempted. His offense makes extravagant bumps look necessary. When he hits a dropkick to Villano IV, it makes sense that it sends him flying out of the ring; when he blasts Pat Tanaka with a clothesline, he swings it so hard that it makes Tanaka's inside out flip bump seem like the natural way to get eaten by that clothesline. Everything Lynn did was crisp, established the pacing of the match, and followed through to logical match building conclusions. When I say I was blown away, I mean it. Jerry Lynn is a guy who I view as a known quantity. We've all seen many JL matches, we all know he's talented, the industry respects him, he's worked everywhere, etc. But seeing Lynn here is like seeing him for the first time, seeing things he was capable of that never defined his style. Lynn really could do it all...but I don't know how often I've seen him doing It better than he does here. 

The thing is, everyone kind of comes off that way. Jado and Gedo as beefed up Mr. Perfect Singlet Boys is the most interesting version of them in the 90s. I love the wave of T&C Surf Designs inspired Japanese indy wrestlers of the late 80s/early 90s, from the surf punks surrounding the ring in the most violent late 80s FMW Different Style bouts, to these two beefy Malibu boys in their mullets and surf suits. It's unfathomable to me that 1992 Jado and Gedo had great clotheslines, but video doesn't lie. Jado throws a top rope clothesline as hard as Ikeda ever threw, and that's arguably the toughest clothesline to throw well. Gedo blows up Jado with a clothesline that would get Tenryu's attention, and it's a wildly more interesting version of themselves than all their bad juniors wrestling the rest of the decade. 

If Pat Tanaka was a real jerk - he was! - then Villano IV might have been an outright sadist. This man was in his late 20s and a physical danger. If I praised Lynn's execution, then V4 deserves the same praise. Everything he does has such force behind it. He has these cool kneedrops, where he starts from a kneeling position and drives a knee into his opponent's temple, and I'm not sure I've ever seen legdrops thrown with more force. I didn't think you could get such impact from a standing legdrop, but Villano made them look like real finishers. 

But the thing that really stood out in a match filled with standouts, was Villano IV and Lightning Kid starting off the third fall with a literal shoot fight on the floor. I couldn't tell why it escalated, but they clearly start throwing increasingly harder and harder shots during a routine sequence. I don't know the exact moment it turned unprofessional, but Villano knocked Kid to the floor and Kid came up throwing elbows meant to crack jaws, and Villano recognized the intent behind those elbows immediately and landed five straight punches to Kid's face and head. This all happened within 15 seconds, where a hard Villano club to the back turned into a Kid shoot elbow, and suddenly Kid was fleeing while wisely shielding his face as Villano finds every uncovered part and lands every punch he throws. No idea what happened, but there's no mistaking those punches for worked, and whatever might have happened didn't affect Kid's big comeback in the tercera, which played as great retribution. Villano IV stood in for spin kicks and cooperated to make it look like a strong comeback, taking all of his kicks and making the decision to not punch him directly in the face, again. 

Gran Hamada/Panterita del Ring vs. Shu el Guerrero/Scorpio Jr. Universal Pro 8/18/92

MD: Shu and Scorpio come out to Simply Irresistible. Good for them. Anyway, I struggle a little with matches like this. There's just not a ton to say. There were 12+ minutes of bits/spots to start, and they were good! A lot of them were really good. But do I just list them? There wasn't a lot of rhyme or reason to them. There was a little bit of progression with early matwork, but after that, it was off into bit-land. Yes, Shu based well. Yes, Scorpio had some moments of stooging, including a great one where Pandrita was able to roll through on something, drive him out, and force him to walk down the ramp hands up in retreat so there was no dive. There was a great bit where Shu swiped away a Panterita dropkick and slapped his chest repeatedly only to end up in the corner for a knee driving headscissors takeover. Hamada in general looked like a million bucks. Then they had a few minutes of beatdown which was, again good (really liked a catapult where Shu choked Hamada down onto Scorpio's knees), and a comeback with a strike exchange and some big dives, before Shu scored a clutch powerbomb and a pretty swank tied up pin. Definitely good action. A lot of character and personality. Super entertaining. I'm sure DEAN would have been able to write the hell out of this. But all I can do is bear witness.

Kendo/Great Sasuke vs. Rocky Santana/Super Delfin Universal Pro 8/18/92

MD: This was the main event, 2/3 falls. By the way, the first match on the show, that we don't have, is Black Magic vs Rey Bucanero. Though it's 92 Bucanero so he was like 12. Ah well. Kendo comes out with a soccer type shirt with himself on it. The fans are immediately behind him.

The initial Kendo vs. Santana and Sasuke vs. Delfin exchanges (two times) are a lot of fun. Nice tricked out back and forth with Kendo and Santana where they both hit the mat hard and Sasuke being insanely flexible against Delfin. Some nice comedic bits in there as well, like Santana getting skidded out and Kendo sliding out to invite him back in and Santana faceplanting a few times. It's mostly friendly though Delfin takes (and misses) a swipe at one point. The fall ends with the pairings getting switched up and Sasuke flying off the top on both Santana and Delfin leading to a funny bit where they toss Kendo off and Sasuke tosses him back on until he finally sits on all of them for the pin.

Second fall switches the pairings for real, with Delfin falling for all of Kendo's tricks and Santana feeding for Sasuke. The rudos take over though and run a beatdown on one than the other than the first again. They tease a comeback but Delfin gets a tornado DDT and locks up Kendo for the pin. After that, Kendo gets rolled out of the ring hurt, and I thought this was going to turn into a different sort of match. It lets the de facto rudos control for a bit but Kendo just comes back in pissed a few minutes later and he gets into the most ridiculous kneeling strike exchange with Santana that I've ever seen. They whack each other, then fall over backwards then get counted and pop back up and do it some more. It goes on for quite a while and it is a crowd pleaser. After that, they pop right into dives with Sasuke knocking everyone out with the Space Flying Tiger Drop to get the countout win. Definitely fun. Might have been interesting to see it take a more grisly turn but that's not what they were doing here. 

ER: I love these proto-MPro matches where you can see the style almost fully gestated, the lightheartedness with the stiffness, the innovative movement with the strong lucha inspiration. I love Rocky Santana within this world. He understood the kind of regional lucha comedy that would crossover well to Japanese Indies, while also working stiff enough to capture the attention of the rest of the crowd. They laughed when Santana charged into the ring and tripped on the bottom rope, face planting into the ring and crying to the ref for support. When he did the exact same thing in the second fall, they ate it up, fully understanding his vibe. He bases as well as Hamada and moves the same, but he'll also break down and start punching people. The whole match building to a long stretch where Kendo and Santana kneel in front of each other and do several minutes of stiff punches, comedy punches, and exhausted punches, is brilliant. We've all seen enough "two men throwing strikes with no defense" at this point, but it's crazy how many innovative versions of that exist on small lucha shows and Japanese Indies. This exchange starts normal...until the strikes start becoming unexpected, sometimes silly, sometimes mean, thrown in a totally unpredictable rhythm. It looked like Kendo and Santana were playing some kind of memory game that nobody else knew the rules to, and this memory game involved being punched in the jaw, ear, and neck. I've never seen an exchange like it, one that had multiple goals and just kept going until everyone in the building was on board. That's wrestling, baby. 

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Found Footage Friday: FUJIWARA~! ANDRE~! SAYAMA~! MAEDA~! KIDO~! HOSHINO~! KURISU~!

Tiger Mask/Osamu Kido vs. Kantaro Hoshino/Masanobu Kurisu NJPW 12/19/82

MD: I always get a little surprised when a new NJPW Tiger Mask HH comes up because I just assume they had a pro shot of it that they released on a twenty disc DVD set at some point. This does seem new though, and it's a great collection of talent. Overall, it's a little formless and exhbition-y, except for a stretch where Kido and Tiger Mask were working over Kurisu in the corner. That was my favorite part, by the way, as Tiger Mask was working like a flittering chickenshit heel to some degree, sneaking in shots that didn't do damage to distract him so Kido could hit more substantial cutoffs. Then when Kurisu rolled over to Hoshino finally, Tiger Mask got right out of the ring and tagged Kido back in. I think he was just having fun on an untelevised show for a bit though, hard to say.

In general, every exchange looked good and while they could change speeds and switch from strikes to holds to rope running, each pairing felt a little different. You could see it even in just how they moved. Kurisu found the path of least reistance with his takedowns, just a percussive series of thuds as he worked in tight or dropped a couple of knees. Tiger Mask was loose and fast to the point where sometimes he wasn't even hanging on to anything as he was spinning and you just had to sort of go with it. He came off like a movie fencer whipping the sword around wildly while Kurisu was an Olympic fencer, precise and with the smallest motion necessary. Kido and Hoshino were somewhere in the middle; Hoshino especially had to base for Tiger Mask and make it all somehow work. Sometimes things didn't feel resonant enough as they moved on to the next move. There was a pile driver from one side and a tombstone from the other in short order and I don't remember who took either. Tiger Mask pulled out his fairly rare slingshot 450 (that I only really remember Scorpio also using) for the win. It wasn't the sort of match that was ever going to come together but you can't really fault the action.

Yoshiaki Fujiwara/Osamu Kido vs. Super Tiger/Akira Maeda UWF 11/15/84 - EPIC

PAS: I can't believe we are still getting brand new incredible HH matches from 40 years ago. God bless the guy sneaking in a video camera. This is as great as it looks on paper, four all timers in their prime, having a hideously violent proto-shootstyle match. Kido is a bit dry, but a tremendous technician, kind of the Tim Duncan of the UWF, Maeda is one of the most charismatic offensive dynamos in wrestling history, although he played a bit of a supporting role here. The focus of this match is Fujiwara vs. Super Tiger, which is truly one of the all time great matchups ever. It is the incubatory version of Ishikawa vs. Ikeda, a brilliant tactician looking for every opening to take advantage of, against a hellacious violence dynamo trying to knock his opponents brains out of their ears. The Sayama kneedrop on Fujiwara is one of the most violent signature spots ever, I don't understand the magic, he lands so hard right on the temple, Fujiwara looks like he should have his skull flattened like when Christopher Lloyd got run over by the tractor in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Meanwhile Fujiwara is dishing out shots of his own, working Tiger's body in the corner like a heavy bag, drilling him with headbutts, yanking and pulling at his limbs. Every moment of it was special and we got a lot of them. The finish run is a bit clipped sadly (I imagine the HH guy was running out of film.) So we don't see every moment of Fujiwara maneuvering into submissions (which is a shame because he is the greatest small movement wrestler ever), but what we got was such a mitzvah.  

MD: Phil likens Super Tiger vs Fujiwara to Ishikawa and Ikeda and man, I don't know. It felt more like Buddy Rose vs Matt Borne during those few months where Buddy Rose was allegedly engaging in frequent acts of domestic violence against Borne's sister and they were trying to draw money off of it. Does Sayama have a sister? Because that's the level of violence he was rising to in the way he was beating on Fujiwara. In the NJPW tag below, Sayama wins with a crazy slingshot 450 that you don't see almost anyone do ever. The moment where Fujiwara starts to come back out of the corner and hit his headbutts and Sayama just clocks him in the jaw to cut him off just blows that out of the water when it comes to pro wrestling being amazing. Maeda and Kido do their part here too. I know Kido's dry, but he's dry like the desert. You can't get one over on him. He stretches for as far as the eye can see and you have to walk a thousand miles to endure all of his takedown attempts. Each of the pairings here were different and when he was in there against Super Tiger, he even tried to match him in stand up striking (he failed) which is not what you usually see out of Kido. Meanwhile, Maeda and Fujiwara contrasted with the dangerous explosiveness of the Sayama/Fujiwara pairing. It was all about positioning and little bits of leverage, constant hand motion, Maeda using his reach to press his hand upon Fujiwara's head and Fujiwara trying to slip around and lock something on. And yeah, when Fujiwara finally did get the chance to get revenge (which had previously been cut off with that Sayama punch) it's grisly, gripping stuff. The clipping's unfortunate but I figure the camcorder just couldn't handle much more of what it was seeing. It switches from wrestling found footage to a found footage snuff film, where we blink and Fujiwara's trying another attempt at the chicken wing, blink again and he's turning it into a headscissors. After all we just saw, it almost even worked in its own startling way.

Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs. Andre the Giant NJPW 5/27/86 - EPIC

MD: When you watch mid-80s New Japan, that month of the IWGP league when you get a bunch of weird singles matches alongside the usual tags is a treat. Granted, we didn't get to see most of these on the TV but that's the miracle of HHs still sneaking their way through (you get the same thing with the CC in AJPW where you'll suddenly get Misawa vs Cactus Jack or something, just like how with the tag league you'll get all the possible pairings if you're lucky). Therefore, seen minutes of Fujiwara vs Andre. It's only seven minutes, really only five given the entrances. You wish it was fourteen, but the taste that we do get is pretty much as iconic as you'd hope that it'd be.

Andre contains Fujiwara in the corner, tries to treat him like any other opponent he might manhandle, as if he was in there against 86 Kengo Kimura. Fujiwara constantly works his way to a neutral point causing Andre to shift holds repeatedly. He has the advantage, is able to shut Fujiwara down when he tries to headbutt, but is also forced to use escalating offense, including a mean shot to the gut off the ropes you rarely see Andre do. There a sense that if Andre lets up for one second Fujiwara is going to come back and cut him down to size. While Andre is unquestionably dominant and winning by points, Fujiwara through presence and motion, makes it seem closer than it ought to be. That leads Andre to take a risk, one that backfires, setting things up for Fujiwara's comeback headbutts. Andre's just too big though and is able to pull them both out and once out, Wakamatsu gets involved forcing the countout. You watch this and almost can imagine what a WrestleMania 3 match between these two might have looked like.

PAS: These two are 15 best wrestlers of all time (10 best? Maybe 5 best?) and while the version of this in my head is an all time great main event collision, this 6 minute undercard match is still pretty great. We get Fujiwara, an all time great pro-wrestling problem solver, tasked with lumbering Andre, an all time great wrestling problem. He prods and pokes looking for openings, and even makes the mistake of trying to hit Andre with a headbutt, which goes as well as one would expect. The match goes to a count out before Fujiwara finds a solution, which is a bit of buzzkill, I can imagine how amazing a UWF main event between these two would have been two years earlier or three years later, but it is amazing we got it at all.

ER: I actually think we're all being a bit too calm about this match. This is the literal only Andre the Giant/Yoshiaki Fujiwara match that ever happened. Andre the Giant and Yoshiaki Fujiwara, two guys who are even more than Top 5 Guys, they are two guys with a legitimate claim to #1. Andre the Giant is my #1 wrestler, and if not now I believe Fujiwara was Phil's #1 at some point. For me, expectations were out the window. The literal only singles match between two giants of my wrestling fandom, a match nobody could have reasonably expected would have ever shown up on tape after nearly 40 years, is suddenly in our hands and it looks, plays, and feels like Yoshiaki Fujiwara forcing Andre the Giant to wrestle shootstyle. 

Yes, I repeat, Yoshiaki Fujiwara prods Andre into wrestling shootstyle, and it is incredible. You want to watch the most fearless knee ripper in wrestling history force Andre to standing grapple for almost an entire match? I sure as hell did. I should have been shocked that Fujiwara walked straight up to Andre and tried to put him in a headlock. Did you see how huge Andre looked in this match? How was Andre the Giant even possible? You know supposedly the Big Show was physically larger than Andre? It makes no sense. Andre looks like a forest ogre forced into working double underhooks with a shooter, Big Show looks like a really big guy stocking shelves at Costco. Andre is shaped like the perfect Giant, the thick legs and comic book distended torso, a Popeye Goon fleshed out into a God. Have we ever seen anyone try to grapple with him as long as Fujiwara did here? 

That's at the core of why I think this match should be so celebrated. To me, this felt like one of the greatest examples of someone Lasting With Andre while taking the game directly to Andre. Fujiwara is perhaps the greatest worker of all time at biding his time for a winning shot, a thing he does against men his own size all the damn time, and here he is against the opponent who makes the literal most sense to avoid while remaining as coiled and prepared at all times to strike one cobra shot. Andre presents Fujiwara with the most logical opponent ever to work a classic Fujiwara lay in wait, and this All Time Motherfucker goes at Andre from go and works for fucking single legs against a Fujiwara size leg of a man. Fujiwara forces Andre to work shootstyle and grapple and be a Force against him for what feels like longer than I've seen anyone do in any other match. Looking at this match as a potential all timer cut short into a 6 minute taste, is not seeing how rare it was to get a six minute stretch in any Andre match where someone takes it to him the way Fujiwara pushed him here. 

Do you know how quick I scooted forward in my chair when Fujiwara looked like he was going to topple Andre onto his butt with that single leg? Can you imagine headbutting the Stay Puft marshmallow man in the stomach? Did you see Andre drop to a fucking knee to clothesline Fujiwara in the stomach? Have you ever seen something so cool? How does every single year of Andre have him doing things that nobody has ever been able to do as well as Andre the Giant? That drop to one knee clothesline I've never seen before leading to one of the all time greatest missed headbutt spots is one of thousands of Andre moments that illustrate his creative brilliance. Nobody has worked with their aging body more creatively than Andre, giving more than any other wrestler has ever physically given and finding new vaudeville acts when he no longer had the reflexes to juggle. He lugged that trunk to all parts of the globe. 

Imagine Andre the Giant navigating Japan during the worst most painful physical year of his life! Andre turned 40 years old as a man knowing he wasn't seeing 50, and a week later was forced to be the largest shootstyle wrestler we've ever gotten to see in a match we didn't know existed until now. This is two Number Ones strengthening their status as Number Ones in a way we haven't seen. The greatest wrestler of all time against the greatest wrestler of all time and every second felt like they understood each other's importance to pro wrestling. 

 

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE YOSHIAKI FUJIWARA

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE ANDRE THE GIANT

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Found Footage Friday: MASAMI~! KANDORI~! TENRYU~! FUYUKI~! TIGER~! LEWIN~?!

Devil Masami vs. Shinobu Kandori JWP 1/16/89

MD: I'm missing some context on this one as most of the Kandori I've seen was later on, but there's a lot you can pick up from the text alone. The first couple of minutes of the match were about her making herself seen by Masami. She starts by putting out a hand only for Masami to refuse to shake it. They lock up but Masami overpowers her and casually hits her with a butterfly suplex, really just dropping her. So Kandori works her into the ropes on the next lock up and starts to slap her repeatedly. After the first, Masami sees her, and after the third or fourth she really sees her. Kandori got what she wanted but soon learns to regret it as Masami powers her immediately into a dangerous back drop, but Kandori was ready to take the punishment and is able to maneuver her into a crossface chicken wing and by that point, they have a real match going (Masami gets out by biting Kandori's wrist and Kandori answers with kicks to the spine, if you were wondering just what sort of match).

The beating that followed was fairly hellacious and one-sided. Kandori would occasionally slip out, pry off a leg, and try to do some damage, but even then Masami eventually had enough and tried to tear apart Kandori's leg for revenge. They went back and forth as the match went on, but always with Masami having a clear advantage, and always with Kandori having to slip out and over to get in a bomb of her own. Usually that came in the form of going back to the leg. Meanwhile, every big impact was made all the more thunderous by Kandori leaning in as hard as humanly possible. Her selling was consistent pain. Masami's on the other hand, appeared when it was most meaningful, especially as they rushed to the finish. Again, I can't put this thing in context, but on its own it stands up extremely well.

Genichiro Tenryu vs. Hiromichi Fuyuki WAR 11/8/93

MD: Tenryu and Fuyuki were stablemates here, but I think even more so than that, they were two guys who knew each other so well in the ring, even if they hadn't matched up all that many times. Fuyuki knew everything about Tenryu and that's why he got dirty first with a stomp and a suplex and holds. He knew he had to in order to get the advantage he needed. Likewise, there was such subsequent tension when Tenryu escaped and had his back, had him up against the ropes. You, the viewer, like Fuyuki, the about-to-be victim, knew the other shoe was about to drop. It was just exactly when and how and Tenryu wrestled as if he was acutely aware of that tension and anticipation.

And the payoff came, because it was inevitable. A shoulder block and a series of these peppering, flicking kicks. The price sufficiently paid, Tenryu was happy to settle back into a Greco-Roman knucklelock but Fuyuki was going to keep stepping over the line (as he must if he was to have any chance at victory and to prove his worth as a man. And Tenryu was there over and again to put him back in his place as only he could. It was when Fuyuki finally pushed Tenryu, finally got him to go for the second rope elbow instead of reverting back to another knucklelock that he was able to capitalize, but even that couldn't last for long, for Tenryu was always back up, always rushing back at him clothesline or powerbomb or a simple shove onto the back of his head at the ready. Still, Fuyuki was no longer a young man. He had size and resilience and an understanding of his mentor's techniques and he hung even in the face of the storm, right up until the point that it blew him away. But not before reaffirming Tenryu's respect for him, however, and maybe that was all that really mattered in the end.

Super Tiger vs. Mark Lewin UWF 9/8/84

MD: If you look at the list of foreigners in UWF (even early UWF), Lewin has to be up there as one of the oddest stylistically. There are Takada and Maeda matches that I've never seen (and I have seen Meltzerian claims that Takada's win over Lewin was a big deal for Takada and UWF, but all I can say for sure is that Phil didn't like it much); I really need to go back for those but this one was pretty out there. Lewin didn't change up his act in the least. It began with Super Tiger throwing a lightning fast kick and Lewin recoiling back wondering just what he had gotten into and it doesn't really look back. Lewin sells all of Tiger's holds like he's wrestling Dusty in Florida, big broad selling. Late in the match he even lets himself get tossed off the top rope. The best bit of that is when the tiger feint gets him in the face and he starts climbing the guardrail in fury. On offense, he's clubbering with stomps, throwing ridiculous karate chops, and yes, gets behind Tiger with the dreaded nervehold. And Sayama is left to try to figure out if he's going to break the illusion by not selling or if he's going to break the illusion by selling. He chooses the latter and I'm not at all sure it was the right decision. The finish, both impressive and merciful is Super Tiger actually getting him up for the tombstone and after the match Lewin goes full maniac and starts dismantling the ring. All of this left me wishing we had the Fujiwara matches from this tour, but I doubt they were as bizarre as this.

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New Footage Friday: FLAIR! MURDOCH! DOUGIE! FUJIWARA! TAKADA! BURKE! GORDY! ULTRAMAN

Yoshiaki Fujiwara/Nobuhiko Takada vs. Rocky Della Serra/Leo Burke UWF 7/24/84 - GREAT

PAS: This was early UWF, before they were really a shootstyle fed, so this was a standard pro-wrestling tag match. It was mostly hard head Fujiwara, which is far from my favorite Fujiwara, but he does hard head spots really well. Burke especially leaned into stooging big from punching or elbowing Fujiwara in his rock hard dome. Takada continued to underwhelm me, lots of kicks which only semi-hit (although he did waste Burke with a top rope dropkick).Burke was the revelation here, he has a big rep, but not a ton of footage, and he was on one here. Great looking bumps, awesome offense (he hit the best inverted atomic drop I have ever seen) totally looked like a super worker. 

MD: Fun stuff. Della Serra is a guy we've seen pop up in a few places since we started doing this and Burke is obviously one of the greatest journeymen of the 80s. What I liked about them here is that this, in early days UWF, felt almost like a different style battle where they were utilizing the sort of pro wrestling they'd do anywhere else and Fujiwara and Takada were Fujiwara and Takada. That might be a series of overdramatic elbow drops from Della Serra or an inverted atomic drop from Burke or whatever. It obviously meant that they knew how to play into all of Fujiwara's head spots for the best effect. Adding to this you had Takada bringing a little more flash with whips and dropkicks on top of things like the belly to belly right into a submission. It all came together pretty well despite it all.

Ric Flair vs. Dick Murdoch NWA 9/11/86

MD: Maybe not the best week to cover Flair, but what the hell, it's footage, it's new, it's Friday, and it's of historical value since, unless I'm mistaken, we just have a couple of minutes of garbage footage from 78 over two matches of Flair vs Murdoch, so this is a new, iconic pairing. I liked the creativity and the variation here, much of which I'll credit to Murdoch. After the initial matwork (not Flair's best, but it was fine) they made the most of the relatively short fifteen minutes of match time, just throwing out interesting transition after interesting transition to the point where it never felt like a your turn/my turn match but like a real struggle where both guys were trying to outfox the other. My favorites were probably Murdoch catching the knee on an early knee drop attempt and Flair causing Murdoch's elbow drop to the leg to overshoot forcing him to wipe out on it. But Murdoch also got a snap turning backslide counter and Flair jammed him on a fireman's carry attempt by punching him in the face, and so on, combined with what you'd expect like Murdoch answering the chops with punches out of the corner or Flair getting a cheapshot in after begging off towards the ropes. 

The finishing stretch was, of course, BS, but still had enough wrinkles to feel creative. Murdoch hit a running power slam instead of slamming Ric off the top. They had a ref bump, Flair tossing Murdoch over the top, a phantom pin off a punch by Murdoch, before the actual finish of Murdoch inadvertently back body dropping Flair off the top onto Tommy Young and then hitting the brainbuster but getting DQed. If you're going to have a finishing minute like that, at least it was dynamic. You didn't know if Flair would win by cheating after Young went down or if it'd be Flair tossing Murdoch over the top that would cause the finish or if Flair would win after the phantom pinfall, etc. On the other hand, if you're having to stack elements of a Dusty finish one on top of the other on top of the other to keep it fresh, maybe there's something problematic with your booking?

ER: I thought this was excellent, just the panacea I needed after a long work week with some late nights. The chemistry between the two was great and they kept upping the ante in ways I wasn't expecting. This match had a ton of activity to it and they kept pulling off sequences that I hadn't seen done quite this way. That always excites me, when I see a new match with two guys I've seen a ton. I can't really get excited about Flair matches these days. I imagine if an unseen Flair/Steamboat there's a good chance I'd watch it, but probably a better chance that I would just watch a random episode of Sunday Night Heat instead. And yet I loved everything Flair did here and loved even more how Murdoch worked with him. The opening was some light matwork with them moving in the familiar ways, but it really kicks up when Murdoch catches and blocks a Flair kneedrop inches from his nose, drags himself to his feet by Ric's leg, and before long is dropping elbows on Ric's leg. That leads to Dick missing one of them when Flair shifts and then Flair starts working over Murdoch's side from his nasty spill. 

Now, this match had a lot of "stuff". Murdoch and Flair are guys with a lot of stuff, and Flair more than most is a guy who is going to get his stuff in no matter what. But this match managed to have a ton of stuff while feeling like all of the stuff served the match. This didn't feel like Flair giving the fans Flair, it felt like Flair giving the fans a good match with memorable Flair moments. And Murdoch was there with some incredible selling and super impressive body work to make Flair look even better. Murdoch's execution was all time great in this match. His misses landed like a man who didn't expect to miss, his punches looked as punishing and sharp as ever, but his technical ability was amazing. He had a nice tight reversal on a Flair abdominal stretch that he then rolled into a tight cradle, and later he hit one of the most finely executed sunset flips I've ever seen. Murdoch understood the physics of wrestling, and his move execution legitimized his fighting. It wasn't just his offense, but the way he took Flair's offense was a real mastery of physics. Murdoch is able to look heavy while taking offense but you can tell he's getting up for everything with ease. He hangs in the air taking a Flair back suplex, and makes a hiptoss look like Flair really has to muscle him over. Murdoch's selling was excellent throughout, taking a Flair kneelift and holding the left side of his belly like he got stuck, or the painful grimaces when Flair would raise his arm and punch him in his left side. 

The dedication to every small spot made every big spot look fantastic, with the best being Flair going up top and Murdoch running across the ring to plant him with a huge powerslam. And we got an all time great punch out, with Flair dishing a hard knife edge in the corner that sends Murdoch responds instinctively to with a three punch combo, and Flair bumps his way through these fists in great ways, leading to ref Tommy Young stopping Murdoch from hitting his big wind up right, only to have Murdoch throw a just-as-nasty left jab over Young's shoulder. It wouldn't have looked better if it was a Bugs Bunny cartoon, and I'm not sure Bugs could work that punching sequence as expertly as Murdoch or Flair. I loved all of this match, bullshit finishes don't bother me when the journey is this much fun. 

PAS: There is an apocryphal Murdoch vs. Flair match from Mid-South which Joel Watts called the best match he has ever seen, but the tape melted in a hot car. From this relatively abbreviated version you can really tell that they had special chemistry. This was way more reversal heavy then I expect from Flair matches, with lots of cool counter wrestling by both guys. This was counter wrestling which felt organic rather then two guys waiting around to dance into another spot. Murdoch especially found neat ways to pick the leg or sneak in punches. I loved Young catching the haymaker and Murdoch sneaking in a jab, I love when punchers have a bunch of different signature punches and Murdoch unloads the arsenal. 

Doug Gilbert/Keizo Matsuda/Tiger Jeet Singh?/Ultraseven/Takashi Uwano vs. Terry Gordy/Shoichi Ichiyama/YUJI KITO/Yukihide Ueno/Tomohiro Ishii IWA Japan 2/4/01

 
MD: Full disclosure: I'm not super familiar with some of these guys, but I found this overall pretty compelling. The story here was good, with eliminations possible by going over the top too, which meant Gordy was a beast here just due to the size differential. I know he was diminished, but you put him in a tag like this where he could be dangerous in the corner or come in and have some guys run into his stuff or just throw his body around and he could still be incredibly effective. I wouldn't want him working a twenty minute singles match necessarily but he had size and presence and meant something to the crowd: when Ultraseven (who was bigger but could still move pretty well) faced off against him the crowd had a real buzz. Anyway, this was ultimately the Keizo Matsuda show. Mostly thanks to Gordy it became 5 on 2 pretty quickly, with a long beatdown on Matsuda, to the point I thought we'd get ten minutes of Gilbert vs the World, but they were able to get it to 4 on 2 and then Gilbert did his job by double eliminating himself and Gordy. After that, Matsuda had some real hope and momentum and it looked like there might be some heel communication and another elimination but the double teaming works and then works more and then works even more and after a valiant attempt to hang in there, the numbers game ends up as just too much. Matsuda is probably stronger for his showing though.

PAS: This was a couple of months before Gordy's death, a full year after his last listed Cagematch match (Hardy Boys vs. Gordy/Hayes, which is pretty intriguing). I thought he looked great. In some of his 90s work he looked addled, but here he moved well, hit some big hard shots, great clotheslines, nice suplex. I liked how he was a real obstacle for everyone he faced, and I dug Dougie needing to sacrifice himself just to give Matsuda a chance. That was definitely not Tiger Jeet Singh btw, it was some guy in a mask, which is always the trouble with translated match listings. Matsuda was fun as a guy dying on his sword, but be valiant all you want, you are still dead. 

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New Footage Friday/Fujiwara Family UWF 4/23/85

PAS: A whole new UWF 1 handheld got unearthed, lots of British guys worked the early tours, but not much of the footage is available. Finlay and Rudge in UWF is still the holy grail, but it's cool to see guys like Singh and Martin as well.

Ray Steele vs. Osamu Kido

MD: I'm fairly high on Steele generally but I like him most in matches with contrast, him vs a scoundrel. Here, despite doing a fairly solid visual John Saxon impression, the actual work was sort of lacking that. It came off dry and exhibition like, with fair struggle but no real fire. When they built to something, like the Scorpion Deathlock, it ended up really not mattering. The finish of Steele grabbing a late headlock and getting suplexed felt pretty lazy for the setting too, even if they twisted it slightly with the submission after the suplex.

Caswell Martin vs. Nobuhiko Takada

MD: I had seen the Steele vs Kido match before this one and I was sort of wondering if it'd just been a while since I'd seen UWF undercard footage and things were just more laconic than I was remembering. No, no they were not. This was top notch. Right from the get go, it had a different sort of aggression, even with Martin's first press into the ropes. Martin really stood out here. There was the sense that Takada had him on holds, on strikes, maybe even on leverage and trickiness, but Martin came off like a true powerhouse with a ton of throws, including this great spin out deadlift gutwrench. My favorite Takada moment here was him slapping Martin in the face on a reset and then drawing him in to stand up striking through it which wasn't at all to Martin's advantage. Just a dynamic match all around. This felt like a real find.

PAS: This was really excellent, Martin fit this style perfectly and I am not a Takada guy, but he was great too. Martin had some killer throws, just popped his hips deadlifted and threw. I also thought he had some fun nifty tricks from the bottom, including grabbing and turning the arm. I liked Takada targeting Martin's gut with spin kicks and whip kicks which really looked like they sucked. He had some nice throws as well, and had his moments on the mat, and never really sat in kneebar which can be the downfall of Takada, in fact his one kneebar attempt had Martin working hard to twist out and counter and was a highpoint of the match. Real gem of a match.

Super Tiger vs. Masami Soronaka

MD: In my head, this was about Sayama being incredibly dangerous and explosive and Soronaka mainly trying to contain him as Sayama worked from underneath. The work mostly bore that out. Sayama just came at you in so many differnet ways. He had the kicks, the lethal headlock suplex, a nasty headlock takeover that took Soronaka's face off, a lightning cross arm breaker, and the northern lights style throw that set up the finish. From underneath, he struggled a bit but could still all but flip out of things. Soronaka put up a pretty solid effort and might have come out close to even on points, but it was just a matter of time before Sayama took him down.

PAS: This was structurally very similar to the all timer Tiger vs. Fujiwara series, with the wily mat wrestler attempting to subdue and ground the explosive striker. Soronaka is very much not Yoshiaki Fujiwara, and I mostly ended up resenting him stifling Sayama and all that he can do.When Sayama gets him in the corner and finally unloads it was very cool, and Soronaka had a trick or two, but I needed a bit more pop.

Yoshiaki Fujiwara/Akira Maeda vs. Omar Atlas/Tiger Dalibar Singh - FUN

MD: Interesting dynamics here. There was a solid Atlas/Maeda exchange to start, smooth but competitive. Singh was clunkier but his stuff had impact. Fujiwara seemed fairly content to feed for him. On the other hand, he leaned on Atlas a little more. For instance, when Atlas didn't quite hit him hard enough in the corner, he turned it around and smacked him on the face. This faded off towards the finish with Fujiwara and Maeda firmly in charge, with crabs and countless great Fujiwara headbutts, which is as good a final image as any if you're going to have a tape abruptly end.

PAS: Definitely a bummer that this gets cut off, because I would have liked to see where it was heading. I as usual am going to focus on Fujiwara and what he brought to the match. I really loved his section with Atlas, he really dominated the standing grappling, locking in the double underhooks and not really letting him go anywhere, shifting and countering any attempts to escape. When Singh gets the hot tag he really puts over those uppercuts and the big suplex, something which meant more considering how tough Fujiwara looked before. It did feel like it was building to something, which we didn't get, but what we got was pretty neat.

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Problematic Hall of Fame: Gerard Gordeau

Gerard Gordeau vs. Akira Maeda UWF 8/13/88

ER: Gordeau's pro wrestling debut, main eventing against the biggest shootstyle star in the large Ariake Coliseum, carrying on that Japanese Different Style Fight tradition. The Different Style allowed the match to stand out in a different way from the excellent Yamazaki/Takada match that came right before it. This match was less "clean" so felt more like a shoot, with Gordeau throwing high kicks and hard punches to Maeda. Gordeau would follow up with shots after knockdowns, but without being a real heel, leading to cool moments like him going down but landing an upkick to Maeda's eye that swung the advantage right back to Gordeau when he pounced for a rear naked choke. Gordeau has Maeda beat on reach, and Maeda gets that his best bet is to catch one of Gordeau's long limbs and start bending it, so when he finally drops to the mat and puts all his weight into down dogging it into a kneebar, it felt big. 

Gerard Gordeau vs. Brian Johnston UFO 10/24/98

ER: Johnson had a wrestling career similar to something you could picture Gordeau having if things had gone differently. Johnston was like a smothering if somewhat dull shootstyle Davey Boy Smith, but he got a strong 3 year run in New Japan during 1999-2001, an era that isn't really circulated much online. Gordeau feels like someone who could have had a similar midcard gaijin run in New Japan, and it would have yielded some great stuff. But I like his career as more of a high card special attraction, and it's got some insanely impressive milestones: Main event of the biggest show in reboot UWF's first year, main event of the biggest show in RINGS' first year, the first fight in UFC PPV history, a Tokyo Dome match against Inoki on a huge drawing show, Naoya Ogawa's BODYGUARD on the night Ogawa shot on Hashimoto, and now the semi main of the first show of Inoki's new UFO fed. There's a lot to be said about Gordeau's place in wrestling history, being used as a genuine special attraction draw as a major part of huge wrestling and fighting shows. He creates genuine buzz and looks like a guy who would have a really impressive heavy metal record collection and entirely unpleasant views on a lot of social issues. 

Johnston smothers him while Gordeau keeps distance when he can with high warning kicks, but Johnston is bigger and is able to pounce on him. Gordeau is patient and avoids damage, but Johnston does get a heavy armbar that leads to a nice Gordeau standing escape. Gordeau doesn't mess around once he's standing, and then his specific scumbag charm comes out as he starts throwing harder and more purposeful kicks at Johnston's head. He kicks Johnston right in the eye and sends him running out of the ring injured, and then there's a big scrum in the ring between cornermen, the kind of thing you would tell a ton of people about if it happened at any fighting show you'd attended. The cornermen keep going at it (Different Style Fight cornermen brawls are among the truest joys in pro wrestling), Gordeau gets on the mic and he's this incredible heel who has built up an old school 50s mythical heel character as a man known to permanently damage eyeballs and faces, as the cameras cut to Johnston holding his eye in the entrance way and a cornerman doing a double leg takedown in the ring. 

Gerard Gordeau vs. Naoya Ogawa UFO 12/30/98

ER: We get a cool Gordeau heel promo package, showing his unprofessional moments from other fights, showing his last UFO mic grab where he talks about when he fights there are no rules and makes threats about taking eyes. He says Ogawa might have a chance against him on the ground, but standing he is going to kill him. And as this match goes on we get more and more heel cheap shot character Gordeau, and it's great. Ogawa tries to tie him up, but Gordeau is a stronger striker and is able to keep knocking Ogawa to the ground. He starts acting incrementally unprofessional, and those incremental steps are key to the brilliance of Gordeau's heel character. He isn't out there doing some Nazi canned ham Sam Adonis bullshit, he's not out there seeking the glory for the heel heat. A heel who isn't showing any signs of enjoying his villainy is a colder, scarier, more intimidating heel. There needs to be a theatrical disconnect from your heels, that need to see them enjoying how bad they are being, that need to see them getting SOMEthing from their bad behavior. Instead, Gordeau always has the rushed unsmiling expression of a man who is trying to finish his cigarette outside while it's drizzling. 

Gordeau starts kicking at Ogawa's legs and sweeping them, and starts sneaking in shots that become more and more blatant, while his legal shots become more violent. After the legsweeps he hits some sicko punch combos to Ogawa's abs and kidneys, all legal but aggressive. But then Ogawa backs him into the corner and Gordeau starts throws a couple headbutts at Ogawa's eye, then actually gouges at it before punching Ogawa in that eye after gouging him down to a knee. But the face/heel dynamics are actually pretty funny, as Ogawa jumped up to his biggest level of stardom after shoot attacking Hashimoto, so them building up Gordeau as the cheapshotting asshole means that this is just a case of fan's cheering on *their* asshole. They are me, loving Jeff Kent as a Giant and hating Jeff Kent as a Dodger. Gordeau and Ogawa are like two internet trolls who can actually back up their words, and Ogawa will not be out-trolled. Ogawa does get Gordeau to the mat and does tap him with a rear naked choke that he holds a little bit too long, then he tries to bait Gordeau into starting a post-fight brawl. Ogawa was 100% the southern heel who was trying to bait the babyface into attacking him, knowing that there was a $5,000 per punch fine attached to each babyface punch until their big match. But again, Ogawa was *their* asshole. Ogawa is on his back trying to taunt Gordeau into getting tapped again, and the fans are into seeing their problematic guy rubbing it in. 

Gerard Gordeau vs. Enson Inoue BML 9/11/05

ER: This doesn't even go 3 minutes, but plays out as one of the hottest rounds in no holds barred fighting history. Gordeau doesn't once attempt to hide his cheating. No, now Gordeau is in his mid 40s, and is similar to how Abby did less bumping and more fork stabbing the older he got. Mid 40s Gordeau just throws high kicks and tries to thumb out eyeballs. He kicks Inoue to the floor then starts right in on thumbs to eyes, like Inoue was his Creator and Gordeau has now met his Creator and must kill him. Gordeau really goes after both eyes with both thumbs, even breaking up a potential choke by gouging at the eyes. Inoue gets his back in a great spot where Gordeau misses a high kick and Inoue takes him down while Gordeau's follow through has him turned around, and gets his back. Gordeau keeps cheating all the way to the finish, when we get this incredible fight over Inoue's match finishing armbar. Gordeau desperately looks like a man holding onto a cliffside root, and the ref completely ignores Gordeau's feet when they make the ropes multiple times, and you can see how disgustingly Inoue hyperextends Gordeau's elbow. Best of all, Gordeau - of ALL people - stands up and immediately demands answers, immediately demands Inoue explain what that unprofessionalism was all about. Where did this unprofessionalism come from Enson? No, we're not talking about the eye gouges Enson, what was that business with the armbar, hmmmmm? This was three of the wildest, unprofessional shootstyle pro wrestling minutes we have, pure lowbrow pit fighting, with the Japanese fans again getting to cheer for their problematic - but less so - homegrown jerk. 

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New Footage Friday: FUJIWARA! SUPER TIGER! MASCARA CONTRA MASCARA! JUMBO! TAUE! FUCHI! MISAWA! KAWADA KIKUCHI!

Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs. Super Tiger UWF 1/16/85 - EPIC

PAS: Tiger vs. Fujiwara is in the discussion with Lawler vs. Dundee, Santo vs. Casas, Misawa vs. Kawada of all time greatest matchups. Our pal Charles from PWO DM's me and says "I think I found a HH Tiger vs. Fujiwara that wasn't out there before" 2021 is already turning the corner.  

I am not sure where this stands in the pantheon of their matchups, but it was a hand to god wrestling treasure. The story in this is familiar, Fujiwara works for various submissions, while Sayama unloads a Dresden level firebombing on his body.  Can Fujiwara find a tendon to snap before Tiger beats him to death? Sayama just mauls Fujiwara's thigh with gross kneedrops and kicks. It is so relentless and violent looking that it seems like Fujiwara might never walk without a cane.  Fujiwara does land some nasty body shots, but he is mostly overwhelmed on his feet. There are very few wrestlers in history who are as brutal strikers as UWF era Sayama and some of the kicks and punches seemed to violate the unspoken agreement of professional wrestling. Despite that onslaught, Fujiwara is who he is, he can be getting blown out and beaten up, but if you stick out your arm or leg even a little bit, it is getting snatched. Fujiwara looks absolutely done, he is lying on his stomach while Tiger whip kicks him in the head and drops knees on his thigh. The ref pulls Tiger off to give Fujiwara a count, Fujiwara stumbles into the corner glassy eyed, but as Tiger approaches to put him down, Fujiwara catches the spin kick, grabs a fast waistlock and pulls him down. He then tries several attacks on the arm, until he maneuvers it into a key lock and snaps it like a breadstick. Wonderful mix of violence and skill. I am a Fujiwara guy, and finding a unseen prime classic like this, what a treat. 

MD: Absolutely elemental battle. Sayama is the wind, absolutely relentless, constantly driving forward, battering Fujiwara with piercing kicks, tearing apart the knee again and again and again, squeezing out of holds to restart the assault at the earliest opportunity. Fujiwara is the sea, repeatedly dissipated by Sayama's barrage but ever reassembling, patiently enduring the storm, calm and consistent, the wave of his arm able to reach around at any moment to pry off one of Sayama's limbs and recover the advantage. For all of the effusive, medium-criticism-defining praise of decades for Sayama's grace and execution, I connect with him most when he's tearing away at Fujiwara in the corner with his kicks. Later on, Fujiwara fluidly seeps out around Sayama's attempt to contain him and returns the favor with brutal punches in the corner; there's none of his occasional playfulness here given the stakes and the ferocity of Sayama's offense. Sayama wins on points by never stopping, by absolutely decimating Fujiwara's leg, but he's never able to fully take advantage of it, and all it takes is one opening, one mistake, one possibility for the sea to sweep forth and swallow the wind whole.

ER: This is listed as a Death Match, and while I'm not sure what that means within 1985 UWF, it's awesome that Fujiwara worked something billed as that sandwiched between days where he fought Terry Rudge. Can you imagine that schedule? How insanely tough is this man, who was taking on perhaps his greatest rival in a Death Match on a Wednesday, while no doubt getting pummeled on Tuesday and Thursday by Rudge. Handhelds are a pretty amazing glimpse at how our favorites worked when the cameras weren't on, and they almost always show us that a lot of them never held back no matter who was watching. Fujiwara is a punisher, but the most iconic images of him are of him taking a punishing beating. I loved the shots we got of him lying on his side, covering his body with one arm while keeping a hand in front of his face, only surviving because Tiger decided to catch his breath lest he get too tired kicking Fujiwara's ass. Fujiwara is the man this crowd wanted to see, hearing them chant his name while Ride of the Valkyries hit was like hearing AJ crowds go crazy for Misawa. And they kept willing him back into things even when Tiger looked like he was trying to cripple him. Tiger was a real monster here, and it occurred to me that there are probably a ton of people who know Tiger from the Dynamite Kid matches, that have never seen him in full UWF asskicker mode. His kicks to a grounded Fujiwara's head were disgusting, but his leg attacks were what really set this apart. His knee drops were incredibly cruel, dropping down as hard as possible on Fujiwara's hamstrings, including off the middle buckle. You knew at a certain point that Fujiwara was only going to target a keylock, and I loved seeing him weather this awful storm to get there. 

Aguila Solitario vs. Al Rojo Vivo CMLL 12/15/85

PAS: An unseen 80s mask match is pretty exciting, it gives you hope that more is still out there to be unearthed. This was pretty formulaic, but it is a great formula to watch. Rojo takes the first fall entirely rips the mask and bloodies Solitario a bit. Solitario is able to fight back and take the second fall leading a near fall heavy third. I liked the Solitario superfly splash he used to take the segunda, and how he came up short trying it again in the tercera. I could have used one more big moment, a huge bump, a crazy dive, a ton of blood. It was just missing the hook which would push this to another level. Still it was really cool to see, and a big moment in two wrestler's lives we got see play out.

MD: This was exactly what I wanted it to be and hugely refreshing to watch. Rojo Vivo launched the ambush right at the start and controlled the primera with a very solid beatdown. Very little pomp or bs. Aguila's comeback spot in the segunda was actually worked for more than you'd usually see in these. It wasn't a bolt of lightning but instead an errant, desperate backhand followed up by more desperate swipes and revenge-driven offense that really embraced selling the damage already done. At the same time, Aguila threw himself into it, making even armdrags feel like punishing revenge spots. The tercera was exciting, full of nearfalls that had me for a moment. Rojo Vivo turned the tide with a low blow on the outside and Aguila used that to express vulnerability and peril off and on in the stretch. He didn't have the world's best execution but it really didn't matter here because everything was believable and he kept the crowd connected.

Akira Taue/Jumbo Tsuruta/Masanobu Fuchi vs. Mitsuhara Misawa/Toshiaki Kawada/Tsuyoshi Kikuchi AJPW 3/29/92

MD: Great lost six man here. You look for the big things and the little ones with these. For big ones, you get the relative novelty of Kawada and Misawa working together, Kawada going at it with Taue, the huge feel of of Jumbo vs Misawa, and after spending a good chunk of the match avoding everyone and getting little shots in, the sheer inevitability of Jumbo crushing Kikuchi starting a really enjoyable peril segment for him where Fuchi demolishes him (including an amazing neckbreaker hold over the top rope) and Taue lawn darts him into the turnbuckle. The little stuff would be the specifics, like Misawa doing his headstand flip and going for a tag early on, only to realize he'd lost his ring positioning and was in the wrong corner, or Fuchi playing his usual bulldog self from the apron and rushing in to go straight for Kawada's eye to break a hold, that sort of thing. I thought the finishing stretch went on a bit too long, maybe, but that's a me thing. Otherwise, this was really good stuff with a pretty legendary four minute beatdown on Kikuchi that everyone should see.

PAS: Pissed off at the kids Jumbo is my all time favorite Jumbo. He seems to take such glee in brutalizing Kikuchi and man does he kill him here. Kikuchi taking these beatings multiple times a week really shortened his career, but he was one of the best ever at spunkily taking a pasting. Fuchi was a real fucker in this match too, he comes in and tries to rip Kawada's eye out, and enziguiris him right in the kidneys. Kawada was a great supporting player in this match, he was a level below then his opponents at this point, and it was fun to see the ultimate asskicker coming off the back foot instead of firing forward.  This was a Kikuchi show, bravely dying on his shield, and the barbarians who slaughtered him. 

ER: I love these six mans, and it's so incredible to see them working their charismatic, easy to follow formula at every house show. A special thing about this nearly 30 minute handheld, is that we have a genuine wrestling handheld maestro behind the camera. Our footage  shakes wildly for the first 30 seconds, and by the time the match starts the guy is doing perfect framing zooms, keeping all the action perfectly squared up the entire LONG match. When the match would break down and everyone would pair off, he'd manage to jump between all three pairs without missing action. This guy did some shots that made it seem like he knew exactly what moves were going to be happening, just an awesome familiarity with these guys. I honestly don't think I've ever seen a handheld match keep the action this well. I have to imagine he was part of some kind of community, the way Grateful Dead fans know the names of certain prominent tapers who got the best sound mix. I want to see his other work. 

The match was an awesome heel performance from grumpy Jumbo and his goons, Masa Fuchi and Akira Taue. This is the era of Jumbo I love, such a magnetic superstar in that ring. The handheld really gets you in with the crowd, and every time Jumbo showed off just why he still had reasonable claim to being the top dog, the crowd OOOOOOHHH'd along with him every time he pumped his fist. The whole match really picks up when Jumbo's team gets Kikuchi away from the pack and really lay in the kind of beating that Kikuchi took in 1992. Kikuchi is one of the toughest lunatics in wrestling history, and most prisoners don't see the kind of abuse this guy took in the early 90s. Taue lawn darts him face first into the turnbuckles, Fuchi hung him out to dry on the ropes, and Jumbo confidently injured him with a stiff Boston crab while keeping him away from his corner. We get the great fakeouts where Kikuchi is held back from making the tag, and all of it works really well. 

You really get to see how far Misawa came when you see him here versus him as the absolute top guy. Jumbo still comes off like the main hoss in All Japan here, and Misawa doesn't have quite the impact for me he would just a couple years later. Jumbo was practically out of wrestling just a few months after this match. Misawa is such a boss within two years, but here he still looked like a guy who wasn't quite able to move Jumbo around the way he wanted. Fuchi is so good as the second in command ass kicker, behind Jumbo. He never uses Jumbo to hide behind, but you can sense he feels emboldened having Jumbo there. He really rips at Kawada, and you always get a sense of glee when you know he's standing across from Kikuchi, like Kikuchi is his violence muse. But really this left me feeling like the perfect kind of match to soak in the 1992 brilliance of nearly/suddenly retired Jumbo and what might have been in the 90s, with more from a great year of underdog babyface work from Kikuchi. A great find, and a more complete look at one of the most fruitful rosters in wrestling history. 

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Bangkok Shocks, Saigon Shakes, Halme Rocks

The Viking vs. The Patriot  UWF 10/11/90 - FUN

ER: This is not Del Wilkes. This is not my beautiful Berzerker. And, we gotta start this thing somewhere. AND, yes, I've now done two straight Complete & Accurates starting with huge 300+ pound white guys working as "The Viking". The Patriot is about the same size and shape as Joey Maggs. Herb Abrams gets to Kal Rudman levels talking about the size of Viking's pecs. The match is very short, about 2 minutes. Viking hits a chop that sends Patriot bumping neck first into the bottom rope, and the finish run is damn worthy of a finishing run. Viking hits a big press slam and drops Patriot HARD across the top rope, then smooshes him with a leaping elbow drop. He also pins Patriot with one hand, and with the other hand he points at the referee through the entire count. It looked badass.

The Viking vs. Kevin Benjamin  UWF 10/11/90 - SKIPPABLE

ER: Before the match we get a promo from The Viking, filmed the way UWF always filmed interviews: Pulled in for a tight close-up on a big meaty face. Halme delivers his promo the same way Peter Stormare mentions being an expert at fixing the cable in Log Jammers. And this match...wasn't always pretty. There was some miscommunication, Benjamin doesn't get up well on a sideslam (that leads to Viking stumbling and dropping him), and doesn't get up great on a press slam. It didn't make either guy look great. I've never seen Benjamin outside of UWF Power Hour, and I assume Halme went through a rushed training with Brad Rheingans and Verne Gagne. There were small moments of joy, like a short Viking kneelift, and some wrist work that leads to Viking bieling Benjamin by the arm. Viking has a big leaping elbowdrop for a finisher, and it looks good, and we get another stretcher job. Things will get better, I say to the dark.

The Viking vs. Stephan de Leon  UWF 11/8/90 - SKIPPABLE

ER: A kid in the crowd appears to be wearing a bootleg Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sweatshirt, with Raphael flexing. It looks amazing. Halme is not making it a secret what moves he'll be doing in these matches. He'll throw someone into the ropes, and immediately wait for them in the position of the move he'll be doing. You know when a powerslam is coming. You know when a press slam is coming, because Halme is there waiting for him like Johnny waiting to lift Baby. Rachel actually defends it in terms of match psychology, suggested that he is so confident he's hitting the move that it doesn't matter that he is showing that he is hitting the move. I like her explanation. Viking delivers that powerslam, and de Leon doesn't have to take it neck first over the top rope. Viking does, however, deliver FOUR of his genuinely great leaping elbowdrops, even asking a fan "One more?" before flipping him off and delivering one more.

The Viking vs. Al Lion  UWF 12/6/90 - FUN

ER: "I think UWF should start selling life insurance," The Viking says, as his helmet sits crooked on his face. Viking, it should be noted, has been awkwardly stepping into the ring over the top tope, because his gigantic horned viking helmet would make it impossible to go through the ropes. Al Lion is someone I've never seen before, he's got pinstripe baseball pants, eye black, a Yankees cap, and is carrying a Louisville slugger. He looks like a nise Baseball Fury, which I dig. And this match actually starts out competitive! Viking runs at Lion twice and misses two big clotheslines, taking nice chest first bumps into the corner after both. Lion gets a couple of nice armdrags that Viking takes well, but from there we go mostly into Viking finishing stretch. We do get a little cross-up on a leapfrog spot, as Lion catches his head while Viking is coming down, but really Lion should have ducked more as he ran. How high did he think a 320 pound guy was capable of jumping in a leapfrog spot? The press slam is great, with Lion trying to pull up on it to make his landing safer, but that ends up just snapping his chin over the top rope. Viking calls out what appears to be the same fan he called out before hitting his big elbow drop in the last match. After the match he grabs the mic out of Herb Abrams' hand, calls him an oversized smurf, and wanders around ringside cutting a walking promo, telling that fan to "go back to Burger King" (I think? He was kind of gassed, so was breathing hard into the mic, and also has a very thick accent).

The Viking vs. Rob Allen  UWF 12/24/90 - FUN

ER: Viking continues talking shit to that SAME FAN! I want to see that match-up more than anything we've seen so far. At first I thought it was a plant, but it's clearly just some guy who is really, really getting under Halme's skin. He talks shit to this guy the entire match, after every move. He'd drop Allen with a backbreaker, then point at that guy. Drop Allen with a rough vertical suplex, then flex towards that guy. Allen is a good sport and takes a couple heavy as hell lariats, and that suplex dropped him into the bottom rope. Viking finishes this match with a spinebuster that seemed kind of...improvised? Halme shot Allen into the ropes, lifted him up into a kind of bearhug (which he had used in a prior match), things looked a little shaky...and then he just dropped him with that spinebuster. The referee gave on of the most gingerly counts I've ever seen, limply tapping that mat. I assume he thought Allen was concussed and didn't want to hit the mat too hard right next to him. We also get tons more great Viking elbow drops after the match, even telling the ref to get out of his way so he can do another.
And we're done with the UWF portion of our Tony Halme, and aside from being left wanting one of those white UWF hats (there has to be a warehouse in LA with boxes of these, right?), I'm left wondering how he went from these appearances - clearly tons of potential, but very tentative, borderline dangerous - to the poise and ring awareness and high end selling that we saw just a month after in the Hashimoto match. The way he carries himself here as a wrestler is night and day to how comfortable he looked as a boxer working a wrestling match. It's pretty astounding, and I'd love to know what happened in the intervening 6 weeks. I don't think the answer is as simple as "Hashimoto".


COMPLETE AND ACCURATE TONY HALME

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1989 Match of the Year

Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs. Kazuo Yamazaki UWF 7/24/89

PAS: This was my number one match in the Other Japan Best of the 90's voting, and truly a beautiful piece of professional wrestling. It is paced differently then any of the other matches in the Top 15, and I am guessing the odd pacing may have been a reason it finished low on some peoples ballots. Fujiwara, especially in the late 80's and 90's does this really stop-start almost Fugazish pacing, where you have big exchanges or moves, and then lulls, where both guys would circle or feint, before the next attack. I really like this kind of pacing, it is the kind of thing you often see in shootfights or boxing matches, really brings drama to the moments of action.

The first part of this match, Fujiwara is really not taking Yamazaki seriously at all. Like he is almost contemptuous, imagine Flair v. Scott McGhee or Ricky Steamboat in their first match. He throws in a cheap shot headbutt, dancing around mugging, puts on a knee bar while reclining with his head resting leisurely in his hand. At one point Yamazaki throws some kicks which miss, and Fujiwara responds with some really assholish thrown kicks of his own. Almost like the Jock Football player taunting the Asian kid with fake Karate. Fujiwara has some of the greatest facial expressions in wrestling history, and he really gets across contemptuous prick.

Yamazaki finally gets some respect when he hits Fujiwara with a nasty kick to the stomach for a down. Yamazaki tends to be kind of hit and miss with his kicks, and Fujiwara only sells the ones that land big, unlike a lot of other guys who will sell intent not result. Fujiwara also is always trying to catch the middle kicks, although even when he does, he will sell the shot if it is solid enough.

The last ten minutes of this match really bring it over the top. Fujiwara has gotten four downs on Yamazaki so he just needs one more knockdown for a technical decision. So Yamazaki has his back against the wall. He gets fed up with the abuse and you almost get the sense he has decided to dish out some receipts even if he is going down. Like many Fujiwara matches ring positioning is very important, Fujiwara had been trapping Yamazaki in the corner and punishing him with bodyshots. Yamazaki kind of bull rushes Fujiwara in the corner, and just unleashes body shots of his own, seemingly aiming right for Fujiwara's sake soaked kidneys. The downs get close to even, and they announce five minutes remaining.

They then go right to the corner with both guys now throwing with abandon and trying to maneuver the other into the corner, Yamazaki gets the final turn and cracks Fujiwara with a knee lift for a nine count. Now UWF2 had booked a ton of 30 minute draws, including one in the opening match of this show. Really the only reason to book so many undercard 30 minute draws is for a main event finish like this.

So we are at 28 minutes and Yamazaki unloads with a nasty headbutt right to Fujiwara's mouth. Now this is a clearly a receipt for the headbutts earlier in the show. Fujiwara comes up with blood dripping from his mouth, and this look on his face "So were throwing headbutts now, Motherfucker," and he just unloads with three nasty headbutts including one right to the eye for the TKO at 29 minutes 30 seconds. Yamazaki was technically fine here, but this was the Fujiwara show. Just an artist at telling a story with smirks and eye rolls and sneers. Every action had a reaction, great great stuff.

ER: I genuinely have no idea what to add to Phil's writing. This is probably the most extensively he's ever written about a match, and he's dead on. This is a beautiful match and showcases the true peak of Fujiwara's powers. This is like watching your favorite musician at the peak of their cool. This is seeing James Brown before he busted his knees or early Suicide gigs or like Mother Teresa in her 30s. I actually had Funaki vs. Nakano from this same show as my OJ #1, and now I'm curious how my opinions have changed on that 10 years later. This feels like a write up where I'm just going to keep saying "Phil is right about..." a lot, but oh well. Phil is right about the pacing of this. It's not a slow build, but the build comes in little waves, little currents. And at times I didn't necessarily think Fujiwara was underestimating Yamazaki, but moreso extremely confident in his own prowess (though at one point he does LITERALLY dust his shoulder off after a Yamazaki kick, soooo). 

This whole match features some of my absolute favorite rolling and grinding. Both guys end up in non-graceful, awkward positions, and the way they work into and out of those positions is wonderful. There was gamesmanship, often very overt by Fujiwara, and it was all great. I loved Fujiwara going down from that first big kick to his stomach, and staying down until the 9 count...and then literally hopping to his feet and walking it off with perfect posture. When you get publicly knocked down a peg in life, you either scramble to make things look totally normal and hope nobody notices (why no, I didn't just trip due to stepping on my own shoe lace...) or you have a little laugh to yourself at how human you are, and recognize that you still got it. 

The strike exchanges in this are beautiful in their imperfections. The timing is off, things don't land clean, and it's so much better for it. There are no turns taken, these are guys punching and kicking for an opening. Phil is so damn right about Fujiwara selling the result and not the intent. That's a beautiful sentence right there. It takes such nanosecond reaction times to be able to sell how good you THINK something looked, and Fujiwara is arguably the best ever at this. Post match is almost worth price of admission, as Fujiwara has gone into such caged animal survival mode that he almost forgets that his knock down of Yamazaki was for the match winning TKO, and his realization of that is so good, the smile of a reluctant fan favorite spreading across his face as he starts almost skipping around the ring. I'm a sucker for good sportsmanship done right, and I loved the moment of Fujiwara clapping Yamazaki on the back, happy in victory but almost relieved that it was over. True respect shown by both men.

ALL TIME MOTY LIST

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Within Segunda Caida's Wheelhouse: FMW vs. UWF vs. Barbed Wire

Yoshihiro Takayama/Masakatsu Funaki/Takuma Sano/Mitsuya Nagai vs. Atsushi Onita/Ricky Fuji/NOSAWA Rongai/Raijin Yaguchi (No Rope Barbed Wire, FMW 6/21/16)


ER: I have no idea what this was, or who it was designed to appeal to, or...well I guess I just don't understand Japan. The cat is outta the bag. What would be the American equivalent to this? Maybe an old timers softball game, except when Ozzie Smith picks up a ball then Dave Winfield is allowed to punch him in the dick? This match feels one step removed from WWE including a clause in their Legends' Contract stating "We reserve the right to one day film a WWE Network reality show where you may be hunted for sport". Several of these guys had very respectable, high end careers. Funaki is a pioneer, Takayama had one of the great puro runs of my lifetime, Sano has had great matches spanning decades, just seems a weird and sad and weird match to even be taking place. Nagai is the lone UWF guy with the sense to show up in jean shorts and a t-shirt. Takayama, Funaki and Sano are all in their trunks and kickpads, looking older and confused, as if they were tricked into being there. I refuse to believe that Takayama still regularly wrestles for actual real promotions. He wrestles the way people think they remember brain damaged Terry Gordy wrestling. I don't think he was able to throw one kick without immediately losing his balance and stumbling backwards. Sano now weirdly resembles Bob Backlund in the face, and I would be greatly interested in seeing a 2016 Backlund/Sano match. I guarantee you by the end of the year I'll have watched good matches featuring older luchadors. NOSAWA looks the same as he always does, Ricky Fuji looks like old weird Gregg Allman, Yaguchi looks like glam Kabuki, and Onita still *looks* like a fucking rock star. Dude could be playing bass in Guitar Wolf for all I know. I do hope he plays bass better than he approximates pro wrestling though. This was about 10 minutes of guys trying not to touch barbed wire, caring mostly about seeing where the barbed wire was in relation to their person, instead of caring about throwing decent strikes. We got SOME decent strikes. Onita took a kick to the eye. Onita also took a couple whips into the wire. I actually thought Funaki was going to be crazy enough to go into the wire, but he reversed Onita into it. Takayama got slammed through a barbed wire board, Sano got hit with a chair and fully looked like he did not want to be there. Some brawling on the floor made up in spirit what it lacked in quality. Onita won with some sort of chickenwing choke on Sano that was so loosely applied that I did not realize he had a chickenwing choke on Sano. I thought he was holding him or something, so that another old FMW guy could inflict actual damage on him. This was a match with old FMW guys and old UWF guys and barbed wire for ropes. I am going to go ahead and assume that all puro is currently just like this.

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MLJ: Brazos vs Villanos/Hijo Del Santo

1991-03-07
El Hijo Del Santo/Los Villanos I, III & IV vs. El Brazo/Brazo de Oro/Brazo de Plata/Super Brazo


Santo/Villanos vs Los Brazos 3/7/91 Part I by ragingnoodles

Santo/Villanos vs Los Brazos 3/7/91 Part 2 by ragingnoodles

I've seen some of these UWF (or other assorted Japanese) shows from this era, and while they can have fun match ups and really interesting crowds, usually the matches are more style than substance. They're single fall and meant to pop and amuse the crowd. I couldn't pass this one up though as we had four Brazos (the usual suspects plus Super Brazo) against three Villanos and Hijo del Santo, which is such a weird atomicos group.

It was more or less exactly what you would expect, but in the best possible way: disposable, fun, with memorable suplexes and rote comedy spots executed to perfection. The surprise came in the restraint and the build. They cobbled together at least the loose frame of a match, with some really hilarious comedic stalling with the crowd, even exchanges, a tecnico shine (lots of arm drags), building to rudo miscommunication and dive teases, at least some lip service towards heat, with the Brazos using teamwork and girth to keep control, a comeback moment, and a drawn out finishing stretch with languid cutoffs building to some big throws, the promised dives, and a finish.

There were individual things that stood out, some of the suplexes, certainly, that comedic stalling in the beginning, Santo's super sharp work with Oro (I think it was Oro at least), the Villanos playing the tecnico role during the rudo miscommunication so well, some big bumps on back body drops or out of the ring, and how well the Brazos played to the crowd with one shout or mannerism anytime that they seemed to be losing interest. It didn't really coalesce into anything greater than the sum of its parts though, which was a shame given that they really did show some restraint and build. I think if everything was broken up with the 2/3 fall structure, it could have really been great. Those pauses and logical break points can be so valuable when it comes to pacing.

They didn't really seem to pay off to the crowd though. I don't know if it was because the finishing stretch was just a bit too methodological or they were burnt out by how fun the start of the match was, or maybe because it was a match that just tried to be too much, but they seemed much more into things at the start than the end. In some ways, the match was a huge testament to the versatility of the wrestlers, but you can only give that so much credit when you're not sure at how the end result was received. Ultimately, it worked for me, though perhaps more as a novelty and a spectacle than a fully formed match.

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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

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MLJ: Recent Uploads: Yoshihiro Asai (c) v. Negro Casas [UWA Middle]

1990-06-07 @ Korakuen Hall, Tokyo, Japan

Yoshihiro Asai (c) v. Negro Casas [UWA Middle]

Another newly posted match from the last couple of weeks. This one has been in circulation but it's new to me and I imagine it might be new to some other people so I'm going with it. This was a UWA title match in Japan. It's one fall, which is not my favorite sort of lucha title match, but I enjoyed it a lot. Asai is someone who I think I'm able to enjoy more due to diminished expectations, than people might have five years ago. I generally know what I'm getting coming into his matches, more flash than substance. I tend to like him as a role player in trios but less so in other settings. Here, though, I was happily surprised.

What I want more than anything else in lucha title matches is a sense of struggle and competitiveness. They really brought that to the table here, in the intensity, in the strategy, in how they worked holds, and in how they escalated their offense as the match went on. If I was going to distill it, this was about Asai being quicker, Casas being more skilled technically, and both wrestlers adapting to their opponent.

The crowd was very much behind Asai, chanting away at various parts of the match. I always kind of love these UWF crowds which felt different to me than other Japanese crowds from the era. Casas also had a fun promo before the match where he broke into stilted English. Just throwing that out there in case you ever wanted to hear it.

This had a lot more matwork than I was expecting. Asai came out kicking, and Casas grounded him quickly. Towards the end of the match, he'd focus in on the leg, but leading up to that, it was mainly about containing Asai and slowing him down. They'd work in and out of holds with Asai gaining an advantage out of almost every exchange with his speed, only for Casas to work his way out of whatever hold Asai tried and ground him a bit more. A few times in here, they also had pretty spirited chopfests too. That really added to the intensity.

There were a number of specific moments I liked based around the struggle. At one point, Asai finally hit a spinning kick and he went for a Tapatia, really grinding in and throwing shots to the side and trying to make it work. When he gave up and went for a camel clutch, Casas used the shift to desperately toss him from the ring. Asai locked in a really nice short arm scissors at one point too. And then there was this beautiful takedown by Casas:

While we're at it, check out this double corner dropkick by Casas:

This was back and forth but never felt haphazard. The transitions were good and made sense. For instance, Casas lost the offense there by going for a third dropkick in the opposite corner and Asai moving. Asai, on the other hand, lost it a couple of times by going for his moonsault back off the ropes (or off the top) too early, allowing Casas to take advantage. It was after a missed one that Casas started on the leg, including a well-worked half crab and Scorpion Deathlock.

They moved into the finishing stretch after a ridiculous Casas spinning kick (like a Trouble in Paradise but barely hit; that's one thing about Casas: he'd try new things all the times, but if they didn't work, he didn't keep doing them), a huge plancha, and a nasty suplex into chairs that we barely saw. The stretch was very solid, a few big moves and logical counters, leading up to Asai finally hitting his moonsault off the ropes, and locking in a German.

It's generally tough for me to get a handle on a one-fall title match (and this write up probably showed as such). This didn't have the ebbs and flows that you might see in more traditional ones, but it was grounded enough in its own reality and the struggle was palpable enough that I enjoyed it quite a bit. If you haven't seen it, you should check it out.

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Top 30 Thursday - Other Japan #29. Nobuhiko Takada vs. Yoshiaki Fujiwara, UWF 7/8/85

This is real interesting as it comes just two weeks after the match that placed at #30 on the OJ ballot, which was Fujiwara getting kicked around by Super Tiger before sinking in a knee bar for the win. In theory Takada should be studying tape, remembering what Tiger did right in that match (pick Fuji apart with leg kicks that he couldn't catch), and what he did wrong (wing kicks into Fuji's waiting arms, allowing him to be taken to the ground and dismantled in Fujiwara's element). Takada is a kicker, so we'll see how this goes.

Takada actually takes it to the ground fairly early, locking in a side headlock, but you get the feeling that Fujiwara knows he's not in danger, and (as Fuji does) he calmly waits for his opening before getting an easy sweep and dropping down with a kneebar. Takada starts wildly kicking him with his free leg and that really does seem like a good way to get somebody to stop twisting you knee, and eventually just gets to the ropes. Fujiwara gets a great takedown and pretty much toys with Takada on the ground. Goes for a kimura from the bottom, then easily takes Takada's back when he feels like it. Takada gets to the ropes and Fujiwara shows he is the originator of the "I got 'til 5" as he just rests on Takada's back as Takada's face is smooshed into the mat, waiting for Fuji to get off him. THEN FUJIWARA STOMPS HIM AS HE'S STANDING UP!!!!

Oh that's fucking awesome. 2 minutes in and already Fuji is smacking this kid around on rope breaks. Takada gets up PISSED and rushes him into the corner and kicks the shit out of him, slapping him on the back of the head until Fuji is curled up in a ball letting the ref break it up. And Takada rushes around the ref and toes Fuji in the head!!

More grappling and Fujiwara does one of my favorite takedowns ever by just grabbing a leg and deadweighting it, forcing Takada to have to drop to the mat with him. Fujiwara is going to take that leg home and mount it in his fucking bathroom. It makes me think that Takada's kickpads and boots are probably working against him in this kinda situation. They seem to be giving Fuji something easy to grab onto and twiiiiisssst. But Takada keeps grabbing ropes and then standing up and leg kicking the holy hell out of Fuji's legs, making him curl up in a ball in the corner again. The ref breaks them up again and Fuji is so fucking awesome as he stoicly limps out to the center of the ring to meet Takada. He worked every goddamn day at that factory (double shifts when he could get 'em!) and you never heard him complain, not ONCE!

God those leg kicks all caught up at once and Fujiwara is a sitting duck. Orrrrrr he's playing possum and suckering Takada to get in close for some grappling. Look, I don't care how fucking cute that baby bear that you saw while backpacking looks, do NOT go near it. That fucker weighs 200 lb. and you know mama is lurking nearby. Just keep walking...or take it down with leg kicks. Fujiwara goes back to yanking the leg off and Takada barely makes those ropes this time, but Fuji just YANKS him back to the middle with evil intentions! The ref breaks it up though and Takada soccer kicks Fuji as he's getting up! These guys are breaking rules like motherfuckers and it is AWESOME!!

And 10 seconds later Fuji does Takada a favor. To get him from thinking about how sore that knee of his is, Fuji decides to just kimura the hell of that arm, trying to touch that hand to the back of Takada's head. Takada taps, and I pray Fujiwara stands up and does an exaggerated Vince strut around the ring on his bum wheels, but dude is hurting. We fade out with Takada being tended to as Fujiwara hunches over, massaging his swollen legs. Both guys are gonna be hurting in the morning.

80's Results and Reviews

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Top 30 Thursday - Other Japan #30. Super Tiger vs. Yoshiaki Fujiwara, UWF 6/24/85

Does watching Fujiwara pull out a buzzer beater ever get old?

These two always match up awesomely against each other, and they really represent UWF's two ideologies: more kicking vs. more submissions. I'm not sure there was anybody who put over Sayama's kicks as well as Fujiwara did, and Kicking vs. Subs is really the tale of the match here, with Fujiwara dancing away from kicks while Tiger occasionally leaves his neck out too far or Fujiwara can reach out and snatch an arm. Tiger takes him down with a DDT/suplex kinda thing, but doesn't seem to know what to do from the top. Fujiwara knows this and you can see him just biding his time from the bottom, that omnipresent half-smirk of his almost too telling. Sure enough he sweeps into an armbar but we're too close to the ropes. Back up and Fujiwara goes for the single leg only to have Tiger counter with an enzuigiri. It only grazes his head though, and Fujiwara being the greatest wrestler ever that he is, just kinda slicks his hair down and struts it off, showing Tiger that he only damaged a couple hair follicles. He struts around so awesomely afterwards that it makes me wish he had a long Snidely Whiplash mustache that he could twirl cockily.

Tiger fights fire with fire as Fujiwara tries grappling with him and Tiger does an insanely awesome suplex, like an arm-captured overhead belly to belly, bridging over and trying to snap Fujiwara's arm off. Fujiwara easily sweeps out again though, but this time Tiger nails a spin kick to the face (which Fujiwara sells greater than any man has ever sold a spin kick to the face, running himself into the ground like someone who just played that "spin around the bat and then try running in a straight line" game at a picnic).

That spin kick allows Tiger to start landing kicks way easier, as Fujiwara starts turtling up in the corner, getting picked apart by leg kicks, slaps to the back of his head, and snapping kicks to the kidneys. Fujiwara keeps trying for some desperation single legs, some more successful than others. At one point he gets Tiger down, into a crucifix and while transitioning to the Fujiwara armbar Tiger rolls through and kicks him right in the face. Tiger seems to be getting stronger as Fujiwara is getting caught more and more......until one mistake costs him the match. While picking Fujiwara apart with leg kicks that he just couldn't defend, Tiger decides to kick him right in the chest. Except his kick lands right in the waiting arms of Fujiwara, who then trips him down and locks on a kneebar right in the center of the ring. The look on Tiger's face is classic as he literally looks desperately at every single side of the ring, trying to size up which ropes are closest, before just screaming and tapping out.

I think I could watch these two wrestle each other just on a loop. They're a real yin yang to each other, and I think Fujiwara brings out the best elements of Tiger. Instead of flippy stumbly spots you get kicks with real bite and honest to god aggression. I don't ever remember writing up "aggression" as one of Tiger's traits in NJPW, but here there are plenty of moments where he just unleashes on Fujiwara. And what more can I say about Fujiwara that Phil hasn't said in 75-odd Fujiwara write-ups. It's just fascinating watching him work, really. Half the time it looks like he's shooting or calling a match and then tricking his opponent, I sit there and wonder how many times his opponent knew he was getting taken down, or if Fujiwara just shot in for single legs on a whim to see if he could catch someone sleeping. I wonder if he did this stuff on purpose during his matches, to kinda piss off his opponents, to make them more aggressive, to make me BUY THE HATE...because I do. Everything Fujiwara does looks real to me, and I don't care if that makes me a rube. He's one of the only guys that I can still have conversations like I did in the 4th grade, where we'd always wonder who was hitting "for real". 25 year old Fujiwara matches still make me suspend disbelief, and I love it.

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