Found Footage Friday: SPORTIVA~! KONAKA PALE ONE~! XEVIOUS~! KUBOTA~! ABE~! ISHIDA~! IZUCHI~!

Shinya Ishida vs. Xevious Sportiva 11/22/17
https://e.pcloud.link/publink/show?code=kZekA2ZmHdaABUjlI8L8sWtExfrBVfUsxUy (video 6)

MD: Back to Sportiva (which is not a night Club but a sports Bar that kind of looks like a night club) wrestling. Sebastian wanted us to look at Xevious, "a fat local obscure wrestler in a mask who does weird submissions and nasty knee attacks." And I might go with "fairly tubby" instead, but it's spot on past that, at least at first glance. My favorite thing about this guy immediately is that he does things that are supposed to be graceful, like Eddy Guerrero's slingshot senton into the ring, and he does them gracefully enough, but the impact is defintitely fat ("fairly tubby") guy impact. He has a very matter-of-fact way of hitting stuff. Not a lot of prelude or framing, just right to it.

Ishida had his charms. He botched a handspring early and played into the comedic effect of it, with Xevious right there to go along with it; either that was the plan all along and they made it seem natural or they just rolled with the crowd's reaction and a moment in a way that the casual setting really allowed. Both of these guys could do a number of fairly complex things over all and did a range, a little comedy, a little chain wrestling, some rope running and flying, some weapon shots on the outside. Midway through the match, Xevious started on the knee and that worked pretty well right up until the point that Ishida was supposed to come back and completely dropped the selling, but considering how many things they did well given the setting, I'm going to forgive that this one time. 

Yasu Kubota vs. Fuminori Abe Sportiva 4/5/17
https://e.pcloud.link/publink/show?code=kZekA2ZmHdaABUjlI8L8sWtExfrBVfUsxUy
(video 15)

MD: Satisfying clash of styles here, or at least clash of executions. Abe flowed from one hold to another, peppering shots in when possible or necessary. If there was a rope break, he'd show frustration, but throw some straight punches to whatever limb he had been working on and would move right to the next hold. If he was in a hold himself, he'd try to throw shots so he could make himself an opening. He was dogged early on and then, when fighting from underneath later, equally persistent in his desperation, chaining kicks together so even if the second missed, the third would hit.

Kubota was more solid and deliberate, thudding blows down upon the leg over and over. He made it seem painful when he dropped his stocky frame down into the hold; it wasn't just the hold itself. Whereas Abe would try various things, switching holds if one wasn't doing it for him, Kubota focused on that leg for as long as he could, with Abe selling it deep into his comeback. In the back half, though, Kubota used it to open Abe up for bombs. It gave the sense that Abe was always trying to come back from a deficit and Kubota was ever closer to putting him away. By the end, all he had were those kicks, and one kick too many meant that Kubota was able to heft him up for a powerbomb, the beginning of the end. 

Konaka Pale One vs. Tetsuya Izuchi Sportiva 8/21/2019
https://e.pcloud.link/publink/show?code=kZekA2ZmHdaABUjlI8L8sWtExfrBVfUsxUy
(Video 75)

MD: Izuchi is a guy we've covered maybe once on the site, a couple of years after this where he was a young pretty boy asshole kickpad guy. Here you don't get to see quite as much of that. Early on when he is in control, he's more of an all arounder, with sharp mat wrestling but also throwing hip tosses and kicks. Transitions here are pretty great. Konaka takes over for the first time by catching the leg in the ropes on a dodged kick, trapping it, and hitting a 619 onto it. He has plenty of those unique twists on things, like how he drops straight to his back abruptly to use a drop toehold or his rolling entry into a figure-four.

That figure-four took up a lot of the match but it was never not compelling. Izuchi sold the knee whenever he had the oppportunity throughout the match and he was constantly struggling to get out of the hold, with Konaka taking his attempts and turning them against him. When he finally caught Konaka off the ropes and hefted him over into a cradling suplex, and certainly when he was able to pull him over for a German at the end, it was like watching a guy trudge through mud. He had every elemental and universal force working against him and he had to grit through it all to get Konaka over. So absolutely no shortchanging the sense of struggle in this one.