Aichi Prefectural Gym, Nagoya
14th June, 1990
att. 8000
In (the real) Jorge Luis Borges' 1940 short story 'Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius', the discovery of one volume of a 1902 Encyclopedia Britannica leads the fictive Borges and his friend Adolfo Bioy Casares to learn about the land of Uqbar, presumed in the region of Iraq, and its unique culture.
One of the schools of Tlön goes so far as to negate time: it reasons that the present is indefinite, that the future has no reality other than as a present memory. Another school declares that all time has already transpired and that our life is only the crepuscular and no doubt falsified an mutilated memory or reflection of an irrecoverable process. Another, that the history of the universe - and in it our lives and the most tenuous detail of our lives - is the scripture produced by a subordinate god in order to communicate with a demon.
From the few concrete details and allusions to philosophical viewpoints (its people were extreme subjective idealists who held that the only contents of the world were one's mind) contained within this fragment, the entire world and people of Uqbar are reconstructed in absentia.
In the 2000 anthology of David Boring strips from Daniel Clowes' Eightball, the only knowledge the near-titular character (his surname is Borring) has of his biological father is an edition of a comic called The Yellow Streak that he wrote.
Boring's mother shreds the comic upon discovering it, leaving her son with only fragments of the inscrutable fragment he already had. These few panels, scattered throughout, act as commentary on the central narrative. But their distending and decontextualising in the damage of time perhaps lead Boring to become idolater, extrapolating a father as a figure of not-mother.
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I have been looking to proceed with this blog for some time now and am prepared to accept fragments and pieces in order to power forward. Thanks to Connor (@isalrightnow on Twitter) I now have one hour of two shows (not abridged shows, the show simply stop after an hour of tape) that I am going to write about. If the rest turn up later, so much the better. It would be better to build another world based on fragments of the UWF that it would be to have Pevsner-esque accuracy of lesser works.
So here we are in the city of Nagoya, a densely-populated city between Tokyo and Osaka, and already the warm glow of shoot-style splendour enswaddles me (yes that is a word now) as a very brief credits sequence announcing the two major matches of the evening precedes a parade of the ten fighters that scrapped, slapped, popped, and tapped around the canvas this evening in June 1989. King Maeda gives a brief oration and with much further ado (there is a rules demonstration lasting a couple of minutes), we eventually find ourselves in the ring for the first match.
The ravishing spectacle of American beefcake Bart Vale, who gets lots of oooohs and aaaaahs for his pretty-if-not-exactly-devastating high kicks, towers over the relatively puny mass of Shigeo Miyato. Freshly divested of his Tiger Mask-indebted trousers, Miyato has opted for leggings that are split between mauve and coral. A bold choice and rendered gorgeously in VHS.
This match is simple. Building around a well-told story where Miyato has to unlock the one-dimensional approach of Yankee idiot, Vale lunges at Miyato with his near foot-in-height of advantage, keeping his opponent at distance like a schoolyard bully putting his hand on the forehead of a weakling victim. Sometimes the match collapses to the ground but the referee is having none of it, standing them up and telling them return to stand-up.
Eventually after the umpteenth barrage of kicks from Vale forces against the ropes, Miyato spots his opening: a swift boot to the knees of Vale, crumpling him. It is worth a little look at this in closer detail:
The moment goes nowhere, but Vale now knows he can't keep distance so he chases Miyato and again finds himself ruined in a big seionage that takes both men to the floor and is broken up.
Miyato has this one won if he can pick his spot, whilst Vale is weary as the match enters double figures in minutes. Sensing the time has come, Miyato unleashes another ippon seionage attempt! But Vale scouts it, hauls Miyato in, applies the rear naked choke, locks his gargantuan legs around Miyato's small frame and takes a back bump centre ring. Miyato is going nowhere and taps!
Miyato slaps the mat in frustration, as if to say "I had him!" Nonetheless, he is charitable enough to accept Vale's offer of a shared hand-raise at the finish. A decent enough opener, though not exactly riveting. There were a couple of fairly egregious cooperation moments, particularly when Vale practically Fosbury Flops over Miyato to help a suplex.
The crowd gently warmed, Yoji Anjo cranks the thermostat up high by charging young princeling Masakatsu Funaki from the bell. The equal volume of cheers received by both men at the outset suggests both are well-loved, and so it proves throughout this back-and-forth barnstormer - the noise is constant and approving of everything that happens.
Things moved far too quickly to be written down in full over a match lasting 22.30. However, the broad schematic is this: Anjo senses he is not as good as Funaki so he's going to have to get in there and Mr. 200% it on the mat from the get go because this Funaki cat is one for the future but even now he doesn't mess around. Anjo pelts Funaki with slaps, riding the occasional counter to give out more.
Whenever Funaki grabs hold of Anjo, his grip is loosened or Anjo squirms his way to freedom. With lighting ease (some may say too easy) Anjo transitions out of being mounted with a huge slap and then armbarring the hell out of the stunned Funaki. It is not the flinty, stop-starty match that Anjo often has. He rolls through beautifully for a heel hook attempt. He moves from armbar, to triangle, then to top triangle as if performing an exhibition - but with compelling and natural vigour.
Everything here is really great and it takes places in a strange indeterminate zone that is never entirely pro-wrestling and is never entirely shooting. It is UWF.
It is pro-wrestling because there's a whole comeback by Funaki and wider story here about the mid-card veteran looking to hold his spot against the future lord; but it isn't because they're blocking and hitting hard and looking for any opening rather than 'weakening a joint'. It is performed, clearly so, but it passes the sniff test of veracity. It is great. Western Lariat agrees:
Funaki is on top near the finish, and like Miyato in the match before appears to have this won before snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Going for a suplex, Anjo counters into an armlock and forces the tap. A really super match that the crowd go wild for.
We do not see all of Yoshiaki Fujiwara and his student Minoru Suzuki though I believe the finish must have come shortly after Fujiwara has Suzuki in a butterfly/double underhook position (Western Lariat again: "Fujiwara more or less just decides that enough is enough and finishes off Suzuki rather easily with a butterfly suplex into a chickenwing") when the tape shuts off.
Up to there we see a cool and basic match worked at 90% between these two old hands. Suzuki rushes Fujiwara with a dropkick at the bell. It glances off the old man's body, who continues circling around ring as if a fly had just breezed by.
Suzuki tries to steal the upset by borrowing Fujiwara's moves (the cheeky shit tries to waki-gatame Fujiwara! He gets a slap for his troubles) and attitude but Fujiwara is Murder Dad for a reason. He invites Suzuki onto him, a classic Fujiwara move, like a spider setting out a lovely afternoon tea on its web for a passing fly. Flies rarely resist, and in this instance neither does Suzuki.
Suzuki nearly scores the upset when Fujiwara is knocked down with the dropkick when it lands in full. But the 9-count is not a near-win in reality; it is another Fujiwara move - playing possum. It's a masterclass in recontextualising sporting tropes for performance ends and makes you realise that Fujiwara might actually be the best in this company at this stage, for all of Takada's rugged poise, Funaki's athletic prowess, Yamazaki's all-around brilliance, and Maeda's pure Maedaoisity.
Not long after the 9-count is the end of the tape. We will write about the finish and the remaining two matches when they are uncovered.
NEXT: another fragment!
So here we are in the city of Nagoya, a densely-populated city between Tokyo and Osaka, and already the warm glow of shoot-style splendour enswaddles me (yes that is a word now) as a very brief credits sequence announcing the two major matches of the evening precedes a parade of the ten fighters that scrapped, slapped, popped, and tapped around the canvas this evening in June 1989. King Maeda gives a brief oration and with much further ado (there is a rules demonstration lasting a couple of minutes), we eventually find ourselves in the ring for the first match.
This match is simple. Building around a well-told story where Miyato has to unlock the one-dimensional approach of Yankee idiot, Vale lunges at Miyato with his near foot-in-height of advantage, keeping his opponent at distance like a schoolyard bully putting his hand on the forehead of a weakling victim. Sometimes the match collapses to the ground but the referee is having none of it, standing them up and telling them return to stand-up.
Eventually after the umpteenth barrage of kicks from Vale forces against the ropes, Miyato spots his opening: a swift boot to the knees of Vale, crumpling him. It is worth a little look at this in closer detail:
The moment goes nowhere, but Vale now knows he can't keep distance so he chases Miyato and again finds himself ruined in a big seionage that takes both men to the floor and is broken up.
Miyato has this one won if he can pick his spot, whilst Vale is weary as the match enters double figures in minutes. Sensing the time has come, Miyato unleashes another ippon seionage attempt! But Vale scouts it, hauls Miyato in, applies the rear naked choke, locks his gargantuan legs around Miyato's small frame and takes a back bump centre ring. Miyato is going nowhere and taps!
Miyato slaps the mat in frustration, as if to say "I had him!" Nonetheless, he is charitable enough to accept Vale's offer of a shared hand-raise at the finish. A decent enough opener, though not exactly riveting. There were a couple of fairly egregious cooperation moments, particularly when Vale practically Fosbury Flops over Miyato to help a suplex.
The crowd gently warmed, Yoji Anjo cranks the thermostat up high by charging young princeling Masakatsu Funaki from the bell. The equal volume of cheers received by both men at the outset suggests both are well-loved, and so it proves throughout this back-and-forth barnstormer - the noise is constant and approving of everything that happens.
Things moved far too quickly to be written down in full over a match lasting 22.30. However, the broad schematic is this: Anjo senses he is not as good as Funaki so he's going to have to get in there and Mr. 200% it on the mat from the get go because this Funaki cat is one for the future but even now he doesn't mess around. Anjo pelts Funaki with slaps, riding the occasional counter to give out more.
Whenever Funaki grabs hold of Anjo, his grip is loosened or Anjo squirms his way to freedom. With lighting ease (some may say too easy) Anjo transitions out of being mounted with a huge slap and then armbarring the hell out of the stunned Funaki. It is not the flinty, stop-starty match that Anjo often has. He rolls through beautifully for a heel hook attempt. He moves from armbar, to triangle, then to top triangle as if performing an exhibition - but with compelling and natural vigour.
Everything here is really great and it takes places in a strange indeterminate zone that is never entirely pro-wrestling and is never entirely shooting. It is UWF.
It is pro-wrestling because there's a whole comeback by Funaki and wider story here about the mid-card veteran looking to hold his spot against the future lord; but it isn't because they're blocking and hitting hard and looking for any opening rather than 'weakening a joint'. It is performed, clearly so, but it passes the sniff test of veracity. It is great. Western Lariat agrees:
The really great thing about this, as is the case with many great UWF matches, is that both wrestlers benefit from the match. Anjo was able to show that he was clearly the better man today, but, after a few more matches (this was only his third), and more practice in the dojo, that Funaki will undoubtably be able to beat Anjo one day
Funaki is on top near the finish, and like Miyato in the match before appears to have this won before snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Going for a suplex, Anjo counters into an armlock and forces the tap. A really super match that the crowd go wild for.
We do not see all of Yoshiaki Fujiwara and his student Minoru Suzuki though I believe the finish must have come shortly after Fujiwara has Suzuki in a butterfly/double underhook position (Western Lariat again: "Fujiwara more or less just decides that enough is enough and finishes off Suzuki rather easily with a butterfly suplex into a chickenwing") when the tape shuts off.
 |
| MURDERDAD VI: I BORE YOU, I RAISE YOU, I TRAINED YOU AND NOW I WILL MURDER YOU |
Up to there we see a cool and basic match worked at 90% between these two old hands. Suzuki rushes Fujiwara with a dropkick at the bell. It glances off the old man's body, who continues circling around ring as if a fly had just breezed by.
Suzuki tries to steal the upset by borrowing Fujiwara's moves (the cheeky shit tries to waki-gatame Fujiwara! He gets a slap for his troubles) and attitude but Fujiwara is Murder Dad for a reason. He invites Suzuki onto him, a classic Fujiwara move, like a spider setting out a lovely afternoon tea on its web for a passing fly. Flies rarely resist, and in this instance neither does Suzuki.
Suzuki nearly scores the upset when Fujiwara is knocked down with the dropkick when it lands in full. But the 9-count is not a near-win in reality; it is another Fujiwara move - playing possum. It's a masterclass in recontextualising sporting tropes for performance ends and makes you realise that Fujiwara might actually be the best in this company at this stage, for all of Takada's rugged poise, Funaki's athletic prowess, Yamazaki's all-around brilliance, and Maeda's pure Maedaoisity.
Not long after the 9-count is the end of the tape. We will write about the finish and the remaining two matches when they are uncovered.
 |
| THANK YOU FOR WATCHING BBC2 GOODNIGHT |
NEXT: another fragment!
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