Nippon Budokan, Tokyo
4th May 1990
att. 14130
Before we get into the emotional and physical fray of a UWF show (and please, keep reading to meet our special guest writer!) I think it is probably important that, given the haphazard order that I have approached UWF shows, I recap where we are as of May 1990 in order to give some shape to the story.
In 1988 we met the original shoot-style six: Akira Maeda, Nobuhiko Takada, Kazuo Yamazaki, Yoji Anjo, Shigeo Miyato, and Tatsuo Nakano. In this year they would introduce the occasional foreign guest (Norman Smiley, Bob Backlund, Mark Rush, and Bart Vale) and wreck the career of their own trainees in one match (Tsunehito Naito). The jockeying for top slot was contested between Maeda and Takada, with Maeda seeing out the year as kingpin.
Things changed dramatically in 1989, and yet somehow remained the same. Akira Maeda beat all-comers to remain on top. However, the defections of Yoshiaki Fujiwara and his mentees Minoru Suzuki and Masakatsu Funaki from New Japan shook up the midcard scene considerably. Johnny Barrett was the only foreigner who would return time and again, though a number of memorable one-offs including Willy Wilhelm and Trevor 'Power' Clarke kept things fresh. Young trainee Kiyoshi Tamura excited and delighted in his few appearances, though he was hospitalised by Maeda in their brief bout in October.
The first four months of 1990 have already seen tectonic shifts in UWF. In January, Takada beats Maeda to return to the top of the company. The second show of February sees Fujiwara defeat Takada in an upset, having himself lost to Maeda on the first show of February. Then, in April, Kazuo Yamazaki defeats Fujiwara to springboard to the top of the company (in my view; there are no metrics in UWF). Maeda and Takada continue to post wins in midcard, leaving the upper card of UWF in a much more chaotic and unpredictable state.
bro im goin fkn nutz at this light show waooowww
Oh hello Connor I almost forgot you were there! Readers, welcome Connor aka @isalrightnow from Twitter! His words appear in italics in this entry. He's right too. An incredibly high level opening package with a new inspirational theme. The light show gone full on Aquatarkus here, like a huge curtain in the shape of an octopus getting pelted with lasers and Christmas lights. It's like Cheap Trick at Budokan only without Cheap Trick. Why is it that modern shows at Budokan look kind of dead (even with full house) and old ones look packed full and ready to seXXXplode? The fans clap rapturously and then THE FUCKING UWF THEME and god I've missed this of late.
OMG IT'S DICK VRIJ IN PAINT SPLATTER KICKBOXING TROUSERS AND SOME INSANE THING IN HIS EAR. The rest of our beloved cast turn up and I thiiiiiiiiiiiink this is Funaki's official return from injury. Fujiwara gets the biggest pop here by a country mile.
Maeda gives the pre-show oration with a bit less control than usual. His eyes were skittering like he consumed a big bag of sherbert. Then some weird stuff where Takada hands a man a big certificate and the man drops something and you can audibly hear the front 9 rows rolling their eyes. Seriously.
So, to Dick (Leon) Vrij once more, looking like the lead dancer for Utrecht hardbass troupe Slaag van Bootdje Boys that I just made up. One of his accomplices looks like he, err, has not missed lunch. He will be fighting the much smaller and eminently weird Yoji Anjo. Anjo pulls this face that is like "who is this guy?" Which is weird as Vrij has fought here before.
Dick Vrij really stands out among his Dutch peers as a guy who is into fighting in order to fuck people up without any real recourse. He shoves, he piefaces, he instigates, and then that's when he starts striking. His strikes feel like what a terminator would strike like. Just perfect balance, precision and impact.
Yoji Anjo (here, merely Mr. 134%) responds well to the instigating, and his grappling attempts such as the headlock takeover are admirable in their skill. He stands up for himself and his own dignity. But then Dick will throw out some palm strikes or do a beautiful leg sweep that makes you think Anjo doesn't have much of a chance. Dick's presence is to be adored precisely because it creates such an inevitability in his fights.
The onslaught he performs to get the win is so stark and arresting. It's the sort of thing that makes you go from "cmon anjo you can do it!" to "oh, oh no. anjo is dead" Dream-dissipating levels of brutality.
Yes what interests me is that Anjo clearly has not yet embraced his true calling as shoot-style jobber. Of course he gets annihilated down the stretch, but there is a solid quarter-hour of making you think he has a chance of beating this West Teuton strike machine. Good match and definitely the best I've seen from a Dutchman in UWF.
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Reminiscent of Goeido vs. Harumafuji from 2016 Aki Basho: Nakano, adopting a peculiar but undeniable stance, stares into Yamazaki's soul. (editor: Kazuo) Yamazaki stares right back sans hesitation as the crowd immediately recognise the magnitude, the electricity of this moment.
Yeah (Tatsuo) Nakano is practically strutting in there isn't he? Circling the ring as if to say "I own this place" despite his W/L record being something like 9-14. It's actually very pro-wrestling and I love when those bits creep in as much as "woah this is a real murder technique".
Nakano has similar chemistry with most but there's something about Yamazaki's trademark demeanor reacting to his antics that feels so perfect. Nakano is always doing something; An elbow on the cheekbone, a headbutt to the jaw, batting away an inquiring hand looking for a knuckle lock, all stuff that would really piss you off if you were in there with him. Yamazaki happens to be in there with him so he unloads on Nakano from time to time with such explosiveness, such fury.
All of Nakano's animus begs for someone to go "fuck you too" and Yamazaki delivers it, and in a way that feels like he's not letting Nakano throw him off, it just becomes imperative that he takes a second to middle kick this asshole and his tomato nose before trying a submission.
Nakano's ripe nose is as much a gift to pro-wrestling as Ric Flair's hair and easy-bleeding forehead is.
I really loved as well when Nakano did a front chancery and afterwards did a slap/Hashimoto chop to Yamazaki's face for no raisin. An impeccable fight.
For me it is the beautiful and poetic way that Nakano looks for an entry into kesa-gatame as an entry to a headbutt. That is thinking outside of the strictures of the Kodokan. I wonder if Steve Austin ever saw Nakano. I honestly wouldn't be surprised. Mounting Yamazaki and jaw-jacking as he smothers his opponent with blows.
This match was really great too. The fans were just all YAYAYAYAYAY when anyone did anything approaching violence. Yamazaki dispatches Nakano quite efficiently in the end because that's pretty much what Nakano does: lose in violent style.
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I received a new comment under the first post on this blog from the user QVA, who writes:
I got into this style watching Pancrase on VHS. Then I found Mike Lorfice and his site and its a gold mine of puroresu. When I got a full show of the UWF, I was blown away. You could tell who stars were and who the next star was going to be. Funaki.
That feels pretty fair even watching in reverse and knowing Masakatsu Funaki already is a star by the time of Pancrase: he exudes princeliness. Here he is wearing some shiny silver trunks which are probably too knowing in their starriness to be honest. Dial it back. Return to lemon.
Aesthetic considerations aside, Funaki's return to the UWF ring gives him an easy task, surely? No. He's fighting Akira Maeda.
Funaki wearing wrestling boots (which if you're bad at wrestling you apparently have no clue how to lace up) is strange. Maeda is a jerk. When he's on top, he'll just paw at Funaki's temple in a way that almost brings to mind Sakuraba. These shots testing the waters, after which he decides to just start hammering.
Unless Maeda is going to kick the face clean off a trainee his matches do tend to be patterned around this early silence punctuated a rippling kick that makes everyone go WOOOAAARRGGGGGG, it's like he revels in this dynamic until the moment he gets bored and starts throwing Capture Suplexes for fun.
Funaki's response reveals this dynamic, perfect in nature, where this young guy with such heart responds to this old chubby bully's potshots by exploding with amazing flurries. I saw Survival Tobita reply to a GIF of this match with a derogatory "That's Copycats MMA!!" and yes it's true but it's fucking good.
A total aside but I like how Survival Tobita is an acceptable problematic Twitter guy because he does seem genuinely demented and hardcore and doesn't give a fuck about anything other than getting paid. But yeah Funaki is showing babyface fire in there when he's not sitting in kesa-gatame looking smug.
The ring being mic'd up is great, hearing Maeda mumble as he palms someone in the face maliciously is very immersive. It's like I am right there in the press area seeing him beat up Sakata for having the nerve to sit down. (LOL) Funaki getting up from the suplex then immediately being cut off with a choke feels so prowres. Maeda's ability to do fake fighting tropes in his fake-but-real fighting is something most will never recognise and praise him for.
This is where I ask everyone to respect the expanded canon of shoot-style blogs and consider Maeda's entry into "real" shoots in RINGS. It is one thing to speak of worked-shoot (fake real-looking wrestling) and shoot (real fighting) but Maeda's mentality seems to find a niche between even these two closely-related things. He just has the aura to smash you around the head for real in a worked match and get away with it (in both the aesthetic and legal sense).
That all said I wasn't too crazy about this match. Quite a lot of Maeda's slightly ponderous groundwork. You could hear the cat-calls in the crowd and the audience chuckling at them. They wake up when Maeda goes crazy with knees and Funaki downs Maeda with a strike flurry. But it's a bit sporadic. Maeda puts Funaki down with a kick and then chokes him for the win.
I also liked hearing both say "no," when asked "gibapp??"
LOL this happens a lot.
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Bulking season Takada, with the thick neck and chubby cheeks like a very handsome hamster, perhaps my favourite look of his. Were I his grandma I would come into the room, see him and be like "ohh Janice ye didn't say ye were bringing Tom Cruise along wae ye!!"
Minoru Suzuki meanwhile is inexplicably decked out in Kobashi gear, making me wonder what he'd be like if he came up under Baba. "He would probably know how to do a bump" my only confident observation.
This match doesn't have the bati-bati quality the preceding three have. These two are calm, cautious and wary of one another, so it is a lot of grappling and trying to get a position like mount or a waistlock and just holding onto it. I didn't appreciate it as much as the rest of the show, but if you're reading this you might be less bloodthirsty than I and thus be more up for it.
I did like Takada subverting literal decades of shoot style by doing the "you heel hooked me? ah i will just heel hook you too how about that!!" except it actually worked and tapped Suzuki out. Takada stronger than Ryouji Sai.
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| TAMURA SIGHTING |
I let Connor take that match pretty much in entirety because I thought it was fairly staid work. Might even venture to say it wasn't very good at all. Takada is a brutish striker: his grappling is utterly superfluous.
Fortunately it's the shortest match of the night, though all of them are between 13-18 mins long. Kind of a mixed bag thus far!
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The main event sees Murderdad Yoshiaki Fujiwara take on UFC 1-0 veteran (winning an opening round match in the tournament at UFC2 but pulling out of the next round) Frank Hamaker (although in some places he is known by the sobriquet faux Fred Hamaker. There's a muted applause pre-match as Frank slaps himself in the face as way of psych-up. He has a squat look, like a bulkier Dynamite Kid, with a more pummelled nose. He wears a red wrestling singlet and is noticeably huger than his opponent.
Fujiwara, on the other hand, shimmies out of the dressing room in a very appealing robe. It is strange that here and now he feels like a complete superstar; a moment in time from being a good hand midcarder in New Japan and being maybe slightly old hat by the time Pancrase rocks up. Connor wrote something here though that I can't add much to in terms of assessment:
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| MURDERDAD IX: MURDER IN THE PARK |
Every Fujiwara match feels like a masterclass in how to do This. He makes a fool of the Hamaker here, making no ha's at all, who at first seems like a predator, aching to get at what he perceives as old, easy prey before being subsumed entirely. Fujiwara's displays of emotion, they engross me so. An example is his run-ins with Dick Vrij and another guy who I presume plays Big Pussy in the Dutch version of the Sopranos. When he's literally pausing the match to go between the ropes and laugh at them like "keheheh" (akin to a spiteful demon) while they get all mad, that's what it's all about. That's why we're here.
This bit is great. Fujiwara sticks his face in Vrij's and goads him just after Hamaker eye-rakes him in the ropes. Also, generally speaking, this is astute stuff. With Takada, Funaki, and Maeda you get this sense of transferable skills, good at the regular pro-wrestling and even big stars. Fujiwara though, in shoot-style, is the one truly in his element. In the spotlight he becomes Fred Astaire and whichever Euro martial arts meatbucket for hire is Ginger Rogers for the evening.
The Hamaker is good but as with other Fujiwara matches whatever skills and qualities that are unique to him are immaterial because Fujiwara will exist regardless of them and I'm going to just have a damn ball watching him exist.
Have to agree. Hamaker is a totally solid worker and I'd love to have seen him back. But this is the Fujiwara show. He moves like a transluscent sea creature, sliding between cracks and crevices, the cogs of his brain visible in his eyes as he gets a massive roar from prodding his opponent lightly in the head and smiling. I feel like his matches are more like watching a lion tamer than a wrestler. All wizened experience and teetering on the edge of death with a grin.
This was a cool match if you like observing the subtlety of charisma in action. As a match it was the mid-point of the show: the best of the tense grapplers, but not as exciting as the brutish action in the low card. I can't tell you how much better this all was for the lack of Shigeo Miyato.
Then he shakes hands with the Hamaker and co. after beating him because we're all friends here. Afterwards he starts crying while slapping a young boy upside the head in a vaguely proud manner. What a joy it is to live and to see this.
Concur. Fujiwara wins with a cross kneelock and celebrates like he's won the PDC World Darts Championship and the Budokan rains FU-JI-WARA down on him. Even Vrij gives him a little pat on the back.
NEXT: another show from 1990!
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