This absolutely ruled.
It’s maybe a little long at seventeen minutes, but the premise of it — mean old shooter against big fat American powerhouse — is so airtight and fascinating both visually and conceptually and it’s handled by such an all-time master in Fujiwara that it still works out in the end.
Fujiwara has probably fifty, maybe one hundred, better performances than this, but as much as any of the lesser or just less obvious ones, it’s very instructive of just why he’s so great.
The match would not work without Fujiwara.
With all due respect to Barrett, who has some lovely shots and uses his size in some fun ways, the match is about Fujiwara’s journey and he makes that journey interesting in a way few others can. The size thing is, obviously, the crux of it, with Fujiwara riffing and trying out ways to get past it or to get the big guy down and then figuring it out from there, but there’s something about how Fujiwara plays it that completes it. Mechanically, yes, it is Fujiwara with the classics. The all-time nasty punches to the body, awesome takedowns, holds with cranks and twists in places where many others wouldn’t bother, and a sense at all times that he is, if not struggling, fighting for something.
The most interesting part though is how Fujiwara plays it off in the smaller moments.
Fujiwara, while being physically overmatched, never feels like the underdog. The match is better and more interesting as a whole for not trying to tell that lie, but especially fascinating is the way Fujiwara responds to everything. When something doesn’t work — and to the match’s credit, most things do not work until the end, a big part of making it still feel like a struggle — Fujiwara laughs it off and adjusts. He’s jovial in a way he often isn’t for the entire match, and in general, there’s a feeling like the question is less if Fujiwara can do this, and more so how he can do it. It’s a very exciting way to tell the truth about this match, the idea that Fujiwara is too good and has too much of an experience edge not to win this match, but nobody — including Fujiwara himself — knows quite how he’s going to go about doing that.
The result is that the match has a beautiful feeling of exploration to it, the atmosphere of an expert mountain climber trying to figure out every inch of the thing and to see where all the paths go, before (this is maybe the best part) seeming to just throw his hands up and decide that he’ll get there how he get there.
For Fujiwara, that’s a classic heel hold, bending the big fella backwards over himself in addition to the nasty nasty bend and crank that Fujiwara gets on it, resulting in the very predictable submission.
It’s one of what feels like a million like it, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be appreciated all the same.
Not one for everyone, but Fujiwara Heads be aware.
HANDWERK 