Following Yamazaki’s career best singles win so far a month prior, and as a result of the smaller roster in this first year, he gets another shot at the crown.
Unfortunately, this match is far more interesting than great.
The big thing is that this match is around ten minutes only. Twenty five in their last outing was arguably pushing it a little, but this is a little far in the other direction. As this venue will show within the next year, matches don’t have to be long to be great, but this is a somewhat restrained ten minutes too, by the standards of what each is capable of. It’s a fairly repetitious ten minutes, on top of being held back, meaning that the short length is felt far more than it might be in this building in, say, ten months or so.
Maeda and Yamazaki still have a match with something to offer though.
Part of that is that, Yamazaki being one of the one hundred best wrestlers ever and Maeda in that discussion too, even more simple motions are better off in their hands than others. Maeda still leans heavy on the legbars and half crabs, but nobody does more for those holds on the other end in the UWF at this point than Yamazaki. The striking is all great. These two are also the best in the company at this point at, in early moments of a match, adding in feints and swipes to make it a lot lot harder to look away early on, if you were ever inclined to do so.
The other thing is that, for this match’s flaws, it again approaches the story in a fun way, and offers a great follow up to their first match, as well as — just a little bit in a moment where Maeda catches a high kick and after a moment of decision, opts for a takedown — Takada vs. Yamazaki the previous month as well.
If Yamazaki did one thing in that match in May, it was ensuring that he had Akira Maeda’s full attention going forward, and everything is different that way.
Yamazaki never has the chance for a big shot out of nowhere like he did before, instead having to really work on finding openings, and finding them later in the fight. While he holds his own and constantly gets out of the big holds, he also never really gets to Maeda on the mat in the way he did before. It’s not that he gets eaten up (although he also doesn’t not get eaten up), because he lands some big kicks and knees when he explodes forward in these dramatic moments, but it feels like a classic sort of revenge game for a guy in Maeda cast as the best in the world.
When he gets the shot, he just about takes Yamazaki’s head off with a high kick meaner than any thrown in their first match, and right after beating the count, another knocks Yamazaki clean out.
It’s not all that it was, can be, or likely will be in the future on a pure talent and mechanical performance level. It’s nowhere near as great as I think they could have done with the narrative material. There are great moments, and at large, it’s a match approached in a way that I like a whole lot and that shows why UWF (original and reborn) is such an interesting promotion, but objectively, it is a letdown.
Still, as a shorter match, it’s interesting enough as a piece of booking to be a companion piece mostly worth the time required.
HANDWERK 