The UWF, almost by definition, does not waste any time.
Following the main event of the first show re-establishing Maeda as the king of this thing, the main event of the second now sees him opposite young Nobuhiko Takada, presented as the man who would be king, and very obviously the next in line.
Maeda and Takada do a fantastic job with this idea all match.
Constantly, things are on the verge of bubbling up and over. Maeda is far more tense with Takada than he was against Yamazaki (if only Takada was as good as Yamazaki), and it takes so much less to get him riled up. He also makes it a point to trip up Takada a few times real early on, and at a few moments, seems just as focused on showing up Takada as he is on winning the match. In the moments when the tension comes up above the surface, they feel really angry and express it in wonderfully physical ways.
Unfortunately, for its many virtues as a piece of narrative work, I don’t love it as a wrestling match quite so much.
The match is again a little long at twenty-five minutes, and it’s not a match that warrants it. A lot of the same problems as the first UWF main event are here too, and feel exacerbated by other choices they make. They get real repetitive with the leg bars and half crabs, as even if they alter them a little here and there, the match still has a nasty habit of following up these moments where the tension is released with a sick slap or nasty kick, only to drop back into a relatively inactive hold. It feels like a choice done so as to save things or delay the total release of all the anger, with a clear sensible excuse in kayfabe of not wanting to dive in and make a mistake, but that doesn’t lend itself to the best kind of singular wrestling match. These choices — opting to lay a longer term foundation for future matches — mean that again, the choice is made for a longer term focus over the best match possible, but this time, they’re also not capable in this moment of delivering a great match alongside that.
So instead, you have a match with some great moments, which is perfectly happy seemingly doing that and teasing out all to come later on, and showing with another sleeper style submission by Maeda that this is still a mountain to climb. It’s not to say this isn’t good, the natural talents of both are there at all times, but it is to say that this match made a choice, and it’s maybe not the one so beloved by fans watching this over thirty-five years after the fact. Given that choice, it’s hard not to call it a success, even if that success doesn’t manifest into a match as great as their others.
Not quite a great match, but as I go through the history of these things, it feels like a necessary one, both to see and to document.
HANDWERK 