For the third time in the reborn UWF, Yamazaki and Takada meet, and like the previous two, their rubber match is also really great.
Part of that is, again, the chemistry.
Although this will likely change with the addition of Yoshiaki Fujiwara, there’s still no pairing in the UWF to this point that I think works as well together as these two. Not just in terms of all they can do together and all the types of matches they can have, but in terms of the harder-to-explain and easier simply to see for yourself physical chemistry. Things seem easy between these two like they aren’t for other pairings, without ever feeling phony. Things between these two are natural, but while always maintaining the grit and aggression and struggle that makes this sort of wrestling what it is.
The other part, speaking just of the match as a study of what’s done and how, is that they again go a different route from what happened before.
In August 1988, they had one of the classical wrestler vs. striker matches, and in February 1989, they had a match that was largely strike oriented, with Takada only giving in at the end because he couldn’t beat Yamazaki like that. This time, the first half or so of the match is more wrestling and grappling heavy than either previous match. It’s not only a nice change of pace and an always admirable attempt to never do the same thing twice, or at least twice in a row if it can be helped, but it’s also just very good. Yamazaki does other things, but again save for now Fujiwara, nobody gets as much out of the UWF/early shoot style mat staples as Yamazaki. This is still an overly long match at some twenty seven or twenty eight minutes, so it is not some model of efficiency or the tight epic that their first match was, but in those moments, Yamazaki is grinding or fighting or moving around in a panic that gives these moments the value that so many others simply do not.
Beyond just that they’re doing something a little different or how well they’re doing it, what again works so well about this match is the connective tissue between everything, the narrative value of these things, and the why that Takada and Yamazaki provide better than any other pairing at this point.
Something I loved about this match is that, quietly, it feels like one of the earlier examples of a shell game strategy in wrestling, which is to say one plan as a disguise for another. It isn’t as overt or handled as well as something like the Samoa Joe vs. Bryan Danielson match in 2004 that deals with this, but it feels like that idea all the same. Takada forcing a ground game in the first half feels, honestly, like a sensible reaction to their first two matches, finally forcing Yamazaki into his match rather than trying to prove a point. However, about halfway or two-thirds of the way through, Takada begins trying to light him up again, and as Yamazaki shows exhaustion in a way he never has before in this company, it feels instead like the real plan was to wear him out like never before before unloading. It’s not only interesting, but it’s something very sensible and backed up by the history of the promotion too. Every time Yamazaki has gone over twenty minutes in the second UWF, he’s lost, including their last match where Takada just barely caught him at around twenty one and a half minutes. Getting him even deeper before unloading genuinely feels like a winning attack, and even the slower parts of the first half have an additional value in retrospect when the full plan seems to reveal itself.
What really ties it together though is that, again, Nobuhiko Takada outsmarts himself.
Takada lands a whole lot of big shots, doing better in a head kick war with Yamazaki than ever before, but seems to forget both (a) the edge-of-a-knife desperation he fought with in February, & (b) that it was a big hold that won him that match. It’s as if the closeness of that match meant he never forgot their 1988 match and he’s still after revenge from that, and in doing that, he again winds up in a match he isn’t capable of winning. Takada still goes for holds here and there, and when they get lower in the amount of downs left before an automatic TKO call, he uses holds to get rope breaks to drive it down more, but it’s still a losing strategy.
Yamazaki is tired, but he always goes for it and gains his points honestly in these desperate swings or grabs in his exhaustion, while Takada seems to just be trying to win by points alone and exploiting the rules, and it’s as if when seeing the potential for him to gain another big win like that, it’s as if some invisible hand (neither Don Callis nor some Adam Smith bullshit, fuck them both) reaches down to stall all of that.
With each man only having one down remaining before a TKO call, Nobuhiko Takada goes for suplexes to guarantee the final down, but he fails on all of them. He goes into the exact kind of striking war he meant to avoid, either having no choice or having deluded himself into making the same mistake again (each is satisfying in its own way, to their credit), only to get caught yet again.
Kazuo Yamazaki drops him — not for half a second, but full on knocks him down on his back and maybe clean out — with one of his beautiful high kicks to the face, and goes up two to one on the golden boy.
It feels like not only revenge for their last match, but in a larger sense, some sort of cosmic revenge for the banana peel career win against Maeda under the same circumstances. It’s beautiful stuff, classic pro wrestling storytelling across some matches, and at the same time, something that also feel in line with the real sports approach, both in someone having a bad plan and paying for it, and also in the way that in the biggest moments, it often feels as if forces larger than any of us decide to intervene and say that someone simply will not be allowed to succeed like this. Takada, 0/27 from three, Nobuhiko Shanahan in the Super Bowl, and things like that.
Wrestling is so fucking cool sometimes.
The match is still too long, and honestly sort of a waste of a story this great, but yet again these two deliver both a great match and a lovely chunk of pro wrestling, and on top of that, yet again one of their better efforts comes in a match that chooses to be satisfying as well as just simply great.
HANDWERK 