A month after arguably Nobuhiko Takada’s most impressive performance, if not his best one, he gets his first major main event against a big name in a while.
Fortunately, what looks on paper like another maddening attempt to force a crown on the head is handled in a far more different way in actuality, and the result is a match that — in a way that does not reveal itself until the entire match is finished — is much more entertaining than I remembered, even if I don’t love it.
The match itself is a lot like the Maeda match, in theory.
Old master Yoshiaki Fujiwara frustrates one of the poster boys beyond all belief on the mat, throws some cheap shots here and the supposed hero has to turn the match into a striking contest to win, and even then, has to fight through Fujiwara’s headbutts, and slaps and punches both to the body and head, so it’s never easy.
Like that match though, this wanders far away from that theory and is far more interesting for it.
When Fujiwara is dominating on the mat, everything he does is so cool. Sometimes effortless and sometimes fraught with it, but always interesting. He’s doing things, all over these sections in the first half that nobody else in the UWF is doing because nobody else is as capable. When the match leaves the mat and Takada begins to go after the legs when a weakness arrives, Fujiwara’s selling and his facial expressions again elevate the material. His own striking is worlds above anything Takada has to offer as well, and in effect by being so constantly interesting and unique, he steals the match away from focal point Takada and takes it for himself.
It helps too that, like against Maeda, Fujiwara eventually annoys the kid into wanting to win by any means necessary, and although technically punished for bad behavior, Fujiwara still gets something of a spiritual victory.
With the downs again leaving one left for each man, Takada crowds him, and as he had done to get a few downs earlier, Takada throws like five to ten kicks to the legs in a row, as if spamming a video game attack like the stupid asshole kid everyone hated, and gets Fujiwara down — like Maeda eleven months earlier, just for a moment, but long enough to technically get the victory — to win.
Nobuhiko Takada theoretically gets the big win that had been evading him for much of the last year, but like the idea of the match, that really only works if you read about the match, and goes away when you actually see it. Fujiwara might lose the decision, but to me as a viewer, he inarguably gets him in the end where it counts most, both in how he loses, but also in denying Takada the big clean totally undeniable as a message main event victory that he’s still looking for.
The idea of the pound of flesh, metaphorically speaking, has never felt quite so clear.
It’s is not my favorite match and it feels far from the best that they can do together, but I absolutely love that, as with the Maeda match in the summer, the only way to beat Yoshiaki Fujiwara is to become the most annoying version of yourself and artlessly simply drain him of downs to force a decision win. Partially because it’s a genuinely great and unique way of booking a guy, as this puzzle that requires you to give up some semblance of self-respect to defeat while never really feeling like he’s been beaten yet, but also because I don’t care all that much about Maeda and definitely not about Takada, so seeing Fujiwara bring the rottenness out of them is as rewarding as anything in the UWF at this point short of a major Yamazaki victory.
Even then, comparing the Fujiwara matches against each of the UWF’s big three, this still kind of feels like one of those.
HANDWERK 