Akira Maeda vs. Nobuhiko Takada, UWF Fighting Network Nagoya (11/10/1988)

A both important and also pretty great.

First, the latter.

Maeda and Takada simply have a pretty great wrestling match, showing in a bigger spot with a little more behind it what they were clearly capable of all along.

This is a fairly significant improvement over their first match under this specific banner, back in June, along with one that makes it plain just how much they were holding back then so as to lay a foundation for this match. Not only in terms of the activity overall or the drama down the stretch, but also just in how much effort goes into things in this match compared to that one. This is Maeda and Takada, you are going to get the stock leg bars and half crabs, but they feel so much more useful here. Not in the sense that this is a match with great leg selling, but in how each of them react in these moments. There’s much more of a sense of struggle in these usual holds this time (to say nothing of the struggle in better and more novel holds), and it not only makes those moments feel less obviously like holds thrown on to fill space, but it also makes the match feel like a bigger struggle when even the smaller moments have a little fight to them, showing the tension between the two in a quieter but much closer way than their first match this year as well.

As for the other part, it’s here where the heir apparent first defeats Akira Maeda.

Notably, I didn’t write that he supplants him on top of the UWF, that he comes into his position fully, that he takes his crown, or any of that. Because he doesn’t.

Even still, a win over Maeda is a big deal, and the great strength of this match is just how unbelievably well they handle it, getting to a (theoretically, even as a hater, I guess) crucial result in a way that manages to balance being dramatic, important feeling, and unique, all without ever feeling phony in a way it very easily could have.

The match is tense again on the ground in the first half, but this time with a much more careful feeling Nobuhiko Takada, making zero mistakes. No hold really works out in the first half like the other wants, no advantage is established, and most importantly, the work on the ground also really fails to reveal any sort of mental weakness this time. Maeda instead shifts the match up to his feet rather than waiting out Takada, in a call that manages, in that beautiful peak pro wrestling as a sport way, to both be an approach that makes way more sense coming from someone at the top of the world and who’s felt unbeatable on these shows so far, but also an objective error.

Of course, the line between “genius attack” and “clear error” is a thin one only ever drawn after the fact, and Nobuhiko Takada’s foot is a hell of an artist.

Following his own success racking up downs on the little asshole and driving him to the ropes for some breaks, Maeda gets caught in the face with one high kick coming in just recklessly enough to count, and the match changes. Not for an immediate end, or even in a way that super obviously gets them there, but it breaks through Maeda’s wall and opens him up for bigger and bigger shots and holds in a way that nothing else has in the UWF so far.

Between the major kicks for downs and his own major holds, including a crossface chickenwing that’s the best submission tease nearfall in the UWF so far, Takada gets Maeda in the same spot he is, with only one down to spare, immediately turning the new system towards its most dramatic possible use.

Two guys face each other down, hurl their hands and feet at each other with equal parts reckless abandon and beautiful precision, and whoever falls down first loses.

It’s dramatic and violent and just so so cool, right up there with the two major Yamazaki matches against each man as being the absolute best illustrations yet, at least in the reborn UWF, of everything that this can be.

Nobuhiko Takada breaks through with a kick, and as if a banana peel is on the mat, Takada slips off his feet for just a second.

Maeda loses, and finally, Takada wins.

He’s up half a second or less later, but that doesn’t matter. The loss is in the books, the first on Maeda’s record here, and the how, at least in this case, matters far less. It feels like both great luck for Takada and horrible luck for Maeda working in perfect synchronicity with each other, and I kind of love it. I am not a Takada fan at all, but the way this specific thing — the first major step, but far from the last one — is handled is so great, giving out the big win, but in a way that demands a rematch, with so many questions still there. This is a win by downs, but it feels like the least legitimate win by downs victory possible. The upper half of his body never really even hit the mat. And yet, it’s also undeniable.

Banana peel ass win or not, he still went down, it’s no fault of Takada’s at all, it’s just — again, a small thing that does more to make this feel like real sports than any number of rules or stylistic flourishes or production choices ever could — just the cruel randomness of the sport sometimes.

Nobuhiko Takada doesn’t feel like The Man just yet, but for the first time in the UWF, Akira Maeda feels like he has something the prove.

As far as hooks for the future go, it’s a pretty great one.

Takada and Maeda have themselves the most important UWF match yet, but only its second or third best to date, as although both are interesting and well done, watching an unlikeable above-average golden boy succeed through a near literal slip on a banana peel is a lot less satisfying than seeing him eat shit in front of the world.

***1/3

Akira Maeda vs. Kazuo Yamazaki, UWF Fighting Network Hakata (9/24/1988)

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.

 

Akira Maeda vs. Gerard Gordeau, UWF The Professional Bout (8/13/1988)

This was a Different Style Fight.

Gordeau, who some of you may recognize from being half of the all-time definitive classic fight against 400 pound Teila Tuli at UFC 1, was a somewhat famous kickboxer, being a Dutch karate champion for many years in the first half of the 1980s, and a future (and maybe present?) European Savate Champion from 1988-1991 and, four years after this, eventually a World Savate Champion.

So, essentially, the exact sort of a man and fighter that the idea of this match — a pro wrestler with a legitimate background (karate) and feeling against a highly credentialed outside fighter — was designed for.

The match is about what you might expect, and want, from someone from another discipline having their first pro wrestling match, and that is a complement.

Maeda and Gordeau keep it delightfully simple. For his inexperience, Gordeau can punch better than Maeda in a match that allows him to with his gloves on, and although he maybe cannot kick quite as well (or at least, as a champion kickboxer in his first pro wrestling match, maybe pulls those in a way he might not when punching with padded gloves), he has a clear and significant reach advantage. In the room that Gordeau needs to punch or kick Maeda, Maeda cannot connect with Gordeau. In the room that Maeda needs to land a shot on Gordeau, the Dutchman can land one on him far easier.

As such, the struggle for Maeda is less in landing a big shot, although it can and does help him out on the few occasions when he manages to, but far more in taking Gordeau down, where he absolutely can beat him on the ground.

Wrestling never has to be complex, and this is fantastic proof.

They never ever deviate from this idea, and along with all of the awesome shots both throw, especially some of Gordeau’s heavier punches, and how they work with the 3:00 round system, it does so much. The latter especially serves as just as much of a challenge for Maeda as the length of Gordeau, as every time in the first three rounds, it takes him minutes to slip past the limbs into some kind of takedown or knockdown, meaning that by the time he gets on a cross armbreaker or heel hook, Gordeau only has to last something like ten or fifteen seconds before the bell saves him.

In the fourth, Maeda finally moves quicker, and that’s that.

Maeda slips past easier and faster than before, and catches a high kick from Gordeau into a heel hold and gets his tap out.

Not the greatest thing ever, and not the greatest Different Style Fight ever, but it feels like such an easy thing to enjoy. Clear tactics and strategy that make sense, hard hitting, a puzzle to solve on multiple fronts, and a challenge overcome through both willpower and intelligent thought and flat out hard work. It can obviously be done t a higher level than this, maybe with someone with the experience to do more and go a little longer and get more out of it, but it works so well all the same. Pro wrestling whips ass when done right, and as this shows, pro wrestling is still the absolute strongest.

This being great is pretty borderline, but it ruled a little too much to deny.

three boy adjacent

Akira Maeda vs. Nobuhiko Takada, UWF Starting Over Vol. 2 (6/11/1988)

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.

Akira Maeda vs. Kazuo Yamazaki, UWF Starting Over (5/12/1988)

Maeda and Yamazaki meet once again in the first main event of UWF’s second run, and as you might expect, it fucking whips.

The match isn’t perfect. Twenty five minutes is sometimes a little long. It can be called a little bit guilty of repetition, falling victim to the old shoot style problem of going to repeat leg bars seemingly to fill up space, and it arguably belabors some of its points near the end. However, the goal here is far less just to have the very best match possible, and far more to achieve something larger on a pretty important show.

Usually, with the main event of a new promotion or even just a sub-brand with its own identity, they have the additional pressure not only of delivering a great match to keep the people coming back, but establishing who these people are and the style and ideology of the promotion, on top of whatever happens on an individual match level. It’s a big ask, and it’s why when a promotion absolutely nails it (think Bryan/Low Ki/Christopher Daniels), it stands out.

Fortunately, this being essentially just the wrestling version of a beloved show finding new life on another network, it’s something a little different, acting both as something a little newer, as well as a refresher course.

Yamazaki and Maeda are maybe not perfect opponents, but it’s super easy to watch this and see why every promotion they were in together kept going back to this match, seemingly whenever they needed something easy and great (because it is easy and great). If you came into this as a new fan, it is a perfect sort of crash course into all of this. The style and approach of the promotion, fighting over holds and trying to set up big kicks, the late match rush to throw more shots when they both become more worn down and opened up for those attacks, the drama of the counts, and how quickly a big fight like this can end. The atmosphere, as Akira Maeda gets not only a superstar ovation, but genuinely one of the biggest entrance pops in the history of Korakuen Hall, along with the crowd shouting along with ten counts in a rarity. Most of all, just how much this rocks. It maybe goes a little long, but especially in the last half, it’s so worth it. The increasingly brutal kicks from both, the horrifying sounding desperation stomach punch barrages, the selling during the ten counts, and especially some of the holds Maeda breaks out when pushed.

Like the majority of truly great shoot-style matches though — the ones without the benefit of being so mechanically perfect and beautiful and violent that little else matters (not that this match is lacking any of those virtues) — there’s more to it than just that. The trick is, yet again, looking at the careers and the histories of both men, particularly against each other, and opening yourself up to the obvious.

In the time between UWF 1.0 closing and this, Yamazaki’s grown a whole lot. A major plot point in New Japan Pro Wrestling the previous year was the idea of Yamazaki’s growth into being able to take it to — and on occasion defeat — top level guys. That was made especially clear in a series of tag title matches between the teams of Yamazaki and Yoshiaki Fujiwara, and the present and future faces of the UWF/UWFi dream team of Maeda and man who would be king, Nobuhiko Takada, ending when Yamazaki beat Takada to win the titles. That’s not quite beating Maeda, to be sure, but the Yamazaki that comes to the ring here is not the one we saw when the UWF first closed its doors.

Yamazaki opens the new UWF by going straight for the top, and so instead of beginning the UWF’s second iteration with something to simple to say who The Man is, Akira Maeda and his position are directly called into question, forcing him to not only re-establish and prove that he is where he is, but also show why he is where he is.

There is a very small difference, but it’s enough to make this that much better.

From the start, Yamazaki steps to him. He’s the first to throw strikes, he makes a point of driving Maeda to the ropes and nodding about it as if to say he’s here for real now, and just completely breaks through the casual cool that Maeda comes into the match with. It’s a tremendous example of someone being aggressive without being a real antagonist, and Maeda has a stellar Ace performance in response. He steady, but loses that the more that Yamazaki pushes him, and he elevates Yamazaki by losing that composure and getting into a frantic, desperate, and flat out nasty fight by the end.

In the final moments, everyone throws everything out, and just swings. Yamazaki aims for a stand-up victory because he can’t beat Maeda on the ground, and Maeda either gives into the ego to not let Yamazaki punk him like that or uses the strikes to open Yamazaki up for what he’s better at — the beauty of great real sports-feeling pro wrestling is that each interpretation makes total sense and that it also might just be both — with each always seeming one large scale hit or large scale miss from the other man away from success at a point.

Maeda begins to overwhelm him eventually, and in classic real top guy fashion, it is less through any one moment and more so simply that his challenger is not there just yet, and simply succumbs. Akira Maeda slowly begins to come out winning the strike exchanges he was losing, not only outlasting Yamazaki, but beating his ass too, to make the order of things especially clear, before then winning exactly how he wants to as well.

Following an especially nasty knock down, Maeda puts on an equally nasty looking rear naked choke, with the right arm trapped overhead in a near cording hold style grip in a way that leaves my favorite guy absolutely zero ability to maneuver or slug his way out. Yamazaki taps out, and his challenge is unsuccessful.

The king stays the king.

What happens may not be their best match, or the absolute peak they can hit together, but I like it a ton all the same, for all that it manages to achieve. Not only a perfect illustration on why the top guy is the top guy, but a real elevation for Yamazaki on day one as well. This is exactly how this sort of a match ought to go, the top guy forced to take something seriously by the end that he probably didn’t entirely at the start, lending credence to the abilities and guts of his challenger, but showing why things are the way that they are, on top of simply establishing the fact. The real stuff.

It’s a real fun thing here, a match that I might like less than I remembered, back when I was still something of a stylistic novice, but that I now appreciate in a totally new way.

***1/3

Akira Maeda vs. Yoshiaki Fujiwara, UWF Mind (7/20/1990)

Commissions return again, this one coming from Ko-fi contributor RB. You can be like them and pay me to write about all types of stuff. People tend to choose wrestling matches, but very little is entirely off the table, so long as I haven’t written about it before (and please, come prepared with a date or show name or something if it isn’t obvious). You can commission a piece of writing of your choosing by heading on over to www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon. The current rate is $5/thing or $10/hour for anything over an hour, and if you have some aim that cannot be figured out through simple multiplication, feel free to hit the DMs on Twitter or Ko-fi. 

Back to this show.

Fujiwara and, a little less so, Maeda, are two of the best ever, and in a semi-main event, deliver a lovely little scrap.

It is not on the level of their 1988 match, and for sure, not the best that it feels like they can do together at this point, but assuming you are not too brain poisoned by the idea of all this can be to the extent that you cannot enjoy what it is, I think there is something here that you can derive some pleasure out of.

Maeda and Fujiwara spend eleven or twelve of this match’s near thirteen minutes feeling each other out and trying for something — anything — only to barely get there. It is maybe not the epic that you want, but it’s one I find real thrilling. Maeda and Fujiwara spend ten or eleven or twelve minutes feeling each other out and trying to find a way in against old foes, only for something to break at the very last possible moment.

The fight over this is, I think, beautiful.

Yoshiaki Fujiwara and Akira Maeda, wonderfully, each make this shit as complex and hard fought as possible. They transform the fight not only into this contest over holds, but this ultra competitive fight over who gets what and at what time they get what. There is a battle in everything, and so even in moments decades later when you can look on Cagematch or a few other sites and see how it all ends, the match preserves a certain tension, right up until the point where it finishes.

True to form as possible, after ten or eleven minutes of a real and true God’s honest stalemate, something breaks.

Following a match that is mostly a defensive struggle and a dare by each man to really try something and go for it, Yoshiaki Fujiwara finally baits Akira Maeda into something real serious and wins out.

Maeda finally gets tricked into really going after it, and truer to form than almost anyone else, Fujiwara almost immediately grabs onto him at the moment where it feels like he finally gets him in, and that is that. Yoshiaki Fujiwara, again the smartest and the calmest and, really, the all around best, gains yet another victory just as much through pure patience and instinct as he does anything else.

It feels like something less than what they are capable of, but truly, that speaks to just what they are capable of.

three boy

 

Volk Han vs. Akira Maeda, RINGS Astral Step Final ~ Blaze Up (12/7/1991)

Commissions continue, this time from frequent contributor, Kai. You too can be like them and pay me to write about anything you’d like. Most people tend to pay for reviews of wrestling matches, but I am happy to talk about real fights, movie fight scenes, movies in general, make a list, or whatever. You can head on over to www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon to do that, just make sure I haven’t already written about it first. The going rate is $5/match, or with regards to other media, $5 for every started thirty minute chunk. If you have a more elaborate thing in mind, hit the DMs, and we can talk about that too. 

A very welcome first on this blog for not only RINGS, but also Akira Maeda and Volk Han. Honestly, it feels a little shameful that we’re just now getting to these two. Not for me so much, I haven’t committed to any projects that would necessitate it, but for all of you in the last three or so years of accepting commissions.

Fittingly, this is also the professional wrestling debut of Volk Han.

Immediately, he has It, or at the very least, he clearly has something already.

Volk Han is not totally Volk Han yet, in terms of being the wrestler who first comes to mind when you think of grappling alchemy, and he occasionally has a moment or two of struggle with how to transition some things into a fixed setting without giving up the illusion of struggle, but the tools and the raw material are immediately there. The obvious and boring thing is to note that he was immediately capable of hanging in there with Maeda for most of the match (he does seem to tire at points near the end, but it goes to serve the match in a way that is actually helpful by illustrating the difference between the two, so even that worked out in his favor), but this is not simply an impressive new guy in a Maeda match who will one day become great. He is already very very very good. Several times, he makes these small little additions to submissions, twisting an ankle while he has a knee bar on, combining holds, and things like that. He also has the explosive quality already, as while he is not inventing these spectacular new things out of thin air just yet, he is suddenly snatching Maeda down into hold after hold, repeatedly, and at a moment’s notice.

While nobody ever shows up in their actual literal debut match fully formed, Volk Han comes closer here than most ever.

Common consensus on this is not overwhelmingly positive, typically noting that it is Han’s debut, him not immediately being perfect, the exhaustion at the end, and the fat that obviously there would be better Maeda/Han matches to come.

I still think it’s very good and borderline great.

The thing that stood out the most to me here was not any one hold or shot or the intensity of anything, so much as it was the construction of the fight.

Specifically, the way that while the match may spend half its time on the ground and end there as well, it’s the kicks and the suplexes you really have to pay attention to, because the entire story of the thing is told with those. Not just how and when they’re done, but the differences between them, and moments revolving around them throughout the match.

First, take the kicks.

At the start of the match, both men throw some low kicks out there, very clearly testing the defenses of the other, in classic shoot style fashion. Nobody panics and most of them are parried away or outright dodged. Once Volk Han first grabs Maeda’s arm and drags him down into a cross armbreaker though, the feeling in the match changes, and the change is shown in the kicks thrown after that. After that point, Maeda’s test kicks feel like a little more than that. They’re not the ones someone throws with an aim to hurt and to try and win with, but they come in just a little faster and land a little higher, and the majority of the kicks begin to come from Maeda. As Volk Han shows himself more and more dominant on the ground, Maeda’s kicks go from being a kind of needling device to being his best defense for a time, and when Han begins throwing his own kicks more effectively in the second half, it operates as this kind of shorthand for how well he’s adjusting to the new environment, only for Maeda to then score the biggest kick of the match at the very end with a gorgeous leaping spin kick to the forehead to reassert his mastery.

Maeda and Han use the suplexes in the match to tell a real similar story too.

When Han begins scoring more and more on the ground with his inventive heel hooks and double heel hooks and armbars, the major victories Maeda scores over Han all begin with some version of a suplex. They’re all slightly more pro-style techniques that Han does not display nearly as much of an affinity for early on, compared to his submissions. He does, however start to get into them near the end, and throws his own big one near the end, as another statement on just how fast he’s adapting.

It’s that last show of force that gets him though.

Han tries to go right off the suplex into another any hold, but Maeda is finally totally ready for him now, and reverses/counters into an indescribable twisting ass double leg lock, and finally draws a submission out of Volk Han.

A great debut, and one of the best displays of how and why experience matters I can recall seeing recently. People have touched on Han being winded in the last few minutes and occasionally doubling over with his hands on his legs for brief moments, but given that the entire story of the match is someone with immense skill and legitimate pedigree struggling with just how hard it is to do this for the first time, I kind of love it, the idea of him doing everything right up to that point, and still hitting a wall. He overexerts himself on top of that, not only leading to an emphatic suplex meant to be a statement, but also read correctly by Maeda as Han playing something of an away game, leading directly to the finish. It isn’t enough just to have Han make small errors or for Maeda to know techniques he doesn’t yet, this match goes further and deeper than that, and I loved it because of that.

Shoot-style, at its best, is the realest and most genuine feeling professional wrestling, and a match like this really puts that and the style on display, taking a classic kind of pro wrestling story and exploring just what that looks like when put inside this context.

The result is one of the more interesting debut matches in wrestling history, starring one of the best wrestlers in wrestling history.

Debut matches, the actual ones and not just matches presented as such on television, are rarely so great that we have some large and impressive list of the best ones ever. You can talk about Akiyama/Kobashi nine months or so after this, Murahama in 2000 or other shoot-style debuts (a style more beneficial for debuts than any other due to the crossover tendency), or the Ronda Rousey mixed tag, but the discussion is not an especially long one, and it doesn’t feel all that impressive to throw “best debut match ever” out there, like it is some superlative piece of praise. It is, however, probably the best one ever up to this point chronologically, and stands up there with all other contenders to that specific crown.

Imperfect, but enormously fun for what it is.

three boy