Nobuhiko Takada vs. Yoshiaki Fujiwara, UWF Atlantis (10/25/1990)

In a rubber match, Yoshiaki Fujiwara once again seeks to find exactly how great a match can be when all it has going for it is one (1) stellar individual performance.

Fujiwara is, again, out of this world great.

There’s so many things a wrestler can do to add to a match in one way or another, and Fujiwara seems like he does every single one of them in this match. If you want cool offense, within reason (this is a shoot-style match from 1990, I would like to believe anyone seeing this knows where the guardrails are), your nasty holds and gross strike, Fujiwara more than has you covered. This match is home to more of those than either other match between them, and that is primarily on the old man. He delivers those nasty body shot combinations that no other wrestler ever has totally managed to match, but he also throws so many of those short and perfect headbutts, each one different and also imbibed with some amounts of Fujiwara’s natural meanness, that Takada begins putting one hand forward onto Fujiwara’s forehead when locking up to try and avoid it.

He’s just as great on the other end too, not just in how he goes down or sells Takada’s major shots in the moment, but in those moments after. Because as is so often the case for the old man, it’s probably even more about the pauses and quiet moments than it is the ones full of sound and action. It’s yet another outing full of these wonderful Fujiwara looks, which like the headbutts, feel just a little different every time, depending on whether or not Fujiwara is reacting to something he’s done, Takada’s done, or best of all, when he reacts — in those moments where Takada backs away at the slightest motion or puts a hand out to block his head — to something Takada’s not doing.

Of course, the biggest problem here is also everything else Takada isn’t doing.

For all Fujiwara offers up, there’s very little coming in return save for those moments of trepidation, which also don’t amount to too much. This absolutely is not to say he’s bad, because that would be a lie. His strikes land well, those early moments are interesting even if they don’t last, and there’s not much he does that’s upsetting. The latter is the other side of the coin, yet again, to how there’s also nothing he brings to the proceedings in terms of flourish, style, any one exceptional area of performance, or feeling. He is a blank slate rather than a blank canvas, something Fujiwara works around rather than being able to really put anything on, and while the Fujiwara Show is once again unbelievable, there’s only so far that this episode can reach.

In his defense, Takada is secretly something of a narrative guy, and the match also doesn’t help them too much either. Not that this is an excuse for performance, but the forward momentum that’s underneath all his great UWF matches simply isn’t here to help this time.

This essentially works as a retread of their match from exactly a year earlier, only now with a different strike to knock Fujiwara down for a second. It’s a knee to the head, a strike with more power and dignity to it rather than repeatedly kicking his legs out, you can see that as progress for Takada if you’d like, but it doesn’t quite feel that way. Fujiwara again gets up right after, it’s treated less like the real victory Fujiwara’s given to others, and again like another rules based Jim Harden Insurance Fraud Hoops style win, meaning that very little’s actually happened here.

It’s not the best, and on the third shot at this, it’s probably just not a match up that’s going to be more than it is here, or was in the past, a showcase for the immense skill of half of the match, and the home to one of those singular performances, but in a setting and against someone not suited to make the most of it.

Still, given three tries at this, although the first offered a better version of the same quasi-denial at the end and second offered the greatest joy (Takada losing), this one crafted more about stand up fighting and with less room for the kid to fuck around where he’s far less comfortable than on his feet, if nothing else and aside from being yet another Fujiwara singular performance masterclass, feels like the fullest realization of the match on a purely mechanical level.

Given the difficulties of Takada with most other things, that seems good enough.

***

Akira Maeda vs. Nobuhiko Takada, UWF Move (9/13/1990)

The last one.

It is, by far, the shortest at ten minutes, and due to this and the lower key approach taken, what feels like the most forgotten Maeda vs. Takada match, even among people who like this match up and series way more than I do.

For sure, it isn’t great.

Primarily, that’s because of the length. This — and the August 1990 show before it — is one full of shorter matches in which the length inhibits the majority of them in one way or another (some wrestlers are not good enough to get something great out of ten minutes, but sometimes, the match is very clearly also one that’s more restrained). Maeda and Takada are not usually the wrestlers to find themselves in great sprints, especially in this promotion and especially against each other, and so this is not really a match with any real chance to be great. It’s a good match with some great moments, but one that also very clearly feels like the most restrained effort against each other.

Like the others though, there’s still something about it I like a lot.

Most of that, again, comes down to what the UWF has done with these two over the last two and a half years, narratively speaking. As a result of giving them the longest running (if not best) rivalry and story in the company, everything always has some foundation to it, giving them deeper reasons for doing things than any other match up has, save for the ones each man also had with Kazuo Yamazaki. Every match always feels like a reaction to the last one that they had, but as so many of them have built up, one cannot help but also notice longer-term trends, like how Takada tends to win when he can stay up and throw quicker strikes, whereas Maeda always succeeds on the ground, and when both men wrestle with some urgency in the pursuit of these things, there’s something to it.

Following up the meeting in June, both are more aggressive than usual as the respect from years past has broken down into something so competitive that there isn’t much room for it when the bell rings, but after losing to Maeda again, Takada is as aggressive as Maeda was then. The scraps feel more hostile than usual, the matwork is again much more hard fought than it was two years ago, and be it intention or just how they decided to wrestle this match, the two sides work together perfectly, hand in glove, to make this another interesting match, when it very easily could not have been.

In the end, Takada slips up again, now in a whole new way.

Following another big catch of a Maeda kick, he goes not for the half crab that failed in June, but the original ankle hold that beat Maeda in January. Maeda is Maeda because he adjusts though, and uses the dogged pursuit to pull him in bent over, before breaking out the rolling cross armbreaker for the win.

Not a great match, but an ultra satisfying accidental conclusion to the story. Even if — given the surprising death of the UWF before the end of the year — they never fight again, it’s the sort of match that achieves a lot, and does a lot for the status of both men. Maeda is still the master, and although (in narrative only, god knows) Takada has his own claims to being the best, there is still more to him and things still left to prove, sort of accidentally setting up the foundational elements of both RINGS and the UWFi.

This is not a blog that tells lies, so I won’t tell you this is more than it is, but at the very least, it’s more than I expected it to be.

Akira Maeda vs. Nobuhiko Takada, UWF Idea (6/21/1990)

This is, to date, I think my favorite match between the two.

Admittedly, yes, once again, part of that is the thrill of them in a match that isn’t half an hour. That isn’t to say matches in this style cannot be long, the best UWF reborn match ever is close to half an hour, but Maeda and Takada — either due to being too similar as a whole or just both being drier in quieter moments — are best off around twenty minutes, and this serves them incredibly well.

Way more important is how this match is wrestled.

More than any other Maeda/Takada match to this point, this feels like a fight.

For the people who wanted more of their prior matches to happen standing up, this is the match for you. Beyond just that you get more striking, it’s some of their best. It’s aggressive and urgent in a way that both — especially not always Takada — have been in this second UWF for all that they bring before and after this. It’s fast and often feels desperate, and that feeling often translates to the ground game as well. Even in those quieter moments referenced above, there’s a struggle — sometimes purely mechanical, explored through movement and positioning, and sometimes expressed through facial expressions — that makes them interesting in a way that they aren’t always.

There’s also so much more of that other stuff.

Coming off their last match, in which Maeda made a big mistake, Takada got a little lucky when he overreached to try and correct the mistake, and in which Takada seemed to finally take the step the heir apparent had been arguably overdue for, Maeda is as aggressive and borderline desperate as described as above for a reason. He’s been great at getting mad in moments before, but never quite as prolonged a way as this, and it also spurns Takada on too. There’s a real indignance to everything he does in response too, not only in what feels like a defense of his position, but a response to both Maeda and the crowd supporting him that feels very much like Takada thinking this is his now, and getting just as mad at either being asked to really defend it like this and/or in response to Maeda getting mad for the first time with him like this now that they’re something close to equals. It does so much for this match, not just the feeling both men put into it, but the job the UWF’s done in the last two plus years of building to a match like this.

Likewise, there’s a few moments here that also land so so so so much better with context, especially that of their last match against each other.

When exploding with a flurry of slaps and an upward kick to a bent over Maeda, Takada again gets him hard in the face and Maeda backs off holding his eye. Takada again catches him in a big leg hold after that, but it doesn’t work this time. Chalk it up to not being as panicked as in January or the eye not being as hurt or simply a half crab not being as bad as a heel hold, but it doesn’t work the same.

Takada misses his chance, and in a moment of his own panic to avoid the Capture Suplex when caught, he willingly drops down, only for Maeda to be better prepared in that moment. Maeda drops into his own heel hook, and this time, Takada taps out.

If you ever wanted these two with a little more intensity, love when the old guy gets back at the next-in-line who arguably already took his crown, or simply enjoy either the success of Akira Maeda and/or the failure of Nobuhiko Takada, this one is for you. The feeling and aggression of great pro wrestling combined with wonderful narrative work and, yet again, the fulfillment of the promise of the UWF, finding more realistic rhythms to influence fights that tick off all of the boxes above.

Beautiful stuff, and if not the all-around best the UWF can offer, an example of how these sorts of thing can elevate an imperfect match and how this sort of a thing ought to work in the first place.

***1/4

Nobuhiko Takada vs. Tatsuo Nakano, UWF Fighting F (5/28/1990)

Watching wrestling can be funny.

You watch enough of something, and you get used to certain rhythms and directions, and it goes with any style once you’ve seen enough to get it. So, usually, if I see a match in which the first third or first half offers little of interest, and it doesn’t involve a wrestler I like a whole whole lot, I will back away from it. There are only so many hours in the day, there is so much other wrestling — let alone other stuff — out there, and I am usually right about these things. The old saying is that if half of a thing is bad, then it’s probably bad, and while nothing like that is ever true one hundred percent of the time, it’s truer far more often than it isn’t.

Early on, this match was trending that way.

Nobuhiko Takada puts his boring ass soul on display in front of the world, becoming the first since Nakano’s major breakout ten months prior to offer up a match beginning with dry grappling and stifling his talents, including himself later in 1989 as well, where he genuinely did seem to get it. This isn’t to say it’s ever bad, but more so one of those drier Takada matches where he stays on the ground despite being much worse there than he is on his feet, the sort of match he has that doesn’t really ever interest or excite me all that much.

Fortunately, as Tatsuo Nakano has become one of those wrestlers that I like a whole lot, I kept with it, and a switch suddenly flipped about halfway through the match.

Tatsuo Nakano finally gets to be Tatsuo Nakano, forces the fight to one based on its feet, and the match suddenly becomes awesome.

Nakano explodes with the meanest and most desperate combinations of strikes possible. He’s the rare guy like this who, as I watch him, feels like he runs into these strike flurries not at all sure of what he’s going to do from moment to moment. Not in the sense that every other one is phony, but that even in the realm of real fighting where people make calculated decisions quickly, Nakano feels like someone working on pure panicked instinct in a way nobody ever quite has in either real or simulated athletics. Takada work with him, much better in his element, and his whole deal enhancing the spirit and passion of every single thing Nakano does.

It’s the match this always should have been, and that every great Nakano match is.

Most interesting of all is the finish they go with, which while not new ground entirely for this UWF, which has excelled in exploring all aspects of the “it’s like if it was a real sport” concept, is again one of the best ways to really get into that.

Following dropping Nakano emphatically in a way he’s struggled to since that initial explosion, Takada goes into a semi bulldog choke semi crossface facelock and without a visible tap on screen and with Nakano’s mouth covered, the referee calls for the bell. Nakano gets up like he’s confused by it and it immediately reads like another time where the referees have just given it to the golden boy and screwed someone over. It’s not this perfect pro wrestling finish, and feels strange to do again to the guy who is supposed to be the central figure poster boy for the company now, but as a real thing, I love it. The referee once again gets a call from on high, some HIGHLY suspect decision making goes down, and Our Hero is robbed in favor of the bigger picture.

If you want to make wrestling feel like sports, it’s important to remember that sometimes, sports is also some real bullshit. `

Between this interesting idea, again, and the back half, the match just manages to work itself out for me, in spite of the very valid reasons someone else might list for it not quite being great, and I’m glad that my faith in Tatsuo Nakano was rewarded, before then also being used against me.

The match winds up being a tale of two halves. One might argue that the quiet first enhances the loud second, but there’s tons of great matches in this style to have two great halves, many involving both of these wrestlers, and what they were doing was not so wild and insane that it required that approach. Instead, we have something a little duller and then something that also ruled. In this specific situation, the stuff that ruled just happened to rule enough to overcome the problems with the first half. So it goes.

Sometimes, it’s nice to be reminded that there is no one correct way. Other times, it’s nice to see people wail on each other for a while, and much to the surprise of Nobuhiko Takada, to see people swing and grapple with some real spirit and intensity to them.

A great match, barely, but also underneath the odd construction, another great example of an imperfect match up that’s way better around ten minutes than it is around twenty.

***

Nobuhiko Takada vs. Yoji Anjoh, UWF Fighting Area Fukuoka (4/15/1990)

Nobuhiko Takada and Yoji Anjoh are not guys that have ever done too much for me, in and of themselves. They absolutely have been part of some great matches, even contributing to them, but something about them has always kept me at arms length. There’s something very company man feeling about them, handpicked guys, and a match like this — in which Anjoh of all the younger guys gets to be the one to really take Takada the distance for the first time since he became arguably the new top guy in January — doesn’t really fight the current on that.

When hating though, it is important never to hate dishonestly.

I liked this a fair amount, in spite of the wrestlers in it.

The set up is simple enough — another young star going for the crown now that Takada just barely has it, prompting a steady increase in intensity and, if not spite exactly, than certainly in some competitive and professional hostility — that it’s a little too hard to get wrong, even if the foibles of both (some pointless holds that impede the flow even just a little bit, imperfect pacing and construction) are on display.

Yoji Anjoh and Nobuhiko Takada also handle it pretty perfectly, mostly in terms of how the thing builds.

It’s not to say that the execution isn’t very good. Anjoh has his best showing yet, individually, on both a mechanical and emotional level. His kicks and especially his slap flurries late in the match are better than ever, and Takada is as fine mechanically as always. It’s yet another Takada match since his ascension that seems to really get where it is that his strengths lie, asking him to do less on the mat throughout the match and focus more on strikes and big suplexes, and it’s to the match’s benefit that they absolutely do not try to get into the weeds and act as if they are masters of the science.

Mostly though, it’s the execution of the simple story that’s where this shines. Anjoh’s total lack of fear in trying to throw kicks at the onset, which Takada plays off perfectly, seeming to interpret on a character level as a lack of respect and on a real sports level as a surprising strategic challenge. The later match flurries, with Anjoh surviving the Takada rush after a surprising down, which would usually be the end of lower card wrestlers (to the shame of the company, it was in the previous match, an embarrassing mere seven minutes for Maeda against Tatsuo Nakano), feel like a genuinely major step, especially when he’s able to put Takada in a little bit of jeopardy after that.

Overall, it is far from perfect, and done with a pairing that is likely not as great at this as many others, but they are exactly good enough for a bulletproof premise like this to succeed, in perhaps the ultimate statement of the power and, more than that, the spiritual correctness of what this iteration of the UWF had been up to for the previous two years.

Takada finally gets him with a double wristlock, but like always, it’s what comes before an obvious result that matters far more. Set up for him or not, it’s easily the best Anjoh performance to date, even if wildly imperfect, and next to what he did against a far better wrestler six and a half months earlier, also one of the better Takada top guy performances yet.

Some set ups are so simple and so classic that just about anyone can do them.

***

Nobuhiko Takada vs. Yoshiaki Fujiwara, UWF Road (2/27/1990)

It is not my favorite.

Probably, the Fujiwara vs. Takada match up is not one that I enjoy on the level of either’s pairings with the other half of the UWF’s big four in Maeda or Yamazaki. Fujiwara’s slower build and ground focus is less hospitable to the best work that Takada can do, as although capable, his strength do not lie in long periods on the ground. Especially in a twenty plus minute main event like this, Takada is encouraged to get repetitive, and although Fujiwara is better than anyone else before now at mitigating these problems, they’re still there.

Again with Fujiwara though, there’s just enough to still love.

He gets more out of the slower early grappling exchanges than anyone. Every motion is treated with importance (to his credit, also by Takada in a way he doesn’t always do for everyone), and although I’m hardly the first to note this, Fujiwara constantly moves in this predatory way that, when he does, makes everything he does interesting. Couple it with how tight every hold is, how mean every strike is, and how demoralizing every sneer and taunt and look is, and it’s another time a Fujiwara performance elevates a match and largely makes it what it is.

In addition to that, once again for UWF, what they opt to do with the match on a narrative level is a real joy.

Four months after their last meeting — one in which Takada technically won, but in which it felt like he was denied any sense of real victory — Takada rides his highest wave of momentum yet to try to gain the one big victory his time in the second UWF has denied him and that Fujiwara denied him the full pleasure of in October.

Despite the rise of Takada’s star in the time since, between these two, very little has changed, and Yoshiaki Fujiwara once again refuses to give him the satisfaction.

This time, it mean he refuses to give him any at all.

As opposed to before, when Fujiwara was frustrating him — a plan that, for all my praise of it as this bastard move that denied Takada a meaningful win, still resulted in a loss — this time, he focuses in completely, and beautifully, just fucking has him from the start. As opposed to Takada’s big wins lately over Akira Maeda and Kazuo Yamazaki where there is a moment where he gets them and the match shifts, not only does Fujiwara never once slip up and allow it, but there’s never a moment where Takada comes close. He again cannot really do anything with the old master on the ground, and unlike anyone before, Fujiwara almost constantly avoids every one of Takada’s big spin kicks. It’s his big shot that, for years, has broken through defenses and gotten him openings when nothing else could, and it never comes close in a meaningful way.

What results from all of this is something super unique, in which the guy who looks like he has no shot gets there not because of anything that happens to him, but because of the majority of the match in which he simply cannot do anything. If it happened to someone I liked, it would feel like the cruelest thing in the world, how Fujiwara completely has the measure of him and makes a show of it, but because I don’t, I’m kind of just in awe of the whole thing.

It culminates, around the middle, in one of the great shoot-style moments ever, where Fujiwara taunts him, gets him, and then drops him with one of the meanest headbutts ever, committing to the attack position now in a spot he maintains for the rest of the fight. It isn’t a “this spot over half the match earlier is why [x] won” moment like the last two big Takada matches where, in that it isn’t an explanation or this moment where the course changes, but in a similar vein, it illustrates exactly why this went like it did.

To his credit, Takada puts up a fight, he lands some downs and gets some big holds on, but he’s never close, either in terms of actual physicality or even forcing a points system TKO, and when Fujiwara totally gets in his zone, it becomes totally clear.

It’s a loss, it’s been a loss from the start, and Fujiwara eventually gets Takada in the same way Takada had gotten his last two major victories, catching him swinging desperately and yanking him down. Fujiwara gets on an expectedly nasty heel hook, and like Takada’s crab or ankle hold, while it isn’t something he always goes to to end a match, both the set up to the moment and the hold itself are nasty enough that it works not only as a finish, but as a really good one.

For all it lacks, what they decided to do with the match is so interesting that I don’t care.

Yet again from this iteration of the UWF, it’s wonderful booking that’s both fascinating, and also manages to again get as much as possible from a smaller roster without it feeling too obvious. Takada, fresh off finally ascending and then also beating his other greatest rival for the first time in a while, goes for the last top guy left, but forgets that he really only beat him last time on something of a technicality, and against someone who makes no mental errors, never has the edge he did in the last two matches against Maeda and Yamazaki. On the other end, Fujiwara gets him into the match he couldn’t three months prior, progresses, and gives the man who might be king another — and far more interesting — challenge.

If not the greatest UWF match ever, or even the best on the show, another sterling example of just why this promotion was as great and as interesting as it was.

***

 

Nobuhiko Takada vs. Kazuo Yamazaki, UWF With ‘90 2nd (2/9/1990)

It isn’t their best.

Running under thirteen minutes and not really aiming for anything more than getting Takada his win back as soon as possible after seemingly deciding to really go that way, rather than anything longer term and more interesting, it is very much a lower-stakes affair. The microwaved television version of a golden boy vs. cult favorite hit from the past, with the double utility of giving the win back as well as delivering another edition of what’s now a guaranteed great match.

Thing is, that guarantee is there for a good reason.

Even as a less ambitious version of this match, it’s still home to the things that always make this match great.

First being that, again, they take a unique approach to it.

After a first half where nobody can really land anything heavy or gain any advantage on the mat, Kazuo Yamazaki first begins to score with palms and then kicks, only to — not even get all that overzealous or make some all time obvious error — but to simply catch his foot for half a second on the middle rope after kicking Takada in the face, allowing him a cleaner shot than Yamazaki had ever given him before to clearly borderline knock him out with a kick across the face.

Like the Maeda match a month earlier, Takada clearly wins in this moment far more than he does in the moment that actually ends the match. Yamazaki is never the same, as while he doesn’t get desperate from there like Maeda does and compound errors on errors, he’s never totally right again. He eats a lot of the same shots, and while his own wild shots get him breathing room on downs too, he’s hunched over. When he get holds on, he’s yelling out like he almost never does, and at the end, gets caught in something that you wouldn’t think 1990 Kazuo Yamazaki would get caught in if not for what’s presented as a flash knock out.

Again, also like the last Takada/Maeda match, this is handled in such a perfect way. The way these things happen, they’re not gripes in the sense that a cheap TKO on knockdowns might feel like, but for fans of the non-Takada guys (hello), there’s still something that feels a little bit unfair about it. Luck exists in everything, it is wrong to chalk anything up just to that, but this particular bit of luck — Yamazaki getting caught for half a second — feels the most like, again, one of those beautiful real sports moments where sometimes something totally unpredictable happens with the human body, really getting to the heart of why great shoot style is so interesting to begin with.

The other thing that is again present here is Kazuo Yamazaki.

Fascinating premise and Takada’s improvement to the point that he stays out of the way aside, it is yet again a Yamazaki performance that really seals the deal. He has one of the better knockout/prolonged effects of recovering from a knockout sells I’ve ever seen in the last three or four minutes of the match. There is the pure mechanical element of that, how fast he takes to get up, how he moves, how he shakes his head out, all of that, but like anything great, it goes a little deeper than that. The heavy breathing in moments where he knocks Takada down are my favorite, one of the best ever communications of the idea of trying to “get right” as fast as possible, but also in the way he walks a line in between carrying himself in a tenser way and also being totally unsteady at all times. The design of the match has him making mistakes as a result of the damage that cost him, but the desperation he carries while making those mistakes is what makes it all stand out like it does.

Nobuhiko Takada catches a wild errant kick, and goes from a half crab into a gross angle Torture Crab with all pressure on the head and neck to win.

In the same way that low level great matches against less than great wrestlers often tend to impress me around as much as deep canon major classics, this smaller version of one of the UWF’s best pairings does a whole lot for me. While the aims are far (far far far) from my favorite, they take a unique approach to it. On top of that, it’s an approach that specifically requires a performance like Yamazaki gave to succeed in the way that this does. There are what feels like a million great ways to explore the idea of the UWF as wrestling with the beats and narratives of real sports, but I’m not sure any of them dealt with the idea of freak accidents in the way that this did.

The lesser version of a great match, but one that still highlights just why this is all so great in the first place.

***

Akira Maeda vs. Nobuhiko Takada, UWF With ‘90 1st (1/16/1990)

In which Nobuhiko Takada finally comes of age.

While it all sort of bores me at this point, it’s hard not to admire the clarity and the simple vision of it all, on top of the super interesting way that they want about it. The first show of a new decade, main evented by the heir apparent taking his biggest leap forward yet. Takada still isn’t my favorite, so this passing of the torch and everything around it is more in the camp of something I admire more than something I feel or even love, but being admirable isn’t so bad, as far as second place prizes go.

More importantly, for the first time, Maeda and Takada follow a great match in their last outing with a great match in the one right after.

In general, it feels like they finally nailed down how this is supposed to work.

Having learned from past successes rather than repeat the mistakes that helped their less stellar efforts, this only goes twenty three minutes, still a little over their golden zone of closer to a hard twenty, but also much better than anything closer to thirty. It cuts out most of the space that otherwise might go to filler holds, allowing for less downtime and more time spent on the mat in moments that actually show off all of the gross things Maeda can do and the struggle of Takada against them, which then has the effect of making the bigger moments standing up feel more important.

The entire match also kind of just feels important in a way the others hadn’t.

Nobuhiko Takada’s first win over Maeda is still, I think, their best match, but this is the closest since, and so much of that has to do with the feeling, more than anything quite so quantifiable.

Maeda and Takada feel like real equals here for the first time ever, whether it’s just because of growth or because Maeda works less from a position of strength here or simply because the Fujiwara matches of each man kind of put them on an equal playing field against a similar opponent the way the Yamazaki matches never tried to, and it makes such a specific difference. The way Maeda plays it on an individual level — more frantic and a little more desperate — helps that feeling a lot, since Takada doesn’t shift a whole lot in terms of behavior or performance, but it’s also assembled pretty brilliantly considering that goal, with major moments at the beginning and end that add so much to the proceedings.

First, Maeda kind of tries to rush in (the kind of brilliant thing that, as with the goal of this stuff emulating real sports, can be read in a few ways as either feeling more under pressure given Takada’s growth or simply wanting to get this done quick after decisively winning the last two times), but gets dropped with a kick to the face in under a minute, and never ever totally recovers the advantage.

It’s small, but it informs the entire rest of the match, both as this reason for the more even playing field with Maeda thrown off, arguably both mentally and physically, but also as this super interesting explanation for why never tries it again, even when he gets his lick back a few minutes later. It would be wrong to call it a fear, but Maeda works with a greater respect for Takada than in any of their previous matches. It’s a crucial and necessary shift, as given that Takada simply is Takada, this doesn’t land half as well without (a) the reason behind it, whichever you prefer & (b) the change within Maeda, allowing this to feel closer to a passing of the torch than anything attempted with Takada either in this series, or the reborn UWF at large.

The second part I love, the thing at the end, is less to this purpose, and more towards still giving Maeda something of an out, but it’s done in such a novel way that I still really really like it, and because of how Maeda’s acted all match and how the match had gone, it still doesn’t undercut the value of the major win too much.

When trading shots, Takada slips through with palms, but an errant thumb or finger gets Akira Maeda in the eye, and he goes down holding it.

Maeda recovers, but like the down to start the match, is never totally the same. Despite being completely conscious, he takes until really almost the ten count to get up again, and never gets another major hit in or hold on. You can fairly argue the kick he throws that Takada catches into an ankle hold is the result of a loss of vision, it’s not the style of the UWF to make these things super super obvious (again, this is a positive, I absolutely love that), but I see Point A and Point B so close together while I have a marker in my hand, and lines are going to be drawn.

The beautiful thing is that, arguably, it only expedites what feels like already began within the first minute.

Absolutely, Maeda seems to lose because of some loss of depth of vision or whatever, but it really only seems to explain when he loses when he loses.  He fought off all match, never felt in control in the way that he so often does, and kind of just felt like he was trying to keep Takada back in the hopes of a big grab or big shot landing, only for that to never really happen in a way that changed everything. Maeda has a genuine gripe, but I love love love that there’s this whole other side to the argument, using the rest of the match — along with the finish — not to say it didn’t matter, but that he would have likely lost anyways, and that it doesn’t take much away from Takada’s major moment at all.

Half blind or not, the match still ends with Akira Maeda tapping out to that hold. Not losing by a points decision banana peel or a weird referee call, but for the first time in the UWF, losing in the clearest way possible.

They’re not done together, you can argue about the torch forever, but the moment worked, in a larger sense, as well as again hitting that UWF psuedo real sports sweet spot, allowing fans to do what they really want to do most of all, feeling aggrieved and getting to engage forever in an argument with no clear right or wrong answer.

Remarkable stuff, elevating a regular strength great match.

***+

 

Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs. Nobuhiko Takada, UWF Fighting Art UWF (10/25/1989)

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.

three boy

Nobuhiko Takada vs. Tatsuo Nakano, UWF Force Korakuen 2 Days Day One (9/30/1989)

Nobody ever talks about this one all that much, if anyone ever has.

It’s not surprising.

Takada and Nakao only have ten minutes together, and it is not a match that aims for any sort of real high drama. This fall 1989 Korakuen Hall double shot feels more like a television taping than the genuine events that the first nearly year and a half of UWF shows did, with a focus on showcase matches for all the major stars (Maeda, Takada, Yamazaki, Fujiwara) against either younger or lower ranking talent. It is not an especially exciting match, especially given what both have proven themselves capable of. If the two wrestlers and the company met on the same page, with an eye towards making a Takada/Nakano match special and memorable, I absolutely believe that they could do it. They simply do not.

For what it is though, I loved it.

Part of that is, again, it rocks.

This sort of style makes it easier than most for me to watch a ten minute little slice of life and go “hell yeah”, and it’s because all of that is filled up with hard kicks and really mean slaps and, in general, a wrestling that feels realer and is easier to get into (especially in a shorter chunk) than most. Nakano and Takada bring not only the mechanics necessary to make this work, but way more importantly, the spirit too.

More surprisingly, it’s my favorite Takada performance in some time, and the first one I really enjoyed that doesn’t involve him also paying for his crimes at the end.

It’s the first one that feels like an actual top guy level performance. Against a much lower ranked opponent, Takada not only feels above him, carrying himself in a stately sort of a way that he often hasn’t before, but gets appropriately indignant when called out and punishes Nakano. Way more importantly, in a way he never quite had before — or at least not on this level — he manages to do that without ever crossing over into being totally unlikeable, like a spoiled child lashing out, in the way he had previously in those Yamazaki matches.

That’s the other thing I love about this.

Nobuhiko Takada — near the end of what’s been objectively a rough year for him — is  faced with an up and coming long black tights clad kicking specialist, trying to capitalize on some status as a peoples champion type to make his name in a very similar way and completely shuts it down.

Sadly, again for Nakano, lighting simply does not strike in the same place twice.

Either he does not have it like someone else, not gifted with the same speed nor quite as much high level experience, or Takada has simply become too good for a pure upset of this nature to work. The delightful belligerence gradually transforms into an even more beautiful petty attempt to drag this out as long as possible, and it becomes easier and easier for Takada to break through the defenses once he finally lands his big spin kick to the face. A few more head kicks land, with Nakano losing the ability to reciprocate, and when Takada manages to pry Tatsuo Nakano’s hands apart — one last pointless and wonderful show of fight in a match he lost minutes ago — he finally gets the submission in a match that feels about as long as it should have been, but also oddly much harder than it should have been, in the nicest way.

Yet again, it’s the sort of real sports ass story that this sort of wrestling should always be capable of.

People trying to win in similar scenarios as others before, great fighters trying to spiritually avenge major losses in similar settings, and things of that nature. The result is not only a fun match, and a fun chunk of wrestling, but an elevation of the golden boy that feels more successful than any number of spoon-fed major on-paper victories ever could.

A real sleeper.

three boy