Kazuo Yamazaki vs. Norman Smiley, UWF Fighting Square Nagoya (6/14/1989)

A year and change since their first meeting, Smiley and Yamazaki meet again for the rarest treat in this version of the UWF, a rematch that’s had long enough to build back up to truly make things interesting.

The first time they met, Norman Smiley was still adjusting to the UWF. He wasn’t even wearing kickpads at the time, learning in that match at the end of Kazuo Yamazaki’s feet that he might want to engage in the practice, and trying to adapt his more pro-style leanings into what everyone else was doing. In the twelve months since, he’s not only gotten those kickpads, but adapted better than any other foreigner, effectively becoming the sole man at the “middle” of the promotion, beneath the big three (and now Fujiwara), but better than and more successful than the handful of younger guys still learning (Anjoh, Miyato, Takano, Suzuki, maybe Funaki), as well as those more amateur than UWF experience. At the same time, Yamazaki’s grown into the main eventer he was just starting to become a year ago, getting the best of the would-be heir apparent and pushing the king further than anyone.

Essentially, that’s the match.

For every improvement Norman Smiley has made — learning how to kick, getting so much better at anticipating kicks coming his way, an improved UWF style ground game — Yamazaki has made a leap that is just as important, and still stays a step ahead.

Yamazaki and Smiley also offer up a steady fourteen minutes of pure wrestling delights on top of that though, making for a match that almost anyone (at least those versed in the style) can probably really enjoy.

Everything they do is so good. So great.

I write all the time about how a guy like Yamazaki stands out so much to me because of how reactive he is to almost every single hold he’s in, and the middle of this match has one of the better examples of that that I’ve ever seen. Smiley gets him in a leg bar and over the course of fifteen to thirty seconds, Yamazaki (a) grabs his own boot to try and pry his foot loose, (b) tries and fails first to hook Norman’s arm and then to just yank his elbow away from his leg, & (c) rolls over and then also has to leap the final half a foot or so to make the ropes. On a show where you can throw a dart at a lot of the show and find someone lying around in the same hold or, at best, gritting their teeth and reaching with maybe a kick thrown with the free leg, it’s that sort of behavior that sets this match, along with the two wrestlers having it, apart, as well as the sort of thing that comes up constantly here. Be it how Smiley never allows himself to get ripped up with kicks like before or the more advanced hold trading and struggle on the ground, just about every inch of this thing is treated with a rare level of respect and care.

Beyond that, they also get the level just right on mixing on the larger stuff. Norman does better than ever, landing big throws and blocks, and never really getting drawn into the sort of match that Yamazaki tends to win, and at the same time, never finding success in pushing the match into looking like the sort of match that he wins either. It’s too fast and efficient to feel right calling a stalemate, but there’s a back and forth and constant forward motion to it that stands out a lot, along with the narrative function right underneath the surface quietly doing a lot for both guys.

Following a more prolonged attack on his leg, Smiley breaks out a real gorgeous and nasty looking German Suplex to bail himself out when Yamazaki zones in, only to fall victim to the same hold as a year ago. Kazuo Yamazaki kicks out after a moment, right back into his Reverse Fujiwara Armbar that seemingly works against Smiley in a way it doesn’t against anyone else, and Norman submits to it for a second time.

This is not a barnburner, it will not make top ten lists either for the year and maybe not for the promotion when it goes out of business a in a year and change, but it’s the sort of wrestling I love, and that makes me love both guys for so regularly delivering it. Under fifteen minutes, but just about every inch is filled with something cool, with just the slightest narrative thread to tie it all together, leaving both men just a little better off than it found them.

One of the real sleeper hits of the promotion to date.

***+

 

Norman Smiley vs. Yoji Anjoh, UWF The Professional Bout (8/13/1988)

Another hit from Norman Smiley.

Much like his match against Yamazaki in June, Smiley faces a quieter member of the UWF roster in a match that is primarily about mechanics.

That’s not to say there aren’t a few really fun touches here. Not so much character ones, as that feels wrong to say about wrestling like this, but the sorts of small shifts one notices when watching these matches close together. The obvious one is that after losing to a heavy kicker in Kazuo Yamazaki in his first match here, Smiley now shows up with kickpads on and uses his legs more for distance than he did then, but there are small things too. Maybe not the most obvious Point A to Point B things, but things that happened in his last match that come around here, like Norm trying a Reverse Fujiwara of his own at a point, or Anjoh doing the same type of arm lock that Smiley rolled out of into the hold that beat him in his last match, only for Norman to find a much more advanced counter that Anjoh has no immediate answer for. You can also find it in how the match reaches its conclusion, not so much the hold itself, but how they get there. Small things like this across the board, suggesting that on top of the obvious skill he showed before, that Norman Smiley has now begun to do the reading as well.

For the most part though, it just rocks.

Smiley and Anjoh put on a wonderful show of little techniques and cool holds. This lacks the wrestler vs. striker approach, as Yoji Anjoh is something closer to an all around fighter, although his strengths and tendencies are more towards wrestling, like Norman. Without that tension, the struggle over the direction of the match, they rely more on the smaller moments of struggle, collecting them into the sort of thing that one might not have a thousand words to write about, but that both thrills if you can enjoy the smaller shifts and adjustments and that feels like a real competition.

Combining this along with the first thing, the two parts that make this into — at its best — one of the best versions of what wrestling can be, Norman Smiley really does learn something in the end. Following an explosive belly to belly from Anjoh, it’s now Norman Smiley taking advantage of a sudden opening. Anjoh thinks he did more than he really did, dives in overzealously, only for Smiley to grab him in something like a reverse cross armbreaker, and Anjoh gives up.

Norman and Yoji do not have the most fireworks laden, strike heavy, or even mechanically tricked out match in shoot style history, but more so one for the real maniacs. It’s a match for those already converted, full of cool little touches in a lot of ways, and the sort of match that — in what now is starting to feel like the specialty of Noman Smiley — is the backbone of a show and promotion like this.

If the middle of the card on these shows is about furthering the ideology, presenting these fights and scenarios that feel like what would or ought to happen if this was to be taken as realistically as possible, than through three shows so far, nobody has done it better than Norman Smiley.

***

Norman Smiley vs. Kazuo Yamazaki, UWF Starting Over Vol. 2 (6/11/1988)

Hell yeah, man.

Some of you, maybe newer readers or those newer to this style or promotion, might see Norman Smiley there and think this is a pure novelty, like a lot of weird little brief runs or one-offs in shoot-style, but Norman actually really rules. UWF’s the best fit for Norman of anywhere he ever worked probably, not only in terms of him fully getting to stretch out in his ground game and not being forced into anything else, but he also gets to show a lot as a personality. He’s a bright eyed promising young guy in incredible shape, which makes for a wonderful contrast with the quieter, steadier, and far less visually impressive Kazuo Yamazaki.

As opposed to the more character history impacted narrative and big match dramatics of the major main events, this is something closer to pure sports, two guys with no history together at all, but very different approaches, simply fighting.

What works about this, or what makes it interesting, all comes down to somewhat opposing styles, and how not so secretly at all, the way that they make fights.

Yamazaki and Smiley have a lot of the same skills (Norm even throws a few kicks here in a little bit of a shocker), but the difference lies in their strengths, and how they try to apply them. It’s not all that dissimilar from the Yamazaki/Maeda match the month before, but Norman’s skillset allows them to lean even further into a classic Striker vs. Wrestler match in an interesting way.

The joy, as opposed to a lot of matches in other styles, comes now not from unpredictability, but from the knowledge of exactly what each man wants to do. Some two-thirds of this is on the ground, and the struggle is less over any one hold, and more between Yamazaki’s obvious approach — wanting to stand and bang — and Smiley’s, and whether or not Yamazaki’s patience pays off. You get some real fun wrinkles added into the mystery too, like Smiley getting frustrated with Yamazaki constantly aiming for the kicks and throwing his own genuine mother fucker of a stomach punch, one of the nastiest ever, or how he goes to some more pro-style holds after Yamazaki frustrates him on the mat.

Most of all, I love the ending.

Kazuo Yamazaki breaks through the wall to begin landing shots, and goes for a psuedo/proto ass sort of Anaconda Vice when Smiley drops, but it’s there where the match opts for realism over everything else. A normal pro style match might pay off the match-long story with either a Yamazaki KO win or a Smiley submission one, but the goal is realism, and to really get that across, they instead make a choice to have something unexpected break loose, because well, hell, sometime fights end like that. It’s perfect.

Smiley rolls out, only for Yamazaki to hang on into a reverse Fujiwara Armbar for a sudden submission victory.

It’s a great win for Yamazaki, not only a get-right game after his main event loss on the return show, but a win over a wrestler this time with a big hold of his own to show that he’s still dangerous on the ground and done in a way that further establishes the beautiful unpredictability of everything. Even in a match so clearly about one type of conflict, sometimes things just happen, and almost nothing they could do feels realer than that.

Not the greatest of all time, but a super fun little midcard scrap.

***

Norman Smiley vs. Minoru Suzuki, 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/match or $5/started half hour of a thing (example: an 89 minute movie is $15, a 92 minute one is $20), 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. 

(The actual commission was for the entire show, but frankly, I think these would do better as individual pieces, as it isn’t like there is some show-long angle or larger whole here, as that would essentially go against the entire concept.)

One of my favorite things guys in wrestling from the 1980s or earlier used to go into on shoot interviews was the idea of a card structure.

Not only in terms of obvious stuff, like not reusing the same finish or shortcuts (blood, table thing, etc.) at all if you can but for sure never two or three matches in a row, or trying to change up the styles or formats (if you have two matches like each other, be it brawls or grappling matches or tag matches, why run them back to back and make them feel less unique?), but in terms of the purpose of the matches in an older school sense. I forget who (gut says Cornette, but I don’t want to give him too much credit, so probably others too), but there was someone who explained in one of these that the first few matches weren’t only to warm people up, but to educate them about the style. Not necessarily boring matches, but simple ones where tropes weren’t broken, nothing too crazy happened, something closer to a purer science establishing a baseline, so that when things inevitably did get wild, it would land with a greater impact. 

Anyways, this feels like the UWF version of that.

Do a young Minoru Suzuki, hair and all, and Norman Smiley have a lot to offer here?

Yes, absolutely.

Every hold is tight, the few strikes thrown land well, and the match is full of cool transitions and cool simple ideas. It’s not a major part of this, but there’s a great repeat bit where Suzuki keeps throwing these little kicks to the knee to try and get something, leading to Norm popping his head up after mostly avoiding one, only to get grabbed into something else as a long set up. Norman is also hardly the most pure American style worker in the world, but there’s a moment near the end where he gives up a winning front choke to try something higher impact as a statement, and it clearly costs him the match, because he can never get back to the same position of strength again.

Mostly though, this is about establishing a baseline, and incredibly successful at that.

There’s a fear established of certain holds, a show of how hard it can be to do many of these things successfully, more strikes are dodged than hit flush, and nothing too wild breaks loose. It’s a look at how this usually works, major and minor mistakes are punished, and it serves a real function at the start of the show to display that this is the sort of wrestling show and promotion where these things matter and so you ought to maybe pay a little closer attention.

Suzuki has a butterfly lock fought off, but he lands the suplex out of it, before going into a front choke of his own from a top mount, with his legs real uniquely wrapped around Norman’s calves, spreading his legs apart to not only stop him from standing out, but also from rolling over, and he gets the submission.

Nothing fancy here, and certainly not a match I would recommend to the sort of fan who really only wants your Funaki/Nakano style crossover hits, but for fans of the genre, a real easy one to enjoy.

An ideal shoot style opener.

three boy