Gary Albright vs. Yoji Anjoh, UWFi Moving On 5th (8/24/1991)

Wrestling’s own version of the 1990s Big Red Wall, mother fucking Gary Albright, steps into UWFi for the first time, and the result is, barring some pure one-minute style trucking that isn’t really the style of the UWFi at present moment, one of the great beatings and squashes yet in this project.

It’s made all that much better by the fact that it happens to Yoji Anjoh, one of the all time least likeable immediately viscerally upsetting twerp ass goons of his day and time.

Barring the release, thirty years later, of footage of the time Rickson Gracie beat the shit out of Yoji Anjoh in a closed-door fight when Anjo came to Los Angeles to fight him instead of Takada (owing to Anjo’s supposed reputation as the toughest wrestler in the UWFi), it is likely up there with the most satisfying beatings that he ever took.

For seven and a half minutes, Anjoh tries and gets nothing. Kicks are checked, throws are so impossible there’s barely even an attempt, and on the rare occasions that he can grab a hold when the match goes horizontal, he can’t get any further than a simple grab. Albright smothers him to an extent that is delightfully embarrassing, blocking and cutting off everything, and then completely obliterating him after that. It’s one of those great dominations, not only awesome but interesting, pummeling him into the Earth slowly, before then suddenly so so so much faster.

The joy of the match isn’t just Albright’s stunning physicality so much as how he and the match uses it, creating a real suffocating effect from start to finish that, by the end, raises a real question of how anyone is supposed to beat him.

It’s also just a god damned BLAST, a match as enjoyable on a lizard brain kind of oooh’ing and ahhhh’ing at pure physical carnage level as it is as an emotional catharsis, seeing someone who annoys you on a gut level being rendered into dust and then knocked clean out.

After the second of his absolute God Damner level German Suplexes, Albright simply leans back from a frantic kick, before cornering and demolishing Anjoh with an elbow that also doubles as a body block. The ten count is a formality, and Yoji Anjoh is never even close to getting off the mat by the time the referee makes it to ten.

Gary Albright debuts, wastes no time, and not only bulldozes someone of stature, but makes a phenomenal show out of it all too, immediately putting himself up there with Yamazaki, Tatsuo Nakano, and baby Tamura as one of the best and most must-see wrestlers in the entire promotion.

Hardly the best anyone can do, but at the same time, unbelievably fun and an almost perfect debut match within this sort of system.

90s Nebraska really did have it all.

three boy

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.

***

Kazuo Yamazaki vs. Yoji Anjoh, UWF Midsummer Creation ~ The Professional Bout Yokohama ~ (8/13/1989)

One of the greatest things about the second UWF is that, on top of the idea of a more realistic kind of professional wrestling that’s carried over from the original incarnation, they’re also better than most other promotions ever at presenting scenarios that feel like something you would get if this was all real after all. Not just the violence, but the ideas of flukes, questionable interpretations of the rules, referees siding with the faces of the league over others, lower ranked competitors taking out on each other what they can’t on anyone else, and things like that.

This match presents another stellar example of this.

Following a loss in an important match three weeks prior, Kazuo Yamazaki is mad and against a lower ranked opponent in young Anjoh, perhaps a little sloppy in the first half. Anjoh gets lucky one time, connects with a big middle kick to the stomach to drop Yamazaki at a time when both swing upon each other, and begins acting like not only does he have a shot at this, but like Yamazaki is someone that he now gets to be aggressive with, as though they are equals.

If you’ve seen it once, you’ve seen it a million times.

Some fighter or team or simply individual player gets lucky, maybe a little hot, and begins acting like they’re so much more than they are. If you’re on their side, there’s absolutely nothing like it, the 2020-21 Piston taking out the defending champion Lakers on a Thursday in January. If you aren’t, there is nothing more infuriating, and I think everyone reading this likely just had five to ten things pop up in their minds. It’s one of the great stories possible, resulting in not only another win for the UWF in that department, but one of the more overachieving matches of the entire second run.

Kazuo Yamazaki gets up more annoyed every time, the dictionary definition picture of righteous indignation, and eventually just fucking trucks his ass.

He lands not only all the awesome kicks in the world like usual, but incorporates more of these ultra mean spirited punches to the stomach that he picked up from Yoshiaki Fujiwara three weeks earlier (in a not dissimilar spot) before also having his way with the boy on the mat. Anjoh has his lucky shot, and a few more moments of success where recklessness and moderate skill come together perfectly, but it doesn’t ever last.

When he tries the big leglock, Yamazaki reverses to a perfect ankle hold of his own, and the boy surrenders.

Another perfect midcard outing not only from a company that excels at that sort of a thing, but also from one of the more versatile and adaptable wrestlers to ever apply their talents to this style. A real sleeper.

***1/4

Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs. Yoji Anjoh, UWF May History 2nd (5/21/1989)

This is not a great match, and I do not earnestly recommend it for someone trying to skim through to watch the big hits for the first time or anything BUT as someone who has always been annoyed by the existence of all time nothing boy Yoji Anjoh, seeing all-time great Yoshiaki Fujiwara spend ten minutes either evading, blocking, or refusing to sell a single thing he does all match before winning with a simple heel hook was remarkably satisfying.

If you are in the same boat, hell, give it a spin.

Quietly, one for the haters.

Yoji Anjoh vs. Mark Rush, UWF Fighting Network Nagoya (11/10/1988)

Borderline great, and a real sleeper.

Mark Rush is an amateur wrestler who, along with the also-debuting-on-this-show Bart Vale, gives the young UWF a BADLY needed injection of some new blood. More than just being a much-needed new face though, Rush also rules. He’s a big bald guy in a sort of Buzz Sawyer type of way, and as a wrestler, is all about the throws and holds, which he adds onto by approaching them primarily in a way that none of the core UWF guys really are.

Yoji Anjoh is far from my favorite UWF guy, I would be shocked if he was anybody’s even in a world where some guys simply speak to people in a way that’s hard to get from an outside perspective, but the contrast Rush presents does a ton for this.

The match doesn’t offer so much of a stylistic conflict within the style — wrestler vs. all-arounder doesn’t exactly leap off the page with possibilities in the way that the time tested wrestler vs. striker match does — so much as a far easier and older one. Not just outsider vs. loyalist, but a huge guy with a clear edge in strength and power against a younger smaller guy. The joy comes in the fact that, as a less experienced all-arounder, one who hasn’t won a match in the new UWF yet, there is no one obvious thing. Against a less experienced powerhouse grappler, one imagines a Kazuo Yamazaki could eventually drop him with kicks or that a Maeda or Takada could use this to open him up and get him to the ground to never let him up, but Anjoh has none of this expertise. He’s forced to stick and move and try stuff in between moments of being hurled into oblivion. It rarely ever works, and when it does, it’s never for long.

As a result of his doomed struggle, Anjoh is the most interesting he’s been yet.

He gets closer, of course. Rush never entirely devours him, and Anjoh has a few impressive moments in the final third of the fight, but in the absolute right decision, it never really matters. His chances are fleeting, and while it takes so much effort for him to crack his window to victory just an inch, Rush’s seemingly cannot ever close. It’s every single thing it ought to be.

Rush gets his debut win with the best looking rear naked choke in the UWF so far.

A hell of a debut for the big guy. Not in terms of this all-time first match in a company that leaps off the page or anything, but in terms of a match that clearly establishes someone, it’s super super effective. Rush not only does a bunch of stuff that nobody else is doing, especially not with his power, but also leaves the match looking like a real force, overcoming a decent challenge on top of all of the clear and obvious things he can do, and the sort of threat to the top two or three guys in the company that the UWF has needed over the last few shows.

Not a crossover one and not one I would insist upon for people trying to catch up on their history, but for those with a lot of boxes already crossed off, I think there’s a lot here to enjoy.

three boy adjacent

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.

***

Yoji Anjoh vs. Tatsuo Nakano, 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. 

I initially began reviewing this show in individual matches rather than at large, both because I thought it would be more interesting for me, given the point of the commission system is to get as wide a spread of eras, styles, and places as possible, but also because I thought it would simply do better, in terms of numbers. The fans of the style would obviously be into most of it and click on a UWF show and go in blind-ish, but main events of Fujiwara/Maeda and Takada/Yamazaki also have some individual appeal, I think. That is to say nothing about what I thought a more casual fan might do when presented with “Norman Smiley vs. Minoru Suzuki”, which the numbers have proven, relatively speaking anyways.

This is where the flaw in that all comes in.

Yoji Anjoh vs. Tatsuo Nakano is fine.

It is a totally alright shoot-style ten minutes. It is, objectively speaking, pretty good. The mechanics are great. There’s something of a nice story with Nakano not being at his best throwing strikes and trying to ground Anjoh, before giving in and trying to counter the striking with throws and losing for it, but it doesn’t feel quite explored enough. Likewise, while there are some neat transitions and a few of Nakano’s holds on the leg near the end look real nasty, before Anjoh wins with a quick double wristlock out of a Nakano German Suplex.

That’s just kind of where it stops.

Not long enough to become something bigger, and not complex or ultra-interesting enough in terms of the time it has to make up for it either.

Perfectly good shoot-style from one of my favorites, and another guy who sure was around a whole lot. I likely never would have written a word about it were the entire show not commissioned and I also cannot recommend it given how much other great wrestling there is out there for you to discover or watch for the first time. Still good, but in between the two fun undercard matches and the two promising looking main events, likely the only non-great match of the bunch.