superkix

A terrific little match-up, with Mishima showing off his quasi-capoeira style and judo takedowns against Tamura's slick-as-catshit counter and matwork. Mishima manages some hard slams and I really liked his takedown into the headscissors, transitioning into the jujigatame. Of course, Tamura's great here as the experienced veteran, tip-toeing out of trap attempts and scoring takedowns>submission holds. The struggle on the ground was conveyed well, although Tamura's king and at times, he looks bored at Mishima smothering his leg. Heading into the finish, Mishima comes at him with a palm thrust but Tamura is able to take him down into a necklock, flipping him over into the armbar and cranking for the submission win.

This is my kind of junior heavyweight wrestling. It’s heated right out of the gate as Minoru immediately starts slapping at TAKA, and then they scramble fiercely around the mat, fighting over a leglock, getting pissy in front mounts with their strikes, including some well-placed palm thrusts from Minoru. Minoru delivers an awesome shoot package Gotch-style piledriver…I don’t even know how else to describe it…then transitions into the single leg. He may be without his glorious locks here but Minoru’s still swanky as all get out, with his smooth leg-trap counter into the kneebar. He’s either taking TAKA to the bottom rope or he’s stuffing him with kicks. They trade suplexes (love TAKA’s snap belly-to-belly) but when TAKA tries for the German, Minoru answers with the wakigatame takedown and when that doesn’t do the trick, he just stomps the back of TAKA's head. Loved this.

Fujiwara ain't got time for TAKA's shit but who does? I loved that no matter what TAKA tries to do on the mat, Fujiwara finds a way of countering and schooling TAKA in the art of old man grappling. When he’s not forcing TAKA to the ropes with a leglock, he’s smacking or headbutting him, naturally. At one point, TAKA sends him headfirst into the corner, but of course, Fujiwara no sells it to re-adjust his socks because...well, it's Fujiwara. But bless TAKA, he keeps trying. When he attempts to boot out of a hold, Fujiwara snags the boot and screws the ankle, and when he’s had enough, Fujiwara cranks him into submission and doesn’t let go.

These two have good matches together, sometimes great matches, and this was no exception -- however, it's getting harder for me to distinguish the matches as they follow a similar blueprint. Naito coolly works the leg, Ishii sells and bumps well, Naito goes back to the leg to escape shitty situations, and Ishii fights through to pain to punish Naito. This time, however, Ishii says "okay, lemme work that leg" and cuts off Naito with a big dropkick to the knee. He doesn't put in a whole lot of work but Naito's selling is terrific throughout, including his knee buckling on a German suplex hold. Even though I knew Naito had about a 0.00001% chance of losing, I still bit on the brainbuster counter to the Tranquilo attempt. Some of the transition work to set up the finish looked sloppy but this was a good match, the best of the show, and had some neat new moments.

Awesome matwork.

Lance Storm duh

Thanks for the kind words! We've got some cool stuff planned that I'm excited about.

Awesome, glad you've enjoyed them. Thanks for the feedback!

Episode 3 is available, friends. https://fightingnetworkfriends.podiant.co/ to stream or subscribe to the RSS feed. You can also search us on Apple Podcasts. FNF #003: Tetsujin! Topics discussed: - Portland wildfires - Portland indie wrestling - Dan Severn - Every Time I Die - Josh Barnett - Hausu - Tetsujin - Jack Gallagher and small wrestling rings - Jun Akiyama and Tamon Honda (COMPLETE!!) - Gene Lydick - HIDEKI SUZUKI & More Matches: 11/20/15 - Tetsujin "Beauty in Combat" complete show 8/13/93 - Gene Lydick vs. Yoshihiro Takayama 9/5/01 - Jun Akiyama vs. Tamon Honda 7/17/17 - Hideki Suzuki Vs. Ryuichi Kawakami 5/1/15 - Masashi Takeda Vs. Gentaro (Strong Style Fusion / Leftover Weapons match) Youtube Playlist: http://tinyurl.com/fnf003 Follow us on Twitter: @fightfriends @trillyrobinson @bren_patrick Email at: [email protected] Youtube at: http://tinyurl.com/FightFriends

Another great Tamon Honda underdog tale. I’d previously only seen the last seven minutes of this match before but seeing it in its entirety really fleshes it out. Here, Honda’s the dopey but mat dangerous Deputy Dawg. They work the opening few minutes to a stalemate, before Akiyama DDTs Honda on the rampway and continues working the neck, using his knees, legscissors, and at one point, slapping on a rear headlock and cranking Honda around into a modified front facelock. Akiyama is able to keep cutting off Honda's momentum – hitting an Exploder in response to Honda’s backdrop and then putting him in a crossface hold – but eventually, Honda breaks out, delivering a couple of awesome slow German suplexes, yanking Akiyama off the ropes, then he goes to the ground with the STF and anaconda vise. Alas, Akiyama’s the man, and he goes back to that neckwork he established so well, utilizing the front necklock, dropping Honda with Exploders to break him down even further before finishing him off with that necklock.

I love this match. Yoshinari Ogawa is the perfect grimy ring tech, who plays the sneaky pants David to Takayama’s blonde Goliath, and Takayama’s Goliath is a real brute, body pressing Ogawa off the pin attempt, punishing him with kicks and knees, ragdolling him with suplexes, grinding his boot into Ogawa’s face. When Takayama gets hung up on the ropes, Ogawa puts him in the tree of woe and pummels the hell out of him with punches and stomps before going to work full-time on the arm. Takayama powers Ogawa up out of an armbar and sets him up top…but Ogawa’s able to take him back down to the mat with the arm in tow. Ogawa’s a jerk to Takayama on the ropes with his stomps and Takayama can’t seem to catch a break. After he hits four consecutive backdrops, Ogawa goes right back into the armbar, kicking Tayama’s hand away to cinch it in. As Takayama starts powering up near the end, I love Ogawa’s final desperate flash pin attempts at hanging onto his title with Takayama countering the last small package, brutalizing Ogawa with the knee strike and putting him away with the big German to capture the title.

No surprises here…you know what you’re getting with these four. A big ole beefcake spectacle of modern strong style. Tons of bomb throwing and clobbering and sweat flying – the crowd was super into it. I thought Shingo and Yuji make a really fun team, Yuji seems to be having fun with it. As always, Sato was stiff as fuck but I thought Shingo actually threw some pretty great elbows, which I’ve never noticed before, and I really like how he hits the enziguri kick. That deadlift Made in Japan on Sekimoto was also really impressive. Probably my favorite part of the match was when Yuji and Sekimoto just start clubbing each other in the chest. Obviously, because this a 30 minute draw, the length is going to hurt it but aside from a few pacing hiccups, there was little downtime and they did a good job of keeping the crowd invested up until the very end.

I was kind of hoping Suzuki and Ishikawa would have a title match at Death Vegas.

There was more heat here between Suzuki and Hashimoto then there was in their title match. Those two interacting was the obvious highlight for me here – I thought Hashimoto’s selling was fantastic after Suzuki uppercuts his knee out from him and then just leaves him on the outside like a chump. Good, sustained selling throughout the match and even post-match. Both Shogun and Kamitani were the big boy brutes throwing their body weight around – Kamitani looked good, he hit that brutal backdrop finish, but Shogun wasn’t bad. I really like his machine gun sumo slaps in the corner. You know, after this match, I’d love to see a rematch between Daichi and Hideki but it looks like we’re getting a Kamitani rematch first.

Episode 2 is available NOW! http://fightingnetwo...ends.podiant.co to stream or subscribe to the RSS feed. You can also search us on Apple Podcasts. FNF #002: Super Tiger Vs. Fujiwara Topics discussed: - Tetsujin coming back in February - Inoki - Who was the 2nd best Russian in RINGS? - Chasito Moritaka - Rockman & Forte - Super Tiger Vs. Fujiwara in UWF (1984-85) - Bobby Heenan, Billy Robinson, Masaaki Mochizuki & Yoshihiro Takayama Matches: 7/23/84 - Akira Maeda & Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs. Nobuhiko Takada & The Tiger 9/7/84 - Fujiwara Vs. Super Tiger 12/5/84 - Fujiwara Vs. Super Tiger 1/16/84 - Fujiwara Vs. Super Tiger 5/31/85 - Fujiwara Vs. Super Tiger 7/17/85 - Fujiwara Vs. Super Tiger 9/11/85 - Fujiwara Vs. Super Tiger 2/28/98 - Jun Akiyama & Kenta Kobashi Vs. Masahito Kakihara & Yoshihiro Takayama 5/27/98 - Masaaki Mochizuki Vs. Minoru Tanaka 5/6/84 - Bobby Heenan & Billy Robinson Vs. Jumbo Tsuruta & Genichiro Tenryu Youtube Playlist: http://tinyurl.com/fnf002 Follow us on Twitter: @fightfriends @trillyrobinson @bren_patrick Email at: [email protected] Youtube at: http://tinyurl.com/FightFriends

This ruled, reminding me a lot of HARASHIMA’s 2010 match against Hikaru Sato. There was a blatant and endearing familiarity between these two that pervaded the match from the initial lock-up to the grinning snug exchanges. HARASHIMA was being quite nasty here, especially with his stompy legwork, which is never fancy, but always looks excruciating, whether it's uppercutting into a leg crank or just wrenching the ankle into precarious angles. When KUDO resists the suplex lift, HARASHIMA slapping that bad leg in order to hit the Falcon Arrow -- very cool touch. I guess if I had one minor quibble, it's that KUDO's selling could've been a little more profound but his in-the-moment stuff is pretty great and at times, he would just throw himself at HARASHIMA. But the legwork didn't do enough to deter KUDO from using his stiff kick-and-knee-based offense. Loved his duck>slap>smile strategy against HARASHIMA and HARASHIMA's lunging headbutt to answer. The escalation into the finishing stretch was terrific, with both guys bumping like crazy and throwing some nasty slaps. Hell of a performance from both guys (both in their 40s), and they managed to do a lot with the time allowed, creating an "epic" in under 20:00.

A total blast, with Kakihara once again being the consummate thorn in the side and this time, he’s got heavy back-up inTakayama. I love how confident Kaki is when takes down Akiyama with a dropkick but when he tries to lure him into a “shoot”, Akiyama brushes off some of his judo skills with a takedown and more than hangs with Kaki on the mat. So Kaki has to rely on his kicks and he quickly chops out Akiyama’s leg and re-asserts himself back on the mat with a leglock. Takayama’s the loveable brute, German suplexing Kobashi and knocking Jun off the apron, which leads to Jun rolling back into the ring to confront Takayama and getting nearly KO’d with a big knee. Kobashi’s the best good guy, checking on the welfare of his partner, taking sympathetic beatdowns, working the crowd while trying to combat Kaki’s pesky kicks. Jun and Kaki have some awesome chemistry here, between the in-ring interactions, the constant taunting and one-upmanship. The final showdown between Kaki and Kobashi was also really great. Kakiwara tries for his roll-up kneebar off a German suplex attempt but it doesn’t do the trick here and when he goes back to the kicks, Kobashi’s able catch one and capture suplex him. Really liked Kaki’s last spat before Kobashi destroys his world with the short-range lariat for the win.

It’s a beautiful day for a fun shoot-inspired pro-wrestling bout between two equally matched friends/rivals. There was a lot of back-and-forth on the mat, until Sakuraba decides to German suplex Kaki but when he gets greedy, Kaki takes him down with the Fujiwara armbar. Kakihara’s FINALLY able to connect with his big spinning heel kick, following it up with a high kick and a slough of palm strikes. He delivers an awesome suplex throw but Sakuraba immediately grabs an arm upon impact, trying to work his way down into an ankle hold. The finish was pretty cool, with Kaki coming at him with a combo of strikes and a suplex to set up the sleeper but in a terrific counter, Sakuraba flips him over and quickly taps him with the armbar.

A fun shoot-inspired pro-wrestling match, with Kaki looking uncharacteristically strong and focused, coming off his frenzied gambit of open hands and a solebutt that downs Ohtani. Ohtani answers with some knees and a German suplex throw, taking Kakihara to the ropes with the cross armbreaker. They fight over a leglock, slapping each other silly, until Kakihara’s able to turn it into a kneebar and continues targeting it throughout. He misses the big spinning heel kick (surprise, surprise) so Ohtani sneaks in with a grounded sleeper but Kaki is able put the pressure back on Ohtani’s leg. Good stuff. Ohtani fires off an awesome backdrop suplex and goes back to the armbar but he can’t close the deal and after the Kaki Cutter, Kaki submits Ohtani with the choke.

This is a pretty sweet sub-10:00 mathc. Kaki rocking the sleek purple because he really outshined Takada here. This had that pesky youngster vs. pissy veteran dynamic, which I love, and it created some rather memorable moments. Almost immediately, Sano bitch slaps Takada and Takada seemingly lays down on the mat out of fear for Kaki’s unpredictability. Kaki uses an arm-trap necklock to force Takada to the ropes but when he grabs an ankle and twists, Takada loses his cool and doubles down on the kicks, hacking Kaki’s leg to spaghetti and taking him down again and again. Kaki’s last gasp is great, as he catches Takada’s kick, barrages him with slaps, necklock suplexes him to the mat, and then squeezes out an unfortunately positioned armbar. His big “oooh ahhh” moment before Takada promptly chokes him out.

This borrows that same template from the 4/20 Sano match of Kakihara getting dominated for about 80% of the match and sneaking a submission win out, via the same roll up kneebar. Gary is being Gary here, taking Kaki down with a belly-to-belly suplex and then just trying to wear him out with the grounded full nelson. Albright uses his girth to essentially smother Kakihara on the mat, and Kaki doesn’t have much to answer with. When he tries striking, Albright snatches a leg and takes him back down or at one point, counters with an awesome leg-catch throw. He folds Kaki up with a big boy German but when he catches another kick, Kaki counters with the enziguri. Copy-and-paste finish from the Sano match.

What I love about Kakihara is how spastic and scrappy he is, completing whiffing on his spinning heel kicks, landing about 68% of his strikes, falling all over himself trying to grab a leg or an arm. Sano’s similar to that effect, especially in this match, as he aimlessly rolls around the mat, not quite sure which way he wants to go. I loved the struggle Kakihara conveys when he tries locking on the armbar, with Sano looking the most “in danger” he looks the entire match. Typically, a Kakihara match starts and ends the same way. Here, he trades strikes with Sano, until Sano dominates him down the home stretch, hitting suplexes, knees, and kicks, overwhelming Kaki until he tries for another German and Kaki rolls him up with a kneebar and quickly taps him. Lucky.

One of the best sub-five minute matches out there and within the first 10 seconds, Kakihara splatters Nakano's nose with a flurry of open hands. Nakano's able to slow Kaki down on the ground with a leglock and I like the combo of the knee > front neck chancery takeover, throwing some salt in the wound with a cheap shot kick. The blood really adds something to the match, with Kaki's grip slipping during a takedown attempt. As usual, Kakihara sets himself up for the big spinning heel kick but misses, which leads to the brutal finish from Nakano: smack, stomp, submit via single leg crab.

Already young Kakihara is showing signs of what's to come with the immediate slap after the handshake. Kakihara is lightning-quick with his kicks and slaps and Fuke does all he can to try and slow the whirlwind down, at one point catching a leg and countering with a cool capture-style powerslam. Once Fuke's got him on the ground, he's able to send Kaki crawling to the ropes by targeting the legs, supplementing the holds with an occasional kick or knee to the face. There's plenty of takedowns and scrambling around the mat until Kakihara finally secures a head-and-shoulder-lock for the submission. Fun match.

Loved this.Takada doesn't do a whole lot for me, especially on the mat, but when he's paired against Fujiwara, I find myself more invested in him as a performer. He sells Fujiwara's awesome lunging headbutts like a million bucks and sells the danger of Fujiwara on the mat, at times, freaking out when Fujiwara's able to reverse a hold. Fujiwara's as methodical as always with that classic grin, brushing off Takada's kicks and hanging out in the corners, which he utilizes as a home base when Takada comes striking. Such a fantastic visual when Takada's strikes get to be too much and Fujiwara slumps to the canvas, still managing a smile when he makes it back to his feet but ultimately, running out of options.