[1990-03-02-Hamada's UWF] Negro Casas vs Yoshinari Asai

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

I've seen these two have better matches, but Ultimo had also matured as a wrestler by the time that happened. This was probably better at the time than it is watching it back now where these spots all seem very tired.

[PeteF3]

Some of this did look overly cooperative, especially in the early going, but...well, I've overgeneralized enough about UWF without doing it for lucha too, but generally lucha tends to be a lot...looser than this match. No air in this--the holds were worked nice and snug and when they weren't working holds they were pounding the shit out of each other. There were some awkward moments and Asai did a whole lot of spin kicks considering he whiffed on probably half of them. Not a great match but Asai did get to show off a lot more stuff here than he did in the 6-man.

[soup23]

I actually enjoyed this a good bit as a look into early Ultimo. I found it interesting that at this early point in his career he covers his botches much better than he would later on. This is definitely a showcase match that gets into your turn my turn territory but they did show some restraint and the match was the right length.

[Cox]

I would call this more interesting than good. Asai's stuff has always looked super, super smooth, though.

[shoe]

I thought this was a good match. Nothing special or anything. It did turn into a you turn my turn fest.

[Kevin Ridge]

Asai likes his jumping kicks. Casas busting out the power moves. Casas gets cocky and turns his back as Asai makes him pay hitting a bunch of moves to put him away. Good action.

[Laney]

This was a nice showcase of both guys but it wasn't anything great. This match seemed to be lacking a cohesive story and instead was more of a showcase of their offensive moves. A little too much back-and-forth but it was decent enough.

[garretta]

Fine introduction to Japanese-style lucha libre. It was worked more like a regular Japanese wrestling match that I thought it would be, but considering that I'm still not sure about lucha as a style, that's not exactly a bad thing. The crowd didn't seem really into this, but that could be because it's a relatively new promotion. Looking forward to seeing more.

[drew wardlaw]

I had my own narrative for this match and the drama was built around if Asai was going to try the moonsault off the loosey goosey ropes and die. So I actually really liked this was the moonsault was part of the finish and really kept my on the edge of my seat the whole time.

[dawho5]

I thought they were way off time with each other on lot of spots and the match looked sloppy as shit. Not real high on Asai/Ultimo though, so that ma have something to do with it.