[1991-03-30-SWS-Wrestlefest] Naoki Sano vs Masakatsu Funaki

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

The setting was a very strange one for this, but it was a great match, and something people should really check out. Sano quietly had a hell of career.

[shoe]

I liked this a lot. Both guys were really working hard. The strikes were good, but the stuff on the mat was great. Their was this one spot where Funaki was trying to get Sano's ankle. He couldn't get it but saw the other one wasn't being defended. So he floated over and went for the other ankle.

[Childs]

I'm usually on the positive side with shootstyle matches and especially Sano shootstyle matches, but this struck me as just OK. They were terrific athletes, obviously, and they did some neat stuff. I just didn't get any sense of one guy asserting a particular style or of them having to dig particularly deep. It was a good match that failed to meet my high expectations.

[PeteF3]

It's crazy that this match took place on a card with WWF talent. Normally stand-ups and resets in UWF-style are what cause me to tune out, but here the stand-up portions were the best part of the match while the matwork portions were good but tended to be overlong. The hard palm strikes and kicks at the end were awesome, and Funaki weathers a "near-fall" to come back and drop Sano with a suplex and cross armbreaker, and the PWFG guys have a big celebration, getting what I guess is considered an upset victory in an interpromotional match. That made for a cool moment.

[Kevin Ridge]

Don’t know what rules/scoring they are using here. Striking looked good. Funaki’s cornermen were very excited about his win.

[Zenjo]

Reasonable enough shoot style grappling but never kicked into high gear.

[soup23]

Kind of agree with the people on the lesser side of this because while the struggle for the arm work and mat stuff was pretty well done, my mind did start to wander a lot during this. Finish was best part with Funaki picking up a good victory and having a nice celebration.

[garretta]

This one didn't get going for me until they traded knockdowns at the end. It would have been a big help if they'd kept track of the points and knockdowns on the screen the way the UWF does; at least I could have seen who was winning at a given point in time.

 

I agree with Pete about this match feeling strange alongside WWF matches and in a WWF ring. I bet guys like the LOD and Hogan watched this and couldn't quite believe their eyes, at least that this kind of match was taking place on the same card as theirs.

 

I don't know if this is a trend or not, but there was no English commentary on this one like there was on the other SWS matches we've seen so far on the Yearbooks. Given the way they interject it (nonsensically and at random), it's just as well.

[dawho5]

Pretty good shootstyle match. The flurries at the end made the ending really memorable.