Beginners Guide to Shoot Style

[El-P]

Well, I was praying to the altar of Volk Han, Tamura and Khosaka about 15 years ago...

 

As far as "realistic", let's not even go there. I might drop that Fujiwara headbutt spot again. And really, nothing is less realistic than a Bitzade Tariel work. Nothing.

[elliott]

So one of my questions was about "under the radar" workers. It's kind of tough because shoot style really only existed for what 10-12 years? The "answers" probably aren't exactly under the radar anymore as most people in our circles have probably heard of these guys. But in the interest of staying true to the Beginners Guide theme of this thread, I figured I'd list some of the highly touted midcarders people should keep an eye out for and I'm hoping Tim or OJ can tell us all more about them and recommend some matches to seek out.

 

Yoji Anjo

Naoki Sano

Tatsuo Nakano

Masahito Kakihara

Yoshihiro Takayama

Tsuyoshi Khosaka

Yoshihisa Yamamoto

 

Who else from the major promotions?

 

In a way I feel like all of BattlArts is under the radar so I don't know what to do about them. I feel like if you've heard of BattlArts then you're aware of Ikeda/Ishikawa/Otsuka. OJ mentioned Carl Greco as someone to look out for. Who are the other awesome BattlArts mid carders?

 

Also if someone wanted to tackle gaijin from Norman Smiley and Bob Backlund to Vader and whatever wierdo Rings guys (that aren't Han) that are worth learning about it would be awesome. This can cover impact and/or best/worst matches.

[Graham Crackers]

Getting the PWFG set will get you Sano's best shoot style matches, pre Battlarts Ishikawa and Ikeda, and some fun foreigners. Of course there are some tremendous Fujiwara matches too but that's not what you asked about.

 

Sano's PWFG trilogy:

Wayne Shamrock vs Naoki Sano PWFG 5/19/1991
Minoru Suzuki vs Naoki Sano PWFG 7/26/1991
Bart Vale vs Naoki Sano PWFG 9/28/1991

 

Early Ishikawa against wacky foreigners:
Bart Vale vs Yuki Ishikawa PWFG 7/21/1993 Vale was always a little awkward but he started putting it together and was pretty fun in 92/93. Baby Ishikawa is exactly who you hope he'd be.
Duane Kozlowski vs Yuki Ishikawa PWFG 9/23/1993 The only really good Kozlowski match. It's cool to watch him for his feats of strength but he never became a good pro wrestler.

 

Daisuke Ikeda & Katsumi Usuda vs Yuki Ishikawa & Shoichi Funaki PWFG 5/19/1995 This one's a fun proto-Battlarts match and introduces Usuda who is one of your other great Battlarts workers.

Battlarts guys you need to see (other than Ishikawa/Ikeda/Greco):

Katsumi Usuda - became a great worker during the Battlarts revival, was good before that.

Takeshi Ono - skinny punk who throws nasty strikes, probably has less footage around than the others but looks to be near their level

Manabu Hara/Suruga - Strong wrestler during the revival

Yujiro Yamamoto - Where is this guy? I loved him back in 2008/09. Check that stuff out.

 

 

In U-Style you want to check out

Hiroyuki Ito - great at creating drama in a shoot style match

Dokonjonosuke Mishima - Interesting worker with a brief wrestling career. Doesn't have the resume of Ito's similarly short career but worth checking out.

 

I wish I could help you with more RINGS info but 1993 is the only year I've watched en masse. Otherwise it's just been the most discussed matches.

[Parties]

Yujiro Yamamoto - Where is this guy? I loved him back in 2008/09. Check that stuff out.

 

Yes.

Also: Usuda is so good that while I wouldn't put him on a top 100 all-time ballot, he's for me really not that far off.

[Tim Cooke]

Andrei Kopylov is sort of under the radar from RINGS. Has more good matches than bad and may have Maeda's best non-Han match from July 1992.

[DR Ackermann]

As far as BattlArts guys go, don't forget Otsuka.

[pol]

What was the deal with Yuki Ishikawa working a couple of shots for RINGS in 1993?

 

Looks like Minoru Tanaka worked a couple of matches for them in 1994 too. Was there some kind of agreement between PWFG and RINGS? I guess I just assumed the UWF split was acrimonious.

[ohtani's jacket]

I enjoy some UWFi. I try to judge it on its own terms, not according to some set of criteria re: quality shoot style wrestling. If it fails at being realistic but still works as pro wrestling I don't see why that's a problem. To be honest, OJ, your criticisms strike me as a similar stance to the one you've criticised Parv for taking on lucha: not taking it on its on terms, rating it according to how much it resembles stuff you already like...

 

I do dislike the UWFi tendency to build matches around manipulation of the points system though. It strikes me as a cheap attempt to manufacture drama rather than having it emerge through the work itself. It's kind of similar to why Iron Man matches tend not to work.

 

I see where you're coming from, and perhaps there's some truth to what you say, but in every style I follow there's a promotion I don't like. I'm pretty set in my ways about what good shoot style should be, and unfortunately the argument that it still works as pro-wrestling doesn't do much to sway me considering shoot style is meant to be an alternative to traditional pro-wrestling. Others may see it as an offshoot of traditional pro-wrestling, but I've always enjoyed it precisely because it's not conventional pro-wrestling. The way I see it, not enjoying shoot style because it's different from traditional graps and enjoying shoot-style lite because it works as pro-wrestling are two sides of the same coin.

 

By the same token, I understand why UWF-i existed as an alternative to RINGS commercially, and why some people may enjoy it as an alternative to out and out shoot style, but it's hard for me to label it as good.

[ohtani's jacket]

What was the deal with Yuki Ishikawa working a couple of shots for RINGS in 1993?

 

Looks like Minoru Tanaka worked a couple of matches for them in 1994 too. Was there some kind of agreement between PWFG and RINGS? I guess I just assumed the UWF split was acrimonious.

 

Fujiwara and Maeda also had a match in '96.

 

From memory, Maeda had a falling out with the UWF front office and was suspended for publicly criticising them. The other wrestlers initially took Maeda's side, but the plan to start a third version of UWF fell through. I don't think it was overly acrimonious.

 

In fact, here are the prowrestlinghistory.com cliff notes (presumably from the Observer)

 

 

• Much like the original UWF, internal problems borught about its downfall. In October 1990, Jin wanted several UWF wrestlers to appear on a show promoted by Super World Sports, a traditional pro wrestling company. Jin felt obligated to do so to help SWS founder Hachiro Tanaka (owner of Megane Super Optical) due to Tanaka sponsoring the 1989 Tokyo Dome show and having paid the penalty fees when Funaki and Suzuki jumpred from NJPW. Maeda was strongly against this move because he didn't want UWF wrestlers appearing on a show with "fake" wrestlers.

   

• At about the same time, Maeda asked Jin for access to the company books. The request was rejected and Maeda was suspended due to his public opposition to the SWS deal. In December 1990 all the wrestlers had sided with Maeda, Jin fired them, closed the company, declared that the UWF name could no longer be used, and a December 29 Tokyo Dome show was cancelled.

[ohtani's jacket]

Regarding the above, PWFG was initially bankrolled by Hachiro Tanaka and the reason Funaki, Suzuki and Fuke quit was because Fujiwara wanted to send his wrestlers out to shows promoted by SWS, W*ING and Hamada's UWF. Once they lost Tanaka's backing, even Fujiwara himself was basically freelancing. I'm guessing that's why a few of his guys did RINGS dates.

[pol]

Is it just me or was RINGS booking pretty damn bad? Seems almost current-WWE-like with the 'a bunch of guys trading wins'-ness of it. Tamura is brought in and is immediately one of the most over guys on the roster if not THE most over. He's built up strong, then loses to Han which I could understand to give him a challenge to overcome, but then he jobs to Maeda, then fucking ZOUEV? Then you have guys that lost on the last show main eventing the next show... it all just feels very random. It sometimes seems like RINGS was trying to get away from as many of the trappings of pro wrestling as possible, and maybe they saw not having clearly protected guys as part of that.

[ohtani's jacket]

UWF booking was like that too. Wins and losses mattered in the overall context of whether the fighters had a winning record, but they didn't matter as much on a fight to fight basis. The cards were never determined by the results of the previous show. Tamura did eventually go over Maeda and was positioned as the top star, but it wasn't a perfectly booked ascension. I think it's important to remember rhat Japanese fans often care more about how a guy fights in a loss than whether he's dominating, Maeda was still posirioned as the ace of sorts when Tamura jumped, and he was unlikely to be a made man from day one. If you're looking for a pro-wrestling narrative you're flat out of luck. I admit to being perplexed at times. But I think big picture Tamura rose to the top.

[Tabe]

Shoot style? Right up my alley. Might as well chime in, especially since my Cover Scan Museum and Takada comps have already been referenced

 

Anybody who knows me, knows that UWFI is my favorite promotion of all-time. So much that I wrote a brief, probably crappy, history of the promotion that can be found here: http://s94991397.onlinehome.us/newsite/UWFI - History of.rtf

 

Here's my take on the major promotions:

 

UWF 1.0 - Not a huge fan but the good stuff is very good. They clearly didn't know what they wanted to be at first but eventually came around and there's several good matches to be found here.

 

UWF 2.0 - Great promotion. The bad stuff is really bad but the top-end stuff (Takada/Maeda 11/10/88 and others) is reaaaaaaaaaly good. Hottest promotion in the world at its peak.

 

UWFI - My favorite. Pro wrestling style drama mixed with shoot style. This doesn't always work but it almost always does, at least through mid-1995. And it worked for the fans too - UWFI in 1994 led the world in average attendance. And their actual show/match quality was really high - there are no bad UWFI shows prior to 1995. UWFI is also great if you like double crosses (Takada/Kitao, Takada/Berbick, Kitahara/150% Machine). FYI, to correct what was said above, UWFI DID use pinfalls but only on their very last shows. They counted as a loss of points rather than ending the match, however.

 

RINGS - RINGS is the most realistic of all the shoot-style promotions. This is good and bad. Their high-end stuff is really high end but there's also a lot of really terrible stuff with legit guys who don't know how to work. I'm a big fan of RINGS, having seen almost every one of their shows, but the inconsistency is a pain. They did eventually morph to being legit shoots but there's a couple legit shoots all throughout the history of the promotion. One problem with RINGS is that their scoring system and rules vary wildly from one match and show to another. Have fun figuring them out!

 

PWFG - PWFG is probably the closest to the UWF 2.0 in terms of style but...without all the quality. There's a few good matches but, in general, I think PWFG is pretty darn mediocre.

 

KINGDOM - After UWFI died, Takada started up another group with an eye toward looking more like MMA by using gloves and aiming for more realistic matches. Takada bailed out early on, however, never actually working any matches, going on to headline Pride. There's not a lot of good stuff in Kingdom but it's not nearly as terrible as you may have heard. The Kanehara/Sakuraba matches are fantastic, for example, and SUPER stiff.

 

U-Style - Sigh. Such a missed opportunity. Tamura starts the promotion, makes himself the superstar, and fills the roster with guys that are too small to compete with him (even though Tamura isn't all that big himself) and nobody gets elevated. The matches aren't great either. I enjoyed U-Style but it's not great

 

Personally, I'm not a fan of hybrids like Battlarts so you won't hear any comments from me on them.

[Tabe]

Blech, my link to my history of UWFI got mangled and it's not letting me do the link I want. Sorry!

[JerryvonKramer]

1/22/97 Han vs. Tamura

I just watched this.

 

To my untrained philistine eyes it went something like this: Kick - kick - submission attempt - Commentator cums in his pants - Crowd pops. Rinse repeat for 14 minutes until one of them actually submits. Didn't seem to have any sort of psychology to it at all to me, felt like the last 10 minutes of your typical Cena match only trade the finishers and false finishes for submission attempts.

 

To me this lacked a lot of elements that I associate with pro wrestling. Namely:

 

- Rope running

- Collar and elbow tieup

- Throws of any kind

- Standard strikes that aren't kicks, like the reverse knife edge, forearm smash, or similar

 

I would like fans of this style to answer the following questions:

 

- What specifically do you like about this match?

- Tell me about the pyschology, why isn't it like your typical modern WWE style false finish fest?

- When you watch these matches do you feel like you are watching pro wrestling? Can you flick from something like this to a normal US-style match or, say, an All Japan match without feeling jarred in any way?

- Why would you watch this over UFC?

[El-P]

UWF 2.0 - Great promotion. The bad stuff is really bad but the top-end stuff (Takada/Maeda 11/10/88 and others) is reaaaaaaaaaly good. Hottest promotion in the world at its peak.

 

UWFI - My favorite. Pro wrestling style drama mixed with shoot style. This doesn't always work but it almost always does, at least through mid-1995. And it worked for the fans too - UWFI in 1994 led the world in average attendance. And their actual show/match quality was really high - there are no bad UWFI shows prior to 1995. UWFI is also great if you like double crosses (Takada/Kitao, Takada/Berbick, Kitahara/150% Machine). FYI, to correct what was said above, UWFI DID use pinfalls but only on their very last shows. They counted as a loss of points rather than ending the match, however.

 

RINGS - RINGS is the most realistic of all the shoot-style promotions. This is good and bad. Their high-end stuff is really high end but there's also a lot of really terrible stuff with legit guys who don't know how to work. I'm a big fan of RINGS, having seen almost every one of their shows, but the inconsistency is a pain. They did eventually morph to being legit shoots but there's a couple legit shoots all throughout the history of the promotion. One problem with RINGS is that their scoring system and rules vary wildly from one match and show to another. Have fun figuring them out!

 

PWFG - PWFG is probably the closest to the UWF 2.0 in terms of style but...without all the quality. There's a few good matches but, in general, I think PWFG is pretty darn mediocre.

 

Welcome Tabe. It's always nice not feeling alone sometimes.

 

(in case you wonder, I pretty much agree with all that's written above (although my favourite shoot-style stuff, and in short, pro-wrestling matches, all comes from RINGS, but like he said, the bad stuff there is atrocious), although I need to watch more PWFG to get my final sentiment on that promotion, but up until now, yep, I would agree on this too)

[pol]

UWF booking was like that too. Wins and losses mattered in the overall context of whether the fighters had a winning record, but they didn't matter as much on a fight to fight basis. The cards were never determined by the results of the previous show. Tamura did eventually go over Maeda and was positioned as the top star, but it wasn't a perfectly booked ascension. I think it's important to remember rhat Japanese fans often care more about how a guy fights in a loss than whether he's dominating, Maeda was still posirioned as the ace of sorts when Tamura jumped, and he was unlikely to be a made man from day one. If you're looking for a pro-erestling narrative you're flat out of luck. I admit to being perplexed at times. But I think big picture Tamura rose to the top.

 

That makes sense, though I can't help but wonder if they would have done better business had they protected certain guys more. UFC and PRIDE booking is way closer to traditional pro wrestling booking than RINGS was, it seems.

[elliott]

 

1/22/97 Han vs. Tamura

I just watched this.

 

To my untrained philistine eyes it went something like this: Kick - kick - submission attempt - Commentator cums in his pants - Crowd pops. Rinse repeat for 14 minutes until one of them actually submits. Didn't seem to have any sort of psychology to it at all to me, felt like the last 10 minutes of your typical Cena match only trade the finishers and false finishes for submission attempts.

 

To me this lacked a lot of elements that I associate with pro wrestling. Namely:

 

- Rope running

- Collar and elbow tieup

- Throws of any kind

- Standard strikes that aren't kicks, like the reverse knife edge, forearm smash, or similar

 

I would like fans of this style to answer the following questions:

 

- What specifically do you like about this match?

- Tell me about the pyschology, why isn't it like your typical modern WWE style false finish fest?

- When you watch these matches do you feel like you are watching pro wrestling? Can you flick from something like this to a normal US-style match or, say, an All Japan match without feeling jarred in any way?

- Why would you watch this over UFC?

 

 

I watched the 9/96 and 1/97 Han/Tamura matches with Parv's questions in mind.

 

What specifically do you like about this match?

It is Han vs Tamura. So I specifically like the mat work. The technique, speed, and skill displayed on the mat considering the degree of difficulty in what they’re doing is more impressive than literally any US-Style matwork based match I’ve ever seen. The skill and conditioning it takes to work on the mat at that pace doing those moves is seriously mindblowing.

 

Tell me about the pyschology,

In broad general terms, Volk Han is the older submission master who can pull out insane finishes from out of nowhere but he isn’t really known as a striker. Han will use strikes when the opportunity presents itself but he is mostly going to try and use crazy tricked out submissions to finish the match. Tamura is obviously extraordinary on the mat as well as he would have to be in order to climb the ladder in Rings. But he is also an excellent striker and has the ability to finish the match while standing. Tamura uses his strikes to weaken Han to set up submissions. Han is more defensive minded, waiting for you to slip up on your technique or get overzealous with strike attempts so he can grab a limb and snap it but if you leave yourself open for palm strikes or knees Han will throw them. They clearly don’t have the same effect Tamura’s strikes do. The finish plays directly into this as Tamura is trying to finish off Han with his kicks, Han grabs the leg, kicks Tamura’s other leg out, and locks on a submission.

 

why isn't it like your typical modern WWE style false finish fest?

Seriously? It is different because anything could finish the Han/Tamura. It could be a hard kick to the stomach, a cross armbreaker, a choke, any number of different leg submissions etc etc etc. WWE likes to pimp the RKO as a move Orton can hit from any place, but realistically he is just hitting the RKO and you know the match will finish after an RKO. Volk Han has 1000 different RKO’s that he can lock on from 1000 different positions (obviously exaggerating). This wasn’t Cena using 5 FU’s to put someone away or whatever.

Not to mention things like number of knockdowns and rope breaks leading to points which are another way to win.

 

When you watch these matches do you feel like you are watching pro wrestling?

 

Yes. I think they are pretty clearly cooperating.

 

Can you flick from something like this to a normal US-style match or, say, an All Japan match without feeling jarred in any way?

 

Sure. You just can't expect all matches to be worked in a similar fashion. Especially if you're looking at different styles. I wouldn't watch 80s Lucha and bitch about the lack of headdropping suplexes. And I wouldn't watch Baba vs BIlly Robinson and say "This could have used more chair shots and ref bumps." Wait a second...

 

Headdropping suplexes

Chair Shots

Ref Bumps

 

I associate all of those things with pro-wrestling. Han/Tamura didn't have any of them. It was still a classic match. Its just worked in a style that doesn't involve ref bumps or chair shots or rope running or ric flair style chops.

 

All styles don't look the same. You shouldn't expect them to.

Why would you watch this over UFC?

 

Because I like cooperation and people working together for money/fame more than I like people fighting for money/fame.

[Graham Crackers]

 

1/22/97 Han vs. Tamura

I just watched this.

 

To my untrained philistine eyes it went something like this: Kick - kick - submission attempt - Commentator cums in his pants - Crowd pops. Rinse repeat for 14 minutes until one of them actually submits. Didn't seem to have any sort of psychology to it at all to me, felt like the last 10 minutes of your typical Cena match only trade the finishers and false finishes for submission attempts.

 

To me this lacked a lot of elements that I associate with pro wrestling. Namely:

 

- Rope running

- Collar and elbow tieup

- Throws of any kind

- Standard strikes that aren't kicks, like the reverse knife edge, forearm smash, or similar

Jerry, I guess I appreciate you trying to watch this stuff but for someone so skeptical of other people's reasons for liking and disliking matches/wrestlers you seem to me like you're so blinded by your own confirmation bias that you aren't thinking logically about how shoot style is presented. I can't help but suspect that you can't see the psychology in shoot style because you've already decided there is no psychology. Remember that it plays by different rules because it's presented as being more realistic. If shoot style is designed to engage in more "realistic" grappling and striking then other styles then why would they include rope running or popular kayfabe strikes of yesteryear? Have you ever seen two real people get into a real fight?

 

Yes, there is a foundation in martial arts for forearm strikes and knife edge chops but there is also a reason you don't see many MMA fighters busting them out. They are not very effective in reality and so they were phased out of the style. Wrestling has used real combat sports as an inspiration as long as it has been faked. The similar camera and lighting setup that boxing and wrestling shared lead to both being on TV in the 1950s. Wrestling was worked but if you want to suck your audience into the act you will usually allude to realities they are familiar with. In a lot of classic wrestling footage I see wrestlers go into boxing stances when punches start getting thrown. I'm not sure when this started becoming less common but it's obvious to me that wrestlers who are doing this are trying to signal that this wrestling match has the potential to turn into a fight. Even many of the classic controversial wrestling finishes evoke some of the more colorful endings of famous 19th century boxing matches. The 90s saw martial artists from around the world being brought into Japan in Vale Tudo tournaments and Pancrase promoting genuine shoot wrestling. The kind of grappling and striking in shoot style is designed to evoke similar images to what viewers might have seen in shoot fights at the time.

 

As for rope running, it is one of the wackiest things about pro wrestling. I love a good rope running sequence but any time I've watched around non-fans it's the rope running sequences that lead to scoffing. If you'd like more historical precedent for the lack of rope running I will point out that some 80s shoot style (though really it was more of a prototype of a shoot style) used rope running and even top rope moves. When the decision was made to push towards Gotch influenced grappling in a more realistic setting both were phased out. If you watch the Fujiwara vs Super Tiger matches Super Tiger attempts to use top rope moves and rope running only to be foiled in every attempt.

 

Throws do not make something pro wrestling. There are some shoot style wrestlers who use big throws. There are also some that don't.

 

Which leaves us with the collar and elbow tie up to discuss. That is one way to initiate a grapple. There are also other ways to initiate a grapple. The only time that a collar and elbow tie up would be the only way to initiate grappling is if you're playing Fire Pro Wrestling and you haven't weakened your opponent enough to grab a waistlock.

 

A word on psychology:

 

Shoot style, outside of a few personalities and big matches is a style dedicated to those little details you spoke about in that Big vs Little thread. In your standard wrestling match using a rope break instead of finding another way of escaping a hold might not be a big deal but in shoot style it can say a lot about the wrestlers in the match. Escaping a hold without using the ropes is a victory for the escapee. Using a rope break is a victory for the guy applying the hold because it changes the score if the match goes to it's time limit without a decision.

 

Also remember that any hold could win a match, creating an element of unpredictability. An armbar can break your arm 10 minutes in or 10 seconds in as long as it's properly applied. Shoot style promotions have booked plenty of fluke victories over the years.

[pol]

I think shoot style is the form of wrestling where I'm most focused on the mechanics of what's going on. I'm looking at the details of how the wrestlers transition into and out of holds and how well the holds are being applied. From personal experience, the biggest step in getting into this stuff was getting over the habit of seeing a hold as just "oh, he has him in a hold". That often suffices for pro-style, but in shoot style things like the nature of the hold, how well it's applied and how close they are to the ropes matter. Someone using a funky counter to escape a devastating hold is a high spot.

 

As for psychology, I think to an extent I look at this stuff like lucha trios matches where I'm looking more for a rhythm and a gradual increase in drama than I am a 'story' per se.

[MJH]

The first Han/Tamura match is quite clearly veteran/upstart. The ensuing two less so. But it couldn't be more obvious in the 96 match.

 

Psychology can differ in shoot style, though. My memory of the 1/89 Takada/Maeda match is Maeda wrestling a very careful match and to ensure there isn't a repeat of the upset. You don't really get that sort of a match in other styles, but it's perfectly suited to shoot style.

[Loss]

I think it's important to remember that good wrestling is a series of reactions more than it is a series of actions. That's not a statement about workrate; it's more of a statement about the purpose behind everything. Just like it's true that people pop for signature spots, unexpected directions and moves that are established as match-enders in non-shoot style wrestling, it's also true that the best shoot-style matches are the ones that are a reaction to the norms that surround them. The crowd doesn't pop randomly -- they have been trained to pop for certain things. That their reactions don't make sense to a novice is actually a compliment, because it's a credit to how great of a job RINGS did training its audience.

 

I can understand watching something like Han-Tamura and not thinking much of it when your points of comparison are more traditional pro wrestling. It doesn't really fit that mold. You're not going to see knife-edges or collar-and-elbows because those are associated with traditional wrestling that everyone knows is "fake". The genius of Maeda was creating a company (UWF and later RINGS) that really was worked, but they were able to convince people at times that they were real. Even now, there is sometimes debate over whether a match was a work or a shoot. So if you look at what has traditionally been pro wrestling's most basic guiding principle, to make people believe, this is a style that accomplished that in spades.

 

Imagine a company debuting in the United States that wanted people to think they were real even though they were worked. With the Internet, such a thing is less possible now than ever, so for argument's sake, pretend it's happening in 1982 or 1983. There were great things about the typical NWA and various territory styles for sure, but they would have to stay away from quite a few things that were staples of those styles if really wanted to distinguish this new promotion as the real deal. That's the mentality from which RINGS evolved.

 

Also, with regards to the low-end matches in these companies, I think it's a necessary evil in many ways. None of these groups ever had weekly television, but more than that, they were selling a style to the public that doesn't exactly sell itself. I think they needed to establish what a "normal" match looked like in that style so they could exceed that normal when the situation called for a classic match.

 

At its core, all pro wrestling is about conditioning fans to react in the desired way. Booking, ring work, interviews and promos ... it all plays a role. The joy of shoot style is in its heightened sense of audience manipulation. I won't deny the manipulative genius of Vince McMahon, but it's also fully transparent and most people see it for what it is. UWF, UWFI, RINGS and PWFG successfully blurred the line.

 

I don't think there's a binary here. Both are equally valid. It's just a very different approach.

[ohtani's jacket]

 

1/22/97 Han vs. Tamura

I just watched this.

 

To my untrained philistine eyes it went something like this: Kick - kick - submission attempt - Commentator cums in his pants - Crowd pops. Rinse repeat for 14 minutes until one of them actually submits. Didn't seem to have any sort of psychology to it at all to me, felt like the last 10 minutes of your typical Cena match only trade the finishers and false finishes for submission attempts.

 

To me this lacked a lot of elements that I associate with pro wrestling. Namely:

 

- Rope running

- Collar and elbow tieup

- Throws of any kind

- Standard strikes that aren't kicks, like the reverse knife edge, forearm smash, or similar

 

I would like fans of this style to answer the following questions:

 

- What specifically do you like about this match?

- Tell me about the pyschology, why isn't it like your typical modern WWE style false finish fest?

- When you watch these matches do you feel like you are watching pro wrestling? Can you flick from something like this to a normal US-style match or, say, an All Japan match without feeling jarred in any way?

- Why would you watch this over UFC?

 

 

Aside from the skill level and technique, I like the match because it's exciting. It's not really that mat heavy compared to what both men were capable of. Instead, they worked an all-action bout where both guys continuously went for the knockout or submission. Watching the two best guys go full throttle is a hell of a spectacle. They could have worked a slower, more methodical, more mat based contest, but Han liked to entertain folks and Tamura was a perfect foil because of his supreme conditioning and athleticism.

 

As far as the psychology goes, it depends on which definition of psychology you use. People used to belief that psychology implied a logical progression to a match (what we might call the build or order of spots.) In that respect, there's more psychology than your average pro-wrestling match because it's built around clear patterns of attack/defence/counter attack and there's a clear framework to the rules. Loss mentioned the crowd; you can hear them pop every time the fighters attack because they know that a single correctly applied submission can end the fight. They also pop for a counter and even for a ropes break, which they know is a points victory for the aggressor. I don't believe those crowd reactions would occur without there being any psychology. It's simple a sports based psychology, or fight based psychology, rather than standard pro-wrestling psychology. Which isn't to say that you can't break it down in pro-wrestling terms, but clearly if your view of psychology is based on heel/face dynamics, character work, morality plays and human drama, you're not going to get too much out of a fight based psychology unless the match is suitably epic, which I don't think Han/Tamura is (maybe as a trilogy, but not the 1/97 fight by itself/) You can get to know Han and Tamura more by watching their fights, but all that really gives you is a bit more characterisation. It does help them to be more likeable, though. Han, in particular, is a likeable guy once you get a broader picture of how unique he was. I always thought the idea of a Russian Sambo master doing worked bouts in Japan was the equivalent of a martial arts master doing magic tricks at a party. And like I said, he was a showman and an entertainer despite being legit better than just about everybody in the promotion. So, the ending and the celebration, carries a bit more weight if you know and like the guy.

 

Of course I feel like I'm watching pro-wrestling. I see it as an alternative to traditional pro-wrestling, and I think it's the highest form of Japanese pro-wrestling, but it's still pro-wrestling. It's simply another genre of pro-wrestling and I can switch between genres the same way I do with music, comics or films. I might not always be in the mood for shoot style, and like Graham Crackers there may sometimes be a flow on effect where it makes other styles of mat work seem weak, but I can switch pretty freely.

 

I've watched K-1, PRIDE, shoot style, Shooto, Pancrase, UFC, boxing and sumo in the past. I don't see why you can't enjoy worked combat sports at the same time as real combat sports. I don't watch pro-wrestling as an alternative to real combat sports. I enjoy both. Besides, Tamura vs. Han doesn't look much like UFC.

[Tim Cooke]

Tadashi Tanaka thought Uno vs Sato I from Shooto 5/29/99 was the ultimate pro wrestling match taking place in a real environment. I wouldn't call it pro wrestling but if you watched it without knowing it was real, you might think it was the best RINGS match ever

[JerryvonKramer]

I will say that I didn't hate the match and found it quite exciting. The insane commentator and crowd certainly helped with that though. It was way more fun to watch than the 1990 UWF stuff.