[2007-12-31-K-1-Dynamite] Kiyoshi Tamura vs Hideo Tokoro

[GOTNW]

I think this was a work. I was suspicious that it was one before I even watched it-I found a clip of Maeda aggressively showing the winner's trophy onto Tamura after this match. It didn't really make sense-I mean you could say Maeda is crazy, but I don't really believe that. Usually there's reasoning behind his violent outbursts. You may argue how sound that reasoning is and how defendable his methods are, but let's move on from that. The match starts with Tokoro slapping Tamura when they go to shake gloves. I'm 100% perceived this is going to be a pro wrestling match by this point. The pre-fight video had Tokoro saying Tamura is his hero and that he wears red pants because of him. There's an article online saying Tamura requested UWFi rules for this. I already saw these two have a pro wrestling tag team match in RIZIN this year. The finish with the Maeda stuff is pro wrestling anyway-but considering all the circumstances surrounding this and how flashy some parts of the match were I'm giving this the benefit of the doubt and saying it's a pro wrestling match. And that I have found zero articles online (well, articles on english) discussing the possibility of this bout being fixed showcases the caliber of Tamura's talent as a performer and his understanding of how he needed to adapt to convince people he was fighting for real. Even if this were a completely real fight (which I highly doubt-there's clear some punches are lacking intention to finish the opponent off) at best/worst it's a something like the type of "real" fights that would go down in Pancrase where one guy would let the other catch him in a submission and then go for rope breaks to build drama and so on. Match was very entertaining but I'd find it impossible to rate it.