[1985-02-18-UWF] Akira Maeda vs Kazuo Yamazaki

[Superstar Sleeze]

Akira Maeda vs Kazuo Yamazaki - UWF 2/18/85

 

Akira Maeda: The Human Cure for Insomnia. He is a total snoozefest on the mat. So many "bundle of legs" lock or just lying on Yamazaki. Yamazaki is not he guy to draw anything out of Maeda. So far nobody is. The first 12 minutes was a Maeda mauling. Well there was a clip because even the cameraman got bored. Yamazaki got a quick German and that was it. I will say Maeda did have his first explosion of fury. Some really nasty kicks and he did seem more forceful, but then it went back to lying in a side mount or a "bundle of legs" lock. He did have a nice deadlift German. Yamazaki was able to wriggle out and get a single leg crab and from there tries to press his advantage on the mat, but this led to yet another game of "leg twister". It takes a great seller to really get over just holding a bundle of legs and these guys just aren't it. Maeda ends up with a single crab now. Maeda does seem more into this match than previous encounters, I will give him that. Yamazaki's selling out of single leg crab would have been great if he was selling a kick to his head, but was just weird coming out of the single leg crab covering his head. Maeda back to the single leg crab, but Yamazaki makes the ropes. This is a full court press by Maeda. Maeda is destroying him with kicks. After two straight jobs to Super Tiger, Maeda does need some rehab and I guess Yamazaki is his whipping boy. Yamazaki tries some kicks and Maeda fights through them to do a Human Capture Suplex and drop Yamazaki on his head. Nice! Yamazaki tries for German, but Maeda connects with a stiff back elbow. Yamazaki keeps making ropes on submissions. DRAGON SUPLEX BY MAEDA for two! and then promptly chokes him out.

 

Just an extended squash for Maeda to remind everyone he is number two to Super Tiger. Better than October encounter, but that just because Maeda was throwing Yamazaki around and had some nice kicks. He still sucks on the mat. Next match is with Fujiwara, which will be interesting for two reasons: 1. To find out who is second fiddle to Super Tiger and 2. to see if Fujiwara can do the impossible and get a great match out of Maeda. ***

[MikeCampbell]

I have no idea why this was chosen to eat up space on the commercial tape that feataured matches from the 1/20 show. Especially when the 1/20 card had a match between Yamazaki and Fit Finlay!  Credit where its due, Yamazaki tries. But, Maeda just can't be bothered to do much of anything to put the kid over. Like Sleeze says above, maybe this was intended to rehab Maeda after losing to Sayama in January. But, it's a pretty awful way to do it. Maeda takes a young gun, who he clearly doesn't view as much of a threat to him, and goes for close to twenty minutes.