[1989-01-10-UWF] Akira Maeda vs Nobuhiko Takada

[Makai Club #1]

One of my favourite matches of the style. The grappling in this match was amazing. Everything looked tight and out right gnarly at times. One thing I loved in this match was everything lead into each other. For example, Maeda's suplexes almost always lead to a submission attempt on the arm. But the focus of the match was Maeda constantly going for the legs. As great as Maeda was, Takada was the star with his all time great underdog performance. His selling of the leg was fantastic and his defence of the grappling from Maeda was great. He got in some great strikes to gain the advantage in parts of the match. Great battle, filled with struggle and top notch grappling. ****3/4

[tcg91]

Shoot style is not my thing and this actually bored me partially, as they went 30 minutes and killed a lot of time with rest holds that didn't look like a threat. Despite that, this had some great strikes and good selling from Takada, who was getting worked on his leg and was very focused on not being outwrestled on the mat, countering Maeda's grapples and trying to knock him down to win by TKO as a way out. It was a shame, as this could have been a great 15/20 minutes match, but they didn't do enough to justify a 30 minutes epic attempt.
***1/4