[2019-09-25-Tokyo Gurentai-Tokyo Dream 2019] Hidetaka Monma vs Takatoshi Matsumoto

[Edwin]

This is a really fun match between two folks who have less than 50 matches in their careers combined. Monma is a former pro MMA fighter with a background in BJJ who is known as the Japanese Arona and who's fought some relatively big names in MMA like Kitaoka, JZ Calvan, Dan Hardy and Mach Sakurai in Japan. Matsumoto as we know is the BJJ brown belt who's wrestled mostly on smaller indy shows and mostly somewhat shoot style so this is the first time I'm seeing him in a more pro-wrestling style match. Despite both being relatively rookies in pro-wrestling, they do a fantastic job putting this together. You know all the grappling exchanges are nice and tight with some awesome scrambles as you would expect given the two parties involved. Aside from the grappling exchanges, Matsumoto can throw some nasty looking stomps and he also does a fantastic job using his belt to tie up Monma and take advantage. Monma also lands one of the nastiest backdrops I've ever seen where Matsumoto's get folded like an accordion. There's some brief ringside brawling with Matsumoto using his belt to tie Monma to a chair which is OK, but it's very brief. One of the trends that's infiltrated wrestling is folks shooting for horrendously loose and phony looking triangle chokes (I'm not saying you should choke someone out, because that's obviously ridiculous, but at least tighten it up a bit so there's no glaring gaps). Monma shoots for some triangle chokes here and they look nice and tight (yet it's safe as he's not pushing the arm across for the full choke) so it looks believable. He also does some neat looking armbars before eventually using Matsumoto's gi pants to catch him in a beautiful armbar.