[2015-07-15-Tokyo Gurentai] Kazunari Murakami vs Shotaro Ashino

[Ma Stump Puller]

Short and to the point Mura squash, but quite enjoyable. Ashino will become a decently awesome talent, but at this point he's a generic Muto-trainee with not much else to give. Mura beats him down on the outside and inside. He walks with a violent swagger as he kicks and beats down both his opponent and the ref for good measure. Ashino lands generic forearms to the chest, Mura does his crazy face and hits him with a stiff slap to knock him down into shape. Him going for multiple pins, letting them go, clapping with the audience as they try to motivate Ashino's comeback, it's all peak dickhead antics.

Ashino inevitably makes his comeback after Mura goes for a overtly lax kick, allowing him to catch it and go into a decent belly to belly. He also lands some TERRIBLE full mount forearms, Christ they were bad even for rookie standards. Mura takes over with punches and his corner stomp, Ashino tries for more shitty forearms before Mura socks him mid-run for the pin. This was a funny case in that it was essentially Ashino with all of his bad-puro teachings (sustained bad forearm strikes, limp "fighting spirit" sections, no flexibility) failing to help him against a asskicker who doesn't give a shit about any of that and just wants to make the dude suffer, and he can't do anything about it because his offence is so bad. Ashino learns a painful lesson here about imitating the greats and how just copying them move for move doesn't make you great as a result. Loads of fun for squash even if it wasn't much in terms of action, Murakami kinda carried this to something way better than it should've been.