Fu-Ten

[cactus]

I find it crazy that this place hasn't had a Fu-Ten thread yet. I love what I've seen of the short-lived promotion. If you haven't seen anything from them, imagine Battlarts with lo-fi guerilla production values and you're pretty much there. It was formed by Daisuke Ikeda in 2005 and ran 62 shows before closing its doors for good in 2015. On top of Ikdea, Battlarts alumni such as Yuji Ishikawa, Katsumi Usuda, and Takeshi Ono were all regulars on the cards. Well-known talents that also have made appearances for the promotions include the likes of Fujita Hayato, Zack Sabre Jr., Tamon Honda, Masao Inoue, Munenori Sawa, and Kota Ibushi.

Here's a short match that sums up Fu-Ten in five minutes and it also happens to be one of my favorite matches. 

What are some of your memories of Fu-Ten? I remember first hearing about it when I was on the long-gone puroresu.tv forums. The shows were incredibly hard to get hold of and they didn't even appear on the usual torrents sites, perhaps as the promotion was too niche. 

The kind souls over at the Puro Archive have been uploading full Fu-Ten shows on YouTube and I watched the first one this afternoon. It's a damn fine show and it is only an hour long, so I highly recommend giving it a watch.

Fu-ten BATI-BATI (4/24/2005)

Katsumi Usuda vs. Kota Ibushi
The first match in Fu-ten history sees a young Kota Ibushi take on shoot-style journeyman Katsumi Usuda. Don't expect any moonsaults from Ibushi in this environment, but he shows that he can work shoot-style surprisingly well. He is competent on the mat, he can trade strikes well and he knows how to milk drama out of every submission he finds himself in after Usuda catches one of Ibushi's many strikes. This told a compelling story of Ibushi being outmatched by Usuda, and Ibushi having to rely on his strikes to gain an advantage. Ibushi must avoid getting put in submissions at all costs, as he shows that he has to rely on a rope break to escape instead of attempting to wrestle his way into a better position. Modern-day Ibushi might be rather polarising, but this was a refresher on that how Ibushi has always had great fundamentals and basics, even if he doesn't always show them. ★★★½

Takeshi Ono vs. Hiroyoshi Kotsubo
Outside of Ono being an absolute menace (he's one of my favorite non-main event shoot-style guys), this didn't really have much going for it outside of giving Ono a decisive victory. Judging by his takedowns, Kotsubo looks to be a fine amateur wrestler, but he doesn't bring much else to the table. He has little in the way of presence or charisma. Kotsubo initially tries to out-wrestle the striker, but he's forced to play Ono's game and delivers some blah strikes and a pitiful German suplex before Ono gets the ground and pound victory in a one-sided match that's just shy of five minutes. ★★

Ikuto Hidaka & Minoru Fujita vs. Hajime Moriyama & Kyosuke Sasaki
This starts off feeling rather pedestrian, but things start to escalate once Fujita and Moriyama gets in a slap fight and lights a fire under everyone's asses. After this incident, you start to feel the resentment build between the teams as everyone takes cheap shots and this no longer feels like a professional sporting contest. Moriyama looked fantastic here and the only thing that he did that took me out of the match was 'hit' a spinning wheel kick that completely missed, although you could place the blame on the receiver for that ball's up. Much like Kota Ibushi did during the first match of this show, Hidaka takes to shoot-style like a fish takes to water. I loved how he would brace himself and try to fight through the pain as his opponents rain strikes down upon him. Once this got into gear, this was a hard-hitting affair that had plenty of drama. ★★★½

Manabu Hara vs. Hiroyuki Ito
The highlight of this was Ito being an aggro bastard and laying in some disrespectful strikes, slaps and grinding his forearm into his opponent's skull whenever he isn't able to make progress on the ground game. Ito has more size on him than Hara and that plays into the story told of Ito being a total bully. I thought this was feeling a little on the generic side to start off, but I was completely invested in Hara pulling off an upset once he was able to counter an Ito strike with a rolling armbar. Ito starts to get tired after throwing bombs at Hara, and you are left hoping that Hara can fight through the pain and get the W. ★★★¼

Daisuke Ikeda vs. Yuki Ishikawa
This might be one of the most famous matches from the promotion's ten-year run and for good reason: it's stiff as balls. Ikeda cheap shots Ishikawa at the start and this puts Ishikawa as the babyface of this match and it's nothing but pure violence from here on out! He gets stiffed and ends up bleeding from the mouth. I had no idea how Ishikawa throws his audibly loud punches and did not seriously hurt his opponent. He's a darkhorse pick for best puncher ever, even if I can't tell if he's pulling his punches or not! We get a nice close-up shot of Ishikawa raining down punches from a mount position and there is zero air in between the strikes and Ikeda's skull. There's not a phony moment to be found here as these two just whack the shit out of each other for 15 minutes. This is a great introduction to shoot-style. ★★★★¼

[fxnj]

Jingus, who seems to have some experience working, mentioned in another thread the key to throwing stiff strikes without KOing your opponent is to aim for either the back of the jaw or the forehead.  In shoots, you'd generally want to aim towards the chin if you want to hurt somebody. Also the opponent knowing that they're coming means they can roll with the strikes a lot easier compared to a shoot. Sort of feels like explaining a magic trick, but that's how it's done if you were wondering.

[Phil Schneider]

I reviewed all of the FU-TEN here

 

http://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2020/09/complete-and-accurate-battlarts-and.html

[Mr JMML]

 

The main event is my MOTY of 2009. Enjoy!

[Mr JMML]

The playlist is very useful for a thread like this.