Ma Stump Puller Posted July 29, 2023 Report Share Posted July 29, 2023 Fun and quick outing. Sumi is a scum-indie karate guy (who apparently did some MMA? The records aren't clear on that) and of course Keita Yano like the big nerd he is wants to turn this into a conventional early 90's FMW Onita/Aoyagi situation where they basically just hit each other really hard on mats in the middle of a gymnasium. You know a match is going to be fun when the first two things that happen are Sumi landing a stiff leg kick and Yano feigning a injury to then catch the guy off guard for a spinning back kick in response. Yano takes control early with low kicks, as well as a tremendously goofy running headbutt to send the guy crashing to the hard floor. Sumi takes over for his own brawling bits, throwing Yano around and beating the dogshit out of him with stiff kicks to the back and to his own legs. Yano bumps great, Sumi looks like a maniac (and unlike Minoru Suzuki actually can hit hard while being interesting) all is good. Yano stumbles around like Terry Funk as his one good leg barely carries him around, with him throwing some wiffed slaps that Sumi can just dance around and act like a cocky shit with. Yano eventually gets rocked with a roundhouse and realise he can't really get anywhere with his shitty leg, so we get a duration of him pulling a Inoki and sticking to the floor with crab kicks. They work this bit quite well, and actually incorporate Sumi getting pissed off enough with this for Yano to catch him off-guard with a cool roll-up after dodging a reckless kick. Last few minutes involve some pretty hard shots by both men, but also a nifty sequence all about Yano slapping on Cobra Twist holds and holding onto them for dear life. Sumi throws as much as he can but his angry roundhouse is dodged and he's thrown into a nifty rolling cradle for the snappy win. Really fun and easy to get into striker/grappler match: despite the natural weirdness of Wallabee conditions making them....hard to get into, to say the least, this turned out to be a pretty sturdy outing where Yano got to show off more of his underdog selling in comparison to Sumi's hard shots and general chaotic shit he throws out here and there. Easily one of the far superior versions of these throwback pre-PRIDE wrestler/martial arts showings. Inoki would (probably) be proud Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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