[1985-04-23-UWF] Nobuhiko Takada vs Caswell Martin

[Ma Stump Puller]

Caswell Martin seems to be one of those workrate darlings of WoS that, unlike others, never really got that next step into being a big deal. He was a good hand....and that seems to be the best of him. With that said, does he look good here on a iffy fancam....with Takada? Well we start off solid as Takada hits him with a low kick and he immediately backs off and changes stance before escaping a Grovit, catching Takada in this funky cravat variation until he has to get a rope escape. Generally the starting sequences mostly go like this, with Martin using his superior Catch knowledge to best Takada's attempts at submissions, using arches, armbars, and some nifty stuff to get out of trouble. Especially cool bit with Takada trying for a front face lock to escape a kneeling Achilles Tendon, only for Martin to throw him up and over into a perfectly placed armbar. This definitely was more of a WoS match than a shoot style match all things considered; Takada even pulls out some of his old fancy spots to run with here as opposed to his more restrictive version we'd see with guys like Maeda or Fujiwara. After a while of Takada struggling (with some decent matwork to boot) he goes for a cheeky slap when Martin tries for a lock-up, signalling his mood shift to strikes, which Martin can do little but eat up and sell. Martin does land this amazingly awesome version of a hammerlock where he does a handstand to give him more leverage (seeing as Takada was wiggling around) before almost spinning his body back down to get back to work. Crowd were big fans of that spot.

His arm work is surprisingly dynamic for the time as he catches Takada's arm for a really mean gutbuster out of a fireman's carry. Takada not to be outdone hits his back suplex and tries for some Fujiwara-isms like a facelock and Achilles Tendon to no avail. The two do the usual underhook pinning exchange, only Martin escapes the inevitable backslide by pushing his legs off Takada to get the leverage off his shoulders, which the crowd were also super impressed by. Martin is pissed and does a gutwrench powerbomb into a bunch of super solid head-submissions (including a outright mean neck crank that I swear Jun Akiyama stole later on) leading Takada to respond with a good kick combo only for Martin to scoop him back into a back suplex and more head work. This third part definitely felt like a pro-wrestling match more than anything else, which is wild when you consider this was way after UWF Original had tilted away from doing stuff like scoop slams and leg drops. Takada uses more strikes to settle Martin into working at his tempo, which is him struggling for double wrist locks in side mount. Martin gets a arm caught with a hook, so arches to stop Takada taking any significant position before using his legs to slide under the ropes for a escape! Despite this and him also going for a solid Butterfly Suplex Takada's strikes are just too much, and he puts the resilient grappler away with a somewhat botched Tombstone (which Martin kicks out at 1.1. to get back at Takada for doing so earlier off the Butterfly, lol) and a full on Boston Crab/double ankle lock to finish things up.

So ok, this definitely had some issues; Martin's selling of Takada's kicks is solid but he absolutely refuses to take any knockdowns or even to bowl over, preferring to just eat them and then keep trucking on. It felt at times like the two did have some issues bridging the gap between a UWF match of this era and a regular pro-style outing, with Martin not really caring while Takada was generally trying to keep on some sort of theme. That being said, I still really enjoyed this. The two work quite well together and the crowd go from politely clapping for Cas to full on chants near the end. I do wish we got more of him just around in Japan, because the crowd really took to him well here despite going up against a fairly popular native. He's not especially flashy, but he's very clean and effective with what he does do here. This for a Takada performance was also fairly strong as well as it got him out of his stupid headlock mania and into actually working a proper match despite his lacking mat-work. All in all, pretty enjoyable match, I just wish we got some of Cas' other matches in UWF on actual footage (apparently he did some pretty long tags against Super Tiger/Fujiwara which sound sweet!)