[2024-03-02-NOAH-Great Voyage] Jake Lee vs Kazuyuki Fujita

[Ma Stump Puller]

Every now and then NOAH will drag me in with something truly based; a 30 minute Fujita match in 2024 was most definitely something that counts towards that standard lol. This is definitely also going to be one of those matches that workrate-heavy smarks will dislike immensely because it really didn't cater a whole lot to them if at all until maybe the last few minutes. You already got people calling this the "worst match in company history" which is.....a interesting opinion given Ibushi/Marufuji is a thing but hey I'm not going to start knocking anyone for statements like that. The first 10 minutes of this were all sprawling on the mat providing a really interesting comparison between Lee's BJJ antics and Fujita's amateur wrestling background. Lee would wangle from under while Fujita was all about taking the top and controlling from there, typically forcing Lee to use the ropes multiple times to escape getting squished. He did get one or two off Fujita with some smart traps (including baiting him into a triangle armbar that shockingly forced Fujita to sell pain!) but mostly had to play it safe with someone as extensively dangerous as his opponent. We got a great bit where Lee had a Sakuraba-style armbar applied and was just throwing himself around trying to get it with some leverage, felt like something out of a random PWFG undercard. Very good stuff ngl

Lee desperately tries to get back control with his cringe mindgames by trying to play around with clean breaks off the ropes; gets the piss slapped out of him for his troubles and forced into a long slog of a outside brawl. This was definitely the filler of the match though helped by Lee being completely ineffective against Fujita's stiff forearm shots making this very one-sided. Fujita basically sat on the guy inside the ring as well as he egged on for more strikes until he did the singlet strap pulldown a-la Angle and got hit with a running knee for his troubles. Lee hits some fairly tame knees; one off the apron, one running down the entrance. It didn't really go anywhere alongside the random leg work right afterwards that felt very much like a placeholder for any random hold. Last few minutes had Lee try to turn up the pressure with bombs, namely German suplexes. His stuff looked fine enough and he got over the struggle in trying to put down someone who seemingly couldn't get hindered by anything as Fujita could predictively no sell and keep trucking along. Lee loses the final forearm exchange, gets hit with a running slap alongside a shockingly safe punt kick to the head. Fujita mounts up a backdrop and sets up a Beast Bomb only to be stopped by the ref as the 30 minute time limit is hit.

Really mixed feelings on this one.

The grappling at the start is legit the best part of the match, no joke. Fujita as shown from the Suzuki match a few years ago can legitimately do grapplefucks with considerable skill (as long as he has a good dance partner) and Lee brings something unique with his passive work in that regard to make this a sort of cat/mouse situation where the mouse occasionally manages to do something really impactful. This does eventually turn into the usual Fujita brainless strike stuff, but Fujita is still really good at hitting hard so you can't really complain about it too much. I think what hurts the match mostly is the length (loads of filler with slow unimpactful work that either went nowhere or was just slow for the sake of stalling) and Lee who really looked awful trying to strike with Fujita. He just isn't one of those guys that can blast people convincingly like a Go or Nakajima and you really felt it here with his piddly forearms and knees. His selling and emoting the hopelessness of the situation was much lot better, really seeming dumbfounded as to how he could actually win this in places. In a way, I suppose, his poor striking played into the match dynamic of him just being well out of his depth despite all of the prior hype surrounding him. 

This really needed that big "oh shit" moment in the last 10 minutes to sell that though; Lee sitting on a figure-four that did fuck all just felt awkward and purely there to have a rest. If they'd gone all in with this being mostly grappling and THEN had the figure-four and strikes then I think this would've been a lot better. Still fairly enjoyable though.