U-STYLE ON SAMURAI TV

Taped 4/28/04

Koichiro Kimura . . . looks for all the world like the next threat to Tamura, after systematically taking his opponent apart.

Crafter M . . . continues to be a highlight of U-STYLE undercards, even if his days of winning seem to be over.

Kiyoshi Tamura . . . treats everyone to a seventeen-minute workout, rather than putting on any sort of engaging match.

HIROYUKI ITO vs. NAOKI KIMURA

Both men brought more than enough attitude and intensity to make this a fun watch. What we already know about them both is fully on display during the match; Ito has the size to use to his advantage, even if he’s not very good in any other aspect, and as good as Kimura is on the mat he’s also not stellar in any other aspect. So, they each have something over the other. And that’s what we see as the match goes on. Ito tries to use his size to bully Kimura, but when he sees an opening, Kimura can turn the tables on him. It works out OK for a bit, until Ito finds the right ways to use his size, such as standing on Kimura to lock up his leg for the single leg crab and making him use a rope break.

The ironic thing is that Kimura’s attempt to show that Ito’s size isn’t a real factor, winds up being the beginning of the end for him. Kimura picks up Ito for a waterwheel drop and locks him in a juji-gatame to force Ito to use a rope break. It’s easily the highlight of the match, but the strength to throw him seems to leave Kimura gassed out. Ito quickly recovers from the armbar and starts bombing Kimura with strikes and bleeding away his points, nearly winning by KO. And with Kimura all but spent, he does a desperation takedown and doesn’t have the energy to do anything with it, and it allows Ito to finally dictate the action first with a triangle choke and then a longish transition to a cross kneelock for the submission.

KOICHIRO KIMURA vs. JUNJI TANAKA

Koichiro Kimura looks like a fine descendant to the Fujii throne, if this is any indication. He doesn’t have Fujii’s disgusted sneer, but his stoicism is a nice contrast to Junji’s showboating. The match itself is a bloodletting. There isn’t a damn thing that Junji can do to get ahead in any meaningful way. The only area where Kimura doesn’t show a clearcut advantage is throws, and that hardly matters because it’s not like they get Junji anywhere. He doesn’t wear himself out with them like Noaki Kimura, but he can’t follow them up either. His idea is sound enough, put Kimura down with a throw and then lock in a hold. But both times that he tries, Kimura counters into something of his own and it’s Junji who loses the point. This isn’t any more of a contest when it comes to striking either. When Junji gets down to his last point, without having taken any off Kimura, he goes for broke with a rolling takedown into a cross kneelock, and Kimura just calmly locks in his own heel hook and Junji forgoes his hold and taps.

RYUKI UEYAMA vs. MAX MIAZAWA

First the opening ceremony on the second RINGS show, and now Ueyama’s entrance music; what’s the correlation between shootstyle and hip-hop? This is a fun enough match, although we don’t really learn anything about Miazawa from his performance here. He hits a belly to belly early on and later knocks Ueyama down with a rolling kick, but neither of them takes any points off. Miazawa shows himself to be competent on the mat; Ueyama seems to have no problem spidering his way all over him, but he’s usually able to escape from whatever hold that Ueyama is looking for and he even gets a couple of counters into holds of his own that Ueyama needs to work his way out of. The KO finish is a bit out of left field. Ueyama wears him down with some kicks and knees to the body and then pops him with a head kick that keeps him down for the count. Before the finish nobody had lost any points (although it’s arguable that the rolling kick should have docked one of Ueyama’s) so it’s unfair to label this as a squash match, although it’s clear that Ueyama was the better fighter.

MANABU HARA vs. CRAFTER M

This was fun, which is typical when Crafter M is involved, but until the finish when Hara puts everything together, there wasn’t much substance to it. Of course, there really didn’t need to be. Crafter M and his tricked out matwork is good enough eye candy filler, and all Hara really needed to do was go along with what he was doing, which he did a fine job of. Crafter M’s triangle choke (which he’d used to beat Hara in December) and Hara’s powerbomb failing to break it is a highlight, and the hold seems to be something of a weakness for Hara as Crafter M gets it on again later, and once again Hara needs the ropes to get free of it.

Hara eventually finds success when he stops playing to his opponent’s strengths. He hits a series of leg kicks that result in a down and then he starts stringing things together to keep Crafter M guessing. First, it’s a vertical suplex that he tries to segue into a juji-gatame. He can’t get the hold locked in, but he uses his position to transition to a mount and start dropping fists. Then, he overpowers Crafter M and hits a German suplex and uses that to sink in a rear naked choke and tap out the masked man.

YASUHITO NAMEKAWA vs. SHOICHI ICHIMIYA

Tamura must have been scraping the bottom of the barrel to fill out this card when he booked Ichimiya. His only method of offense is to charge at Namekawa and sort of shove him, and he throws a few slaps as the match is winding down. But he’s entirely useless in any other capacity. He can’t even do a half decent job of blocking when Namekawa starts to tee off on him, let alone fight back to any real degree. It doesn’t take Namekawa very much time, or very much effort, to take away his points. I’m hesitant to call Ichimiya the worst worker to step into a U-STYLE ring, but heaven forbid we see him in a three way against Okubo and Ito.

KIYOSHI TAMURA vs. KAZUKI OKUBO

I suppose matches like this are a necessary evil. The ace can’t face worthy challengers every time out. We saw it in the UWF with Maeda/Miyato and UWFI with Takada/Nakano. Nakano is actually a pretty good comparison to Okubo, seeing as he blows himself up inside of five minutes. Any time Okubo gets the chance, he tries to attack Tamura with strikes and, more often than not, they barely make contact. This is the longest match in U-STYLE history up to this point, and Tamura barely breaks a sweat. It’s easy to see him trying to give openings to Okubo, which he doesn’t always seem to know how to take, and even when Okubo does get something on, such as the front choke, Tamura easily gets out of it. If Tamura had the attitude of someone like Sakata or Namekawa, this would be fun in a sadistic sort of way. Instead, it looks like an extended sparring session.

Okubo manages to take one point from Tamura, and it’s after Tamura had already knocked off four from Okubo. Okubo gets hold of Tamura’s leg and does a half crab. Tamura easily crawls to the ropes and Okubo drags him back to the middle, and then Tamura crawls right back to the ropes. There’s something of an awkward pause before Okubo cranks down on the hold and Tamura grabs the rope; most likely Tamura telling him something along the lines of “I’m not using a rope break unless you can actually make this hurt.” And after they’re stood up, Tamura hits a few kicks to knock Okubo down and take the last point.

Neither man is blameless with how pedestrian this winds up being. Instead of rising to the occasion of working with Tamura, Okubo didn’t look much different than when U-STYLE first opened their doors. And while nobody gave Okubo a prayer of winning this, the idea of working the match is to create doubt, and Tamura seemed to be going out of his way to hammer home the idea that Okubo isn’t on his level.

KYOSUKE SASAKI vs. MASAHITO KAKIHARA

This is a bit like the Sasaki/Sakata match from December, which is both good and bad. It’s nice to see Sasaki in a second straight main event following his match with Tamura. However, it’s yet another case where the overall message that it delivers is that Sasaki isn’t on that level. And it’s even more egregious here because it’s Kakihara’s first time in the promotion while Sakata had been consistently pushed as a top-level player. If Kakihara putting Sasaki over was an impossibility because of his New Japan affiliation, then Fuke was right there as a Tamura contemporary who’d already worked in U-STYLE.

Thankfully, this winds up being a lot better than the December match, with Kakihara willing to let Sasaki look good, at least until the finish. Kakihara was never known as a strong mat worker, and that’s what Sasaki uses to take away his points. Before the finish, Sasaki gets Kakihara down to his last one after he counters a waistlock into a rolling legbar. Kakihara has the edge in striking and Sasaki briefly tries to play that game, but after he catches one of Kakihara's kicks and throws a spin kick, that Kakihara easily dodges, he straightens up and plays to his own strengths. Out of the three points that Kakihara docks, two of them come from his strikes. He does force a rope break on a legbar, and Sasaki comes right back with one of his own to make Kakihara use a rope break.

The finish comes out of nowhere, and not in a good way. After Kakihara gets up from the rolling legbar and shows that he’s good to go, he hits an innocent looking knee and then grabs a headlock and cranks down on it until Sasaki taps, even though the camera showed that he was close to the ropes and still had two points. It’d have been one thing if Kakihara, the proficient striker, had hit a spin kick or a palm strike that stunned Sasaki and gave him the opening for the hold. But this is Kakihara just casually outwrestling one of the better non-Tamura mat workers in the promotion. The match certainly isn’t the slap in the face to Sasaki’s momentum that the Sakata match was, but there still had to have been a better way for Kakihara to get the win. Of course, U-STYLE was about to be running shows even more sporadically than they already had been, so it really didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things.

Conclusion: There’s some good wrestling to be found from the usual suspects (namely Sasaki, Ueyama, and Crafter M), but nothing that was especially standout great.