LIDET UWF V. 3

March 7, 2023

Shinya Aoki . . . invokes memories from the UWF glory days of the legendary man known as The Fuj!

Hideki Sekine . . . shows that he’s not a lost cause and there’s still hope for him to turn into something of a decent worker.

Tatsuaki Nakano . . . treats the GLEAT workers who predominantly work pro-style the same way that the UWF legends used to treat him!

After a full year since the last Lidet UWF show (and going on two years since GLEAT opened the door to the idea of running standalone UWF shows), they finally take the next step and start the process to crown the first ever Lidet UWF Champion.

MAYA FUKUDA vs. YURA SUZUKI

Although this is rather short, it’s still fun to watch the story play out. Suzuki quickly trims two of Maya’s points on the mat, which included a very well-done sequence of Suzuki trying to wrench on her ankle and Maya rolling and angling herself in order to stay out of the hold. Then Maya connects a surprise high kick that knocks Suzuki down and costs her a point, and after she gets back up she’s just a little bit slower in everything that she does, and Maya uses her newfound speed advantage to knock off more points. And Maya wins out when Suzuki isn’t able to beat the count, going from a 5-3 deficit to a KO win. They probably could have gone for another few minutes and worked a couple of more sequences to keep the story moving, and Suzuki’s vertical suplex to knock off one more point really wasn’t necessary, but this still gets across its intended message.

Quarterfinal: YU IIZUKA vs. MINORU TANAKA

I’ll fully admit that I don’t know very much about what GLEAT has been doing with Iizuka on their regular pro wrestling shows (aside from a rematch with Izuchi after their match from the previous UWF show) but having him tap out Tanaka in under three minutes certainly seems to suggest that there’s big plans for the kid. Tanaka catches an errant kick and hits a high kick of his own to score a down, but Iizuka gets right back up and counters Tanaka’s armbar attempt and works his way into an Octopus hold and turns that into a grounded Octopus for the submission. Again, this obviously could have gone longer, but it certainly does its job of showcasing Iizuka as an early favorite to win the tournament.

Quarterfinal: TETSUYA IZUCHI vs. SHINYA AOKI

Shinya Aoki is my new favorite GLEAT wrestler. He works just like Fujiwara, the crafty and calculating bad ass who seems to be three steps ahead of Izuchi the whole time, and when it seems like his luck has run out, he has another ace up his sleeve. The match takes on a striker versus grappler tone, with Izuchi firing away with slaps and kicks, and Aoki calmly blocking them before taking Izuchi off his feet and working his way to a kata-gatame and causing Izuchi to go for the ropes. After they get back to their feet the action more or less resets, with Izuchi trying more slaps and kicks, and this time Aoki wraps up Izuchi’s leg and rolls him into a legbar and makes him burn another point.

It seems like Izuchi is going to get caught again when Aoki takes him down and tries to secure another legbar. Izuchi fires away with slaps to try to fend it off and Aoki just grins and starts exerting pressure, but this time Izuchi fights fire with fire and grabs Aoki’s other leg and wrenches, and it’s Aoki who winds up scurrying to the ropes. Aoki has trouble keeping his balance after the legbar and Izuchi smells the blood and fires away with leg kicks and gets two downs to take away two more points, and then takes away another when Aoki uses the ropes to stop Izuchi from hitting a German suplex. Izuchi spikes Aoki with the German and it looks for all the world like he’s finished, Aoki is wounded, stunned and is down to his last point. Izuchi picks up Aoki for another German and Aoki counters into a waki-gatame and forces Izuchi to submit. It’s the same sort of finish that Kido and Fujiwara were famous for in the days of the original UWF; Izuchi appears to be moments away from winning, until he loses. This doesn’t go very long at all, but it’s still far and away the best match that any Lidet UWF show has had up to this point.

HIDEKI SEKINE vs. SEICHI IKEMOTO

This is easily the best match I’ve ever seen Sekine have. It’s still got most of the issues that plagued his other UWF matches, namely the slowed down sequences that completely give way to the cooperation and his selling is overdone in the wrong way. But this match shows that, if nothing else, Sekine doesn’t have an ego problem as far as letting his opponent get over on him a few times to create drama. When Ikemoto counters the German suplex and rolls into the ankle lock, the crowd wakes up when they realize that Sekine may finally be in with someone who can actually beat him. Ikemoto smartly tries to keep the match on the ground, where he can make Sekine’s size advantage moot, and even though Sekine’s stumbling looked goofy, he was just about perfect when he charged into Ikemoto’s knee for the KO tease.

Just like his other UWF matches, Sekine wins by KO after hitting his German. But this time it’s done in a smart way, and it feels like a good payoff after seeing Sekine get pushed further than ever. Sekine catches a kick and turns it into an ankle lock, and when Ikemoto tries standing up to escape the hold, Sekine plants him with the suplex. Ikemoto’s offensive run started with him countering the suplex and Sekine wins by countering Ikemoto as a means to eventually hit it. As crazy as it sounds, considering he was running away with the title of worst worker on the roster after his first two matches, it’s actually disappointing that Sekine isn’t part of the title tournament. It’d be interesting to see what someone like Aoki might be able to get out of him if he was in the mood to work the way that he did here.

TATSUAKI NAKANO/DAICHI HASHIMOTO vs. KAZ HAYASHI/RIONNE FUJIWARA

The booking of Nakano in GLEAT continues to puzzle me. The only thing that really separates 2023 Nakano from the Nakano of the 80’s and 90’s is that he’s now able to get through matches without getting his nose busted open. Yet, he steps into GLEAT and spanks everyone that he works with. It does help that he’s working against guys like Kaz and Rionne, who GLEAT doesn’t seem to have much interest in doing anything with on the UWF side of things. Kaz looks just as hopeless against Nakano as he did in their singles match, and Rionne fairs a little better by virtue of actually being able to escape a submission instead of using up points. There are a couple of times that Rionne should have been called as down, the first is after Nakano hits a soccer kick and the ref calls him down but then changes his mind, and just after that Nakano gives him a vertical suplex that goes uncalled.

The best exchanges are between Rionne and Hashimoto, but they’re good in a pro-style way. Hashimoto wants to use pro-style offense and Rionne counters both the DDT and a lariat into the Fujiwara armbar, and Hashimoto does a nice job of selling his arm from the hold. But right after they establish that the arm is weak, Hashimoto catches a kick and takes Rionne over with a dragon screw and puts on an STF (and he at least teases the fact that his arm might be too worn down to fully apply it) and quickly taps out Rionne, despite the fact that he was close enough to the ropes to break the hold, Rionne and Kaz still had two points left, and the STF was close enough to the corner for Kaz to easily make a save. The only one here who looks like they’d have a prayer of hanging with the better workers in the company is Nakano, and if any of the GLEAT young guns (namely Iizuka, Izuchi and Ito) hope to become long-lasting top guys in this group, getting pushed to the brink by someone best known for being a bumbling fool who can’t hold his wind, isn’t going to help achieve that goal.

Quarterfinal: TAKANORI ITO vs. DAN TAMURA

Aoki/Izuchi may have been the best match of the night, but this is right on its heels, and it has something over the Aoki match as far as feeling like a more competitive match. They work the same ‘strikes versus matwork’ motif and also showcase Ito and Tamura’s efforts to lead each other away from their strengths and force them into their preferred style of match. Ito takes off the first point with a high kick and Tamura comes right back and takes him down and locks in a sleeper to force Ito to use a rope break. The rope break causes the ref to stand them up and it almost becomes a match within a match, with the question of can Ito land another kick or knee strike or will Tamura be able to take him down again? And it’s not like Tamura is clueless about striking or Ito about matwork, when Ito throws his kicks and slaps, Tamura is good about blocking them. When Ito gets taken down, Tamura still has to fight and struggle to get his hold fully locked in, so it’s not like simply being able to work their preferred style suddenly makes it easy on them.

What pushes Ito ahead and gets him the win is that he’s the first one to find an opening that Tamura doesn’t realize he’s giving him. Tamura shoots in for a takedown and Ito uses the same knee strike counter that nearly finished off Sekine in his match (and also, incidentally, turned out Iizuka’s lights the year before). Ito follows up with a German suplex that looks even nastier than Sekine’s and Tamura is barely able to beat the count. And a stunned and groggy Tamura is easy prey for a pair of high kicks to earn Ito a KO win. Just like the Izuchi/Aoki match, this also winds up feeling like something out of a 1985 UWF match, which is certainly unexpected from two men who weren’t even born at that time. Ito wins the match and looks deserving of the win, but it comes in such a way that he doesn’t look like he’s definitively the better fighter. If a rematch were to happen at any point, Ito might be favored since he won this match, but it’s nigh impossible to not give Tamura at least an even shot of getting the win back.

Quarterfinal: HIKARU SATO vs. SOMA WATANABE

The first round of the title tournament ends on a bit of a sour note. This is one of those matches that makes the result sound more impressive than the actual match. On paper, another one of the GLEAT upstarts going for nearly fifteen minutes against someone with the background and credentials of Sato sounds good. But, Soma does very little of note and aside from a couple of striking portions, he never feels like he’s got a genuine chance to win the match. Soma spends the bulk of the match standing and circling Sato, or on the mat struggling because Sato has him locked up in a submission. They have one nice sequence that plays off the finish of Aoki/Izuchi, where Soma gets his first down on Sato with a surprise palm strike and tries to follow up with a German suplex and Sato does the same counter that ultimately beat Izuchi and Soma manages to escape, and then goes back to his striking with a series of knees that gets another down. But other than that, this is pretty much a one-man show from Sato, where he ties up Soma on the mat and does a decent job of putting over the effects of Soma’s strikes. The finish illustrates exactly why Soma hasn’t yet hit the level of the other young upstarts in the promotion; he just starts swinging wildly at Sato, and Sato is far too skilled and experienced to get caught like that, and easily takes Soma off his feet at the first chance and traps him in an Achilles hold that forces him to tap out.

Of the four tournament matches on this show this is clearly the weakest one, despite getting the most time by a decent sized margin. The other three matches all managed to put over the winner strongly, while giving the impression that the loser would still be able to pose some sort of threat going forward. Tanaka put over Iizuka in under three minutes and still made the most of his chance to look good. Whether it was Sato holding him back or Soma just not being ready to carry the load is hard to say, although with how well Sato put over the striking attacks it looks like the latter is the more likely scenario. It makes sense to an extent to put Soma in a match like this, if only to establish his spot in relation to Ito and Iizuka. It’s just too bad that this was the last match because it leaves a bad taste to what was otherwise a very fun show.

Conclusion: Having the two best matches of any Lidet UWF card so far is enough to give this a thumbs up, and it’s a very fun and solid show overall.