U-STYLE ON SAMURAI TV

Taped 3/13/04

Crafter M . . . continues to be an undercard highlight of this promotion.

Wataru Sakata . . . once again shows why he’s amongst the worst opponents for someone if the goal is to make them look strong in defeat.

Kiyoshi Tamura . . . shows that, to paraphrase Mick Foley, he’s every bit as bad at the booking side of things as he is great on the wrestling side.

RYUKI UEYAMA vs. MANABU HARA

This winds up looking pretty similar to the match Ueyama and Ito had on the U-STYLE debut show. The first couple of minutes suggest that it’s going to be a competitive affair, but once they settle in, the match turns into an extended squash for Ueyama. Ueyama completely controls the match on the mat, as he works through some holds and sequences while he decides how he wants to start taking away Hara’s points. There are a couple of times that they could have given control to Hara, to give the idea that he might have a chance to win, but nothing ever comes out of it. The first one is when they’re on the mat and Hara gets a chance to wrap up Ueyama in a Triangle choke, they were close to the ropes so it would have been relatively easy for him to burn a point to escape the hold, but Ueyama opts to just work his way free. A little bit later Hara scores with a big German suplex and then rolls over for a second one, and once Ueyama hits the mat, he goes right for an armlock to force another rope break. After that, it’s hard to care much about anything else that happens since it’s obvious that creating doubt about the outcome isn’t exactly a priority. Hell, Ueyama even feels the need to spike Hara with a couple Germans of his own, for seemingly no good reason, before he finally ends it with an ankle lock.

SEICHI IKEMOTO vs. CRAFTER M

Anyone who enjoys matwork will want to seek out this bad boy yesterday! They don’t have the methodical touch that someone like Fujiwara did, where they work a single hold for an extended length and make it seem engaging the whole time. Instead, these two are constantly countering, maneuvering, and thinking off of each other. It’s almost a disappointment to see one of them get the ropes, because it means they’ll have to be separated and then start up again. The one issue that they have is that it looks similar to the match between Crafter M and Sasaki from the month before, in that it comes off as more of an exhibition than an actual contest. Of course, Crafter M hasn’t exactly been pushed as a threat to someone like Tamura, but these sorts of matches on the undercard are more than welcome. The finish is pretty much flawless for getting over the story of the match; Ikemoto wants a juji-gatame and Crafter M blocks it and works his way to a mount and starts dropping punches. Ikemoto manages to wiggle himself free and get himself a mount, and after he gets Crafter M disorientated he grabs the arm and slaps on the juji-gatame and submits him. Ikemoto wanted the armbar and he eventually got it, but only after he got out of a predicament and then had to get the right opening so that he couldn’t be stopped.

DOKONJONOSUKE MISHIMA vs. KAZUKI OKUBO

This is pretty much the polar opposite of the match Mishima and Tamura had the previous April. While Tamura was able to play off Mishima’s flashiness and use it to tell a bit of a story, Okubo is more like a deer in the headlights. He doesn’t know how to react and isn’t able to get much of anything going for the first half of the match. Okubo finds some aggressiveness after the ref stops to adjust Mishima’s kick pad and manages to trim a couple of points on the mat. Okubo shows a little promise by managing to drag himself to the ropes in order to get a break from Mishima’s Cobra hold and then slaps the mat in frustration, which is pretty much the only time that he’s shown any personality thus far. But, despite the flashes of potential that he’s shown over the last few shows, he’s still too young and inexperienced to be a real competitor, and it doesn’t take long for Mishima to trap him in a nasty armbar.

TAKAKU FUKE vs. HIROYUKI ITO

Overall, this is easily the weakest match thus far. Ito isn’t all that good in the first place, and there doesn’t seem to be much that Fuke can do to carry him. If nothing else. Ito knows that he’s got no chance of winning by trying to wrestle with Fuke, so he uses his size and striking to his advantage, but, other than striking his way out of a legbar and the first down that he scores with palm strikes and knees, he doesn’t have much success. It’s smart of Fuke to try to keep them on the mat, since Ito is so lost that he basically puts himself into positions for Fuke to lock in holds. But Ito doesn’t do much of anything to give the idea that the holds have much of an effect on him, even when he’s trapped in the hold for a while. Fuke gets him into both a Triangle and later a front neck lock that are both on long enough that it seems plausible for Ito to either tap or pass out. But, as soon as he gets the ropes and the ref breaks them up, he’s on his feet throwing his palm strikes. There’s one moment when they could have made it interesting, but it doesn’t go anywhere, and they go right to the finish afterwards. Ito’s frustration boils over after he tries a Triangle and gets reversed, he throws a couple of punches and then hits a nasty kick while Fuke is down, which gets him a yellow card. Fuke sells the kick like death, and it was the perfect time for Ito to take over the match and take advantage of Fuke being dazed and knock off one or two points and make the crowd think that he was about to pull off the upset. But Fuke just gets himself together and the next time they go to the mat, he locks in another Triangle and keeps it on until Ito goes out.

WATARU SAKATA vs. NAOKI KIMURA

For the second month in a row Kimura finds himself in the semifinal position, and this one seems even more baffling than the February match with Namekawa. Sakata has more or less been positioned as the Yamazaki to Tamura’s Takada, and with Kimura losing to Okubo in December, the outcome isn’t in much doubt; and the way that this plays out doesn’t do much to create any. What’s even more weird is that Kimura’s biggest strength has been his mat work (and the fact that his lack of parity as far as the mat, striking, and throwing game is usually what leads to his undoing) and Sakata, who has never been presented as a strong mat worker, has very little trouble with him. The crowd clearly knows the score too, seeing as they only really wake up when Sakata does something heelish, like catching a kick and slapping Kimura or when Sakata gets a mount and grinds his knuckles in Kimura’s face. But, for the most part, Sakata uses his size and keeps Kimura pinned down, and when Kimura tries to catch Sakata off-guard, there’s no real consequence. Hell, the one time that Kimura manages to take him by surprise, they flub the sequence and have to repeat it. The only real difference between the Sakata/Sasaki match from December and this match is the fact that Sasaki had momentum going into it.

KIYOSHI TAMURA vs. KYOSUKE SASAKI

For all intents and purposes, this should have been the U-STYLE equivalent of something like the Maeda/Takada UWF match from 11/88, where the young upstart shows that he’s got what it takes to be a top player in the promotion. One could argue that they accomplish that goal from the standpoint of how the points are used; Tamura is down 5-3 before he manages to take one off Sasaki, and the final score is 2-1 when Tamura gets his TKO win. But it sure doesn’t feel like it when actually watching the match. If anything, this is just a slightly less infuriating version of the December match that Sasaki had with Sakata.

The main issue with the match is that Tamura doesn’t do anything worth a damn to truly put over anything that Sasaki does. Sure, it’s great that Sasaki is able to not only hang with Tamura on the mat, but even outdo him a couple of times. But, it’d have been more impressive to see that from Tamura. He’s almost mechanic-like in his approach. Sasaki seems to want a chickenwing armlock and then switches gears and takes Tamura by surprise with a cross kneelock that causes Tamura to use a rope break. The crowd reacts to it, but Tamura just gets up and gets ready for the next exchange. There’s nothing from him as far as facials or body language goes to convey any sort of reaction or urgency. The closest comes after Sasaki gets a juji-gatame to knock off Tamura’s second point. Once again, Tamura just gets up and goes to continue the match, this time he simply holds Sasaki stationary and throws slaps and fists into his midsection. One might interpret Tamura’s attack as taking out some frustration, but it looks like Tamura is toying with him more than anything else. And when Tamura moves away from the mat game and turns the match into a strike fest, Sasaki starts bleeding away his own points and eventually goes down for good. There are a couple of times that it seems like something big will happen to continue giving Sasaki hope, he catches one of Tamura’s kicks and gets him in a half crab to trim another point, and a bit after that Tamura puts on the front neck lock that beat Sakata on the debut show and Sasaki gets a rope break. But neither of them feels like a big moment and they don’t do much to give the impression that Sasaki can pull out the win.

If nothing else, Tamura was at least willing to let Sasaki trim some points from him, which is enough to make this better than Sasaki/Sakata. But the tournament final between Fujii and Sasaki absolutely smokes this as far as making the spunky underdog look good in defeat. Tamura did so much more in his match with Kosaka to get over the idea that he had to truly defend his top spot in the company, and TK was just brought in as a one-off opponent, so it’s even more puzzling that he wouldn’t put in that same sort of effort against one of his own U-File members.

Conclusion: There’s some decent stuff to see here, but this is definitely one of the weaker U-STYLE shows.