|
| Naoya Ogawa vs. Gary Goodridge | |
|
The fans saw Ogawa as a superstar. This had unbelievable heat early on that died down during the fight, but Ogawa did get a monster pop when he beat Big Daddy. Other than the crowd reaction, I don't see what all the hoopla over this match is about. It's hard for me to believe that anyone familiar with shoots would think this might have been one. The punches were pulled. They weren't fighting to get out of bad spots, they were going along with them if not putting themselves in them. It was more realistic than the typical Ogawa match in New Japan, but a shoot? Please. Goodridge got off to a big start with haymaker style punches that didn't even hit. He threw some knees that did little more than touch. Ogawa locked Goodridge up then Goodridge fell down so Ogawa would be on top to try some arm bars. Goodridge quickly got a reversal, but Ogawa almost had him in the sankakujime. Goodridge bled from the mouth, but he managed to apply a hizajujigatame despite making quite a slow move to apply it from a position (kind of like how the sharpshooter starts) where Ogawa could have got his leg away had there been a reason to be desperate. Ogawa got an arm lock, but Goodridge escaped and they rolled around until Ogawa got a side mount. Ogawa used punches to the face to draw more blood. Goodridge was tired at this point, which is no surprise, so he just covered up and let Ogawa throw short punches. Ogawa was really sloppy when it came to keeping his base, particularly when it came to throwing punches from the mount, but points of balance don't matter if you know your opponent isn't going to call you on it. Goodridge made one attempt at an elevator to make it look like he was trying then went back to covering up so Ogawa could punch his arms or under his arms where you couldn't see it wasn't doing much of any damage. When Ogawa would actually hit Goodridge in the head, it would usually be with a looping punch so it wouldn't hurt much, his hand would graze just across Gary's skin. When he punched straight down it was short blows that weren't that hard. Maybe I'm going overboard on how fake it was, but certainly Kiyoshi Tamura takes a lot worse beatings in his worked matches against the kickboxers. Since Gary's lip was split, it looked like he'd taken a worse beating than he had. The second round was over almost as soon as it began. After some punches that didn't do anything, Ogawa fell on top again and this time was able to apply the V1 arm lock for the win. Ogawa got a standing ovation, and this made him a star in the MMA world and increased his drawing power in Japan. However, the match was not close to being a shoot and was no better than good. Jason: The first round started off with a flurry of strikes from Goodridge, but then Ogawa got the mount on Goodridge and worked over his arm for the rest of the round. Goodridge didn't do anything convincing like fight back, he gave his arm way to many times to set up the finish. Ogawa did land some stiff blows that busted up Goodridge. In the second round, Goodridge just let Ogawa take him down and apply the arm lock for the finish. They could have been a little less obvious about it and had Goodridge fight back a little bit. Instead, Ogawa did all the work and Goodridge got an easy pay day even though I'm sure he had some nasty bumps from a couple of Ogawa's blows. Special Thanks to: Jason Higgs 0:06 of round 2 |
|