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HYPER VISUAL FIGHTING TOURNAMENT
ZION '98 Ikkaisen Rie Tamada (6-8-4) vs. Mikiko Futagami (15-4-2) |
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A pretty solid match with a good story. Futagami looked really good here, as always, but Tamada didn't seem to be all there. It was like her heart and her mind weren't fully into this match. Overall, she just wasn't convincing. Maybe it's just that she was all banged up? "It was a good match, but I didn't get really into it. Tamada's attack was focused, and it was good, but her work is really pro-style and some spots really don't hold any water. The dropkick to the knee off the second rope was really out of place, I thought. However, she never deviated from her strategy and the match was logical," wrote Jerome. Tamada does deserve credit for launching a focused attack. "Indeed, Tamada knows how to launch a focused attack (in this case the knee), but she doesn't know how to build into the attack. She relies far too much on her AJW style, multi dropkick offense as her 'build.' It normally doesn't come off convincing, and it didn't today due to the pace that Gami tried to establish. Tamada is like Yoshiko Tamura, relying on her spots without figuring out ways to build into her big ones. It's probably comfortable for Tamada because that's what she's experienced in, but it just doesn't work given the type of environment that ARSION is (was) trying to develop. In turn, Gami did an excellent job of selling Tamada's legwork, but she seemed to have trouble helping Tamada develop a good pace to match her selling," wrote Keith. Tamada worked over Futagami's knee, with Gami doing a typically good job of putting this over. "Tamada focusing on the leg was great! A big improvement over her work at ARS. I thought she looked good as far as the story of the match went, and that was totally because of Gami," wrote Chris. Futagami finally came back with her abisegeri, but she couldn't stand, so Tamada regained control and continued working the knee. On two separate occasions, Tamada put her foot on the back of Futagami's knee and tried to ram it into the mat. The problem was, she released it before Futagami's knee hit the mat, so it looked awful. Futagami surprisingly had some lapses in her knee selling while on offense. Still, Rie's knee attack being constant went a long way to making this a good match. The execution being strong also helped, as the lowlight would be Rie hitting a spot, but not hitting the knee like she was intending to. The lack of heat seemed to hurt this match more than others. What also stigmified the match is that Tamada is weak in the mental aspects. Her lack of putting over damage done to her shoulder rendered the offense Futagami aimed at the shoulder, which really wasn't incredible much given the result they were shooting for, useless. "I loved how Gami tried to work the whole match without taking the obvious easy way out and attacking Tamada's injured shoulder. It wasn't until she realized that Tamada just wouldn't quit that she attacked the injured shoulder and got the win. This helped Tamada look good because Gami just could not beat her through normal means," wrote Chris. Due to the lack of heat, when Futagami applied the finishing hold, I felt that this would not end the match because nothing Tamada was doing made me think that any serious damage had been done to her perpetually bad shoulder. As a result, the wakigatame seem to come out of nowhere. They tried to have the underdog receive so much offense to look good before she lost, but her inability to make Futagami's offense look good by selling it and build towards that ending presented a problem. It is truly pitiful that Akino knew enough to put her shoulder out on the way out less than three weeks into her career, but Rie has been wrestling for seven years and still doesn't have a clue. "Gami had performed some work over Tamada's shoulder (considering she had that shoulder injury in the first place) with a variety of arm/shoulder submissions. The problem is that Tamada's selling of her shoulder (except for a few probable lapses in actual damage her shoulder has) was nonexistent, and it especially hurt the logic of the match when she would go for key moves that involved her shoulder like her rolling elbow. The result is that you tend to forget that Gami put any offense against Tamada's shoulder/arm at all. Most likely that hurt the heat level for the match as well. Gami did a good job of trying to put over Tamada's legwork, but Tamada worked too much on the mat with her AJW spot-style thinking, so it doesn't come off as well as it should," wrote Keith. "I don't think that the finish was out of nowhere because even if there hadn't been any real damage on the shoulder, Gami already applied the wakigatame and other shoulder holds a few times in the match, but this time it was far from the ropes and Tamada could not escape. It would have come off better if Tamada had sold her shoulder more" wrote Jerome. Special thanks to: Jerome Denis & Chris Martinez & Keith Watanabe - Manami Toyota Rules! 13:46
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