Normally wrestling leagues splintering is bad for the fans because it does little beyond further dilute the talent pool, and while there was a sense of that in 1991, mostly in RINGS since Akira Maeda was ever the loan wolf, the first year of UWF-I, PWFG, & RINGS were characterized by a greater sense of freedom to express your particular brand of martial arts, to have your own focus and quirks without them simply feeling like pro wrestling stabs at marketing. There were a few veterans who changed their style, most notably Masakatsu Funaki & Kazuo Yamazaki moving more toward realism, but predominantly the sudden excess of available roster spots gave wrestlers who had only a handful of matches in the U.W.F., most notably Kiyoshi Tamura, Ken Shamrock, Yusuke Fuke, & Masahito Kakihara or were outright rookies, most notably Volk Han, Hiromitsu Kanehara, Willie Peeters, & Billy Scott the ability to do their thing in a landscape that was very different, and actually evolving. Much of this difference had to do with many of the new wrestlers not being pro wrestlers who were trained in the New Japan dojo, and had worked there before the U.W.F.. At the very least, the natives trained in the U.W.F. showed a more realistic style, working on judo rather than lariats and topes, but it was really the actual martial artists who, in the absense of much legitimate competition, found they could make something of a living doing something that actually utilized their skills to an extent, and didn't leave them feeling embarrassed and ashamed. RINGS was at the forefront of this revolution, bringing in sambo champion Han, bringing back judo silver medalist Chris Dolman and his assortment of Dutch kickboxers and proto MMA fighters, with former bouncer Dick Vrij & Olympic judoka Willy Wilhelm being Maeda's first foes.

Having a bunch of rookies has rarely lead to good pro wrestling matches, as they mostly have the same trainer teaching them the same basic holds and counter holds, without much to differentiate them beyond the better athletes and quicker learners rising to the top faster, though probably still getting squashed by whoever the tallest or heaviest stiff in the lot is. Luckily, this was totally not the case in shoot wrestling because there were so many disparate skills and backgrounds on display, honed through years of practicing their more limited and focused arts with a variety of teams, gyms, and coaches. Sometimes rounding out those skills and opening the specialists up enough that they had the striking or submission skills to maintain interest in a game that required them to fight both standing and on the mat took some real effort, but the good news is these guys were, for the most part, already really good in some aspects of the sport that would serve them really well. More importantly, having specialists in all of the legitimate fighting backgrounds other than BJJ really upped the overall level of these skills among their opponents. This was particularly noticeable when it came to amateur wrestling, which seemed to barely exist at the start of the year, but be widespread and decent to good amongst most of the regulars fighters by the end.

There was also refreshingly much less of that overriding pro wrestling philosophy of what you should and shouldn't be doing because everyone wasn't just training the same sequences in the same gym. You were supposed to be realistic, but beyond that the performers seemed to learn from each other, experimenting to try to add new skills to what they'd been doing for years and eliminate the weaknesses they didn't have to deal with in their base arts. Though the new leagues were run by guys who participated in the old one, they surprisingly felt fairly distinct, with UWF-I leaning most toward the flashy end of the spectrum despite having the most shoots with Ohe's regular kickboxing matches & the wrestler vs. boxer shenanigans, PWFG leaning most toward the realistic end of the spectrum, and RINGS being the most martial artist and big show oriented by relying mostly on outsiders with legitimate sports backgrounds. All three leagues ultimately had 1 great, must see wrestler who made the promotion worth following. While obviously it's disappointing that with no interpromotional activity after the U.W.F. split, these guys never fought each other, but the rankings were also very skewed by the odd match making, which saw peculiarities such as Suzuki & Funaki never facing off during their two years in PWFG, while Ken Shamrock faced Suzuki 5 times & Funaki 4 during that stretch. Overall though, this was a really exciting year for quasi shooting, maybe the best year in the sense that they really felt cutting edge and seemed to be advancing the sport because Shooto was so under the radar that these pro wrestling leagues were still as close as most fans got to the real thing, and certainly closer to that concept than what we'd seen in the previous decade.

MB: We have witnessed three different promotions all with the same roots, and presumably the same endgames, but with different approaches that have had their pros and cons. The PWFG has been closest to the heart of real shooting, with several performers that have both the talent and desire to push this format closer to their vision of "real" fighting, with the drawback being that they have at times sacrificed entertainment value for realism. The UWF-I, on the other hand, has been the most consistently entertaining of the three promotions by a wide margin, but also the most frustrating, as their insistence on making Nobuhiko Takada appear to be indestructible as well as some of their other booking decisions have shown that they may be the promotion with the most to lose in the next year, as they run the risk of being a flash-in-the-pan with their inability to provide Takada with some real threats to his throne. RINGS has by far had the rockiest start, as Maeda simply had to run this promotion mainly on the sheer strength of his star-power alone, as he is severely lacking any homegrown talent, and his outsourcing almost all of his talent to martial artists with little to no experience in pro wrestling has led to some very uneven results. The upside to this, is that Maeda seems to have the strongest concept in place, and now that Volk Han has arrived, the only direction to go now is up. Another credit to Maeda, is that he is willing to allow himself to lose if it means good business, and honestly he comes across to me as if he wouldn’t mind not wrestling at all, but is forcing himself to do it as it’s the only way to sell tickets and be able to have a television deal in place at this stage in time.

A few of the historical highlights that were witnessed in 1991 include:

The first full-blown MMA fight in the shoot-style era (not counting Shooto) with Takaku Fuke vs Lawi Napataya aAt the 7-26-91 PWFG event.

A shoot fight between Gerard Gordeau and Mitsuya Nagai which took place almost two years before Gordeau was at the inaugural UFC event.

A shoot between Ken Shamrock and Kazuo Takahashi that was short, fast, and brutal. Very entertaining, but perhaps a cautionary tale as Shamrock almost kicked Kazuo’s head off his body and was probably a warning against these kinds of matches from being trusted to happen in the near future.

Shoots between pro wrestlers and legitimate high-skilled boxers. Even though the concept far exceeded the execution, we got to see Billy Scott face a very deadly James Warring in an MMA fight, and while the rules led to a ridiculous outcome, this was a historical snap-shot of protoplasmic MMA.

The birth of Kiyoshi Tamura. He had a brief run the NEWBORN UWF, but was quickly sidelined by an injury given to him by Akira Maeda. The UWF-I has wisely chosen to showcase his talent, but perhaps unwisely not given him as strong as a push as they should have, due to their choosing to groom Gary Albright as the unstoppable suplex machine that will eventually come to blows with Takada. This is unfortunate, as we can see that he is a once in a lifetime performer that not only has endless potential in this style of pro wrestling, but surely has the goods to be effective in real shoots as well. (Though we have not seen him in a real shoot as of yet.)

The debut of Volk Han. Another talent that only comes around once in a generation, this Sambo master would wind up showcasing what was a relatively unknown martial art to the world at large, and gave us a glimpse of new possibilities both in the shoot and shoot-styles.

A format that really allowed talents like Minoru Suzuki, Masakatsu Funaki, and Ken Shamrock to flourish and cultivate their skills/identities. Without the PWFG, Ken Shamrock would have probably continued to flounder around in the middle spectrum of American Pro Wrestling, and while there was a chance he could have caught a break in an American promotion with his physique, it probably wouldn’t have come anywhere close to the opportunities afforded to him by being an early star of American MMA. Funaki and Suzuki, on the other hand, probably would have both carved out respectable careers in NJPW or other Japanese pro wrestling companies, but would not have anywhere near the respect or notoriety of having founded the Pancrase organization, and thereby securing their legacies as MMA pioneers.

It remains to be seen what awaits us on the horizon as we venture into 1992, but it is clearly an exciting time as the styles and hearts of each of these promotions have coalesced enough that they each have their separate, yet equally important, identities that are going to blaze the path forward to becoming part of the roots of full blown MMA.

3/4/91 PWFG: Wayne Shamrock vs. Minoru Suzuki 30:00. Suzuki vs. Shamrock is the reason to watch the first Fujiwara Gumi show, an ambitious all out 30 minute draw where their ability to show all the sport is capable of may fall slightly short of their desire to do so, but that desire is so high it's hard to fault them. Being one of the newest and youngest fighters in U.W.F., Suzuki had a hard time seizing the limelight even though he was having strong matches on the undercard, but immediately really came into his own as a regular top of the card performer in PWFG. Fujiwara’s match with Johnny Barrett was definitely more believable, a trend that would quickly be reversed, but it was the younger fighters that Fujiwara gave the spotlight to, particularly Suzuki, who set out to evolve the shooting style by working and countering the holds rather than just lying around and taking rope escapes as many a man had been content to in U.W.F. Structurally, this was still a pro wrestling bout, quite a well built one, at least working up to and in the suplexes and dropkicks that "shouldn't have been there". That being said, their desire to up the realism from the U.W.F. level was quickly, if subtly on display right from the opening sequence where both were hesitant & used small feints to try to set up their strikes, which were really distraction to open up a single leg takedown. There wasn't much striking in the 1st half, which is probably a good thing because Shamrock was often too fake with his hands. However, tensions really escalated in the 2nd half when Shamrock went from a series of mount palms to illegal soccer ball kicks to Suzuki's head, prompting Suzuki - after a break to recover - to come back at Shamrock with a series of short range standing headbutts, which thankfully bore no resemblance to Fujiwara's big windup comedy spot. I would have liked to see them explore the takedown possibilities more rather than revert to the old more Greco style high clinches leading to throws to get the match to the ground, positionally the bout still left a lot to be desired once they hit the canvas as well due to the lack of BJJ, but the grappling was a lot more realistic than much of the U.W.F. stuff because the fighter on the defensive was active, twisting, turning, and rolling to either escape, take the top and/or use their own counter submission. While it wasn't the smoothest match, and it didn't have the best sequences, I was impressed by the active matwork with regular position changes. Most shooters can counter, but one thing that elevated this match above the pack was the intensity and effort they fought with. Everytime you thought one man had made some headway, the other took the advantage at least partially back. The frustration seemed genuine, particularly when Shamrock rope escaped Suzuki’s ankle lock. They just fought so hard throughout the duration of the contest that it never felt as though it would be a marathon, in part because they never stalled, but much of their success was in getting over the concept that they were equals without the usual corniness that has full time draw written all over it. Though the high number of rope escapes wasn't ideal, they did allow for an entertaining ground oriented contest where they were able to keep working hard & threatening one another for half an hour. I appreciated their lack of laziness, not so much in keeping the pace, but the fact that Suzuki, and to a lesser extent Shamrock, understood the importance in putting the effort into their grimacing and contorting to maintain the interest, anticipation, and credibility of what they were doing. They worked some highspots into the submission oriented match such as the overhead belly to belly suplex with a float over and a dropkick, and did some nasty striking in the second half, but the crowd really took to this one because they made their attempts and refusals seem important. By the end of the night, these two had the crowd in the palm of their hands. There was some booing for the draw, but they soon gave the performers a big hand for their exceptional effort. Suzuki was pretty great here, and Shamrock could complement him well enough that the match worked exactly as they hoped, stealing the show with a semifinal draw that propelled them to the main event on 8/23/91.****

MB: Fujiwara should get a lot of credit here, as he was willing to put himself in the mid-card and allow some of the younger talent a chance to shine. Here we find a very young Suzuki facing an incredible looking specimen in Shamrock, and it's rather amazing to see that right from the jump, Shamrock was an awesome performer that really shined in this kind of format. One has to wonder if he had jumped back into Japanese pro wrestling instead of the WWF in 1996 how his later career would have turned out, as all he really seemed to get out of his tenure there (outside of a fat stack of cash) was a lot of injuries. While this match was not the smoothest and being a 30 minute draw, it did have its fair share of dead spaces, both fighters did an excellent job of parlaying intensity and frustration throughout. They constantly looked for submissions, even in bad positions, and you could really see an example of a grappling mentality, before the positional thinking of a BJJ influence crept in. The match also had a nice progression to it, as it was mostly submission orientated in the beginning, saving the flashier stuff like a belly to belly suplex, and much nastier striking until later in the match, which gave it natural feel, as if the stakes were getting higher and it was time to pull out all the stops. Though a little dry in spots, a great start to to the new era of shoot wrestling, as well as an insight into the fact that maybe...just maybe.. there was a future paying audience to be found in real fighting.

3/30/91 SWS, UWF Rules: Masakatsu Funaki vs. Naoki Sano 10:23. While Sano's PWFG matches with Suzuki & Shamrock were epic match of the year attempts, this was a fine serious match sandwiched between a bunch of cornball tomfoolery. I liked it, but as with all of Funaki's matches this year, it felt too patient, especially early on. It was wrestled as though they were going 20 minutes, which is what would have happened had it taken place in PWFG, until they packed virtually all the action into the final 45 second explosion. A good and interesting match, but hardly the classic they were capable of. ***

4/1/91 SWS: Masakatsu Funaki vs. Naoki Sano 23:42. This was at least epic in length, though not in quality. They started stronger than their previous bout with a lot of standup, even though it was initially a bit too much toward sparring. Things picked up with Funaki dropping Sano with a palm strike, and it was almost a short night for Naoki, as they redid the finish from 3/30, but this time Sano was more prepared, and thus able to defend the armbar. From here, the standup was more aggressive, but again, it never really seemed like Sano had anything to truly threaten Funaki. Sano had some top control, and could land a damaging strike now and then, but Funaki had more speed and more technique, even a low blow couldn't slow him down for long. This was definitely the better match of the two, as it was not only much better developed, but also got going a lot quicker. However, it was almost as if Funaki was too good for the match to approach its potential. This should have blown Sano vs. Shamrock away, and while the striking was certainly better, it felt like Sano had answers for Shamrock and could win that match, whereas this one he'd really have to just get lucky. Still, a good match that was light years ahead of the rest of the show. ***

5/10/91 UWF-I: Kiyoshi Tamura vs. Masahito Kakihara 14:16. Giving their brightest new lights the opportunity to usher in the new era of shootfighting was a great way to start the new promotion. Tamura and Kakihara did themselves and the promotion proud with a crisp and energetic contest. As is always the case with the early shoot style, the standup was a lot more credible than the mat because kickboxing and muay thai were well established sports, while judo and amateur wrestling had their place in the Olympics, but had never been deemed entertaining enough to be ticket selling sports, and thus the fighters were probably less encouraged to fully utilize or really even develop those styles. Instead, they just incorporated the spectacular end game of the throw rather than teaching the audience to be patient while they set one up. When all else failed, they could always get the bout to the canvas with a good old fashioned leg scissors, as Kakihara did here. This was a good match but obviously nowhere near their best work. One has to keep in mind that Tamura was out from 10/25/89 when sloppy Maeda accidentally fractured his orbital with a knee until the final UWF show on 12/1/90. Then there were no shows for the next 6 months as everyone reorganized, so this was only the 7th match of Tamura's career, which still put him 2 ahead of Kakihara, who debuted on 8/13/90. Though these two have always been linked because of their age and popularity, at this point they weren't the best matchup for one another because their strengths differed considerably. Both are talented enough to offer things in the other man's realm, but for the most part the match played out logically, with Kakihara trying to avoid grappling and Tamura trying to avoid striking though there was one truly standout exchange and Tamura did considerably more striking than in any of his other matches this year. Overall though, this layout really hurt the match because the development of the sequences is what makes Tamura shine and stand apart, while this was basically just a back & forth spotfest. What Kakihara had right from the outset was a very infective, wild passion. He may not have been cut out for real fighting, but if he were, he would have been one of those high risk all action fan favorite fighters who goes for bonuses and finishes, one way or the other, rather than just trying to win safe. Kakihara certainly had his routine, but he may have been the only wrestler that, no matter how many times you saw him engage in those rapid fire palm barrages or wild kicks, you still felt his match was legitimately getting a bit out of control. That out of control nature, combined with their blistering speed, really elevated the believability of his strikes, as throwing fast as you can combos is much more intense and believable than the usual loading up on 1 strike, which everyone can see coming a mile away and clearly witness the faults of. Tamura was a good compliment to Kakihara because he could ground him just enough that they could strike a balance between an out and out highlight real and a technical fight. Overall, this was much more toward Kakihara's style though, and a bit too overeager. ***

5/11/91 RINGS: Willie Peeters vs. Marcel Haarmans 10:51. Peeters was the most interesting of the original roster because he more or less really went at it, and his matches were extremely intense, out of control, and sometimes baffling because of that. None of his matches this year were straight up shoots, but they felt less planned than what most of his peers were doing. Peeters might not have been actively trying to knock Haarmans out, but he wasn't really pulling his strikes either, which made for an odd constrast given Haarmans was pulling his, and I kept waiting for Haarmans to complain about the way Peeters was laying into him. What's actually more interesting though, and makes the match look very much ahead of its time, is the lack of cooperation on the throws and various attempts to get each other down, resulting in a style where both guys exploded and whatever happened, happened. Seemingly Peeters would sort of cooperate by not specifically resisting the lockup or immediately trying to get back to his feet in the grappling, allowing Haarmans to toy around with crabs, but he wouldn't necessarily cooperate with the throws and transitions. There was a lot of flash though, mostly from Peeters, with spinning kicks and belly to belly suplexes since Haarmans was much more obliging, but they both made each other work for things & didn't sacrifice the essence of the fight for entertainment value. ***

MB: Peeters was a master of general jackassery for most of his career, but at least he was entertaining throughout it all. This match was bizarre, as Haarmans was trying to be a professional in the ring and put the appropriate amount of force behind his strikes, but Peeters seemed to be content in doing whatever he felt like. He wasn't completely shooting, as he would allow Haarmans some time to work for a submission, but he was definitely taking liberties by laying into Harrmans with strikes that were certainly much stiffer than Haarmans was bargaining for. I wound up being surprised that Haarmans put up with this, as I was expecting him to either complain to the ref, or start shooting on Peeters, but he stayed level-headed throughout, which only further served to illustrate that Peeters was a jerk. Still, this served as an intriguing example of what could be achieved in this style, when there is a legitimate amount of non-cooperation, which would later be fully realized by some of the PWFG matches later in the year.

5/16/91: Naoki Sano vs. Wayne Shamrock 26:15. Suzuki's match with Shamrock on the previous show was considerably better because he has a lot more ability to both lead & react, and is by far the most creative of the three, but while Shamrock was forced to initiate a lot more here, he was able to maintain his patience & do a good job, with Sano bringing some good things to the match. Sano was the better standup fighter, landing some solid low kicks early (though he didn't really attempt to follow them up) and a lot of good openhand shots that helped force Shamrock into a more grappling centric performer. The basis of the match was ultimately Shamrock controlling with superior wrestling, forcing Sano to make things happen. It's unfair to compare a shoot debuting Sano to Suzuki in the style Suzuki has been training in for 2 years, but in any case Sano obviously wasn't totally ready to match his ability in junior heavyweight action yet. He was good in the striking exchanges and had some submissions in his arsenal, but most of his transitions & counters would have taken the bout to a more puroresu place, and he was trying not to go there too often. While the bout had the long match vibe too it throughout, emphasizing position changes on the mat over finishing opportunities, that was mostly okay because they kept the credibility a lot higher than it would have been, even if things meandered a bit more. I don't want to make it sound as if credibility was near the top of their priorities, Sano got a takedown with a jumping DDT and a knockdown with a jumping spinning heel kick that mostly missed, while Shamrock did a few of his suplexes, but they built the match up well to these meaningful highlights, and didn't lose the plot when they failed to finish with them. Sano began to press in the standup, with Shamrock happy to get involved in a flurry because it would help him grab Sano & land his clinch knees, which tended to result in the bout hitting the mat one way or another. The finish didn't really work for me because by continuing to exchange the openhand strikes on the inside, Sano somehow getting behind Shamrock when he missed one of these short shots without much hip turn was pretty clunky. Nonetheless, Sano did a released version of one of his wrestling favorites, the Dragon suplex, turning into the wakigatame for the finish. Definitely a good match, you could certainly argue very good, but my memory of it was better than it looks to me today. ***1/2

MB: The first few minutes start off with the fighters feeling each other out on the ground, with Ken ever looking for a leg attack entry. This is interesting to watch from a modern vantage point, as it was clearly by people that weren't in the BJJ mentality of "position over submission." Sano will attempt to place Ken in a bad position, and as soon as Ken is able to reposition himself, he instantly goes for the attack, which was the mindset of Catch Wrestling. Both men jockey back and forth on the ground for a while, with both trading Kimura, toe hold, and choke attempts. This goes on for a while, until Shamrock is able to secure a rear naked chock, thus forcing a rope escape from Sano. They get stood back up and escalate the entire affair with some stiff palm strikes, and nasty knees from Sano. Everything is looking very snug and believable until a momentary show of flashiness takes place with a jumping DDT from Sano. This didn't really amount to a whole lot, as Shamrock quickly reversed his position by applying a hammerlock variant into another rear naked choke attempt and rope escape. After trading a couple of kicks, Shamrock hits an explosive Northern Lights suplex into a Kimura, which is super impressive looking, but admittedly fake as all get out. This surprisingly didn't accomplish much as Sano was right back up with some more kicks and managed to score a knockdown against Shamrock. Shamrock gets back up and they continue to trade submission attempts, but one thing I'm starting to notice is that this has a great back and forth feel, without the sometimes-scripted feeling that a RINGS match would give off. The limited rope-escape format of RINGS could add a lot of drama to a match, but often produced matches that felt very formulated. The PWFG approach of unlimited rope escapes allows for a much more organic match to take place, although can also lead to bouts of meandering if not done correctly. The match continues to seesaw all the way until the 25:00 min mark, when everything culminates into an explosive crescendo, as both men give everything they have into knees/palm strikes towards one another. Sano gets behind Shamrock and hits a Dragon suplex followed by a straight armbar for the win. While not perfect, this was a great match that really showcased the new and uncharted territory that this style could deliver. It was fairly credible, outside of a few highspots and Shamrock's striking needing to be a bit stiffer. Still, this was a glimpse of some of the magic to come, and Sano proved to a perfect foil to the powerhouse that was Ken Shamrock.

6/6/91 UWF-I

Makoto Ohe vs. Rudy Lovato 5R. Kickboxing never had a history of worked matches, so lucky for us, the powers that be had no problem putting on a match with legitimate, high level all out lightning speed combos before their series of flatfooted, pulled palm strikes. UWF-I's foot fighting division was essentially just Ohe, but Ohe was both an exciting little fighter as well as a good one who had been champion in Shootboxing, and while in UWF-I, went on to win the ISKA World Super Lightweight Title. Tonight's opponent was "Bad Boy" Rudy Lovato, a journeyman boxer from Albuquerque who once had one of his fights stopped when a rowdy fan pelted him with a soda bottle. Though he won that via unanimous decision, and went on to claim the vaunted Canadien American Mexican Jr. Middleweight title, he wound up 21-40-4 in a 21 year career. That being said, he was a legitimately good, multi-belt champion in the less lucrative and largely undocumented art of kickboxing, and he truly ushered in UWF-I's new division with a memorable fast pace war. The action in this contest was pretty insane because they had no regard for defense to the point that early on they often didn't even wait for each other, simultaneously throwing their lengthy combos. Lovato had much better hands, and with Ohe not looking to defend (the only way this match slowed down is that he often grabbed a clinch to bring knees), it was amazing how many shots in a row he could land, often even with the same hand. Ohe was definitely the more diverse striker though, and the basic problem for Lovato is he couldn't match Ohe's kicks, which were shredding his legs. Even though Lovato scored a knockdown in the 1st catching Ohe coming in with a right straight, he was almost forced to pat on the inside when Ohe initiated the clinch rather than fighting hard to keep enough distance to land his damaging hooks & uppercuts because Ohe would answer those with debilitating leg kicks. Lovato did his best to slow Ohe down, really digging the body hooks in as his best answer for the low kicks. One of the things that made this fight so interesting is Lovato was winning the short term wars, he had the knockdown and was the one who would stun Ohe from time to time, but Ohe was winning the long term battle because his offense was slowly shutting Lovato down. Given Lovato was based in the US, it's likely he had little to no experience with kicks below the waist and knees being legal, but in any case he wasn't checking enough of the kicks or was telegraphing his check, which would allow Ohe to just bring the kick up to the thigh. While Lovato's right leg was worse, both were ready to go early in the 3rd, and Ohe finally took this round then got a low kick knockdown to start the 4th. Lovato switched things up going to something of a side stance and throwing a couple side kicks, which forced Ohe to close the distance, and when he clinched, Lovato backed & punched his way out instead of accepting it, nearly dropping Ohe with a right. Though they battled it out late in the round, fatigue was finally setting in, and Ohe never truly recovered. The 4th was a great round, with Lovato now holding his own at range in punch vs. kick exchanges, but Ohe no longer had the forward drive in the 5th, so Lovato was finally able to dominate with distance boxing. Though this was the only legitimate fight on the card, it also told the best story, and it was fun that the tale it seemed to be telling was actually reversed, with Lovato's volume & body punching winning the attrition war & allowing him to mostly use his power punching late even though he no longer had much ability to move had Ohe still been able to press him. Lovato should have won a decision, but UWF-I uses an odd scoring system instead of blind mice, and while Lovato finished up 29-27, that's not a big enough margin for a victor to be declared. Great match.

MB: In the pre-match interview, Rudy explained that he had been doing his usual Kickboxing training, but to prepare for this match, he was really working on how to use knees. Such a thing seems elementary in our post K-1/Muay Thai familiar world, but in 1991, the only time an American was likely to have to deal with low-kicks, knees, or clinch fighting was when he fought abroad. Immediately both fighters start tearing into each other with no let up. After a steady barrage from both men, we begin to see that Lovato's seeming lack of experience with the Thai style of fight is becoming a chink in his armor. Ohe was able to really take advantage of the clinch and work a steady stream of knees into his opponent, which mostly garnered the response of Rudy putting up his hands and having the ref break it up. By the time the 2nd round was underway though, Lovato had seemingly come up with an answer, and started tirelessly working stiff/short uppercuts to punish his clinch-happy adversary. Rudy wasn't out of the woods entirely, as Ohe continued to spam Lovato with low kicks that he was ill equipped to check properly. After a while, the pattern of the fight started to shift into what was basically a battle of foot vs. fist, with Lovato having the edge in boxing skills, and Ohe with the experience with low-kicks and knees. That's not to say that there weren't plenty of punches from Ohe, or kicks coming from Lovato (there were), but we did wind up getting a great snapshot of the disparity between Western/Eastern styles of kickboxing from this era. Round 3 had hardly started when Ohe delivered a devastating thigh kick to Lovato, which almost took him out of the fight for good. Somehow Rudy managed to hang on, but after this he was forced to rely on his boxing, as his legs were pretty much out of the equation. To his credit, Lovato continued to chip away with uppercuts, when Ohe wisely shoved his opponent into the corner and delivered a straight punch that would have resulted in a 10-count, but when Lovato fell, his leg fell in-between the ring ropes, which caused the ref to consider it a slip instead. Rudy spent the rest of the round just surviving and hoping the bell would ring. Ohe starts the 4th with a kick into Lovato's midsection that leads to a knockdown. Lovato was able to get up quickly though, only to suffer more punishment for his efforts. All seemed to be lost, when miraculously Rudy was able to turn the tide by throwing a couple of perfectly timed sidekicks into Ohe's solar plexus as he was charging in. It would figure that the most American of all kickboxing staples, the sidekick, would be the key that could potentially unlock victory, and makes me wonder if he should have been using this technique a lot earlier in the fight. The rest of round 4 and round 5 saw more of the same, Lovato continuing to throw combinations, but eating nasty kicks from Ohe. Amazingly, at the end of round 5, it was Ohe that was barely walking, and needed help back to his corner. The fight was declared a draw, and a great fight it was!

Kiyoshi Tamura vs. Tom Burton 9:08. The most overachieving match of the UWF-I. The first minute of this fight alone had more compelling moments than the entirety of Takada's feeble effort to pull anything out of Burton in the debut show's main event. Tamura was actually interacting with Burton, and that was making it a riveting, high quality match as they kept pulling unconventional answers. Right from the get go we saw not simply a basic a striker vs. wrestler fight, but that Burton had knees to answer Tamura's kicks, while Tamura had a roll to counter Burton's takedown and take the top himself. The whole match was based on this sort of back & forth where one discipline of martial arts provided the answer to another. Look, Burton may not be the tightest or most agile worker out there, but Tamura was fantastic here, crafting a match that was intense, explosive, exciting, unpredictable, and creative, and to his credit Burton was consistently able to go outside of the box to answer him. This was on the short side, but that was really a necessity given Burton. Even if Burton was a little sloppy and awkward in his slams and transitions, no one would have expected this bout to often be shockingly excellent. It was really exciting seeing Tamura demonstrate what he could truly do for the first time, and get such a match out of Burton, whose career is practically only memorable for the matches against Tamura. As such, I'm ranking this at in the UWF-I top 5 of the year over a couple other solid contenders, Scott vs. Anjo and the 11/7/91 tag, that could possibly be marginally better in the grand scheme of things, but at the same time didn't make nearly as much of an impression upon me. ***1/2

Yuko Miyato vs. Kazuo Yamazaki 11:00. Yamazaki is such a subtly great performer. Tamura, Takada, & Han were more flashy, but because of that they often just jumped to the action & kept it coming, whereas Yamazaki set things up and did many little things that were ahead of his time to make his matches credible. Though he doesn't have a specific background in karate or kickboxing (he was one of 3 members of the high school judo team), his mentor was Satoru Sayama, and he used to teach in Sayama's gym during the original UWF days. Yamazaki was willing to start slow, using little hand fakes, leg lifts, quick hip twitches to keep Miyato guessing when and how he was coming. Yamazaki seemed to take over when Miyato ducked a right hook kick, but then ate a left kick to the liver. However, Miyato answered with his one big weapon, the rolling solebutt. I like Miyato, but lack of creativity was really his big problem, in that he really seemed content to be the undersized guy who could hit a couple home runs, though as this is fighting rather than baseball, that style was more equivalent to having a puncher's chance. The match was just designed to put some heat back on Yamazaki since he lost to Anjo on the 1st show, but Yamazaki knew how to keep Miyato in it while gaining incremental advantages. Yamazaki's focus was on destroying Miyato's legs, and he was targetting them with most of his kicks & submissions, without forcing things. Miyato's kick to break Yamazaki's Achilles' tendon hold was both the shock & highlight of the match, it was almost as if he just boosted his butt off the canvan into a sort of ground enzuigiri. Increasingly though, he had no defense for Yamazaki's low kicks, and ran out of points getting knocked down by them. ***

MB: Yamazaki always brought great psychology to his matches, used proper feints and footwork, and had a demeanor that suggested he was in a real fight, which is sadly a rarity in pro-wrestling. This match breaks from the high-octane approach of the nights prior bouts, with an almost subdued, methodical performance from both men. They spend several minutes feeling each other out, with Yamazaki coming across as a cat waiting for the perfect moment to pounce, whereas Miyato seems to know this, and is cautiously looking for an answer. About halfway into the bout, Yamazaki just decides to start kicking Miyato into oblivion, which forces a rope escape, and sets a new tone for the match. Miyato returns the favor, and in the course of these exchanges we learn the true counter to an Achilles' hold, which is simply to kick your opponent in the head with your free leg. So simple, and yet so elusive. Well played, Miyato. This was Miyato's final act of defiance, as Yamazaki proceeded to use him for target practice for the rest of the match, effective kicking him to shreds. Both myself, and the crowd at the Korakuen Hall enjoyed every glorious min of it, as truly, Yamazaki does not seem capable of turning in a bad performance.

7/3/91: Kiyoshi Tamura vs. Yoji Anjo 17:35. The man who will advance the worked game to its highest level arrives here, in just his 9th pro match. As the leading light of the next generation of shooters, the guys who debuted in one of the worked shoot leagues rather than being trained in the New Japan dojo, Tamura at least feels a lot more like a catch wrestler than a pro wrestler, and this is the most progressive match we've seen so far. Tamura may not yet be reaching new levels of believability, but as by far the most explosive grappler in shoot wrestling, he's at least expanding the boundaries of what crazy things you can get away with and how entertaining you can be without simultaneously testing the groan factor. Kakihara has more hand speed, but isn't nearly as slick or well rounded, certainly can't adjust & transition on the mat or maneuver his body the way Tamura can. Tamura is just such an amazing mover that watching him do a simple pivot to avoid a takedown, much less his more spectacular movements, is usually more exciting than watching the juniors do their gymnastic counters. There was an amazing spot where Anjo was not so much trying to set up a guillotine but just to control Tamura with a front facelock, however Tamura did this crazy counter where he bridged backwards just to get low, then when he had separated Anjo's clasp by getting under it, he changed the direction of his explosion entirely & somehow took Anjo's back into a rear naked choke. I want to say that Tamura does things that nobody can do, and while that's probably the case with this particular maneuever, generally it's more accurate to say he just does them so fast he catches the viewer (if not also the opponent) off guard, whereas with most anyone else you could see these moves coming and they might even look clunky because they aren't fast enough to disguise how they are being done and/or the cooperation or lack of opponent's reaction they entail. This was really a different match for Anjo because Tamura was already such a tidalwave that, when he had a full tank, Anjo was just reacting to him desperately trying to keep up. Anjo is known for his cardio, and normally is prone to more durdling given he's almost always in the longest match on the card, but you could see early on that when Anjo thought he was safe, the next thing he knew Tamura had his back, so Anjo could never relax & had to be proactive. While this started off sort of like a junior heavyweight match, rather than slowing after the early fireworks, it was arguably even faster & more explosive once they shifted from throws into the matwork, with some great twists, turns, and rolls to escape the opponent's submission or counter into their own. The story of the match was early on Tamura would gain the initial advantage with his blinding speed, but Anjo had a massive experience advantage, and by being the smart veteran who focused on working the body to slow Tamura down, he was able to not only get into the match, but eventually take over due to his superior striking offense & defense. As the match progressed, it wasn't so much Tamura doing circles around Anjo, but rather Anjo making Tamura pay to get the match to the canvas. It's always been a point of pride for Tamura to find the answers to what the opponent is doing and generate offense out of defense rather than grabbing the ropes, though obviously he'd get much better at this as his career progressed. Despite Tamura already being the best defensive grappler in the worked game & making a ton of great squirmy counters to save himself, there's quite a few rope escapes as Tamura is a massive underdog given Anjo has been around since '85 and is now hitting his peak. However, by doing everything he can to avoid the rope escape, Tamura generally elevates the moves that actually require them to the intended level, in other words rather than just gaming the system as we'd see the strikers do in the few actual shoots this year, these felt like moves that were deep enough they would have won had they been caught in more advantageous ring position. They exchanged advantages on the ground a lot, but one of the big differences is while Tamura would look for the immediate payoff with a submission, for instance a lightning go behind into a rear naked choke, Anjo was confident in his ability to win the attrition battle, and thus happy to take any opportunities for damage, for instance burying knees in Tamura's face. Anjo was also happy to put the youngster in his place, so when Tamura would get too overexuberant, fiesty, or nervy, Anjo would do something within the rules but slightly dickish or excessive such as the knees to take him down a peg. Tamura was already really over, and the fans would go nuts when he appeared to have a chance to win, for instance the half crab after ducking Anjo's leg caught reverse enzuigiri. He didn't have too many of those chances though, as most of his highlights were early on, and it became more of an uphill battle as Anjo wore him out beating up his midsection. That being said, it's not as if Tamura wasn't getting submissions, but Anjo was defending them better in the story sense of finding ways to get out of trouble without losing points. Still, Tamura was so impressive the match seemed a lot closer than it was on the scoreboard, which mostly isn't that relevant given points are a resource as long as you still have 1. Though Tamura's performance was the awesome one, Anjo really did a great job of both following him as well as filling in around him, and deserves a ton of credit as well. ****1/2

MB: Not even a minute and half into this and we already have stiff strikes, a slam, a double leg takedown, and a beautiful O-Goshi throw from Anjo. The pace never lets up either, as all sorts of position changes and submission attempts from Anjo occur, before Anjo is finally able to force a rope escape due to catching Tamura in a straight armbar. A beautiful sequence followed where Anjo attempted a flying armbar to which Tamura counters with a cartwheel, which is absolutely genius, and shows that we are witnessing something that is truly far ahead of its time. The rest of the bout was filled with a tidal wave of transitions, submission attempts, and passionate striking, all done at breakneck speed. The fight finally ended when Anjo was able to secure a single leg crab, but to his credit, was able to quickly torque it in a way that actually came off as somewhat credible. While this fight won't hold up on the believability scale to a modern MMA audience, due to the tempo and lighting fast fluidity, it was still truly something special, and may so far be the best glimpse of what both this style of pro-wrestling has to offer, as well as what REAL fighting may have to offer. Up to this point, it was probably just a given in the pro-wrestling world that you had to have Irish whips, clotheslines, and hokey submissions to create a product that people would want to see, but here we have wrestlers actually moving like 3-dimensional fighters, (or at least catch-wrestlers) and showing that there may be something after all to shooting.

7/26/91: Minoru Suzuki vs. Naoki Sano 30:00. The previous two high end PWFG matches were Shamrock vs. Suzuki and Shamrock vs. Sano, but with Suzuki being the man in his matches vs. these opponents, and these matches both being notably better than Shamrock vs. Sano, it's more clear that he's the leading light in this promotion. Suzuki is really grasping the urgency as well, if not better than anyone. Even though his arsenal floats somewhere between pro wrestler & what we'd come to know as an MMA fighter, he does it with so much speed & desperation that the same technique comes off almost completely different than in a traditional pro wrestling style match. This feels like a struggle, like there's real danger if you are unable to react to them before they can react to you. The fact he was not only able to accomplish this, but keep it up for the majority of a half hour match where he also managed to take things down seemingly not to rest, but rather to set up further escalation with another wild dramatic burst that didn't feel false was pretty remarkable. It's difficult to keep the illusion of a shoot alive for 5 minutes, but the incredible tension that these two are able to sustain throughout such a long contest is really what sets it apart. I don't want to make it sound like this was all Suzuki, Sano was growing in this style by leaps and bounds. You can see that his confidence is so much higher here than it was against Shamrock on the previous show, and he's just flowing a lot better, really on point with his reactions as well so it doesn't feel like pro wrestling cooperation. Sano again allowed the opponent to lead, but Suzuki is a lot better leader than Shamrock, and Sano is a better opponent for Suzuki in the reaction style because speedy offense & counter laden chain wrestling are the backbones of the junior heavyweight wrestling he's so good at. Although Sano is the newbie in U-style, he's the veteran in this match, and he's able to show that by staying composed and trusting that, unpredictable as Suzuki may be, he still has the counter/answer to anything Suzuki can throw at him. The match was very spot oriented, but they did a good job of just avoiding or immediately defending the submissions so they weren't straining the credibility for so called drama with the minute armbar before the opponent finally finished sliding to the ropes shenanigans. I won't say that they didn't strain credibility, I mean, Suzuki tried his dropkick, but they did so only by performing fast, explosive moves. Still, I liked the first half better when things were more under control than the second half when, ironically, what began to make the match look like it would be a draw was that they started hitting high spots that would have been finishes if they were used at all in PWFG, but they weren't getting the job done. That being said, this managed to be both exciting enough to be a great pro wrestling match of the era and credible enough to be a great shoot style match of the era. The weakness of the match was the transitions from the striking sequences to the mat sequences, not so much because they lacked great ways to get it to the mat, though that's also true, but mainly because they really only knew a bit of Greco-Roman based wrestling, so the action kind of artificially stalled out in a sort of minimal exertion mid-ring clinch while they plotted their explosion to get into the next great mat sequence. This aspect did improve as the match progressed with the introduction of knees, but this is also where they started incorporating the pro wrestling maneuvers. Though Sano is the spot merchant in pro wrestling, it was actually Suzuki that was initiating the more suspect spots here, with Sano shrugging them off. I though the no cooperation belly-to-belly suplex was good precisely because it wasn't cleanly performed, but I could have lived without the later versions, the piledriver, and a few other flourishes. Suzuki did a great job of blending pro wrestling affectations with shoot style desperation though. For instance, chopping Sano's wrist to try to break his clasp that was defending the armbar or slapping his own face to keep himself from from going to sleep in a choke were nice dramatic nods even though they obviously aren't what you'd learn from Firas Zahabi. The crowd was pretty rapid throughout for this big interpromotional match, probably the best reactions PWFG has gotten so far, as they were really eating this up. It felt like Sano really pulled ahead midway through the contest when Suzuki initiated a barrage of strikes, even using body punches, but Sano ultimately won what turned into a palm blow exchange, dropping & bloodying Minoru. However, Suzuki had more stamina than Sano, and as the match progressed he began to be too quick for Sano, and was now getting strikes through that had previously been avoided. Sano may well have just been blown up, but it added to the story without reducing the quality in any way. The contest finally climaxed with both working leg locks as the 30-minute time limit expired. You'd think PWFG would want Sano back as soon as possible, and the draw should have led to a rematch at some point, but sadly Suzuki was the only native Sano ever fought in PWFG, with his remaining 3 bouts being against Vale and Flynn. ****1/2

MB: This was a treat, and one of the best matches, shoot-style or otherwise, that we have seen up to this point. A fast paced 30 minute war that featured all sorts of grappling that was ahead of its time for most audiences. Guillotine chokes, ankle picks, half guard work, armbars, and heel hooks were spliced together with more standard pro wrestling fare, and terse striking exchanges. The striking in this match was also very logical, in that they would focus on the grappling first, and when that seemed to stall out, then one would break up the monotony with strikes in an effort to force a change, or create an opening. There was some pro wrestling tomfoolery, (at one point Suzuki gave Sano a piledriver as he was warding off a takedown with a sprawl/underhook technique) but it didn't detract from the match, in fact because the flashier spots were used sparingly and towards the end of the match, it did have the effect of spicing things up a bit towards the end. This match showed us that despite their flaws, the PWFG was the best of the Shoot-Style promotions at this point in time, and had the potential for something truly extraordinary.

7/30/91: Kazuo Yamazaki vs. Billy Scott 12:39. Yamazaki hasn't exactly had a great opportunity to shine yet. After frustratingly getting strapped with the Southern man, who clearly couldn't keep his head, he now found himself involved in the trial of Billy Jack. Luckily though, Scott, who wound up being my favorite American fighter in the promotion (other than monster for hire Vader, who almost doesn't count given his matches were almost purely powerbomb driven pro wrestling beatdowns), shows a good deal of ability even in his debut. What set this match apart was their ability to tantalize the audience through a display of defense. This wasn't a match where they'd lock the submission, and then 45 seconds later the opponent magically grabbed the ropes, it's a match where they always seemed close to something on the mat, but rarely got it. Early on, they kept testing each other, kind of for the fun of it, with the fighter who defended the move trying his hand at it, and failing as well. They really had the answers for each other in standup, with Yamazaki being ready for Scott's single leg takedown, which seemed to be Billy's biggest weapon from his amateur wrestling days, and Scott avoiding taking too many of Yamazaki's kicks, answering aggressively to at least take away Yamazaki's space so he had to grapple with Scott instead. Yamazaki was a massive favorite here as he's the #2 fighter in the promotion going against some new guy from Tennessee, a place where wrestlers seemingly only know how to throw punches, yet still have no actual footwork or technique. Yamazaki is somewhat subdued early, just testing Scott out & seeing what he has to offer, while Scott is much more excitable, which is his personality anyway, but the difference especially makes sense here given he's the new guy trying to make a strong impression against a top dog who sees this more as a tune-up/sparring kind of walkover. Yamazaki tends to be a step ahead for the first 10 minutes. Though he's not running away with the contest by any means, you can see his brilliance in the story of the match where he sets up Scott turning the tide & actually becoming a threat to win when Scott finally catches Yamazaki's kick & counters with a back suplex into a 1/2 crab for the matches big near submission. The fans were instantly ignited, chanting "Yama-zaki" because in the context of the bout they've been viewing, someone actually being trapped in a submission, especially mid ring, is a real threat. Yamazaki does a great job of putting the submission over by not going over the top, taking a down after a rope escape trying to recover, & then still just stalling by fixing his kneepads to try to steal Scott's momentum. Yamazaki then coming back with high kicks somewhat defeated the purpose though. This was really the time for Scott to have a minute or two with Yamazaki in danger to show what he could do before Yamazaki turned the tide back and perhaps won, and while that's mostly what happened with Scott coming right back with a belly to belly suplex & working for an STF, the transition to the finishing segment was a bit abrupt & the segment itself felt rushed, as was the case with Miyato/Nakano earlier in the night. Both matches felt like the workers may have been finding their way to a pre scripted finishing sequence, but these two did a better job of having a match before that & finding a way to stay true to it rather than just biding time until the usual UWF-I flashiness. As a whole, Yamazaki/Scott worked quite well because they kept active enough that the fans cared about them coming close but not quite getting there, and the drama kept increasing. In the end, not a lot happened by the usual UWF-I pro wrestling standards, but much of what made it good is they were successful in teasing the audience that things almost happened. This was certainly more credible than the usual no resistance exchanges, and to me, much more exciting and dramatic because of that. ***1/4

MB: Scott must face the ultimate trial by fire, and have his very first professional wrestling match, against the seasoned Yamazaki. We can see that Scott is the best Gaijin that the promotion has seen so far, as he actually moves like someone with a solid wrestling pedigree, but unlike Tom Burton, he has the speed and fluidity to go with it. The first couple of minutes have them feeling each other out, with Scott faking some shooting attempts, and Yamazaki feeling out his opponents' distance with some fast kicks. Scott succeeds with a takedown, but his training in submissions must have been limited to the school of "crank on something, and hope for the best," which doesn't faze Yamazaki in the slightest. The match followed the pattern of Scott being the takedown artist, but not being able to pin Yamazaki down for long, or lock in an intelligible submission. Yamazaki would keep finding crafty ways to transition out of his predicament and turn in it into a leg/ankle attack. Eventually, Yamazaki got the win when his Scott came rushing at him with his head down, and he was able to slap on some kind of version of a standing arm-triangle choke. What was great about this match was that they went into it with the mindset of having to feint, set up attacks, and actually work for a takedown or submission attempt, as opposed to just handing everything to each other. Unlike much of the overtly choreographed wrestling of the past, it seems that this style can allow its practitioners the ability to shoot for good portions of the match (at least in terms of positioning) and sprinkle in cooperation in others. In any event, Yamazaki was a master of ring psychology, and to his credit, Billy Scott showed a lot of poise for a rookie, and had good patience and movement. His submission acumen needs work, but that can surely improve in time. It's very likely that the UWFI has secured a great talent in Scott, and I hope to see him improve in the days to come.

8/23/91: Masakatsu Funaki vs. Wayne Shamrock 21:03. This was some ballsy booking, but that's what made it great. PWFG was still determining their top foreigner. Shamrock had been the best performer by a mile, but Vale had been around longer, and after a rocky start in U.W.F., had gone undefeated in 1990 (4-0), even avenging his loss to Yamazaki. Funaki had beaten Vale on PWFG's debut show, but Vale was 3-0 since. Logically, this is where you had Shamrock ascend to the top, especially since Funaki had defeated him on the final U.W.F. show on 12/1/90. However, the timing was tough because Funaki, who had been in the main event of every show and was the top star of the future if not the present, was coming off a crushing defeat to old man Fujiwara, so the normal rebound would be for him to once again defeat Shamrock, confirming the pecking order of Fujiwara, Funaki, Shamrock/Vale, Suzuki. The match was worked like Shamrock was going to ultimately lose, in other words the early portion was about establishing Shamrock on the level with Funaki by having him take the lead, getting Funaki down with the suplex, winning the kicking battle to score the first knockdown, etc. Funaki's calm & confident demeanor made the match seem closer than it was even during Shamrock's best portions, but by any definition this wasn't Shamrock running away with it, but rather a very competitive back and forth contest where Ken scored the signature shots in between regular exchanges of control that, as the match progressed, were more likely to be won by Funaki. Funaki's patience was something of a negative here, especially when combined with Ken's tendencies to durdle on the mat. Though obviously the underlying problem was the lack of BJJ knowledge from both, the result was a rambling ground affair that was still in the old U.W.F. mode of laying around passively for no reason when the opponent wasn't controlling in a manner that prevented either exploding to counter or to stand back up. Their speed & athleticism was sometimes on display in standup, but because the match was so mat based, I don't feel like it's aged particularly well. It's a good match to be certain, but I remembered it being one of the highlights of the year when in actuality, it's merely a good match, on par with Funaki's matches against Sano but nowhere near Ken's match with Sano, rather than being in the class with the best stuff of Tamura & Suzuki, who seem miles ahead of the rest of the pack in retrospect. I thought the released Dragon suplex finisher from Ken to score the huge wildly celebrated upset was great because it was in the mold they'd set the whole time, parity but Ken occasionally manages to pull off a great spot. That being said, this was a 21 minute match with a few highlights in between a lot of watching & waiting, honestly more like what we'd come to see from Pancrase though without the modernization of the positions to allow them to get away with it better. ***

MB: For the time in PWFG, Funaki is given a main event with someone I expect to really bring out the best in him. Funaki wastes no time in throwing a kick and pays the price by being on the receiving end of a belly-to-back suplex. Funaki gets up quickly and starts to kick a grounded Shamrock, which causes Shamrock to put his hands behind his neck and start fighting off his back, trying to upkick Funaki, with an exchange that is somewhat reminiscent of Allan Goes vs Kazushi Sakaraba 7 years later in PRIDE. This doesn't last long though, as Funaki quickly goes back to the ground, and they go back and forth for a bit, until stood back up by the ref. They immediately go to pounding each other once back on their feet, with the best strikes I've seen from Ken so far, and Funaki really putting some velocity behind his kicks. The rest of the fight had it all, strikes, submission attempts, constant jockeying for position, but most importantly, an abundance of intensity. They constantly went at each other for 20+ min, and allowed themselves to be stiff. It always felt like they were giving their all. Even though the finish looks a bit hokey on paper (Shamrock with a knockout via Dragon suplex), it never felt anything less than excellent. One of the best matches we've seen so far.

8/24/91: Kiyoshi Tamura vs. Yuko Miyato 9:42. It's hard for me to imagine that anyone improved more in 1991 than Kiyoshi Tamura, who, after missing virtually all of 1990 with a fractured orbital, is now both leaving everyone in the dust, while at the same time pulling incredible matches out of them that are way beyond what his opponents are doing with anyone else or the increase in quality the other top workers can pull out of their opponents. Tamura is making great leaps in his ground movement, developing a perpetual motion style (which obviously is what you should be doing if you are actually trying when the antiquated techniques of the opponents don't control your body, much less lock you in place, but basic logical techniques rarely stop pro wrestlers from lazy hokem) that makes everyone else seem like dinosaurs. Miyato was a good performer in the U.W.F. where the standard of mat wrestling was still more toward New Japan's idea of good enough, but has looked rather dated so far in UWF-I until this match where Tamura's insistence on moving hid the holes in Miyato's no control ground game and really made him an effective performer once again. Meanwhile, Tamura's defense is improving magnificently, as his style is increasingly built around turning defense into offense. He's developing his game based upon the premise that with his speed and technical mastery, as long as he can play the motion (scramble) game, he'll eventually win the battle of adjustments. Miyato is one of the quicker guys in the promotion, but it's immediately apparent that he's having trouble keeping up with Tamura, who has made the adjustment to Miyato's attack or counter as soon, if not before, he got it off. Miyato would like to slow things down a bit, but he doesn't have the wrestling or BJJ to force Tamura to stay put, and Tamura isn't going to volunteer that on his own, so Miyato is forced into Tamura's hyper mode. This was such a great sprint because Tamura was able to utilize the legitimate positions and techniques with movements that were so quick and precise it was at once super flashy but also urgent and realistic. Whenever Miyato tried to go on the offensive or change positions, Tamura found a way, often totally unexpected, to use his movement against him & take over. For instance, there's a beautiful spot where Miyato tried to swing into an armbar from side mount, but Tamura used a backwards roll to get off the canvas, spinning into a standing position but immediately dropping back down into an Achilles' tendon hold. Another great counter saw Miyato slipping out the side of Tamura's facelock & trying to work the arm, but Tamura pivoted off a headstand to take Miyato's back. Every time you see a Tamura match, you see these kind of things that no one else is doing, done so fast, smooth, & effortlessly that they just seem second nature. Miyato definitely has the striking advantage when he can keep it in standup, and finally took over with a middle kick knockdown followed by a spinning heel kick knockdown. Miyato has a giant 13-6 advantage on the scoreboard after a belly-to-belly suplex into a 1/2 crab forces a rope break, which is something we are already seeing Tamura use less and less of. This is beginning to look like the great Tamura vs. Anjo match where the advantage shifts to the wily veteran Anjo the longer the match goes, and the point system favors the guy who can score on his feet because it's much easier to get a knockdown than 3 near submissions, even from someone who favors the striking end, that's just so ridiculously imbalanced. Tamura isn't slowing down this time though, and does another crazy counter, now being ready & taking a guillotine off a Miyato's second attempt at the fireman's carry. The bout grows increasingly brutal after Miyato just cold cocks Tamura in the face & tries for the ipponzeoi, but Tamura takes his back & drops into a rear naked choke. One of the problems with the match is Miyato doesn't have enough counters of his own to really chain the escapes & submission attempts together, but finally he does deliver, peeling the hooks off by attacking the top leg then spinning into a kneebar only to have Tamura spin to his knees & aggressively slap Miyato in the face until he releases, then adds in some stomps for good measure. The impact & intensity of the striking is really growing by the second, and while the match may be less believable at times because of Tamura's flash, the fire & heat these guys are building up is at least allowing the audience to buy into the fact that they don't like each other & really want to win. Miyato is laying into Tamura with some big body kicks down the stretch, but Tamura does his drop down/go behind to drag Miyato down into another rear naked choke. Miyato attacked the top leg again, but Tamura released the choke & used what's left of his hooks to roll Miyato to his stomach. Miyato immediately scrambled back to his feet before Tamura could flatten him out, but Tamura pulled him down into the choke for the upset win before Miyato could get close enough to grab the ropes. This is just Tamura's 11th match, and it's a big notch in his belt coming against a 6th year fighter who was 2-0 against him. While 10 minutes seems short for these guys, especially given it's a 3 match plus a one sided shoot card with nothing else looking like it needs tons of time, length is not really what you are looking for in a worked shoot. In fact, being shorter almost certainly probably made for a better match because Tamura could just keep exploding the whole time & Miyato didn't seem to be his usual 1 trick pony, being for once the favorite while also forced to react to all the crazy stuff the kid was throwing at him. The usual downfall of a Miyato match is it just drags on the mat, especially when they start playing footsies, but this was all blazing fury, as even Miyato was actually reversing and sweeping regularly rather than just laying around on the mat. This wasn't as epic as Tamura vs. Anjo, but it was better in many respects, and almost every moment was interesting & exciting. It's been almost 29 years, but I was still constantly rewinding to see what Tamura was managing to do & how he pulled it off, which is very abnormal for me. Tamura was clearly a whole lot better than in the Anjo match even though it's only been a month & a half. Though the "downfall" is that Yuko isn't as good or well rounded as Anjo, Tamura got a ton out of him carrying the veteran to the match of his career. Tamura's stuff just feels way more modern than anything else we are seeing, the maestro not only innovating in a breathtaking manner but raising the level of his opponent so many notches it's hard to even fathom them having a match with anyone else that remotely approaches this. ****1/2

MB: We are off to a fast pace as Miyto plunges into his bag of Tachi-Waza tricks, looking for a takedown, in this case with a nice Kata Guruma (Fireman's Carry), and O-Goshi (Major hip throw). Tamura is too slick on the ground, and once the fight travels there, he reverses his situation and secures a straight armbar, forcing a rope escape. Miyato defaults to a more kickboxing based strategy, landing a few strikes, but there is no containing Tamura in any position for more than a few seconds, and the rest of the fight followed in a whirlwind of transitions, submission attacks from every angle, and naked aggression. While this wasn't realistic in modern MMA terms, with the 23432 position changes, it was exciting, and we are getting more and more glimpses of not only Tamura's genius, but how a new art is emerging from the pro wrestling zeitgeist, as we are starting to see glimpses of what is possible when skilled practitioners get together and pretend to fight like they are really going to fight. Tamura ends the fight with a rear naked choke, coming off a failed kneebar attempt from Miyato. This was very entertaining, if a bit short, and Miyato's bread-and-butter Judo/Kickboxing style played well with Tamura's flash & fury.

9/14/91

Mitsuya Nagai vs. Herman Renting 12:23. While our second helping of Nagai vs. Renting isn't exactly producing the ecstasy of dining on honey dew and drinking the milk of paradise, it's a much more sufficient banquet than their initial brew. In fact, outside of Kiyoshi Tamura and Naoki Sano, these two are battling each other for the biggest improvement from one match to another we've seen so far, with the edge going to Renting. They really figured out how to blend their styles, and now had a clear course of action with Renting either being proactive & initiating the clinch or urging Nagai to kick so he could get the take down by grabbing him. Renting did a lot once he got the fight to the ground, showing a variety of submission attempts, but Nagai's ground game was solid as well, and he was able to both apply submission pressure from the bottom and get back to his feet. The urgency was high here, and they did a nice job of keeping the match moving by continuing to find different transitions & counters to the same basic sequence where Renting would get a takedown off a Greco body lock. Renting's striking was solid as well, but he wasn't going to duke it out with a stronger striker when he could put him on his back & get the first crack at finishing him. They kicked it into high gear after Renting got a down with a soccer kick, with Nagai charging the length of the ring at Renting, which was such a theatrical departure from the otherwise fairly U.W.F. credible action even though he missed the flying knee that had preceeded, that it kind of worked in showing he was fired up & didn't care about the risk. Nagai then managed to do an even more spectacular version of the leg catch enzuigiri spot where he instead flipped forward for a knockdown. Renting's takedown game eventually ruled the day though when he changed things up, rolling Nagai down in an arm in guillotine then releasing & reapplying the guillotine from side mount for the win, which the billed as a "reverse full nelson hold". ***

MB: This is the exact same pairing seen a month ago at the Aqua Heat event, and while I found it to be a moderately entertaining excursion, it wasn't exactly something that demanded a revisiting. This match started off in the vein of an open-handed-kickboxing-sparring-session kind of vibe, but thankfully it didn't stay there long as we got to see plenty of fine judo from Renting throughout, including a nice ashi-dori-ouchi-gari (leg-pick-inside-trip). There was also a nice sequence from Nagai that saw him charging toward Renting with a flying knee, only to miss, and then rebound with a kneebar attempt that forced a rope escape. When the ref stood them back up afterwards, Nagai executed the very first somersault kicks in the kakutogi spectrum, which resulted in a knockdown, and was pleasant for all to behold. The fight did not last much longer though, as the wrath of Renting was complete, and he turned a headlock takedown into a neck-crank for the submission win. While it wouldn't be confused for match of the year by anyone, I was pleasantly surprised by all of this, and it did feel like they were starting to find a groove for this style by adding some more variety in their grappling and striking exchanges, which led to the match having more drama and a better flow than their first bout.

Bert Kops Jr. vs. Willie Peeters 12:37. There was a classic Peeters dick move when he didn't go with Kops head & arm throw, and soccer ball kicked Kops rather than letting him back up. That being said, he's one of my favorite fighters on these early RINGS because he's such an unpredictable wildman. Willie landed several of his signature hard closed fist punches to the body today, but Kops seemed to be on the same wavelength, or at least know what to expect from Peeters, and was actually responsible for escalating, if not starting, the violence right at the outset. Kops was very active & aggressive, enjoying displaying his power with a variety of rotational deadlift throws. There was a nice spot where he hit a rather low impact suisha otoshi only to have Peeters pop up & drop him with a running uppercut. This wasn't the most realistic match, but Kops showed a ton of potential as suplex machines whose credible strikes were in short supply in these days. He was probably more suited to UWF-I, but he seemed too good an athlete not to have made an impact somewhere. One of the great things about this match is Kops refused to take Peeters crap. He came right back dropping Peeters with a knee, and then when he was supposed to be disengaging, he gave the downed Peeters a little kick. Kops wasn't trying to hurt Peeters, but keeping him in check by letting him know that he could, and would consider it. These two seemed to be vying for who could be the bigger subtle heel at this point, as Peeters responded by threatening to cheap shot Kops on the rope break. Unfortunately, Kops seemingly tore his left knee midway through the match, and though he tried to proceed as normal, eventually the kneecap seemed to be moving around on him, and it appeared that they'd have to stop the match. Kops wasn't trying to quit though, he just had them spray it numb so he could finish as planned. The injury probably knocked 1/2* off the match, as it continued beyond the point where Kops was particularly productive, with Peeters eventually KO'ing him with a knee. Still, this is the best RINGS match we've seen through 3 shows. ***1/4

MB: Kops is perhaps best known to modern MMA fans as one of the mentors to former Bellator middleweight champion Gegard Mousasi, but he has been wrestling since the age of 6, and is active to this day in the Netherlands MMA and wrestling scene. Right away, it seems that Peeters is being a bit more behaved than his last outing, and is cooperating with his opponent, although he is still a bit spazzy and his body shots are probably too stiff for a work. Both fighters trade throws, strikes, and submissions, and the entire time Peeters manages to come off like a cartoon character. Kops starts throwing some surprisingly decent worked kicks at Peeters, at an appropriate genteel speed, before shooting in on Peeters to execute a backdrop slam. Peeters responds by charging forward and clocking Kops in the jaw, in a seemingly (shoot) jerk move, as it appears to be way too stiff. The rest of the fight saw Kops use several throws, including some beautiful examples of the Koshi-Guruma (Hip Wheel, or Headlock Throw in BJJ parlance) and some rather contrived gut-wrench suplexes. Watching Kops try and execute solid fakery with an opponent that only seems to want to cooperate when he feels like it, led to an entertaining match, albeit for the wrong reason.

9/26/91: Kazuo Yamazaki vs. Yoji Anjo 11:49. Both a story match and an attempt at a more realistic bout in between two cartoon jobber matches. Though Yamazaki is normally one of the better strikers, here Anjo shows his superiority early, and Yamazaki shifts to being strategic, gambling that the risks Anjo is taking with his big strikes will eventually outweigh the rewards. Despite Anjo throwing some bombs, this isn't a particularly flashy match, as it's more about Yamazaki's patience & craftiness trying to see his strategy through. It's not nearly as reductive as I may be making it sound, with Anjo still being able to do things on the ground & Yamazaki still scoring in standup, but the general thrust is Anjo wants to make something happen & is thus willing to take chances, while Yamazaki wants to grab him, and ultimately that usually means taking a few shots. Even then, it doesn't always work, for instance Anjo pulls ahead when Yamazaki catches a middle kick, but goes down on delay before he can capitalize. They work with this idea of whether Yamazaki can seize the opportunity to take the offensive once he sacrifices himself to get the catch, but the match ends rather abruptly just when it's finally beginning to take off. Considering it's sandwiched in between two matches whose combined time was less than 4 minutes, you'd think they could have given these guys 15 minutes to work with. Had the kickboxing shoot not gone the distance, this show wouldn't even have lasted an hour. ***

MB: Things start with Anjo offering his hand in the spirit of camaraderie, but being met with empty disgust. Anjo has his revenge moments later, as he gets the better of Yamazaki in the kick exchange by grabbing his leg and kicking out the other leg. The energy and atmosphere that these two are able to generate early on is incredible. Yamazaki plays it off, like a thuggish veteran that refuses to give any respect to the upstart, but Anjo keeps delivering fire and intensity, which is really resonating with the Japanese crowd. There is a great sequence in which Yamazaki is trying to take a basic ankle lock and turn it into a more sinister heel-hook, which causes Anjo to panic and fly towards the ropes like his life depended on it. Yamazaki wasn't able to relish this for too long, as Anjo nailed him with a beautiful high kick to the ribs for a knockdown. It continues to go back and forth, but Yamazaki can't seem to catch a break, as whenever he is able to land a submission on Anjo, he is forced to pay the hefty price of being lit up like a Christmas tree in the standup portions. Yamazaki is able to somewhat abruptly win the match with what I can only describe as an emergency single-leg Boston crab that he had to pull out of nowhere after taking a volley of palm strikes. Despite having to end the match with the worst thing to come from Boston since tariffs, this was totally awesome, and easily the best match that Yamazaki has had so far in the UWF-I.

9/28/91: Wayne Shamrock vs. Minoru Suzuki 16:34. A major step up for Shamrock, who really puts it all together here after the somewhat disappointing match with Funaki, and gives his best performance to date by a wide margin. Shamrock is just fighting a lot more aggressively & assertively, getting solid strikes in even though it's not really a striking match, and then making decisive moves on the mat even though he's experimenting with different positions & leg locks that are more the game of his crafty opponent. In addition to being two of the best shoot style workers, Suzuki & Shamrock also stand out for being able to tell little pro wrestling stories without having to stop the match or be corny & unrealistic to do so. This wasn't the best match we've seen so far, but it was probably the richest in terms of having a lot of little things going on, and something of a running storyline that didn't feel forced. Shamrock quickly established his standup advantage, putting Suzuki in the familiar grappler vs. striker role. When Suzuki kept manipulating Shamrock's ankle until the lock was tight, only to have the ref immediately make him break because Shamrock was in the ropes, he pounded the canvas in disgust and then grinned at Shamrock, kinda taunting him that he should be better than to have to dive for the ropes, at the same time he's content to point out that he's already got one up on Shamrock. Shamrock soon answered with his own ankle lock, and while Suzuki is less anxious, he does take a rope escape and then begin doing the good sort of pro wrestling selling where he shows he's hampered - has difficulty putting weight on that ankle - without having to stop the match & make the ref look like an idiot for allowing a match where someone doesn't respond for a minute to continue simply because pro wrestling never actually modernizes. Sticking in the pro wrestling mode, these two are able to show they don't like each other, but again in the good sort of way where Shamrock immediately kicks Suzuki in the ankle because his rival has made the mistake of revealing it as a weak point. They soon proceed to a spot where the ref breaks them as both are in the ropes working for the same ankle submission. The ground continues to more or less be a stalemate as Suzuki answers Shamrock's Achilles' tendon hold with one of his own, but later Suzuki gains an advantage instead answering with a heel hold, which forces Ken into a rope escape. Though the argument could be made that Shamrock has the advantage because he's handily winning the brief standup exchanges, Suzuki is doing a better job of getting the quick lock up, and is coming closer to getting the submission once it hits the ground. He forces another rope break with an Achilles' tendon hold, and is able to get armbar position twice, though Ken fights it off before he can extend the arm. Shamrock also defends a wakigatame attempt & is able to take Suzuki's back while they are standing back up. Suzuki avoided a suplex earlier, and now uses a Kimura grip to spin out into a standing wrist lock, but this leaves him exposed, and Shamrock just takes his back & hoists him for a huge Dragon suplex. Shamrock bridges to go for the corny pinfall, but after the ref counts 1, he releases & instead has the ref count Suzuki out when he can't answer the 10 count, which again is a ridiculous carry over from pro wrestling that needs to go in order for the ref to have a shred of credibility. Anyway, I think they were on the right track with this finish, but Shamrock should have done a released Dragon right into an immediate ref stop KO. Though the match never felt great, it was a rich, well themed & focused match where both were on the top of their game. We haven't really seen this sort of match so far, and they were also doing some different things with the ankle & joint manipulation. I think they really found a nice balance of being a pro wrestling match with some of the storytelling & acting at the same time they were a proto shoot match with the sort of footsies we'd see in early Pancrase where the best defense was often to just apply your own submission to whatever limb the opponent left exposed. If you like quantity then their 3/4/91 match is certainly better given it's almost twice as long, but this match is a lot tighter & shows they've grown and improved considerably during the past 6 months. ****

MB: This is the 2nd time these two have met, as they both had an excellent 30 minute draw at the inaugural PWFG event. Right away I'm impressed with Suzuki's footwork, very springy, and always feinting in a way that leads you to think he could shoot in at any moment. Shamrock fires off a high kick followed by a palm strike, and he is completely jacked here, just dwarfing Suzuki. Suzuki gambles on shooting in with a deep single leg from a mile away, but is stuffed by Shamrock. However, Ken gives up his superior positioning by diving for some kind of toe-hold attack, giving his back to Suzuki. Suzuki uses this reversal of fortune to work for a crab, but Shamrock shows us the secret that we have all been looking for, that one simply needs to slap the next person in the face that tries to get you in this Boston contraption. From here, Suzuki falls back for a straight ankle lock, much like Shamrock tried in his first confrontation against Royce Gracie, and just like Gracie, Ken went with his opponent's momentum to wind up in top position. After both fighters tried various unsuccessful leg attacks, they went back to their feet, and kept jockeying from the clinch. One nice sequence showed Ken give Suzuki a stiff knee to the midsection, which gave Suzuki an opportunity to hook Ken's free leg and attempt a kneebar from the takedown. Suzuki couldn't quite extend the leg far enough, so he used a Kimura grip to put the added threat of a toe-hold into the equation, and was able to put enough torque on that maneuver to force Ken to take a rope escape. Next we see a beautiful takedown set-up from Suzuki, as he does a very subtle short stomp to Ken's thigh, and immediately dives in to go for a clinch, followed up by a standing switch, while Ken is momentarily distracted. It didn't wind up working, as Ken did a switch of his own, which caused Suzuki to turtle up, and Shamrock showed us a technique to deal with a turtled opponent that I had never thought of, which was to grab his opponents foot and dive over the opposite shoulder, as to wind up repositioned in a place where you have enough leverage to finish a toe-hold. While some would look back into this hazy shroud that is early 90s catch-inspired grappling and only see rudimentary ideas, if we dig a little deeper, we can see some interesting truths made manifest. Namely that wristlocks, toe holds, and other leg attacks put the entire BJJ orthodoxy on shaky ground, as they are techniques that are able to be hit from all sorts of angles, including what would otherwise be terrible positions. Shamrock succeeded in getting a rope escape from his unusual foot attack, and they both returned to clinch warfare soon afterwards. The rest of the match saw various armbar and leg attacks from both men, punctuated by Ken's need to slap the stuffing out of Suzuki in between the ground exchanges, but the match ends when Suzuki hits a standing Kimura on Ken, only to be reversed into a Dragon suplex, which gave Ken a knockout victory. This was excellent, and a great way to end the show. While it wasn't able to build as much drama as their first fight due to being about 14 minutes shorter, it didn't have any of the dead spots of that bout either, and was non-stop from the opening bell. If I had to pick between the two, I would still give their first match the edge, in terms of quality, but make no mistake, this was very good, and an excellent showcase of the new possibilities that are emerging. It's strange that real fighting is being advanced by a group of people that are pretending to fight for real, as if they were in a real fight.

10/6/91

Kiyoshi Tamura & Yuko Miyato vs. Tatsuo Nakano & Tom Burton 18:48. It's hard for a Tamura match to overachieve, but given the tag match format, I think it's fair to say this one did. Though the format may be hokey, this is a great example of a doubles match that worked, keeping a higher pace than they could have in a singles match of this length (18:48) without losing the intensity, as well as keeping guys who don't have amazing stamina or huge move sets effective by breaking their portions up. The key to the match was Miyato, who, all things considered, probably gave an even performance than he did in his great match against Tamura on 8/24/91. Beyond being an entertaining and fiery presence who pulled the fight out of the opponents, he also really upped his technical game in all areas. Miyato was again making an attempt to move more like Tamura, turning and spinning out, even using the go behind. There was a nice sequence where he hit a backdrop into a half crab then spun into a facelock. Miyato set a good tone for the match, showing some good use of distance & footwork in standup to get his low kicks in, and doing a good job of taking advantage of the opponents inability to actually do anything to control him once they got him to the mat, just exploding rather than honoring the imaginary forcefield that normally keeps UWF-I fighters other than Tamura down. This is really what I've been wanting to see from him, things that make him relevant & dangerous despite being undersized. The story of the fight was that the larger team of Nakano & Burton would start out ahead on the mat, getting the judo throw or takedown, but then their more skilled opponents would start moving & countering before they got anywhere with their submission holds. Miyato wasn't showing a path to victory so much as wearing the bigger guys out by making them keep working at a higher pace than they would like because he was feisty & annoying, and if they didn't get him down again, he was just going to make it harder by continuing to beat up their legs. Tamura was able to get a takedown on Nakano, and his counters were often into his own submissions, rather than simply scrambling back to his feet & forcing the opposition to start over. Tensions were escalating as Nakano dropped into an Achilles' tendon hold, but Tamura countered with a heel hook only to have Nakano keep kicking him in the face until he released, which allowed Nakano to take his back. Miyato got back to his feet enough that Burton began to slow down, and was caught off guard when Miyato finally threw his hands, stunning Burton and allowing Miyato to get the spinning heel kick in for a knockdown. I was surprised at how much ring time Miyato was logging, Tamura was really getting the star treatment here, coming in for brief sequences where he looked good, but letting Miyato carry the load. There was one crazy Tamura spot where Burton had his back & started to go for a cravate, but Tamura handspringed & took a front facelock. Nakano got a couple near finishes on Tamura including a snap suplex into a high kick when Tamura was getting back up, and as usual, Tamura was way down on points. I liked the finish where Tamura losing the battle of pulling himself halfway across the ring to get to the ropes before Burton could turn him over into the Boston crab, which allowed him to use Burton's momentum against him (Burton was busy dragging him back), tripping him up into an ankle lock for the win. I'm not saying much about Nakano or Burton here, largely because they were instruments who were very well played by maestros. ***3/4

MB: It is the small/lithe gentleman vs. the brazen monsters, so we will now experience size vs. skill, speed vs. raw power, and slick holds vs. steroids. The contest was entertaining and fast paced, and somewhat surprisingly, everyone looked good here. Even Tom Burton was looking looser and more fluid this time. Of course, Tamura is still the rock star, and is really bringing the new generation of tech to the shoot-game. Cartwheeling out of bad positions, rapid transitions, and creative grappling entries, show that he was really something special. To make it even more impressive is to think that he was a very high caliber contender in real shoots too, which isn't something too many fighters can lay claim to, the ability to excel in both the real and worked ends of the spectrum. Tamura wins by finally figuring out the counter to the Boston crab, which is to apparently is to turn a quasi ankle-pick into a toehold. Well played, sir.

Billy Scott vs. Yoji Anjo 11:29. Scott took a big step forward here, partially because he's a tough & proud guy who isn't going to allow Anjo to take advantage of him. These guys really stepped up the level of defense & intensity, not only refusing to go along with the opponent, but making each other pay with a swift foot to the face. While this wasn't a shoot by any means, of all the works we've seen so far, it's probably the match that felt most like it both in terms of the fighters moving quickly & desperately to avoid what the other fighter was trying & getting a bit out of control and even nailing each other when they had the chance. They really put a lot of energy into the takedowns, throws, and scrambles, and both fighters inserted their share of cheap shots. They took some brief rests on the mat, where Scott isn't the most fluid to begin with once he gets you there, but made up for it by seeming to legitimately piss each other off in standup, leading to some strikes that were arguably too mean & some scrambles where the loser normally would have given up much easier. 11:29 was a good length for this, as it started great, and maintained the intensity throughout, but the holes were becoming more and more apparent the longer it continued. I was surprised that Scott got the upset here, although Anjo is one of their better fighters, I wasn't opposed to it because Scott did a nice job of standing up for himself & hanging with the veteran. With this being Scott's 3rd match, it's hard to argue against this overachieving. ***1/2

MB: Immediately after the bell, Anjo rushes in with a slap to tries to set up an o-goshi throw, but Scott just shoves him off, and gives him a stiff kick in the back for his trouble. This causes our zebra to wisely rush back to the safety of his savannah, backing off to regroup before charging in again. He attempts another hip-toss, but Scott is wise to these judo shenanigans, and responds with a couple of ultra-low single-leg takedowns, a la Sakuraba, succeeding with his second attempt, which he converted into a slam. They get into a slap fest until Anjo pulls a sweet Kani Basami out of his bag of tricks, which shows that maybe there is something to be said for these judo parlor tricks, after all. What followed next was a barrage of strikes, takedowns, and reversals until Anjo scored the first rope escape against Scott, in what could be loosely interpreted as a Kimura from an open guard. Anjo quickly followed this up with a head kick knockdown, furthering his score against Scott. This upswing didn't last long though, as shortly afterwards, Scott got a takedown and finished the match with one of the most bizarre submissions I've ever seen, which resembled something between a "twister" and a neck-crank. Bizarre finish aside, this was a great match, and although they could have let it breathe more in spots, the fast pace kept it highly entertaining. Scott is continuing to show that he has a bright future, as he adds a credible gravitas with his look and athleticism.

10/17/91

Yusuke Fuke vs. Jerry Flynn 30:00. Fuke has already done a shoot where he failed to take down the greasiest of Muay Thai competitors for longer than it took Lawi Napataya to just grab the ropes, and I was really impressed at how he took the distance & his strategy into consideration. This was probably the most realistic fight we've seen so far in terms of approaching the wrestler vs. grappler dynamic. Flynn had a big reach advantage, but Fuke mostly stayed on the outside looking for a kick he could catch when he wasn't making his move to initiate the takedown. Fuke generally did a good job of moving in and out, and would actually even move laterally then cut an angle to get in on Flynn's legs. In the meantime, Fuke would try to check Flynn's low kicks, which really made me take them a lot more seriously. While the length kept it from being the fastest paced or stiffest match, they did a great job of upping the urgency & stiffness when it mattered. If there was a potential submission for either, or a takedown attempt for Fuke, they found an extra gear or two to fight, and hit, hard to answer it, then would relax somewhat when they were more or less out of danger. I really liked Fuke blasting Flynn with palms to the face to fend off his leglock. Anyway you slice it though, the length was still the problem, largely because Flynn basically just did his thing, and while Fuke was credible & technically proficient, there were only so many scenarios he, or anyone, could think of to keep a realistically bent vanilla striker vs. grappler match going for half an hour. I don't want to downplay Flynn's contributions, he was the more well rounded of the two in that he could offer more to counter & answer Fuke on the mat than Fuke, who had little striking, could in standup. While these guys were green, this was nonetheless a huge step forward for both, and one of the signature bouts of 1991 in terms of moving the sport forward in a more believable direction. ***1/2

MB: Right away Flynn fires off a nice kick to Fuke's thigh, but is taken down by a beautiful single-leg entry before he could launch another one. Both jockey for position and trade submission attempts, before Flynn unleashes a barrage of kicks and palm strikes in standup that are a lot quicker than you would expect from a man of his size. Flynn is looking very solid here, and while he didn't look bad against Vale, he was limited in what he could do working with him, but isn't having to scale back as much now that he's paired with a far more fluid opponent. Fuke really earned his pay, as he took plenty of stiff kicks and palm strikes from Flynn in most of their standing sequences. The groundwork was nicely paced too, and they kept things at a fast tempo without ever getting hokey, and also added some nice touches like when Flynn would escape from an ankle lock attempt by kicking Fuke in the head with his free leg, or at one point when Fuke was working for an armbar, and decided to slap Flynn in the face several times to open his opponent up. This went to a 30 minute draw, and I must admit that I'm quite impressed with this. In fact, I would go as far as to say that this is one of the best matches we've seen so far. At no did this ever drag, and it was able to really strike a balance between realism and entertainment value. Fuke and Flynn were able to give us a long match with the stiffness and flow of a shoot, but with a faster, and more entertaining pace, without ever feeling corny or contrived. Where I would have assumed Flynn to have been a lumbering ox, he moved gracefully for a man of his size, and it never felt like Fuke was having to really stretch to make him look good. While the idea of having a 30 minute draw for the opening match sounded odd to me on paper, it wound up being a great way to put Flynn over, and has really opened my eyes to Fuke, as I always just saw him as a middling journeyman figure from Pancrase, I had no idea he was basically the PWFG's answer to Yoji Anjo, as a cardio machine that could be used in a variety of capacities within the card to good effect.

Masakatsu Funaki vs. Kazuo Takahashi 6:24. Funaki rose to the challenge of crafting a competitive match against an opponent who was clearly well beneath him. While the match was a bit repetitive in that Takahashi's chance was getting a single leg then finding an armbar, at least that chance was made real, and thus the threat seemed genuine. Funaki going from one hip to another to back up enough to try to keep Takahashi inside his guard when Takahashi exploded trying to pass is the sort of thing we haven't seen anyone else care about (or probably understand) that made maintaining the defensive position seem to be of the utmost importance. Funaki has been the most realistic worker so far, and while that can often be to his detriment as his striking tends to be much more exciting than his grappling, which is his bread and butter, Funaki found a good mix tonight. Funaki knew he needed to punish Takahashi before Takahashi took him down, and hopefully Takahashi would either get KO'd charging into a well timed blow, or some of these strikes would at least slow his shot down enough that Funaki could find an actual defense. Takahashi came close just before the finish, eating a few palms before ducking a high kick into a takedown & passing into an armbar attempt. Funaki rolled though, and then they did a pretty lame finish that, unlike most of what came before it, felt very contrived, where Takahashi tried to transition into a kneebar, but Funaki made Takahashi release with a body shot then went into an Achilles' tendon hold for the win. While it was the first submission locked, Funaki winning with a strike or guillotine to counter the takedown would have been a lot more fitting for the story they'd been telling than Funaki grabbing a leg out of nowhere & Takahashi offering no defense. I think they had to keep this short both because it was a big mismatch & because Takahashi is a one-trick pony, but at 10 minutes they might really have had something here. ***

MB: Takahashi doesn't waste anytime hitting an excellent single leg that would be the envy of any current MMA fighter, and quickly gains side control after slapping his way out of Funaki's guard. Takahashi goes for an armbar, but Funaki is way too slick on the ground, easily escapes the attempt and getting back to his feet. Takahashi blasts him right back down to the mat again, and repeats his armbar attack, only this time Funaki rolls out and opts to mount Takahashi. It is a treat to see Funaki's methodical nature, even at this early stage of his career. As he has the mount, he patiently rides Takahashi, and starts to grind his elbow across his face, forcing him to squirm a bit, and uses this technique to its fullest, looking to open up a submission. Takahashi remained composed, so Funaki dialed it up a notch and started firing some short, stiff, forearm strikes to Takahashi's face. This still wasn't enough to force Takahashi to make a mistake, so Funaki gets up, smacks Kazuo in the face, and soccer kicks him in the head as the ref calls for a break. While the ref is separating them for a restart, Kazuo runs right after Funaki and gets a swift kick to the thigh for his trouble, but if there is one thing that Takahashi has that Funaki can't seem to stop, it's the speed of his single-leg, and he uses it to good effect before Funaki before he could fire off another kick. Funaki's groundwork seems to consist of putting his hand over Takahashi's mouth and punching him in the face, which doesn't really yield any results. Takahashi eventually passes guard, but seems to get bored with the idea of maintaining a superior position, and quickly goes for another arm attack that fails just as quickly as the first two. He loses his position to Funaki, who goes into side-control mode, and goes back to his tactic of using the blade of his forearm to annoy Takahashi. After making Kazuo squirm a bit, Funaki starts to posture up, and shifts his body towards his opponents legs, which instantly set off Takahashi's spider sense, and caused him to franticly grab the ropes for an escape. This time Takahashi has no slick takedowns for his mentor, and instead suffers the wrath of a stiff thigh kick followed up with another kick to the face forcing a knockdown. Kazuo gets up at the count of 9, and takes some more punishment, before Funaki misses a kick, and it's back to the ground. Sadly, the only submission he cares to try is an armbar, and his 4th attempt fails as well. Kazuo winds up on the wrong end of a north-south situation, but tries to make the best of it by going for a toehold, but the master has all the answers, and simply gives a hard blow to Takahashi's stomach, forcing his legs to dangle, and goes right for an ankle lock. The lock is in snug, and Kazuo taps out. Excellent match, that I would assess as a ¾ shoot. They weren't cooperating, and everything (with the exception of the ending) felt authentic, even though they weren't quite going at each other with an absolute 100% intensity either. This was definitely a great blueprint on how much shoot you can put into a work.

11/7/91

Yoji Anjo & Tom Burton vs. Yuko Miyato & Kiyoshi Tamura 20:44. Tamura is sometimes criticized in his younger years for being too showy, but I'd counter that his flashy aspects are actually some of the most realistic moments in his matches because the scrambles are so fast and explosive that both fighters wind up mostly just reacting to one another. Take, for instance, the amazing opening sequence Tamura does with Anjo where Tamura tries to take Anjo down in stages, first getting the clinch but with overhooks, so he has to switch to an underhook, but that high bodylock takedown would now be too predictable, so he drops down after the leg instead. Meanwhile, Anjo keeps pivoting and scrambling, trying to counter with a knee to the face, but Tamura avoids by dropping down to the right, and continues scrambling until he gets behind Anjo and sweeps his leg with his arm. Other than that amazing sequence, the match has a lot of feeling out and thwarting one another early, establishing the strategies that Anjo & Miyato want to strike, while Tamura & Burton want to grapple. The action picked up during Tamura & Anjo's 2nd encounter, when Anjo got a knockdown with a high kick and Tamura got trapped in the corner because he still hadn't recovered when the ref restarted. Anjo, who already kicked Tamura in the balls, got a somewhat dishonorable knockdown out of this with a knee in the corner rather than respecting the ropes. A fired up Tamura answered with this neat hybrid between a swinging neckbreaker and a snap suplex and started stomping Anjo's face then soccer kicked him until Anjo escaped to the floor. Even though the tag match format negates some of the intensity, urgency, and believability, Anjo's shenanigans and Tamura's fire helped negate that, and this wound up being quite the heated affair. One problem with the UWF-I is in these matches where they try to start off showing it's difficult to make things work, they tend to then go too far in the other direction trying to be super entertaining in the later stages to make up for it, and certainly by shoot style standards they were kind of spamming throws in the 2nd half. Tamura vs. Anjo was great, and the other stuff was fine to good, with the interrupted flow of the tag format being more of a liability than the other guys not being Tamura. Burton doesn't have the speed or body control to work the sort of match these guys were really trying to do, but he stepped up his game as much as he was capable of. His peak level is still nowhere near that of the others, but I prefer to credit him for probably reaching it here, whereas Miyato is actually the one who could have delivered a little more than he did. The finish was pretty lame with Anjo countering Tamura's rear naked choke attempt into a sort of reverse wakigatame where Tamura was lying on his back. This might put a little pressure on the wrist or elbow, I guess, but is even that much less likely than the regular cornball version to either be a maintainable position or actually put enough pressure on an improperly isolated joint while one has the catch to force a submission. Nonetheless, while no one is going to confuse this with Ozaki & Kansai vs. Yamada & Toyota 11/26/92 or Kawada & Taue vs. Misawa & Akiyama 12/6/96, this was another strong candidate for the top 5 UWF-I matches of the year, though it's slightly below last month's tag with Nakano instead of Anjo, in part because it's traveling similar territory. ***1/2

MB: This is off to a fast clip as Anjo and Miyato immediately go at each other with a sense of urgency, with Anjo giving Miyato plenty of kicks, and even a nice Ippon-seoi-nage (or one arm shoulder throw, if you prefer). Not long afterwards, Tamura was tagged in, and we got to see further evidence why he was a once in a lifetime kind of talent. In one breathtaking display, Tamura shot a beautiful low single-leg takedown (the kind that Sakuraba later became famous for) into almost taking Anjo's back with a rear naked choke, with such a grace and fluidity that it has to be seen to be believed. The rest of this match was simply off the charts in terms of entertainment value. Everyone did a great job, and even though I'm tempted to complain that there still isn't much of a point to a tag match (within a promotion that doesn't so much as have any titles to vie for) such objections would ring hallow, as all the performers gave 100% intensity, and the bout was riveting from start to finish.

Nobuhiko Takada vs. Bob Backlund 16:42. Backlund is one of those guys I really want to like because his skills are based in realism, but can't because his mannerisms are based in Doinkism, which totally negates that. When you are just acting like a WWE clown, you are also wrestling like one whether you are doing a perfect double leg or just poking the opponent in the eyes Three Stooges style. The first Takada/Backlund from 12/22/88 was the first worked shoot I saw, it was one of those matches hyped as so great it must be seen to be believed, ending up tossed at the end of kind of an Ultimo Dragon compilation because even though it had nothing to do with juniors or lucha, it was just that good it transcended styles and genres. It didn't really capture my imagination at the time, still just feeling more like spectacle, and in that case I'd rather see more of Ultimo doing backflips. I've liked it more and less at times since then, but nonetheless, it's by far their most famous match. It's definitely the best for the crowd, which I could care less about, but it's an electric atmosphere partially because the outcome is in doubt with Takada having lost to Maeda & Yamazaki earlier that year before coming back & beating Maeda on the previous show to finally get a big win in U.W.F. Though the first half had a lot of dead spots, there's some things to enjoy in the match as they did a lot in the 2nd half to make up for it, with Backlund's bloody nose & Takada's bruised face giving it some extra aura. I just never believed in the match for a moment, as it was the same old crap with Backlund just standing there letting Takada do his bag kicking routine on him, and thus actually managing to look more stupid than usual. I'm going to take the unpopular opinion and say that this third meeting is actually their best match because they shockingly made an effort to avoid what the opponent was trying to do. One of the biggest problems with Takada is it never feels like he works for anything, but that's not the case here, there's movement, there's countering, there's even some craftiness. While there are less kicks, they are more exciting and feel more earned. There are still a lot of issues here, but comparatively speaking, there's a lot more effort put into making an attack good here, which allows the match to rise to the level of being interesting even though it's a bit slow and dry compared to Takada's most famous flashy firework showcases. The usual lazy Takada lockup instead sees Takada utilizing it to land fast body punches that open up the backdrop that he'd normally just go into naked. This is the first match we've reviewed that Takada actually seemed motivated for, and Backlund was also easier to take, as he toned down the goofiness quite a bit. The finish was even pretty good with Backlund hitting his famous doublearm suplex then barely getting Takada over for the resisted U.W.F. style German suplex only to have Takada swing into the chickenwing armlock upon impact for the submission. ***

MB: A rematch absolutely no one was asking for, as the last one was such a fiasco Sapporo almost had a riot on their hands, but that isn't going to stop Takada and Co. from trying again. Backlund's goofy mannerisms aside, this is already better than the last outing (though that's not saying much) as they spend some time feeling each other out, and Takada shows some impressive sprawling technique as he stuffs one of Backlund's double leg attempts by putting his right arm around Backlund's neck while putting his right knee on the ground at the same time, and really shifting his bodyweight into Backlund's neck, preventing his ability to torque and effectively nullified the takedown. The rest of the match was mostly both men jockeying for a toehold or ankle lock with a decent crescendo towards the last couple of minutes. This match was mostly free from strikes, until the end, which was a positive, as this allowed a format for Backlund to come off credibly, if a bit outdated. Backlund's strikes towards the end looked hokey, but he did hit an excellent double underhook suplex that sent Takada flying across the ring. The match ended with Backlund hitting a German suplex that Takada shrugged off, and responded with a keylock for the win. This was okay, and had this been the original match between the two, I don't think too many would have complained. Backlund has the amateur wrestling chops to look decent in the grappling portions, but there is only so much you can do with him, as his lack of submission and striking knowledge, plus age, prevents him from being much more than an occasional special attraction. Still, taking their first match out of the equation, this was a fine, if forgettable main event.

12/7/91: Akira Maeda vs. Volk Han 12:16. In probably the greatest pro wrestling debut up until this point in time, and perhaps only since surpassed by the woman who would go on to be the top MMA fighter of her generation, Megumi Fujii, a once in a generation talent arrived from Russia and carried one of the handful of top stars in Japanese wrestling to his best match in quite some time. Han immediately proved himself to be one of the couple best performers in the genre, somehow seeming to understand how all the styles of actual MMA worked despite it barely existing at the time, and relying on a really flashy and innovative version of his sambo background rather than trying to assimilate to the accepted chicanery that passed for pro or even shoot wrestling. Han was super exciting, with a vast array of submission holds that relied on large and/or small joint manipulation. He was the forerunner of chaining of submissions, which perhaps never really caught in on pro wresting but would eventually form the basis of the Japanese MMA style in the no ground punching era. Though Han's background was in submission, we immediately see him putting his energy toward employing actual, legitimate kickboxing footwork and feints that are maybe not quite up to the level we saw earlier from karate legend Nobuaki Kakuda, but otherwise set him apart from the pack, even though this isn't what he's been doing all his life. While Maeda is theoretically the better standup fighter, he can at least knock you out if you are expecting him to be working with you rather than taking a cheap shot, the artist formerly known as Kwick-Kick Lee can't manage to touch the nimble Han, who is able to back away from his kicks with ease, as well as get in & out of range quickly enough to incite him with slaps to the face and his own low kicks without taking counterfire. Of course, Han's real plan is to grapple, and while it's true that hitting a flying armbar as the first move of a match may not be the most realistic, it certainly speaks to the self confidence, guts, and out of the box thinking of Han to go out there and do this not only as the start of the match, but of his pro career. I had never seen a flying armbar before this, it was a jaw dropping what is this, and more importantly who is this kind of moment. While it's important to focus on what Han is doing, what's actually more telling is how that was forcing Maeda to step up his game in so many ways, to use footwork himself, be quicker with his attacks, and to try to chain them together because Han wasn't just going to stand there for him like a doofus. Sure, the match was a work, but there's really varying levels of what the opponent is going to allow you to get away with, and Maeda not only saw that Han's standard is high, but just being a proud athlete who wants to win because he's better not because he's running the company, he was pushing himself to earn thing and get over on Han. Suddenly, we saw a great sequence from Maeda where he wasn't merely content to land a snap suplex, but was up like lightning trying to grab an appendage and drop into a submission, in this case an armbar, before Han couldn stabilize. This was the first time all year that Maeda looked good. Han's matches are built around the high spots, which are plentiful, but he is able to get away with that more than others because he doesn't half-ass the basics of fighting, the positions, or the execution of the moves. In addition to understanding spacing on his feet, he's already using the mount and the guard on the ground, and chaining his submissions to try to catch the opponent off guard or just beat their defenses by being proactive and reacting quicker. Han may be selling because he still reacts quickly when Maeda does something, but used to 5 minute sambo contests, he appeared completely out of gas down the stretch, holding his hands on his knees the way Mark Coleman would go on to make famous in his historic loss to Maurice Smith at UFC 14. This allowed Maeda to get a spinning wheel kick in for a knockdown. Han was able to answer with a suplex to set up one of his rolling cradle sort of leg locks, but Maeda was able to stop the roll and use his left leg to block Han's lock, thus getting the better position on the mat to crank on the ankle, with a desperate Han realizing he's left with nothing but to tap in disgust then cover his face with his hands in embarassment and shame. ***1/2

MB: Now, for the moment that will forever change the course of Rings and have an incalculable effect on all things in the shoot-realms for many ages to come.. Yes, we are about to witness the professional debut of Volk Han (real name: Magomedkhan Amanulayevich Gamzatkhanov) who wound up being one of the greatest professional wrestlers of all time by helping to cement the shoot-style's status as being the very apex of what professional wrestling could achieve as an art form. Han had a background in collegiate wrestling before joining the military, which is where he began learning sambo, going on to become a three-time Russian champion in the '80s. Maeda thrust him into the main event, despite this being only his first match, so he surely Maeda saw something special in him right from the get-go. We can see that Han was being groomed for greatness right away, as they gave him one of the best theme entrances of the era, Jean-Michel Jarre's Second Rendez-Vous, a grandiose synthesizer intro that sounds like what would happen if you were to mix the Phantom of the Opera with something from Brad Fiedel's work on The Terminator soundtrack. Tthe crowd is absolutely in total rapture for Maeda though, he could be wrestling a Yakisoba vendor tonight, and I don't think it would affect how over he is. The first minute is quiet, with some feeling out between the two men before Han hits a tobi-juji-gatame (flying armbar) for an instant rope break well before the maneuver become the cool thing for Carlson Gracie students to do. This breathtaking maneuver may not be the best opener for the purposes of realism, but it is done with such verve that we must allow its indulgences. Maeda then throws some high kicks, forcing Han to distance himself a bit before stalking his way up to Maeda and hitting the 2nd kani-basami of the evening, which is now banned from judo competitions for its perceived riskiness. Han attempts a heel-hook off of this, but Maeda was successful in rolling into the ropes, prompting a restart. The next several minutes see Han attempt just about every leg attack one could think of (and perhaps many that no one has thought of), and also marked the debut of his infamous rolling kneebar that we have all come to cherish. Maeda winds up pulling a win out of nowhere by securing a toe-hold while tangled up in a human leg-pretzel with Han, and serves to remind me why I gave up my Twister addiction a long time ago.

12/22/91 Hiromitsu Kanehara vs. Masakazu Maeda 15:00. The exciting thing about this year end show was not the dopey boxers, even though shoots are welcome, but rather the bright young talent on display with the return of Kakihara and the debuts of Kanehara & other Maeda. Maeda's career didn't last long, but this was the classic undercard fued of the early UWF-I days, with their bouts in early 1992 already becoming highlights of the promotion, if not stealing the show entirely. Right away we can see Kanehara using the more evolved level of grappling that Tamura employs that revolves around chaining quick, deceptive movements. He was changing levels, trying to fake Maeda out so it was more difficult for him to win the scrambles. Maeda was more of a striker, and Kanehara keyed on his kicks, looking to catch one to initiate a grappling exchange. What's so impressive about Kanehara is his confidence. Maeda, while certainly already decent, was more hesitant and prone to hedging on his strikes, whereas Kanehara already worked like a veteran, pulling off high level sequences as if they were second nature because he's been doing them all his life. In traditional pro wrestling, it's easy to tell the rookies matches as they are either really basic or just kind of short and limited, but none of those characteristics were present here. It's more like Kanehara was out to steal the show, and truly believed himself capable. They went through most of the points, with Kanehara mounting a 5 point lead despite Maeda having a few knockdowns with flying knees and palm strikes, but being unable to put Maeda away before time expired for the draw. Forget about this merely being a great debut or even rookie match, although Maeda could use a little more menace on his shots, this was one of the better worked shoots of the year. Kanehara would be an easy pick for rookie of the year, if not for the beyond exceptional competition of Volk Han. ***1/4

MB: Kanehara was an absolutely fantastic talent, and may be one of the most underrated figures from this era. Like Tamura, he was excellent both as a pro wrestler and a shooter, although to the unlearned his MMA record might indicate otherwise. While his 19-27 win/loss stats are true, further examination shows that he often faced a murderers row of opponents in their primes, and gave many of them a very hard time, including Ricardo Arona, Matt Hughes, Dan Henderson, Mirko Cro Cop, and Wanderlei Silva. His best win was possibly his hard-fought victory against Jeremy Horn in the A-Block of the 1999 King of Kings tournament or defeating Dave Menne right before Menne became the 1st UFC Middleweight Champion. This will be the debut for Maeda as well, and strangely he only wrestled a total of 6 times, all within the span of a year, and all against Kanehara. The match starts with Maeda taking a light-on-his-feet kickboxing approach and throwing some crisp high kicks towards Kanehara, but he couldn't maintain the offense for too long before being taken down and put into an ankle lock, thus deducting a point via a rope escape. What followed next, was another 14 minutes of what turned out to be a very well rounded and nicely paced match. There was plenty of everything here, submissions, striking, suplexes, and reversals, but everything was blended together well, and turned out to be a great way to set the tone for the evening. You could tell that Kanehara was the better of the two men, and was carrying Maeda by allowing him some offensive moments, but Maeda gave a good showing and seemed to have enough potential to grow into being a solid talent.

1. Kiyoshi Tamura. Though Suzuki at least gave Tamura a little competition putting up three **** or better matches, and really being the only other fighter to make their presence felt in the top 10 matches list, this is still Tamura by a landslide. He really transformed the sport with his full speed chain grappling style.

Tamura set the bar for pro wrestling grappling about 10 times higher with his explosive style that really brought scrambling and chaining attacks into the pro wrestling game. He made the matches much less predictable by introducing complex, fast paced sequences that continued far beyond the single action/reaction based style that was previously in place, greatly increasing both the intensity and the level of difficulty by extending both the length and the scope. Now it wasn't simply the first attack that you had to defend, but rather each attack was as much an attempt to succeed with the takedown or submission or control gain as it was a diversion to get the opponent off guard for the subsequent attempt, if the previous one didn't work. Though none of the other performers were near Tamura's level, he was able to bring them into his new universe and raise their game to levels they didn't attain with anyone else. Basically everyone who worked with Tamura also had their best match with him, which is the mark of a truly next level performer. In this case, it's partially because the opponents were forced to work so much harder & faster to try to simply keep up with Tamura and prevent him from outclassing them to the point of embarrassment that the best they had emerged. Certainly, a great deal of skill, precision, speed, and body control is also required from the opponent to pull off the style Tamura wanted to work without a hitch, and they too deserve a lot of credit, as the Kazuchika Okada's of the world would have just laid on the mat looking clueless and letting Tamura just do whatever he could to their corpse rather than engaging Tamura in his interactive, back & forth jockeying.

2. Minoru Suzuki. Suzuki did the best job of transitioning from the pro wrestling style to the shoot style, just having a better grasp of what made both tick from a viewer standpoint. He combined the urgency and intensity necessary to make the matches work as "shoots" with the more subtle brand of entertainment of pro wrestling where actions and affectations that aren't necessary but also aren't unreasonable are thrown in for dramatic purposes, finding an exciting balance between the credible and the energetic. Even when he was doing somewhat nonsensical things such as trying to work in his dropkick, his matches still overall felt like epic struggles where you couldn't let your guard down for a second. As we are seeing with Tamura, being fast and explosive are far more important to the quality of worked shoot style than absolute technical precision because ultimately you are still getting away with something, it's just that the less time you give the audience to identify that, the more difficult it becomes for them to see the holes. Suzuki had excellent speed and footwork in standup even though that wasn't the strength of his game, and was the only fighter who won two shoots, a planned one where he relied on his grappling to beat Thai fighter Lawi Napataya and an unplanned one where he relied on his footwork and handspeed to humiliate SWS' Apollo Sugawara.

3. Yoji Anjo. Coming into the year, my guess would have been that Anjo was #3... in the UWF-I. He really overachieved this year, and even though working with Tamura while Yamazaki didn't made a huge difference, both in the UWF-I rankings, and overall, Anjo deserves a lot of credit for being a diverse & reliable performer who did a reasonably good job in all of his matches.

My recollection of the original U.W.F. is that Anjo tended to blend in with the other solid undercarders, separating himself, if at all, by his ability to sustain his level for longer durations. In 1991, there's definitely a distinctive difference between Anjo and the likes of Miyato and Nakano, as Anjo can both add a lot to a match where he's the follower as well as actually carry a match. Anjo may not be great, but he's really reliable. He can do any style, at any length, and while he doesn't always succeed, his matches don't feel formulaic and, at worst, have some interesting aspects. As the top dick in the promotion, he's able to pull the otherwise largely missing grudge aspects out of his opponents, these shenanigans again differentiating his matches from the rest.

4. Naoki Sano. It's still unfortunate that Sano had little activity in this style during the second half of the year, but he slightly edges out Shamrock now that his two good SWS matches against Funaki can be included.

Sano was a great, albeit overly reckless pro wrestler who was willing to go the extra mile. He had a learning curve, and clearly had a lot more potential in this style than he was able to reach this year due to spending most of it in his home promotion, SWS, taking on Americans that were neither juniors in style nor in weight, finally claiming the inaugural SWS Light Heavyweight Title from an overroided Model. On talent alone, Sano was probably the best follower we saw in this style in 1991, immediately having a memorable match with Shamrock, a match of the year with Suzuki, and a couple of good, more technical and less competitive matches in SWS with Funaki. Sano went 1-2-1 in his initial important run, but with Megame Super having deemed it too dangerous to have interpromotional matches with PWFG on SWS's shows after the Suzuki/Apollo debacle, Sano wound up only making a few more appearances in a filler role. This was really a shame because he'd clearly improved a lot in the style in just a few matches, and I feel like he could not only have reached another level himself, but helped the stars of this promotion get there too.

5. (Ken) Wayne Shamrock. Shamrock's intensity and work ethic were his best attributes early on, but despite having some of his best matches at the outset, he clearly improved a lot over the course of the year, particularly in the striking department. Shamrock benefitted from having the best run of opponents, but even when he was carried by Suzuki & Funaki, he added a lot to the matches and always felt like a distinct talent. He really began to hit his stride with the Suzuki rematch, with his improved familiarity and confidence allowing him to work a more decisive, aggressive, and assertive style with strikes that were now solid, if not even impressive.

6. Volk Han. Han was the most difficult fighter to rate because he's #2 on talent, but it was easy for everyone else on the list to out compile him given most fighters had close to 10 matches, while he merely had 1. I settled somewhere in the middle, above the guys who could carry a match but didn't really come close to living up to their potential as well as the guys who were strong followers who benefited from having good opponents.

Han is an amazing one of a kind, once in a generation talent who was immediately head and shoulders above everyone but Kiyoshi Tamura despite having never competed in a worked or full rules shoot. Han really revolutionized the grappling game, popularizing the attacking, chain submission style that made people outside of hardcore practioners want to watch ground fighting and, perhaps indirectly, became the basis of the gambling, no risk no reward Japanese MMA ground style at a time when American MMA was all about lay & pray. No submission wrestler was ever flashier than Han, yet perhaps because he wasn't trained in the lazy ways of cooperative pro wrestling, he maintained most of the good habits he'd employed in competitive tournament fighting, and was able to build the sparking end game around a really solid, technically sound foundation. Han had amazing reflexes with the speed and anticipation to capitalize on them, moving constantly and correctly, adjusting, tweeking, eventually capitalizing on something that might otherwise be outlandish, and probably would just be too slow and deliberate if a lesser athlete and/or tactician attempted it. Han was never content to be a one man show, but rather someone who forced the opponent to step up their game to try to keep up with him. Han was going to work his hardest, and if you had any semblance of talent, he wasn't going to let you get away with getting anything over on him without earning it, which again added a level of urgency and intensity to his contests.

7. Kazuo Yamazaki. While 1991 was probably the worst year of Yamazaki's career since at least 1983, he's still one of the only shooters who will always stand on his own feet and craft a match. Though I'm ranking Anjo ahead of him, it's due to the great work Anjo did against Tamura, an opportunity Yamazaki wasn't granted, and it should be noted that Yamazaki was, of course, the one laying out the good, if somewhat disappointing match he and Anjo had. Yamazaki & Funaki were very similar this year in that they made a conscious choice not to be flashy. As such, I think their actual talent greatly exceeds their end results, but I also respect this decision, and can say that their matches hold up a lot better as quasi shooting because of it. Yamazaki didn't have nearly as many good opportunities as in years past, and while he also didn't make the most of them, he was still a very interesting watch because he's a thoughful performer who has the courage to work outside the expected.

8. Yuko Miyato. Miyato is the best follower in the league. Left to his devices, he's basically a one trick pony who just wants to play the underdog and get in 1 or 2 Hail Mary spinning solebutts that won't actually win him the match anyway, but Tamura got him to improve his matwork considerably, upping the number of counters and reversals and just doing things faster to maintain the intensity and viewer interest. As a consequene, Miyato was generally more well rounded this year, and in spending much of his time working with the more capable workers who were also more toward his equals in standing, he seemed better positioned to display a more diverse & technical game. It remains to be seen how consistently he'll employ these sweeps, reversals, and quick position changes when he's not doing them to try to hang with Tamura, but I feel he did progress considerably on the mat from his days of laying around doing nothing in the U.W.F. opening match time fillers against Nakano.

9. Masakatsu Funaki. Going in, I thought Funaki was a lock for the top 5, but even with the addition of a couple good SWS matches against Sano, I'm not really temped to bump Funaki up because he just never excited me. He's way better than Miyato on paper, but Miyato had a great match and a couple of very good ones, granted all on the sturdy back of Tamura, whereas even Funaki's matches with Sano & Shamrock, who both proved extremely capable of standout matches this year, were only marginal recommendations.

Funaki had his own break them down style, and being positioned at the top of the cards, he was able to carry his opponents through it, or just smother and thwart them. Sparring was important to the PWFG wrestlers dojo preparation, and was definitely influential toward Fujiwara & Masami Soronaka (though he didn't see most of them since he lived in Florida & was only in Japan when the events were close) determining the results of the matches in the sense that while they had to keep the fans happy, everyone knew who was really better, and thus should win. My sense is Funaki either thought the matches should be as realistic as possible or really wanted to win at this point, or both, and mostly continued to implement the positional grappling he dominated with in training, rather than somewhat switching into entertainment mode when the bell rang. Funaki arguably had the most charisma of anyone in the shoot game when he wanted to, but increasingly it was instead his calm & confident demeanor that set him apart. He had the best technical and positional understanding of all these guys, and nothing was going to fluster or sidetrack him because technique trumps emotion. While some of his matwork looked like Takada's on the surface, in other words just laying in wait, Funaki actually had a plan and things going on, and was able to implement this trap setting style where he exploited minute advantages and adjusted to stuff the opponent's escapes until he created the opening/forced the mistake, rather than literally doing nothing in hopes that the opponent would eventually bail him out one way or the other as Takada did. Funaki also had tremendous hand speed, but unlike Kakihara, who made a career out of that, was largely reticent to display it in more than brief flashes, being more confident in his ability to dominate on the mat. I respect that Funaki was very much working for everything and out to show that nothing comes easy when the opponent is actually (or at least theoretically) trying to resist, but he was often frustrating because it always felt like, in the best of times, he was good when he should have been great.

10. Yusuke Fuke. I'm tempted to rank Hiromitsu Kanehara here because I was so impressed with what little we were able to see of him, but Fuke's best match was better than Kanehara's lone match. Both were really overachievers, Kanehara because it was his debut & his opponent's debut, and Fuke because even though he was one of the few U.W.F. guys that followed Fujiwara to the Gumi, he was the least experienced of the original four, and just got the scraps filling out the undercard.

Fuke was one of the only workers to participate in an actual shoot, and was even able to demonstrate ideas that were otherwise almost completely absent from the pro wrestling spectrum such as distance control, getting in and out, and checking kicks in some of his works. In some ways his technique was better than even Funaki's, and one could argue that, despite being an undercarder who only had 3 matches under his belt prior to the U.W.F. split, he did the most this year to advance the sport of pro wrestling toward legitimate martial arts. It's unfortunate that he's positioned with guys that never deliver, Bart Vale & Wellington Wilkins Jr., as he's the only one who seems to have the potential as a worker to to fill the hole left by Sano.

1. Volk Han

2. Hiromitsu Kanehara

3. Willie Peeters

4. Billy Scott

5. Herman Renting

1. UWF-I 7/3/91: Kiyoshi Tamura vs. Yoji Anjo

2. PWFG 7/26/91: Minoru Suzuki vs. Naoki Sano

3. UWF-I 8/24/91: Kiyoshi Tamura vs. Yuko Miyato

4. UWF-I 6/6/91: Makoto Ohe vs. Rudy Lovato

5. PWFG 9/28/91: Wayne Shamrock vs. Minoru Suzuki

6. PWFG 3/4/91: Wayne Shamrock vs. Minoru Suzuki

7. UWF-I 10/6/91: Kiyoshi Tamura & Yuko Miyato vs. Tatsuo Nakano & Tom Burton

8. UWF-I 6/6/91: Kiyoshi Tamura vs. Tom Burton

9. UWF-I 11/7/91: Yoji Anjo & Tom Burton vs. Yuko Miyato & Kiyoshi Tamura

10. RINGS 12/7/91: Akira Maeda vs. Volk Han

Top 3 Shoot Wrestling Leagues of 1991 Ranked in quality order

1. UWF-I. While it's not like me to fall on the entertainment side, UWF-I not only had the standout performer in Kiyoshi Tamura, who single-handedly had half the years best matches, but also just had so much more roster depth than the other promotions. Yamazaki & Ohe were always threats to have a good match. Miyato ultimately may have had the best year of his career working with Tamura after looking out of date at the outset. Anjo probably had his best year thusfar as well. Kakihara, Kanehara, & Scott were very exciting, and were only held back a lot more by lack of appearances than lack of experience. I don't like that the promotion is built around Takada, and now Albright, but even though these two only managed a single good match between them, UWF-I was definitely the most likely promotion to have multiple good matches per show.

2. PWFG. As much as I'd like to rank PWFG #1, there's only so much you can do when you basically have 3 workers, two of whom you for some reason refuse to allow to fight one another. Suzuki & Shamrock delivered when they had opponents, and Funaki was the most successful at showing what actual MMA looks like, but once you take Sano out of the equation there's just not a whole lot else going on here. While I think there's a decent chance Fuke could be that 4th guy they truly need, they are unwilling to give him that opportunity, and thus risk this promotion starting to get stale as they have the fewest guys coming up the ranks.

3. RINGS. While RINGS is a distant 3rd in what would be the worst year in the history of the promotion, managing to awkwardly cobble together 4 big shows featuring a broken Maeda & whatever martial artists he could unearth that wanted a paycheck, they have a lot of leeway going forward given they don't really have a set roster yet. RINGS was definitely figuring things out as they went along, and began to find their bearings at the end of the year with the introduction of Han & the Seidokaikan fighters. Given almost all their fighters other than Maeda would qualify as a rookie under one definition or another, they arguably have the most promise going forward as Han, Willie Peeters, Herman Renting, Mitsuya Nagai, Bert Kops Jr., Koichiro Kimura, and others should be better, if not much better at this time next year. They also have the best chance at making the kickboxing aspect work given they have multiple options and less of a stake in the outcome working with karate league rather than just having 1 fighter under contract and trying to find compelling opponents for him that aren't too easy but also don't make him look bad given it's very much to their detriment when Ohe loses.

MB: 1. UWF-I. Although it pains me to admit it as well (I was really hoping to put PWFG in this place) I must agree on this. While the UWFI does seem to be on the most fragile of foundations as the promotion seems to insist on building everything around Takada, there is no question that they have the deepest talent roster of these three promotions, as well as the highest percentage of good matches. Their biggest problem right now is their average event length. With most of their shows only clocking in at the 1-hour mark (when you take away the montages/intros/etc) then Takada’s shenanigans become much more of a nuisance then if they had added another 1-1/2 hours to their format. Instead, they have been tending to rely on tag-team matches to try and cram most of their roster into such a tight time crunch. They have also criminally underused one of their most valuable players in Kazuo Yamazaki, and there doesn’t seem to be any indication that will be changing anytime soon. All said, this feels like the promotion with the most to lose in in the days to come, and it will really depend on how well they can build Albright as a foil to Takada, or if they can come up with any other narratives that don’t involve him.

2. PWFG. I would say that the highest highs of 1991 have been within this promotion, but they weren’t hit with enough frequency to knock the UWFI out of the top spot. They are the closest to what would become actual MMA, but what is hindering them is a serious lack of depth in their roster, especially towards the beginning of the year. Once you got past Funaki/Suzuki/Shamrock, it started to feel like you were fielding applications from the Acme Institute of Unemployed Jobbers. Things started tightening up by the end of the year as Fuke is really starting to become a key player and Duane Koslowski adds a lot of gravitas for the mid-card, but Fujiwara and Vale are problems, as they can only be used in specific situations without dragging the card down, and guys like Wellington Wilkins Jr, are just going to amount to filler any way you cut it. For the long-term health of this promotion they are going to have to find 1-2 more key full-time players, and Fujiwara would have to be willing to phase himself out of an active competitor role, which is something that he may be unwilling to do, and perhaps unable to do, depending on how much his name is needed to sell tickets at this point. It would seem like he is in the best position of the three promotions to get away with a secondary or behind the scenes role, as Funaki, and the rest of the promotion seem to be over with the fans, and he never had the star power of a Maeda to begin with. Fujiwara has the raw talent on board to make his promotion take the top spot next year, but will arguably have the hardest time making that happen, as even one mistake and it could very well be fatal for this outfit.

3. FIGHTING NETWORK RINGS. Of the three promotions that we have covered this year, RINGS is perhaps the most interesting in the sense that they undeniably had the worst year in terms of the actual content that they put forth, but also clearly have the most long-term potential of the three leagues. Despite the uneven quality, there is no question that Maeda has set up a format that is going to provide a lot of elasticity and room for growth. By creating something of a quasi-federation where various countries have their representatives competing at any given time, this could theoretically foster an environment where individual star power will not be as important as your standard pro-wrestling promotion, as one could be pulled more into rooting for a particular country or faction, almost akin to a team-sport or even Olympic dynamic. That’s not to say that they don’t need to build more stars, they do, but with Maeda being able to single handedly sell giant swaths of tickets on his own name, and with the recent arrival of Volk Han, and help from the Sediokaikan gym, it only seems like a matter of time before things will fall into place for Maeda and Co. At the very least, it appears that RINGS is in the best position to find themselves in the days to come, whereas the PWFG and UWFI are much more susceptible of being disrupted in the days to come.