Kakutogi Road: The Chronological History of MMA
Chapter 16: PWFG Battle of the Lions 2 10/17/91 Tokyo Korakuen Hall
By Michael Betz & Mike Lorefice 8/1/20

The ever stalwart PWFG clan has perhaps made the most out of what they've had to work with at this stage of the game, compared to their contemporary rivals. They greet us with a brief montage of Minoru Suzuki training, and working on his heel-hook entries, contrasted by Bart Vale walking around, showing off his patriotic duds, and basically demonstrating to us that this won't just be another case of man against man, but will rather be two rival nations colliding, in what must surely be an apex in the history of Japanese-American relations.

The first match of the evening will be between Takaku Fuke vs Jerry Flynn. When we last saw Fuke he gave us a very solid performance against Wellington Wilkins Jr, and when we last witnessed Flynn he was in a rather pedestrian match against Bart Vale, through no fault of his own, but with Fuke at the helm this bout should be an accurate gauge of how he will fare within this style.

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. There must have been something in the water over in those days, as Fuke, Takahashi, and later Sakuraba, always had insanely proficient single-leg techniques in their arsenals. Both jockey for position, and trade submission attempts, before having to restart on their feet, and once they do, Flynn unleashes a barrage of kicks and palm strikes that are a lot quicker than you would expect from a man of his size. Flynn is looking very solid here so far, and while he didn't look bad against Vale, he was limited on what he could do working with him, while being paired up with someone a lot more fluid like Fuke, he isn't having to scale things back as much.

The rest of the match saw Fuke really earning his pay for the evening, as he took plenty of stiff kicks and palm strikes from Flynn in most of their standing sequences, and the groundwork was nicely paced too. Whenever it hit the mat, 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, as at no point 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. I always saw Fuke as a middling journeyman figure from Pancrase, I had no idea he was basically PWFG's answer to Yoji Anjo, a cardio machine that could be used in a variety of capacities within the card to good effect.

ML: 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

Next up is Ken Shamrock vs Wellington Wilkins Jr. When we last witnessed Shamrock, it was a very solid match where we defeated Minoru Suzuki. With that booking, we can get a glimpse as to what is going to a major hurdle in this style, the limited talent pool. It makes some sense to use Wilkins as Shamrock's next opponent, as they have never fought before, but it also feels like a holding pattern, as the only other members of the promotion that are likely to really give him a worthy battle are Funaki, Suzuki, or possibly Koslowski, all of which he has already faced. If the UWF-I has proved anything, it's difficult to just throw random American pro wrestlers into this style and expect good results, so we are left with a situation where this small roster of talent in the PWFG is likely to have to be constantly mixed and matched in inconsequential ways, unless they manage to pull in some more talent.

Ken has a bored look on his face that would indicate that he would rather be anywhere else right now. Things start off with some light strikes back and forth, until Ken clinched up with Wilkins, paused for a couple of seconds while seemingly whispering something into Wilkins ear, and then suplexed him.

Things get a bit more interesting on the ground, as Wilkins starts to turtle up, and Ken does a creative semi-cartwheel, diving over Wilkins back, looking for a kneebar in the process. Wilkins gets a rope escape, and after the standup is able to get the fight back to the ground via a northern lights suplex, but is forced to escape yet again, when Shamrock sinks in a rear naked choke. After the stand up, Ken starts to up the stiffness quotient, putting a lot more velocity into his palm strikes, which causes Wilkins to respond with a headbutt and some knees. Ken answered with an especially stiff open handed slap to Wilkins' face, causing a knockdown.

A few more short exchanges went down, before Shamrock won via an armbar around the 6 ½ minute mark. One nice sequence within those was when Wilkins was working his way out of a loosely applied guillotine, and was starting to slide out from under Shamrock's left arm/shoulder (while still wrapped around Shamrocks arm), so Ken took the opportunity to completely torque his bodyweight into a palm strike using his free right hand as soon as Wilkins escaped, and scored a knockdown off of it.

Overall, this was a very awkward match that never really found its rhythm, or a consistent tone. Wilkins was striking way too softly, while Shamrock would oscillate between soft/stiff, and seemed unsure of how to work against Wilkins. Shamrock's prior five matches all ranged from good to great, but he was working with seasoned veterans in all of them except amateur prodigy Koslowski, which is probably what is needed to really pull the best out of Ken at this stage.

ML: Shamrock had the wrong attitude here, just seeing an opponent that was beneath him & being unwilling to do anything to raise him up to the level of having a prayer. By being rather indifferent, and somewhat sloppy, either going easy or throwing wild hard shots that either blew Wilkins away or missed, the match never came off as anything beyond a dull enhancement match. This isn't a bad match per se, but there's also really no reason to watch it.

Now we have a battle between Masakatsu Funaki and Kazuo Takahashi that is sure to violate several building ordinances, as the amount of yellow neon sported between the two is clearly a safety hazard. Takahashi doesn't waste anytime firing off an excellent single leg that would be the envy of any current MMA fighter, taking Funaki down, and quickly slaps his way out of Funaki's guard to gain side-control. Takahashi quickly goes for an armbar, but Funaki is way too slick on the ground, easily escaping the attempt 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. He 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, stopping 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 the 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. They stand back up, and this time Takahashi has no slick takedowns for his mentor. Instead he 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 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 against Funaki, but the master has all the answers, and simply gives a hard blow to Takahashi's stomach, forcing his legs to dangle and going 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.

ML: Unlike Shamrock, Funaki found the challege & crafted 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. ***

Thankfully, we just received a rush of adrenaline because we are going to need it to face what will surely be our collective doom, as Fujiwara faces Mark Rush. We were all the better for Fujiwara's absence last month, but surely it was too much to hope that he would lose his way within the building a la Spinal Tap. As this fight starts, I am beginning to realize, that I can't recall Fujiwara ever looking young. Even in 1985, it looked like he was going on 80, but to his credit he is still going strong as a freelance wrestler in 2020, outlasting almost all of his contemporaries.

The fight starts off with a brief tie up, before Rush shoots in and takes Fujiwara down, and then proceeds to execute the worlds slowest ankle lock entry. This leads the two to play footsie for a while, before Fujiwara reclaims superior position, and secures a keylock, which prompts a rope escape. After the standup, Rush takes Fujiwara right back down and fumbles for a toe-hold when two things become readily apparent, the first is that Rush has some legit amateur wrestling experience, and the 2nd is that Fujiwara could easily smoke cigarettes in between submission attempts from Rush.

The next 8 minutes of the fight was really a battle of takedowns, as Rush pitted his amateur wrestling against Fujiwara's judo arsenal, and to Fujiwara's credit, he seemed to take this seriously and was on his best behavior, until just past the 10 minute mark where he had to throw a couple of his awful comic headbutts, which Rush did his best to sell. The rest of the match didn't fare much better, and it finally ended just past the 17 minute mark with an ankle lock from Fujiwara. This would have been passable had it clocked in around 5-6 mins, and Fujiwara kept it straight. As it stands, this match only served to be a way for Fujiwara to try and show off his judo, and that could have been accomplished with a much quicker match. All this served to do was kill the momentum of the show, and make Rush look bad.

ML: Shamrock & Funaki each doing 6 minute matches left Fujiwara to eat a lot of time. Typically, he did it in the least intense fashion, getting outwrestled then making fun of Rush when he tried for a submission hold. In Fujiwara's defense, Rush only possessed the most rudimentary knowledge of submissions, and would just kind of make things up, twisting Fujiwara's ankle without isolating it or controlling Fujiwara's body in any way, which I suppose deserves Fujiwara putting his hand to his ear to hold his head up while he rested in this nonsense. The match was dated & lazy, with Rush generally doing little to actually control Fujiwara on the mat, but Fujiwara just laying there passively anyway. The finish was the only time either seemed threatened, but that was overdramatized with a lot of bluster from Rush while staying in the hold too long. This match was just a bunch of air, between being so long & so laid back, I'd rate this as one of the worst worked shoots of the year.

Now it's up to the clash between East and West to save us, so here's hoping that Bart Vale said his prayers and took his vitamins before coming out here, brother. Right away, Vale is moving faster than usual, and seems to be giving his best effort. He tries to cut the ring off from Suzuki by working his side stance, and trying to box Minoru into the corner with some sidekicks. Suzuki gets wise, and shoots his way out of the corner, but is stopped by Vale's sprawl. Vale wasn't able to capitalize though, and spent his mat time hanging on for dear life against Suzuki, though he did wind up warding off a bully choke and an armbar.

The rest of the match was rather surprising, as outside of a few strikes, Vale was given very little offense by Suzuki. The match was mostly Vale defending Suzuki's offense, outside of getting a few strikes in, there wasn't much that he was able to do. The match ended with a weird submission that was a cross between a half nelson, and a neck-crank.

ML: The move toward realism seemed to help Vale the most, as he did a better job of closing the distance aggressively and landing quicker, more plausible blows that would put Suzuki on the defensive without exposing himself horrible, thus making it more difficult for Suzuki to just grab him & get it to the ground. While Vale was able to back Suzuki with front kicks, and through his generally aggressive barrage, he didn't do a good job of then getting out of the pocket when his surge was finished, so he did wind up spending a lot of time on his back. Vale's ground game could still use a lot of work, and these limitations hampered Suzuki because Vale wasn't giving a ton of openings either trying to rest or survive, but I actually liked the first half of the match, and the last minute or so. The weak portion was almost all control with neither seeming to really be setting anything up, especially the lengthy front facelock by Vale. Overall though, this was way better than any of Vale's other matches, and the first time I mostly enjoyed his striking.

This wasn't terrible but was by no means great either. To his credit, Vale gave an honest effort here, but, as usual, his problem is that he is just way too slow when put with small opponents. He works okay when put with other large/slow men, but there are few, and it's hard to carry him to a good match. He is getting better at this compared to his rookie days, though. (If anyone wants to see a terrible match, they need look no further than his match against Akira Maeda at the 2-27-89 Newborn UWF event).

Conclusion: Fuke/Flynn and Funaki/Takahashi were worth the price of admission alone, but in the end, things were seriously hampered by the Fujiwara match. The Shamrock and Suzuki matches, while not great, were short enough that they didn't drag things down too much, but 17 minutes of Fujiwara/Rush was painful.

ML: What stands out about the show is the concerted attempt made by everyone to step up the realism. While some had more success at that than others, not surprisingly Funaki & Fuke, who are among the most realistic to begin with, and surprisingly Vale, who needed a more urgent situation to get out of his safe movie striking shell, the cooperation was almost across the board much less obvious than in other leagues or on previous PWFG shows. This isn't my favorite PWFG show by any means, but given none of these matches were particularly competitive or compelling on paper, it's a great sign that they finally managed to have two good matches, and hard to argue against the show overacheiving considerably.

*In Other News*

Akira Maeda has managed to snag a lucrative job moonlighting as a sports reporter for the WOWWOW channel (similar to HBO in the states). He was even able to interview both Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield for Japanese television.

The terrible match between Nobuhiko Takada and Bob Backlund on 9-26-91 is rumored to have been due to Backlunds unwillingness to lose to a submission (presumably seen as an affront to his reputation), thus the idea for him to lose quickly to a kick (acting like it was a low-blow) was the solution. It's safe to say that this idea backfired as it almost caused a riot that Kazuo Yamazaki had to go out and quell. They are scheduled for a rematch on 11-7-91.

It would seem that the UWF-I and PWFG are in for some stiff competition from the rival FMW promotion, as they recently (10-14-91) almost packed 4,000 people into the Fukuoka Hakata Starlanes, which is considerably more than either of those groups have been able to do so far.

Trevor Berbick is rumored to be scheduled to fight Nobuhiko Takada for the UWF-I's year-end show, scheduled for 12-22-91. Berbick is a Jamaican-Canadian boxer, who was the last boxer to face Muhammad Ali, defeating him in 1981. He went on to win the WBC heavyweight title in 1986, only to lose it to Mike Tyson in his first defense.

Akira Maeda has been rumored to be scouring the former Soviet Union looking for solid samboists and judokas to start a Russian confederation within his RINGS promotion.