[1994-05-06-UWFi] Kiyoshi Tamura vs Naoki Sano

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

One of my favorite discoveries going through these yearbooks has been the quiet career full of great matches from Naoki Sano. In this case though, Tamura is the star. I love the details, like raising his foot when Sano attempts a single leg to counter a waistlock. He seems to have an eventual counter for most things Sano throws at him. At one point, he seems to kick Sano a little low by mistake, but they shake hands and move on, which is a cool moment. Later in the match, you start seeing some of Sano's counters, like using jumping knees with his free leg to counter Tamura's attempted single leg takedown. That Tamura can work a Michaels-style kip up into this style of match makes him awesome. Sano locks in a Boston Crab to a big pop, but can't hold it for very long. Lots of awesome exchanges make this a really great match.

[Kevin Ridge]

All the way to May before getting one of these kinds of matches. I do like Sano though. It’s very quiet but I do hear the crowd a bit at times. Sano looks to have got kicked really low but no point deduction seen but I guess that’s not part of the scoring. Duck and kip up was really cool. Sano busts out a Boston Crab in this setting and hits a German suplex too. This ended up being quite good and I’m not a fan of shoot wrestling. Had enough to keep me watching through out.

[Exposer]

Once this got going, it got really good. Tamura doing a kip up in the middle of a shootstyle match is tremendous. The exchanges in this were in a way fascinating to me. Simply because the detail is so important in these types of matches. I enjoyed the pop Sano got when he turned Tamura over for the Boston Crab. The finish was pretty great too. I was worried that I would be disappointed at the start but this came alive quick. Great match.

[soup23]

Very good shoot style match, I always have a hard time describing these matches because of the jockeying for position but I do think in many ways it is a style that is pretty easy to see what is a good representation and bad representation and this clearly aired on the side of good.

[Cross Face Chicken Wing]

The start of this match was a snoozefest. It seemed like they were just sitting in holds for the hell of it. Once things got going, though, it really got going. Perhaps the blahness early was to make the stuff at the end seem even better.

[PeteF3]

Pretty good but seemingly inconsequential shoot match.

[Zenjo]

This had its moments, and there was certainly potential for an excellent bout between these two. They weren't going full out here though. With this level of pacing they'd have needed 5m longer to make something of it.

[superkix]

I liked this a lot. I dig the jockeying for position, considering the speed with which both guys work. Everything is just so fluid. I thought Tamura did a really good job of establishing Sano as a threat on the ground. But Tamura's slippery. Loved Tamura ducking the kick and kipping back up to his feet. Sano's able to hit the German suplex but it spells his demise, as Tamura grabs onto the double wristlock and never lets go, which leads to a dramatic finish. Great stuff.