[2000-01-30-BattlARTS] Naoki Sano vs Minoru Tanaka

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

 

[Superstar Sleeze]

Independent Junior Heavyweight Champion Naoki Sano vs Minoru Tanaka

Battlarts 01/30/2000

Almost ten years to the day of this match, Naoki Sano put on his most heralded performance against Jushin Liger for the IWGP Junior Heavyweight match. On this night, Sano looked like he was moving in slow-motion and just plain old. Minoru Tanaka did the best he possibly could, selling all of Sano's holds like he was in agonizing torture, but he could not carry this match far past average. I read another review of this from Puroresu.TV promoting this as a slow matwork masterpiece. I want to clarify it is not the pace of the match that bothered me it was the fact that Sano would take down or transition in and out of holds like a snail. There was no struggle. It was just a slow-motion exhibition of catch wrestling on the mat. Then you add the first time Sano goes for the leg lace he just kind of holds MInoru foot and he just starts screaming in pain. It would be great selling if he did not look like a total tool because of Sano was applying literally zero torque or pressure. When Sano lazily applies a rear naked choke, Minoru sells like he is about to pass out and just makes it to the ropes. Everytime, Sano would even touch Minoru's leg or foot, he would immediately scramble for the ropes and scream. There was a clear inequality in effort levels throughout the match. Eventually, they drop the shoot-style stuff and just go full bore into pro wrestling, Sano tombstones Minoru and missile dropkick, but gets kicked in gut on a plancha attempt that did not look too good. Minoru hits his own missile dropkick and applies the cross-armbreaker, but Sano makes the ropes. Minoru grabs the heel hook, but Sano touches Minoru's foot, which sends flying out of the ring. Minoru is sure as hell selling that leg. Sano follows him out with a suicide dive in his best spot. They tease the countout finish with Minoru making it in at 19, which I thought was the best part of the match. Sano hits a Tiger Suplex, but Minoru is too close to the ropes. Minoru goes for his bread and butter again, but Sano makes the ropes. They trade nice head kicks before Minoru lands a Dragon Suplex for 2, but the immediate cross-armbreaker gets a submission and the Independent Junior Heavyweight Championship. I had high hopes for this shoot-style affiar, but Sano just did not show up. I thought Minoru did the best he could given what was dealt to him. Very disappointing match **3/4

[Graham Crackers]

I thought this was a pretty good juniors match. Cool athleticism and a good pace without any egregious no-selling. I think the length works in this match's favor. This is definitely preferable to the 30 minute junior singles matches that dominated the latter portion of the decade and make for one of the biggest flaws in Minoru's body of work. It's only the third best nominated match of the first month of the decade so if it does make my top 100 it probably isn't getting out of the 90s.

[dawho5]

This plays out like an exhibition to me. It gets across that Minoru has a great armbar for sure. Also, and this is the more definite thing it gets across, Naoki Sano knows lots of submissions and wrestling moves. He knows all about how to properly execute them and they all look real spiffy and nice. What he seems to have missed is allowing for a sense of struggle and selling the leg late in the match. Honestly, I don't understand how this match made the best of 2000. Was it that bad a year?

[Ditch]

2000 had really, really high highs... and then the quality sorta goes off a cliff. Uneven year, yet it could produce like 5 of the top 25.

[Wahoos Leg]

Probably a mistake to read some of the comments here before I watched this match, but I entered with decidedly low expectations and was still underwhelmed.

 

Felt like a sparring session. No way this makes the ballot.

[Jetlag]

I've grown a strong dislike for Minoru Tanaka over time, but Sano easily drags him to a perfectly good junior style match here. This wasn't PWFG Sano or potatoe machine NOAH Sano, this was Sano as a maestro carrying a young all flash-no substance flier to his career highlight. Him constantly twisting at limbs and reversing Tanaka's submission attempts was a pretty spectacular show, and Tanaka's flashy moves are timed perfectly. Tanaka has flashy submissions and kicks and really nothing else between the flashyness, so this was pretty much the ideal match to make him look like a killer.

[soup23]

This match feels like the personal hell of JerryvonKramer. Perhaps 3:00 AM wasn’t the best time to watch this but I struggled with good parts of it. For starters, I thought the selling of Tanaka was pretty inconsistent. I actually thought Sano outworked him pretty easily throughout this match as judged by his selling of the leg in the second half of the match compared to Tanaka in the first half. The countout tease spot is something I am so conditioned with in current day New Japan but it worked here and wasn’t a cliché. Finish is pretty dramatic with a lot of throws and big submission attempts. I will give Korakuen kudos as they stayed with the match and got into it big time at the end. Sano is eventually able to win with an armbar which wasn’t teased much throughout the match. A good match overall I suppose but one that barely reaches that barometer for me and I was hoping for much more. ***

[Loss]

This was a tough match to watch. It was something worse than bad: it was boring. Way too long for the style in which it was worked and not really true enough to the house style for my tastes. Again, this feels way more New Japan than BattlARTS, and I really hope this and the match that preceded it are outliers instead of the beginning of a trend. This is solid technical wrestling I guess, but it's not overly focused or exciting and there's no overarching hook to keep things interesting. You could almost be tricked into thinking this was a great match based on the admirable job they do in building drama in the last few minutes, but this isn't a match that aired clipped down on New Japan TV, yet it seems like it was worked to be.

[concrete1992]

Will comment on the match but the comments leading up to this reminded me that there was a Best of Japan 2000s project. What a time. Bless Ditch.

 

Hope to come back to this with actual thoughts now so this post isn't detrimental to discussion.

[GOTNW]

Very interesting match, particularly because the weird shooty junior style it's worked in doesn't exist anymore. The first half of so had the kind of unique matwork you could only see in Battlarts, where they'd work the counters and the flow of it like it was a lucha match but use holds that were either straight out of RINGS or a 1978 Fujinami match. That portion of the match was a little disappointing, since there wasn't really much struggle out urgence in it. A lot of ideas of used here could've turned out great, but it did feel a little exhibitiony. Maybe it's the fact that the 2/3 falls lucha structure allowed something like Atlantis-Panther to essentially work a 20 minute match where holds don't lose meaning because there's never a portion of the match in where they're doing matwork that couldn't lead to a finish, maybe it's that some of the shooty holds here weren't fit for this type of use. Maybe they could've just executed it better. As it was I don't think it's much different than the million other mmatches where the opening is slower and means less and then the second half is bigger and more exciting, and the matwork at least kept my attention. They did work an exciting fiishing stretch-getting the most out of simple cradles, building up Tanaka's Armbar and milking every properly locked in hold as much as they could without slowing the match down and keeping the pace they established. ***1/4

[ohtani's jacket]

This feels like it's being unfairly maligned. It was a perfectly fine juniors match. Sano was in full on New Japan junior mode and didn't attempt much in the way of shoot style matwork. In fact, most of the holds he used looked like traditional New Japan holds. I didn't have an issue with the pacing and can't understand the criticisms about the lack of struggle. It was competitive and in no way an exhibition. Tanaka, who certainly can be annoying, was good in his role working from underneath, and if you like Sano, as many people do, I would think this was required viewing as he looked like he was still in his prime. Not a match that reached any great heights but solid the whole way through and better than Ikeda vs. Nigai, I thought.

[superkix]

This was probably the best match on the 1/30 BattlARTS show, with a simple structure, good performance from Sano working on top with his bullying lucha-esque matwork, and Minoru working underneath, looking for the armbar throughout. I liked the idea of Minoru’s ankle being an exposed weakness, even when he’s trying to get something going on the ground, and I thought his selling, for the most part, was good. Him hobbling out of the ring at one point was a nice touch. Sano did a good job of selling the armbar as his biggest threat and Minoru was able to pull off a number of takedowns, including a cool rolling armbar counter to the lariat. I always like when the more dominant, sure-footed guy has to take a walk around the ring to re-think his life. The hybrid junior-ness of the match was hit or miss with some of the back-and-forth exchanges, especially when Minoru’s on offense, but we get some neat suplexes and the armbar paying off for Minoru in the end.

[Edwin]

This was not a shoot style Battlarts match. This was a standard Independent Jr. Heavyweight title match, so if you were expecting this to be otherwise, then you were going to get letdown.

 

This was more of a straight forward Jr.'s match, than anything else. Thought the finishing stretch was pretty good. They got the crowd invested, so you have to give them that. Sano's desperation on the cradles leading to the near falls, him countering Minoru's kneebar with a leglock of his own, his rolling sole butt kick, etc. all looked fantastic.

 

I agree with ohtani's jacket, the criticism on this is a bit harsh as it's not necessarily as bad as it's made out to be here.

 

***

 

Also I have no idea what the commentators were rambling about, but they name dropped WWF, Dean Malenko, Eddie Guerrero, Chyna and the WWF Intercontinental title...

[Makai Club #1]

Kinda long but I dug it for the most part. The battle at the final few minutes was great. The striking and mat work was good, Sano still had some great strikes and Tanaka brought the determination and speed to the mix. ***1/4