The UWF-I might not have released an official anti-Bosch mission statement, "Takada counts, and nobody else counts", but that was certainly their philosophy. Though building a shoot promotion around a performer who lacks even the most basic understanding of how to control and maneuver on the mat wasn't quite as dubious an endeavor in a world that had, for the most part, yet to be introduced to Royce Gracie, and accepted monks leaping 20 feet in the air as a normal part of elite hand to hand combat, it still presented the major problem of having to concoct opponents for Takada while providing busy work for the rest of the roster, other than Gary Albright, who would run through the opposition far more easily than Takada, and even temporarily dethroned him in order to give the promotion a single rematch that made actual sense.

Shockingly, the amount of effort put into matches that literally didn't matter to anyone but the fans was nothing short of outstanding. Outside of Tatsuo Nakano, who tended to be a bit sluggish but still managed to be involved in the best tag match, literally every native on the roster put the truly lackluster efforts of Takada to shame, and overall, as with RINGS, the promotion was worlds better than in their fledgling 1991 efforts. To his credit, Takada did utilize the never rattled calm, controlling, and commanding persona almost to the perfection of Masakatsu Funaki, the crucial difference being that Funaki consistently made the proper technical maneuvers to legitimately back it up, whereas Takada was looser than Gary Albright's singlet on a newborn.

Luckily, '90's puroresu was set up for the undercards to deliver, not built around bloated and padded main events that were supposed to be epic by the sole virtue of being 30+ minutes, even though they mostly just contained more or less the same 5 minutes of actual action once you suffered through all the stalling. In spite of UWF-I's unwillingness to even contemplate utilizing their actual skilled natives on the marquee, the UWF-I had the deepest talent roster of the 3 shoot promotions from a working standpoint by such a wide margin that they not only dominated the top 10 matches and workers, but at least during the first half of the year, the third best match on their show was often better than anything RINGS or especially PWFG had to offer because they always had a number of good workers going up against good workers, rather than Volk Han trying to work miracles with a greenhorn or Minoru Suzuki facing the same opponent, yet again. It's crazy that Masahito Kakihara isn't even in consideration for a spot among the top 5 workers in the promotion given he is not only one of the most exciting performers in shoot style, but he certainly became one of the 10 best workers in the genre on talent, and had a much better year than the couple PWFG guys that you'd rank ahead of him if you were simply listing the most skilled fighters without considering what they actually produced over the course of the year.

The roster was greatly expanded in 1992, for better and for worse. The first half of 1992 was truly outstanding for UWF-I, in good part because the opening match rookie battles between Hiromitsu Kanehara and Masakazu Maeda were the best series of opening matches we've ever seen in pro wrestling. The truly extraordinary efforts of Kanehara & Maeda were groundbreaking examples of going all out each and every second the way one must in a real fight, doing everything they could to momentarily gain a slight edge, which the opponent would then counteract with his next movement. Outside of the opening match, where we certainly weren't complaining when Kanehara vs. Maeda was producing a series of the best, most urgent and realistic matches we've seen in the genre, they did a pretty good job of trying to keep the matchups fresh. Unfortunately, that not only kept the talented fighters apart, but also steered them further and further from delivering the native vs. native focus that had separated the 1st two incarnations of the U.W.F. from what All Japan & New Japan were doing in the 1980's.

Kiyoshi Tamura was ultimately still the man, finding new ways to display his an amazing brand of speed and creativity within a semi believable context. While many of their workers were ultimately better in 1992 than they were in 1991, Tamura was arguably the only major performer that had an even stronger second half of the year than first (Kakihara was likely another), with great matches against Yoji Anjo & Kazuo Yamazaki. Though his improvement was steady, much of the reason he stood out more in the second half had to do with terrible booking that, after a standout match against Miyato on the first show, saw him stranded in meaningless tags and/or anchored to green gaijins. However, with the uncoordinated oaf Yoshihiro Takayama replacing Maeda in the endless rookie match, and way too many native vs. gaijin matches otherwise, the overall quality of the cards fell way off in the second half of the year to the point that 18 of the 27 recommended matches took place before July. Still, this was overall an excellent year for the promotion, almost amazing by todays dubious construct where the main event is practically the only thing that "matters" given the combined output of the two top stars was a single good match from Albright by virtue of the wizardry of Yamazaki & Tamura, an embarrassment even more staggering when you consider that broken down legends Nick Bockwinkel, 58, and Billy Robinson, 54, managed to come out of retirement for one night and have a good match, basically without even notice or preparation.

MB: The story of the UWF-I in 1992 is yet another ribald yarn of taking two steps forward, only to turn around and take three more back. There is no doubt that the most spectacular moments from 1992 came from this outfit, which was nothing short of a miracle, considering they seemed intent on doing everything they could to squander their massive talent advantages by virtue of insisting that Takada was more suitable to be in the pantheon of Greek gods rather than fledging puroresu stars. This outfit gave us so many awesome moments, almost in spite of the many hurdles that Booker Miyato and Anjo-San put forth. From a historical perspective, it was fascinating to watch this year's progression between the three shoot-style companies as we saw that Akira Maeda was a much wiser man than any of us probably gave him credit for. While he severely lacked any semblance of homegrown talent, he was shrewd, and was able to maximize his various foreign partnerships, and was even willing to check his ego at the door when it was good for business, whereas the UWF-I was never able to come anywhere close to fully maximizing their huge talent advantages. I don’t want to sound overly negative, however. Even with their faults, they gave us some fantastic action, a lot of which still holds up well today. In fact, the series of matches between Hiromitsu Kanehara and Masakazu Maeda are nothing short of fantastic, with their 3-17-92 outing being of such an elite status that almost nothing has even come close to replicating that even to this very day. Also, 1992 saw the UWF-I largely move away from completely relying on Tennessee stumblebums for their foreign talent, with an impressive coup of acquiring a legitimate array of Americans with some seriously impressive wrestling bona fides. Dennis Koslowski, Dan Severn, Steve Day, and Gene Lydick were all some very impressive additions to the roster, despite their relative inexperience with submissions or the mechanics of pro wrestling.

The UWF-I also did well by setting the correct tone for their shows by having footfighiting phenom Makato Ohe open up their cards. While it would have been nice to see a few more additions to their kickboxing roster, Ohe always delivered a great performance, win or lose, and could often be counted to have one of the best matches of the night. It was also great seeing catch wrestling’s equivalent of Mount Rushmore get behind this outfit, with Lou Thesz, Danny Hodge, and Billy Robinson all acting as brand ambassadors. Granted, these promotional efforts were simply smoke and mirrors from the UWF-I, as from their standpoint, it was an easy way to capitalize on each of their considerable legacies. But despite that, you always get a sense of legitimacy with the endorsement from men like these. One must assume that they all longed to see pro wrestling take a legit turn into the realms of shooting, or at least being taken seriously, and since MMA only barely existed at this point, this was the closest thing that they knew of that they could throw their hat into. Overall, we saw both the best and worst moments of 1992 from this group, and in a way that isn’t a bad legacy, because win or fail, they always went big and made an impression. It will be interesting to see how things take shape as we go into 1993 since Fujiwara will be largely out of the picture for the first six months, and then the Pancrase and the UFC upping the overall global awareness of true shootfighting in the latter part of 1993.

1/9/92: Hiromitsu Kanehara vs. Masakazu Maeda 15:00. These two stole the show a couple of weeks prior, and while I’m surprised they would go back to the well so quickly, I won’t complain as any day Kanehara is in action is a good one, indeed. They don’t waste any time, and other Maeda is looking a lot more confident this time out, as he immediately goes guns blazing towards Kanehara with a litany of palm-strikes, but is taken down quickly when he misses a Ushiro-Tobi-Mawashi-Geri (reverse jumping roundhouse kick). Maeda was able to quickly get out of Kanehara’s mount, and ended the rapid sequence with a soccer kick to Kanehara’s back. We aren’t even a min into the match, and this is looking good, so far. Maeda continues to press the action with a variety of strikes that Kanehara is able to parry before closing the distance and executing a tasty Ippon-Seoi Nage (one arm throw). Kanehara looks for a quick Kimura, but other Maeda does a good job of scrambling, and his constant movement stifles Kanehara’s submission attempts, which causes Kanehara to simply stand back up, and give several soccer kicks of his own. What followed was nothing short of excellent, as there was a total non-stop flow between two men that, outside of a few questionable suplexes and a couple of Boston crab attempts from Kanehara, never felt hokey. It also helped that other Maeda exuded a lot more confidence this time around, and while you can tell that Kanehara is the better athlete, unlike their first bout where there were sequences that felt like Kanehara was just letting Maeda do what he wanted, everything here felt organic and earned. There was one great spot where Kanehara was on his back, reaping the knee of other Maeda, looking for a leg-attack, in which Maeda countered by twisting around on one leg while stomping the body and face of Kanehara with the other. This sequence, along with others in this match, started to show an evolution in pro-wrestling logic that had rarely been seen up to this point, where a wrestler had to find creative solutions to a submission as opposed to simply crying and screaming until he inched closer and closer to the ropes, looking for an escape. Speaking of which, there was a great moment in this match where Kanehara had other Maeda in an armbar, and as soon as he arched his back to put pressure on the elbow-joint, Maeda shrieked in pain, and immediately exploded towards the ropes, in what came across as a realistic approach to being put in this predicament, as opposed to the usual contrived theatrics. The fight ends in a 15min draw, and this was a great way to start the year. I suspect that this will wind up being in the 1992 year end highlight reel, and if they can manage to keep Kanehara, and give him a proper spot as a main player, then that coupled with Tamura, could be enough to push them over the top into the preeminent shoot-style promotion going forward.

ML: I can't in good conscience call this a rookie match given it's more evolved than at least 95% of the matches we saw in '91. Maeda made incredible strides in just a few weeks, now fighting with the confidence of a seasoned performer. That's really the difference here, as Maeda can be aggressive, taking it to Kanehara in standup where he has the advantage because he now has the belief to let it rip. While Kanehara is still the superior performer, the gap has lessened enough that they can do an organic, back & forth counter laden bout where Maeda has the advantage in standup & Kanehara has the advantage on the ground, but from the viewer's perspective, it doesn't matter where they are because the quality is very high regardless. The matwork was better in the 1st match because it was more focused on Kanehara working his magic, and thus had some more evolved transitions, but the standup was 10 times better here, with some impressive flurries in the later stages, mostly by Maeda. While an incredible match for fighters a few weeks into their career, this in no way hinted at the amazing matches we'd see between these two over the next 4 months. The chain grappling was nice, but rather than transitioning between breakneck paced standup, it largely stayed in that domain, and never felt incredibly urgent or desperate the way their great matches would. ***1/2

1/9/92: Kiyoshi Tamura vs. Yuko Miyato 8:11. Both men brought a great explosive energy to the ring. Right off the bat, Tamura charges in with a high kick, and a relentless palm-strike assault, but Miyato stands his ground and fires back with several stiff slaps of his own, before downing Tamura with a spinning back kick to the stomach. So far this is very intense, and believable. Tamura gets back up, and Miyato tries to clinch with him while throwing some knees, but Tamura slickly switches behind him, and nails a standing rear naked choke followed by a takedown. Yuko spent a while deflecting the choke from being fully sunken in before being able to pry out enough to attempt a straight-armbar against Tamura, who countered with a beautiful cartwheel, and right back into a rear naked choke. However, Tamura made the same mistake that many BJJ white-belts do when he crossed his feet while attempting the choke, which allowed Miyato to attack one of his ankles. They are now both back on their feet, and Tamura quickly goes for a wrist tie-up with Miyato, and after he gets it, starts to shift his bodyweight side to side, in something similar to a feint, as if he is weighing his next move, when suddenly Miyato explodes into the finest fireman’s takedown we’ve yet seen.  Miyato then gives us some interesting ne-waza when he controls Tamura’s head with a modified leg-scissor while fishing for a Kimura. Once he gets the Kimura, he quickly forgoes the head control and explodes into the submission, causing an instant rope-escape and a cry of anguish from Tamura. The rest of this bout was total fire, as it saw Tamura dwarfed on the scoreboard by Miyato, as his occasional submission was worth a lot less than Miyato’s knockdowns. Eventually, Tamura was able to get Miyato in the center of the ring and secure an ankle-lock for the victory. This was another excellent match, and it really has me rethinking my opinion of Miyato. Before this, I kind of just looked at him as an unassuming, and middling figure that could be good, but was too tethered to the old UWF ways to be of much interest, but he proved me wrong here, as a motivated Miyato is capable of a top-tier performance, and really shined here tonight.

ML: The much-anticipated rematch of the 2nd best UWF-I match of '91 was total fire, as these two just blitzed each other from start to finish. One of the great things about Tamura is he's able to up the speed, pace, and intensity in a manner that is not only believable, but based on the urgency that's so lacking in ordinary pro wrestling, where fighters are more concerned with playing to the crowd & posing, just stalling at every opportunity when the opponent is down so they have to do less. His pythonesque execution of submissions in this match is as impressive an example of exploding into submissions as I have ever seen. You first notice the speed in which he's moving to secure the holds, but what's most impressive is that his movement to change the position until the opponent's body is jerked into the prone spot corresponds almost equally with him gaining more and more leeway by coiling tighter and tighter around Miyato. It's never just a takedown or a sweep, it's always at the same time a tighter and tighter squeeze until the hold is in so deep in all areas by the time they've settled that the opponent would be done before they knew what hit them if it were a shoot. I really believed in the early near finishes because they were working at the rate that others can only approach when they kick it into high gear for the last minute or so. There was a great early sequence where Miyato countered into a hammerlock when Tamura was trying to pull him back into the center to reapply the rear naked choke, but Tamura did one of his crazy one-armed headstands to pivot into a position where he could retake Miyato's neck. Another great sequence saw Miyato do a hip toss into an armbar, but Tamura countered with a backwards roll into an Achilles' tendon hold. The whole match was back & forth like this, with Tamura ultimately getting the better of the grappling, but Miyato being scrappy and having fast flurries of strikes. The only downside is it was even shorter than their 1st match, which was perhaps the shortest match I've ever rated great. I'm glad they never slowed down, the whole match had the feel of a finishing sequence because of that, and it was really brilliant, though their previous match was perhaps a little better because it was longer, or I was slightly disappointed that they ran through the points so quickly it was obviously not going to last much longer. Regardless though, this was one of the most amazing examples of why an all out short match is far more riveting than a stalling "epic", and it will surely wind up being one of the top matches of '92. ****1/4

2/15/92: Hiromitsu Kanehara vs. Masakazu Maeda 15:00. Normally, I would be prone to gripe about the same match three times in a row, but these two just keep getting better. If they can keep improving their match, I would be fine with them opening as many events as they please. Things start off with Kanehara taking the initiative as he bull rushes Maeda with a litany of stiff palm strikes, but after being initially taken off-guard, Maeda was able to regain his composure and return a volley of his own. Kanehara started to find himself on the losing end of this slap-fest, so he wisely opted to shoot in with an explosive double-leg, however Maeda is continuing to increase his skills from match to match, and was able to effortlessly switch from standing firepower to an effective sprawl. Kanehara is simply too crafty with his grappling however, and was able to negate the sprawl by continually “turning the corner” until he was at an angle where he could forgo the takedown altogether, and shift to attacking the leg of Maeda. He used this leg threat just long enough to create an opening to move to side mount, all the while subtly throwing in strikes on his grounded opponent so he could continue to move and tweak his positioning. So far this is light years ahead of what anyone in the game has produced outside of Tamura/Funaki/Han, which is amazing considering these two are “rookies” and this is only their thirst match. Kanehara squandered his superior position with a failed armbar, which allowed Maeda to get up and start soccer kicking at will. Kanehara was able to fight his way back up and get the action back down to the ground, but not before taking another barrage of palm-strikes for his trouble. The next couple of minutes saw the two go back and forth on the mat, exchanging positions and submission attempts, but unlike most matches up to this point, or even a lot of future Pancrase matches for that matter, they would be willing to strike each other on the ground in an effort to create an opening for an attack. We have seen a little bit of this so far, but not in such a fluid and sustained way from both competitors, so this really gets a nod for being far ahead of the curve. Even the old and tired Boston crab got a breath of new life here, as there was one sequence where Maeda was going for the single-leg variation, and unlike every other pro wrestler in history, Kanehara was actually not cooperating with this, so Maeda started frantically kicking Kanehara in the back to try and force a way for him to continue to finish the maneuver. It didn’t wind up succeeding, but was brilliant all the same. The next 10 minutes wound up being total lava, as they went to a 15 minute draw with a non-stop barrage of strikes, positions changes, and submission attempts that were traded between both men, with absolutely no let-up or dead space in-between. This might be one of my favorite matches so far, and will surely go down as one of the best matches of '92, and even if the rest of this card winds up being hot garbage, it won’t really matter as this was worth the price of admission all on its own. ****3/4

ML: Kanehara arrived as one of the top 5 worked shooters in the world in this truly revolutionary bout! This was the first UWF-I match that came out of the gate looking like a shoot, and somehow it never really stopped, because they never stopped going full force, even for a second. This seemed a truly amazing test of stamina at the time even if it were simply a 5 minute match, and they certainly went the whole 15 giving all they had and then some, but honestly, while it still looks nothing like basically any pro wrestling match you'll see today, it essentially looks like every MMA match outside of the useless lardass division where they more or less either nearly die over the course of 15 minutes of standing around doing nothing or one fighter collapses from exhaustion the first time a punch actually connects. That is not a knock on Kanehara & Maeda by any means, but simply to point out that, arguably before anyone else, Kanehara realized that what separated real fighting from show fighting was that both fighters were always trying to attack and defend themselves at all times. This was one of the most intense worked matches you'll ever see! The speed and aggression were just off the charts. That was absolutely the difference here, and totally the key to their success. They were throwing really fast open hands, and scrambling hard and fast on the canvas. There was simply no sense of cooperation at all, anywhere. Everything one fighter did, the other fighter fought against, as if for their life. If every worked match looked like this, there almost would have been no need for actual MMA. While this doesn't have the I need to rewind this awe factor of Tamura's works, it was the most relentlessly aggressive fight we've seen until this point in time. These guys were pretty nasty too, it always felt like they were trying to hurt each other because that's how you open win through strikes or open things up on the mat, and there were some particularly nasty shots to the ribs, and soccer ball kicks. Maeda was dead by the end from going so hard for so long. A classic! ****3/4

2/15/92: Kiyoshi Tamura & Yuko Miyato vs. Tatsuo Nakano & Mark Silver 18:23. The fierce challengers from last month, Tamura and Miyato, will now be teaming up. Miyato and Nakano start first, and Miyato opens fire with some crisp kickboxing, but is completely overpowered in the clinch, and just winds up on the ground where Nakano can put all his weight on him. For whatever reason, Nakano just decides not to bother with it, and tags in Silver, who is able to move a lot quicker than his size would seem to suggest. After a brief back and forth, Miyato tags in Tamura, who takes a minute or so to feel out his opponent, before taking it to the canvas and giving us our first memorable moment when Silver tried a primitive toe-hold attack while being seated behind Tamura’s back, but found himself quickly countered with a slick armbar entry. Tamura and Silver continue for a couple more minutes, and Silver is moving well for a rookie. At this stage, he is showing some decent wrestling and kicking skills, placing him above Burton and Boss, but beneath Scott, so with some more refinement, I could see him being a solid addition to the roster. Silver tags Nakano back in, which prompts Tamura to really turn up the volume, as Nakano desperately tries to get a takedown, but Tamura scrambles and contorts in every way imaginable to prevent him from being successful. The fight eventually winds up on the mat when Tamura dives in for a kneebar, but only winds up plopping down on his backside, which allows Naknao to smother him, before eventually securing a kneebar of his own, prompting both a rope escape and a tag back in for Miyato. The match continued to be an entertaining and brisked pace affair, which really shined every time Miyato was in the ring. He brought all the same fire and intensity that he was showing us last month, and because of this, he was able to really elevate this match from standard boiler plate to an above-average entry. That’s not to say that the others didn’t do a good job (they all did), but he really brought his A-game, which forced Silver and Nakano to have to rise to the occasion as well. Tamura was a bit more subdued than usual, taking on more of a counter-fighter role, but even though this wasn’t his flashiest showing, it was still Tamura, and thus good. I would give this a solid *** 1/2 , as the only real drawback here was the randomness of the match/contestants, which caused it to lack any real emotional satisfaction, and simply served as a high-quality time killer.

ML: The biggest problem here was the pairings. We didn't get to see more of the best rivalry in the UWF-I (although after the opener, they probably ceded that mantle to Kanehara/Maeda) because Tamura and Miyato were on the same team. On one hand, the debuting Silver did pretty well, but they kind of sacrificed Tamura & Miyato to achieve that. Nakano was more lively than one could have expected, and actually everyone was really doing a much better job tonight with the scrambling, as if they got a memo about being more urgent. While Tamura was, of course, good, it was really Miyato's energetic striking exchanges that made the match. While hardly a classic, it was a great example of a great team being able to still have a good match despite lackluster opposition. ***

2/29/92: Hiromitsu Kanehara vs. Masakazu Maeda 17:25. We are now set for round 4 in the never-ending magma stream that is Hiromitsu Kanehara and Masakazu Maeda. After their last outing, I am now fully in favor of them opening every wrestling card on every single promotion from here on out, as it was one of the best shoot-style matches I’ve seen, only coming behind some of Tamura and Han’s best work. No time is wasted as other Madea charges in with a plethora of kicks and palm strikes, but to his credit, Kanehara stands his ground, and fires off several kicks of his own. You can see that he is somewhat out of his element compared to Maeda in the striking dept, but he was able to fend off Maeda long enough to close in and execute a lovely koshi guruma (headlock throw). Things did not stay static on the mat however, and Kanehara constantly tried to attack both the ankle and then the arm of Maeda, but Masakazu was simply too wily, and was able to defend himself from every submission entry until he got back on his feet and soccer kicked Maeda for his efforts. After his first submission barrage did not work, Kanehara takes Maeda down again, only this time opting for a Kimura attack, but now Maeda is wisely starting to make Kanehara pay for every failed attempt on his elbow joints. After escaping the Kimura, Maeda jumped back to his feet, soccer kicked Kanehara again, but did not stop there, he kept kicking and kneeing Kanehara as he was standing back up, even to the point of wearing himself out, and eventually succumbed to a desperation throw by Kanehara. The next 16mins were a total non-stop war, where neither opponent gave any pause and were constantly attacking or actively defending. What was really neat about this, is that it was a play on your classic grappler vs striker match, only both the grappler and the striker were also proficient in the other’s discipline, just not to the same degree. So, while Maeda was usually having to defend Kanehara’s submission attacks on the ground, he was able to launch several credible threats of his own, and while Kanehara is not as sharp on the feet as Maeda, he too was able to get some nice shots in. There were also plenty of nice subtleties throughout the match. For example, there was one nice sequence where Kanehara was standing up and grabbing Maeda’s ankle to attack and used that as a way to fake a swift kick to Maeda’s face, and later Maeda was able to return the favor, when Kanehara had him in a variation of a single-leg crab, and his response was to spin around and smash his foot into Kanehara’s head, which got a great pop from the audience. The last minutes of the fight saw Maeda throwing palm strike after palm strike, until the point of exhaustion, but his show of heart was so profound that the crowd had a Rocky IV moment when they shouted their support with chants of “Mah-eh-da! Mah-eh-da!” This was the beginning of the end however, and it was not long afterwards that Kanehara secured a submission victory via half-crab. Another excellent match, and I’m thankful as this will keep forcing the rest of the roster to take notice, and hopefully follow suit. While this may have been a smidge below their last outing, by virtue of the extra length and the somewhat contrived finish, make no mistake, this was still fire and well worth your time. Easily ****.

ML: I'd highly doubt that at any other time in history a feud between two rookies would be the best thing going on in pro wrestling. After three 15 minute draws, they've graduated to a 20 minute time limit for the latest fantastic chapter in this rivalry, which was even more urgent than the previous encounters. Maeda gets a little better at executing, and seems to have a little more stamina with each encounter. The urgency is always so out of control that they got a bit wild and sloppy at times with their striking even before Maeda gasses, but overall they are becoming more precise with their chaos. This had a bit more of a striker vs. grappler feel, as Maeda was so aggressive, just non stop blitzing Kanehara in standup the entire match, forcing Kanehara to mostly just try to fend him off and rely on his submissions. Kanehara still had a couple good flurries, particularly to the body, but clearly they seemed more evenly matched in standup in their previous encounter. If ever there was a match where both workers were possibly trying to hard, it was, well, any match between these two. I mean, as impressive as it was, it probably would have been a little better with a bit more patience, precision, and control of their emotions, as Maeda really exhausted himself by the final stages. The pace they kept was simply insane! They took everything to the max, if not beyond. After a series of full time draws, they utilized nearly every point at their disposal before Kanehara finally broke through. I kind of liked the draws more than having an actual finish, it just seemed more fitting, but regardless this was a really crazy all-out match! Though it wasn't as good as their match 2 weeks earlier, it's still one of the better matches we've seen, and some of the best displays of heart and desire you'll ever come across. ****1/2

2/29/92 Standing Bout: Makoto Ohe vs. Pat Kane 5R. Tthis is the first time we’ve seen Ohe this year, and if he had been on the last couple of cards (replacing JT Sothern for instance) we probably would have went from 2-classic fights to an over-the-top 3 great matches, which would have pushed those events into legendary status. Unfortunately, I have been unable to find out any information on Pat Kane as of press time, but since Ohe is coming off of two back-to-back loses, I wouldn’t be surprised if they went back to the jobber mill to find an easy opponent for Ohe. Both fighters come out of the gate aggressively, but while Kane is landing some good combinations, he seems to leave his face out in the open while doing so, and is eating some hard leather because of it. The rest of the fight shows an aggressive Kane varying his attacks, and showing some strong power in his fists, whereas Ohe seems to be content in patiently waiting and setting up his thunderous kicks. Even round. Round 2 starts with more hyper-aggressive behavior from Kane, but he is still adhering to the ancient proverb that punches are best blocked with your face. While he is landing a lot of volume, Ohe is doing a great job of being the counterpuncher and setting up some truly nasty answers, both by vicious straights down the pipe, and nasty knees from the clinch. This round came down to quality vs quantity, with the former going to Kane. Round 3 was Ohe’s turn to lead the attack, and he quickly laid into Kane with everything he had, prompting a knockdown early into the round. The rest of the round saw Kane make a bit of a comeback by wisely utilizing the uppercut whenever Ohe would try and get into clinch range. Still, this is now going to be an uphill battle for Kane to try and win this fight on points. Round 4 has Kane coming on strong again, being the one landing the majority of the shots, but he still leaves himself wide open, and continues to suffer some very stiff counters from Ohe, particularly his left straight. Despite a strong early showing, Kane kept eating more and more counters until succumbing to another knockdown late in the round. Kane was able to get back up, right before the bell rang, but he is going to have to pull out a magic trick to win this fight in the 5th. The final round was a strong showing for Kane, who kept pressing the attack, and continued the wise strategy of unloading uppercuts whenever Ohe tried to clinch. His impressive offensive output came at the cost of a good defense though, and he walked right into the game of a patient fighter like Ohe. Still, this round belonged to Kane, but it wasn’t enough to turn the tide, and the decision had to go to Makato. I give the UWF-I credit for continuing to find game opponents for Ohe, and this was a good match, as well as a strong showing from Kane.

ML: Kane was a strong boxer and athlete. He showed good quickness, and was generally the aggressor. His problem is his kicking game wasn't particularly developed. He basically never kicked after throwing a punch, instead just leading with a kick to control the distance and set up his punch combo. Ohe tried to work on the inside so Kane couldn't just beat him with hand speed. Kane's corner wanted to make certain he was completely refreshed going into the third, with his trainer even spraying water down his pants.Ohe probably lost the first 2 rounds, but started strong in the third, landing a big left straight then following with a series of clinch knees and a left high kick, repeating the sequence until he finally dropped Kane with the left hand. Even though Kane's defense throughout the fight was simply to attack, attack, and attack some more, Ohe still had much more success when he initiated then when he waited to land counters to Kane's open face. Kane had to be really active to make up for his lack of defense, and that was increasingly difficult in the later rounds, as Ohe's knees to the midsection really sapped his energy. Ohe landed a few big lefts in the fourth, but it felt like Kane went down from exhaustion as much as from Ohe's big shots. Kane had obviously trained hard in Xanadu, as he still fought hard trying to pull out the victory, though much of his speed was gone, with his right hand particularly lacking zip. Ohe's power advantage was just too much , especially in the second half of the fight. I had Ohe winning the last 3 rounds. Good match.

2/29/92 Yoji Anjo vs. Yuko Miyato 9:02. Miyato is the one wrestler, that more than anyone else, has changed my perception of him compared to when we first started. This is due to his putting a lot more urgency and intensity into his matches lately, which is something that he only seemed to do sporadically before. The atmosphere starts to gain an intense energy again, as these two are going right at it. Anjo keeps trying to push Miyato back with various kicks but keeps eating slaps to the face for his trouble. After a protracted leg-battle that didn't yield any results, Anjo decides to go for some flying knees, and clinch work, to try and get his point across. He then eventually gets Miyato down and gains a point from forcing Miyato to take a rope escape off a rear naked choke attempt.  The match then took on a disjointed flow that wound up making me like it less than I had wanted to. The stand-up portions where great, with a lot of energy and verve, but the intensity would immediately stall out whenever it hit the ground, mostly from Anjo just kind of chilling until it got back to the feet. The finish was cool though, with Anjo following up a nice throw with an instant straight armbar. A solid ***, but this should have been better, and probably a few mins longer.

ML: I really liked this match. It was realistic and intense, and they really did a nice job of escalating the tensions. The stand up here was quite impressive. They really put the extra effort into their footwork, showing some nice entries and exits, as well as feinting, and generally trying to keep each other off balance. The grappling may not have been quite as impressive from a 21st century standpoint, but that's from lack of proper BJJ training rather than giving anything less than 100% effort on their part. They definitely had some nice counters, and made some nice transitions. Miyato is really on fire the past 6 months, and after seeming rather dated at the start of '91, I'd currently rate him as the most improved veteran overall, as well as the third best worker in UWF-I behind Tamara in Kanehara. The only downside with this match is it was way too short. The 9 minutes felt like 4 because it was so good, but it would have been much more reasonable to give this 5 minutes from the Silver match, or better yet don't waste our time on the junk food man. ***1/2

2/29/92 Kazuo Yamazaki vs. Tom Burton 9:00. Now Kazuo Yamazaki must take a break from the illustrious tag-team scene, to take on the unenviable task of getting a good match out of Tom Burton. Things are underway, with Burton trying to bait the usually patient Yamazaki by verbally goading him to attack. This didn’t work, as Yamazaki wisely just chipped away at Burton’s thighs with some well-timed kicks, prompting Burton to go for a takedown off a back body-lock, which Yamazaki instantly tried to counter with a standing Kimura. This serves to illustrate that before Sakuraba was breaking Renzo Gracie’s arm years later with this same technique, this counter seemed to be in the lexicon of every UWF fighter. Burton was able to get the fight to the ground, but could not seem to manage anything once it got there, as he quickly found himself defending various submission attempts from Yamazaki. The ne-waza finally ended when Burton was fishing for a toehold while Yamazaki was sitting behind him, and in a cool move, Yamazaki took an escape, not because he was in danger, but simply to get the fight back on the feet. Yamazaki then does what we all adore about him and starts setting up feints by offering his hand to try and initiate a tie-up, only to instantly send nasty kicks to Burton’s thighs. He then gives us a nice sequence when he takes Burton down with a shoot-style schoolboy, and transitions off that into a straight ankle-lock. As nifty as it was, it didn’t work as Burton simply stood up, and muscled his way into his own standing ankle lock, forcing Yamazaki to take another escape. The end began when Burton hit an explosive tomoe-nage (monkey flip), but Yamazaki wound up landing on his feet like a cat, and this surprising technique from Burton prompted Yamazaki to start wailing away with kicks, before finishing the fight with what can only be referred to as the shoot-style version of the Million Dollar Dream. I was pleasantly surprised. While the Miyato/Anjo match was a bit of a letdown, this wound up being a lot better than I would have anticipated, thanks to Yamazaki’s subtle and crafty ways. He always looked like the best fighter in the ring, but still wound-up making Burton look like a legit threat due to his size, and power. *** ½

ML: A pleasant surprise. Probably the best performance we've seen from Yamazaki since the restart, combined with quite a bit of improvement from Burton, seemingly out of nowhere. Somehow, Burton was actually flowing here, and Yamazaki managed to pull some pretty nice sequences out of him, whereas the match would normally stall out as soon as Burton got it to the ground with his wrestling. Yamazaki incorporated a lot of nice little touches, such as his ankle momentarily giving out after he escaped from Burton's ankle lock. Burton started off with some annoying cartoonish taunts, but Yamazaki was really on his game here, and played off everything Burton did very well. While this was by far the most pro wrestling oriented match so far, Yamazaki at least set up the fake spots pretty well. Again, the match was somewhat rushed, seeming to just end rather randomly because they suddenly had too many matches to squeeze in. ***

3/17/92: Hiromitsu Kanehara vs. Masukazu Maeda 18:04. The first match will be the 5th conflict between two of the greatest rookies in pro wrestling history. We at Kakutogi HQ are now in full support of this opening pairing from now until the cessation of all things, but sadly this will be the 2nd to last time we get see better Maeda, so we should savor this while we can. Neither man wastes any time unloading kicks into one another, and just when I think that Kanehara has dispensed with any grappling formalities, he quickly shifts gears and gets a takedown off an errant kick from Maeda, and immediately goes for a near naked choke. In the short amount of time that these two have been going at it (around 3 months now) Maeda has been getting smoother in his transitions, and that is evident here, as he manages to not only slither out of Kanehara’s vice grip but is able to convert that into an armbar attempt. This leads to a nice sequence where Kanehara stacks Maeda to escape the armbar and falls back for a straight ankle lock once Maeda’s foot became available. Maeda then countered with an ankle lock of his own, but Kanehara wisely kept slapping Maeda in the face while shifting his body position so that he could rotate into his own armbar attack. This worked, forcing a rope escape from Maeda, and it is nice to see the local Nagoya audience appreciate this fine waza display as much as I am. The greatness did not stop there however, and as soon as Maeda got up, he went ballistic on Kanehara’s face, landing several hard strikes and kicks, until Kanehara was forced to dive in with a desperation single-leg attempt. It worked, but Maeda is getting to be way too wily on the ground, and simply will not stay still long enough for Kanehara to do anything. Eventually, Maeda stands back up and starts soccer kicking Kanehara when he does the same, and if that was not enough, he went into full E-Honda mode by unloading dozens of lightning fast palm strikes. I thought this would be the end of Kanehara, but he managed to respond to this assault with a plethora of his own fast hand combinations. The rest of this bout was…. who am I kidding? I am simply running out of adjectives to describe how good these two have been, and this was their best outing yet! Not only will this be a contender for best match of '92, but in its own way it is also one of the best pro wrestling matches that I have ever seen. It did not have the flashy innovation of a Volk Han, the slick transitions of a Tamura, or the subtle psychology of a Yamazaki, but the amount of abuse these two put each other through is simply unreal. That, and it had just the right amount of pro wrestling theatricality to push the entertainment value over the top while not detracting from the realism of their constant barrage of stiff striking. This was 18minute of pure cataclysmic fire before Maeda eventually succumbed to a crossface neck-crank, and for that I hereby award this my very first *****. Excellent! 

ML: This match is simply outstanding, the best we've seen so far! It's obviously not as groundbreaking as their 2/15/92 match, but they are moving better and connecting more solidly, generally doing a better and more precise job of reacting to what their opponent is doing. If these two just fought every show for an entire year, there is no doubt that these would be the 2 best rookie years ever in pro wrestling! Unfortunately, Maeda won't be around much longer, but seemingly the only things that could keep Kanehara from being the best rookie of all time would be for Miyato to endlessly sacrifice him to the alter of Takada & Albright, or pair him with someone as completely inept as Yoshihiro Takayama. What separates Kanehara & Maeda is they represent a new school of MMA based training rather than pro wrestling based training. Their focus is on fighting all out for the positions, particularly in the grappling, and thus what they are doing looks wholly different then what the old pro wrestlers are doing, as their movements are a constant dance where they adjust to the last adjustment the other made. The number of adjustments these guys make in 3 seconds is more then Takada makes in 3 matches. Of course, there's also their constant pressure and movement, and a very palpable sense of urgency to win by being first, rather than the typical lethargy where someone will hang around in a tearing submission for oh, a minute or two, and then grab a rope and restart as if nothing happened. There's no one in wrestling who's putting in the amount of nonstop effort that these two are. There's simply no downtime in their matches because it's not simply about the highspots, but rather the constant barrage of movement and aggression that actually allows for them. I don't mind that their matches are generally a little sloppy because they are volume striking at the highest pace, but this is definitely the most well executed of their bouts. Maeda is getting better at being able to keep pushing forward with his onslaught of strikes without getting as sloppy trying to maintain the all out assault. These matches are crazy challenges for their cardio to be certain. Though they would probably be more amazing if Maeda ever so slightly backed off from his Diaz level of volume, and focused slightly more on how he was connecting, it feels like nitpicking, especially when we remember he's not even 4 months into his career. Also, the whole give 200% effort at all times philosophy is the main thing that's making these matches so realistic as fights even though the precision isn't always there. Kanehara won again, but it's the more obvious massive improvements of Maeda in confidence and execution that is allowing their matches to reach new heights. These matches are more quantity than quality, in the sense that there aren't amazing individual sequences and counters, but rather just an endless, all out push to seize better positions and overwhelm the opponent by beating them to the next strike or submission.****3/4

3/17/92: Masahito Kakihara vs. Mark Silver 30:00. Kakihara will likely need thousands of dollars in therapy with his resident sports psychologist for the shameful and absurd treatment that was bestowed upon him at the last UWF-I event, in which he had to be squashed out by the gargantuan Gary Albright, who did not even permit Kakihara to have a full minute of offense before smothering him into oblivion. Here they are continuing to put Silver through his paces, as last month he got some invaluable experience going against Kiyoshi Tamura, and now he gets to advance in his training gauntlet by going against aggression ace Kakihara. The great thing about Kakihara is that no matter who you are, when you are getting slapped a hundred times at a hundred mph, you are going to give some honest reactions no matter how entrenched you are in your old way of doing things. After getting blitzkrieged by an onslaught of naked aggression, Silver starts to slap back, and is moving a lot faster than we have seen prior. He clinches up with Kakihara, and gives some knees that would definitely go into the “weak sauce” category, but otherwise he's looking lively, so far. This wound up being a rather strange booking choice in that it went to a full 30 minute draw, which is really too long for someone as green as Silver. Despite the long length, they both managed to be active the entire time and wound up being a lot more entertaining than I would have expected given the circumstances.  Also, the 30 minute length did have some interesting side effects as we got to see that Kakihara is more than just a one-trick pony with his relentless striking skills, but that he has a solid submission/grappling game to go with it, and he nicely balanced his ground attacks with opportunities for Silver to fight back. The last ten minutes of this match were on fire, as Silver got his nose busted open with a really stiff palm-strike uppercut, and despite the blood and the pain neither he, nor Kakihara, would show any quit. This was particularly good, minus some moments of greenness from Silver. His main problem isn’t his instincts, which are good, but rather he is inconsistent with his striking. Sometimes it looks good, but often he is too tentative, which causes some of what he is doing to look too soft and fake. He is getting better though, and if he starts to attack/move with more confidence, in addition to scaling back his output into 8-12 minute matches, then I have no doubt that he can be a good fit here. Still, this was a lot better than anyone could have guessed and managed to hold my interest for the entire 30 minutes. ***¾

ML: I was really surprised by the decision to make this a 30 minute draw given Kakihara has only fought about 36 minutes thus far in his UWF-I career, and Silver is in just his third match. I'm thankful Kakihara was finally given the opportunity to be more than pulsating palms, and this was definitely his most impressive performance so far, as he showed some legitimate ability on the mat. Silver did a better job both with his stand up, and in continuing to work on the ground. I thought this would be more of a striker versus grappler match, but Kakihara was actually initiating the ground game, and doing quite well against the wrestler, putting him on the defensive on the mat. I expected Kakihara to simply overwhelmed Silver with a barrage of stiff palms sooner or later, but this never felt like a draw in the sense that Kakihara mostly had Silver on the defensive, he just never found that one big shot or center of the ring submission to finally finish him. Silver certainly had his moments as well, but Kakihara did a much better job of taking the offensive out of the transition game. I liked the spot where Kakihara ducked a high kick, and clipped Silver's plant leg for the takedown. Though they certainly worked hard for the first 20 minutes, they somehow found the energy to make a big push in the standup down the stretch to really take this to the next level. It always felt like these two were trying for the win, rather than coasting towards the draw. Silver's nose was really a leaking blood, and Kakihara's stomach was being painted red when he tried for the triangle. ***1/2

3/17/92: Mark Fleming & Yoji Anjo vs. Yuko Miyato & Kiyoshi Tamura 20:40. Right now, I’m both excited for this match, and ready to slap booker Miyato in the face, as they could have an all-star event tonight if they had shortened the Nakano/Burton match to ten minutes and split these 4 up into two separate singles matches, which would have surely led to a much better result. Still, I can’t complain too much, as these 4 are surely a recipe for goodness. Mark Fleming and Yuko Miyato are going to start things off, and we are underway with Fleming stalking his much faster prey around the ring. Miyato is able to fire off some rapid kicks, before eventually being caught and slammed down on the mat like a rag doll. They are back on their feet, and while he clearly doesn’t have much experience with striking, Fleming has much faster double-leg takedown abilities than a man of his size would indicate. He is able to blast down Miyato easily, and succeeds in a rudimentary standing anklelock, prompting a rope escape, and a tag in for Tamura. They quickly get into a footsie war, which Fleming had no chance of winning, but didn’t wind up losing either, and is eventually able to tag Anjo in. Now things get turned up to 11, as they are both going full blast towards each other, and Tamura’s scrambling is so fast it has to be seen to be believed. When they are back on their feet, Tamura proves that he is more than just a machine gun, as he slows down and pulls a page out of the Yamazaki playbook by slowly feinting takedown attempts, which serves to take Anjo off guard and is immediately followed up with a quick slam/ankle lock attack. This did not yield fruit however, and Anjo was able to break free and counter with a Kimura from something sort of resembling an open guard. The hyperactive and intense energy was able to stay over the course of this 20 minute match. It seemed like Miyato, Tamura, and Anjo would feed off each other which in turn would amp up the crowd, ratcheting this entire affair into one flaming crescendo. Fleming was also an asset, as while he doesn’t have much in the way of an offensive submission arsenal yet, his wrestling skills are top notch, and he brings a welcome amount of realism with him. The finish was great too, when Tamura tried to hit a rolling kneebar on Anjo, who saw it coming and immediately countered with a lighting quick armbar of his own. While I still maintain that I would have rather seen these 4 in singles competition, I can’t deny the palpable energy on display here. Great! **** ¼

ML: Tamura and Miyato are basically sparring with Fleming, but not only does he have years more wrestling training, he has at least 75 pounds on them. Whenever Miyato makes an adjustment, Fleming just weighs down on him more, usually putting in as bad as, if not a worse position. Tamura is so quick that it's hard for Fleming to get the lead on him or keep him in one place, but he's still able to neutralize him one way or the other. Fleming was apparently taught the STF by Lou Thesz as well, but Tamura manages to get the ropes before he can fully secure it. The match is much more interesting with Anjo in, as he's leaving openings, and thus there is a lot of speedy countering back and forth. The work is definitely a lot looser with Anjo in, but the rapid pace makes up for it, and is what makes the match exciting. I don't have anything against the segments with Fleming beyond them being rather one sided, but they're not in step with the style the others enjoy displaying, which is much faster and more back and forth. As the match progresses, it becomes more and more apparent that they're working interactive segments at warp speed when Anjo is in, then struggling to fend off the control of Fleming. Anjo does his best work of the year so far here, and his segments are the ones that include some nice striking rather than being entirely mat oriented. This is the first time it really feels like he's able to keep up with Tamura, and that's important because his counter of the kneebar role into an armbar for the finish feels believable because Tamura hasn't been a step ahead of him all night the way he usually is. This is basically half a great match, and half Tamura and Miyato getting schooled in Wrestling 101. ***3/4

5/8/92: Hiromitsu Kanehara vs. Masakazu Maeda 15:08. The closure to one of the greatest rookie feuds in pro wrestling history, the 6th and final conflict between Hiromitsu Kanehara and Masakazu Maeda. These two have completely turned the conventions of wrestling upside down, by pushing the boundaries of what can be done in a worked pro-wrestling environment, by turning them from choreographed routines based around telling a physical story, to all-out assaults where the only connection to standard pro fare would be the predetermined winner. Yes, as my colleague Mike Lorefice once pointed out, had shoot-style pro wrestling continued in this vein, then there would have been no need for actual MMA, but that’s part of what makes these two so great, is their ability to turn up the physicality volume to 11. In their last couple of matches, they managed to put forth the same urgency that one would have in a real shoot, which is something that requires a full-throttled commitment that very few performers would be capable of. Their last bout got a ***** and ****3/4 rating from each of us, and while it would be unreasonable of me to hope for another outing of that magnitude, I’m sure that this will be good. As expected, Maeda charges in like his life depended on it, and starts wailing away on Kanehara, but is quickly stifled by a suplex. Kanehara tries to keep him contained to the mat, but Maeda is looking very slick here and instantly slithers back to his feet. The next couple of minutes may be Maeda’s best showing yet, as he constantly keeps the pressure on Kanehara both on the feet and on the mat. Eventually, Kanehara is able to utilize some fast palms to get Maeda down long enough to acquire an armbar/rope escape, and while it’s still clear that Kanehara is the superior submission artist, that may not be enough to keep the relentless aggression of Maeda at bay. This continues to move at such a breakneck pace that it’s hard to give a play-by-play, but Maeda continues to go all-or-nothing, thus keeping a lot of pressure on Kanehara, but surprisingly it’s Kanehara’s striking that continues to set up grappling opportunities for him, as he is able to counter Maeda’s speed with more precise attacks. After getting him back down on the mat, they entered into the requisite foot-lock battle, before Kanehara’s heel-hook wins over Maeda’s straight ankle lock. The rest of this match was what we’ve come to expect, non-stop action and unmitigated aggression from both men. While this wasn’t on par with their last showing, due to more pro-wrestling styled submission sequences (with the ever-nefarious Boston crab making several appearances) both the striking and intensity continued to be top-notch. This was a fine way for Maeda to end his career and a great way for Kanehara to start his. One has to wonder why such a fantastic and promising young talent like Maeda would end things just as he put himself on the map, and in the spirit of seeking true knowledge, we decided to take action to find out. Mike Lorefice contacted one of his deep underground sources from Japan, who offered this quote, "I don't know much about Masakazu Maeda’s fights, but he believed that UWF Inter matches were serious competitions. Every time he had a match, his family and friends cheered for him seriously. He thought that he had cheated them. It is rumored that he retired because he couldn't stand to cheat his family and friends." If this is true, then it cements Masakazu Maeda into the pantheon of general badassery, as it shows that this was a man so committed to the true budo spirit of MMA, that he could not continue to fool people within a worked entertainment sphere, and thus quit, just as his career was taking off. It’s a shame that he didn’t move on to Shooto, or a different organization to forge ahead in a real combat sport, but we appreciate his efforts and wish to immortalize them here. A beautiful and haunting final song, indeed. ****¼

ML: Their final match might not be their best, but it was their most brutal and grueling. This was simply another incredible display of heart and desire, the sort we unfortunately rarely see elsewhere. To me, one of the biggest reasons MMA and kickboxing are better than pro wrestling, and the lighter weight classes in them are so far superior to the heavyweight division, is that cardio is so crucial. I want to see two fighters going full speed ahead for the duration, rest and sleep when they are dead (or at least on their time, don't waste mine). In a real fight, you can't turn your back on the opponent, play to the crowd really, do one more per minute like C.M. Punk (though admittedly that was way more than he managed in his jokey MMA career), lie on your side because you will almost immediately get knocked out for letting your guard down, or stay down because the ref will stop the fight. It is so rare that we are treated to something that actually appears to have stakes in pro-wrestling, but Maeda is already one of the greats at just constantly blitzing for the duration. Obviously, it's fine for the action to slow down when it is logical, but what I'm talking about Maeda showing an endless drive and passion to win the match, his desire increasing my interest, as opposed to the usual where the performers lack of earnestness dramatically decreasing my interest. And obviously, Kanehara deserves some credit for this as well. I thought this was Maeda's best performance though, particularly his standup has improved to the point where the speed and consistency of his attacks wasn't coming with an obvious decrease in accuracy because of that. The striking was incredible here because they threw volume striking speed, but really laid into each other with their flurries in a beliable manner as well (both were always moving and trying to attack and/or defend). Kanehara's striking is getting better as well, and he began to take over in standup, once he started slowing Maeda down with his submission attempts on the ground. I didn't like that Maeda was selling more than ever here to show that Kanehara was breaking him down, but at the same time, Kanehara was putting such a beating on him that some of it was probably legit, especially Kanehara's body shots giving Maeda trouble given Maeda was trying to continue at warp speed . If this match wasn't quite as good as their best encounter despite this being the best version of them we saw, it's because Maeda was either injured and/or running out of gas too much of the second half, and thus unable to put up consistent resistance, particularly in the final minute. Though in a sense, the match was somewhat even in that Maeda controlled the first half, while Kanehara controlled the second half, Kanehara was only slightly behind in the first half, while when Maeda hit a German suplex but failed on the armbar only to have Kanehara counter with a kneebar about 11 minutes in, the writing was just on the wall for Maeda to once again be humbled by his fellow rookie. Maeda limped to the finish, but it's doubtful that he'd do a jump spinning kick if the knee was truly damaged, so it just seemed like foreshadowing the inevitable (though in that case it was a bit suprising he didn't lose to a leg lock). The booking was once again incredibly frustrating, as while Kanehara was in the midst of what is most likely has the best rookie year in the history of pro-wrestling, there is still no reason for him to win every single match against an almost as impressive opponent. Kanehara should win the series, you know, by one, as you would probably see from even all the worst bookers in the history of wrestling, apart from Gape Sapolsky, who would probably book them in 2/3 fall matches just so Kanehara could go over 2-0. The beginning was truly awesome, maybe their best stuff so far because the striking had all the aspects that made their previous matches great in addition to a lot more ferocity and impact, but unfortunately, the final stage was less competitive, and thus compelling. Another classic, and while not quite as amazing as 3/17/92 or 2/15/92, these matches all exemplify what makes me want to watch pro wrestling, which like any singles sport whether it be MMA or tennis is to see two top notch highly skilled competitors giving 200% the whole time because the stakes are so high (at least in their mind) that they can't afford to offer any less than their best. While this was a fitting swan song for better Maeda, it was a tragic loss for the promotion and the fans, and we should all feel doubly cheated that we didn't even get our 2/2 blue Bird creature token with flying as compensation for our tremendous loss. ****1/2

5/8/92: Yoji Anjo vs. Steve Day 11:48. While he lacked charisma and any sign of striking skills in his debut, Day more than made up for it in great wrestling. He may be the best pure wrestler that we’ve seen so far, and possesses a surprising understanding of submissions, especially for a debuting westerner at this stage. Day had a commendable debut against Takada, so it should be interesting to see what Anjo can pull out of him. Before it became all the rage for BJJ guys with no striking skills in the late 90s circuit, here Steve Day pulls the tactic of covering one side of his face with his elbow, while he tries to carefully close the distance on Anjo. As you would expect, he eats some shots from his very quick opponent, but is able to secure the clinch and toss Anjo with some lovely Greco-Roman skills. This pattern repeats itself, only Anjo is showing surprising amounts of balance in the clinch, probably due to his judo background. Still, no amount of judo is likely to prevent you from being taken down by Steve Day, so it only served to make him work for it. Still, despite his submission game being better than your average American newb, he is no match for Anjo and lacks the firepower to ever give him a serious threat. This regulates him to being a mostly one-trick pony, as he has 0% stats in his striking column. This was fast-paced, but never really felt like a contest as Day just didn’t have the tools to threaten Anjo. This was somewhat frustrating, as I like seeing someone with the legit skills of Day in this kind of format, but he is going to have to improve on areas outside of his wheelhouse if he wants to get above mid-card status. Tough to rate, but my final verdict is *** due to the fast pace and some excellent wrestling technique from Day.

ML: Though it is embarrassing seeing someone whose only standup tactic is to plod in while covering up like a vampire, this match had by far the most intensity and urgency we have seen since the opener. Both men were very explosive when they did something, adding to the sense of realism, and the general importance of succeeding in their tactics. Day may not have all around skills, but he fakes the things he's good at a lot less than any of the other wrestlers we have seen, really not dampening the power and drive necessary to to legitimately jerk the opponent around. Anjo had big advantages both in striking and submission, but there wasn't much you can do to keep Day from depositing him on the mat. To his credit, Day wasn't simply trying to control Anjo. On the contrary, he was taking too many chances (if this weren't a work), leaving his solid base to chase after ankles. This wasn't on par with Anjo's best work obviously, but was certainly one of his most realistic matches, and I really liked the aggression that both men displayed. ***

5/8/92 Special Exhibition Match: Billy Robinson vs. Nick Bockwinkel 10:00. Now for something that I wish we got to see more of over the years, an exhibition between two legends. Things start with Lou Thesz (who at this point was fully committed to seeing the UWF-I thrive) talk about how the WWF and WCW were a joke, and just considered by Americans to be show business, which is a shame. He then mentions that although Nick and Billy aren’t in peak physical shape, that he was confident that they will put on a great show of “pure international wrestling.” These two had faced each other several times within the 70s and 80s, with their encounter on a 12-11-80 AJPW event being particularly noteworthy. We then get two quick, but heartfelt interviews from both men, and Robinson was emphatic that he would be happy to do whatever he could to put real wrestling back on the map. Nick Bockwinkel still appears to be in great shape, which isn’t surprising as he was an active competitor up until his retirement in 1987. Robinson, on the other hand, looked flabby even back in the 70s, but that didn’t stop him from always being a game performer. Things slowly build-up, until the first great moment where Robinson gets his underhooks in and it seems like he is going to suplex Bockwinkel, who knows what’s coming, and instantly backs up into the ropes to escape it. A nice subtle exchange that got a great response from the audience. The next memorable moment was when Bockwinkel kneed Robinson, which seemed to legit piss him off. Robinson yelled and curled his fist, to which Nick responded by saying, “It’s just a knee Robinson!” to which Robinson threatens to punch him in the chin. The exhibition ends at 10min, with Robinson finally getting his underhook suplex. While this was obviously hampered by Robinson’s physical shape (Bockwinkel looked like he could still go full speed if he had to) it was still obvious that these were two masters of their craft, and it was a treat to see them, even at this stage.

ML: Lou Thesz gave the classic this horrible fake American crap doesn't represent me speech, which is one that can never be stated enough as far as I'm concerned. Though it's still dubious to bill serious fake wrestling as real by virtue of being less nonsensical, at least they have presented us with two of the absolute legends that any wrestling fan should be proud to say they admire. Unfortunately, this wasn't anything Robinson or Bockwinkel were planning or training for, from what I gather Robinson said they basically just informed them that they were wrestling. The match was basically the condensed, greatest hits version of their classic match minus most of the big bumps. It obviously wasn't done quite as well because they are more broken down and less athletic by this point, as well as simply out of practice. Their match is also one that gains a lot from the length, as they really understand how it to you mileage out of working the body parts. That being said, this was still a lot of fun, and for anyone who had a little while to forget, much less several years, this is an excellent display of a now mostly lost style. In my case, while I possibly saw Robinson in AWA when I was seven or eight years old, this is the first match of his I can say for sure that I saw, and it definitely put him on the map for me. These are the most difficult matches to rate because while it is not good by the great standard they set in their primes, it was still entirely compelling, and better than anything on last weekend's AEW DUDExplosion PPV. It held my interest throughout, and didn't have me rolling my eyes at all. ***

5/8/92 Special Match: Kazuo Yamazaki vs. Koji Kitao 7:44. As if Kazuo Yamazaki’s career couldn’t get any worse, now he must face Koji Kitao in what will surely be a dreadful exercise in putting the former sumo star over. Kitao, despite no one in the western hemisphere ever taking him seriously, was still a star in Japan, and reportedly the UWF-I just signed him on for a $75,000 per match (!) contract. This was even after he embarrassed both himself and his former employer, the Japanese SWS wrestling promotion. That move may have been in the UWF-I’s interest here, as they could easily spin this as Kitao being sick of WWF/SWS style fake wrestling and now wanting to test his skills in the “real” UWF-I. Regardless of the logic, $75,000 is a lot of cash to throw away per match, so hopefully, this isn’t the start of some really poor business decisions. Even armed with a blowtorch & sledgehammer, it’s doubtful that Kitao could ever hurt Yamazaki, but here we are. Kitao starts out taking a karate stance, and the crowd is eating this up. Yamazaki must be given great credit, as he is taking this seriously, and right away starts crafting a David vs Goliath narrative, going right after Kitao’s legs with numerous thigh kicks. Yamazaki skillfully weaves in and out, attacking Kitao’s legs from different angles, until he opts to try and take him down, in which we see Kitao respond with one of the laziest sprawls in history. The rest of this farce saw Yamazaki do everything he could to make Kitao look like a million bucks, instead of just slapping him in the face for a 40-second victory, a la Mark Hall at UFC IX. Yamazaki proved to be worth every penny and then some by eventually allowing Kitao to pummel him with several ultra-slow leg kicks for a KO victory. From a pro wrestling 101 standpoint, this was a great example of how to put over a lesser opponent, but it’s a crime that it had to be Kitao, who would end up diminishing Yamazaki’s reputation even further.

ML: From the opening intense stare to putting over the KO, Yamazaki used his acting ability as much as his wrestling ability to craft an urgent and intense match where each of his actions was important because of the potential repercussions, and get bad boy Kitao over that much more than he already was. This was truly a brilliant performance by Yamazaki, who has always been great at these sort of mixed matches against specialists from other combat sports, devising a logical and reasonable match that was intense and a highly compelling, while at the same time doing his best to keep Kitao from embarrassing himself by doing any more than he absolutely had to. Yamazaki saw a huge slow opponent, so he tried to use his speed to kick his legs out before Kitao could fire back. The problem was that Kitao was so much bigger and stronger that he could take a lot more of Yamazaki's blows than Yamazaki could take of his. Kitao is so awful, he even almost fell landing on his own ill advised jumping spinning kick, but Yamazaki is so smart & talented that he got a good match out of him because he knew how to play things. Kitao's offense was horrible at times, even a low kicks he won with could best be described as labored, but Yamazaki mostly had him standing in the center threatening, and sold what little Kitao did so well that it didn't kill the match like it should have. Yamazaki used every trick in the book to solve the puzzle, but 200 pounds is an awful lot of sheer mass to overcome. In the end, Kitao came off as being really impressive (in a real behemouth of a fighter sense, not as a worker) because of his imposing presence and the things Yamazaki did to make his offense somehow look deadly despite Kitao's lack of grace and coordination. Of course, all the fans desperately wanted Yamazaki to win, and had UWF-I been willing to shell out the cash to help anyone but Takada, Yamazaki's career could have been salvaged here with a precursor to Keith Hackney vs. Emmanuel Yarborough, as Yamazaki was still massively over, even if largely in this case because the crowd hated Kitao. Though this wasn't a total one man show that somehow managed to be a great match like Kenny Omega vs. Kazuchika Okada by any means, even with the great atmosphere and all the smoke & mirrors Yamazaki employed to make it come off way closer to a shoot than I would have possibly believed it could, it's just barely good, but you have to realize just how are truly terrible Kitao is, really a 0 out of 10, to understand just how amazing it was that Yamazaki somehow managed to come up with almost eight minutes of heated and compelling action involving him, especially in a style Kitao is completely unfamiliar with. ***

6/28/92: Tatsuo Nakano & Mark Fleming vs. Kiyoshi Tamura & Yuko Miyato 17:51. I would much rather see these guys broken up and given an additional match on the card, but the UWF-I's tag matches have been exciting lately, so I shouldn't complain too much. I would appear to owe Miyato an apology for ever doubting him, as he right away tries to inject life into this match by going on a spirited slapping spree against the portly Nakano, but this fire was quickly put out by Tatsuyo's considerable girth. He merely grabbed Miyato and gravity did the rest, so now we are finding ourselves on the mat. Thankfully, it wasn't long before this ended, and Fleming was tagged in. Fleming then proceeded to wonderfully toss Miyato like a discus and forced the first escape with a crude rear-naked choke. This prompts Miyato to tag in Tamura, and we then got a great sequence where Tamura used his considerable speed to stifle all of Fleming's entries, that was until Fleming surprised Tamura with a lightning quick fireman's carry. Tamura didn't stick around to let Fleming capitalize on the takedown, however, and after he got up, he did a brilliant fake, where he seemed like he was going to try for a standard hip-throw and faked it into a quick ankle pick that took Fleming down. Sometimes, I'm seriously surprised, and impressed, with these little nuggets of fine ne-waza that occasionally appear in these shoot-style matches. The rest of this match continued its winning ways, mostly thanks to the excellent intensity of Miyato, who was able to pull out some decent effort from Nakano, and the seemingly endless creativity of Tamura, who almost always finds a way to shine. I will still continue to gripe about there being tag-team matches in the first place, since without a tag-team division or championship title in place, there are no stakes in these kinds of matches. Still, it's hard to complain too much when the quality is present as it was here. This was intense and exciting for almost all of it's almost 18 minute running time. The bout is eventually won by team Fleming with Miyato being an unfortunate victim of Lou Thesz's STF. ****

ML: Fleming is proving to be a good addition, as while he will never be the most exciting worker on his own, he is someone that those who understand how to work with, and counteract his amateur wrestling, can get good things out of. Tamura is certainly one of those opponents, and Miyato did some nice things when Fleming as well. This match wasn't as flashy as many of Tamura's matches, but there were a lot of nice little explosions. Tamura mostly worked with Fleming, which, beyond the obvious reasons, was good because those two being the mat pairing mostly kept Nakano from his usual durdling on the canvas. Fleming tweaked his knee early on when Tamura tried to spin into a kneebar, but Fleming rolled in the wrong direction, so Tamura had to abort. I didn't really understand the point of having the score be so lopsided in the favor of Tatsuo Nakano & Mark Fleming even when I incorrectly assumed they were ultimately losing, but this was a consistently good match, with a lot of nice moments. It never felt outstanding though, most likely because Nakano and Fleming just don't have that kind of speed or athleticism. ***

6/28/92: Masahito Kakihara vs. Yoji Anjo 10:12. Now for the return of the man with the fastest hands in the East, Masahito Kakihara! Sadly, Kakihara has been on rookie duty the last couple of months, as he was forced with the absurd task of having to carry newcomer, Mark Silver, to two thirty-minute draws in a row. Here he will be facing Yoji Anjo, who has been on fire as of late, so I expect this to be good. Needless to say, Kakihara wastes no time in launching his lightning-palmed assault, but Anjo, being well versed in the ancient G.I. Joe code of "Knowing is half the battle!" is anticipating this, and stifles much of Kakihara's output with some rangy kicks. Still, Kakihara is so voluminous with his hands of torment, that he is still able to push a good percentage of his strikes through, despite Anjo's defenses. Anjo knows that a standing battle is futile, so he wisely opts to go to the ground with a Kimura from what could be viewed as a half-guard, using only the loosest of definitions. Anjo lacked the necessary torque to properly finish this submission, but thankfully for him, Kakihara turned incorrectly into the hold, giving Anjo the needed leverage to put pressure on the shoulder, and thereby forcing the first rope escape. The rest of the match was odd with most of the offense coming from Anjo both in the standing and ground portions. Kakihara proved he isn't just a one-trick-pony by going for several submission attempts throughout the match, including a triangle choke and a couple of spinning kneebar/toe-hold entries. The problem was that while Kakihara is serviceable on the mat, he isn't strong enough to ever put any credible pressure on Anjo. Most of Kakihara's offense came off of Anjo botching an o-goshi or similar judo attempt, which made the ending feel very sudden and contrived when Kakihara won with a basic ankle lock, seemingly out of nowhere. This was still fast-paced enough to have been decent, but could have been much better. **3/4

ML: This was a pivitol match in Kakihara's career, a surprising huge win out of nowhere over an established and highly respected veteran. Previously, he only had 3 wins, with the only native being fellow rookie Yusuke Fuke in U.W.F. on 10/25/90 (after Fuke had defeated him on the previous show). They did a shorter version of Hiromitsu Kanehara's match, or one could say this is what Kanehara vs. Yoshihiro Takayama should have been if Takayama were actually competent. Speed, intensity, all-out aggression, this was a savage and explosive sprint. Kakihara showed some great movement and defense here. Whenever Anjo was striking, Kakihara was either making the decision to come forward to immediately get inside his striking range by blitzing him with blazing palms or backing away and dodging. One of the reasons some semblance of defense is so important in pro wrestling is that it makes the strikes actually seem meaningful. The usual nonsense of two guys standing there begging each other to hit them as hard as they can essentially assumes that while the strikes may hurt, pain is no big deal since there is exactly zero chance of it going beyond that and actually ending the fight. I mean, no one would stand there and beg the opponent to shoot or stab them (unless they were taking on Tiger Jeet Singh since they know he only uses the clumsy small sword handle rather than the giant long blade), so it just feels like the threat is so minor when people don't care to even be bothered to defend themselves. The ground fighting wasn't as good as the standup obviously, but they still went back and forth with a lot of nice fast moves. Anjo was quickly winning huge, 14-3, but the story they were telling was that the Commander was increasingly looking to keep it on the ground to press his advantage, because he could. Kakihara may not be the best mat wrestler technically or positionally, but he nonetheless kept countering Anjo well. Eventually, he did some damage with a kneebar, then when Anjo got back up, Kakihara caught his jumping knee and took him down into an Achilles' tendon hold for the huge upset win. This booking made the result of the last match where I was expecting Tamura and Miyato to pull it out even though they were way down seem better, as this time I was expecting the experienced fighter to just stomp the upstart, so there was nothing out of the ordinary with him racking up an otherwise insurmountable lead. ***1/2

6/28/92: Kazuo Yamazaki vs. Steve Day 9:39. Now for the man that I feel is the sleeper hit of this outfit, Steve Day. No, he may not have been blessed with any charisma (or striking skills for that matter), but he may be the best pure wrestler that we've witnessed since starting this project, and I suspect that with some fine tuning he could have been a very dangerous force within the early American MMA/NHB days, had he chosen to go that route. For now, he must face Kazuo Yamazaki, who I have given up on ever seeing be elevated to his true worth, and must begrudgingly content myself to knowing that at least he is going to put forth a good match, regardless of the outcome. The match starts with Day hitting an absolutely breathtaking Greco-Roman throw that Yamazaki tried to stave off with good balance, to no avail. Day immediately starts smothering Yamazaki, who wisely took a rope escape, not because he was locked in a submission, but just to have an opportunity to get some distance between him and Day. It's the little nuances like this that make Yamazaki such a stellar talent. Yamazaki then goes for a low single, which gets the fight to the mat, but Day is an excellent scrambler, and easily gets the superior position. However, he is not excellent at submissions, and despite being able to easily dictate where the fight takes place, he still seems kind of clueless on how to end the fight once he gets to where he wants to be. He attempts to choke Yamazaki after taking his back but is so awkward in doing so that Yamazaki easily fends it off until the ref stands them back up. The rest of this match was somewhat frustrating, as Day is the best at what he's good at, but since he is only good at one thing, it's hard for him to excel in this kind of environment. The rest of this match was mostly Yamazaki finding creative ways to get the fight to the ground (I.E., a flying scissor takedown) and attacking Day's legs, only for Day to not really know how to stop this. I like Day, but the more I see him, the more I wish he had been part of the early UFC's where he really would have had a chance to make a big splash. As it stands, he is good enough that his match is always going to be solid, but unspectacular. The match ends when Yamazaki gets an armbar after punishing Day's legs for good measure. ***

ML: Yamazaki really underachieved in 1991. He was certainly good, but nonetheless, his matches sounded better on paper than they were in actuality. He has really stepped it up on the last two shows, getting much better short matches out of the opposition and then he had the right to. The Koji Kitao match was always going to be a one man show, but that makes this one all the more interesting, where Yamazaki finally really developed the sequences to his capability, and crafted a match that was more than the sum of its parts. Day was obviously impressive here as well, as this wasn't merely Yamazaki reacting to the wrestler's aggression, as he would with say Tom Burton, but rather Day answering him counter for counter. I loved the urgency Yamazaki brought to some of these segments. For instance, there was a great segment where Day countered his belly to belly suplex with one of his own, but as soon as Yamazaki's back hit the canvas, he immediately turned and took Day's back, trying to go into a Boston crab only to have Day roll into a heelhook, setting off a game of footsies. The finish was a similar sequence where Day countered Yamazaki's German suplex with a go behind into one of his own, but Yamazaki spun into a Kimura attempt as soon as they landed, chaining submission attempts until he hit the armbar for the win. ***1/2

7/12/92: Kazuo Yamazaki & Kiyoshi Tamura vs. Gary Albright & Mark Silver 18:44. It's a contest with no stakes or meaning, but any chance to see Tamura shine is a good one. Things start with Tamura toying with Silver, allowing him some offense, knowing that Silver isn't likely to ever put him in any real jeopardy. It was fun to see Tamura play with his prey and instantly turn a switch on and dominate Silver when he chose to. Humiliated and in over his head, Silver brought in the Albright-monster. As quick as Tamura is, you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone up to the challenge of being smothered by such a beast. Gary spent a considerable amount of time laying on Tamura before forcing a rope escape via a reverse keylock. Yamazaki fared a little better, scoring on Albright with a heel-hook, and punishing Mark Silver in a variety of ways. The rest of this match was disappointing because Albright spent very little time in the ring, forcing Silver to handle the bulk of the workload. Tamura and Yamazaki did all they could with him, and while it was ok, Silver's slowness and inexperience prevented this from ever achieving liftoff. Not bad, but could have been much better, having someone stronger than Silver to build around. *** 1/4

ML: Silver, who has been somewhat hit and miss, got his first main event here, and was able to step it up and allow Tamura & Yamazaki to do their thing. This was mostly grappling based, and in his element, Silver was able to react to those two well enough to more or less keep up. Albright, on the other hand, just ground the match to a halt by simply weighing on Tamura in a fashion that would make Tom Erickson proud. The story was that while Silver was mostly owned, he allowed his team to get way behind because he was too proud to tag. This allowed Albright to be the monster superhero hitting his big suplexes for the splashy finish, but at the same time, it allowed there to be an actual compelling competitive match beforehand, and deliver the most useful action on an otherwise lousy show. Yamazaki certainly wasn't too proud, as when he got a knockdown on Silver with a middle kick, he then fired off a deadly high kick as soon as Silver was back on his feet, even though the ref was still checking him out & hadn't restarted the contest. Yamazaki, in particular, did a good job of making it look like he was shooting on Silver in the pro wrestling sense with these sort of cheap tactics, and Silver almost ran out of points trying to get revenge, finally hitting a uranage on Tamura and tagging at 19-2. Albright then proceeded to do his usual 30 second suplex rampage for the win, but but at this point that wasn't the worst thing that could have happened, though obviously this was another missed opportunity to get Yamazaki or Tamura a semi relevant win by defeating Albright by beating Silver. ***

8/14/92: Yuko Miyato & Masahito Kakihara vs. Tatsuo Nakano & Tom Burton 17:34. Now for another sequence in the random booking generator that booker Miyato has been keen on using. At least this is an interesting pairing on paper, as having two lithe and explosive workers like Miyato/Kakihara vs two burly monsters like Nakano/Burton could lead to good results if done correctly. Right away, I’m impressed as there is palpable electricity in the air when Kakihara unloads some lighting palms into Burton. Kakihara being impressive is standard, but what is remarkable here is how urgent and intense Burton is acting. The pressure that Kakihara is putting on him forces Burton to fight as if his life depended on it, and he does a good job of immediately closing the distance and slamming Kakihara, thus mitigating the damage he has to take. Kakihara gets up quickly, however, and shifts to rangy attacks, using incredibly stiff kicks from a distance. Seriously, it looks like he is going to imprint a permanent mark on Burton’s thighs, just like Pedro Rizzo did to Randy Couture several years later. The rest of this match was excellent, and may wind up being one of the sleeper hits of 1992. Kakihara was the real star here, everything he did just looked fantastic, but I don’t want to diminish anyone, as they all stepped it up and brought their best games. Even the pro wrestling styled spots (in which there were several), felt organic and looked good, which is a considerable challenge in a shoot-style context. Excellent! **** ¼

ML: Kakihara was just on fire here, making this match with his energy and urgency. He did a great job of fending off Burton's takedowns, and making him pay with flurries of lightning fast strikes. He did excellent work against Nakano as well, pitting his Jeff Speakman of the East speed against Nakano's power striking. This was by no means a shoot, but much like the Kanehara/Maeda matches, Kakihara was able to maintain the realism through that sort of life or death pace and reaction speed, both offensively and defensively. Even Kiyoshi Tamura may not be able to get Nakano & Burton to work at such a high pace to keep up with him. Miyato was his usual reliable self, and there was some really nice scrambling between him & Burton. Though Kakihara gave his best performance so far, and really came into his own this match, perhaps the revelation here was Burton, who showed a newfound ability to work the grappling sequences with some actual speed. Burton wouldn't push a match in this direction, but if not for Burton's suddenly being able to follow in this vein, this wouldn't have been one of the best UWF-I tags we've seen. ****

8/28/92: Yoji Anjo vs. Kiyoshi Tamura 30:00. Now for an opportunity to tear the house down, as it’s been almost a year since we got to see an opportunity for Kiyoshi Tamura to have a singles match that had some potential to be dynamite. Since January, Tamura has been stuck in either pointless tag-matches or having to put guys like Glacier and Mark Silver through their paces. The last time these two met alone was in July of 1991 in one of the best matches of that year. The tone for the fight is set when Anjo tries to shake Tamura's hand and is slapped for his trouble. The match starts, and Tamura is looking a lot like a prime Frank Shamrock in the way that he effortlessly moves around in a wrestling stance, all while being ready to make any kind of needed transition at a moment's notice. It doesn’t take long for the action to go to the mat, and it’s almost impossible to keep up with Tamura, as he quickly goes from armbar to triangle to heel hook in the blink of an eye. Anjo keeps himself alive by going for his own leg-attacks, but can never stay on one thing for any length of time due to Tamura’s wily ways. This match wound up being a 30-min Tamura masterclass on how to be a badass, with nonstop creative attacks, transitions, and general fluidity that showcases how when this style is done properly, it easily embarrasses what else passes for pro-wrestling. It went to a draw, and whenever there was a brief moment where I thought the action was going to stall out, someone would kickstart things again with an inventive maneuver or entry. While I would have liked to have seen a bit more striking, and there was no doubt that it was getting very theatrical towards the end with Tamura down to his last rope escape before getting Anjo in a choke right as the bell was about to ring, this was total fire from start to finish. Furthermore, this is a match that only Anjo could have done, as there isn't anyone else on the roster that had the cardio to keep up with Tamura at this pace for the entire thirty mins. **** ½

ML: Tamura vs. Anjo should have been one of the most natural rivalries in UWF-I, as Anjo was the energetic, skilled, feisty, hard working upper mid carder in the UWF, and now Tamura, who had a different attitude but all the said attributes and more, needed to surpass him in order to become one of the main stars of the new promotion, if Anjo wasn't going to be allowed to finally seize that deserved role for himself. Tamura should also have needed to go through Anjo to get to Yamazaki, who was the more established great worker, having been at or near the top of the card since joining the original UWF a few months after it started in 1984. Obviously, Tamura & Anjo were also two of the best workers in the promotion, and had already delivered the best shoot-wrestling match of 1991 on 7/3/91, with Anjo's experience proving too much for young Tamura, as it did again when they met in the 2nd best tag match of the year on 3/17/92. Shockingly and sadly, this great 30 minute draw, which one would have thought would have set up Tamura finally getting the victory in 1993, was actually their final singles meeting. This was a great back and forth counter war from start to finish! The sequences were just amazing, as there was no need for rope escapes when both had the answer for everything the other threw at them. This is the sort of defense that I love, going all out to protect yourself, but using that knowledge to go right back on the offensive. I don't understand the criticisms of this match being overlong, there was more action, transitions, counters, thwarted attempts, etc in the first 5 minutes than on the entire rest of the show combined. I mean, sure non-stop motion on the mat for 30 minutes would have been more fun, but cardio is never an issue for these two, and I agree with their decision that it was only reasonable for someone to establish 30 seconds of control once in a while. It was clearly one of the most technical matches of the year, with amazing fast scrambles, but they were also telling a story in exploding when there was a position to be had rather than as a stylistic choice. I thought the bout was actually helped by their willingness to slow down once a position/lock had been acheived because it seemed more like they were actually trying to win than merely provide a certain brand of entertainment. Anjo was usually the one that succeeded in slowing things down, and this was one of the ways the match was able to portray him still being slightly superior, despite not having the speed of Tamura to immediately threaten by countering into a possible finisher as consistently. There wasn't a lot of standup here, which was to Tamura's advantage, but Anjo had his moments including intercepting a single leg with a blistering kick to the head, and later scoring a knockdown with a couple of inside leg kicks. He then tried to finish with a high kick, but Tamura stayed on its feet, and when Anjo tried for a German suplex, Tamura did a go behind and dropped into a rear naked choke. The early minutes were literally a leg-lock clinic, but Anjo doing his best to shift to kicks down the stretch. This wasn't easy given Tamura did outstanding counters such as catching a kick and spinning down into an ankle lock, but was one of the things that kept this from obviously looking like a draw, as well as again giving him an aspect of superiority. He wasn't fooling around anymore, and Tamura was doing his best to match this with submission attempts, even if some were of the pro-wrestling variety. The sequences as a whole may have been slightly less amazing than last years classic, but there was more top notch stuff here because the match was almost twice as long. The stamina these two showed was amazing; they had more left after 30 minutes of mostly fast countering than Takayama did after his first 30 second blitz. Another great match from these two that is the best thing we've seen thusfar in 1992 other than the best of the Kanehara vs. Maeda matches. ****1/2

9/21/92: Kazuo Yamazaki vs. Yoji Anjo 10:01. Last month Kiyoshi Tamura had to single-handedly carry the evening into greatness, and now this duty falls squarely upon Yamazaki's shoulders. Yes, only Kazuo can now take this card into the realms of greatness that we all seek, with Commander Anjo's help, of course. Anjo takes on the role of the smarmy heel, refusing to shake Yamazaki's hand. However, he doesn't refuse to relentlessly attack Kazuo once the bell rings with a litany of strikes. Kazuo is very sneaky though, and he negated a lot of Anjo's offense by keeping him in clinch range. What's fascinating, however, is that Yamazaki seems to be the only pro wrestler since Sayama that understands feints, and he utilizes them splendidly, which helps him fake his way into the phone both with Anjo. This conflict was a lot of jockeying for the submission victory with mostly unsuccessful attempts from both men. This outing didn't have the boundless kinetic energy that last month's Tamura/Anjo contest had, but it did maintain a mid-tempo burn that I felt was more effective in some ways. The constant tension that they were able to create kept you in rapt anticipation with a feeling that at any moment, all hell was going to break loose. The dam eventually busted open, getting more and more heated as each minute went by, with Yamazaki winning by submission in the end. I felt this was on par, or better than the Anjo/Tamura match, except for the length. This bout should have been a couple of mins longer to really catapult it past last month's affair, but it was fantastic all the same. While Tamura is the equivalent of sound'n'fury, in your face and unrelenting, Yamazaki is more cerebral and calculating. Those qualities helped shape this into a fiery crescendo that had a great build-up that only needed a little more time to cook. **** ¼

ML: I was pretty disappointed by this match. It wasn't as good as their 9/26/91 match, much less anywhere near the stratosphere of either Kiyoshi Tamura vs. Yoji Anjo. The match seemed rather dated, more like the 1985 UWF stuff I've been watching in that it was submission oriented, but just too slow on the mat, so with the lack of amateur wrestling and BJJ, they were really obviously just kind of randomly trading pro-wrestling submission holds because they weren't using counters, explosions, or really doing anything to disguise the transitions or make them somehow plausible. The match would have worked better if we got more of Anjo's dickishness and aggression. The match started off with Anjo refusing to shake Yamazaki's hand, and I wish they went further down this path, as Yamazaki is one of the only guys that can match Anjo's antics, and the heated portions were by far the best thing going on. The random submission exchanging was unfortunately the predominant action in the contest though. With Anjo, that patient, thinking Yamazaki match doesn't work as well as with others because one of Anjo's strengths is losing his cool and being cheap and cheeky. There were moments when the match threatened to take off and be exciting and very aggressive, but unfortunately it would quickly calm down again. They seemed to be wrestling a 20 or 25 minute match that was building to something interesting, at which point the Yamazaki patience could still have won the day, but then they randomly ended it at 10 minutes. There were some good to excellent moments, but certainly not enough of them, and overall it was just very inconsistent in terms of quality. I get that Takada vs. Albright is the big attraction in the entire league this year, but you also have to understand who can handle time and who can't. Things would have been better for everyone if this got an extra 10 minutes, while that was that much shorter. ***

10/23/92 1st Junior League: Tom Burton vs. Hiromitsu Kanehara 7:22. While I fail to see the logic in having a Jr. League tournament when you only have two fighters in the roster that can arguably qualify, I simply can't complain about Kanehara having a different opponent to face. This time it's Tom Burton, who last month had his face punted like a soccer ball at the hands (or feet in this case) of Takayama. Kanehara seems to scare Burton by slapping him with the fury of a Karen talking to the manager, which prompts him to quickly go for a low single leg. This desperation move doesn't faze Kanehara, who keeps on slapping away, before rolling under the ropes for a restart. The slaps didn't stop there as Kanehara continued his target practice for most of the match. Of course, Burton got the occasional takedown, but it never profited him for very long before Kanehara took over. It was nice to see Kanehara in action, although I would hesitate to call this good. Burton's only function seemed to be as a life-size wrestling buddy for Kanehara. This was only marginally ahead of a squash match. ** ¼

ML: The best thing about this UWF-I junior league is that Kanehara finally gets back to fighting a few opponents that I am confident can at least tie their own shoes. Although this match was surprisingly short, which was lucky for Burton as he doesn't have the world's largest gas tank, especially at this crazy pace, it was the best thing we have seen from Kanehara in months. Kanehara applied a ton of pressure, doing his best to beat Burton with his speed and technique. Kanehara owned the striking game, but Burton would quickly use his kicking against him, countering with his far superior wrestling to get the takedown, but it wasn't long before Kanehara had the reversal, and was applying pressure with submissions. Burton may not be the world's most dynamic fighter, but he is always willing to go, and was able to keep up with Kanehara on willpower (despite sucking wind towards the end), working as fast a paced match as he was capable of, with a lot of transitions, largely because Burton got the takedown then Kanehara got to counter. Burton had a few power moves including the powerbomb just before the finish, but his lack of submission skills really keeps him from being much of a threat, even at this level. I didn't really care for the random ending here, where Kanehara got the kneebar submission after the annoying minute of struggling, and felt the match really need to be a little longer, but I was excited by what we got here, for the most part. ***

10/23/92: Kazuo Yamazaki vs. Kiyoshi Tamura 15:34. Things start cautiously with Yamazaki treating this almost like a kickboxing match, but he's forced to quickly shift gears when Tamura forces things to the canvas. Tamura continues to try and force Yamazaki to work at his breakneck pace, but Kazuo is doing a good job at stifling Kiyoshi's flow with his strength and the constant threat of submissions. The first half of this match felt a lot like a late 80s UWF match, albeit with a lot more urgency than what was typical of that era. Things picked up considerably in the 2nd half when Yamazaki started ramping up his aggression with more kicks, and Tamura switched from ancient tech in the Boston crab to more modern fare like the spinning kneebar. Tamura also shocked me with something close to a shoot-style version of an Indian deathlock, which has to be seen to be believed. While this too closely resembled the older U-Style to be considered a top match for either man, it still had a lot to offer, and the insane energy from the crowd helped this immensely. Also, the ending was fantastic, with Yamazaki faking a suplex to open up a rear-naked choke, only to see Tamura reverse this with a throw and a win via armbar. ****

ML: This match felt like a wakeup call for Yamazaki, who despite the endless humiliations and disappointments at the hands of Takada and Albright, had yet to be asked to put over any of the natives that were beneath him. After a disappointing performance in the should have been top notch match against Anjo last month, he really stepped it up here and delivered the sort of high quality story match he is capable of. Everything was really on point here, with Tamura playing the brazen young underdog who totally believes he will win, while Yamazaki was the more relaxed veteran doggedly clinging to his #2 native rank. The pre-match was classic with Tamura getting in Yamazaki's face with a chest bump, but Yamazaki digging in and holding his position firmly, really the theme of the match, in general. The action was totally back and forth from the get go, but was also unique in that they refused to press the reset button, endlessly countering, but essentially all of a counters were performed without letting go of the opponent. This was an amazing struggle with such a great seamless flow. The sequences weren't rushed, but also seemed to never end in the best possible manner of someone always having another idea to continue things. This was a real roller-coaster with great teases and payoffs as they foiled each other back and forth, to a regularly exploding, appreciative crowd (who was surely thankful to finally have something with some meat they could actually dig into). Tamura & Yamazaki handling their own disappointments and frustrations almost seemed like it must have been as much of a challenge as warding off their clingly, crafty opponent who just wouldn't go away. Everytime you expected someone, particularly Tamura since he was a big underdog, to crumble they instead proved how capable and clever they actually were, concocting yet another great counter or escape. Tamura is known to be the best submission fighter in the league, but also much weaker on his feet, so Yamazaki decided to do his best to make it a kickboxing match, using every ploys and cat and mouse game he could think of. Tamura was well prepared, catching Yamazaki's first kick though and just throwing Yamazaki down to piss him off. This really set up the dynamic of their battle of wills, Yamazaki stubbornly doing his best to beat Tamura in standup, while Tamura did his best to instead counter the kicks and force Yamazaki into a submission clinic. There's a classic early sequence where Tamura catches a kick and slams Yamazaki, then tries to drop into an Achilles' tendon hold, but Yamazaki instead stands up and tries for an enziguri, only to have Tamura block it and drop into a kneebar. They continue to go back and forth until Yamazaki finds his way into a kneebar of his own, and is none too quick to break when Tamura grabs the ropes. There's a real cyclical nature to this contest, and the next big sequence ends with Tamura rolling through Yamazaki's 1/2 crab and forcing Yamazaki to now take a rope escape from the kneebar. Though this isn't as outwardly flashy as Tamura's best work that we have seen so far, Tamura doesn't need to be as singularly brilliant because Yamazaki has more or less as much ability to add to the sequence as he does. I guess what I am saying is there's less of the one or two really explosive movements from Tamura that mark some of his previous standout work, but that is replaced by a much more capable back-and-forth, which ultimately allows, if not demands, the performers be more patient and probably less explosive initially. Though it begins to feel like Yamazaki has abandoned his strategy because he doesn't panic when the fight hits the mat, knowing he has more or less as much ability to find his way into an arm or knee lock as Tamura, when he does get back to his feet, he really makes a hard push to blow Tamura out with heavy kicks. Yamazaki had Tamura really wobbled on both legs after his last standing sequence, but finally decided being too predictable in standup was costing him, and switched to clinch knees, only to have Tamura soon answered with a suisha otoshi. The finish had Yamazaki bending Tamura with axe kick to set up a German suplex to go up 12-9. Yamazaki tried to go back to the German suplex after a front kick, but of course nothing ever works twice here, and when he switched to a standing choke, Tamura backed him into the corner then hits an ipponzeoi into an armbar for the upset. While Tamura was still the better performer, this felt much less one man showish, and more like Yamazaki was really adding a lot of craft and setup to take this to the next level. It stands as the best match Yamazaki ever had in UWF-I, and, of course, was followed up by neither doing anything notable for the rest of the year (Yamazaki won a main event tag match because Takada was his partner & Tamura missed both shows training with Thesz). ****1/2

11/25/92: Yoji Anjo vs. Masahito Kakihara 5:49. So far, we are well on our way to having the most consistently entertaining card from the UWF-I in a long time, and this may be the match that seals its fate. These two have been way more hit than miss for the last two years, and are an explosive paring when put together, so I am excited. Kakihara moves like lighting, zipping around Anjo while using Jeff Speakman quality hand-feints. He started to unload his palms of fury onto Anjo, but Yoji was smart enough to instantly clinch and take the fight to the mat, thus negating the damage he had to take. This turn towards the horizontal plane quickly led to the requisite footsie battle, which Kakihara lost, and was deducted a point. The standup battle continued where we saw some surprisingly nice waza from Kakihara, as he took an opportunity to counter Anjo’s knees with a nice rolling kneebar entry, which was converted to a toehold. That was almost the end of Kakihara’s offense, as Anjo proceeded to lay in a volley of quick low kicks, which crushed both the mobility and the fighting spirit of Kakihara. Anjo wins by submission. I liked everything that I saw here, but it was just too short and really needed another 4-5 mins in the oven. This match could have morphed into an all-time classic if they let it cook a little longer, but the incomplete flavors made it frustrating. ***

ML: UWF-I has given us a great match on two of their last three shows, but those matches involved the legendary Kiyoshi Tamura, who is unfortunately absent training with the one and only Lou Thesz. In order to save this card, Anjo, who has been a top tier performer for the promotion, and had one of those great matches against Tamura, and Kakihara, who is always bottled lightning and is clearly their most exciting stand up performer, must be called upon to deliver the goods. Did they succeed, well, probably to the best of their abilities given what they had to work with, but certainly not to the extent that we needed them to. Miyato's booking of Kakihara continues to be bizarre at best, inexplicable is probably a better description. He seemingly has no confidence in Kakihara to go any amount of time, which is slightly understandable given he operates at 200%, and it's difficult to keep that up for 25 minutes, but Kakihara is also a young gun in great shape who possesses an underrated ground game and mainly just needs ring time to become great. Unfortunately, the only times Miyato is really willing to do that is against Mark Silver, who is one of the last guys you want to be involved in any type of long match, especially against someone like Kakihara who thrives on standing exchanges. Kakihara hasn't been blowing hard or drastically tailing off when he is actually given time, so there is no reason to coddle him so much. This match was certainly entertaining and explosive, but there is literally no circumstances under which this wouldn't have been better with another 5 minutes. I mean, even if for some reason they had to slow what they did down considerably, it would still have been impressive. These two had good chemistry, and this actually felt like a different match, we never see Anjo against a quick evasive striker. Kakihara is the longer fighter, as well as the much quicker one, so he was able to use distance and land kicks while making Anjo miss. Anjo was thus forced to get inside and tie him up, which in turn forced Kakihara to use his inside striking game, and ultimately try to match Anjo on the mat after he was tripped up. This was all fast and exciting, and they had nice answers for each other, working a very interactive and explosive match, but at a ridiculously short given the talent 5:49, it was not exactly going to be match of the year. ***

12/20/92: Junior League Match: Hiromitsu Kanehara vs. Yoshihiro Takayama 13:05. Now, to dig back into that everlasting well of Jr. League Matches, and by everlasting we mean the 5th matchup between these two, which would have probably been the 13th in a row between Kanehara and better Maeda, had Maeda not retired earlier in the year. It’s kind amazing, both in a good and bad sense of the word, that around this time last year in 1991, both Kanehara and better Maeda were making their debuts, and putting the entire country of Japan on notice that this style was not only evolving quickly, but that the ceiling of quality was nowhere near what it was capable of up to this point. However, it doesn’t seem like there is really any vison or plan for this outfit other than to continually try and get its main star, Takada over, so hopefully that changes in 1993. As for this match itself, I have to admit that I am impressed with Takayama’s spirit at the opening. He comes right out and shows us a fantastic intensity, in fact, I would go as far as to say these first couple of mins are probably the best stuff we’ve seen from him so far. He still has an awkward gait, but he is putting a 100 percent effort into this, and unlike his last encounters, looks mostly credible in doing so. Kanehara also answered with plenty of his own intensity, even throwing some pre-Pride soccer kicks our way. Kanehara was quite impressive in how he blended his grappling and striking, never wanting to get stuck in one mode for too long, which kept the pressure on Takayama. The middle of the match shifted away from raw aggression and more towards pro wrestling high spots, with Takayama pulling off the more impressive of the slams when he seemingly sent Kanehara about 100 feet into the air with a fisherman’s suplex. Of course, as the match progressed, Takayama’s output slowed down since he doesn’t have the cardio to do this style, outside of maybe 3-5 mins. However, unlike their last encounters, this wasn’t a problem as it shifted away from the brazen non-stop striking output of the original series of Kanehara/Maeda matches once Takayama got tired, and by blending in more of a pro wrestling flavor, it not only hid some of Takayama’s weaknesses, but also served to add some entertainment value. This wound up being their best match yet, as even Takayama’s few awkward moments never got in the way of the pacing or intensity of the match. Kanehara did wonders here by constantly forcing the pace, and this is probably the best that Takayama will ever look. ****

ML: Their 5th outing is considerably more successful than even the best moments of their previous four combined. They are still utilizing the same shell that produced the great Kanehara vs. Maeda matches, but Kanehara has finally learned to expect nothing from Takayama, and thus that he must keep things as simple for him as humanly possible, and do as much as he can on his own. Maeda was keeping as high pace as he could, and providing actual quality standup action that was a great compliment to Kanehara's slick matwork, as well as inserting counters that were just as speedy as Kanehara's in all aspects of the fight. Takayama only has a couple minutes of stamina, a sloppy flying kick, clinch knees that don't really connnect, and a few submission holds without the technique or movement to get to them without Kanehara gift wrapping them (which he begrudgingly had to do). Luckily, they have wisely shifted to Takayama simply attacking like a wildman, which somewhat disguises his clumsiness, and the fact that his technique is all around terrible, with half of his shots barely touching Kanehara. Takayama is basically only using knees, which allows him to briefly overwhelm Kanehara between Kanehara providing the diversity by countering with a wide array of maneuvers. The matwork didn't look too clunky because Takayama was being threatened most of the time. The match was nonstop action, with Takayama flying at Kanehara with a jumping kick or knee, then Kanehara soon suplexing/taking him down, which gave Takayama a brief rest before he had to rush in again. Kanehara looked great here, and did as good a job as he could of distracting from Takayama's shortcomings. It's great action, even if it's often sloppy and uncoordinated, and not the least bit realistic. It's kind of surprising the match goes 13 minutes given they are just burning points. Takayama didn't have the energy to even do his big charge in the later stages, so Kanehara began to dominate him in stand up, using his movement to pick on the stationary target. He has already dominated the suplex and submission game throughout, and it becomes just a matter of time before he finishes the now compromised oaf yet again, this time with a rear naked choke to capture the 1st Junior League. I don't know how to rate this because if this were Kanehara vs. Masakazu Maeda, it would have been a great match, and probably ten other guys in the promotion would also have an excellent or better match with Kanehara here, but this is actually at least entertaining in spite of Takayama undermining things with basically everything beyond his strong effort and willingness to follow Kanehara. This is clearly not amazing beyond their desire for it to be, but it's a fun attempt at a memorable match, rather than their previous ones that were so far off the mark they just seemed pathetic. This is definitely the best Kanehara has looked since Maeda retired, he did a great job of filling in the gaps, really covering Takayama when Takayama was unsure how to proceed. Takayama's effort was genuine, and it was his least bad performance thusfar. ***

12/20/92: Dan Severn vs. Yoji Anjo 6:12.This contest will be the 2nd step towards Severn’s path to being both a mainstay in MMA and pro wrestling for years to come. Last month, we saw his brief debut, which didn’t reveal much outside of the knowledge that Dan was a much quicker man when he was younger, so had he started MMA in his mid-20s he would have been a scary dude indeed. Anjo does a great job of bullying Severn with some fast strikes, and he is smart enough to know that he has to stick and move to avoid the takedown. Eventually, Severn gets the clinch, but having ropes is a much better deal for the striker than a cage, and Anjo wisely keeps in mind his ring positioning. This was probably about as good as it was going to get, thanks to Anjo’s spunkiness breathing a lot of life into what would otherwise have been a total dud. Still, even with Anjo’s help, there is only so much you can do with Severn. His wrestling was fantastic, but that’s all he knew how to do, so it was up to Anjo to keep things moving. For the most part, this was fine, it was brisk, and Severn did just about every variation of a slam that he could think of. The main issue was it was short, and Severn doesn’t really know how to “work” with this opponent. It’s probably a good thing it was as abbreviated as it was since Severn isn’t ready yet for anything longer than the 6 mins that he had here. ** ¼

ML: This is what a Gary Albright match could be if they put any effort into the booking, and Albright actually had some energy. Severn came across as a beast, but this was a extremely entertaining, if still too one-sided. Certainly a lot better in actuality than the sum of its parts, as they really brought a tremendous amount of urgency to the encounter, and were consistently working extra hard, scrambling for positions. Yes, the match was Severn trying to deposit Anjo on the canvas, but this wasn't a grinding encounter by any means. It was instead nonstop action, as they kept moving once they hit the canvas, rather than just (or really ever) resting. Anjo was in full on desperation mode, trying to squirm back to his feet like a displaced kickboxer, and Severn was trying to improve his position to get the finish. Even when Severn hit a nice gutwrench suplex, Anjo popped up and charged at him with a high kick. They kept things exciting with Severn hitting a wide variety of suplexes and slams, but the problem was they never established a path to victory for Anjo, who was certainly portrayed as having the striking advantage, but if he was lucky, he would land a kick or two before just getting tossed yet again. Anjo finally hurt Severn with a sidekick, but it was simply played as a Miyato style hope spot, with Anjo trying to follow up by charging with a middle kick, only to have Severn catch it and slam him yet again. Dan applied a kneebar that could very well have been the finish the way this match was going, but Anjo had no quit in him, and kept turning, twisting, and leaping, ultimately dropping a knee on Severn before finally freeing himself. Again, Anjo is supposed to be one of the stars of this promotion (if we can pretend there are any beyond Takada & Gary), there's no real reason he can't have some so success on his feet, put together a couple knees or drop Dan with a big kick, except that Miyato can't see past establishing a temporary star (until Takada dispatches him). Severn soon powerslamed Anjo, and finished him off with a sort of side 1/2 crab plus facelock combination that they just called a leg lock in the results. Even though this match was very short and not very competitive, the action itself was almost shockingly good, with nice contributions from both performers. ***

1. Kiyoshi Tamura [91: #1]. A blazing ball of ferocious energy, Tamura is the most explosive mover and probably the fastest fighter in the genre, though Kakihara gives him a run for his money, and has more striking speed. Tamura has the most speed in transitions, scrambles, anything that involves manipulating the position of his or the opponent's body. He's generally way more graceful and fluid than anyone but maybe Volk Han because he has the most amazing balance, at least of anyone who isn't doing crazy high wire tricks on the ropes (for obvious reasons). He's the second most creative behind Han, but while Han has a wider variety of submissions, no one executes their submissions the way Tamura does, he is a constrictor with this awesome mix of blistering speed & violence, engulfing around the opponent to tighten his vice grips at the same time he is jerking them into position at full force. It really feels like his submission application is multidimensional, he is able to go both down (either dropping or dragging the opponent with him) and around at the same time, while pretty much everyone else has to first position then tighten. He's able to up the speed, pace, and intensity in a manner that is not only believable, but based on a sense of urgency that actually feels legitimate. His countering is so varied and amazing it truly feels like a disappointment when he actually takes a rope break. Though Tamura was all about speed in 1991, he is displaying more variety as he evolves, flooring the gas pedal when he's exploding to seize a position, but now having more patience to allow the holds to play out. One reason Tamura is so exciting the opponent can gain an advantage on him, but keeping it is truly a different story. He has such a vast arsenal of counters that it must be intimidating for his opponents to even try anything on him, but luckily this is a style where no one hesitates.

2. Hiromitsu Kanehara [91: #5]. Kanehara always tried to do a lightning paced, dramatic back and forth counter oriented match with endless transitions. His matches are always moving, even to the point of never wanting to get stuck in either striking or grappling for too long. Kanehara didn't really care if you got him down because his ground skills are superior to all his opponents, so he'd quickly reverse and pressure with submissions. When better Maeda was there to keep up with him and fill in around him, it was amazing. What separates Kanehara & Maeda is they represent a new school of MMA rather than pro wrestling based training that's focused on fighting all out for the positions, particularly in the grappling, and thus looks wholly different than what the old school New Japan guys do, with constant pressure and movement, and a very palpable sense of urgency to win by being first. Even though they always opened, their style of pro wrestling always feels like a lot is at stake. Kanehara is an interesting case because he not only had perhaps the best first 6 months of any rookie in history, with 4 great matches out of his first 6 including the two best shoot matches of the year, but you could even make a case for rating him #1 in all of shooting until better Maeda retired. However, with Miyato somehow refusing to understand what made Kanehara successful or that he was special, Kanehara was essentially without a capable opponent for the rest of the year, and added very little to his resume. Kanehara was one of the smartest rookies we have ever seen, just having a great feel for all aspects of the game, grasping the flow of the sequences, the drama of shifting between disciplines, and the concept of trying to stay one step ahead by constantly adjusting to the opponent's adjustment. Perhaps even more than Tamura, he understood that speed and aggression were the keys to this style looking real, though he (and especially his opponents) were also clearly not as crisp and technically precise. It's the constant pauses that expose pro wrestling, but Kanehara is one guy who will never allow anyone to get away with a moment of doing nothing. He was one of the most well rounded performers literally from the outset. While his grappling is clearly stronger than his striking, his matches are incredibly urgent, flowing back and forth, in and out, with great sequences and counters when he has an actual opponent. Giving 200% effort at all times was the main thing that made the Kanehara vs. Maeda matches so realistic, and while Takayama also went as hard as he was capable, it became obvious that the high speed of Maeda was also crucial. Against Takayama, most of what made his matches against Maeda so great didn't work that well because Takayama can only do a few things very deliberately before gassing, so Kanehara had to really work to do all the moving and countering, basically doing his own thing when a capable opponent would be countering to keep the match moving briskly.

3. Masakazu Maeda [91: NR]. An all-or-nothing fighter with a constant barrage of movement and aggression, the pace at which Maeda improved was nothing short of amazing. He was reasonably not very confident in his debut match on 12/22/91, but already showed up as a new fighter for his second match on 1/9/92, and was just flowing more and more with each encounter. While somewhat imprecise initially, he quickly got to the point where the speed and consistency of his attacks wasn't coming with an obvious decrease in accuracy. Pace is the aspect that separates Maeda from the rest of the pack, as Maeda is perhaps the most relentlessly aggressive performer we've seen in shootfighting, pushing as hard as he can the entire match, and simply not caring that he's tiring himself out as much if not more than his opponent. He's one of the most realistic competitors as well, largely because of the constant movement his style entails. He got into shoot wrestling thinking it was shooting, and although he sadly never got to do a real fight, which likely had a lot to do with him quitting so soon, he tried not to stray too far from what he was theoretically supposed to be doing. Maeda having the belief to be aggressive and let it rip in standup opened up all sorts of possibilities for his matches with Kanehara, as well as freeing up Kanehara to counter into his takedowns and submissions, making their matches very dynamic, back and forth sprints. His career was all too brief, but he truly fought every fight with a ton of heart and passion.

4. Kazuo Yamazaki [91: #3]. The most subtle performer in the promotion, Yamazaki is a crafty, dramatic tactician who incorporates a lot of nice little touches, setting things up and playing off everything the opponent did. When he was motivated and in charge, Yamazaki had the abiltiy to use his acting ability as much as his wrestling ability to craft an urgent and intense match where each of his actions was important because of the potential repercussions. A master of misdirection, Yamazaki is very unpredictable in his entries and lock ups, and probably utilizes feints better than anyone else. He has the most little nuances, and is most able to craft a match that was more than the sum of its parts. Despite being perpetually abused and misused, he was definitely a better performer in 1992 than in 1991, with a couple of magic acts against green performers, and the great match against Tamura. His ability to use his mind to get more out of opponents than he has the right to gave him a slight edge to push back ahead of Anjo in the rankings.

5. Yoji Anjo [91: #2]. UWF-I's resident jack of all trades, Anjo never exactly awes you, but he can play any role, and there's almost no situation he won't more than hold his own in. He's energetic, skilled, feisty, and hard working. He's by far the best sort of heel in the genre, really able to add heat to the match by getting chippy without it feeling forced or turning things silly or cartoonish. He can excel against any reasonable opponent, and will always add to the match from multiple parameters. He dropped 3 spots this year through no fault of his own. The promotion just had a lot more depth, with young guys getting a lot better, which Anjo didn't get to benefit from as much as I would have liked. On one hand, as Kanehara & Maeda only fought "rookie" matches, Anjo was the only one who got to have singles matches with each of the other four fighters that stood far above the rest of the pack. While Anjo is a wrestler you think of as having great stamina, and thus actually gaining a lot from having long matches, especially since he's so diverse, outside of the draw with Tamura, his matches were all on the short side, with 9:02 vs. Miyato, 10:12 & 5:49 vs. Kakihara, and 10:01 vs. Yamazaki being among the reasons these matches not only weren't among the best of the best, but actually felt somewhat disappointing. In constrast, Anjo only had one match under 11 minutes in each of the previous two years, and Albright and Wellington Wilkins Jr. aren't workers that go long. Anjo also had the misfortune of being the only opponent of The Iron Sheik and one of two who faced Pez Whatley, laughing stocks that were presumably there to make fake American wrestling look even worse, but mostly just had that effect on their current employer. Anjo doesn't make enough matches on his own to be a truly elite fighter, but certainly managed to have a wide variety of interesting matches that were less predictable than most. He quietly had the most appearances in the recommended match list with 8, with no misfires on resume, and matches against Dan Severn and Steve Day that clearly overacheived in making the list, so perhaps I'm underrating him.

MB:

1: Kiyoshi Tamura. I must admit that I find it strange that I'm almost completely concurring with my esteemed colleague regarding the placements for this year’s best UWF-I picks, but there really isn’t any controversy when assessing who the top players are this year. Honestly, the top three could easily be rotated out in any order without any major complaints, but Tamura gets the nod, once again, not only due to his awesome rock-star ways, but also for the simple reason that he was allowed to have a lot more variety than anyone else. Kanehara may have given Tamura a run for his money this year if he hadn’t been forced to keep wrestling the same two people repeatedly, especially since Tamura took the latter part of the year off to train with Lou Thesz. Tamura was the gold standard in 1991, and I would say he still has that positioned locked in at the end of 1992, but is going to be facing some ultra-stiff competition heading into 1993 with the rise of Volk Han. Also, Kanehara might prove to be worthy of that spot if he’s allowed to break out of his endless cycle of opening matches, so next year should be exciting to see how it all plays out.

2. Hiromitsu Kanehara. Again, this is a no-brainer. No one short of Volk Han has come close to displaying such a varied array of skills and potential as Kanehara. What makes this even more impressive was the majority of his matches this year were him having to carry an inferior opponent, which shows that he is capable of more than just shining when circumstances are favorable, but can also work his magic amongst lesser mortals. Kanehara, more than most of his peers, was a man that came up in the wrong era. Had he developed several years later, and not been thrown to the sharks of the Pride FC era, he may have been a strong candidate for perhaps the UFC’s Welterweight division, but instead had to throw his body in the wringer with a murder’s row of foes that vastly outweighed him. Kanehara is poised to have a breakout year in 1993 if Booker Miyato can manage to not completely screw things up, but if 91/92 are any indication, then we probably shouldn’t get our hopes up.

3. Masakazu Maeda. It’s the discovery of people like Maeda that make a massive project like this worth it, as he could have easily been forgotten to the sands of time if we hadn’t taken a comprehensive approach to document early MMA history. Here was a flaming star that came and went all too quickly, but in his short time with us, he demonstrated that we hadn’t come anywhere close to what was possible to be achieved in a pro wrestling format, at least in terms of blurring the lines between reality and fantasy. He somehow managed to fight like his life depended on it, despite knowing that he was booked to lose, which is a feat that very few people would be capable of. Before I started this endeavor, I would have thought that the finest moment from the shoot-style era would have been Tsuyoshi Kosaka vs. Kiyoshi Tamura or one of Volk Han’s matches, and while those were great examples of how far the art of this style could be pushed, Maeda took the other route and showed us how the envelope could be stretched with pure naked aggression. Yes, Volk Han may have been the art-rock maestro, with long-winding time changes, proggy interludes, and subtle flourishes, but Maeda’s matches were pure sound’n’fury, a stripped-down, ugly, visceral punk-rock sans any pretension, by comparison. It’s a shame that we can’t rate him higher here, but he left after only having six matches. Still, his body of work left a far greater impact than what this meager list can provide.

4. Yoji Anjo. Here is the only difference between myself and my esteemed colleague. Yamazaki is a completely reasonable choice to have here, but I have to admit that Anjo proved to be a lot more of an MVP this year, although that was more due to the incessantly stupid booking than any lack of effort on Yamazaki’s part. Anjo proved that he could jump into any role, as needed, and had the cardio to back it up. While he isn’t at the top of the heap in any one area, he’s good at everything, and is just the kind of hand that is the backbone of any wrestling promotion since he can jump around and fill into any role as needed.

5. Kazuo Yamazaki. Yamazaki is a better performer than Anjo, but was largely wasted this year when he should have at least had a back-and-forth series with Takada. Instead, they only seemed to find it fit to use him as fodder to put over the likes of Koji Kitao. More than any other of the original cast members of the UWF, Yamazaki has the saddest tale to tell, as he had heaps of potential that was never realized due to his peers repeatedly misusing him. Sadly, Yamazaki has nowhere to go but down from this point forward. Since Miyato has already blown any chance of credibly using Yamazaki in the main-event title picture, he will probably continue to have to embrace his newfound role as a jobber-to-the-stars.

1. Hiromitsu Kanehara

2. Masakazu Maeda

3. Steve Day. Day was a great enough amateur wrestler that he was able to hang with some of the best fighters in the promotion from the get go. Debuting against top star Takada, which predictably was the only one of his three matches that wasn't good, no one will confuse him with the most diverse workers in the promotion, but he was a very explosive and realistic performer. While it certainly helped to have the opportunity to work with Anjo & Yamazaki, what really sold me on Day's talent was his ability to already by answering Yamazaki counter for counter, rather than just being the usual consistent bull that the actual workers have learned to craft a match around through various matador tactics.

MB:

1. Hiromitsu Kanehara

2. Masakazu Maeda

3. Dennis Koslowski I would have easily put Steve Day here had Dennis Koslowski not showed up at the last minute. Even though his debut was a silly exercise in proving the invincibility of Nobuhiko Takada, it was still enough to show us that he was probably the most explosive pure-wrestling talent that they’ve yet acquired. Day probably showed more submission savvy than Dennis, and isn’t unworthy of the number three slot, but you can tell that Koslowski is a very special talent.  

1. 3/17/92: Hiromitsu Kanehara vs. Masukazu Maeda

2. 2/15/92: Hiromitsu Kanehara vs. Masakazu Maeda

3. 8/28/92: Yoji Anjo vs. Kiyoshi Tamura

4. 5/8/92: Hiromitsu Kanehara vs. Masakazu Maeda

5. 10/23/92: Kazuo Yamazaki vs. Kiyoshi Tamura

Honorable mention: 2/29/92: Hiromitsu Kanehara vs. Masakazu Maeda, 1/9/92: Kiyoshi Tamura vs. Yuko Miyato, 8/14/92: Yuko Miyato & Masahito Kakihara vs. Tatsuo Nakano & Tom Burton

MB:

1. 3/17/92: Hiromitsu Kanehara vs. Masukazu Maeda

2. 2/15/92: Hiromitsu Kanehara vs. Masakazu Maeda

3. 8/28/92: Yoji Anjo vs. Kiyoshi Tamura

4. 5/8/92: Hiromitsu Kanehara vs. Masakazu Maeda

5. 8/14/92: Yuko Miyato & Masahito Kakihara vs. Tatsuo Nakano & Tom Burton