I think this was also the only impact of this short lived organization.
Tomoharu Fuse vs. Mark Johnson
More Fuse content, baby. This was a cool opening match. No clue who Mark Johnson is (apparently have been several MMA fighters named Mark Johnson), but he was good. He had good strikes, and carried the opening section with his cool throws and grappling. Fuse was along for the ride until he got full mount and started raining down punches on Johnon. He really turned it up after being outgrappled the whole time which is exactly what an outmatched fighter would do in that situation. One near KO later and what followed was a cool little run of false finishes including Fuse grapping a really cool spinning leglock. Wish we had gotten more shootstyle with MMA gloves because they utilized them well here.
Hidetada Irie vs. Tsunehito Naito
Naito is my boy, but future KINGDOM EHRGEIZ boss Irie completely squashes him here. Irie hit one or two cool kicks but his punches from mount where extremely lacking and there was no need for him to lazily dominate Naito for 3 minutes straight. It’s shootstyle, kick up the pace or at least brutally potatoe your opponent.
Tatsuo Nakano vs. Tom Burton
This was two tubby mulleted guys with sleazy mustaches basically beating on each other in a phone booth. I won’t pretend there was any genius wrestling going on here but I enjoyed watching these guys do some low distance fighting. Burton should’ve faced Ian Rotten at some point so we could know who the quintessential redneck shooter is.
Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs. Billy Scott
Getting to see Fujiwara do a faux PRIDE match is cool because it makes him do some fighting stance and striking work that you normally don’t see him to in typical UWF type matches. And Billy Scott is a really good grappler with fast movements and good tenacity that he matches up very well against Fujiwara. This went 5 minutes and really should have gone longer.
Enson Inoue vs. John Calvo
Two bulky guys tangling on the mat and punching each other for 2 minutes. Punches looked good although there is really no reason to run these kind of pro wrestling matches when real MMA is a thing.
Yoji Anjoh vs. Nicholas Starks
Anjos singlet with sparkly belt getup is just amazing. This ended up being another 2 minute squash. Anjoh just completely eats this poor guy up. Weird booking on this show, as you had a 16 minute opening match leading to a 2 minute main event. Maybe they were building to an epic Yoji Anjo vs. Tomoharu Fuse match on the next show before sponsors backed out or something.
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