Ricky Fuji Produce Ricky Fuji Wild Night 3/20/04

 60 Minute Ironman Match: Ricky Fuji vs. MEN's Teioh

Yes, this is the only match on the card. Just that good old high confidence indy sleaze. Teioh is the perfect Bret Hart to Fujis sleazy Michaels. They start by hitting the mat for 15 minutes or so with Teioh looking really great. It's fun to think that Teioh is such a nerd for western style matwork he'd track down shit like World of Sport tapes or random GCW TV episodes to nick mat moves from Ole Anderson, like we track down these Japan sleazy MUGA matches now. Fuji does some fun things too including busting out a neat body scissor Full Nelson Hold. I'm not sure anyone has ever praised Ricky Fuji, aside from his amazing Rockers worship act and being Ricky Fuji, but he looked like a really solid wrestler here and his act feels fresh compared to other more generic juniors. I was surprised how well they planned this match out. They went a really long time and never looked lost or like they were doing filler stuff. There are some insanely well worked Figure 4s, and while the match didn't have long term selling they made that stuff convincing and engaging. They also had other fun things, like one guy taking the lead with a flash pin and the other having to chase him for a while. Blood comes into play, and we get to see Teioh doing cool Terry Funk punch combos. Fujis punches were a bit Shaw Michaelsish (no wonder), but that was the only criticism of him. The one hiccup in the structure came at about the 45-50 minute mark where it seemed the guys had overestimated the time passed and had to do some filler moves, although a 2 count for something like a knee drop (both guys had some ridiculously great knee drops in this by the way) 49 minute into a match is a lot more interesting. The ending had great drama and you saw Fuji unloading more moves than in probably any other match of his. This was honestly better than I expected, just both guys doing a ton of cool stuff in a well structured 60 minute match.

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