More Sportiva Twitcastings

 

Hiroaki Ura & Kazuhiro Tamura vs Michio Kageyama & Toru Sugiura (Sportiva 1/23/2019)

Sportiva could still deliver the goods in 2019. Hiroaki Ura was their young hope, and watching his progression on the weekly bar shows is very intrigueing. The first half of this is nothing special, it’s solid enough but nothing you haven’t seen before as it’s mostly the non-Ura guys doing their thing. I will say that Toru Sugiura is always an impressive wrestler, he doesn’t get talked about much but whenever I see him he looks like one of the best guys going. Things get going when they start kicking Uras ass with Sugiura working him over with nasty stomps and face scrapes. The second half had lots of really well timed stuff and unpredictable twists inculding one nearfall that was unbelievably well done. Kageyama and Tamura also gave a shit in this match so that means they were quite good. These guys really know how to deliver a good match on these tiny shows without doing too much for their own good. In an era where everything is going for the grandiose and overboarding it’s nice to see some less is more pro wrestling where they still put in effort to make it interesting.

Hiroshi Yamato vs 801 Kenichi (Sportiva 1/30/2019)

Yamato is another really underrated wrestler. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him shoot at his full potential but he always does cool stuff and shows he understands pro wrestling well. He did an impressive job crafting a neat little match around Kenichi. His technical prowress and bits of athleticism always keep things interesting and he manages to time Kenichs stuff very well. Kenichi is rather sluggish but because Yamato paced the match around him in such a way it didn’t really matter. Kenichi had one Thesz Press that actually looked awesome because of Yamato timing it as if it caught him off guard. Yamato also had this impressive sequence where he leapt to the top rope in a spider suplex position, threw Kenichi, then hit a missile dropkick and followed with a dive to the outside. It was like something Misawa in his athletic prime would do. Very nice stuff.

Hiroaki Ura vs Yusaku Ito (Sportiva 2/6/2019)

This was really fucking great. Getting to follow Uras weekly progression from tags to singles is awesome. He is still at the stage where something like a camel clutch might finish him, so just seeing him try his damndest to take a chunk out of Ito and get as far as he can go is great and a story to be invested in. Ito is awesome here, giving Ura the chance to catch him off guard. I won’t spoil too much but Itos strikes were absolutely vicious and getting into harrowing tier in the second half. He really cracked Ura with his kicks and elbows. Ura caught Ito off guard early and immediately capitalized working the leg. It didn’t last long but Ito sold the fuck out of that and it set up this awesome moment in the second half where Ura grabbed Itos leg like a terrier. It was that moment where you felt Ura started pushing beyond his limits and it was awe inspiring. The stuff they did with the basic submissions was awesome too and the way they worked them into the match was very inventive compared to your usual cliché submission reversal stuff. And because of Uras standing and Itos selling the crowd bought a tapout finish. Ending was sick too. This was a gem, one of the best rookie vs high ranked guy I remember in an awful long time.