More Sportiva

 Shinya Ishida vs Yu Shimizu, Sportiva 11/25/2020

Sick WAR-esque match with both guys beating the fuck out of each other and showing tons of hatred. Ishida is starting to grow on me, the guy really knows how to deliver an asskicking.Yes he looks like your typical junior wrestler but when it comes to stomping a guys guts out he is much closer to Ashura Hara than someone like Marufuji. He is also very good at working momentum shifts. Him blistering Shimizu with those nasty short kicks to the chest, brutal Garvin stomps and bitchslapping him was great stuff. Shimizu is a rookie who at this point has little more than dropkicks and elbows, but he throws some fierce elbows and his dropkicks land flush in Ishidas face, really putting the Wrestling and Romance into a silent arena plague era match in a way that should have gotten more attention at the time (who can blame people, I didn't have my eye on Sportiva at this time either). Some awesome moments here where both guys are pummeling each other from the mount, and for a fairly long match they keep things fairly interesting with Shimizu really having to earn his salt. I love me a stiff war where guys land basic strikes with bad intentions and this was that kind of match.

 

Toru Sugiura & Kengo Takai vs Kyozo Furuta & Hiroaki Ura, Sportiva 5/8/2019

It’s Kyozo Furutas debut match. Since I’m writing about it you know it was a good debut match. Furuta almost immediately gets a bloody nose when Sugiura and Takai start beating him down, and you get Sugiura slapping his bloody face and Takai stepping on his nose, and Furuta gets all kinds of fired up. He did good for a young boy. And, just the fact that even getting his more established opponents up for a bodyslam for him takes enormous effort out of him makes things interesting. That and the fact he might tap out to any random boston crab. Ura was pretty fun here, too. He’s no Akiyama but his ways of catching people with dropkicks from odd angles is very cool. In a way he’s still a young boy too but more accomplished and he still surprises you with what he can achieve and what he busts out. Sugiura and Takai don’t do anything beyond the basics and they didn’t need more than that, tho Takai blasts Furuta with a pretty hefty lariat. Blood, fire and characters that get you invested. This was pro wrestling done right.

Takaya Shibayama vs Kyozo Furuta, Sportiva 5/29/2019

Takaya Shibayama is a curious wrestler. He’s pretty checked out in his late career and mailing it in most of the time, but capable of delivering good stuff in a while. Thankfully he decided to deliver the good stuff here. This was a really nice rookie vs veteran match where Shibayama guides the freshly debuted Kyozo Furuta through sensible match without relying on no-selling or extended beatdowns and stretching. Obviously he dominates a lot and it takes a while before Furuta can even get Shibayama off his feet, and things stay basic, but it’s ever dull simply because they manage to create that sense that it might just happen. And they just build every part of the match nicely. Furuta has to build up to basic stuff like even a bodyslam and even getting in something as basic as slipping underneath and hitting a forearm feels very satisfying. And Shibayama does some cool stuff in the second half, hitting some gnarly forearms, a really stiff swinging lariat and a really cool snapdown into a facelock for the tap. Furuta only had the most basic dropkick and bodyslam stuff at this point but his fire was good enough that it’s definitely a letdown that he retired before his career could really get anywhere. Still, I look forward to checking out how far that boy made it.