U-DREAMS 1st Impact 11/12/1998

 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.

 

THE LIBRARY

JPWA 4/14/2000

 

1. Billy Scott vs. Mamoru Okamoto

2. Tomohiko Hashimoto vs. Tom Burton

3. Retsu Maekawa vs. James Woodin

4. Kohei Sato vs. KC Geyer (KC Thunder)

5. Koichiro Kimura vs. Shawn Hernandez (Hotstuff Hernandez)

 

The card looks interesting, but unfortunately, they clipped all the matches. Quite unecessesarily, because most of these were around the 7 minute mark except the main event and opener. Billy Scott looked quite good in the first match, doing some nifty wrestling, and his opponent, former BattlARTS undercarder Okamoto bringing the punishment. The 2nd match was wrestler vs. judoka that looked fun from the glimpses. Tom Burton looked old as dirt, but still like a credible asskicker, so it's obvious that I love him. Maekawa/Woodin was barely shown. Woodin had funny bleach blond hair and was not in great shape, so kinda looked like a garbage worker. Sato/KC looked like a fun power vs. skill matchup, with Sato looking especially good, and KC (a huge musclehead) looking nervous.

 

Then the main event - this was 28 minutes clipped down to 17 minutes. And Shawn Hernandez is Hotstuff Hernandez in a singlet, looking like an absolute tank. This match was a match of two sides - 1. Hernandez was absolutely killing Kimura for the entire duration, launching him around with some of the most beastly throws I've ever seen and exploding his nose with a stiff palm strike. 2. the absolute stupidity of putting Kimura, a guy who's not all that good, and Hernandez, a guy with very little experience especially not at shootstyle wrestling in a match this long. Hernandez didn't seem to know any submissions, Kimura added very little, and for some reason they did not allow rope breaks at this show, so even with the clipping, a lot of this was two guys lying on the mat, one of them being very unsure. Thankfully, Tom Burton was at ringside to tell Hernandez what to do step by step: "Take the ankle! Good, now slap him once!" Now that's a veteran, carrying a green guy when he's not even in the match! God bless you, Tom Burton. Fujiwara also was at ringside, and at one point was convinced Hernandez was throwing fists, so he took offense and took his jacket off, ready to go at him. So, Fujiwara and Tom Burton did more to add to this match than Kimura. Kimura eventually got to pick up the win after he KO'd Shawn with a lucky kick after absolutely getting his shit pushed in for 28 minutes, and admittedly this got a pretty excited reaction from the crowd. So I guess the match did work after all! Kinda funny to watch, and makes you wonder if with a little more help from Tom Burton Hernandez could turn into the next Shamrock or a great tag partner for Lesnar.

 

THE LIBRARY