Anjoh's a Different Kind of Daredevil Than a Lot of Folks I Know, but He Still Walks the Tightrope with no Net Down Below

Yoji Anjoh v Kiyoshi Tamura (UWF, 9/30/89) - GOOD

This might be my favourite ever non-RINGS shoot style match-up, and even then it's pretty close to any of those. Young Tamura is a phenom and even if he was never winning against Anjoh at this point you know he'd try his best to make it a contest. Anjoh was far more assured in the stand up, but there was one awesome part where Tamura's temper got the better of him - as it often would in his early career - and he tried to stomp Anjoh's head into the mat. Anjoh responded as we all knew he would and those headbutts to the cheek bone were nasty as fuck. You could already see the signs of Tamura becoming a world-class defensive grappler. He never really managed to turn those escapes into any sort of advantage here, but but he was wicked slippery and a nightmare to pin down for very long. Though I guess Anjoh never needed very long in the end and it would still be a couple years before Tamura would take him to the wire.


Complete & Accurate Anjoh