I'll tell you what, if our man Super Tiger was more aggressive in their second match than he was in their first, he only went and upped it another notch a month later. He was borderline savage at points here, or maybe not even borderline. There was even less hesitancy when it came to kicking Fujiwara up and down the place. It was almost reminiscent of Ishikawa/Ikeda, where Ikeda knew full well that Ishikawa would open himself up to be annihilated every time out and so Ikeda tried to volley his head into the fourteenth row with no remorse. "It's fine, he knows this isn't a monkey show." Tiger still doesn't want much to do with the mat and he'll demonstrate that with urgency. Urgent in that he'll try and kneedrop Fujiwara to death at every opportunity. I said it about the December match and it's even more true in this one -- these are some of the most brutal kneedrops ever, first to the head, the body, then to the legs when he started going after those. He'd mix in leg kicks with the kneedrops and a couple times he'd just fully jump with both kneecaps right into Fujiwara's thighs. Really brutal stuff and Fujiwara was having to cover up on the mat like he was near death, a staple of Super Tiger v Fujiwara at large. Obviously when it goes to the mat Fujiwara can control things and he was super aggressive at points as well. You can always draw comparisons with their first match to see how the rivalry has progressed, how with familiarity they'll approach certain openings differently even if their general methodology is the same. In their first match Fujiwara would be more patient and grind Tiger down. There was still some of that here, because he knew he had things in control so why rush, but once or twice he really snapped into something and forced Sayama to the ropes. A sign of GROWTH for our Tiger comes when he actually manages to wriggle free of a kimura attempt and get back to his feet, then when that happens he does what you'd fully expect him to do and try to kick Fujiwara's head off. Fujiwara again would back into the corner when Sayama started reeling off combos, doing what Fujiwara would always do against strikers, trying to draw them in before pouncing, maybe catching a leg when the opponent gets overzealous and then he'd turn it into a kneebar or whatever. It's a high risk, high reward strategy and sometimes you're going to get roundhouse kicked in the skull, but the moments where he managed to flip it were amazing, throwing awesome punch combos to the body and cracking Sayama with headbutts. The piledriver makes an appearance again as a huge weapon for Fujiwara, like it did in their first match. Towards the end I thought they were actually going to do a stoppage with Tiger kicking and kneedropping Fujiwara into a corpse-like state, basically a rerun of the December match, but this time Fujiwara comes back, manages to take Sayama to the mat, then patiently sets up his play before just about snapping his arm with a rapid kimura.
No comments:
Post a Comment