I didn’t expect a bloodbath coming into this project, so I’m happy one snuck its way in.
Here we have Delfin defending the UWF Super Weltwerweight Championship against MEN’s Teioh. Teioh sets the tone early by ripping up the official title match announcement scroll as well as attacking Delfin right at the bell. I’d assumed that what we’d get is our first real extended heat segment on Delfin. It’s not something that we’ve really seen in this project, and I was hoping to see how he’d take to the role. He’s great at a comeback, but we haven’t really seen him have to draw in sympathy for extended amounts of time.
We don’t get that as Delfin rallies back fairly quickly. Instead, we get something that actually plays far closer to Delfin’s former role as a heel. After seizing control, Delfin zones in on a singular plan of attack: going after a fresh wound on Teioh’s head. Delfin’s actually quite vicious about it–ripping the bandage off the wound, attacking the cut repeatedly with punches, dragging Teioh out into the crowd to brawl with him and claw at the wound.
If Teioh didn’t have the Kaientai Deluxe boys at ringside interfering on his behalf, I might have assumed that Delfin might be the heel here. Luckily, it never really crosses that threshold, and Delfin always has cause to be the righteous top guy exacting revenge especially with how Teioh’s posse keeps interjecting themselves into proceedings.
Delfin’s punches aren’t always perfect, but some of them can really land with a nice crack. He throws more good ones than bad and it really makes his lengthy control segment over Teioh great to watch. I’d be remiss not to mention Teioh’s own contributions to the match either. Not only is Teioh a great bleeder in this, his selling of the blood loss is fantastic as well. He has the wild, loopy swinging at the fences down selling that you want from a heel eating shit. That plus the blood staining his blonde hair made me think of Steve Corino while watching this.
There’s a great touch late in the match where Teioh goes for the same low back heel kick that’s cost Delfin multiple victories against Kaientai DX, but Delfin finally learned how to block the blow. It’s a nice little show of progression from our hero, showing how he’s had to learn and grow while fighting off his enemies.
Even better though is how this plays into the finish. Knowing that Delfin can counter the low blow from that standard angle, Teioh’s instead able to hit it when Delfin sets him up for a backslide. With Teioh behind him, Delfin can’t see the kick coming and the low blow opens the door for Teioh to get the victory with a Delfin Clutch for additional insult to injury.
This match shows us another side of Delfin that we haven’t seen before. Delfin bloodbath brawler. While he doesn’t do the bleeding, he does much of the punishing and he takes to that role incredibly well. A nice feather in his cap to have something like this that contrasts so strongly from the rest of his work, even if Teioh often feels like the star of the show here. As always, it’s about Delfin applying himself to help his opponent shine, and he does it with poise and skill.
