This review was commissioned by Eric T. over on my Ko-fi account.
I understand the hesitation with shoot style. It’s just enough of a deviation from mainstream professional wrestling to have an intimidating aura about it. The historical and promotional ties to what MMA would become also create another layer of detachment. More than once, I’ve heard the idea of “Why would I watch shoot style when I can watch MMA instead?” What these ideas obfuscate though is that at its core, what makes the best shoot style great is what makes all the best pro wrestling great too.
It’s that primal struggle performed through combat. It’s drawing a line in the sand, picking your guy, and saying, “Get his fucking ass.” That’s all pro wrestling is at the heart of it, regardless of what stylistic nuances you dress it up with. At the end of the day, it’s a guttural need to see conquest through sweet, glorious violence.
I’m convinced even a novice to pro wrestling as a whole could understand this match. With the roar of the crowd packed into Hakata Starlanes just on the introductions, and then how Nakano rejects the handshake with a swift kick, it feels like the easiest thing in the world to understand. These two have a fucking problem with each other, and they’re going to fight to settle it. Nothing all that complicated or obtuse about it all.
What these two excel at most of all is approaching this in the most direct and straightforward way possible. While a beautiful trick of momentum and grappling can always dazzle the eye and warm the heart of a freak like me, it’s just not the same as the meaty smack of flesh on flesh. There’s a sensory quality to the best pro wrestling, and that’s what makes it so visceral. It bypasses the intellect and leaps straight into the heart. And when pro wrestling can feel that tangible, that real, that’s when it reaches its greatest heights. When those kicks land or when they both crowd in with those vicious open palm strikes, it’s just this undeniable blast of sheer violence that would knock the pulse back into even the coldest corpse.
Then, the blood too.
Tatsuo Nakano famously has a nose made of paper. It’s no difficult thing for Funaki to bust him up real quick with how often he’s aiming at the head with palm strikes and big kicks. Nakano’s nose gushes, enough so that doctors pause the match at multiple points to check on him. There’s something about being a busted nose that adds to this too. Everyone knows what it’s like to bleed, but there’s a certain distance from the forehead gushers people get when blading. A nosebleed though? That’s childhood, that’s falling on your face and getting busted up. I don’t know what it’s like my forehead to get split open, but I know how much it sucks to get knocked in the nose.

The blood adds so much to Nakano as an underdog figure here too. When he pushes the doctor aside to continue the fighting after first pause, he does the smallest thing. He just balls his fist up in determination, and the camera catches it at just the right angle to win over my undying loyalty. The rest of the match is just a full on, “Get his fucking ass, Nakano.” It really doesn’t get much more pure than that.
Mechanically, not quite as complex as the slickest shoot style mat work out there. And at points, it does feel like it pauses in the same way other UWF matches of this era did when they’re both tangled up fighting for a leg lock on the mat. But these are easy things to look past when the rest of it is these meanspirited smacks to the face, straight up punching, and kicks and knees aimed right for the head, always seeking to dole out maximum damage. The interception of these strikes feels breathtaking as well. When Nakano catches the leg and tries for his shoot style dragon screw, it actually knocks the wind out of me to see Funaki block the attempt and go back on the attack instead.
In all these ways, Nakano and Funaki tap into the elemental feeling of pro wrestling. They capture the spirit of it, and complement this by deviating from the mechanics of it in exciting ways. Most wrestling fans understand what a double arm suplex looks like, so when Nakano goes for it and ends up spiking Funaki on his head instead, it sends me screaming. The action flows and gets countered in all these small but impactful ways that make the match feel unlike anything else in the world, while still honoring the meaning of the whole damn artform to begin with.
They may call it shoot style, but dig a little deeper and the truth reveals itself. Through it all: pro wrestling is the strongest style.
IS IT BETTER THAN 6/3/94? In nine minutes, filled with even more drama and narrative twists than the thirty minute epic. Concise and punchy in a way that so few wrestling is, believably violent in a way I most associate with two other freaks beating the shit out of each other in a sub-ten minute match sixteen years later. One of the greatest matches of all time.
Rating: *****