Junior Heavyweight Matwork

[Guest Thunder Rising!!!]

As you guys know the traditional structure of japan's junior heavyweight is to kick off the match with matwork, before proceeding to the power moves, then the highspots and end of with the near falls.

 

During the matwork, one guy could be working on another's leg, putting various submission holds to weaken the leg.

 

But the problem is most of the time, all the focus on the leg ends up meaning nothing, as they start hitting the highspots without favoring the leg which irritates me.

 

Seldom do we see a wrestler selling the injury throughout the entire match and most of the time it is towards the end before they start favouring the leg again.

 

Anyone with better knowledge on Puroresu can comment on this?

[Guest Coffin Surfer]

The matwork merely serves as the body of the match, since it's impossible go hell on wheels for 15-20 straight minutes. Most matches(reasonablely timed) have a build that ends up not directly factoring into the finish of the match, it's just the juniors usually tend use matwork so they can save themselves for a big finish.

 

The ideology that everything from start to finish has to directly factor into the finish is bullshit propraghandi that guys like Scott Keith spread. As long as the sequence goes somewhere it works. Attacking a limb can give the guy control, and create an opening for the high spots. Still, lengthly limb working that goes nowhere can be annoying and can frustrate the viewer.

 

But most of the time the mat work does serve a purpose in giving some body control of the match like Beniot/Sasuke or even Lyger/Sasuke in the JCup 94 matches.

 

However you will find that alot of the truely great junior matches like Lyger/Sammy, Ohtani/Lyger, Ohtani/Samurai either don't use the limb working as much or work it into the final run somehow(especially Ohtani/Sammy 96).

[Guest wildpegasus]

Good post. I was wondering if the fact that the TV footage often comes in during the middle of a juniors match is why the matwork at the beginning is so prominent. Perhaps the wrestlers don't want everyone missing their fancy moves so they'd wait for the cameras to start rolling. Than it just becomes habit somewhat.

Just of note: As for going all out for 15-20 minutes-Benoit/El Samurai 7/7/95 was all out action for 30 min and it seemed like Benoit was just getting warmed up. Not New Japan but Benoit/Malenko Hog Wild was also all out action for almost 30 minutes.

[Guest Thunder Rising!!!]

Well i guess not all of them can go all out for 15-20 mins and the matwork serves as a minor build up before they really start going.

 

But the matwork really puts me to sleep sometimes, especially if they go 5 mins on it. I guess I'm not one who appreciates the aspect of it.