The (You-Tube) Shoot-Style Thread

[RavishingRickRudo 0]

I'm starting this thread cause I need an outlet to talk about this stuff. I love the shoot-style. When it's done right, there are very few things better. Once upon a time, when there were stretchers, hookers, and shooters, wrestlers used to be considered pretty dangerous guys. You wouldn't fuck with a professional wrestler. Then along came Gorgeous George and the like and eventually this breed of wrestler pretty much died out. Each generation of North American wrestler got watered down and so did their legitimacy. Today, professional wrestling is a joke, wrestlers are cartoons. The legitimacy simply isn't there. However, a select few carried the torch, trained by guys like Billy Robinson and Karl Gotch. Wrestlers such as Takada, Fujiwara, Sayama and Maeda. They started up the UWF in the 80's which was the starting-ground for the promotions to come, promotions like RINGS, SHOOTO, and UWF-i. The next generation of professional wrestlers that resulted from this pro wrestling mindset were the likes of Funaki, Tamura, and Sakuraba. In the spirit of Antonio Inoki in the 70's, Martial Artists from around the world were brought in to compete. A particular wealth of talent came from Russia and Volk Han was generally considered to be the best grappler not only from that country, but in the world.

 

The fall of the shoot-style would have to be with shoots themselves. Inevitably, the desire for real fights became too great. By the time PRIDE started up, the tide started to turn and worked shoot companies pretty much died out and embraced real fighting. Today there are a few companies like U-Style that promote the shoot-style, but it's nowhere near its peak like it was in the 90's. In this thread I hope to relive those glory days plus check out some of the newer stuff. I just got done watching Frank Shamrock in a shootstyle match and enjoyed it immensely. I think modern fighters could have more success performing in shootstyle than workers shoots, and I hope that the trend continues in the future.

 

But until then, here is a swank match between Kiyoshi Tamura and Volk Han from 1995 with my review below.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILDFKwY6CfE&search=tamura

 

 

Volk Han is a member of the Russian Top Team, formerly the home of uber-fighter Fedor Emelianenko. LordoftheCurry and I have always called the Russian top team "The Accountants" because they do not look like fighters at all. They are every day guys, there is nothing really impressive about them, physically. Their hair, their physiques, the expressions on their faces... they're accountants. Now, I loves me some Fedor, but all this time I did not know that Volk Han used to be "that guy" in Fedors corner. He's the tall accountant. And he's like the second coming of Karl Gotch in the way he works the crazy ass submissions.

 

Kiyoshi Tamura might just be the greatest worked shooter of all time. His work in UWF-i is tremendous, his matches with Vader and Takada are some of my favourites. The guy is just really, really, really good at making things look real.

 

The match starts off with Volk Han grabbing a standing keylock on Tamura and picking him up by his one hammerlocked arm and walking around the ring with him. That just may be my new favouritest move. The action gets taken down to the mat with Han still holding on to the arm, trying to hook his legs across Tamuras body for the cross-arm breaker, which Tamura scoots around and grabs Hans leg for a heelhook, and then Han stands up and crosses Tamuras legs together and falls back down for a sorta figure four cross heel hold... this is all in, like, 20 seconds. I won't do PBP for the rest of the match, because as you can read it's very complicated stuff and very hard to describe. The moves come very naturally and the two feed holds to each other throughout the match. These counters are logical, but the pace itself is sped up from what you'd normally see in a shoot. There isn't the premium placed on positioning or scoring points as you'd see in grappling matches at ADCC, so they go for holds a lot quicker than usual. The matwork is very fluid and there is a diversity of moves, even if they centre around armlocks and leglocks. This is technical wrestling.

 

Where this differs from traditional wrestling is that there is no story to it. Two guys trading holds, trying to get the better of each other, until one finally sinks in for the finish. That's it. Each guy is trying to beat the other. It's not grand. There are little theatrics. None of these guys pander to the crowd, or rally their support. They don't work limbs. They don't really build towards the finish, or have pay-back spots. The standard wrestling conventions simply aren't there. The excitement comes from the subtleties in the work, it comes in the movement and holds. It comes from the personalities, as well, in that you want one to win and the dramatics come from how close they are to winning or losing. Tamura is especially excellent at conveying danger, anticipation, importance, etc. of various moves and submissions through his body language and his facial expressions.

 

My favourite moment in the match is about 3/4's of the way through (around the 8 minute mark), when -after all this mat wrestling and trading of holds and rope breaks and the like- the two are standing after Tamura frantically gets a rope break, and he levels Han with a kick to the solar plexus which puts him down immediately. The swings in the match also help create the excitement, as the fans are very into the "near fall". The selling by both guys is tremendous after this move. Han has his arms on the ropes, trying to catch his breath. Tamura is horny and anxious. Like, that dude just wants in there right away so he can finish the job. He sees the opportunity and he doesn't want Han to recover. Han is very sluggish in his movements while Tamura is frisky and perhaps over-anxious. Eventually Han gets back in control of the match and is able to get the upper-hand on Tamura standing. From watching his matches with Vader, Takada, and now Han, I don't think anyone plays "dazed and woozy" better than Kiyoshi Tamura.

 

The finish is fitting for the match. It comes after a near fall/10 count spot when Tamura gets knocked down by Han after a flurry. They end up on the ground where Han has a keylock (or maybe an Americana) on the arm and traps Tamuras leg with his so Tamura can't roll out of it. They were able to catch the crowd when they were still hot after the near fall and it came at a point where the trading-moves didn't become repetitive. This is a truly great grappling match, I haven't seen many that can rival it, certainly none in North America. This is what mat wrestling is, not the Eddie/Dean pinning sequences or the armdrag and headlock crap you get on the indy scene. It was logical, it was well performed, and it worked. It should be required viewing. As an aside, I would love to see MMA guys work this style as I think they could do it very, very well. They could mix it up on the ground and standing, which would be an absolute delight. **** ~!

[BrokenTiger 0]

Very fascinating. I thouroughly enjoyed the vid in the link & your review.

 

Incidentally, I had watched Tamura against a fellow named Mishima, I believe (IIRC, from RINGS). I don't remember the date, unfortunately. Mishima doesn't strike me as a threat to Tamura, from my initial perception...so the outcome is somewhat obvious. Yet, Tamura cared enough to bring Mishima as someone who might have a chance to beat him - his facial expressions when Mishima had him in a leglock, for instance...and he goes for the rope quite a few times. He eventually won with a keylock/kimura.

 

Well, I haven't watch that fight for quite a while, so apologies for any errors. I'm just new to shoot-style...and I'm hungry for more.

[BrokenTiger 0]

Oops...that Tamura vs Mishima is from U-Style, not RINGS (still not sure about the date, though). Plus, Tamura finishes Mishima with a cross armbreaker. My mistake. Match ran around 11 minutes. Currently my internet connection is rather shitty, so I had no means of showcasing this match online...but here's some caps of it:

 

Mishima and Tamura squared off. Loved the wacky red-and-blue wristband on the ref.

 

The initial scramble. Tamura goes for the arm, and Mishima's targeting the leg.

 

Tamura's in trouble. Desperately reaching for the ropes while Mishima's wrenches the leg.

 

The finish. Mishima taps out to the cross armbreaker.

 

I'll leave the reviews/analysis to more knowledgable people than myself.

[thecitythesky 0]

*

 

I'll preface this by saying that I do enjoy "shoot-style" professional wrestling.

 

However, the consistant problem that I have with it is that in an effort to make the matches seems legitimate as "shoots" the fighters frequently take chances and put themselves in positions that a real fighter in a real fight would do their best to avoid. That and that the styles appeals to those fans who enjoy actual athetic competition, and to really get the full effect of the work being done; one would have to at least have a familiarity with shoot-fighting. This familiarity takes away quite a bit from the perceived legitimacy.

 

I do particularly enjoy the pure aspects of it, as well as its ability to avoid what are otherwise the duller moments of MMA and shoots in general (namely, the lengthy periods which tend to arise that-while important strategicall-are more or less boring to most viewers). But it is the "working" attributes that seems to easily slippery slope into what is more commonly past off as professional wrestling in the modern era.

 

To appeal over a long period to a large amount of people there really needs to be some kind of emotional investment (i.e. give *me* the viewer a reason to want fighter A to win, since, given that it's a work, winners and losers can't simply be chosen in an arbitrary fashion). This gives way to more defined characters which begets more and more pagentry to separate the participants. I think it's clear where this is going and that somewhere down the line the pure representation of the artform gets filtered down in an effort to sustain itself. Shoot-style can and should have its runs; but there is no real way for it to sustain itself. Especially with actual MMA gaining ground and visability; as well as becoming increasingly more exciting. If one wants to watch worked competition, there is an outlet for that (certainly not on par with UWF, et al), and if one wants to watch two (wo)men oppose one another to see who is the better fighter - there is an outlet for that as well.

[Hunter's Torn Quad 0]

If you want to save video from YouTube, then this is what you do.

 

Take the URL from the Video URL window and copy and paste it into your browser and hit GO. This takes you back to the file but it changes it, for example, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILDFKwY6CfE&search=tamura to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILDFKwY6CfE.

 

Copy and paste this address in your browser into a Notepad file.

 

Then, change the watch.php?v= part of the file name into get_video.php?l=165&video_id=. This would change http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILDFKwY6CfE into http://www.youtube.com/get_video.php?l=165..._id=ILDFKwY6CfE

 

Copy and paste this link into a blank e-mail and send it to yourself.

 

When you open the e-mail up Right Click on the link and hit Save Link As and give it a name but then give it a .flv extension. For example, Tamura-Han.flv. You can then save the video to your computer as a Flash that you can watch at any time. You won’t be able to fast forward to rewind the video, but you can get around that by using CinemaForge http://www.download.com/CinemaForge/3000-2169-10373646.html to convert it to another media file type. Quality will likely diminish, depending on what you convert the Flash into, but you’ll be able skip ahead or pause and it’ll be easier to handle.

[Your Paragon of Virtue 0]

Most of those early shoot style pro wrestlers weren't as dangerous as they were claimed, and to make things worse for the Mike Reilly's of the world, a lot of those so called "legitimate" matches were worked. How do you think guys could go for an hour and then tap to an STF? A good comparison would be someone like Bas Rutten in terms of grappling, or Ken Shamrock. The style of catch wrestling is not as effective as some would have you believe.

 

Regardless, I still enjoy shoot style quite a bit. I will be checking some more stuff on Youtube if it's available.

[Your Paragon of Virtue 0]

Okay I watched it, and maybe I over-analyzed, but I wasn't that impressed. I suppose it was pro wrestling, so a lot of your disbelief must be suspended, but most of it down to the finish seemed unrealistic. I won't say it isn't anything special, because it definitely is different than most of what you'd get in pro wrestling. However, the realness is still lacking a little bit and there were more than a few spots I could easily say "that doesn't work" or "he doesn't look like he's fighting, he's laying there waiting for the other guy". Again, it should be expected since this is pro wrestling, and maybe my expectations are high, but I assumed these guys would try to mix excitement with realism, and I don't think I got enough of the latter.