Hase isn't as smooth as Fujiwara on the mat but I thought he looked good here. I liked the opening exchange for wrist control, and Fujiwara's early frustration. Hase borrowing a page from Fujiwara's playbook as he grinds the forearm and elbow into his face. Fujiwara hamming it up is so awesome. The strikes were fun and Fujiwara's counter work was top notch. I loved how he kept going back to the armbar in the end, with the transition out of the German and then countering the uranage with the armbar takedown. This was a blast to watch, with a little bit of everything.

 

Yeah this ruled. I always wondered how Hase would do in a shoot style promotion, I remember loving his match vs. Anjoh on one of those weird Inoki shows, and while that wasn't exactly what we got here it was still super fun. You'd expect Fujiwara's jokes to get old at some point but they just don't. Lots of nifty matwork and Fujiwara had so much shtick they could play up it was incredibly easy for this match to work. Not to say Hase wasn't good here-I enjoyed his takedowns, striking, selling and so on-but having Fujiwara as a foil allowed him to bloom. Loved all the fighting over the Fujiwara Armbar and how the match ended on the first killshot. ***3/4