Munenori Sawa was a great professional wrestler who recently announced his retirement from the art. In America, he may be best known for competing in two outstanding matches in Evolve (at least that is how I got introduced to him. More informed fans obviously would have known of him longer). He defeated TJ Perkins on the first Evolve show and then lost to Bryan Danielson at Evolve 5.
Recap from TJ Hawke:
Obviously, with this being a Sawa match, they immediately start wailing on each other. They started brawling on the floor. Back in the ring, they started headbutting each other. Back to the floor, Sawa ate a DVD on the padded floor. Takagi pulled out a table; he then hit a splash from the top rope through the table on the floor. Sawa took a piece of the broken table and started bashing Takagi in the forehead with it. They traded some submissions and then started trading slaps. Sawa finally knocked him down with his baseball punch, but Takagi came back with a big lariat. Eventually, Takagi came off the top rope with a lariat for the win. This was a real solid match, but I think these two would have the potential to do more
Match Rating: ***1/2
Thoughts from Lee Goodfellow:
Munenori Sawa is awesome. He brought the BattlArts strong style violence with him to this bout with DDT owner Sanshiro Takagi, a style which was exemplified when Sawa knocked what appeared to be Takagi’s tooth out. Takagi showed he was no slouch in the violence department when he responded with strikes that messed up Sawa’s face. This started good, then became completely gripping when they just started destroying each other. Hell of a match. Watching Sawa now makes me even sadder that his career and BattlArts came to an end.
Match Rating: ***3/4
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