Brand New Shoot Style... Again! Well Done, Internet!

Hard Hit Holy Land Pilgrimage

(2014/10/13)

1.       Shibata vs. Hiroshi Kozakai

Decent opener, not bad.

**3/4

2.       Hayato Mashita vs. Yukio Sakaguchi

Squash! Yukio was a beast here.

**1/2

3.       Tomoya Miyashita Memorial: Kosei Kubota & Manabu Hara vs. Shuichiro Katsumura & Mitsuhisa Sunabe

Very good match, exciting and fast paced, with slick matwork, painful holds and hellish strikes. Well done, this is why I love the genre.

***3/4

4.       Super Tiger vs. Ryo Kawamura

Didn’t dig it at first but then it got significantly better down the road with all the killer kicks, palm strikes and grueling holds, good match, Tiger seems suited for this thing.

***1/2

5.       HARASHIMA vs. Hikaru Sato

Another good match between the former rivals from DDT, SHIMA displayed his dangerous versatility against the well known and highly respected representative of the genre. Some of the “pro” moves were beautifully incorporated.

***1/2

6.       Kenichi Yamamoto 20^th Anniversary & Retirement Match: Ryuki Ueyama vs. Kenichi Yamamoto

Good anniversary/retirement match for Yamamoto, you could really feel the UWF aura, that touch of the 90s. The ending was killer.

***1/2

Hard Hit is definitely not for everyone, even if you like/love the shoot style it’s not a guarantee you’ll like/love Hard Hit. It’s probably the most rigid shoot style league you’ll ever see, traditional in-ring cooperation is completely absent or invisible, and they’ll easily sacrifice suspense and drama to make a match as realistic as possible. All that being said, I like the product and hope they grow, hoping to see them in Korakuen Hall one day.