Universal Wrestling Federation (UWF)

[10.0] "The least appreciated version of the UWF, partly because footage for this is by far the hardest to find and gather: there's only a few dozen matches available fully. That said, the roster at its prime was incredible: Sayama and Maeda could main event by themselves and draw great minus the other big stars here like Fujiwara and Kido. Original UWF featured longer, more drawn-out matches that followed traditional structures rather than what we'd see in later formats: there were no sub-5 minutes matches here, everything was rather long. This makes the matches more predictable and not as tense, but also means that the guys had to really slow build and work to a big finish, which when it worked created some of the best matches in the 80's in terms of overall action and storytelling. Original UWF might have not been the most refined stand-up wise but you had probably one of the best mat-work rosters around at the time alongside a TON of British Catch guys who Sayama had mostly brought over from his WoS days, so you get a great blend of styles when it comes to those kind of matches when you had Gotch-trained Japanese guys clashing with them in the ring. When it came to mat-work, I'd argue Original UWF was king when it came to quality bouts. If you are looking for a less strict form of shoot-style while maintaining the complexity seen in the likes of RINGS, this is definitely worth checking out. It's a pretty easy 10 to rank given this birthed shoot-style as a whole much like how the JWA did for wrestling in Japan."

[10.0] "Arguably the most influential promotion in the history of Japanese Pro-Wrestling. Shoot-Style wouldn't exist if it wasn't for the almitghy UWF."