Takuya Nomura vs. Fuminori Abe (BASARA, 11/26/19)

A 10+ minute slugger with tons of cool stuff you'd expect to see between two spunky astronauts. A little grapple action, plenty of cheeky shots, some neat counters and transitions from Abe - love his dragon screw legwhip and his simple transition into the front necklock. Of course, the fakeout slaps are great, too. Nomura's real shitty to Abe on the ground and throws plenty of suplexes, including a gnarly half nelson that Abe no sells. They ramp up the baseball punches and headbutts during the finishing stretch, until Nomura slaps off an attempt, dragon suplexes Abe and KOs him with the high kick. Nothing fancy, nothing bloated -- just two friends wrasslin' and kicking the shit out of each other.

Takuya Nomura & Fuminori Abe vs. Hikaru Sato & Takuya Wada (AJPW, 8/11/19)

Another dope Astronauts match with plenty to love on. Abe getting caught with the open hand early from Sato and his staggered sell, the intensity of the Nomura/Wada exchanges, which lead to nasty slaps and corner headbutts. And Wada's Northern lights suplex is snappy as hell. Loved Sato going nuts on Nomura with the ground-and-pound, and then Nomura German suplexing Sato as he's reaching out for the tag. Another cool spot came with Abe catching the double wrist-lock off the German suplex hold by Wada, slickly keeping it cinched in through Wada's struggled efforts. Abe's so smooth -- loved his set up to the cross kneebar on Sato before turning that into a legtrap German l. Fun mix of shoot-style and pro-wrestling with a motivated Sato turning up the heat and Abe getting plenty of time to shine. Abe and Nomura are a blast - a bit like modern day Fujiwara and Maeda. Same energy.

Hideki Suzuki & Daisuke Sekimoto vs. Takuya Nomura & Fuminori Abe (BJW, 5/13/18)

Oh baby, what a tag team match on paper and boy does it live up to my expectations! Tons of neat little things throughout, nasty strikes and suplexes, blood, finger biting, and zero shits given from the man Hideki Suzuki. Takuya Nomura opens the match against Daisuke Sekimoto and I love how he keeps slapping away Sekimoto's hands as he's trying to reach in...only to then straight up slap Daisuke in the face. When Fuminori Abe's in there against Suzuki, he's trying to get something on him but Hideki is too big so it's easy to get out. There's an awesome counter out of the armbar by Abe but when he tries for the armbar, Hideki maneuvers up to his feet and stomps Abe's face to break the hold, which may or may not have busted open Abe's lip. Hideki's still a dick from the apron, kicking Abe's foot off the ropes while he's in there against Sekimoto and then coming in and giving him some more shitty little kicks while he's down. Abe stuns Hideki with a spinning solebutt in the corner and when Suzuki tries for his strike combo, Abe counters the European uppercut with a leglock takedown, forcing Suzuki to the ropes.

Hideki biting Abe's fingers and casually tagging out to Sekimoto was a definite highlight of the match. Oh, and Sekimoto trying for a baseball-style lariat but sadly missing. Abe does a good job of slipping out of Hideki's single leg crab attempt and tags in Nomura, who comes at Hideki with kicks until Hideki catches a leg and capture suplexes him. Loved Nomura's pissy strikes in the corner, with him straight punching Hideki in the face! There's a pretty sweet double team into the reverse armbar by Nomura, with Abe climbing onto Sekimoto with an octopus hold. But Sekimoto powers over to kick Nomura off Hideki before dumping Abe. Then it's total destruction time for the big boys, as Hideki kills Nomura with a release dragon suplex, they Steinerize Abe to eliminate him form the equation, and finally finish off Nomura with the Sekimoto German into the Hideki double arm suplex.

Post-match, Hideyoshi Kamitani comes out like a total dweeb to challenge Hideki AGAIN but Hideki's like "fuck you, get out of my ring." Then Nomura says Suzuki is scared to put the title on the line against him and Suzuki responds that if the fans want it to happen, it will happen. Fuck yeah.

Koji Iwamoto vs. Fuminori Abe (Hard Hit, 3/17/18)

The boys from the Sportiva Dojo spar it out in HARD HIT, the last vestige of shoot-style in Japan. This was like 6:00 minutes long and it ruled. Fuminori Abe's slick as cat shit on linoleum against Koji Iwamoto, in his ground defense, his counters, his speed and transitions. Iwamoto's able to snag him with an armbar and when Abe tries to fancy his way out of it, Iwamoto shows good control, keeping him check. Love Abe's arm drag takedown and when Iwamoto takes him down with an STO, Abe turns it into a hammerlock, trapping the arm with his leg in order to flip him over into a guillotine check. It's awesome. The striking doesn't get to heavy and Iwamoto uses a little uranage slam but this is mostly a struggle for submissions, and after Iwamoto hits the judo throw from out of nowhere, he cinches in the scarf hold for the tap out. It'll take this over a bloated 37:14 epic any day.

Takuya Nomura vs. Fuminori Abe (BJW, 1/17/18)

I watched this match a few weeks ago, really liked it, re-watched this match last night, loved it. I mean, it's bati-bati in Big Japan, with Fuminori Abe putting on one of his best singles performances to date and, at times, overshadowing Takuya Nomura. Abe's awareness shines through early on, as he rolls through the snapmare to prevent the typical "I kick your back" spot that he did to Nomura -- loved that. His strategy is simple: keep Nomura on the ground. That's arguably Nomura's weak spot, his matwork, and Abe's able to stay on his leg, taking him to the ropes a couple of times. Nomura will get in a slap or a kick here, and he's able to catch an Abe kick and plant him with the capture suplex before going into the armbar. But just as Nomura starts heating up his strikes, Abe counters with a beautiful legscrew. In the last few minutes, they start laying in the hard strikes -- the punches, kicks, slaps, elbows -- both showing exhaustion as they stumble around the ring. I like how they lunge with into their strikes.  Nomura peppers him with a little flurry of palm thrusts, slaps on a calf hold by chopping out Abe's leg, but in the end, Abe is able to break out and trap Nomura in the manjigatame for the submission. Very cool match worked in a style that is, sadly, rarely worked these days.

Fuminori Abe vs. TORU (GUTS World, 6/20/17)

GUTS World, where have you been all my year? With the demise of NicoPro's paid-subscription YT channel, the wacky world of GUTS and HEAT-UP return to the wellspring of puro for my viewing pleasures. Now Fuminori Abe is a young guy I like a lot when he pops up in AJPW and BJW. He's technically Sportiva-affiliated but GUTS World seems to be his wrestling home-away-from-home. Back in June, he faced another impressive young guy I'm less familiar with in TORU (not to be confused with TARU). This was quite the little exhibition match-up between these two, and an easy watch/recommendation. Abe is a very emotive performer, in his movements and expressions, which can become rather annoying (see Kenny Omega/Will Ospreay) but Abe works in that Munenori Sawa/Keiji Mutoh vein, which is good by me.

The match itself tells a simple story of basic limbwork and movez but the execution of it all is what makes it worthwhile. For starters, Abe tries to do this big running attack on TORU outside of the ring and TORU overhead suplexes him onto the floor to set-up his subsequent backwork. He delivers a gnarly looking backbreaker, sold well by Abe, before landing a double stomp and locking in a Scorpion Deathlock. Abe chooses to focus on the arm, keeping it locked up through TORU's escape attempts and breaking it down with good stiff kicks. When he tries for his wind-up punch, TORU clocks him with a big elbow but Abe is able to rally back with some more big kicks, knocking him flat with a high kick and following up with a PK. Abe's selling off the German suplex is terrific, which leads to TORU hitting a Shining Wizard and a dragon suplex hold for a nearall. After catching Abe with a brutal flip-over knee strike to the back of the head, he's able to put him away with a brainbuster. Fun stuff.