>>10536967the original spirit wasn’t “we are trying to evolve the sport” it was “fuck these other phonies, only we do this shit for real” no less carny than the rest of them.
Unfortunately the japanese marks believed it so much they actually reached greater levels of popularity (for a period) than NJ and started to believe their own hype.
at this point the style had developed to a point where it appeared to be more realistic/sophisticated than what the other feds were peddling at the time. The UWF marks had no idea what an actual fight looked like so bought it as “real pro wrestling”
it was never the next logical step since it was just as fake as any other style and sooner rather than later a yoji anjo type would have gotten smoked by an actual shooter and destroyed the mystique of it all
