Onita Pro 08/22/1999

  (Written by jom)

    I guess the bi-weekly schedule is back on track? Probably not. I have finals for the next few weeks and then I graduate. Life is about to suck. Four years ago everything I knew changed, and now everything is about to change again. But no matter how many things, places, or people come and go, Onita will always be here for me. Onto the review!

Fushitori Karasu & Walbuta vs. Animal Welfare Association Satan & Rey Pandita

    The first two Onita Pro shows took place in Korakuen Hall. We've finally left the sacred temple, and have arrived in a random field. The outside venue means explosions are finally on the table, but it also means we get natural lighting pro wrestling! It's a weird thing to love so much, but ever since I played SmackDown vs. Raw 2011 and discovered the greatness of the "Tribute to the Troops" arena, I've been a big proponent of outdoor shows, especially ones happening in the daylight. Plus, well-lit outdoor night shows rule, and just from the show-opening music video, this show's going from sunup to sundown.

    I must ask once more: who the fuck is Rey Pandita? He's been the true anchor of these Onita Pro shows, and yet I still don't know for sure who is under the mask. A damn shame if you ask me because he really deserves his flowers for his work here. A better question to ask though would be WHO THE HELL IS ANYONE? We've got FOUR unknown entities here! Well, four in August of 1999, because we actually know who one of these guys are. Fushitori Karasu is... Fushitori Karasu! Although this is his debut as a pro wrestler, he's going to become a regular in the series. He's another Hayabusa knockoff, sitting on an island with luminaries such as Great Takeru and Garuda. He'd wrestle under the Karasu name for his entire career, working a bunch of sleaze indies and eventually becoming a Goto Ippa guy before silently retiring from wrestling (outside of a special appearance on Tokai Bushido V3's retirement show). 

    So... what the fuck was this match? I've watched it twice now, and I still don't really know. We know Karasu is making his debut, but I have a strong suspicion that Walbuta is too. Commentary keeps repeating that they're Hayabusa parodies like you couldn't just guess from the gear. I have a feeling that if you're a Japanese indie fan tuning into an Onita Pro broadcast, you know who Hayabusa is. Although, you can definitely tell that everyone here, from the audience to the commentary to even the wrestlers, has no idea what's going on. 

    Karasu (the person I was most interested in seeing here) was in the ring for maybe a minute, only doing bad matwork and one alright evasion into a shitty rolling solebutt. He seems to actively avoid wrestling, constantly tagging out and forcing a gassed Walbuta to come back in and hit more incredibly sloppy moves. Walbuta is really something to witness here. He throws some alright kicks but all of his aerial offense is dangerously sloppy. Outside of a sloppy-but-kinda-good-because-its-sloppy Asai Moonsault, the safest-looking move he hits is a diving crossbody where he entirely overshoots Satan and almost hits a slingblade on him in the process.

    Pandita is good though! He hits a nice dropkick and slightly overshoots a moonsault (just like Kikuzawa tended to do around this time... I think my "Pandita = Kikuzawa" theory from the last post may have more merit than expected), and that's really all he does here. Satan is entirely worthless until he TURNS ON PANDITA AND FLOORS HIM WITH A FUCKED UP LARIAT. And then he high-fives both of the fake Hayabusas. And then Walbuta hits a bad avalanche hurricanrana. And then it seems like Karasu is gonna hit a match-finishing dive but NO! He points at Walbuta and Walbuta begrudgingly climbs the top rope to hit a bad frog splash for the win. Hayabusa's theme plays as the three walk out. I am unable to process all of this and begin to cry.

    Honestly, if they had just let Walbuta die in the ring from exhaustion, never having Karasu tag in to do slow and boring matwork, this could've been a dogshit classic. All it needed was more actual botches and a faster tempo. However, this match just had too much worthless filler between the incredibly bad wrestling, and that's a recipe for disaster. It's the most baffling match I've seen in the project so far, and also definitely the worst. I can't imagine it going lower any time soon.

    Just as a final note, Walbuta never wrestled again after this. And honestly, I kinda get it. 

Match Rating: D

Crusher Maedomari, Miss Mongol, & Shark Tsuchiya vs. Killer Iwami, RIE, & Tsuppari Mack

    Tsuppari Mack is BACK! I had no idea any of the retired FMW women stuck around after the reunion tag on the last show, but luckily the coolest one of them all is here again (and Killer Iwami). Once again, the random assortment of faces are put against the badass face-painted fouler team of Maedomari, Mongol, and Tsuchiya. And the heels come out eating ice cream!! I don't even know man, this sounds incredibly stupid on paper but something about three devious fiends coming out for a match enjoying ice cream cones kinda rules.

    Sadly, this was another bits match like the reunion tag, except without the context of a light-hearted reunion, and less funny bits. That whole ice cream entrance I talked about? That was probably the highlight of the match. The only person particularly interesting was Tsuppari Mack, who did her weird satchel attacks and also hit a really nice kneel kick on Tsuchiya. Of course, the joke was that everyone in the match besides Maedomari and Tsuchiya is weak, so Tsuchiya took the kneel kick, stood there for a second, and then hit a flat back before leaning up and shaking her head in approval at Mack. Whatever.

    There's nothing to really even say about this match. It started! There were jokes! And then it ended! Were some of the jokes funny? A little bit. I'm not even trying to be a killjoy here, I just don't particularly care for comedy wrestling, and I'm starting to get sick of seeing Maedomari and Tsuchiya do it when they could be doing awesome brawls like the one from the first Onita Pro show.

Match Rating: C-

Asian Cougar & Kurokage vs. Kyohei Mikami & Takashi Sasaki

    Thank God, a DDT offer match. This show started on the worst foot possible with a 1-2 punch of shitty tag matches, but Sanshiro Takagi has sent the troops in to save the day. Cougar and Sasaki were in the last DDT juniors tag, where I pointed out both as being good but not all the way figured out yet (especially Sasaki). But, it's been a few months, and a lot can change in that amount of time. 

    Mikami is also here! And Mikami fucking rules. It's not until he changes his name to MIKAMI and becomes the coolest guy ever that he really reaches his peak, but 90s Kyohei Mikami doing incredibly quick hybrid lucharesu shoot style whatever-the-fuck pro wrestling is a sight to behold. Kurokage (the DDT/WYF one, not to be confused with the other Kurokage trained by Kurisu that teams with Diablo all the time) is the odd man out, as everyone else eventually becomes a big name in the 2000s juniors talent pool, but Kurokage/Hebikage/Masahiko Orihara/etc was always a really talented worker, so it's cool to see him too. 

    So this match fucking rocks. Like, it rocks a lot. Even with my praise of all four men at the start, I still came into this with some hesitation. Maybe three months isn't enough for Sasaki and Cougar to figure everything out. Maybe Mikami isn't ready yet to carry the load if this is the case. Maybe Kurokage actually sucks and my memory is wrong. Luckily, not only was I wrong about all of these concerns, the opposite is true. This is really something special.

    Mikami is by far the biggest highlight here. Talk about a guy capable of doing anything. He does some really great work with Cougar both in terms of grappling and high spots (commentary actually mentions that both men started in Hamada's UWF around the same time as trainees so there's a nice little bit of lore that adds just a little bit to it all), and his work with Kurokage is nothing to sneeze at either. I think Mikami's biggest contribution to this match is just how high-octane it felt any time he was involved. Don't get me wrong, Sasaki kept the action going for sure, but Mikami flying in to hit a perfect hurricanrana or one of the best dropkicks ever while moving at speeds usual humans can't even fathom is the type of work that pushes a match from being "fast-paced" to actually breakneck.

    Asian Cougar is probably the next best person here, and that feels insane to say because once again he doesn't do the Cougar Tope Atomico! But man, does he deliver. He more than makes up for not doing that move by doing a bunch of other crazy ones. I've said this before about Cougar, but there may not be another wrestler ever who's better at setting up their spots than Cougar. Every time he hits a leg drop, it feels like a natural occurrence, like a leg drop was the only thing Cougar could even do in that scenario. At the same time, he's wonderful at setting himself up for moves by other wrestlers, positioning himself well and feeding into spots in such an effortless way. He's a guy that not only does big spots, but actually understands how to do them in the best way. And beyond all of that, he just rules. Nobody else was hitting slingshot leg drops to the floor, and nobody else ever will.

    Takashi Sasaki has it all figured out. I said earlier that a lot can change in a few months, but wow. Sasaki feels almost like an entirely different person here. He does a lot of the same moves, but his work feels so much more driven and aggressive, and he's put a lot more focus into throwing strikes and bullying guys rather than experimenting with new moves. That's not to say he doesn't have some new weapons in the arsenal. At one point he hits a slingshot rider kick to the outside and sends Cougar tumbling across the concrete. At another he pulls out a ridiculous twisting fisherman's buster. Unlike his last appearance though, all of this feels so fitting for him, and like he actually knows what he's doing. This is the start of Takashi Sasaki, the relentless asskicker of the Japanese indies.

    Finally, Kurokage. While he's definitely the least interesting part of the match, he also fills his role perfectly. He's here to take a lot of the bumps for his team, while also getting some chances to bust out big moves every now and then. And man, his moves are big alright. Everything he does feels like a bomb, from the Sankakugeri to Sasaki to the crushing Blue Thunder Bomb to Mikami. His moonsault is also a real beauty, and he works really well with Cougar throughout the match. He's a vital part of the match's flow, and more than fills his portions of the match with cool shit. Really, you can't ask for more.

    Eventually, the match ended after Mikami flattened Kurokage with a beautiful 450 splash. What a war this was. Not only did this serve as a great showcase of all four guys' individual talents, but the match itself was extremely well-structured and flowed at a great pace. It did everything it needed to do as a spotfest without ever devolving into just hitting spots, and the escalation was really well done. This felt like the type of match that would've rocked a compilation tape and blown the minds of a bunch of forum posters during the time period. I feel very comfortable giving this match the the A-range rating of a non-Onita match from this series.

Match Rating: A-

Different Style Fight: Nise Onita vs. Katsuji Ueda

    Almost two months ago, the Onita Pro faithful were introduced to the fraudulent Onita, Toshiyuki Moriya. He fought his heart out against a squadron of different style fighters, with his hero by his side, and he was defeated. Now, Nise Onita is back once more, this time on his own to fight one of the very fighters that defeated him previously. Can he even dream of standing against the might of Katsuji Ueda's boxing gloves? Only time (and this match) will tell...

    ... And he can't! He really can't at all. This is a slaughter. The footage is clipped to hell so maybe he got something in the match at some point, but he gets literally zero offense in the footage we have. All he does is die, die, die. I'd say something like "Ueda took the dog out behind the shed" but that would imply a quick and merciful death. Ueda repeatedly beats on Moriya until Moriya can't stand, throwing lots of punches, kicks, knees, elbows and anything else at the poor man. He unloads combo after combo into Moriya, and to Moriya's credit, he lasts until round three. Then Ueda throws an incredibly gross bicycle knee to Moriya's jaw, and that's the end of him.

    I can't even rate this. I'm sure if I really wanted to I could (Ueda threw mean strikes, Moriya's selling was alright), but it feels so weird to try and rate a match like this, not only considering just how little of it we have, but also what we do have. This wasn't a match. This was a sacrifice. 

Match Rating: (x_x)

Naohiro Hoshikawa & Super Delfin vs. Black Buffalo & Policeman

    I believe that I've noticed a trend. Every single Onita Pro match on this Onita Pro show has been either bizarre, awful, or both. Meanwhile, the only non-Onita Pro match so far was stellar. Hopefully that trend continues here as Osaka Pro throw their hat into the ring. 

    Admittedly, this is the match I was most excited to see coming into this tape, as I've already seen two Onita/Tenryu main events and I haven't checked out any early Osaka Pro in years. Plus, good friend of the blog CFOS just finished his entire watch-through of Osaka Pro (and wrote a nice piece on his findings from the journey which you can read here), and I've been getting bombarded with Osaka Pro information from him for the last few months. I love all four of these guys, so I'm excited to see what they do on Onita's grand stage.

    Wouldn't you know it, but my prediction at the start was correct! This is a fun little match, one that really played to each guy's strengths well.

    Delfin and Policeman are both somewhat interesting, but I don't have much to say about either of them. Policeman does fun spots involving being an officer of the law, and he also hits a nice quebrada. Policeman is one of those genuine "what could've been" scenarios based on his early FMW work under his real name of Yukihide Ueno (I have a friend that has pushed the idea of Ueno being the heir apparent to Onita himself during this time), but even though his career never really panned out as well as it should have, he still always did fun work like he did here. Delfin meanwhile hits a lot of the classics. He's always been a good foil for shooty juniors guys, both as a teammate (see Masaaki Mochizuki) and an opponent (see Takehiro Murahama), so he does a lot of fun tag work with Hoshikawa here. Outside of that, he's just a generally cool dude, and even hits the Osaka Midosuji Stunner, a move I have a great deal of love for since it was my Create-A-Wrestler's finisher for 5 or so years.

    Someone I do have a good amount to say about is Hoshikawa. He really felt perfect for Osaka Pro, and actually stood as a nice representative of where juniors wrestling was heading around this time. Hoshikawa was a perfect hybrid of both sides of the evolving juniors styles, pretty seamlessly mixing the more aerial risk-taking offense with very "jumping out of the screen" shoot-inspired work. Hoshikawa was never able to out-shoot Murahama, nor was he ever able to out-fly Yakushiji, but he was able to do things from both ends of the spectrum in just the right mixture that it worked out perfectly. All of that is to say he's pretty awesome here! He hits cool kicks really quickly and pulls out the meteor knee strike. Thank you for your service Naohiro Hoshikawa. 

    Black Buffalo is the fucking man. I love this bastard so much. I want to preface what I'm going to say next with a little tangent on the idea of "versatility." I'm kind of a critic on the versatility talking point when it comes to analyzing wrestlers' GWE cases, because I've noticed that a lot of people will put high value into guys just attempting other match styles rather than excelling at them. This isn't to say it's bad for wrestlers to be versatile! I may love the one-note workers of the world, but being able to do your job in a lot of different and equally interesting ways is incredibly impressive. Such is the case of Black Buffalo, also known as Keisuke Yamada. The fact that he could go from a scumlord IWA Japan bruiser to such a fun lucha fouler in a place like Osaka Pro is a testament to his abilities. He does so much great work here, moving at Delfin pace without a single slip-up and constantly targeting the balls of his opponents. He also throws in a lot of nice character work, like scraping his feet back like a charging buffalo for all the big running moves. I just can't help but applaud the guy any chance I get. He's someone who'll probably never get the flowers he deserves for the incredible work he did for at least a decade and a half.

    Delfin wins for his team with the Delfin Clutch after the aforementioned Osaka Midosuji Stunner. This wasn't better than the DDT tag, but it filled its role as a fun crowd-pleasing juniors tag with a lot of goofy character work mixed into some genuinely real good wrestling. I already know the Osaka Pro crew probably won't be appearing again anytime soon, but hopefully Delfin and Co. return to this journey through the Onita sphere of influence one day.

Match Rating: B

No Rope Barbed Wire Double Hell Barricade Street Fight Current Mine Explosion Death: Atsushi Onita, Mitsunobu Kikuzawa, Sambo Asako, & Sanshiro Takagi vs. Genichiro Tenryu, Hiroshi Ono, Ichiro Yaguchi, & Shoji Nakamaki

    Outside of this being the first super long Onita stipulation, I really don't have much to talk about. This matchup has been done twice already, and you probably know my thoughts on it by now. I will say though, Onita has made the first notably bad decision of the series by swapping out Okumura for Takagi. Takagi is a very fun wrestler who actually tends to do really well in these types of brawls, but Okumura has been the secret standout of the last two matches. I love Sambo Asako, but if you had to bring Takagi into this, why not get rid of him? Just put Asako in a fun lower card match and let Okumura run wild like he always does. It's disappointing, but I might as well trust Onita's vision on this one. He hasn't led me astray thus far.

    Ichiro Yaguchi makes his entrance coming out with a guitar, shredding on it to Tenryu's theme before flipping off the camera and sticking his tongue out a lot. Already a definite A-range match.

    This is probably the most fascinating Onita brawl yet, entirely because of how it plays on the formula established by the first two matches. The biggest change so far is, of course, the additions and limitations of the explosive environment. One of the vital aspects of the first two matches was the extensive crowd brawling, turning Korakuen Hall into a complete warzone with guys traveling all around the venue and throwing each other who knows where. In this new place though, that type of work really doesn't work. Onita and Tenryu spend a little bit of time fighting amongst the fans, but it's less them splitting the action in two and more the two captains leaving their soldiers to be the main attraction for a little bit. Otherwise, most of the match takes place in the ring, and a lot of the brawling is a lot slower because of this. Not worse per se, although definitely hampered by this more confined space. The guys still deliver the goods though, with Nakamaki and Takagi especially getting into a lot of very spirited exchanges (Nakamaki takes a bunch of unprotected chairshots and does the chicken walk after each one of them; it's very good).

    However, this new territory also brings about the incredible power of the explosion, something neither of the last two matches had any way of embracing. And my god, do they embrace the explosions here. There are at least ten different explosions in this 15 minute match, and the crowd goes wild for all of them. The previous Onita brawls were concerned with the gradual degradation of each wrestler, contests of endurance to see how much each side could take until one person cracked. This match completely flips that idea on its head, with wrestlers instead trying to avoid the one-shot killers surround the ring on all sides. There's this genuinely incredible moment early on, when Onita takes the first explosion bump and time just stands still. All the action in the ring just stops. Everyone ducks for cover and stares in awe at the mighty power of the boom. "If such flimsy wire could do that to a guy like Onita, what the hell could it do to me?"

    The way previous spots get adapted into this new world is equally interesting. Yaguchi and Nakamaki had set a precedent in the previous two matches with their double team suplex barbed wire hanging move, and they once again do the move in this match, with Takagi being the victim. However, the second that wire underneath Takagi's stomach explodes, there's a real feeling of dread that sets over. The last two times they did it, the move was a nice way to deal some big damage. This time, it feels like they might've actually killed the guy. I don't feel like I need to explain that explosions add gravity to a situation, but man, they really fucking do.

    Karma is a cruel beast. Yaguchi and Nakamaki go for another one of their signature spots later on, attempting to rip the wire from the ropes on one side to wrap a poor soul up in it. Their hubris, thinking they have any control over this environment, is their downfall, and the wire explodes in their faces. I think this one moment really does a great job of illustrating the real story of the match. This isn't about one team trying to overcome the other directly. This is about everyone trying to figure out how to cope with being surrounded by certain death. The winner is just the first team to do it.  

    Onita, of course, figures it out first. This is home turf. He and the rest of his boys fight back, and Kikuzawa even makes a noble sacrifice by getting knocked into the hell pit with Ono. Onita gets to Ono, his clothing ripped and charred from the explosion in the pit, and a Thunder Fire Powerbomb seals the deal. Onita leads the hundreds in attendance through an impassioned Onita Theatre (definitely the coolest one yet), and everyone goes home happy.

    To be entirely honest, this is my least favorite of the three Onita brawls so far. I know I just wrote a whole thesis on the power of the exploding barbed wire, but I truly just love a good old fashioned street fight, and the venue-spanning chaos of the first two matches just hits all the right buttons for me. Still, this is a great piece of work, and I had a ton of fun watching guys blow up. It's an Onita Pro main event brawl. Of course it's fucking good.

Match Rating: A-

    Theoretically, this should be my lowest rated show yet. The first two matches were pretty damn bad, and the Nise Onita squash was almost indescribable in terms of "quality." However, the peaks of this show were damn good. Even if the highest rating I gave was an A-, I gave two of those, which I didn't think would happen so soon, if ever at all. A very wide-ranging show in terms of quality, but I will always value great peaks over a consistent level of good.

Show Rating: B

Onita Pro 06/27/1999

 (Written by jom)

    Okay, so y'know how I said I'd have a new Onita Pro review every two weeks? I meant five weeks. But maybe the next one will come out in three weeks! Or one week? or maybe two after all. I don't know. You don't care. Onto the review!

Survival Tobita vs. Pinch Hitter Joe vs. Rey Pandita

    This is a Saitama Pro offer match. It's presented with the tagline "THIS IS ZERO" and contested under "Survival Three Way Fuckin' Dance" rules. Every time I write one of these Onita Pro reviews, I will call Atsushi Onita a visionary. Allowing fellow visionary Tobita to run something like this is further proof of his position in the pantheon of sick ass wrestling bookers.

    Once again, who the fuck is Rey Pandita? I still have no idea who's under the mask, but honestly, I'm fine with that. Rey Pandita is Rey Pandita, and he's here to ruin someone's day with psychologically-devastating bits wrestling. Also, who the fuck is Pinch Hitter Joe??? Probably Naoshi Sano, but that's besides the point. While Pandita is absolutely an Onita gimmick, Joe is a Tobita gimmick through and through. The story goes that Tobita planned for a "man from a manhole" to be in the match. However, due to some sort of bodily fluids issue, the man couldn't make it to the show. So, a pinch hitter named Joe has taken his place.

    Survival Tobita gets his own introductory paragraph because he's the coolest motherfucker ever. My Tobita bias is probably not much of a secret (I have a whole series on the site dedicated to singing his praises), but truly, has there ever been a more powerful entrance than this one? Tobita stomps out with a cigarette in his mouth, raising the plunger over his head and using his open hand to high-five the fans. He's also using Elephant Kashimashi's "Namida no Kazu Dake" as his theme on this occasion, which, while not my favorite Tobita theme (nothing will ever be better than "Gastronger"), is probably in my top five at the very least. 

    This is a match of many phases, all of which are pretty fun. We start out with the usual comedy three-way spots (triple lockup and interrupting holds) before Pandita and Joe start teaming up on Tobita. It's around this point that I realize Pandita might be Mitsunobu Kikuzawa. There's just something about the way he pantomimes that reminds me a lot of Ebessan. Pandita is also built pretty similarly to Kikuzawa around this time, and Kikuzawa really began his time under Onita in Onita Pro, so everything seems to line up. Also, Joe pays dearly for trusting Pandita when Pandita starts trying to get one over on him, leading to a Gedo Clutch from Pandita eliminating Joe. The golden rule of Onita Pro: never trust Rey Pandita.

    At this point, the match takes a sharp turn: Pandita becomes Genshi Enjin Virgon. He starts doing all of the Virgon-isms (prowling around, hopping up and down, running into the crowd) and the monster music begins playing over the speakers. The crowd is barely invested which hurts my soul, but they still do some fun stuff, with Tobita bumping like a madman for every Pandita push and Pandita doing a good job of pretending to be Virgon. Tobita eventually hits his piledriver and locks in a figure four necklock for the KO victory.

    Honestly, not much to say about this one. It's an extremely surface-level match, and while it never does anything bad, it also never does anything particularly good. I love Tobita and I was fascinated by Pandita's Virgon tribute performance, but it really just made me want to watch more of the Tobita/Virgon matches. Pinch Hitter Joe also certainly existed. This was a fine enough opener for the show.

Match Rating: B-

Masanobu Kurisu vs. Kengo Takai

    Atsushi Onita is a monster. I take back everything good I've ever said about him. Booking this match should get you arrested. A young Kengo Takai, only a year into his professional wrestling career, is taking on Masanobu Kurisu. This is nine and a half years after the Kurisu/Akiyoshi slaughter, and here we have another case of Onita putting a plucky rookie against the king of killing rookies. Truly, these matches are the sins that will weigh heavy on Onita's soul in the afterlife.

    This goes roughly like you'd expect. Kurisu (with a shitty little ponytail) is actually a lot more giving in the early portion of the match than he was against Akiyoshi. He throws some mean headbutts and stomps, but he also lets Takai throw some big strikes of his own, and even bumps for him on a few occasions. However, Kurisu gets his hands on some chairs and all of that cooperation goes out the window. With chair in hand, Kurisu is an agent of pain. He throws an unprotected shot to the head in this match that almost made me turn away from the screen. Takai committed the crime of accepting a match against Masanobu Kurisu, and Kurisu is his executioner.

    Even after the initial chair assault, Takai still fights back, and even gets a good string of offense going, culminating in a big diving headbutt. That's probably Takai's biggest strong suit in this match: his fire. Shoji Akiyoshi had a lot of fire in him in the infamous 1989 squash, but Takai's fire feels a lot more outwardly expressed. He's yelling out to the crowd, almost hyping himself up to try and fight this old behemoth he has no chance of beating. Of course, Takai waves his muleta in front of the bull a little too much. His attempt at throwing some shoot headbutts gets no-sold. Kurisu entirely brushes off a dropkick and goes back to '89, letting loose with the headbutts, head stomps, and punt kicks that made him infamous. He even flings Takai back outside to throw more unsafe chairshots, before finally, mercifully, killing Takai with the Kurisu Special (a llave that I can't even begin to explain, but it looks like it could've snapped Takai's neck).

    This, like many "Kurisu vs. guy he can take liberties on" matches, was uncomfortable. Was it the most abhorrent of the genre? Absolutely not. Kengo Takai should pray to his god that this was a decade beyond Kurisu's peak of cruelty. But, like many of the matches from that genre, it also kinda rocked. It may be weird to say this, but there's something special about these types of young boy matches. They're full of work you could never see today. We as a society have improved enough to silently ban these matches from happening. And yet, there's something bizarrely entrancing about them. They're the ultimate fights for survival, genuine David vs. Goliath matches. Even if you're vocally cheering for the Goliath, you always silently pray for this David to have a slingshot. They never do. But one day someone might. It's an awful genre of match to exist, but I will never stop enjoying it.

Match Rating: B+

Combat Toyoda, Crusher Maedomari, Miss Mongol, & Shark Tsuchiya vs. Emi Koizumi, Killer Iwami, RIE, & Tsuppari Mack

    Fun fact! Half of this match is already retired. This is a reunion tag for a bunch of the FMW-raised women's wrestlers, and there's a lot of people here I've never seen before. Specifically, I haven't seen Koizumi, Iwami, or Mack before this match, and I've never seen RIE in this gimmick (but I've seen a fair number of Bad Nurse Nakamura matches and she fucking rules). This is also Combat Toyoda's one-time return in the form of an actual match. I don't really count battle royals as returns because there's an entirely different energy to battle royals than pretty much all other wrestling.

    Speaking of energy, this is a match all about having fun. And wouldn't you know it, it was fun! If you came into this match expecting some sort of serious clash between the face-painted freaks and the plucky underdogs, you'd probably be disappointed. This was around 85% just bits and goofs, but you could tell everyone was having a blast. 

    Any time one of the retired faces would do anything, everyone would clap and cheer (including the heel team). Toyoda gets to come in and run wild at least once, and it's cool to see her still put some power behind her lariats. There's a very fun spot near the middle where RIE does a great rolling cradle, and Koizumi completely botches her attempt at one right after. Then the faces and heels all start hyping her up, and she gets the strength to pull off a great one. If I had to pinpoint one person as a highlight, it'd probably be Tsuppari Mack, who kept hitting Maedomari in the face with a book or something. She was cool and I might need to seek out some of her work from when she was actually an active wrestler.

    All in all, I had a fun time watching this. Maybe it wasn't the most engrossing thing in the world, but that's fine. It was a real "getting the band back together" type of match, and you can't not enjoy that, at least a little bit.

Match Rating: B

Atsushi Onita, Nise Onita, & Sambo Asako vs. Katsuji Ueda, Masashi Aoyagi, & Shooter #1

    For the first time in blog history, Nise Onita is here. Nise Onita, for anyone that doesn't know, is Toshiyuki Moriya, a bonafide legend of the Japanese indie scene. Even if he wasn't always the greatest worker in the ring, he was a vital part of many important promotions from the time, and places like DDT wouldn't have become the monoliths they are without Moriya's help. Also, I'm gonna be referring to him as Moriya throughout the review, because calling him Nise sounds weird, Onita would be confusing, and Nise Onita is too long.

    Moriya is actually the primary focus on this match, as this kind of serves as an initiation into the Onita crew. Ueda and Aoyagi beat his ass over and over again, and Moriya bumps for it all because, canonically, Moriya is an incredibly weak wrestler. If Onita was a normal wrestler trying to become a God, Moriya was a normal man trying to become Onita. Moriya does get some offense in, with a lot of "swinging for the fences" strikes filled with some real passion. Both Aoyagi and Ueda crush him as much as they can, and Aoyagi especially takes exception to Moriya's fiery attempts at fighting back, at one point just raining down mounted punches on Moriya's head, busting Moriya wide open.

    Onita and Asako are both in more "supporting act" roles here rather than being at the main stage (both men still have to wrestle in the main event after all). Onita does get some great moments to shine though, and the crowd becomes rabid when Onita and Aoyagi finally get to face off. The crowd in general were super into the match here, cheering a ton of Moriya and getting unglued whenever one of the martial artists popped off a strike combo. Eventually, Ueda uncorks a punch to the back of Moriya's head, and the referee calls for the bell.

    Moriya cuts a promo after while covered in blood and he does all the Onita-isms, which gets a big pop from the crowd. The camera then cuts to backstage, where Moriya is laying on the ground, still covered in blood, in Onita's jacket.

    Honestly? I thought this was pretty damn good. Ueda and Aoyagi got to let loose with their awesome martial arts stuff, and Onita had a few moments to reignite the old different style fighting spirit within. Moriya was the real star of the match though, and he did a really great job of selling like a motherfucker. He fully understood how to do the Onita style of work, and it came off as very endearing. Asako and Shooter (oh yeah he's in this match) were pretty much nothing here, but the other four played their roles very well, and I enjoyed it as a whole. 

Match Rating: B

Anywhere Fall Street Fight: Masao Orihara & Shooter #2 vs. Exciting Yoshida & Sanshiro Takagi

    Takagi is BACK! I assumed on the last show that Takagi was challenging Luther and Hannibal to a match, but this makes a lot more sense. Takagi and Orihara had been feuding for a few years at this point (and still had another year to go before the feud ended), and this is their first encounter in Korakuen. Takagi is teaming with regular partner Exciting Yoshida and Orihara is with "Shooter #2." The original Shooter #2 was Ryo Miyake, but no telling if that's who's under the mask here.

    This starts off with Shooter and Takagi getting into a scrappy fight while Orihara throws a comically wide chair swing that Yoshida sells by jumping away. This is a pretty great precedent setter for the match, as all the actually cool stuff comes from Takagi and Shooter brawling around Korakuen, while a lot of the very funny/not good work involves Orihara and Yoshida.

    The best wrestler in this match was probably Shooter #2, who I can very safely say is Koichiro Kimura. He was just working how he usually does, only in a black mask. Him and Takagi went on a little tour of Korakuen, checking out the lobby and the hallways, before eventually landing in the crowd where Shooter started throwing a bunch of really gross kicks before crushing Takagi with a double arm suplex in the bleachers. Kimura is a really underrated worker when it comes to his versatility, and this match really helped to show just how capable he was in a brawling context. He brawls the exact way you'd hope for him to, basically doing all the same ruthless shoot style work he usually just, just on concrete instead of in a ring. I am, of course, a hardcore Kimura agenda pusher, but that doesn't change the fact that he ruled here.

    Orihara, meanwhile, fucking stunk. He really couldn't be bothered to put any effort into his work here, or at least it didn't seem like it. He did a very goofy spot with Takagi early on where they dodged each other's clothesline attempts six or seven times, before doing another stupid spot with Yoshida where they casually no-sold brainbusters back and forth. Yoshida was kinda meh here as well. he wasn't as offensively bad as Orihara, but his brawling was uninspired and his in-ring work was just acceptable.

    The match culminated with Shooter and Takagi (who was solid enough hyping up the crowd and letting Shooter kick him) doing some nice heated brawling on the Korakuen stage, before Takagi hit a fucking german suplex on Shooter to get the win. It was a really gnarly way for the match to end, so at least they wrapped everything up on a high note.

    I have very mixed feelings on this match. Takagi was cool and Shooter rocked, but Yoshida wasn't good and Orihara sucked. If this was just the Orihara/Yoshida stuff, I think this would be in the Ds range. If it was just the Takagi/Shooter work, it would be closer to a B+. I'll just split the difference in a positive way because the finish was crazy.

Match Rating: C+

No Rope Barbed Wire Double Hell Street Fight: Atsushi Onita, Mitsunobu Kikuzawa, Sambo Asako, & Shigeo Okumura vs. Genichiro Tenryu, Hiroshi Ono, Ichiro Yaguchi, & Shoji Nakamaki

    Once again, no big explanation needed. This is pretty much the same match on paper as the main event of the last show, only this time Kikuzawa and Ono have been thrown into the mix, and the stipulation has gotten bigger. Also, Tenryu is here in a button-up and tie this time around. He's all business.

    Just like the first Onita Pro main event, this was a ton of chaos and brawling, so attempting to run down the match spot-for-spot would not only be a fool's errand, it would also make for shitty writing. Instead, I'll focus on the most important wrestlers in the match.

    Firstly, let's talk about Onita and Tenryu together. They're the team captains, leading their armies into battle, and their interactions are of course the big draw. As always, they did great together. All of their encounters were equally violent and dramatic, with Tenryu letting loose with an enzuigiri within a minute of the match starting and Onita getting the boys to help him do a spike piledriver on the big man (using a chair since the top rope wasn't available). They also rehash the chair bash spot I loved from the last match, but this time Tenryu was very clearly just punishing an already hurt Onita rather than throwing a chair out of desperation. It felt like the natural evolution of the spot considering Tenryu was in control for much more of this match than he was in the previous one, and did a great job of continuing to isolate Onita from his partners.

    Speaking of Onita's partners, Shigeo Okumura. What a fucking guy. In the last review, I mentioned that Okumura came off as a million bucks, but this is the match where he truly felt like he near Tenryu and Onita's level power-scaling wise. One of the first spots of the match was Tenryu pulling off a whip cancel to keep himself from going into the wire, only for Okumura to dropkick him into the barbs anyways. Okumura constantly ran roughshod over the match, throwing chops and punches at anyone in his way and never staying down too long. He even pulled off another save like before, keeping Tenryu from killing Kikuzawa long enough for Onita to come back in and regain control for the team. I don't know how you can see his performances in Onita Pro and not walk away thinking that he had a monster of a traveling brawler career hidden within him.

    Finally, we need to talk about Mitsunobu Kikuzawa. I haven't been silent about my distaste for Kikutaro. Most of my issues stem with the plethora of matches he's had against women, because sadly, I just don't really find sexual assault funny! And his many intergender matches are filled with creep spots. I'm aware that Kikutaro's non-intergender work is an entirely different world, and I enjoy a lot of it, but I just can't ignore his VKF career. 

    All of that being said, I've always thought that Kikuzawa was a real missed opportunity, as all of his unmasked work that I've seen has been very good. This was probably one of his best performances ever, as he took the role of designated team victim for the Onita army, and my god, was he a victim. Tenryu made it his mission to force Kikuzawa to leave the industry in this match, constantly punching him in the jaw and chopping his throat, which Kikuzawa sold like hell. Kikuzawa also took the most insane spot of the whole show, a monkey flip from the ring to the barbed wire on the floor from Tenryu, which Kikuzawa sold the same way I reacted when I hit a rough bump riding my bike downhill at 13 and did a full flip directly onto the small of my back on the poorly paved road. Kikuzawa was here to die, and although he fought back as best he could, but by the end of the match, he was left bathed in own blood while wrapped in barbed wire (just like Onita was in the last main event; I see what's going on here). But he survived. He survived and made the decisive final attack for his team. Kikuzawa's body attack with his barbed wire-wrapped chest led directly into Onita's match-winning powerbomb. Kikuzawa went through hell in this match, and used that hell to win.

    After the match, there's this visually beautiful moment where Onita, Okumura, and Asako all work together to unwrap the wire around Kikuzawa, before Onita grabs his water bottle and pours it over his own head, dripping onto Kikuzawa's crimson visage and washing some of the blood away. In a sense, Kikuzawa was baptized into the Onita sphere of wrestling in this match, and this was the actual baptism.

    This was a clear sequel to the last Onita Pro main event, so it's worth comparing the two. A lot of the spots from the last match happened in this one as well (even a few of the same botches), but this match also brought a lot of new stuff to the table, especially when it came to the whole "double hell" part of the match. I do think this one slightly falters compared to the first Onita Pro main, as it doesn't stay as consistently chaotic, and the action-less parts of the match are more noticeable. Still, this match was fucking great. Again, I have bias for Onita Pro main event brawls, but I do feel like this was a very worthwhile sequel to one of the best matches ever. 

Match Rating: A

    I think this was a little worse than the previous Onita Pro show. While this show never had anything as bad as the Hannibal tag, it also felt like it never truly reached the highs of the first show, and the stagnation in quality really hurt the flow of the full show itself. The main event was still great though, so that keeps it from escaping the B-tier. Overall, solid stuff, and I'm still excited to continue going through Onita Pro.

Show Rating: B-

Onita Pro 05/13/1999

                 (Written by jom)

    Ahhhh, Onita Pro.

    It's not much of a secret, but I'm a total sucker for skeezy Japanese indie wrestling. It's the scene that I dove into when I saw the branching paths of being a wrestling fan before me, and I've maintained a long-term loving-yet-unhealthy relationship with it for at least five years now. While I've thankfully expanded my range of wrestling consumption beyond the shindies of Kansai into scenes like the shindies of Tijuana, I'll probably always keep myself locked into this world of bizarre masked gimmicks based on inside jokes only the workers get and sociopaths no-showing events with less than 50 fans, for better or for worse.

    Onita Pro (I bet you can't guess who runs this fed) is probably one of the most fascinating sleaze-adjacent feds ever (feels weird to call a promotion full-on sleazy when they've Korakuen as much as Onita Pro has). It's a pure distillation of the Japanese indie scene of the time, with guys from promotions you've never heard of getting some of their only chances to work in front of larger crowds, let alone to make it onto TV. Where else would you find an underground juniors tag followed up by a UNW offer match? Onita has always been a guy with a really special vision for wrestling (one that I absolutely adore), and the fact that he spent 1999 having explosion deathmatches in NJPW while also booking a promotion with a murderer's row of sleaze scene names as regulars is truly why he's the GOAT.

    Even though I love Onita Pro as a concept and I've really enjoyed the matches I've seen from it, I've only seen maybe two full shows. I've always wanted to do a deep dive into the fed, going through every single taped event to experience Onita's vision in full, so why not write about it? I have no idea what type of schedule these posts will follow, but I'm hoping to get a review out every two weeks at the very least. Who knows, maybe I'll get distracted with a homework assignment and take another year to do a blog post again. Onto the review!

Yusaku vs. Rey Pandita

    Who the fuck is Rey Pandita? Cagematch says that Violencia and Flying Kid Ichihara worked under the gimmick at different points, but it's 100% neither of those guys. I guess the world may never know. Yusaku is here though, so I am a happy man. He's only a year into wrestling too! Sadly he's given the jobber entrance treatment, but I can't imagine Korakuen Hall going wild for a Yusaku Shimoda entrance in 1999. He's wearing all gold gear with a bleach blonde mullet though, so he looks like a much cooler Shane Douglas. Pandita comes out wearing a burger king crown throwing candy into the crowd, which is a great first image for a promotion's first ever taped show.

    This follows the basic formula of agility versus power, as Pandita has some lucha acumen and Yusaku really likes Vader. He's already got some pounds on him too, although he's not yet reached the level of BIG that he would ten years later, so his power level is much lower. Pandita commits to styling on Yusaku throughout this match, including psyching him out on a dive only to slap Yusaku on the back. This confuses Yusaku, who thinks his brother Daisaku did it, and gives him a big shove. To Pandita, this is all fun and games, but he may have just sown the seeds for a family to rip itself apart.

    Pandita continues to style on Yusaku until he misses a moonsault. Yusaku promptly picks him up and casually crushes him with a pumphandle emerald flowsion for a two. Yusaku then goes for a lariat but gets drop toe hold'd by Pandita, and then Pandita does a Gedo Clutch while posing for the cameras to get the win.

    This was a perfectly fine piece of work, albeit weirdly paced with a few odd moments, especially the finish which just kind of happened. Yusaku was fine though, and Pandita styling on him was fun. Hopefully Pandita can showcase his abilities in MUGA-esque matwork on the next show.

Match Rating: C+

Asian Cougar & Phantom Funakoshi vs. Exciting Yoshida & Takashi Sasaki

    DDT! One of Onita Pro's defining traits was the massive presence of DDT on all of the shows. I guess Onita was just a big fan of Sanshiro Takagi's vision, something I'm very thankful for because this got us some of the first TV exposure for the DDT crew (outside of having show highlights appear on STV news broadcasts).

    This match is... good. I'm gonna do some individual performance breakdowns here because this match was basically just all four guys trying to get themselves over, they still worked together and cooperated to do moves but it was pretty obvious that the main goal for these guys was to try and get booked on more Onita Pro shows.

    Takashi Sasaki is probably the weakest guy here. You can kinda feel it with how he's wrestling, but he's in a lab mindset, just busting out random moves and seeing what works. He does some nice kicks and hits a few gross diving knees, but he also does some weird suplex gutbuster things and hits a diving knee drop 69-style, so it just looks like he's trying to diving teabag Funakoshi. Sasaki also never hit the D-Geist for some reason, even though he was absolutely doing the move by this time. Maybe one of those fucked up suplexes was an attempt at it? I couldn't tell you.

    Cougar's also not a faultless worker here, but he's got a much better idea of who he is, busting out some of his trademark wild leg drops. There's this great moment in the latter half where Funakoshi has Sasaki gripped by the neck while he's laying on the apron, trapping him there for Cougar to hit the guillotine leg drop. It kinda felt like a moment from a gorey horror movie where the killers hold a guy down while one of them chops his leg off, and you just have to watch the poor guy squirm around and suffer. Cougar isn't perfect in this match when it comes to execution though, and the crowd laughs at him a few times for his botches. He also doesn't do his biggest signature spot (the tope atomico suicida). It's Korakuen! Do the spot!!!

    Exciting Yoshida does some awesome Animal Hamaguchi stuff and throws sick ass headbutts, but also hits an insane spinning tombstone and a big diving leg drop. Sasaki kicks him a bunch and he sells by slowly falling over every time. He's a bomb-thrower, but also an easy one to beat up. Not much else to say, wrestling needs more glass cannons like Yoshida. 

    And then Phantom is the coolest wrestler ever. He's a hardcore lover of 70s wrestling, so all of his high spots are indian deathlocks and snapmares. Every time the match felt like it was about to go too far into experimenting and botching, Funakoshi would tag in and hit a few suplexes and suddenly all is right in the world. Sasaki can invent as many bad moves as he wants because Funakoshi knows the exact time he needs to trip Sasaki and do a japanese rolling leg clutch to pull me right back in. He hit a release tiger suplex that nearly killed Sasaki and I sprung out of my chair like a jack-in-the-box.

    The finish ends up being with Sasaki and Cougar, but they luckily keep it short and sweet. Sasaki nails a real disgusting lariat for a two count, and then Cougar counters an attempt at another one into a cross-arm german suplex for the three. Sasaki, of course, immediately no-sells the move to get up and complain to the ref that he kicked out. Man, Sasaki really wants  me to hate him, huh?

    In a strange way, this felt like it was both overambitious and underachieving. They had all the pieces to put together a great match, and ended up only completing half of the puzzle. At the same time, it felt like one guy was using the rest of the pieces to try and create a whole new puzzle. Does this analogy make sense? Whatever. Good little match, even if I know it could've been much more. I pray that Funakoshi keeps popping up on Onita Pro shows going forward. Damnit, I just remembered he's retiring later this month and now I'm sad. God bless you Phantom.

Match Rating: B

Street Fight: Yoshiko Tamura & Yuka Nakamura vs. Crusher Maedomari & Shark Tsuchiya

    Putting these four in a street fight is inspired. Onita just can't be beat. I don't know if I've ever seen Tamura or Nakamura in this type of environment so I'm already very excited. They slot into it well with their street fighter gear, which just looks like they're going into a very fashionable war. Maedomari and Tsuchiya respond with black shirts and black pants. "This is no time for fashion", they say. "This is a time for bloodshed."

    Maedomari and Tsuchiya jump the faces before the bell rings and we're off to the races. Lots of brawling around the ring, most of it isn't worth talking about but everything Tsuchiya does rules. Tsuchiya beats the hell outta scared little Nakamura like she owes her money and smashes a microphone into her face a bunch. Then a little later on she goes wild on both women with a barbed wire sword. I love Shark Tsuchiya so much. Maedomari is cool too though! She and Tsuchiya (I can't not talk about Tsuchiya) do some crazy tag moves throughout, culminating with a gut kick/snap backdrop driver that's as funny and as violent as it sounds.

    I guess I should talk about Tamura and Nakamura too. They were fine! Nakamura is good at getting beat up, and I love how she sells for the Tsuchiya sword attack like she's just been cut in half in one of those old samurai movies. She also throws some absolutely awful punches at one point, but redeems herself with a crazy ass roll-up counter out of a chokeslam. Tamura is alright as well, albeit I remember like nothing she did besides screaming a lot. Not in a "I'm in pain" kind of way, just screaming whenever she got the chance to. Why do so many joshi wrestlers do that? Can they please stop?

    Maedomari wins the match for her team with a gross chokeslam, and she even sits on Nakamura and counts the three with her fingers because some of Tsuchiya's coolness has rubbed off on her. Not a ton to complain about here, just a fun little match. Tsuchiya is the best and I hate everyone that hates her.

Match Rating: B

Dr. Hannibal & Dr. Luther vs. Katsuji Ueda & Sanshiro Takagi

    Hey, it's the funny internet guy! The guy that goes Blehhhhh~ in AEW! Is Luther culturally relevant anymore? Deadlock haven't mentioned him in at least a year. Anyways, he's here with fellow weird Canadian Hannibal (different from the other weird Canadian Hannibal wrestling today) and they're facing a real kickboxer (Katsuji Ueda) and a fake Steve Austin (Sanshiro Takagi). Onita, vision, etc. Hannibal and Luther come out and do the chaotic running through the crowd shit, except they're in straight jackets and keep trying to headbutt people. I already hate Dr. Hannibal because he's literally just walking around with his head turned sideways and that's it. This guy is a phony. Dr. Luther meanwhile is throwing chairs into the crowd and threatening fans, like a real worker.

    I don't even know how to talk about this match. Ueda does kickboxing to Dr. Hannibal and Dr. Hannibal responds with bad strikes and his shitty sideways neck stance because he has no idea how to be a psychopath. Luther and Takagi tag in and they work at a really fast pace before doing a pretty wild brawl on the outside. Luther has become le funny internet wrestler guy but he was actually pretty damn awesome in Japan, and Takagi is a deceptively good wrestler for a guy who's only really known for liking Stone Cold.

    Eventually they get back in the ring and Takagi pulls out MR. SOCKO, APPLYING THE MANDIBLE CLAW TO DR. LUTHER. The WWF had a stranglehold on Sanshiro Takagi's life in 1999. He hits a few other moves before trying to win with a meh impaler DDT, only for Dr. Hannibal to throw what looked like a full cup of powder into his face. Luther hits a German Suplex for a 2.9, and then Hannibal comes back in and dumps even more powder on Takagi. I wonder if this is how British Bulldog looked when Bret found him before Summerslam 1992. Katsuji Ueda runs in to stop Hannibal's cocaine-based assault with some kicks that probably hurt like a bitch. Then Luther hits a genuinely great kneel kick and a rope-walk bulldog and wins.

    Takagi cuts a promo after and challenges the two psychopaths (well, one psychopath and one pretender) to face him and Exciting Yoshida in a street fight on the next Onita Pro show. This was just really bizarre. Luther was honestly the standout with his antics and actually good wrestling (albeit the move he won with really didn't feel like a finisher). Takagi was fine and him just ripping off WWF moves was funny. Ueda did kickboxing and I like kickboxing so I can't complain about him. Dr. Hannibal offends me on a spiritual level and I could probably do a better job of wrestling than he ever did. Please find a real psychopath like Luther to replace this stain.

Match Rating: C-

No Rope Barbed Wire Street Fight: Atsushi Onita, Sambo Asako, & Shigeo Okumura vs. Genichiro Tenryu, Ichiro Yaguchi, & Shoji Nakamaki

    No reason to have a big opening explanation for this match. If you're reading the blog, you most likely know who all of these people are. At bare minimum, you know who Onita and Tenryu are. That's all you need going into this.

    I fucking love this match. The first time I saw this was in a random late-night voice call with a few friends. None of us had seen this match before and I thought it sounded great on paper, so I just threw it on. We rewatched the match at least two more times within the span of 24 hours. It felt like striking oil in your backyard while digging up some weeds. What we thought would be a fun "send the fans home happy" kind of brawl between some great wrestlers ended up being one of the most chaotic, dramatic, and all-around insane matches I've ever seen.

    There was way too much going on here to try and properly run down everything, so instead, here's a list of some notable spots:

- Tenryu holding Onita's head down and repeatedly punching him in the forehead

- Onita doing the classic baseball slide wire dodge only for Tenryu to do his own into Onita's face (countering baseball with baseball)

- Yaguchi vanishing from view for a few minutes only to reappear bathed in blood

- Tenryu throwing a chair into Asako's face really hard

- Okumura saving Asako from more damage by rushing Tenryu and then punching him a bunch in the face

- Onita swinging a table onto the top of Nakamaki's head like Whac-A-Mole

- Okumura choking Tenryu with his wrist tape (Okumura felt like the best mid-tier Memphis brawler ever in this match)

- Yaguchi DYING

    And that list is less than half of the craziest shit that happened. The match never slowed down, just constantly bashing you over the head with violence and chaos like the many chairs bashed over the head of Sambo Asako. Now, there were a solid handful of moments that you could call "botches" or "mistakes", and I'll happily admit that some of them were probably not planned. But if you see these moments and think "this makes the match worse", you're stupid. This is a fight, a brawl, and brawls are messy. Brawls are uncoordinated. Brawls aren't about doing everything perfectly, they're about trying to do anything you can to hurt who you're fighting. Of course you're gonna slip up every now and then, that's just a part of brawling. What matters is how you recover, and every single time a "mistake" happened, not only did it usually still look insane, it was also always recovered from incredibly well.

    I think the spirit of this match comes through the most in a spot near the halfway point. Onita and Tenryu are down, already broken by the damage dealt to both of them so far in the match. As they both start to get up, Tenryu notices a chair, immediately grabs it, and lunges over to throw it into Onita's face. It's the type of moment that takes this from a wild chaotic brawl into something with a real sense of spite and fury behind it. Before watching this match, I believed in Tenryu and I believed in Onita. Hell, I believed in everyone here. Spots like this are why I believe in the match itself.

    No rundown of the finish, because you really just need to see it for yourself. In fact, you need to see this whole match for yourself! It's up there as one of the best Onita brawls ever, and if you enjoy those matches in any way, shape, or form, you have to watch this. Life-changing pro wrestling.

Match Rating: A+

    In terms of the show as a whole, this was a mixed bag. I don't think anything on the show was truly bad (outside of everything Dr. Hannibal did), but there was a lot that never really moved me. As it stands, it felt like a good starting point for Onita Pro. Most of the less interesting stuff feels like it'll naturally get better with time. The DDT crew will complete their individual journeys of self-discovery, Onita will book better women to lose to Maedomari & Tsuchiya, and Pandita will only grow stronger in his ability to style on people. Add onto all of that one of the best matches ever in the main event, and I feel like this show left me pretty satisfied in the end. I'm excited to see where we go from here.

Show Rating: B