Monday Night RAW #1

  (Written by Jom)

Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to MONDAY... NIGHT... RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH

       ...This is probably not the RAW you were thinking of when I said that, but you couldn't pay me $100 to watch a full episode of the big Dub. Radical Athletic Wrestling is a "Kusa" (grass/sandlot, aka backyard) pro wrestling promotion in Japan that's been around for about 15 years. The roster is almost entirely made up of guys who were never trained, which actually works in the favor of the promotion. You can tell everyone in it is only doing this because they love puroresu and want to somewhat live out a dream of actually doing it. Almost all matches happen on the same giant gym mat, and while there are definitely the types of wrestlers you would expect for such a promotion, a majority of the roster actually don't give off the generic yarder vibe, as all of them are pretty solid with most matches being a weirdly cool mixture of battlarts/zero1 style wrestling. I love backyard promotions due to them entirely being passion projects, so I knew that if I had to spend every Monday night watching wrestling called RAW, it would be this. I have a playlist of seemingly every RAW match on youtube, and I'll be reviewing 3 RAW matches every Monday from now until I've gotten all of them. Also, since the promotion's whole thing is about having fun, I'm just gonna wing these reviews and write whatever I think works. Without further ado, let's begin.

Macho-Michaels vs. Ariake Shogo

    Shogo comes out and from the start I'm a fan. He walks out with his own stool to sit on, and his theme is so good that it's about to make me go on a Sheena Ringo binge just to see if all their songs are like this. Macho-Michaels (who I will refer to as Macho) is a Shawn Michaels' ripoff while Shogo is a shooter who could care less to be here, a gimmick I always love. I should mention neither of them are wearing shoes, which is pretty much customary in RAW. Shogo starts the match by hitting a nasty rolling solebutt. 15 seconds into the match and I'm already a bigger fan. Macho responds with a kinda bad flippy chain escape and a stiff dropkick, but then pulls out the WTCHAAAA pose like X-Pac. I think he might just be a big fan of the clique. My suspicions are confirmed when he pulls out the Indian deathlock, doing Michaels poses every time he falls backwards. He tries to turn this into a Muta lock at one point but Shogo simply grabs Macho's neck first. After some more grappling, Shogo starts unloading these wicked uppercut elbows, you can hear the arm to chin connection every time he throws one. At the same time he uses some overhand punches that... well, let's just say I wanna see him do a lot more upper elbows. He gets the advantage and puts in a COBRA CLUTCH MANJIGATAME? I've never seen this move before, and why the fuck haven't I, it's so cool. From this point on there's a couple very noticeable miscommunications between Shogo and Macho, mostly when Shogo has beaten on Macho a little and he obviously wants Macho to start fighting for a comeback, but Macho just kinda stands there not doing anything. It doesn't kill the flow, but it certainly hurts it. Speaking of hurt, Macho nearly kills Shogo with a body slam, letting go of him way too early and almost spiking my new fave shooter right on the top of his head. He makes up for this terrible mistake with some okay kick combos, before tuning up the band. I think to myself "well, he can't be that bad at the sweet chin music, so let's hope for the best". Turns out I had nothing to worry about, as he simply instead hit the NASTIEST FUCKING THRUST KICK IVE EVER SEEN. STRAIGHT TO THE NECK JESUS CHRIST. Because Macho has no clue what he's best at and is also somehow confused about who he's trying to imitate, he then does a running frog splash where he lands on his feet nearly a full second before falling onto Shogo. I got so scared Shogo wouldn't kick out but he did, and I guess at that point Shogo was sick of Macho's shit since he shoot punched him in the jaw and knee'd him like he was trying to kill him, getting Shogo the win. This honestly didn't do a great job as a match, but as an introduction to Shogo I'm very glad I watched this.

Rating: Shogo was great, and Macho should be directed to the nearest exit

Ashita Maeda vs. Yuuki-Robert Kawaguchi

    Maeda is, as you probably could've guessed, a total Akira Maeda cosplay wrestler, coming out to an alternate version of "Captured" and wearing a RINGS shirt along with the traditional Maeda black trunks and kickpads, also wearing black boots to complete the look while also going against the RAW rules of no shoes, meaning that he's even a rule-breaker just like his idol. Kawaguchi on the other hand comes out in full black gi with the nWo logo on the back. Why? How the fuck should I know. This is under what I assume are RINGS or UWFi rules, as there's a scoring system based on each time a person gets knocked down or has to use the ropes (and by ropes I mean a tape square used to signify the ropes). To show these points, the announcer's table has two notebook paper sheets behind it, and every time someone loses a point they tape a new paper with their current point count on top. I'm not sure why I enjoy this so much (probably because I'd wanna do the same thing if I was in a backyard fed doing shoot matches), but I certainly do. The grappling in this is definitely amateur, but at the same time that helps the struggle feel real, as this is just two dudes genuinely trying to put each other in holds they probably are thinking of on the fly. Maeda throws some nasty kicks which let out a gross sound when they connect, and I can't tell if that's because the room is so small or he's just throwing them that hard. Either way, this match is just Maeda kicks and both men doing snug grappling for less than 10 minutes until Maeda gets Kawaguchi in a pretty sick arm-trap neck crank for the victory. This wasn't great, but for two guys who weren't trained, it was still a pretty fun match, one that was actually aided by how low budget everything was. Low budget Maeda, low budget judoka, low budget RINGS system, this was simply some low budget fun.

Rating: cosplay RINGS is still RINGS baby

SAGAT vs. SG Wonder

    For anyone wondering, yes, this is that SAGAT, the BASARA dude. Turns out not only was he originally a yarder, but he was apparently considered the best yarder in Japan in 2011. No clue when this is happening, but hopefully it's around that year. This whole match felt like a weird fever dream honestly. Both dudes just drop all the normal parts of a wrestling match at multiple points, and it honestly is so cool. It starts out weird enough with Wonder doing some singing before SAGAT throws a NASTY spear out of frustration. Wonder, after getting up from the spear, then starts singing again, which makes SAGAT just kinda not care anymore and try to wait it out. Wonder takes advantage of this by getting SAGAT to get on his knees and then IMMEDIATELY GO FOR A GEDO CLUTCH. Both men trade chops before going into a Wonder limb targeting sequence, which actually works because Wonder is surprisingly good at it. What else is surprising? Oh, when SAGAT gets up and Wonder does a mean headlock takeover into a fucking superkick straight to SAGAT's face. SAGAT gets up pissed off and the two men are now throwing shoulder tackles like they wanna turn the other into roadkill. At this point it becomes less of a wrestling match and more of a turn-based battle, as each one waits for the other to hit a move, taking a normal strike exchange and turning it into a fucking bloodbath with the escalation of the strikes. Sadly, it wasn't a literal bloodbath, but I'm amazed it never got to that point since some of those strikes were totally full force. Wonder finally wins with an out of nowhere slap to the face, followed up by a rolling solebutt, before running back for his nasty lariat but slipping, allowing SAGAT to bowl into him with another shoulder tackle almost to Wonder's face. SAGAT follows it up by diving off the announcer's table for an elbow, but Wonder just gets up again, hitting a nasty german suplex into a side slam, then another shoot kick to the chest, then a running leaping superkick, AND FINALLY A POUNCE. SAGAT GETS BACK UP AGAIN AND NOW THEY ARE THROWING STIFF SLAPS. WONDER RESPONDS WITH SHOOT PUNCH AND I CANNOT TELL IF THIS IS PLANNED OR NOT. Somehow SAGAT gets control again finally and hits another shoulder tackle to the face this time, before following it up with a rear one straight to Wonder's neck. Wonder... KICKS OUT??? SAGAT IS FUCKIN PISSED, ROUNDHOUSE KICK, SPEAR, ANOTHER FUCKING KICKOUT, AND FINALLY ONE MORE SPEAR FROM SAGAT GETS THE WIN. I don't even know how to rate this because sometimes it was boring and sometimes it was so violent I couldn't take my eyes away from the screen. Those first 5 minutes of Wonder playing around and singing did not prepare me at all for what followed, but I probably won't forget this match for a little bit.

Rating: what the fuck, holy fuck, all the fucks