(Written by jom)
Sachie Nishibori & Emi Motokawa vs. Keiko Aono & Yasha Kurenai
Being entirely honest here, I have significantly less knowledge about these four than I really should. Nishibori and Motokawa (the future Emi Sakura) are IWA Japan wrestlers who worked frequently in other promotions and have been pretty damn solid in the small amount of their work I've seen from IWA Japan. Yasha Kurenai is someone I've only seen pictures and clips of but she looks absolutely beast, with a really sweet yankee gimmick which is honestly just a gimmick I love in general. And Aono... I've never seen before. I've definitely at least seen her name but cannot for the life of me remember if I've ever seen her wrestle.
Wouldn't you know it, this was pretty awesome! Genuinely, this was a lot of fun with all four involved really bringing it and starting the show off right. Nishibori was doing some pretty cool stuff, hitting a great hurricanrana and a crazy dive, as well as pulling off some cool counters. Motokawa was awesome here too, moreso than Nishibori, being absolutely full of energy and going as fast as possible the entire match. Her first contribution to the match was repeatedly dropkicking Aono into oblivion so it was pretty obvious she was gonna pull off a top level performance. The two of them even had a few solid moments of teamwork, especially this crazy assisted flipping senton onto Kurenai:
Aono was solid for the small amount of stuff I got to see her do. She did some fun power moves like her really good shoulder tackles, and at one point caught a Nishibori crossbody to hit a real nice powerslam. Kurenai was my favorite part of the match though, just completely wrecking Motokawa and especially Nishibori. She pulled off some cool stuff, like a springboard leg drop and the awesome uranage/exploder type move shown below (not really sure what to call it considering the landing).
Overall, this rocked pretty well for the amount of it that we saw. SamuraiTV ended up clipping out over half the match which really does suck considering what we got was awesome, but I've definitely become more interested in checking out the work of all four women after this.
Rating: B
Yusaku & Daisaku vs. Yuichi Taniguchi & Sanshiro Takagi
There's really not an introduction needed for either of the Shimoda twins (I've already covered them both enough in Yusaku/Rikiya Fudo's Comprehensive series). Taniguchi is a guy who I've never been super high on but he's almost always put in at least a serviceable performance. Takagi is based as hell. I love the resident Stone Cold cosplayer in Japan and especially during this stage in his career he was pretty great, doing some solid brawler type stuff while starting to really integrate Austinisms into his work. Sadly all the entrances were cut so no "FIREEEEEE" but it's not the end of the world.
Once again, this was really damn good! Two for two so far on this show. Taniguchi really surprised me with how well he did here, really using his mass to pulverize the Shimoda twins with crushing corner and running splashes. He also at one point hit a genuinely great northern lights suplex which I was decidedly not expecting from someone of Taniguchi's size. Takagi was also great here, constantly turning up the heat when he was in the ring by just fighting with whoever he was there with. He had some awesome moves like his DDTs, but probably the best moment he had all match was when he came in and just started shooting on shooter Daisaku for no particular reason. Truly, Takagi is a beast.
Yusaku, similar to Aono, was a solid power wrestler, although honestly he didn't do a ton of impressive stuff here. He hit a cool back elbow and a vader bomb, but for the most part was just fine. Daisaku on the other hand was off the fucking bean. He was honestly pretty similar to Masashi Aoyagi, coming in and popping off some hard strike combos, really making himself feel like such a threat. Probably the best of these combos came towards the end, when he hit a beauty of an axe kick before smashing Takagi's temple with a gamengiri.
Another really good match for this show so far, even better than the last one. I think that this never really entered into enough of a next gear to be called "great", but this wasn't a match ever intended to be anything like that. It accomplished exactly what it was meant to as a lower midcard match featuring some real shitkickers, and if you're a fan of any of these guys you'd probably enjoy this.
Rating: B+
Azumi Hyuga & Ran YuYu vs. Carlos Amano & Kana Mizaki
Basically take what I said about the opening match and increase it tenfold. I have no watching experience with anyone in here besides Carlos Amano (although I recognize all of their names). Now, having said that, I think that Amano might be a top 100 wrestler ever from the amount of work I've seen from her. She throws hard headbutts, has some insane grappling ability, and does the greatest armbar of all time, so going into this I'm at least hoping she gets to pull do two out of three of these things.
Another pretty solid match, albeit a step below the last two. Hyuga and YuYu both did pretty good, especially YuYu. She hit some pretty awesome samoan drops, especially a really sweet one off the top rope. Hyuga hit some cool stuff of her own, such as a nice springboard dropkick and this beauty of a butterfly backbreaker:
Mizaki and Amano both put in some pretty good performances as well. Mizaki hit a ton of sentons which I thought was cool, and also it a solid tornado DDT. Amano was absolutely the best part of the match, pulling out some real nice grappling and hitting a ton of different armbars (which made up for the complete lack of headbutts). This culminated in her hitting genuinely an extremely awesome doomsday armbar, shown below.
While I think this match had a solid handful of cool moments, it definitely felt slightly disjointed and move-spammy. It didn't help that the way the pace went made it feel like it never really built to the finishing stretch, just going at the same tempo for the majority of the match. That said, I still think this was pretty good and I enjoyed it overall.
Rating: B
Great Takeru, Keisuke Yamada, & Keizo Matsuda vs. Shigeo Kato, Onryo, & Shinigami
IWA Japan vs. Wrestle Yume Factory~! Starting to think Kendo Nagasaki was somehow talking to me when booking this show because this is exactly the type of match I would book if I could. Love all six of these guys, with Takeru being an awesome suicidal high-flyer, Yamada and Matsuda both being hardass bruisers, Kato being a solid heel technican, Onryo being a sleek juniors worker, and Shinigami being like if Undertaker was a member of the Von Erich family. Basically, I already was in love with this match before it even happened.
...And that's about as much love as it ended up getting. It pains me to say this but this match just wasn't very good. The opening of it was pretty hot with the teams brawling before leading into a solid "good guys stand tall" moment, but after that the match turned into one giant extended heat segment with very few breaks. Nothing these guys did was bad per se but it was more that they just did nothing at all. Probably the best guy in the whole match was Shinigami, who not only got to act cocky as hell and do a bunch of shittalking, but also did probably some of the most interesting stuff in terms of moves, with the best one being this pretty awesome double choke into a belly to belly suplex:
Now, maybe this match was better than it seems. Once again, this match was the victim of some extreme clipping, with the 22 minute match being cut down to roughly 10 minutes. However, considering what we do have, I have a feeling that it wasn't, and that makes me very sad. This is probably a C- but my disappointment weighs heavy.
Rating: D+
Barbed Wire Boards Deathmatch: Tarzan Goto & Freddie Krueger vs. Shoji Nakamaki & Mitsunobu Kikuzawa
Another match that, on paper, seems really fun. Jun Saida is someone I've never heard of before wearing a weird red mask, wrestledata says that Nakamaki teamed with Kikuzawa on this show so maybe that's his real identity but no sure way to know (EDIT: the mask came off within 3 minutes of the match, it is in fact Kikuzawa). Krueger (the IWA Japan one portrayed by Doug Gilbert) is alright, albeit he only really does good when he's being carried by someone better. However, Nakamaki and Goto are absolutely better enough wrestlers to carry if need be, with Nakamaki being a really fun hard hitting deathmatch brawler and Goto being a top 50 wrestler of all time in my own eyes. To be honest though, my expectations are out the window after that last match and I'm just kinda hoping this ends up being good.
It's a good thing I did temper those expectations because this was totally alright. Tarzan Goto was by far the best part of the match (I would've been shocked if he wasn't), just being generally very evil and doing things like his signature bottle break spot, throwing people into the wire, and letting out an evil laugh. The best thing he did all match was the powerbomb shown below, where Kikuzawa got all sorts of wrapped up in the wire. Outside of Goto though, everyone else didn't really do much. Krueger had a couple moments of being in control on his own and they were very nothing, Kikuzawa was the whipping boy for the most part (although he did get to hit one very cool running senton onto Krueger in the wire), and Nakamaki just didn't really do anything worthwhile outside of some pretty solid brawling with Goto.
While I think this match had a solid handful of cool moments, it definitely felt slightly disjointed and move-spammy. It didn't help that the way the pace went made it feel like it never really built to the finishing stretch, just going at the same tempo for the majority of the match. That said, I still think this was pretty good and I enjoyed it overall.
Rating: C+
Sayuri Okino & Eagle Sawai vs. Shinobu Kandori & Junko Yagi
Once again, I know nobody hear besides one person. I've seen limited amounts of Kandori but she's always come off amazingly so I was looking forward to this match just to see more from her.
And we are back with a genuinely good match! This was a really solid old school face/heel tag match, with Sawai and Okino constantly running interference (along with a 2nd they had with them that was in the ring for like 90% of the match) and using weapons, while Kandori and Yagi having to try and fend them off. Sawai was pretty solid here, doing some alright body blocks and being a generally imposing force but she never really did anything that wow'd me. Okino was really good as a less imposing, more annoying heel, just wailing on Kandori and Yagi with weapons like a pink kendo stick and a chain. She had a few moves she got in that were awesome too, like this sweet dropkick:
Yagi was alright, although she didn't do much. Her main existence in the match was to get beaten up by the heels and to constantly get inches away from the tag, only to get cut off at the last second, leading to Kandori's eventual hot tag. And man, Kandori fucking rocked in this match. She was a total house of fire any time she got involved, moving with such ferocity and busting out some amazing counters like the one into an armbar show below. Her work in the finish was absolutely amazing too, with her repeatedly going for the kill on Okino while Sawai and the 2nd tried their damndest to stop her for finishing Okino off.
Overall, this was a blast of a match. I think the only thing holding it back from greatness was just how much the 2nd was involved. If they had been a little more creative on how they got her in the match so that the ref didn't look like the biggest idiot on the planet I think this would've been a shoe-in A-, but the score it ended up with is still absolutely respectable.
Rating: B+
Shigeo Okumura, Nobutaka Araya, & Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs. Kendo Nagasaki, Genichiro Tenryu, & Masaaki Mochizuki
The main event of the show is here and what a clusterfuck on paper. You've got a solid all-rounder, an agile hoss, an old stiff grappler, a violent brawler, a total force of nature, and a karateka. Pretty much the perfect storm for a crazy main event tag match.
Yeah, this match fucking rocked. It ended up being the absolutely insane brawl I was hoping for, if not even more so than I could've dreamed. I can't even begin to go over everyone's performance, genuinely not a single person wasted their spot. Of course, anything involving Fujiwara or Tenryu was money, especially when they were together in the ring. This is a few years removed from the genuine all-time classic singles match they had in WAR, and the heat from that match completely carried over because these guys tried to kill each other as much as possible.
Nagasaki also had some awesome exchanges with Fujiwara, especially when the two just started shoot headbutting each other with reckless abandon. He was also part of maybe my favorite visual of the whole match, as when it turned into an all-out brawl Fujiwara and Tenryu were fighting in the ring, but in the background you could see Nagasaki absolutely mauling Okumura. Mochizuki did an awesome job hitting a bunch of badass karate stuff including a brutal head kick into a springboard dropkick. Araya and Okumura both were really damn good too, acting as some awesome young bruisers backing up old man Fujiwara when he needed it and just beating the dogshit outta whoever they were in the ring with.
This was just such an amazing match. Violent, chaotic, a total shot to the heart compared to everything else leading up to it. This is the type of match that walks in, punches you in the nose, and walks out like nothing happened. Truly something special.
Rating: A
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