(Written by jom)
For anyone that isn't aware, WGWF/West Gate/Nishiguchi Pro is a promotion run by comedian and well-known Riki Choshu impersonator Koriki Choshu. The roster is entirely made up of fellow comedians, and the production values for WGWF shows tend to be much higher than the average indy. I'm definitely not the hugest fan of comedy wrestling, but I think when it's done in a good way it can be a really fun watch (considering the fact this roster is entirely professional comedians I am terrified for how shit this could be). The intro package of the show features a bunch of sped up, choppy clips of a woman in a WGWF shirt with all the colors inverted, and random shots of people wrestling with stock sound effects. I'm not really sure what to make of this, but I guess if you're gonna start a show, you wanna do it in an impactful way.
Love Sexy Rose, Kensuke Yoyogi, & Masa Kobayashi vs. Love Sexy Young, Kenzaburo Kamikaze, & Don Kusai
So, let's go over some gimmicks really quick. Love Sexy Rose has a Dino-esque gimmick of just trying to force himself on anyone around him (I'm already regretting turning this show on), Yoyogi and Kobayashi are two bigger guys that serve as Rose's muscle, Love Sexy Young is more of a flamboyant rockstar type character than a sex pest so I prefer him much more over Rose, Kamikaze is a WW2 soldier and extreme Japanese nationalist, and Kusai is a fat slob who likes to eat a lot. The DVD started less than 10 minutes ago and I feel like I've had a sensory overload.
In terms of the actual match, this was shockingly kinda good! I came into this with little to no expectations in terms of these guys' wrestling ability, and was pleasantly surprised to see that all of them had at least one cool thing to their name. Now, in terms of comedy? There wasn't a ton, and some of it worked for me while some didn't. Don Kusai was probably my favorite contributor in terms of the comedy stuff, doing some fun stuff like running the ropes and immediately running over to his corner for a water break, or trying to do a cobra twist and having absolutely no clue how to do it. Outside of Kusai's ineptness, the most notable "comedy" was Rose doing weird gross sexual shit. If this type of humor is something that you like then I guess you'd enjoy it, but Rose trying to force the dildo attached to his trunks down Young's throat just isn't something I'm interested in watching in a wrestling match.
With the wrestling portions, I think pretty much everyone had a moment to shine. With the heel team, Rose was absolutely the least impressive, doing mostly the sexual stuff and his actual wrestling was subpar for the most part. He did however do a rolling romero special, as wel as a genuinely pretty sick crucifix bomb, which just made me sad that he's saddled himself with such a godawful gimmick. Yoyogi was alright as a roided up powerhouse, doing some nice spots like a cool spinning hook kick, but generally just being alright. Masa Kobayashi was definitely the highlight of the heel team, as he layed in some cool strikes like an awesome shining kenka kick. He also did the awesome delayed falcon arrow seen below, featuring the first appearance of a REF CAM~! I'm not sure why but I just enjoy when promotions do dumb stuff like this, so seeing it in WGWF feels spiritually correct.
On the face side, Kusai impressed the least with the actual wrestling. This is mostly due to the fact he did nearly nothing besides comedy, but he did do a brain claw at one point so he at least got a point for that. Young was alright but mostly nothing too, but he had a few cool moments like a hard powerbomb and a pretty nicely done shiranui. Kamikaze was far and away the best part of the match wrestling-wise, busting out some genuinely impressive stuff like a great ipponzeoi. He also threw the kneel kick below, which connected with a gross crack, so I knew from that point on he was almost definitely going to be my favorite wrestler from this match.
With all of that said, this wasn't all great or anything like that. It was a pretty disjointed match, and even with some cool spots from all six guys, I think the gross stuff involving Rose really damaged my enjoyment of this match a lot. Still, I'm pretty impressed by a lot of the stuff these guys ended up doing, and in a match not involving Love Sexy Rose, I think I'd like the rest of the wrestlers a lot more.
Rating: B-
Masujiro Kuratomi vs. Utsuhachiro
This was for some "IW" championship that I have not a single clue about. Kuratomi is jacked and wears really shiny gear, while Utsuhachiro just kinda look like a dude who decided to do Inoki cosplay. Considering one of the best Inoki cosplayers ever is in the main event, this is not something I find particularly interesting from Utsuhachiro.
This one's gonna be short because this was entirely comedy and I was absolutely not a fan. The whole idea of this was the ref being extremely involved in the action, pretty much telling both guys how to do the match as they were doing it. This had a few fun moments such as the ref trying to get the two to break up since they were touching the ropes by climbing on top of them, or making Utsuhachiro do a diving splash to nothing because he got scared and chose not to do one before. However, this gimmick also got old really fast, and considering the whole match was based around it, I just got sick of watching about halfway into it. Kuratomi seemed like he could be genuinely pretty cool too, busting out some slick grappling and hitting really good gutwrench suplexes, but both he and Utsuhachiro (who admittedly wasn't that good anyways) were shackled by this dumb gimmick.
I genuinely do think there were a few funny moments, and Kuratomi's few wrestling moments were cool, but overall I have no interest in rewatching this. A great example of how to take a funny spot and beat it into the dirt.
Rating: C-
Dirty Kamen & Psychic Boy Daiji vs. Jiro Hachimitsu & Bison TAGAI
Daiji, if you couldn't guess by the gimmick, has a school boy psychic gimmick (think Mob Psycho 100). Kamen seems to just be a guy in a mask. Similarly, Hachimitsu seems to just be a dude (although he wouldn't look out of place working the BJW undercard). TAGAI is probably the weirdest out of the four, and seems to just want to be Kinnikuman. You might actually recognize TAGAI from his later career in Battlarts, but he's always been a WGWF trueborn.
This ended up being just kinda okay. I really was not a fan of Daiji because while I like stupid gimmicks, doing one like "psychic" just kinda breaks that barrier between fun stupid and genuinely stupid. He did stuff like pushing people with his mind and locking in a camel clutch from across the ring. If you like that stuff then he's probably fun to you. His partner Kamen was definitely more interesting and also much funnier, but still wasn't great. He hit an alright tilt-a-whirl headscissors and there was a fun spot early on where TAGAI accidentally took off his mask and Kamen just got very despondent over it. Outside of that he did nothing of interest.
Meanwhile, Hachimitsu and TAGAI were actually pretty solid. Hachimitsu had some fun moments like doing running eye pokes, but was also able to do some solid pro wrestling, hitting a nice big boot and a few really solid lariats. TAGAI meanwhile was definitely the most talented in the ring of the four, hitting some alright powerbombs and a genuinely awesome Sankakugeri (which is shown below). He did some dumb comedy stuff I didn't like but for the most part was fine in that regard.
This was a step up from the previous match for sure, but still rife with disjointedness and weak performances from Kamen and especially Daiji. TAGAI and Hachimitsu were able to carry this to being a fine match.
Rating: C+
Itako THE Aomori vs. The Invisible Man
I'm only listing this because I'd feel bad about excluding it. There will not be a review for this match. I'm sorry, you just can't make me review an Invisible Man match. I have to draw a line somewhere. I honestly used to be a fan of the whole "invisible wrestler" gimmick (Invisible Man vs. Invisible Stan was a match I thought was a ton of fun at the time), but I've since entered college and the world of paying bills, becoming significantly less happy and less accepting of fantastical gimmick shit like that. You can call me boring or negative or a party pooper or whatever. I am probably all of those things, and I'm still not reviewing this match.
Rating: N/A
Dr. Dare & Kunihiko Mitamega vs. Sa Obasan & Teruko Kagawa
I know nothing about Obasan or Kagawa, but Obasan has an old lady gimmick and Kagawa is actually a trainee from Jd', so hopefully she'll be able to do some cool stuff here. Dr. Dare is, you guessed it, a doctor. Kunihiko Mitamega also doesn't seem special at first glance, but he was actually a fixture of 2010s Wallabee shows, so I've seen him before and he was alright in those matches. If Yano saw something in him, who am I to doubt that?
I really needed something more interesting after the last three matches, and thank god this was next because it was actually really enjoyable! Obasan was the least interesting person here, mostly doing some comedy stuff based around being an old lady, but never really intruding and making the match worse. Kagawa meanwhile was actually pretty solid, hitting some nice stuff like this beauty of a diving missile dropkick, hitting Dare right on the side of the head with it.
Meanwhile, Mitamega and Dare were pretty awesome as bully heels, really working over Obasan and Kagawa hard. Dare didn't do a lot of note but he did have a few cool moments like throwing a mean boot at Kagawa or hitting a disgusting springboard dropkick to Obasan's head. Mitamega meanwhile was actually really cool. His few moments of comedy were alright, with him accidentally putting himself in a figure 4 which I thought was clever (he also did a very strange bridging pin with the joke being it made no sense, and I probably would've liked it more if Kagawa didn't act like it was actually working). He also bust out some awesome juniors offense, like hitting the Cougar slingshot leg drop, a code red from the corner, and this really well executed diving double foot stomp:
This only went 7 minutes, but ended up being probably the most enjoyable match so far. The comedy was never overbearing, and the actual wrestling was really good compared to everything else so far thanks to the efforts of Kagawa and Mitamega. Overall, a fun match and the best WGWF has done up to this point.
Rating: B
Hardcore: SanpeiX2 vs. Yumbo Ando
The prematch interview for this match featured Sanpei and Ando getting into a brawl, so I was already pretty interested by what was happening. Sanpei looks like a poor man's Ken45 and Ando was asleep during the interview until Sanpei attacked him so just based on that I had hopes for this to be good.
While it may not have gotten to the level of those hopes, it still was a pretty fun match. Ando was alright here, really only doing one comedy spot but being one of my favorites all show, when he tried to take a smoke break in the middle of the match leading to Sanpei hitting him with a mean kneel kick. Ando's wrestling though was sadly uninteresting but at least inoffensive, hitting at least 4 powerslams and not much else. He did hit a bulldog on Sanpei onto a pineapple though, leading to Sanpei pulling out a fake pineapple that had fake blood in it and squirting it on his face. I'm not sure why I'm okay with that compared to other stuff, but this bothered me less than most of the dumb stuff on the show.
Meanwhile, Sanpei was actually pretty cool! He started the match off hot by attacking Ando and putting him in a trash can, leading to the pretty sick kick seen below. He would taper off in terms of interesting moves as the match went on, but still had some cool moments like riding a bike on top of Ando. He also did this piledriver where Ando did a headstand and never actually got piledriven, and while I strongly disliked this move it wasn't enough to really make me dislike Sanpei's performance overall. The actual finish was fun enough too with some fire getting involved, which is a good way to get me to like a match more no matter what happened before said flames.
Once again, this didn't go very long so it never truly outstayed its welcome, and the contents of the match were fun. It had some boring spots as usual, but made up for it with some interesting ones. This is pretty much the theme of this whole show, but this match definitely outperformed most everything else.
Rating: B-
Koriki Choshu vs. Antonio Koinoki
We've made it to the end of this wild ride with the main event to end all main events. West Gate's owner and founder Koriki Choshu (small Riki Choshu) taking on top star Antonio Koinoki (small Antonio Inoki). Of course this was the match I had the highest expectations for, so after the previous matches weren't that good, I was pretty much riding on the hope that this match would be enjoyable enough for me to comfortably post this, since I don't wanna post something if it's just gonna be a mostly negative read.
Luckily for me, this was match of the night by far. Genuinely, this match had both the funniest comedy and most well-done wrestling of the whole night, with both guys pulling off their impressions great and incorporating some actually funny spots into their tribute acts. The match started with some fun spots based around the two not really being in sync on their spots, leading to both trying to do leap frogs or drop downs at the same time, and then yelling at each other over it. There were also some fun comedy spots where both guys would do the funny thing and just keep going like nothing happened. Honestly, doing that really made me like it a lot more, cause it felt much more natural and like a normal part of the match (even if it absolutely wasn't). Once it actually got into the wrestling stuff, it was almost a complete shift too, with both guys getting pretty serious and putting on an awesome show in the closing stretch.
Choshu was really sweet here, busting out nice elbows to Koinoki's shoulder at one point, as well as some cool Choshu offense like a sasori-gatame and a pretty mean Riki lariat. The highlight of his wrestling was definitely the great backdrop suplex seen below, where he pretty much executed it exactly how Choshu would.
The clear highlight of this match was Koinoki though. He's just so damn good at the Inoki impression, with the movements and facial expressions being spot-on and all of his comedy only being enhanced by that. He was able to perform well a ton of Inoki spots too, such as the enzuigiri, the indian deathlock, and even the diving knee drop. The best moment he had all match though was a seamless counter into a cobra twist. I truly mean it when I say Koinoki was head and shoulders above everyone else on this show, with some of the best offense in tribute to one of the greatest of all time.
Overall, this was the best possible way to end the show. Koinoki and Koriki Choshu went out there and put on a blast of a match, with a great mix of truly funny comedy spots and amazingly done tribute spots. Even though I had very mixed feelings on most of the show, this match made it all worth while.
Rating: B+