(Written by jom)
Early into 2022, I was faced with an admittedly easy decision. I was about to make some major changes in my personal life and had been contemplating returning to making blog posts for a while. I had also been thinking about what types of posts I would make, and one thing that I kept coming back to was "make a year-end list". While I was interested in making one for 2021, I didn't really have the time to fully commit to a project that ambitious considering how little planning had been put into it (zero), and instead decided that I should instead focus my efforts towards a 2022 list that I could work on as the year progresses.
Originally, I planned on reviewing shows and matches as they were made available, and eventually ending the year with a list that was simply made up of links to my already made reviews. This would lead to a pretty bare-bones actual list, but it would instead act as a launchpad, sending readers directly to the thoughts I had at the time rather than writing it all in one location. It would also allow me to create the list in a healthy way with a smaller chance of me slacking off and forcing myself into a position where I would have to write a lot in a single post. I also considered creating that massive single post, but doing so would mean that I would have to write everything on one blog post, and maybe it's just me, but putting that many words onto one article is a horrifying thought.
At the time, I decided that, in my own best interest, I would be much better off doing the real-time reviewing. It would allow me to have a steady stream of blog posts, and I wouldn't have to deal with the pressure of trying to assemble together such a monolith of a year-end article. I wrote down in my notes section for Dragon Screw "work on the 2022 biweekly reviews".
Through a combination of busyness and laziness, the 2022 biweekly reviews never happened.
Instead, I didn't return to making blog posts until March (albeit with one of my favorite posts I've done this year), and the idea of reviewing 2022 wrestling completely slipped out of my mind. I stuck to looking at shows from the late 90s/early 2000s, fun time capsules of Japanese indy sleaze that I could quickly consume and then quickly review. I started to incorporate gifs into my posts since pictures are cool and moving pictures are even cooler. I've been getting into the groove of writing more and more, and outside of having to take longer periods between posts due to school, work, and life in general all getting in the way, I've been really proud of how the blog has shaped up in the latter half of the year.
Around July, I randomly remembered "oh yeah, I wanna make a year-end list". Starting in August, I created a notes section to write down matches that I enjoyed enough to consider for this post. Thankfully, I didn't have to start entirely from ground zero, as I had been posting my thoughts on matches in a discord channel since the beginning of the year (shoutouts to the Shiga Server). I slowly worked on the article for about two months before having to take a break starting in November, and soon after was when I decided to change the format for how I write blog posts, meaning that when I finally had the time to get back to writing in December, I had to get rid of everything I wrote so far and start all over again. It look some long hours of writing and a lot of rewatching, but after a couple months of working on it, the DRAGON SCREW 15-22 is finally here.
The basis for this is pretty simple; I take fifteen matches I loved from whatever year I'm covering and do a write-up for each. Some of these write-ups will be pretty short and others will be very long, mostly depending on how much I actually have to talk about. I'll be linking matches as much as I can, either in the form of direct links to the matches or links to buy the shows they happened on.
Now, just to be crystal clear, this is not meant to be a "best matches of 2022" list. I'll be the first to tell you I saw very little outside of my usual circles of wrestling. I didn't watch a single match from WWE, and the amount of AEW and ROH I watched could be counted on one hand. NJPW, AJPW, NOAH were rarely visited (only during discord VCs where someone would suggest checking out recent matches from either of those places), and in terms of indy wrestling anywhere outside of Japan, I only watched a select amount of matches featuring people I'm friends with. Instead, I primarily stuck to indy feds like Tenryu Project and CAPTURE, as well as a bunch of stuff from micro-indies like FU*CK!, XGF, and SHI-EN. Were there better matches from places like AEW than most of the ones on this list? Yeah, I think it would be safe to assume that. However, I didn't watch those matches, nor am I particularly interested in watching them (for better or for worse I am entirely committed to the Japanese indy scene, and attempting to integrate anything else into my regular watching schedule would make my social life even worse than it already is), and even for the few I did watch, that stuff doesn't fit with the make-up of the blog, so they aren't on the list.
That's about a thousand words that aren't reviewing any match, so it's probably about time to start doing that. I hope you've got snacks ready, because this one's gonna be long as hell. Without further ado, let's get into the DRAGON SCREW 15-22!
Honorable Mentions:
- Daijiro Matsui vs. Daisuke Nakamura (GLEAT 03/05)
- Seichi Ikemoto vs. Soma Watanabe (GLEAT 03/13)
- Keita Yano, Masayuki Kono, Shota, & TORU vs. Hikaru Sato, Kengo, Kenichiro Arai, & Kohei Sato (Tenryu Project 03/16)
- GENTARO vs. Yasushi Sato (Mutoha 03/19)
- DAICHI vs. Bomber Okuno (SHI-EN 03/20)
- Hiroaki Taniguchi vs. Maro Kuriyama (SHI-EN 03/20)
- Yuto Kikuchi, Ryuya Matsufusa, & Harutoki vs. Yuki Tanaka, Hideaki Sumi, & Takaku Fuke (Dotonbori 04/03)
- Kosuke Sato vs. Super Crafter U (CAPTURE International 05/08)
- Naoya Nomura vs. Rikiya Fudo (CAPTURE International 05/08)
- Kusuri Matsumura vs. Hinjaku Ningen Casshern (AZW 07/10)
- Minoru Tanaka vs. Hitamaru Sasaki (Kyushu Pro 08/11)
- White Moriyama vs. Kotaro Nasu (HEAT-UP! 08/14)
- White Moriyama vs. Hitamaru Sasaki (HEAT-UP! 10/01)
- Minoru Kido vs. Violence Beast H Pinky Kong (XGF 10/10)
- Kotaro Nasu & Keisuke Goto vs. Rikiya Fudo & Raito Shimizu (HEAT-UP! 10/10)
- Keita Yano vs. Kotaro Nasu (Tenryu Project 11/12)
- Keita Yano vs. Hikaru Sato (Tenryu Project 11/13)
- Isami Kodaka vs. Fuminori Abe (BASARA 12/11)
Tatsuhiko Nakagawa & Hiroyuki Iwahara vs. Hiroaki Moriya & Fugo Fugo Yumeji (FU*CK! 01/03)
Fugo Fugo Yumeji is a very evil pro wrestler.
He's kind of always had some cruelty deep in his bones. Even in the earliest matches in his career, there's a level of violence and hate that very few wrestlers have ever seemed to reach, a lack of empathy in his wrestling that comes bundled with a sadist's smile. In 00s ZERO1 he got an image change, starting his career long dance routine to "Samba De Janeiro" before every match, but the brutality remained. No matter what changes about Fugo, be it his age, his look, his music, or even his apparent attitude, that deep-seated callousness has never truly went away.
All he ever needs is a little push.
This match, taking place for the nearly twenty year old super shindie FU*CK!, actually starts out as Fugo teaming with Nakagawa to take on Iwahara and Moriya. Nakagawa is an old karateka who I've seen a lot of in recent times and have come to really enjoy. He's got a wildness to a lot of his strikes that makes him feel like a rougher Kazuhiko Ogasawara, throwing brutal kicks and chops with reckless abandon, and while some end up not connecting, the ones that do really connect. Iwahara and Moriya meanwhile aren't usually very good. Both are tribute-adjacent wrestlers, with Iwahara doing lots of Tanahashi moves (and even acting as a parody of Tanahashi in WGWF) and Moriya busting out stuff from Tenryu's arsenal, but neither of them are particularly interesting on their own (an especially disappointing situation for Moriya considering he's trained by one of my favorites ever, Masanobu Kurisu). Coming into this, it looked to be an alright match at best, with Fugo and Nakagawa doing most of the good work and Iwahara and Moriya hopefully just holding their own.
Fugo and Moriya started off for their teams and did some fine enough old man grappling, but nothing of interest. They quickly tagged out to their partners, and Nakagawa, for some reason, decided that instead of wrestling himself, he wanted to drag Iwahara over to Fugo and tag him in for a team maneuver or something. Fugo didn't really want to though, and refused to tag Nakagawa. Nakagawa then kicked Fugo as hard as he could in the stomach. You could hear a pin drop after Nakagawa did this, and not because there were only a handful of people at the show. Fugo got up on the apron and decided to try and reason with Nakagawa, telling him to focus on the opponents and not take his anger out on him. Nakagawa slapped Fugo for saying this.
This was a poor choice from Nakagawa.
Fugo got into the ring and without a second thought the two started brawling. After the ref and the enemy team both couldn't get them to split up, the ref finally threw the match out as a no contest. Moriya quickly decided to offer that he team with Fugo and Iwahara team with Nakagawa, and after all four agreed on the new teams, the match was started up again, with Fugo and Nakagawa in the ring.
Immediately, things were tense. Fugo had Nakagawa gripped up by his gi and after a long time of waiting for the moment to strike, both guys started throwing mammoth slaps at each other, the type of slaps that would leave your ears ringing for days after. They brawled in mount position and took turns trying to brutalize each other, with Nakagawa throwing stiff knees and punches all over Fugo's body and Fugo quickly turning towards his most trusted weapon in his arsenal: his skull. The hollow crack of a Fugo headbutt is a noise that sticks with you for a while, and the ones in this match were maybe some of his most scarring in his entire career. Every time he threw one, Nakagawa would be sent sprawled into the ropes, and Fugo would be standing there with the smuggest grin, proud of himself for giving permanent brain damage to this old karateka that dared to challenge him. After about three and a half minutes of some of the most ruthless violence to take place in a wrestling ring in the last decade, both men finally tagged out.
The match was never able to reach this type of malevolence again, but it never drifted too far away from that cruelty.
Moriya's early work was entirely uninteresting but pretty soon into his time in the ring, he started to realize that he needed to at least try and match Fugo's evil tendencies, and quickly took to throwing some real mean chops, elbows, and punt kicks at poor Iwahara. Fugo also tagged in later to get his own licks on Iwahara, including maybe the cruelest spot all year, where he gripped up Iwahara by the hair and made him flinch twice before laughing in his face and headbutting him directly on the bridge of the nose. Nakagawa finally got the hot tag after a few minutes of the other team torturing his partner and immediately went back to kicking ass, throwing those hard kicks that I love him for, before tagging back in Iwahara only for Iwahara to go right back to getting his ass kicked. In the finishing stretch, Moriya locked in a deep cloverleaf and Fugo, in a moment that may go down as one of the craziest in his whole career, hit a torpedo headbutt suicide dive on Nakagawa (which, according to Fugo himself, was the first suicide dive he had ever done in his entire career), leading to Moriya locking in a figure four toehold and getting the tap-out victory.
On a technical level, this is a deeply flawed match. Moriya and Iwahara were both very rough around the edges with everything they did, and while Moriya ended up redeeming himself to a certain degree with the Tenryuist violence he pulled out later in his work, Iwahara never really did anything good at all, hitting a horrendous slingblade among other poorly executed maneuvers. The actual finish of the Moriya toehold also ended up falling kind of flat, at least compared to everything else in the match.
However, this match exists as less of a full match worth critiquing and more as a pure spectacle of barbarity. The actions of Fugo Fugo Yumeji in this match were inhumane in a way no other wrestler has approached, and Moriya and Nakagawa both worked their damndest to reach their own personal pinnacles of violence, doing a damn good job of it. If you have the stomach for it, this match is far and away one of the most compelling wrestling matches of the whole year.
Rating: A
Dick Zlater vs. Great Zako (AZW 03/05)
Great Zako is one of my favorites in the current wrestling scene. A lumbering psychopath who cut his teeth working in amateur fed nkw, Zako first really came onto my radar because of his friendship with Keita Yano (a relationship that has led to a number of insane matches, including the infamous match in UEW between Zako and "Masked Holiday", aka Yano wearing a Super Muneco mask), and ever since then his stuff has been must-see. He's reminiscent of guys like Mr. Pogo or Necro Butcher, working almost like a deathmatch zombie in his movements and actions. Dick Zlater is someone I know much less about, but in the few matches I've seen of his, he's been pretty impressive. He's another non-pro based in the recently-formed AZW promotion, and works with a blend of tricky technical work and stiff strikes.
Now, to be entirely honest, I'm pretty iffy on modern deathmatches. I think there's definitely some guys in that scene that rock, with Kasai, Takeda, and Ueki immediately coming to mind, but the overall style has fallen towards masturbatory spots and sequences where those involved are just trying to scream "WE ARE EXTREME! WE ARE HARDCORE!" at you, while also completely losing any feelings of danger, the prime aspect in my opinion that make deathmatches so good.
This match lived and breathed danger.
From beginning to end, they always treated everything in this match like it really hurt. There's no "breaking light tubes over your own head" spots, and when Zlater took a self-inflicted bump onto the tacks to start the match before inviting Zako to do the same, Zako instead threw his shirt at Zlater and wailed on him with stiff punches. There's a clear amount of care that both guys had towards making sure the pain of this match was evident.
It's also worth mentioning that there was some solid wrestling moments, like Zako throwing a stiff Keita Yano-esque european uppercut into a DDT, or Zlater hitting his own uppercut to Zako. But while the wrestling moves of the match were well done, this was always a match entirely devoted to Zako and Zlater trying to inflict some of the most absurd violent acts upon each other. Both guys pulled out some absolutely crazy shit, with tons of plunder employed like a bucket of thumbtacks, a keyboard, and even light tube rings. They also got an opportunity to go to town on the other's forehead with a boxcutter, and Zlater went above and beyond by giving Zako one of the gnarliest slices I've seen in years.
By the end, we even got another Great Zako classic, as similar a number of Great Zako matches in the past, this ended with one of the most visceral "attempted murder" spots I've seen, as Zako tried to waterboard Zlater until the referee called for the bell. It's almost definitely the most evil finish of the year.
This, of course, had moments of roughness, featured a couple spots that you could easily pick apart, and was overall paced pretty slowly. At least to me though, this was a total blast, and I'm fine with excusing some of those rougher moments due to the fact neither of these dudes are actually professionally trained. One of the best deathmatches of the year, and a testament to Zako being one of the craziest dudes in wrestling.
Rating: B+
GT & Karim Kazama vs. Chocott Shiteiner & Minoru Kido (nkw 03/05)
If you noticed the date, yes, this did happen on the same day as the last match, as AZW and nkw were doing a double header in BASEMENT MONSTAR. Sometimes I get kinda sad that I'm not able to afford a Japan trip currently, because multiple shows like these happen a lot with the smaller feds I like to follow, and they always seem like a ton of fun.
Of the four people in this match, the one I'm the biggest fan of is Minoru Kido. He's genuinely one of the most intimidating wrestlers in the world today, putting in insane performances against guys like Great Zako and Paul F'N Ishida where he tries to commit horrific violence on them. He comes out to a real snazzy rock song and puffs on a vape, before trying to smash people's brains in with horrifying elbows and headbutts. He's got a real dangerous yakuza-type vibe to him and works like his idol is Masanobu Kurisu, so of course I'm a fan. His "Elbow Rengo" partner Chocott Shiteiner isn't a slouch either, throwing his own deadly strikes while also pulling out some awesome big moves which make me feel he would've slotted in perfectly with the 90s IWA Japan juniors guys. GT and Kazama are two people I know significantly less about, although both are members of nkw's "American Top Team" stable and Kazama had only debuted three months prior to this match.
Before the bell even rang, I was a little worried about how this match could go. I already kinda knew the ATT guys weren't my type of wrestlers, so it made me think this would end up being a sadly skippable match even if it two of my favorite amaresu guys. I even almost skipped this match entirely.
Thank god I didn't.
GT and Kazama rushed Elbow Rengo before the match could start, and immediately began a brawl on the outside. While the early shots aren't very interesting, everyone's strikes started to heat up very fast, with Kazama and Shiteiner especially getting almost worringly stiff with each other. Kazama threw some pretty fucking hard elbows and got in Shiteiner's face, and Shiteiner responded with his own elbows as well as with a stiff headbutt and some real mean punches to the stomach. Eventually, everyone settled down and got to their places in the ring and on the apron, with GT and Kido starting the match off. They busted out some really awesome shoot style grappling at this point, with GT doing some slick BJJ-type work in contrast to Kido's basic but effective veteran style grappling, before Kido picked GT up and carried him to his corner, leading to both men tagging out and allowing Shiteiner and Kazama to continue where they left off.
It is at this point that Kazama got demolished.
It's not immediate to be fair. Him and Shiteiner worked a pretty basic opening match routine, with the added bonus of some real fire behind all the work. However, Shiteiner soon hit a really hard front slam, and then, after just grinding his knee into Kazama's head, started to throw some of the gnarliest kicks at his head I have seen all year. One especially is horrific, catching Kazama right in the nose. He and Kido then alternated just torturing the poor guy, and although one attempt at a combination attack in the corner resulted in Shiteiner dropkicking Kido, the onslaught still ended with Kazama as a broken mess on the outside, leaving GT to come in and do this match as a two on one.
At this point, the match does dip in quality, albeit not by a lot. Shiteiner and Kido still worked in a similar way as they did with Kazama, with Kido hitting an especially fucked up gutwrench throw that looked like it could've broke GT's back on landing, and Shiteiner even bust out an awesome giant swing. GT nearly ruined it by doing an extremely stupid comedy sell, but honestly, it's nearly impossible to ruin a giant swing for me. It kinda sucks that GT has such a propensity for doing stupid spots, because GT's serious offense was miles better than it had any right to be, with some hard kicks and flat-out great grappling whenever he wasn't busy trying out bad comedy spots or attempting fast-paced juniors offense he's incapable of pulling off.
Throughout all of this match, there's been an extra story beat that I only mentioned once, that being that Kido and Shiteiner weren't really on the best of terms and have had a slight tendency of putting each other in harm's way. Elbow Rengo was less of a harmonious union and more like two bastards that realized they could be even worse bastards together, so really this team imploding was inevitable. This story reached its climax near the end of the match, as Kido pulled Shiteiner in the way of a jumping knee from GT to save himself, and then when Kido called for Shiteiner to help him hit a double brainbuster, Shiteiner laid Kido out with a mean axe bomber. Kido got up and they started to argue, only for Karim Kazama to finally return after having been beaten half to death, dropkicking Kido into Shiteiner and then, with assistance from Shiteiner himself, nearly taking Kido's head off with a sick lariat. According to common wrestling tropes, this would be the point where Kazama would hit one final big move and get the victory over the two people that basically tried to kill him. A happy ending and catharsis for the horribly beaten Kazama.
This match was too cruel to give Kazama that happy ending.
Instead, Kido, all on his own, countered a brainbuster attempt and beat the brakes off of Kazama, eventually throwing two absolutely horrifying shoot headbutts before locking in a deep kneebar for the tapout victory.
In a way, this is the amaresu equivalent to the FU*CK! match I went over earlier. I came into it with low expectations and got smashed over the head by Elbow Rengo's ultraviolence. Kido and Shiteiner seemed to truly enjoy beating GT and especially Kazama like they owed them money. GT may have stunk it up a couple times in the match, but he had a few moments where he truly shined and showed that there's clearly some talent in him. And Kazama (who hasn't wrestled since this match) may have gotten his ass beaten horribly, but his few moments of offense were also really good and the fact he was able to hold his own against Elbow Rengo at all is laudable. Once again, if you've got the stomach for it, I absolutely implore you to check this out.
Rating: A-
Sanshu Tsubakichi & Fuminori Abe vs. Johta & Keisuke Goto (CAPTURE International 03/23)
This match was from the first CAPTURE show of 2022, which also happened to be the first CAPTURE match to make tape in almost 20 years. Koki Kitahara decided to finally grace us with his long-heralded sleaze fed, where wrestlers fought in the most basic yet powerful confines possible: a thin mat surrounded by guard rails. Everything we've gotten from CAPTURE up to this point made it out to be one of the greatest promotions of all time, and now that we've reached the end of CAPTURE's first fully broadcasted year, it's safe to say that previous assumption was much closer to truth than fiction.
This was also one of the only Johta matches to make tape this year, and that's a god damn shame. A CAPTURE original, Johta's been an absolute killer since the early 00s, when his appearances on the few taped CAPTURE events from that time were some of the best parts of those shows. He's been hard to come by since then, only really able to be watched on the few Ganko Pro and EXIT shows that have cropped up among western traders, but his work has been consistently high quality, with stiff strikes and tight grappling aplenty, along with a real dickhead attitude that made a lot of what he did so much harder. Nowadays he still mostly works in the same places as Fugo Fugo Yumeji, such as the rare EXIT show as well as the weird shows in bars that Fugo likes to wrestle at, while also making frequent appearances for fellow CAPTURE-born Hideo Toda's Seisho and Chigasaki events.
That whole preamble about Johta was really there to set up the fact that in this match, he was by far the most compelling wrestler. Everything he did had a level of aggression that truly communicated that he was born and raised in this environment, spending years having his face kicked off by Koki Kitahara to the point that all he wants to do now is kick the faces off of others. His grappling was tight and cruel, really stretching at Tsubakichi and Abe, and his strikes were on another level, throwing slaps that had the force of closed fist punches as well as some real mean boots.
Keisuke Goto, for his part, was a fun tank. I honestly don't have much to say about him, as his grappling was pretty meh and he didn't really do anything noteworthy in terms of strikes, but whenever he embraced his size and hit stuff like crushing sentons, it was pretty sweet. Speaking of sweet though, Tsubakichi was really really good in this match! He's another CAPTURE original so you know his work against Johta was damn solid, with both guys taking shots at each other during the grappling before Tsubakichi started throwing some stiff kicks, including one horrific punt kick on Johta. Abe was absolutely the best part of the match besides Johta, fully tapping into that bati-bati lineage and combining nice flowing grappling with closed fist punches and precision kicks. He was a real dickhead throughout the match to Johta too, at one point running in to break up a submission with a crazy kick to the back. Johta responded with violence that truly took this match to the next level, kicking at Abe's head when he was down and trying to throttle not only Abe, but even the referee for trying to stop him. Even faced with this violence, Abe still got the win for his team by eating a senton from Goto and grabbing him into a headscissors/armlock combination, leading to Goto tapping out.
The Abe/Johta interactions were truly something to behold, and the fact that Johta still hasn't come back to CAPTURE is honestly bizarre considering his top-level performance here. I think the only thing holding this back from entering A-tier is the lesser work that Goto and Tsubakichi put into this, but even if their contributions weren't worth as much praise, the Abe/Johta work was such amazing stuff that it still deserves a spot on the list.
Rating: B+
Naoya Nomura & Super Crafter U vs. Kosuke Sato & Rikiya Fudo (CAPTURE International 03/23)
Naoya Nomura's story in the last year has been something truly special. Nomura chose to leave his cushy position in AJPW to become CAPTURE's de facto ace, and we cannot thank him enough for this. He saw Kitahara's vision and fully immersed himself in CAPTUREism, resurrecting the legendary REAL BLOOD team (originally consisting of Tomohiro Ishii and Nihao) with Mizuki Watase, a young hard-hitting juniors guy from Ganbare, and Super Crafter U, a mysterious masked man who seems to be an old school CAPTURE original and has been part of the wrestling scene under different masks for years. This wasn't Nomura's first time in the CAPTURE pit (he's even teamed with Nihao on multiple occasions, where the legend himself probably gave Nomura the honors to take charge over his group), but it was his first time in the pit after leaving AJPW, as well as his first time in CAPTURE's taped era.
Another person whose career trajectory has changed with this CAPTURE revival is Rikiya Fudo. A fixture of the lower indies for a while, Fudo had pretty much all but left the eye of fans in recent years, disappearing into the untaped trenches of Land's End. Outside of a few matches that did make tape (most notably the 2020 MOTYC against Kanehira), Fudo's career seemed to be winding down. And then Kitahara came calling. Fudo was one of the earliest CAPTURE regulars, with him and his brother Daisaku appearing for the promotion all the way back in 1999, and he was needed for its return. As I write this in 2023, Fudo has returned to being a ZERO1 roster member after years away from the promotion, and the CAPTURE run is most likely the reason for this.
These two, Nomura and Fudo, were by far the most important parts of this match, and their work together was something to behold. Tons of disgusting stiff strikes and great sequences (such as the one displayed above), with a level of ferociousness behind every single moment that few pairings matched this year. Nomura's forearms were beautiful, his grappling was stiff, and his spear has got to be the flat-out best spear on the planet, always connecting with such a high level of force and explosiveness. Fudo, meanwhile, fought like a CAPTURE version of UWFi Vader, throwing horrific Vader hammers and chops, along with hitting some awesome pro-wrestling type stuff like a huge jumping splash and a shotgun kick.
That's not to say their partners weren't great either. Kosuke Sato was a little beast here, rushing into the pit with fire in his heart. He had to have thrown at least fifteen dropkicks, and every single one of them looked great. All his work using the guillotine choke was also a ton of fun, which him constantly finding ways to apply it and refusing to give it up. Crafter actually put on such a great performance that I am tempted to say he did even better than Nomura. His kicks are potentially the most fucked up in the world, connecting like baseball bats and sounding like a gunshot. His grappling was also phenomenal, pulling off some great stuff like a beautiful heel hook on Sato. If it weren't for Nomura's amazing chemistry with Fudo, I'm almost certain Crafter would've had the better performance for his team.
This was two out of three falls, and every single fall had some great moments, with the actual finishes themselves were pretty damn good. The final run was absolutely wonderful stuff, with Sato standing up to the monolith that is Nomura and fighting his heart out for a guillotine choke, only for Nomura to drop him with a vertical suplex on CAPTURE's ultra-thin mat before wrenching back with an insane side headlock to get the tap-out win.
All four guys fought with such a wild and unpredictable energy, blending pro wrestling moves seamlessly into the shoot atmosphere and making the most of every big spot. Even if there may have been a little bit of a reliance on strike exchanges in the match, all of them were packed with stiff strikes and tons of spirit, so I was fine with them personally. If you need an introduction to the CAPTURE style, this is absolutely the match to watch.
Rating: A-
Rikiya Fudo vs. Rocky Kawamura 2 (CAPTURE International 05/08)
Less than two months before this, Fudo went to war against Nomura and Crafter on CAPTURE's last show. After having fallen to REAL BLOOD on the last event, he arrived at CAPTURE's one-night tournament on a quest to take the vacant CAPTURE Openweight Championship. His opponent? Pancrase legend and boxing enthusiast Rocky Kawamura 2. Kawamura is a total beast of a wrestler, throwing awesome boxing glove punches and constantly losing "retirement" matches, which always lead to him returning very shortly with a new gimmick (usually based off of famous Sylvester Stallone characters). While Fudo had lost in the main event of the last CAPTURE show, Kawamura hadn't even been on it, but still came into this match with a three match winning streak in the promotion. Based on that, you would think this would be a highly contested battle between two of CAPTURE's longest-standing top guys.
You would be wrong.
What instead played out was one of the most inspired squash matches of the modern era. The second the bell rang, Fudo immediately started to approach Kawamura, who kept his distance. Kawamura was plainly aware that in terms of size and strength, he's hopelessly outmatched, and to even have a chance at winning he would have to play his cards just right. There's a lot of hesitation in this opening stretch, with Kawamura circling the monstrous Fudo and taking quick little jabs whenever he can before backing up and going back to circling. When one jab caught Fudo on the chin, Fudo quite literally brushed it off and just stood there staring straight through Kawamura.
Eventually Fudo got close enough to start hitting Kawamura, and God did he hit him, with the first Vader hammer of the match sending Kawamura careening into the guard rail. Kawamura, upon recovery, went right back to his previous strategy, but started throwing even harder punches at a faster rate. Once Fudo finally got his hands on Kawamura, he hit a huge side headlock takeover and immediately started attempting to smother Kawamura to death. Fudo has him buried under all his mass for minutes, Kawamura struggling to even breathe, until eventually Kawamura was able to get the submission break. After this, the match devolved into an all-out slugfest. Fudo started throwing the hardest hammering shots he could, and Kawamura responded with cement fists straight to the face and body of Fudo.
After tons of huge shots from both guys, Fudo finally came out on top in this brawl with a massive lariat. Soon after, he crushed Kawamura with a humongous standing splash, before locking in a scorpion deathlock, wrenching back with such strength that all the veins in his face were popping out, leading to Kawamura being forced to tap out.
This is a masterful match. While Fudo had already established himself on the last show as a force to be reckoned with, this match elevated him to the status of a world-destroying kaiju, completely obliterating Kawamura with insanely stiff strikes and utilizing all of his mass as a weapon. Kawamura put on the fight of his life against Fudo, throwing punches with a fervor at this behemoth like Rocky Balboa taking the fight to Ivan Drago in Rocky IV. On this night though, there was no victory for Rocky. Only a truly crushing defeat.
Rating: A
Seichi Ikemoto vs. Atsunori Suzuki (Ikemoto's Publication Party 05/28)
A truly surreal match, with a blend of crisp shoot style, fun heel work, and Ed Sheeran.
The context behind this match is very important in my opinion. This occurred at a party held to celebrate the publication of Ikemoto's new book on building healthy muscle for people that don't exercise much. A very just cause, and one that many people would believe deserves a party. Not Atsunori Suzuki though. A fellow martial artist (and someone I assume to be a trainer at one of Ikemoto's STYLE gyms), Suzuki seems to think Ikemoto is a weakling for doing something like "writing a book", and displays this in the prematch promo by flexing his muscles, throwing Ikemoto's book, and stomping on it. Truly, there is no more evil man that Atsunori Suzuki.
Just based on the prematch stuff, I was prepared to enjoy this match a lot. Ikemoto had been having a crazy year, and Suzuki looked like a cool shooter who would do classic heel schtick. However, when the bell rang, the sound system at the party immediately started playing "Shape of You". I knew in that moment that I was going to witness something special.
The early portion of the match was honestly some of the best shoot style work of the year. Ikemoto of course is a god damn genius at working in that style, and he threw some stiff cracking strikes while pulling out some phenomenal Tamura-esque grappling. Suzuki was more than able to hold his own in this section too, hitting some cool stuff of his own like a great sweep into some mounted punches. Eventually though, Suzuki was clearly overwhelmed, and chose to resort to devious heel work to take advantage. He went to town on Ikemoto with a water bottle he hid in his tights, hit a couple big spots like an insane Gotch-style piledriver , and even threw some genuinely great Fujiwara-style headbutts. Once Ikemoto was finally able to get a comeback going, this match entered its final stage, and the last three minutes are truly what cements it as an all-timer. There's a sick suplex outside the padded square, Suzuki hit some killer leg sweeps, and Ikemoto's comeback was one of the most beastly things in all of 2022 wrestling, leading to Ikemoto getting the victory with his picture perfect Minoru Special.
This was lightning in a bottle, a match that felt like a Frankenstein's monster combination of Battlarts and SPWC. Ikemoto's return to pro wrestling has been such a wonderful time, and no other match displayed both the intense shoot style he's perfected and the bizarre yet engrossing non-GLEAT matches he's been part of quite like this one. Suzuki was an extremely great opposite force for this match, and his performance here makes me hope that he can do more in pro wrestling. Almost definitely my personal hoot of the year, undeniably entertaining and infinitely rewatchable.
Rating: A
Kotaro Nasu vs. Hitamaru Sasaki (Kotaro Nasu Produce 06/05)
I could write a whole separate blog post covering the U-FILE CAMP boys' work from last year, as so many of them had constant killer performances. Masashi Takeda's return run has been solid, White Moriyama has been really picking up the pace, and TAMURA's been sweet as always. The two that probably had the best year though were Kotaro Nasu and Hitamaru Sasaki. Nasu returned from injury in March and has had banger after banger since, including a really good match against Moriyama in HEAT-UP! and another against Takeda at a produce show ran by Nasu (both of which barely missed out on making it onto the list). Sasaki meanwhile spent a lot of the year rocking it in Kyushu Pro, mostly occupied with his feud against Minoru Tanaka, a feud that created some pretty fun tags and singles matches.
The match started out with some truly amazing grappling by both men, the type of smart shoot grappling you'd expect from two trainees of Kiyoshi Tamura. There were lots of really nice counters and transitions, with both fighting for each position and struggling to escape from every one of the holds cinched in. There were some great spots built around this early grappling, like Sasaki locking in a tight manjigatame only for Nasu to roll forward and grapevine one of Sasaki's legs, putting him into a really nice kneebar to force Sasaki to break the hold.
Eventually, the match started to move on from straight grappling to include with more strikes, and both men once again excelled in that department. Sasaki's slaps and kicks were great, with almost an air of excellence to them, executed near-perfectly and landing right on their target. Nasu meanwhile was much more heavy-handed with his strikes, throwing big sweeping shots with tons of force behind them rather than concentrating on one specific area, such as his insane gamengiri near the middle of the match which nearly cleaved Sasaki's head off his shoulders. While Sasaki was a scalpel when striking, Nasu was much more of a crowbar, adding a nice contrast between the two shooters.
The finishing stretch was some tremendous stuff, as both guys started letting loose with their bigger spots one after another. Nasu pulled out an awesome deadlift backdrop suplex, and soon after Sasaki was able to bait Nasu into a missed strike allowing him to hit his beautiful abisegeri. Sasaki was finally able to get the job done in the end by countering another backdrop attempt with a fireman's carry, rolling through it, and locking in a deep single leg crab for the win.
For my money, this is the best of the U-FILE CAMP trainees from this year. Both guys worked with a lot of fight and grit in their grappling, and also pulled out some great bigger bombs from their arsenal without it ever devolving into just hitting moves, resulting in an extremely well-worked match that never felt like it betrayed the ideological limits of the style.
Rating: B+
Hideki Suzuki vs. Keita Yano (Tenryu Project 06/15)
This is, on paper, an incredible match. Suzuki is a trainee of Billy Robinson and Shigeo Miyato, cutting his teeth in the UWF Snake Pit before traveling all around the japanese wrestling scene, building up his skills in places like IGF, Battlarts, BJW, and most recently, NOAH. Yano, meanwhile, is a student of Yuki Ishikawa and Negro Navarro, originally training in the Battlarts dojo and spending his early years in the promotion before moving onto the indies, eventually heading to Mexico to hone his craft under Navarro.
Considering all of that, it isn't hard to tell what type of match these two had.
Suzuki and Yano both fought hard in the early grappling portions of the match, pulling out tons of little tricks and transitions to take control over each other. Suzuki did this great little wristlock escape, getting ahold of Yano's ankle and tripping him to do a real mean leg snap. Yano responded by taking Suzuki down to the mat and putting in an indian deathlock, really wrenching on Suzuki's legs and keeping him from escaping by sweeping out his arms when he tried to pull himself towards the ropes. There's a bunch of detail-focused work during this portion of the match, so much so that it's almost hard to pinpoint good ones to talk about without just running down the whole match.
After about ten minutes of super high level grappling, the two of them started to throw some real killer strikes, with Yano unloading some awesome european uppercuts and Suzuki responding with his own uppercuts, as well as a really stiff forearm. There's some extremely well-executed exhaustion spots too, with Yano throwing a feint into a stomach headbutt, and Suzuki just responding by shoving him away in an attempt to create distance so he can get some reprieve.
Yano is soon after able to get a really tight sleeper hold in, and he just refuses to let it go. Suzuki tries to throw him off his back multiple but Yano maintains control, hellbent on forcing Suzuki either to tap out or pass out. Suzuki is finally able to break the hold by throwing himself and Yano into a turnbuckle, and Yano, believing Suzuki to be nearly finished, tries to slap on a side headlock without much effort. Suzuki immediately takes advantage of this carelessness by hoisting Yano up and dropping him with the Robinson backbreaker. After that, all it takes it one big Robinson-style butterfly suplex for the victory.
This is a match that, honestly, is kind of hard to talk about, entirely because it does little to betray expectations. Yano and Suzuki worked the exact kind of "human chess" pro wrestling match you would expect from them, and they wrapped it up in an impactful way. If you are a fan of this type of technical work, go out of your way to see this one.
Rating: A-
GENTARO vs. Kenichiro Arai (Masamune Produce 06/19)
An 80s wrestling masterclass in 2022.
Similar to the last match, you can tell just from the line-up that this is going to be something special. Kenichiro Arai has long been an extremely competent classic style wrestler, working as a "handyman" (a term used pretty often in Japanese wrestling to refer to crafty technicians) with a higher focus on basics and a great blend of solid grappling and old school heel work. GENTARO meanwhile has had many different faces, but since the early 2010s, he's been progressing more and more towards a deeply old school grappler style, reminiscent of Antonio Inoki or Osamu Nishimura.
Additionally, this match is being contested for Mutoha's "Hao" (a flag that serves as the promotion's top championship), and if you know of Mutoha, you know that the promotion is strongly based around "classic strong style". A lot of the main event matches tend to be contested at a slower pace, filled with extremely detail-oriented wrestling. Earlier in the year, GENTARO had a match against Yasushi Sato in Mutoha, and it was probably the best "riffing session" technical wrestling match of the year, just barely missing out on making it onto the main list. Arai had a pretty good "face vs. heel" match against Masamune on the same show, and after beating Masamune to retain the Hao, challenged GENTARO to this match.
This is 100% the most deliberate match in Japan, and potentially all of the world this year. Both wrestlers worked their heart out to draw out as much as they could from everything they did. They were able to pull me in completely for things like an extended headscissors exchange, or the long battle the two had over an ankle hold. Every single motion or action these two took had a thought behind it, and those thoughts wove together to tell an extremely compelling story, a war of attrition between two men that see wrestling in a way only they can understand.
Arai worked in this match as the aforementioned "handyman", adapting to holds and slickly transitioning through them. He was able to constantly pick at parts of GENTARO's body and utilize different submissions and transitions to get into advantageous positions, such as when he countered one of GENTARO's bow and arrow stretches by grabbing GENTARO's ankle and twisting it as hard as he could until GENTARO lost the ability to maintain the hold. He also had a few great bombs, like his diving double axe handle that, by the time it happened, felt like a world destroyer.
GENTARO, meanwhile, was much more of a "fortress" in this one. He was an extremely stubborn grappler, constantly trying to put in the specific holds that he's mastered, rather than easily moving through them like Arai. This had the downside of being susceptible to Arai and his propensity for counter grappling, but when GENTARO was finally able to get those holds in, the power behind them was immense and they always felt like they had the potential to end the match on the spot. His own bomb-throwing moments were great too, with GENTARO hitting a real beauty of a fist drop and pulling out one insane barrage of roll-up attempts as the match's time limit approached.
On that note, this match actually ended up going to a time limit draw, with both men's desperate pinfall attempts unable to secure the victory before the bell rang. However, after the two men made an appeal to Mutoha's owner (who was standing ringside filming a DVD version of this show), the match was officially restarted with a five minute time limit.
Immediately upon restart, the pace of the match was almost tripled, with both Arai and GENTARO constantly going for the kill. Arai tried to pull out different holds like another high angle headscissors to get the victory, while GENTARO focused on trying to beat Arai into a pinfall with huge maneuvers like a great neckbreaker and one of the best backdrop suplexes of 2022. Again though, neither man was able to secure a pinfall or submission before the five minute timer ran out, resulting in another time limit draw, this time truly concluding the war these two went through.
This type of wrestling is absolutely an acquired taste, and for some people it would be too much of an outdated match style for them to really get into it. However, I thought this totally rocked, and it was cool to see two kings of classic wrestling go at it and do what they do best.
Rating: A
MUSASHI vs. Fujita "Jr." Hayato (Michinoku Pro 07/01)
The return of the king.
In 2017, I began my first real venture into Japanese wrestling outside of New Japan. Summer break had just started, so I pretty much had two months to do absolutely nothing but consume wrestling, and I wanted to consume wrestling outside of my comfort zone. I had been a Nooj fan for probably a year up to that point, and while I was still enjoying a lot of what I was seeing (a fact that would change by the end of 2018), I was also starting to get a little bored with most of the roster. I'm not sure where I started in terms of my exploration outside of Nooj, but pretty I quickly landed in Zero1. I started looking at their earlier shows in the year, and somehow ended up watching a show from their Tenkaichi Junior League in Shin-Kiba 1st RING. On that show was Minoru Tanaka vs. Fujita "Jr." Hayato, a match that, at the time, blew me the fuck away. I have no idea how well it would hold up upon rewatch (I potentially was just blown away because it felt so different from anything I was watching at the time), but the fact remains that as I remember it, this was my first introduction to Hayato.
I started seeking out as much of his stuff as I possibly could. Eventually, I started to watch some of his Michinoku Pro matches thanks in large part to the Ozzi MichiFan channel, and matches like the ones against Manjimaru and Shinzaki just affirmed to me that Fujita "Jr." Hayato was the best wrestler in the world. He dished out a level of violence I hadn't seen before, with earth-shattering kicks and wicked tight submissions, combined with an infectious charisma that made him feel like the baddest man on the planet.
It was also around that time that I realized that I had been just a little too late to the party, and that for the foreseeable future, watching any sort of current Hayato matches wasn't going to be possible. He had injured his knee pretty badly in April, probably only two or three months before I first discovered him and decided that he was my favorite wrestler.
A year later, he came back only to announce he had cancer.
At the end of 2019, he got permission from his doctor to wrestle at least one more time in a match against close friend Kengo, a sort of soft retirement in case his condition worsened, or a surgery went awry, or a surgery succeeded but he could still never get back in the ring. When the match finally made its way online, I was currently staying at a hotel with my dad, who I hadn't seen in years. Even under those circumstances, the second I found it I went straight to the bathroom and watched the whole match. I haven't cried much at pro wrestling, but him getting completely blanketed in streamers during the introductions broke me.
Hayato lost via KO after twelve minutes. It didn't feel like a cemented retirement match, but there was a clear feeling that this just might be it.
Flash forward to two and a half years later. Hayato makes a surprise appearance at a Michinoku Pro in May of this year and announces he's challenging MUSASHI for his Tohoku Jr. Heavyweight title. You can probably guess, but emotions were pretty high for me. Going into this, I had a weird combination of high hopes and tepid expectations. I wanted Hayato to be wrestling in peak form, but I also understood that it would be kind of unreasonable to expect that from a guy who just recovered from cancer.
And the fact that he did return in peak form is why he's one of the best ever.
I mean it when I say that. Hayato came into this match and wrestled like he barely lost a god damn step. His grappling was tight and vicious. He was able to go on the mat at lightning speeds, and when he was able to work a hold he worked it with hate in his heart. One particular armbar was genuinely uncomfortable to watch, with him grabbing at MUSASHI's fingers and trying to bend them so far back you'd think they would snap off at any second. Speaking of hate in his heart, let's talk about those strikes because good lord they were cruel. Hayato threw kicks with maybe the greatest level of force I've seen in years (him and Crafter are pretty much tied for the strongest kicks on the planet). Tons of blasting shots all across MUSASHI's body, kicks that would probably kill a lesser man. His forearms were disgusting too, placed almost directly on MUSASHI's chin most of the time and sent with real oomf behind them. We don't even need to talk about the headbutts. Do you see the gif? That's all you need to see.
Hayato wasn't just phenomenal on offense either though. Hayato's always been a great seller, moreso than most of his contemporaries, and he was truly giving a lifetime performance here. He sold MUSASHI's leg targeting like absolute death, and a lot of the strikes he got hit with resulted in a Tenryu-esque combination of reacting to the pain and emoting that you're honestly just pissed that someone thinks they could hit you like that and get away with it. Above all else though, Hayato's got his groove back. In the 2019 match against Kengo, he still had flashes of his previous energy, but overall the vibe he gave off was more "I'm happy to be back". Makes sense, considering he was probably pretty damn happy to be back. That's not the Hayato that we saw here though. The Hayato we saw here was constantly exuding an energy of "of course I'm back, and of course I'm going to win the title". It was that level of confidence that could be seen through so much of what he did in the ring, that brash swagger that made him such a prick to his opponents and clearly separated him from those who worked a similar style. His killer edge had returned, and MUSASHI was there to be the first one to bear witness.
All that makes it sound like this was just the Hayato show and MUSASHI solely existed as a warm body for him to destroy, and really, that's not the case. Honestly, even if this was more about Hayato's performance, MUSASHI's work here was immense as well, and shouldn't be ignored. He was willing and able to return fire with strikes, starting out with some middling forearms but pretty quickly turning up the heat in response to the live rounds that Hayato was throwing. His shoot headbutts were potentially even stiffer than Hayato's, and he had a few pretty killer kicks, especially one superkick to the back of Hayato's head that looked like could've sent Hayato's head rolling. His work on Hayato's leg was also pretty damn great, going crazy on it with nice holds and some real mean dragon screws. Even his bigger bombs were very quality, with his falcon arrow especially being one of the best I've seen in years.
Up to the last five minutes of the match, this was already one of the best matches of the year. Once Hayato finally took the shirt off though, this match entered into truly transcendent territory.
Both men entered into a super heated strike exchange, throwing the stiffest forearms all year at each other's faces. MUSASHI, after surviving through the beating of a lifetime for the last twenty five minutes, was finally able to win out over Hayato, smashing Hayato's face in with superkicks before letting loose with a string of high angle german suplexes. Upon going for the Niten Ichiryu though, Hayato slipped out, locking in the KID and then going all out with insane head kicks and knee strikes. MUSASHI tried to fight defiantly, but eventually, Hayato was able to get in the KID once more, and after a long struggle to escape, MUSASHI finally tapped out.
Was this a perfect match? Purely in the ring, I don't believe so. The leg targeting was a really cool part of the match, but it was never given a proper payoff. I also acknowledge that it fell into modern convention pretty hard at times. There were a plethora of strike exchanges. There were suplex no-sells. There were one-count kickouts. It was a very 2022 match, for better or worse. I do think it's worth noting that the forearm exchanges were stiffer than pretty much every forearm exchange in the world this year, so at least it was the best execution of that trope. Plus, those other two things aren't inherently bad if they feel earned, and beating cancer is a damn good way to earn the right to pop some of those off. Still, it's worth mention that in terms of the moves and in-ring actions, this wasn't a spotless performance.
Wrestling isn't just about the moves and in-ring actions though.
The best wrestling is the type that makes you feel something. The type that can drag you into it and allow you to completely ignore any and all faults through the emotions it causes you to experience. Whether that be sorrow or jubilation, excitement or heartbreak, the fact that a match can cause those feelings is enough to say that it accomplished more than most other matches.
There was no match that made me feel more emotions in 2022 than this one.
No matter what flaws may have been present in the in-ring action, the feelings this match gave me buried those flaws. Hayato returning and working at this level even after five years of inactivity evoked emotions that no other match did. In my own eyes, this is not only a top level contender for match of the year, but it could even end up being my match of the decade. That's an emotionally driven statement, but emotions driving your decisions is what wrestling is all about.
Rating: A+
Shota vs. Keita Yano (Tenryu Project 08/17)
This was Shota's send-off match for Tenryu Project, as he was going to be heading stateside for a few months at the end of August. Originally, this was meant to be a tag match, pitting Shota and Yano against Oji Shiiba and Takuro Niki, but due to a card reshuffling occurring less than 24 hours before the event, Shiiba and Niki were moved to a different tag match, and Yano and Shota were chosen to wrestle each other instead of teaming. The previously announced tag match would've been a fun affair, pitting the more technical team of Shota and Yano against the faster, more spotty team of Shiiba and Niki. I wouldn't have loved the match or anything but it would've served its purpose and let me see some more good work from four wrestlers I've enjoyed a lot in Tenryu Project.
Instead, fate gave us one of the best matches of the year.
Starting out, both guys got to do some extremely nice grappling. Yano is a mastermind of blending llave and british style grappling into his already high level catch stuff, and he was pulling out a ton of great holds, counters, and transitions, such as when he escaped from a wristlock by walking up the corner and leaping off, stomping down Shota's arm. Shota also got to do some great stuff here, not only in terms of grappling but also with some great classic spots like an awesome sequence into a hip toss. This was pretty much what you would expect if you know both guys, and it was absolutely a ton of fun.
Towards the end of this opening stretch, Yano started to target Shota's left leg, and very quickly decided that he's going to hyper-focus on it for the whole match. Yano's work on the leg was borderline evil, with a ton of really tight stretches and little moves meant to torque the leg even more. Yano's always been great at throwing nice little moments into his grappling, and he was doing some peak stuff here. At one point he had Shota in an indian deathlock, and Shota went to grab Yano's hair in an attempt to make him lighten up the hold. Yano pushed Shota's hand away, stood up (while still maintaining the hold), stomped on Shota's stomach as hard as he could, and then sat back down to continue putting pressure on Shota's leg. There were tons of moments like this, really adding a nice gritty feel to a match that was already filled with great technical work.
Shota's work on defense was just great. Shota is one of the best babyfaces in Japan, with some phenomenal selling abilities and truly awesome bursts of energy during comeback spots. He sold his leg like it was completely shot, constantly grabbing at it and walking with a limp or somewhat hopping on one leg whenever he was on offense. He never stopped selling the leg for the entire match really getting across just how much Yano had destroyed it, and making his comebacks feel that much more grand. When he did get to go on the offensive he was truly awesome, doing tons of great stuff like a beauty of a diving crossbody or an awesome small package counter to a figure four.
This didn't have some grand finishing stretch or anything, but instead just succinctly wrapped up the story told. Shota went for a desperation backslide, and after Yano kicked out, stumbled away, only to walk into a leg trip from Yano. Yano then pulled out the Kiwi Roll, a rolling side figure four while pulling on Shota's hurt leg, leading to the submission victory.
I know this type of match may not be as highly regarded by everyone else that sees it, but to me, this was just the type of wrestling that I love. Shota and Yano went in there with a clear story in mind and executed it to perfection, with both getting to showcase what makes them such great individual workers, as well as getting to display how great they are when they get to work together.
Rating: A
Akihiro Takei vs. Super Crafter U (ZERO1 08/28)
I've already talked about Super Crafter U earlier in the list and, considering how much of a mystery he is, I sadly don't have much else to add. I will say that he's been one of my favorite discoveries in 2022, and realizing that he's been around for so long, having worked under maybe hundreds of different names and masks, is incredible. It's been a very surreal experience to get a random tape from the late 00s/early 10s featuring some name I've never heard of, only to load up the match and realize it's just Crafter under a different mask. Takei is another complete mystery, but that's less by design and more due to the fact he's a BJJ guy who has seemingly only done two matches in his whole career, that being a jiu-jitsu rules match against Takafumi in 2021 and the match at hand.
Similar to the two participants, I honestly don't have a lot to say about this match.
There's a pretty clear dynamic of grappler vs. striker established almost immediately. Takei started the match trying to throw a couple leg kicks only to get obliterated by Crafter's own monstrous kicks, but soon after took the advantage by utilizing his high level grappling. That's not to say that Crafter is a slouch on the mat. Far from it, Crafter was able to hold his own against Takei for sure, but Takei is truly on another level in regards to grappling ability. He was able to pull out some awesome fluid takedowns into heel hooks and his transitions between each hold were all wonderful. While Takei came off as a sniper in this match, using pinpoint accuracy to pull out extremely precise holds, Crafter felt more like a tank, completely decimating Takei with huge bombs, including a big german suplex and a wild tornado kick. Even though Takei was able to control him on the ground, any time Crafter could let off a single hard kick, the momentum would entirely shift back in his favor.
The match ended up finishing with pretty much the perfect summation of this grappler vs. striker story. Crafter, desperate after Takei had survived multiple huge slams and the aforementioned tornado kick, let loose with a flurry of huge kicks, until Takei finally saw his opportunity and flew in for a picture-perfect Imanari roll into a heel hook. Crafter tried to get towards the ropes but Takei pulled him away and finally got the tap-out victory over the behemoth.
Even with the little bit of roughness this had when it came to execution, I thought this match absolutely rocked. Crafter came off as a true force of nature, with all his attacks carrying a real weight to them and completely changing the power balance of the match every time he pulled one off. Takei meanwhile was a total killer of a grappler, pulling out tons of different crazy stuff and moving with a lightning fast fluidity that really nobody else in wrestling has. Hopefully Takei takes more wrestling dates in 2023, because if he does we could see a whole new generation of beastly different style fights.
Rating: A-
Hikaru Sato vs. Keita Yano (Tenryu Project 09/19)
One of the only reasons I've been watching modern pro wrestling is the Keita Yano redemption run.
Yano, after having lost multiple homes due to promotions closing or backstage issues, had spent years mostly relegated to working the lowest indies possible, fighting in basements in front of a handful of people. That isn't to say those matches were bad though. Far from it, Yano's work in these dingy little venues was constantly some of the best wrestling in the world. He had classic matches with guys like 326, Survival Tobita, and Great Zako, blending elements from tons of different eras and regions into his style and delivering some of the most compelling professional wrestling of all time. However, there was always the understanding that if Yano just got a real platform for his work, he'd be treated like the truly phenomenal wrestler that he is.
Enter Genichiro Tenryu.
While Yano had been part of the original Tenryu Project run, he was never anywhere on the card past the first few matches. That changed with Tenryu Project's return starting in 2021. Yano, with his first opportunity in a major indy in years, busted his ass, putting on killer match after killer match against guys like Shota, Kenichiro Arai, and HUB, before being given the chance of a lifetime in a two out of three falls six-man tag against MAZADA, Hikaru Sato, and Minoru Suzuki. While he lost in that match, he not only impressed greatly against Minoru Suzuki, but also ended up getting the sole win for his team against Hikaru Sato, leading to two singles matches with Yano losing both. However, those two matches, of course, ended up being two of the best matches in all of 2021, and it led to Yano and Sato joining forces to take on IJ Heavyweight Tag champions Shota and Kenichiro Arai, where Yano and Sato pulled out the upset and dethroned the champions.
Yano, at this point, clearly established himself as one of the top guys in the promotion. He made it to the finals of the first ever Ryutama Cup, falling to TORU. He continued to defend his tag title with Sato. He even teamed with Shota and TORU to make it to the finals of a tournament to decide who would take the vacant Tenryu Project six-man championships. It was soon after this that Tenryu would reveal in an interview who he considered to be Tenryu Project's "Ryutama Three Musketeers": TORU, Kengo, and Keita Yano.
Soon after this, Yano and Sato would lose the tag titles, and Sato would take the IJ Heavyweight championship from TORU. Sato would declare himself "Mr. Tenryu Project", adding himself into the mix as the top wrestlers in the promotion. With Sato winning the title, this not only meant that Yano was the only one of the Ryutama Three Musketeers to not hold the belt, but it also meant his former partner, the man he had never beat, was the only thing between him and finally reaching the pinnacle he had deserved for so long, the pinnacle that he had been destined for ever since Tenryu declared Yano's spot at the top of Tenryu Project. This match was Yano's make-or-break. Either he completes his ascension into legend, or plummets back to Earth.
When the bell rang, both men were immediately on guard. Yano started to hesitantly approach, fruitlessly trying to grab at Sato, while Sato stood his ground, barely moving from his position besides to either dodge a Yano grab or throw a strike. Every time Yano would make an attempt at taking Sato down, Sato would just refuse it, before finally, Sato got tired of waiting for Yano to slip up in these grappling attempts and took the initiative by throwing a stunning kick to Yano's kidney, sending Yano tumbling to the ground. Immediately, there's a clear idea set that while Yano is gonna have to work for all of his substantial offense in this match, Sato has the ability to pull off huge tide-changing maneuvers pretty much whenever he wants, and Yano will just have to try his best to avoid them.
After that crushing middle kick, Yano was on the backpedal, even more weary of Sato and his lethal striking capabilities. Once Yano was able to finally get Sato on the mat though, it was his time to shine, and he shone through with some absolutely ruthless grappling. He drove his knee into Sato's ankle, he grabbed at Sato's face, he ground his elbow into the side of Sato's head. Even if Yano couldn't answer Sato's dangerous strikes with some strikes of his own, he was happy to get some level of revenge by beating him down as much as he could during grappling.
On the topic of grappling, the work both men did on the mat was truly something to behold here. Both guys did some truly awesome scrappy fighting on the ground, with each of them getting a chance to throw potshots throughout the match, such as Sato trying to escape a head-and-arm scissors by kicking Yano in the head as hard as he could, or Yano doing the same thing later on when Sato had him in a tight armbar. Any time either man would try to get control on the mat, it was almost an invitation to the other that now it was their time to get their receipts and let loose with stiff strikes.
The stiffness wasn't contained to the mat though. Sato continued to throw horrific kicks all over Yano's body throughout the match, leaving welts and bruises all over him. Yano didn't end up getting any real returning fire until the latter half of the match, but once he did, he made the most of it, throwing disgusting headbutts and landing an especially insane knee drop right onto Sato's forehead. The ending stretch featured probably the best striking sequence all year, with both guys throwing wild strikes as much as they could. Yano eventually won the sequence with a ton of super stiff punches to the body, scrambling on top of Sato in a desperate pinfall attempt, but only getting a two count.
Soon, Yano was able to get in a leglock, and at this point the ring announcer got on the mic to reveal that there were only three minutes remaining in the match. Usually, world title matches in Tenryu Project are contested with a sixty minute time limit, but due to a potential impending tsunami, all the match times on the show had been cut in half to allow fans to leave earlier and have more time to get prepared. While both men had already started to become urgent, hearing that three minutes remained triggered a final burst of energy in both, with Yano wrenching back as hard as he could with his leglocks and Sato trying to counter with different submissions like a mean toehold. In a final attempt to win the title, Yano pulled Sato into the middle of the ring and tried a leg rolling clutch, but Sato kicked out, catching Yano as he fell and locking in a sleeper hold before transitioning it into a Fujiwara armbar. Yano fought with all his heart to get to the ropes, but right when he was about to reach them, Sato yanked him into the center of the ring, pulling out a La Majistral and getting the victory with less than a minute remaining.
There's a lot I didn't talk about here. I didn't talk about a lot of the big moments or the more "epic" type of spots, some of which I'd go so far as to call the best all year. I didn't talk about Yano's incredible comeback sequence. Hell, I didn't even talk about the brutal arm targeting from Sato and the phenomenal payoff moment for it. This was just a match with so much happening that attempt to cover it all would be near impossible, and I'm much better off telling you to watch the match yourself. No amount of coverage I could do would truly communicate its greatness.
That isn't to say this is an infallible match. I don't think any match is truly perfect, and if you wanted to really critique this match there's a few points of contention for sure. Sato at one point did the same spot four times in a row, and while the first three felt like Sato trying his damndest to use it to get the win, the fourth felt a little bit like overkill. Sato's selling was also a little iffy a few times, and Yano had a few moments of sloppiness that, while I thought totally worked to sell the exhaustion the match had inflicted upon both men, could instead be considered a weak point in the overall match.
I honestly don't really care about all of that though.
This was Yano's moment in the sun, his true ascension from being the gem of the sleaze indies to the greatest wrestler on the planet without a major contract. Later in the year, he finally beat Sato in a non-title match, and in the process won the Ryutama Cup. Arguably, that victory marked the true culmination of the Keita Yano redemption arc. However, in my eyes, he had already reached that peak by the end of this match. He may have not beaten Sato, but in the process of fighting him, he beat years of doubt, years of being held away from the spotlight. It doesn't matter that he lost. Even in defeat, Keita Yano won.
Rating: A+
Minoru Tanaka vs. Kotaro Nasu (GLEAT 10/09)
Another of the Nasu hits of the year, this time with our favorite lumpy shooter coming into GLEAT for a match against Minoru Tanaka. Tanaka was pretty unremarkable in 2022, spending most of his time having nothing midcard matches for GLEAT and AJPW. He wasn't really doing anything flat-out bad for either promotion, but instead was pretty clearly happy to go through the motions and get a paycheck. However, as stated earlier, he also spearheaded a cool little invasion of Kyushu Pro and fought some fierce battles against Nasu's fellow U-FILE CAMP peer Hitamaru Sasaki. Once this match was announced, I knew it had potential to be pretty awesome based on Nasu's stellar 2022 and Tanaka's great work against Sasaki.
This was intense as hell right from the get-go. After a little feeling out from both guys, Tanaka was able to get a forceful leg trip in but Nasu popped right back up and just started bullets through Tanaka. Once they started to really grapple it became clear that Nasu completely had Tanaka's number, refusing to lose any grasp on Tanaka he had while also constantly jockeying for better position. Even when Tanaka was finally able to escape after Nasu attempted to roll into a choke, Nasu immediately went back to dominating Tanaka with some stiff shoteis, forcing Tanaka to pull him into more grappling on the ground, which, again, Nasu pretty quickly took over.
After this though, Tanaka was finally able to get some measure of notable offense in. He and Nasu traded some stiff kicks, and Tanaka was able to catch a stray one and took Nasu down with a hard dragon screw. Nasu sold it really well for this type of environment, getting his leg jammed in before crumpling rather than just flying downwards like you usually would. Tanaka tried to follow this up with a figure four leglock but Nasu wouldn't let that happen and shoved him off, before dodging a whiffed shotei and completely crushing Tanaka with a german suplex followed by a strong high kick. At this point, one of the major stories of the match had been pretty clearly constructed; Nasu is a straight-up monster of a shooter, and the only way Tanaka was really going to get control is through stuff he's developed as a pro wrestler.
This wasn't the only story in the match though.
As the contest went on, Nasu, time and time again, refused to relent in any way to Tanaka. Every time Tanaka got him in a bad submission situation, Nasu ignored the ropes and instead found a way to fight out of it. When Tanaka dropped him with any big strikes or slams, Nasu willed himself up as fast as possible so as to not lose one of his points. Nasu had come into this match with a point to prove, that no matter what Tanaka threw at him, he would keep coming at him.
In the end, this is likely what did Nasu in.
Tanaka, after having been brutalized throughout the match with high kicks and big bombs, was finally able to catch a kick and dropped Nasu on his head with a brutal shoot fisherman's buster, but Nasu scrambled to get back up. Tanaka followed this up with a brain-rattling high kick of his own, but again, Nasu immediately began to try and pull himself up. Finally, Tanaka got Nasu into the Minoru Special, and Nasu, unable to see his position in the ring due to his head being covered by Tanaka's leg, just barely missed getting a rope break with his feet, being forced to tap out.
It's arguable whether Nasu would've won this match if he had let himself take a down or two when the going got tough. Nasu had almost absolute control throughout the match, and if he took the time to recuperate instead of immediately getting up in a weakened state, he almost assuredly would've maintained that control. I don't know if it was hate, hubris, or whatever else, but it gave Nasu that single-minded urge to fight until he fell and, ultimately, led to his defeat.
Beyond the poetic waxing, this match isn't flawless. Nasu, for as hard as his kicks were, had less consistent shoteis, with some being really stiff and others being pretty bad. There were also a few moments that, if you were to look at this as a shoot style purist, could be seen as bad or phoney. It certainly isn't on the level of Izuchi/Iizuka from later in the year, but if you can't suspend disbelief at all then you'd probably have a problem with those spots. At least for me though, I thought this was a really good and compact match, properly telling two pretty interesting stories all within less than five minutes.
Rating: B+