Onita Pro 05/13/1999

                 (Written by jom)

    Ahhhh, Onita Pro.

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

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

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

Yusaku vs. Rey Pandita

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

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

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

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

Match Rating: C+

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Match Rating: B

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

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

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

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

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

Match Rating: B

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

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

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

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

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

Match Rating: C-

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- Yaguchi DYING

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

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

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

Match Rating: A+

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

Show Rating: B