Onita Pro 06/27/1999

 (Written by jom)

    Okay, so y'know how I said I'd have a new Onita Pro review every two weeks? I meant five weeks. But maybe the next one will come out in three weeks! Or one week? or maybe two after all. I don't know. You don't care. Onto the review!

Survival Tobita vs. Pinch Hitter Joe vs. Rey Pandita

    This is a Saitama Pro offer match. It's presented with the tagline "THIS IS ZERO" and contested under "Survival Three Way Fuckin' Dance" rules. Every time I write one of these Onita Pro reviews, I will call Atsushi Onita a visionary. Allowing fellow visionary Tobita to run something like this is further proof of his position in the pantheon of sick ass wrestling bookers.

    Once again, who the fuck is Rey Pandita? I still have no idea who's under the mask, but honestly, I'm fine with that. Rey Pandita is Rey Pandita, and he's here to ruin someone's day with psychologically-devastating bits wrestling. Also, who the fuck is Pinch Hitter Joe??? Probably Naoshi Sano, but that's besides the point. While Pandita is absolutely an Onita gimmick, Joe is a Tobita gimmick through and through. The story goes that Tobita planned for a "man from a manhole" to be in the match. However, due to some sort of bodily fluids issue, the man couldn't make it to the show. So, a pinch hitter named Joe has taken his place.

    Survival Tobita gets his own introductory paragraph because he's the coolest motherfucker ever. My Tobita bias is probably not much of a secret (I have a whole series on the site dedicated to singing his praises), but truly, has there ever been a more powerful entrance than this one? Tobita stomps out with a cigarette in his mouth, raising the plunger over his head and using his open hand to high-five the fans. He's also using Elephant Kashimashi's "Namida no Kazu Dake" as his theme on this occasion, which, while not my favorite Tobita theme (nothing will ever be better than "Gastronger"), is probably in my top five at the very least. 

    This is a match of many phases, all of which are pretty fun. We start out with the usual comedy three-way spots (triple lockup and interrupting holds) before Pandita and Joe start teaming up on Tobita. It's around this point that I realize Pandita might be Mitsunobu Kikuzawa. There's just something about the way he pantomimes that reminds me a lot of Ebessan. Pandita is also built pretty similarly to Kikuzawa around this time, and Kikuzawa really began his time under Onita in Onita Pro, so everything seems to line up. Also, Joe pays dearly for trusting Pandita when Pandita starts trying to get one over on him, leading to a Gedo Clutch from Pandita eliminating Joe. The golden rule of Onita Pro: never trust Rey Pandita.

    At this point, the match takes a sharp turn: Pandita becomes Genshi Enjin Virgon. He starts doing all of the Virgon-isms (prowling around, hopping up and down, running into the crowd) and the monster music begins playing over the speakers. The crowd is barely invested which hurts my soul, but they still do some fun stuff, with Tobita bumping like a madman for every Pandita push and Pandita doing a good job of pretending to be Virgon. Tobita eventually hits his piledriver and locks in a figure four necklock for the KO victory.

    Honestly, not much to say about this one. It's an extremely surface-level match, and while it never does anything bad, it also never does anything particularly good. I love Tobita and I was fascinated by Pandita's Virgon tribute performance, but it really just made me want to watch more of the Tobita/Virgon matches. Pinch Hitter Joe also certainly existed. This was a fine enough opener for the show.

Match Rating: B-

Masanobu Kurisu vs. Kengo Takai

    Atsushi Onita is a monster. I take back everything good I've ever said about him. Booking this match should get you arrested. A young Kengo Takai, only a year into his professional wrestling career, is taking on Masanobu Kurisu. This is nine and a half years after the Kurisu/Akiyoshi slaughter, and here we have another case of Onita putting a plucky rookie against the king of killing rookies. Truly, these matches are the sins that will weigh heavy on Onita's soul in the afterlife.

    This goes roughly like you'd expect. Kurisu (with a shitty little ponytail) is actually a lot more giving in the early portion of the match than he was against Akiyoshi. He throws some mean headbutts and stomps, but he also lets Takai throw some big strikes of his own, and even bumps for him on a few occasions. However, Kurisu gets his hands on some chairs and all of that cooperation goes out the window. With chair in hand, Kurisu is an agent of pain. He throws an unprotected shot to the head in this match that almost made me turn away from the screen. Takai committed the crime of accepting a match against Masanobu Kurisu, and Kurisu is his executioner.

    Even after the initial chair assault, Takai still fights back, and even gets a good string of offense going, culminating in a big diving headbutt. That's probably Takai's biggest strong suit in this match: his fire. Shoji Akiyoshi had a lot of fire in him in the infamous 1989 squash, but Takai's fire feels a lot more outwardly expressed. He's yelling out to the crowd, almost hyping himself up to try and fight this old behemoth he has no chance of beating. Of course, Takai waves his muleta in front of the bull a little too much. His attempt at throwing some shoot headbutts gets no-sold. Kurisu entirely brushes off a dropkick and goes back to '89, letting loose with the headbutts, head stomps, and punt kicks that made him infamous. He even flings Takai back outside to throw more unsafe chairshots, before finally, mercifully, killing Takai with the Kurisu Special (a llave that I can't even begin to explain, but it looks like it could've snapped Takai's neck).

    This, like many "Kurisu vs. guy he can take liberties on" matches, was uncomfortable. Was it the most abhorrent of the genre? Absolutely not. Kengo Takai should pray to his god that this was a decade beyond Kurisu's peak of cruelty. But, like many of the matches from that genre, it also kinda rocked. It may be weird to say this, but there's something special about these types of young boy matches. They're full of work you could never see today. We as a society have improved enough to silently ban these matches from happening. And yet, there's something bizarrely entrancing about them. They're the ultimate fights for survival, genuine David vs. Goliath matches. Even if you're vocally cheering for the Goliath, you always silently pray for this David to have a slingshot. They never do. But one day someone might. It's an awful genre of match to exist, but I will never stop enjoying it.

Match Rating: B+

Combat Toyoda, Crusher Maedomari, Miss Mongol, & Shark Tsuchiya vs. Emi Koizumi, Killer Iwami, RIE, & Tsuppari Mack

    Fun fact! Half of this match is already retired. This is a reunion tag for a bunch of the FMW-raised women's wrestlers, and there's a lot of people here I've never seen before. Specifically, I haven't seen Koizumi, Iwami, or Mack before this match, and I've never seen RIE in this gimmick (but I've seen a fair number of Bad Nurse Nakamura matches and she fucking rules). This is also Combat Toyoda's one-time return in the form of an actual match. I don't really count battle royals as returns because there's an entirely different energy to battle royals than pretty much all other wrestling.

    Speaking of energy, this is a match all about having fun. And wouldn't you know it, it was fun! If you came into this match expecting some sort of serious clash between the face-painted freaks and the plucky underdogs, you'd probably be disappointed. This was around 85% just bits and goofs, but you could tell everyone was having a blast. 

    Any time one of the retired faces would do anything, everyone would clap and cheer (including the heel team). Toyoda gets to come in and run wild at least once, and it's cool to see her still put some power behind her lariats. There's a very fun spot near the middle where RIE does a great rolling cradle, and Koizumi completely botches her attempt at one right after. Then the faces and heels all start hyping her up, and she gets the strength to pull off a great one. If I had to pinpoint one person as a highlight, it'd probably be Tsuppari Mack, who kept hitting Maedomari in the face with a book or something. She was cool and I might need to seek out some of her work from when she was actually an active wrestler.

    All in all, I had a fun time watching this. Maybe it wasn't the most engrossing thing in the world, but that's fine. It was a real "getting the band back together" type of match, and you can't not enjoy that, at least a little bit.

Match Rating: B

Atsushi Onita, Nise Onita, & Sambo Asako vs. Katsuji Ueda, Masashi Aoyagi, & Shooter #1

    For the first time in blog history, Nise Onita is here. Nise Onita, for anyone that doesn't know, is Toshiyuki Moriya, a bonafide legend of the Japanese indie scene. Even if he wasn't always the greatest worker in the ring, he was a vital part of many important promotions from the time, and places like DDT wouldn't have become the monoliths they are without Moriya's help. Also, I'm gonna be referring to him as Moriya throughout the review, because calling him Nise sounds weird, Onita would be confusing, and Nise Onita is too long.

    Moriya is actually the primary focus on this match, as this kind of serves as an initiation into the Onita crew. Ueda and Aoyagi beat his ass over and over again, and Moriya bumps for it all because, canonically, Moriya is an incredibly weak wrestler. If Onita was a normal wrestler trying to become a God, Moriya was a normal man trying to become Onita. Moriya does get some offense in, with a lot of "swinging for the fences" strikes filled with some real passion. Both Aoyagi and Ueda crush him as much as they can, and Aoyagi especially takes exception to Moriya's fiery attempts at fighting back, at one point just raining down mounted punches on Moriya's head, busting Moriya wide open.

    Onita and Asako are both in more "supporting act" roles here rather than being at the main stage (both men still have to wrestle in the main event after all). Onita does get some great moments to shine though, and the crowd becomes rabid when Onita and Aoyagi finally get to face off. The crowd in general were super into the match here, cheering a ton of Moriya and getting unglued whenever one of the martial artists popped off a strike combo. Eventually, Ueda uncorks a punch to the back of Moriya's head, and the referee calls for the bell.

    Moriya cuts a promo after while covered in blood and he does all the Onita-isms, which gets a big pop from the crowd. The camera then cuts to backstage, where Moriya is laying on the ground, still covered in blood, in Onita's jacket.

    Honestly? I thought this was pretty damn good. Ueda and Aoyagi got to let loose with their awesome martial arts stuff, and Onita had a few moments to reignite the old different style fighting spirit within. Moriya was the real star of the match though, and he did a really great job of selling like a motherfucker. He fully understood how to do the Onita style of work, and it came off as very endearing. Asako and Shooter (oh yeah he's in this match) were pretty much nothing here, but the other four played their roles very well, and I enjoyed it as a whole. 

Match Rating: B

Anywhere Fall Street Fight: Masao Orihara & Shooter #2 vs. Exciting Yoshida & Sanshiro Takagi

    Takagi is BACK! I assumed on the last show that Takagi was challenging Luther and Hannibal to a match, but this makes a lot more sense. Takagi and Orihara had been feuding for a few years at this point (and still had another year to go before the feud ended), and this is their first encounter in Korakuen. Takagi is teaming with regular partner Exciting Yoshida and Orihara is with "Shooter #2." The original Shooter #2 was Ryo Miyake, but no telling if that's who's under the mask here.

    This starts off with Shooter and Takagi getting into a scrappy fight while Orihara throws a comically wide chair swing that Yoshida sells by jumping away. This is a pretty great precedent setter for the match, as all the actually cool stuff comes from Takagi and Shooter brawling around Korakuen, while a lot of the very funny/not good work involves Orihara and Yoshida.

    The best wrestler in this match was probably Shooter #2, who I can very safely say is Koichiro Kimura. He was just working how he usually does, only in a black mask. Him and Takagi went on a little tour of Korakuen, checking out the lobby and the hallways, before eventually landing in the crowd where Shooter started throwing a bunch of really gross kicks before crushing Takagi with a double arm suplex in the bleachers. Kimura is a really underrated worker when it comes to his versatility, and this match really helped to show just how capable he was in a brawling context. He brawls the exact way you'd hope for him to, basically doing all the same ruthless shoot style work he usually just, just on concrete instead of in a ring. I am, of course, a hardcore Kimura agenda pusher, but that doesn't change the fact that he ruled here.

    Orihara, meanwhile, fucking stunk. He really couldn't be bothered to put any effort into his work here, or at least it didn't seem like it. He did a very goofy spot with Takagi early on where they dodged each other's clothesline attempts six or seven times, before doing another stupid spot with Yoshida where they casually no-sold brainbusters back and forth. Yoshida was kinda meh here as well. he wasn't as offensively bad as Orihara, but his brawling was uninspired and his in-ring work was just acceptable.

    The match culminated with Shooter and Takagi (who was solid enough hyping up the crowd and letting Shooter kick him) doing some nice heated brawling on the Korakuen stage, before Takagi hit a fucking german suplex on Shooter to get the win. It was a really gnarly way for the match to end, so at least they wrapped everything up on a high note.

    I have very mixed feelings on this match. Takagi was cool and Shooter rocked, but Yoshida wasn't good and Orihara sucked. If this was just the Orihara/Yoshida stuff, I think this would be in the Ds range. If it was just the Takagi/Shooter work, it would be closer to a B+. I'll just split the difference in a positive way because the finish was crazy.

Match Rating: C+

No Rope Barbed Wire Double Hell Street Fight: Atsushi Onita, Mitsunobu Kikuzawa, Sambo Asako, & Shigeo Okumura vs. Genichiro Tenryu, Hiroshi Ono, Ichiro Yaguchi, & Shoji Nakamaki

    Once again, no big explanation needed. This is pretty much the same match on paper as the main event of the last show, only this time Kikuzawa and Ono have been thrown into the mix, and the stipulation has gotten bigger. Also, Tenryu is here in a button-up and tie this time around. He's all business.

    Just like the first Onita Pro main event, this was a ton of chaos and brawling, so attempting to run down the match spot-for-spot would not only be a fool's errand, it would also make for shitty writing. Instead, I'll focus on the most important wrestlers in the match.

    Firstly, let's talk about Onita and Tenryu together. They're the team captains, leading their armies into battle, and their interactions are of course the big draw. As always, they did great together. All of their encounters were equally violent and dramatic, with Tenryu letting loose with an enzuigiri within a minute of the match starting and Onita getting the boys to help him do a spike piledriver on the big man (using a chair since the top rope wasn't available). They also rehash the chair bash spot I loved from the last match, but this time Tenryu was very clearly just punishing an already hurt Onita rather than throwing a chair out of desperation. It felt like the natural evolution of the spot considering Tenryu was in control for much more of this match than he was in the previous one, and did a great job of continuing to isolate Onita from his partners.

    Speaking of Onita's partners, Shigeo Okumura. What a fucking guy. In the last review, I mentioned that Okumura came off as a million bucks, but this is the match where he truly felt like he near Tenryu and Onita's level power-scaling wise. One of the first spots of the match was Tenryu pulling off a whip cancel to keep himself from going into the wire, only for Okumura to dropkick him into the barbs anyways. Okumura constantly ran roughshod over the match, throwing chops and punches at anyone in his way and never staying down too long. He even pulled off another save like before, keeping Tenryu from killing Kikuzawa long enough for Onita to come back in and regain control for the team. I don't know how you can see his performances in Onita Pro and not walk away thinking that he had a monster of a traveling brawler career hidden within him.

    Finally, we need to talk about Mitsunobu Kikuzawa. I haven't been silent about my distaste for Kikutaro. Most of my issues stem with the plethora of matches he's had against women, because sadly, I just don't really find sexual assault funny! And his many intergender matches are filled with creep spots. I'm aware that Kikutaro's non-intergender work is an entirely different world, and I enjoy a lot of it, but I just can't ignore his VKF career. 

    All of that being said, I've always thought that Kikuzawa was a real missed opportunity, as all of his unmasked work that I've seen has been very good. This was probably one of his best performances ever, as he took the role of designated team victim for the Onita army, and my god, was he a victim. Tenryu made it his mission to force Kikuzawa to leave the industry in this match, constantly punching him in the jaw and chopping his throat, which Kikuzawa sold like hell. Kikuzawa also took the most insane spot of the whole show, a monkey flip from the ring to the barbed wire on the floor from Tenryu, which Kikuzawa sold the same way I reacted when I hit a rough bump riding my bike downhill at 13 and did a full flip directly onto the small of my back on the poorly paved road. Kikuzawa was here to die, and although he fought back as best he could, but by the end of the match, he was left bathed in own blood while wrapped in barbed wire (just like Onita was in the last main event; I see what's going on here). But he survived. He survived and made the decisive final attack for his team. Kikuzawa's body attack with his barbed wire-wrapped chest led directly into Onita's match-winning powerbomb. Kikuzawa went through hell in this match, and used that hell to win.

    After the match, there's this visually beautiful moment where Onita, Okumura, and Asako all work together to unwrap the wire around Kikuzawa, before Onita grabs his water bottle and pours it over his own head, dripping onto Kikuzawa's crimson visage and washing some of the blood away. In a sense, Kikuzawa was baptized into the Onita sphere of wrestling in this match, and this was the actual baptism.

    This was a clear sequel to the last Onita Pro main event, so it's worth comparing the two. A lot of the spots from the last match happened in this one as well (even a few of the same botches), but this match also brought a lot of new stuff to the table, especially when it came to the whole "double hell" part of the match. I do think this one slightly falters compared to the first Onita Pro main, as it doesn't stay as consistently chaotic, and the action-less parts of the match are more noticeable. Still, this match was fucking great. Again, I have bias for Onita Pro main event brawls, but I do feel like this was a very worthwhile sequel to one of the best matches ever. 

Match Rating: A

    I think this was a little worse than the previous Onita Pro show. While this show never had anything as bad as the Hannibal tag, it also felt like it never truly reached the highs of the first show, and the stagnation in quality really hurt the flow of the full show itself. The main event was still great though, so that keeps it from escaping the B-tier. Overall, solid stuff, and I'm still excited to continue going through Onita Pro.

Show Rating: B-