Onita Pro 08/22/1999

  (Written by jom)

    I guess the bi-weekly schedule is back on track? Probably not. I have finals for the next few weeks and then I graduate. Life is about to suck. Four years ago everything I knew changed, and now everything is about to change again. But no matter how many things, places, or people come and go, Onita will always be here for me. Onto the review!

Fushitori Karasu & Walbuta vs. Animal Welfare Association Satan & Rey Pandita

    The first two Onita Pro shows took place in Korakuen Hall. We've finally left the sacred temple, and have arrived in a random field. The outside venue means explosions are finally on the table, but it also means we get natural lighting pro wrestling! It's a weird thing to love so much, but ever since I played SmackDown vs. Raw 2011 and discovered the greatness of the "Tribute to the Troops" arena, I've been a big proponent of outdoor shows, especially ones happening in the daylight. Plus, well-lit outdoor night shows rule, and just from the show-opening music video, this show's going from sunup to sundown.

    I must ask once more: who the fuck is Rey Pandita? He's been the true anchor of these Onita Pro shows, and yet I still don't know for sure who is under the mask. A damn shame if you ask me because he really deserves his flowers for his work here. A better question to ask though would be WHO THE HELL IS ANYONE? We've got FOUR unknown entities here! Well, four in August of 1999, because we actually know who one of these guys are. Fushitori Karasu is... Fushitori Karasu! Although this is his debut as a pro wrestler, he's going to become a regular in the series. He's another Hayabusa knockoff, sitting on an island with luminaries such as Great Takeru and Garuda. He'd wrestle under the Karasu name for his entire career, working a bunch of sleaze indies and eventually becoming a Goto Ippa guy before silently retiring from wrestling (outside of a special appearance on Tokai Bushido V3's retirement show). 

    So... what the fuck was this match? I've watched it twice now, and I still don't really know. We know Karasu is making his debut, but I have a strong suspicion that Walbuta is too. Commentary keeps repeating that they're Hayabusa parodies like you couldn't just guess from the gear. I have a feeling that if you're a Japanese indie fan tuning into an Onita Pro broadcast, you know who Hayabusa is. Although, you can definitely tell that everyone here, from the audience to the commentary to even the wrestlers, has no idea what's going on. 

    Karasu (the person I was most interested in seeing here) was in the ring for maybe a minute, only doing bad matwork and one alright evasion into a shitty rolling solebutt. He seems to actively avoid wrestling, constantly tagging out and forcing a gassed Walbuta to come back in and hit more incredibly sloppy moves. Walbuta is really something to witness here. He throws some alright kicks but all of his aerial offense is dangerously sloppy. Outside of a sloppy-but-kinda-good-because-its-sloppy Asai Moonsault, the safest-looking move he hits is a diving crossbody where he entirely overshoots Satan and almost hits a slingblade on him in the process.

    Pandita is good though! He hits a nice dropkick and slightly overshoots a moonsault (just like Kikuzawa tended to do around this time... I think my "Pandita = Kikuzawa" theory from the last post may have more merit than expected), and that's really all he does here. Satan is entirely worthless until he TURNS ON PANDITA AND FLOORS HIM WITH A FUCKED UP LARIAT. And then he high-fives both of the fake Hayabusas. And then Walbuta hits a bad avalanche hurricanrana. And then it seems like Karasu is gonna hit a match-finishing dive but NO! He points at Walbuta and Walbuta begrudgingly climbs the top rope to hit a bad frog splash for the win. Hayabusa's theme plays as the three walk out. I am unable to process all of this and begin to cry.

    Honestly, if they had just let Walbuta die in the ring from exhaustion, never having Karasu tag in to do slow and boring matwork, this could've been a dogshit classic. All it needed was more actual botches and a faster tempo. However, this match just had too much worthless filler between the incredibly bad wrestling, and that's a recipe for disaster. It's the most baffling match I've seen in the project so far, and also definitely the worst. I can't imagine it going lower any time soon.

    Just as a final note, Walbuta never wrestled again after this. And honestly, I kinda get it. 

Match Rating: D

Crusher Maedomari, Miss Mongol, & Shark Tsuchiya vs. Killer Iwami, RIE, & Tsuppari Mack

    Tsuppari Mack is BACK! I had no idea any of the retired FMW women stuck around after the reunion tag on the last show, but luckily the coolest one of them all is here again (and Killer Iwami). Once again, the random assortment of faces are put against the badass face-painted fouler team of Maedomari, Mongol, and Tsuchiya. And the heels come out eating ice cream!! I don't even know man, this sounds incredibly stupid on paper but something about three devious fiends coming out for a match enjoying ice cream cones kinda rules.

    Sadly, this was another bits match like the reunion tag, except without the context of a light-hearted reunion, and less funny bits. That whole ice cream entrance I talked about? That was probably the highlight of the match. The only person particularly interesting was Tsuppari Mack, who did her weird satchel attacks and also hit a really nice kneel kick on Tsuchiya. Of course, the joke was that everyone in the match besides Maedomari and Tsuchiya is weak, so Tsuchiya took the kneel kick, stood there for a second, and then hit a flat back before leaning up and shaking her head in approval at Mack. Whatever.

    There's nothing to really even say about this match. It started! There were jokes! And then it ended! Were some of the jokes funny? A little bit. I'm not even trying to be a killjoy here, I just don't particularly care for comedy wrestling, and I'm starting to get sick of seeing Maedomari and Tsuchiya do it when they could be doing awesome brawls like the one from the first Onita Pro show.

Match Rating: C-

Asian Cougar & Kurokage vs. Kyohei Mikami & Takashi Sasaki

    Thank God, a DDT offer match. This show started on the worst foot possible with a 1-2 punch of shitty tag matches, but Sanshiro Takagi has sent the troops in to save the day. Cougar and Sasaki were in the last DDT juniors tag, where I pointed out both as being good but not all the way figured out yet (especially Sasaki). But, it's been a few months, and a lot can change in that amount of time. 

    Mikami is also here! And Mikami fucking rules. It's not until he changes his name to MIKAMI and becomes the coolest guy ever that he really reaches his peak, but 90s Kyohei Mikami doing incredibly quick hybrid lucharesu shoot style whatever-the-fuck pro wrestling is a sight to behold. Kurokage (the DDT/WYF one, not to be confused with the other Kurokage trained by Kurisu that teams with Diablo all the time) is the odd man out, as everyone else eventually becomes a big name in the 2000s juniors talent pool, but Kurokage/Hebikage/Masahiko Orihara/etc was always a really talented worker, so it's cool to see him too. 

    So this match fucking rocks. Like, it rocks a lot. Even with my praise of all four men at the start, I still came into this with some hesitation. Maybe three months isn't enough for Sasaki and Cougar to figure everything out. Maybe Mikami isn't ready yet to carry the load if this is the case. Maybe Kurokage actually sucks and my memory is wrong. Luckily, not only was I wrong about all of these concerns, the opposite is true. This is really something special.

    Mikami is by far the biggest highlight here. Talk about a guy capable of doing anything. He does some really great work with Cougar both in terms of grappling and high spots (commentary actually mentions that both men started in Hamada's UWF around the same time as trainees so there's a nice little bit of lore that adds just a little bit to it all), and his work with Kurokage is nothing to sneeze at either. I think Mikami's biggest contribution to this match is just how high-octane it felt any time he was involved. Don't get me wrong, Sasaki kept the action going for sure, but Mikami flying in to hit a perfect hurricanrana or one of the best dropkicks ever while moving at speeds usual humans can't even fathom is the type of work that pushes a match from being "fast-paced" to actually breakneck.

    Asian Cougar is probably the next best person here, and that feels insane to say because once again he doesn't do the Cougar Tope Atomico! But man, does he deliver. He more than makes up for not doing that move by doing a bunch of other crazy ones. I've said this before about Cougar, but there may not be another wrestler ever who's better at setting up their spots than Cougar. Every time he hits a leg drop, it feels like a natural occurrence, like a leg drop was the only thing Cougar could even do in that scenario. At the same time, he's wonderful at setting himself up for moves by other wrestlers, positioning himself well and feeding into spots in such an effortless way. He's a guy that not only does big spots, but actually understands how to do them in the best way. And beyond all of that, he just rules. Nobody else was hitting slingshot leg drops to the floor, and nobody else ever will.

    Takashi Sasaki has it all figured out. I said earlier that a lot can change in a few months, but wow. Sasaki feels almost like an entirely different person here. He does a lot of the same moves, but his work feels so much more driven and aggressive, and he's put a lot more focus into throwing strikes and bullying guys rather than experimenting with new moves. That's not to say he doesn't have some new weapons in the arsenal. At one point he hits a slingshot rider kick to the outside and sends Cougar tumbling across the concrete. At another he pulls out a ridiculous twisting fisherman's buster. Unlike his last appearance though, all of this feels so fitting for him, and like he actually knows what he's doing. This is the start of Takashi Sasaki, the relentless asskicker of the Japanese indies.

    Finally, Kurokage. While he's definitely the least interesting part of the match, he also fills his role perfectly. He's here to take a lot of the bumps for his team, while also getting some chances to bust out big moves every now and then. And man, his moves are big alright. Everything he does feels like a bomb, from the Sankakugeri to Sasaki to the crushing Blue Thunder Bomb to Mikami. His moonsault is also a real beauty, and he works really well with Cougar throughout the match. He's a vital part of the match's flow, and more than fills his portions of the match with cool shit. Really, you can't ask for more.

    Eventually, the match ended after Mikami flattened Kurokage with a beautiful 450 splash. What a war this was. Not only did this serve as a great showcase of all four guys' individual talents, but the match itself was extremely well-structured and flowed at a great pace. It did everything it needed to do as a spotfest without ever devolving into just hitting spots, and the escalation was really well done. This felt like the type of match that would've rocked a compilation tape and blown the minds of a bunch of forum posters during the time period. I feel very comfortable giving this match the the A-range rating of a non-Onita match from this series.

Match Rating: A-

Different Style Fight: Nise Onita vs. Katsuji Ueda

    Almost two months ago, the Onita Pro faithful were introduced to the fraudulent Onita, Toshiyuki Moriya. He fought his heart out against a squadron of different style fighters, with his hero by his side, and he was defeated. Now, Nise Onita is back once more, this time on his own to fight one of the very fighters that defeated him previously. Can he even dream of standing against the might of Katsuji Ueda's boxing gloves? Only time (and this match) will tell...

    ... And he can't! He really can't at all. This is a slaughter. The footage is clipped to hell so maybe he got something in the match at some point, but he gets literally zero offense in the footage we have. All he does is die, die, die. I'd say something like "Ueda took the dog out behind the shed" but that would imply a quick and merciful death. Ueda repeatedly beats on Moriya until Moriya can't stand, throwing lots of punches, kicks, knees, elbows and anything else at the poor man. He unloads combo after combo into Moriya, and to Moriya's credit, he lasts until round three. Then Ueda throws an incredibly gross bicycle knee to Moriya's jaw, and that's the end of him.

    I can't even rate this. I'm sure if I really wanted to I could (Ueda threw mean strikes, Moriya's selling was alright), but it feels so weird to try and rate a match like this, not only considering just how little of it we have, but also what we do have. This wasn't a match. This was a sacrifice. 

Match Rating: (x_x)

Naohiro Hoshikawa & Super Delfin vs. Black Buffalo & Policeman

    I believe that I've noticed a trend. Every single Onita Pro match on this Onita Pro show has been either bizarre, awful, or both. Meanwhile, the only non-Onita Pro match so far was stellar. Hopefully that trend continues here as Osaka Pro throw their hat into the ring. 

    Admittedly, this is the match I was most excited to see coming into this tape, as I've already seen two Onita/Tenryu main events and I haven't checked out any early Osaka Pro in years. Plus, good friend of the blog CFOS just finished his entire watch-through of Osaka Pro (and wrote a nice piece on his findings from the journey which you can read here), and I've been getting bombarded with Osaka Pro information from him for the last few months. I love all four of these guys, so I'm excited to see what they do on Onita's grand stage.

    Wouldn't you know it, but my prediction at the start was correct! This is a fun little match, one that really played to each guy's strengths well.

    Delfin and Policeman are both somewhat interesting, but I don't have much to say about either of them. Policeman does fun spots involving being an officer of the law, and he also hits a nice quebrada. Policeman is one of those genuine "what could've been" scenarios based on his early FMW work under his real name of Yukihide Ueno (I have a friend that has pushed the idea of Ueno being the heir apparent to Onita himself during this time), but even though his career never really panned out as well as it should have, he still always did fun work like he did here. Delfin meanwhile hits a lot of the classics. He's always been a good foil for shooty juniors guys, both as a teammate (see Masaaki Mochizuki) and an opponent (see Takehiro Murahama), so he does a lot of fun tag work with Hoshikawa here. Outside of that, he's just a generally cool dude, and even hits the Osaka Midosuji Stunner, a move I have a great deal of love for since it was my Create-A-Wrestler's finisher for 5 or so years.

    Someone I do have a good amount to say about is Hoshikawa. He really felt perfect for Osaka Pro, and actually stood as a nice representative of where juniors wrestling was heading around this time. Hoshikawa was a perfect hybrid of both sides of the evolving juniors styles, pretty seamlessly mixing the more aerial risk-taking offense with very "jumping out of the screen" shoot-inspired work. Hoshikawa was never able to out-shoot Murahama, nor was he ever able to out-fly Yakushiji, but he was able to do things from both ends of the spectrum in just the right mixture that it worked out perfectly. All of that is to say he's pretty awesome here! He hits cool kicks really quickly and pulls out the meteor knee strike. Thank you for your service Naohiro Hoshikawa. 

    Black Buffalo is the fucking man. I love this bastard so much. I want to preface what I'm going to say next with a little tangent on the idea of "versatility." I'm kind of a critic on the versatility talking point when it comes to analyzing wrestlers' GWE cases, because I've noticed that a lot of people will put high value into guys just attempting other match styles rather than excelling at them. This isn't to say it's bad for wrestlers to be versatile! I may love the one-note workers of the world, but being able to do your job in a lot of different and equally interesting ways is incredibly impressive. Such is the case of Black Buffalo, also known as Keisuke Yamada. The fact that he could go from a scumlord IWA Japan bruiser to such a fun lucha fouler in a place like Osaka Pro is a testament to his abilities. He does so much great work here, moving at Delfin pace without a single slip-up and constantly targeting the balls of his opponents. He also throws in a lot of nice character work, like scraping his feet back like a charging buffalo for all the big running moves. I just can't help but applaud the guy any chance I get. He's someone who'll probably never get the flowers he deserves for the incredible work he did for at least a decade and a half.

    Delfin wins for his team with the Delfin Clutch after the aforementioned Osaka Midosuji Stunner. This wasn't better than the DDT tag, but it filled its role as a fun crowd-pleasing juniors tag with a lot of goofy character work mixed into some genuinely real good wrestling. I already know the Osaka Pro crew probably won't be appearing again anytime soon, but hopefully Delfin and Co. return to this journey through the Onita sphere of influence one day.

Match Rating: B

No Rope Barbed Wire Double Hell Barricade Street Fight Current Mine Explosion Death: Atsushi Onita, Mitsunobu Kikuzawa, Sambo Asako, & Sanshiro Takagi vs. Genichiro Tenryu, Hiroshi Ono, Ichiro Yaguchi, & Shoji Nakamaki

    Outside of this being the first super long Onita stipulation, I really don't have much to talk about. This matchup has been done twice already, and you probably know my thoughts on it by now. I will say though, Onita has made the first notably bad decision of the series by swapping out Okumura for Takagi. Takagi is a very fun wrestler who actually tends to do really well in these types of brawls, but Okumura has been the secret standout of the last two matches. I love Sambo Asako, but if you had to bring Takagi into this, why not get rid of him? Just put Asako in a fun lower card match and let Okumura run wild like he always does. It's disappointing, but I might as well trust Onita's vision on this one. He hasn't led me astray thus far.

    Ichiro Yaguchi makes his entrance coming out with a guitar, shredding on it to Tenryu's theme before flipping off the camera and sticking his tongue out a lot. Already a definite A-range match.

    This is probably the most fascinating Onita brawl yet, entirely because of how it plays on the formula established by the first two matches. The biggest change so far is, of course, the additions and limitations of the explosive environment. One of the vital aspects of the first two matches was the extensive crowd brawling, turning Korakuen Hall into a complete warzone with guys traveling all around the venue and throwing each other who knows where. In this new place though, that type of work really doesn't work. Onita and Tenryu spend a little bit of time fighting amongst the fans, but it's less them splitting the action in two and more the two captains leaving their soldiers to be the main attraction for a little bit. Otherwise, most of the match takes place in the ring, and a lot of the brawling is a lot slower because of this. Not worse per se, although definitely hampered by this more confined space. The guys still deliver the goods though, with Nakamaki and Takagi especially getting into a lot of very spirited exchanges (Nakamaki takes a bunch of unprotected chairshots and does the chicken walk after each one of them; it's very good).

    However, this new territory also brings about the incredible power of the explosion, something neither of the last two matches had any way of embracing. And my god, do they embrace the explosions here. There are at least ten different explosions in this 15 minute match, and the crowd goes wild for all of them. The previous Onita brawls were concerned with the gradual degradation of each wrestler, contests of endurance to see how much each side could take until one person cracked. This match completely flips that idea on its head, with wrestlers instead trying to avoid the one-shot killers surround the ring on all sides. There's this genuinely incredible moment early on, when Onita takes the first explosion bump and time just stands still. All the action in the ring just stops. Everyone ducks for cover and stares in awe at the mighty power of the boom. "If such flimsy wire could do that to a guy like Onita, what the hell could it do to me?"

    The way previous spots get adapted into this new world is equally interesting. Yaguchi and Nakamaki had set a precedent in the previous two matches with their double team suplex barbed wire hanging move, and they once again do the move in this match, with Takagi being the victim. However, the second that wire underneath Takagi's stomach explodes, there's a real feeling of dread that sets over. The last two times they did it, the move was a nice way to deal some big damage. This time, it feels like they might've actually killed the guy. I don't feel like I need to explain that explosions add gravity to a situation, but man, they really fucking do.

    Karma is a cruel beast. Yaguchi and Nakamaki go for another one of their signature spots later on, attempting to rip the wire from the ropes on one side to wrap a poor soul up in it. Their hubris, thinking they have any control over this environment, is their downfall, and the wire explodes in their faces. I think this one moment really does a great job of illustrating the real story of the match. This isn't about one team trying to overcome the other directly. This is about everyone trying to figure out how to cope with being surrounded by certain death. The winner is just the first team to do it.  

    Onita, of course, figures it out first. This is home turf. He and the rest of his boys fight back, and Kikuzawa even makes a noble sacrifice by getting knocked into the hell pit with Ono. Onita gets to Ono, his clothing ripped and charred from the explosion in the pit, and a Thunder Fire Powerbomb seals the deal. Onita leads the hundreds in attendance through an impassioned Onita Theatre (definitely the coolest one yet), and everyone goes home happy.

    To be entirely honest, this is my least favorite of the three Onita brawls so far. I know I just wrote a whole thesis on the power of the exploding barbed wire, but I truly just love a good old fashioned street fight, and the venue-spanning chaos of the first two matches just hits all the right buttons for me. Still, this is a great piece of work, and I had a ton of fun watching guys blow up. It's an Onita Pro main event brawl. Of course it's fucking good.

Match Rating: A-

    Theoretically, this should be my lowest rated show yet. The first two matches were pretty damn bad, and the Nise Onita squash was almost indescribable in terms of "quality." However, the peaks of this show were damn good. Even if the highest rating I gave was an A-, I gave two of those, which I didn't think would happen so soon, if ever at all. A very wide-ranging show in terms of quality, but I will always value great peaks over a consistent level of good.

Show Rating: B