(Written by jom)
I'll be honest; I need a break from Onita Pro. Not a long one, but a break nonetheless. I really love the promotion, and I've enjoyed writing about it so far, but at this point, I've done four straight Onita Pro posts. I'm a little tired of writing about it, and I'm sure you're a little tired of reading about it. Luckily, Hasegawa's got me covered.
If you're reading this and somehow out of the loop, diamond in the rough promotion Mutoha has been doing online sales for close to a year now, after myself and a bunch of other complete nerds practically begged them to start selling matches to foreigners. Beforehand, getting our hands on Mumeijuku/Mutoha footage was extremely difficult, mostly relying on YouTube uploads and the rare case of someone getting their hands on a DVD release. However, through Hasegawa (an editor with ties to Mutoha along with other indie promotions), we've finally been able to get direct access to a plethora of footage (mostly from Mutoha, but also a lot from indies spanning four decades) we would've never seen otherwise.
I've been meaning to write about some of the footage I've gotten from Hasegawa for a long time. Sadly, the beginning of the online sales coincided with my complete loss of motivation for blogging, and I only really got that motivation back through having a focused project in the form of the Onita Pro reviews. I'm back in the zone though, and Hasegawa just started selling this event, so I thought what better show to cover. This is only the fourth show in the promotion's history, back when it was still called Mumeijuku, and the card is absolutely stacked, so I'm excited to dive in.
One last note before getting into the pontificating. If you have any interest in this event, or would be at all interested in purchasing some of the hundreds of matches Hasegawa has made available in the last year, you can contact him here. I'll be avoiding discussion of match finishes for this post in case this inspires anyone to actually get the show themselves. Mutoha is easily the most interesting and consistently great promotion in the world, and any purchases you make go directly towards supporting the promotion. They've been going through rough times financially and only plan to run one show this year, so show some love and maybe we can convince them to run one more. That's all the begging from me. Onto the review!
Daisuke Kamata vs. Leonardo Takatsu
Leonardo Takatsu? Cool guy! I've seen maybe two full Takatsu matches in my lifetime along with clips from Occupation, but he's always seemed like a worthwhile judoka. Meanwhile, I've never seen a Kamata match before. I've definitely got a few, but I've just never sat down and watched them. All I actually know about him is that his retirement match against Syuou Fujiwara is apparently amazing. That's really all I have to say about either guy.
Similarly, I have very little to say about this match. It's a fine match! Just not in a particularly interesting way
Kamata brings very little to the table here. He works this like a young boy (he's only two years into his career and has only worked 10 matches before this, so it makes sense), throwing kinda worthless forearms and doing very basic grappling. He also initiates a lot of strike exchanging, and I grew tired of that pretty quickly. However, Kamata's basic grappling is still good, and Takatsu does a damn good job of making the grappling a lot more interesting. He works almost like a rookie different style fighter, rough around the edges when it comes to execution but still able to do a lot of really fascinating work. His leg picks and hold transitions in this match are all great, and he does some nice matwork throughout. He also throws some really loud chest chops, so that helps make the constant strike exchanges more bearable.
As a whole, this was a solid outing. I wouldn't say this is something you should go out of your way to see, but Takatsu's definitely someone I'm going to need to keep more of an eye out for.
Match Rating: C+
Hideya Iso vs. Kosei Maeda
Now this has a lot of potential. Here's two of the founding fathers of Mumeijuku, battling it out for the first time ever. Iso is a real mystery. I have no idea how he actually got into pro wrestling, who trained him, or even when he first debuted. The first Iso appearance we know of is in a tag match on a Bungee Takada produce (which Hasegawa recently posted to YouTube! You should watch it, the match is great). His second appearance, and I'm not making this up, is in the main event of an Onita Pro show in Korakuen Hall. Sadly, we won't be getting to cover that show as it was untaped, but I've seen a photo that confirms he was there. I also know he was originally affiliated with a group called NCL (couldn't tell you what that stands for). One day, I'll actually start asking around to find out who Iso is and how he started his career like that, but for now, we're all in the dark.
Maeda, meanwhile, is a lot more of an open book. He's one of those guys who you could find pretty much everywhere on the indie scene in the 90s and 00s. He used a ton of masked gimmicks (including all of the Tokai Bushidos) and tended to do fun juniors work. However, according to people like GENTARO, Maeda's greatest happiness was found doing visceral matwork wrestling as himself. Considering that, it's no surprise that Maeda is considered just as vital to the Mumeijuku/Mutoha ethos as Hiroshi Watanabe. Those two were the architects of the in-house style, a style that persists to this day, and Maeda was the staunchest defender of the deliberate grappling and patient flow of the promotion's marquee matches. He's someone that secretly stood head and shoulders above the majority of the wrestling world in terms of pro wrestling IQ, and Mumeijuku was the one place to give him a chance to show that off.
This match feels special.
It's weird, because as I mentioned at the start, I came into this with the belief that the match had a lot of potential. I already knew they could deliver, and that they most likely would. And yet, I still didn't set that bar high enough, because this match clears the bar by a mile. From the first time Maeda and Iso lock up, there's a magic in the air. A feeling that these two fully understand what to do, that they subconsciously have already planned this match out beat for beat. That's what this match kind of feels like. It's natural, but in a perfect sense. At no point do I watch this match and feel like I'm watching pre-planned spots, but everything just goes so well that I almost can't imagine it being anything else.
Mumeijuku's ideology, at its core, is human struggle. It is a battle of the body. It is a challenge to see how far the will can guide the vessel, and how much one will can endure being battered by another. It is an ultra-traditionalist view of professional wrestling, one that relies almost exclusively on the ability of the wrestlers to convey pain, struggle, and fortitude entirely through physical combat. This match is Mumeijuku. Every hold is wrenched, and every counter is tight. Everything in this match is a struggle. Nothing in this match is earned without effort. Iso and Maeda grunt and pull and rip each other apart on every hold, every transition, every single little moment. It's all a fight.
There's a moment pretty early on that feels like a strong statement of what the match is as a whole. Iso, in an attempt to take control quickly, goes for a double leg takedown. It's an easy way to gain a strong foothold, and it's the type of move that you'd see executed effortlessly in a lot of matches. Iso does this when Maeda is still at relatively full strength, without being stunned or inundated in the slightest. As such, Maeda punishes him for this, first simply shutting down the takedown attempt, then carefully twisting Iso's body around, before finally locking in a deep side headlock. It's a strong mood-setting moment for the match. Nothing either man does in this match will be done with ease or without backlash. If you want to accomplish anything, you have to fight. You have to create opportunity rather than hope for it. You cannot hope to win a battle without putting yourself through one.
I tend to avoid talking about professional wrestling philosophy and things of that nature because it feels like a slippery slope. Simply observations turn into grandstanding, which turns into making a fool of yourself. It's not hard to start off with a genuinely good point and lose it in a subconscious attempt to create something bigger than the point itself. I'm fully aware of this. I still think this philosophy talk is incredibly fitting and important here though, because I don't know if I've seen many other Mumeijuku matches that feel so representative of the promotion's philosophy, as well as why I enjoy said philosophy so much. Off the top of my head, GENTARO/Watanabe and GENTARO/Arai are the only matches I can think of that truly fit the bill. Maeda/Watanabe from the first Mumeijuku show ever is within the realm, but this feels like such a strong piece of work that it blows that match out of the water.
I feel almost uncomfortable giving this match the grade it's getting. This is the second match on a five match show. This is a match I've only ever seen once. It feels wrong to give it a score this high. Truth be told, part of me wants to take that last step, too. I'm not going to, because I need to give this at least one more watch a few weeks from now when I've cooled down on it. At that point, if my feelings remain the same, I'll probably pop back in here to make the appropriate change. Regardless, what a god damn match. What a god damn match.
Match Rating: A
Daisuke Masaoka, Shun Mizuno, & Kazuma Nishi vs. Shota, Masashi Takeda, & Kazuhiro Tamura
So... where do we go from here? How about Tokyo vs. Aichi BITCHES?! This is a STYLE-E vs. DEP match, and if you read those two promotion's names and got excited, congrats! You are one of the probably twelve people that would pop for that. I popped for it though, and that's all that matters to me.
For everyone that has a life, STYLE-E was the pro wrestling promotion started by all of Kiyoshi Tamura's trainees in the early 2000s. A lot of staple indie guys of today's scene got their starts there, primarily Tamura trainees like Masashi Takeda, MJ Paul, and TAMURA (Kazuhiro, no familial relation to Kiyoshi), along with guys like Shota who just went through the pro wrestling training aspect of U-FILE CAMP. Nobody seems to actually know who was running the U-FILE pro wrestling classes when Shota trained there, but timeline-wise, my bets are on TAMURA and AKINO.
Meanwhile, DEP (full name Daiwa Entertainment Pro) is a promotion started a few years after STYLE-E based in Aichi. Lots of the more popular Aichi workers nowadays spent their early years in the promotion, including Michio Kageyama, Daisuke Masaoka, and Toru Sugiura, just to name a few. Mizuno and Nishi are two guys that also got their starts in DEP, albeit neither of them stuck around in wrestling for long. This is actually the first time I'll be watching either of them, and considering Aichi seemingly had a machine printing out good wrestlers like clockwork around this time, I'm excited to see how they fare here.
God, this match rocks. Really, it's perfect way to follow up the last match. Instead of trying to match Iso/Maeda in Mumeijuku-ness, these six stick to what they know best: super high energy juniors work. This is easily one of the most accessible Mumeijuku/Mutoha matches I've ever seen. The DEP guys and the STYLE-E guys have prebuilt heat simply from representing two different promotions, and they do a great job of maintaining that heat while keeping everything moving at such at fast pace.
The DEP team really show out here in a big way. All three do a great job, all in different ways. Mizuno is a pudgy rookie and he works exactly how a pudgy rookie should work: lots of yelling, lots of spears, and lots of diving headbutts. It was one diving headbutt, but considering how low the roof is in Nishichofu, that's still a lot of a diving headbutt. Nishi is equally impressive, coming in with blatant Masaaki Mochizuki ripoff gear and working like a guy that studied Mochizuki tapes without actually learning karate (but in a good way). He throws a bunch of hard kicks and lets loose with some big forearms. He's probably in the match the least, but I appreciate everything he brought to the table. Masaoka is easily the star of his team though, and maybe the whole match. As someone that's really only see Masaoka working as a deathmatch guy, seeing him do lightning-quick juniors work with full commitment and perfect execution is pretty stunning. He's blatantly inspired by TAKA Michinoku, and honestly? If TAKA ever brought him into K-DOJO as TAKAcito, I'd buy into it. He feels like the next coming of the guy, and does a ton of really awesome work outside of the TAKAism too, like a wild sliding knee strike and a beauty of a moonsault.
The STYLE-E team is equally impressive. Even only three months into his career, Shota already has pro wrestling down to a science, hitting everything so smoothly and positioning himself perfectly for every spot he's involved in. To be this dependable of a hand with such a short amount of time as an actual wrestler is absurd, but of course Shota's the one to fit the description. Tamura and Takeda are both in the zone just as much as Shota is. They're rattling off their respective spots like nobody's business, and Takeda even gets to pull off some new moves, like a weird double underhook powerslam I've never seen him do before or since this match. I guess he decided to leave it in the workshop after this night. It was a cool move though, so he should bring it back. The best work the STYLE-E team does in this match is easily their tandem moves though. The three have a great sense of chaining moves together, and even hit the KDX pose with the STYLE-E hand sign. If you're gonna be a trio of dominating juniors workers trying to break down a team of plucky upstarts, you might as well take lessons from the best of the genre.
I was ready for this to be a pretty good match. A decent follow-up to the potential classic that happened before it, mostly worth talking about because of how fascinating it is to see FREEDOMS main eventers Takeda and Masaoka squaring off before either of them were even in the deathmatch world, let alone six years before they'd face off in their current home promotion. However, this really overdelivered, and helped to reset the show as a whole. A vital match for the card, and a kickass match on its own.
Match Rating: B+
Ken Kataya, Bungee Takada, & Fugo Fugo Yumeji vs. Diablo, Kaoru Nemoto, & Kazuhiko Matsuzaki
From six juniors to six heavyweights. We're pulling out the big guns here, as trio of general good guy attitudes Kataya, Takada, and Yumeji take on the dastardly Diablo, Nemoto, and Matsuzaki. Is Matsuzaki that evil? I don't feel like he usually is, but he's teaming with two notably evil guys here. Maybe he's moonlighting as a bastard. I think I've talked about everyone in this match before, so I'm not gonna do it again. Just know I think all six of these guys are cool, and this match is, on paper, pretty sick.
Paper reflects reality, because this match is, in fact, pretty sick. It's incredibly "heavyweight" styled wrestling, so how much you enjoy this match probably depends on how much you enjoy that type of work. I've somewhat grown tired of the style over time, but these guys keep it interesting and do a lot more work than just heavyweight stuff, so it keeps me entertained throughout the runtime.
The heel team is pretty awesome here. Nemoto is the weakest link, throwing some not good hammer fists and being a little underwhelming at first, before throwing a couple good punches and reeling me back in. He probably does the least outwardly interesting work of the three, but his work is still consistently solid and he's a nice addition to the team. Diablo is the main bad guy of the three and lives up to that position well, stomping and kicking Takada's arm and constantly bending the rules in his favor. He also has a real nice lariat and he hit it a good few times in the match, so I was happy. Matsuzaki is the highlight of his team though. Matsuzaki is kind of the ultimate reliable hand, working for over thirty years without losing much of a step. All of his execution is crisp, and he knows exactly when do what he does. He wrestles like he's got eyes all over the ring, and this was another textbook performance from him. He also throws really awesome strikes so that definitely helps.
The faces also contribute some great stuff here. Takada spends most of the match getting his ass kicked, but he gets a few opportunities to fight back, throwing some nice kicks and just generally doing good work. Kataya is a little rougher around the edges, but he's got some nice fire and his bigger bombs all rule, especially his piledriver. Fugo is definitely the most notable guy from the face side of the ring, entirely because he only comes in to hit big moves and be cool. His house of fire spot in the match entirely consists of him throwing headbutts and hitting backdrops. There's not much else to say. What more could you want?
I think that this is definitely a step down from the last match. While the last match started strong and kept escalating to bigger moves and spots, this match was just generally solid for the entire runtime. I did enjoy all of the work in the match and I'm never unhappy about getting to see guys like Matsuzaki, Diablo, and Fugo, but it wasn't anything you'd need to see.
Match Rating: B-
2/3 Falls: Shigeo Kato vs. Hiroshi Watanabe
The main event is here. On one side, you have Hiroshi Watanabe. The ace of Mumeijuku. The king of the style. The bastion of everything the promotion stands for. On the other, Shigeo Kato. Another person that has strong feelings for more traditional wrestling, but in an entirely different sense. Kato is a heel down to his bones. A man who embraces the villainy of old. If Watanabe is the last believer in the classic Japanese style, Kato is the final follower of Ric Flair-esque territory technical heel work. In a way, there's no two men more similar in the Japanese indie scene at this point than these two. And at the same time, they couldn't be any more different.
The match reflects this pretty damn well. Kato and Watanabe both stick to the essentials of pro wrestling, taking weapons from the arsenals of the 60s and 70s, while still feeling like entirely unique individuals. If Iso/Maeda was a battle of physical endurance, then this match is a lot more concerned with mental fortitude. Rather than being a back and forth contest of two men trying to pick each other apart, this match is all about Watanabe's will to survive Kato's onslaught.
Kato is a total bastard in this match. Early on, he's cheating at any and every opportunity, raking and gouging the eyes while going for cheap shots and quick tricks. The earliest lockup in the match ends with Watanabe against the ropes and Kato raking his forearms across his face, and that kind of petty work just never goes away. Kato, all throughout the match, kicks at Watanabe's face. It's never really one big moment when he does it. Instead, they all happen right before or after a more notable spot, or as a passive action in-between two larger actions. They don't do a ton of damage, nor does Kato probably want them to. They hurt just enough to pester and frustrate Watanabe, to drive home who's in charge.
Because of all those little bug bites, Kato's real stingers feel much bigger. When Kato starts drilling Watanabe with piledrivers, it's not just a noteworthy moment because the piledrivers look great. The piledrivers are exclamation points at the end of a long paragraph of torture. Torture that, as the match goes on, becomes more and more targeted. Kato goes for the leg pretty early on, but somewhat abandons that target to instead go for every part of Watanabe's body. After the first fall however, Kato's mentality changes, and he very quickly starts shooting for Watanabe's left leg. There's a ton of super creative work here, from some awesome rule-bending involving Watanabe's boot to Kato's toe kicks transforming into shin kicks. The bombs of the match also morph into leg targeting. There's one spot on the outside of the ring that I really wish I could talk about, but it's the type of moment you just have to see for yourself. It's been a long time since I've seen a spot where borderline-parodic screams of pain like the ones Watanabe let out feel entirely earned.
Speaking of Watanabe, what a guy. In the face of Kato's rule-breaking and disrespect, Watanabe stands firm on his beliefs. He fights back with incredible displays of athleticism and conditioning, tight submission work, and a fiery spirit. There's something incredibly endearing about Watanabe's work. I've heard friends describe him as a poor man's Inoki, and I don't think that's entirely inaccurate, although it certainly has some negative connotations to it. Watanabe is, at his core, an Inokiist. Not in the Twitter buzzword kind of way, but in the real kind of way. He's much closer to Yuki Ishikawa than he is to Kazuyuki Fujita. Watanabe is a firm believer in the power of fighting spirit, of standing your ground in the face of insurmountable odds and never saying die. It's a goofy spot, but every single time I see Watanabe get into his "take a swing wise guy" stance, I get the biggest grin across my face. Watanabe fights for a professional wrestling that doesn't exist anymore, and Mumeijuku is his only refuge to embrace that wrestling in full.
This match isn't perfect though. I have some critiques, albeit not strong ones. The first fall of the match, while really good, does feel a little loosely worked, especially compared to Iso/Maeda. The finish for that fall also comes pretty abruptly, and I'm not sure if I love that abruptness (the crowd seemingly agreed with my mixed feelings based on their response to the fall). The second fall is pretty much perfect to me, so I have nothing to say there. However, I do think the third fall ever so slightly betrayed the previous one. I understand why it's worked the way it is, and I do think it's still really good, but if the execution had been slightly different, I'd be a lot higher on it. Also, I actually enjoyed the way the match ended, although I already know some people who have issues with it.
Overall, this match, even with those faults, was great. Kato and Watanabe tapped into the pro wrestling they excel at, and they both played their roles incredibly well. The two have a rematch a few months later, and I'm praying that Hasegawa is able to unearth that show in the future. Just based on this match, I know they've got it in them to really craft together something monumental.
Match Rating: A-
