(Written by jom)
I still don't feel like reviewing Onita Pro (I've been way too busy with RL stuff to commit to watching a full show on my own while taking notes) but I do feel like writing. I also don't want to write in my usual "half recap, half breakdown" style. Instead, I'm just gonna write down some thoughts on random matches I've watched recently and call it a day. The series is called "Spitball Reviews" because the reviews are small and I'm shooting 'em out malformed and at high speeds. Will they be good? Hopefully!!
KING vs. Cosmo Soldier (KAGEKI 12/23/2009)
KING is a pretty awesome lumbering masked heavyweight doing a blend of sumo and power moves. He starts the match by doing a tsuppari rush, sending Cosmo into the corner and himself into my heart. Cosmo meanwhile is a 10,000 IQ worker who does some gritty leg targeting before KING really starts owning him, leading Cosmo to abandon the leg work and morph into a really compelling junior-in-peril. There's a lot happening in the match considering it only goes nine minutes. The finish does feel abrupt but in a really violent way, like a fist fight ending with one dude breaking the unwritten "no grappling" rule and putting on a rear naked choke. Am I sad about us not having the alternate version of this match where Cosmo just does really vicious leg work for the entire runtime? A little!!! I'm still happy with what we got though.
Match Rating: B
Ni Hao vs. Makoto Saito (WYF 09/13/1998)
Wrestle Yume Factory in a random field! Ni Hao's awesome theme gets cut off because of technical issues and he just jogs to the ring as the fans clap for him. Around this point in Japanese wrestling, it was pretty commonplace to see traditional junior vs. hybrid junior matchups, so it's cool to see the pretty rare hybrid junior vs. shoot junior matchup instead. Ni Hao is half a year into wrestling and already one of the coolest wrestlers ever. He's damn good at picking apart Saito here, constantly going for limbs and working over different parts of the body hoping for one to give out. His throws also have an insane amount of snap to them, and they all look dangerously close to putting Saito in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. Saito eventually taking control with big bombs like a springboard double foot stomp feels perfect for this type of pairing since Ni Hao, by virtue of being a CAPTURE guy, is much more susceptible to cutters and drivers than he is to grappling. Ni Hao and Saito keep the intensity going from bell to bell and end the match right when they need to. Nothing that would blow you away but still a lot of fun. God I love Ni Hao.
Match Rating: B
Macho Pump & Masao Orihara vs. Sabu & MIKAMI (Michinoku Pro 10/16/2003)
MIKAMI and Sabu teaming up feels like the bump freak equivalent to when a famous red ranger would appear in a newer Power Rangers series and work with that team's red ranger. We need to get a bunch of other bump freaks together with these two to do the wrestling equivalent to "Forever Red". If we're to continue this comparison, Masao Orihara is Lord Zedd as he is the fucking devil, throwing lots of unprotected chairshots to MIKAMI's head and hitting gross double stomps to his ribs. At some point he seems to break MIKAMI's nose and MIKAMI bleeds all over his white mesh shirt. MIKAMI, for his part, is an amazing seller, doing a great job of stumbling and ragdolling for all of Orihara's offense like he's suffering from intense blood loss. Macho Pump is fun enough as a little goon mostly there to support Orihara and hit one or two moves of his own (which are just moves stolen from The Rock). Sabu and MIKAMI do get some points to run wild and hit all of their cool moves, with Sabu throwing a chairshot at Orihara as revenge for his new friend's gruesome beating. I came into this hoping to see Sabu and MIKAMI doing tons of crazy spots in a big car crash of a match. Instead, this is the Orihara and MIKAMI show, and both guys do a great job stiffing and selling respectively so I still thought this was great. Hopefully more Sabu in Michinoku crops up where Sabu and MIKAMI get to go full chaos mode like I originally hoped for.
Match Rating: B+
Hiroshi Itakura vs. Ryuma Go (Oriental Pro 09/12/1992)
A real baptism in blood. Itakura takes on his mentor as part of a trial series of matches to prove Itakura has what it takes to be Oriental Pro's eventual top guy (Oriental Pro would die before that could ever happen). Ryuma Go decides Itakura needs intense brain damage to take on this role so he spends the entire match hitting no-hand shoot headbutts. No kidding, Go throws at least 50 skull-cracking headbutts, with Itakura getting busted open hardway after only the fourth one. Itakura, for his part, responds with equal stiffness in his handful of hope spots, but every moment of triumph leads directly into Go dragging him back to hell. If you've ever seen Masanobu Kurisu vs. Shoji Akiyoshi (specifically the handheld) this match feels thematically similar, albeit Kurisu was a lot more varied and intelligent in his beatdown. Ryuma Go is a dumb man. He's called the "pro wrestling idiot" for a reason. His head doesn't store information. His head is filled with rocks and he will use this rock-filled head to kill his son.
Match Rating: B+
Drake Morimatsu & Yuiga vs. Tarzan Goto & Shinigami (Yuiga Produce 10/30/2004)
Shinigami and Morimatsu do not exist in this match. They each get one or two moments to show out, but are primarily just warm bodies in the ring rather than anything worth paying attention to. No, this is all about Goto and Yuiga. Goto might be my favorite plunderer of all time. He's so good at grabbing any object within range and turning it into a deadly weapon. He was in prime form here, stabbing and smashing things into Yuiga's head while doing evil laughs and little dances. While Yuiga was mostly selling throughout the match (which she did really well), she took her chances to fight back and ran with them, throwing really stiff strikes and hitting awesome judo throws. Her botched avalanche judo throw on Shinigami looked like it should've killed the man, and honestly turned out much better because of the botch. This is up there as one of Goto's better 2000s matches, and is a real feather in the cap for Yuiga so early into her career.
Match Rating: B+