(Written by jom)
Happy holidays! Hope you've all been well since the last time I put the proverbial pen to the proverbial paper. A combination of a busy life and brutal indecision has kept me away from the blog. I've planned out and cancelled at least three different large-scale projects meant for the blog since the last post in October, and I'll surely think up and scrap a few more before the year ends. Now don't fret: I do have a special project planned for the blog in the coming months for any of you that would care about a thing like that, and I plan to continue the Spitball Reviews series as well. I've escaped my rut, just in time for the holiday season. To celebrate, I'm writing about one of my biggest hyperfixations in wrestling: the Kurisu lineage. Masanobu Kurisu's influence goes far beyond instances of extreme liberty-taking, as Kurisu's gym (appropriately named Kurisu Gym) was the birthplace for a number of notable names, ranging from actual megastars to some of the scummiest sleaze indie workers you've ever seen. As this holiday is truly all about family, let's check in on what the Kurisu household has done over the past thirty or so years.
Masanobu Kurisu vs. Keigo Kurihara (WAR 01/05/1994)
The only match on the docket to not include exclusively Kurisu trainees, as this match features papa Kurisu himself. The Kurisu WAR run can generally be defined as "fun." He's still a bastard, a purveyor of chair-based violence, but he's also a fan favorite, more than happy to please the crowd with all his antics. Keigo Kurihara, meanwhile, is one of the many forgotten karatekas in wrestling history. Based on the commentary, he comes from Masashi Aoyagi's Seishin Kaikan dojo. As such, this is worked as a different style fight, a format Kurisu is deceptively adept in. One of the core tenants of different style fighting is the presence of different styles. It seems on the nose, but wrestlers choosing to focus entirely on certain aspects of their work to counteract their opponent is vital for the format. Masanobu Kurisu never has to worry about this problem because he's the most "pro wrestling" pro wrestler to walk planet earth. He's a real angry beast with all his stomping and slamming, dragging around Kurihara by the legs and recklessly throwing him out of the ring. Kurihara is able to get little bits of vengeance through his karate, but he's definitely a little floatier than most of the other Seishin Kaikan guys. Still, when his strikes land, they land, and when they don't, Kurisu is there to punish. Is it the best Kurisu different style fight? No, not by a long shot. Still, it's a perfectly fine match in an incredible genre, and the crowd eats it up. Hard to go wrong here.
Match Rating: B
Green Fire Okumura vs. Blue Fire Kikuzawa (PWC 02/16/1995)
It feels bizarre to cover this match in this blog post. This is a first round match from the rookie tournament on the Stray Dog Legend show, an event that honestly deserves its own coverage on the blog. I'm sure I'll at least talk about the main event in the future, once I finally bite the bullet and start working on my Shunji Takano dissertation. Anyways, Okumura and Kikuzawa are two of the earliest Kurisu trainees to make a splash on the wrestling scene, and this is especially early into their runs. Even if you combined both men's careers at this point, it still wouldn't be close to a year of experience. Still, they're here to rock the house, and they do so in style. Both men have their bombs that they throw incredibly well, and they pad everything out with solid matwork and quality pacing. Kikuzawa is a ball of fire with his flying kicks and insane suicide dive, while Okumura is always trying to crush him with massive lariats and a beauty of a moonsault. It's a real popcorn match from the halfway point onwards, lots of flash with enough substance to keep it worthwhile. Considering just how early both men are into their careers, this is a real feather in the cap and a clear sign that both had big things ahead of them.
Match Rating: B
Akira Kawabata vs. Tadanobu Fujisawa (Pro Wrestling X 03/30/2002)
Seven years later, two more Kurisu trainees are brought in to rock the house. This takes place a few years after the J2000 exodus (more on that later), and there's a good chance this is the most exposure the final generation of Kurisu Gym trainees ever got before the gym shut down in 2004. Kawabata and Fujisawa are a significantly more experienced than their first generation counterparts were in the previous match, as Kawabata debuted in 1998 and Fujisawa debuted in 2000. More contrasts come in the match itself, as rather than working a fast-paced junior style bombfest, Kawabata and Fujisawa are more interested in heavyweight hits and deliberate grappling. It doesn't land perfectly, but that's not entirely on the two of them. They're wrestling for nobody but themselves, as the crowd can't be bothered to care. Nobody came to see two Kurisu rookies have a slower-paced and orthodox match. Everyone's here for Onita theatre, and these two are not on the bill. Still, they make the best of it, with both men hunting for armbars and pulling out some cool spots, like Fujisawa's early spear to cut off a shoulder tackle exchange, as well as Kawabata's gross kicks and shoteis. The match's slower moments really feel slow thanks to the silent crowd, but a lot of the work does hold up pretty well. I hope these two know that somewhere out there, there's a dude from the United States that appreciates this match a lot more than the people in the crowd did.
Match Rating: B-
Kenji Fukimoto & Takuya Fujiwara vs. Riki Senshu & Junpuku Yamamoto (J2K 11/07/2004)
A little bit of an info dump before getting into this. J2K is a rare existence: an exodus fed formed out of an exodus fed. In 1999, Hiroaki Moriya led a exodus from Kurisu Gym to form his promotion J2000. The majority of Kurisu Gym wrestlers left with him, including Ryo Tamiyasu, the future Riki Senshu. Only a few years into J2000's existence, cracks began to form between Moriya and the duo of Tamiyasu and Kenji Fukimoto. Tamiyasu eventually decided to retire in 2002, hosting the retirement event in his newly-formed promotion, J2K. Within a year, half of the J2000 roster would leave to join J2K alongside Tamiyasu and Fukimoto, and Tamiyasu would return in 2003 to act as one of J2K's top stars. It's such a fascinating tale of wrestling politics and individual visions leading to the Osaka sleaze indies being run by two different groups of Kurisu trainees. Now, regarding the match at hand: I love this match. I've probably seen it ten times. It's one of my favorite matches to come out of the Kurisu family, with all four guys willing to go buck wild on one another while having a match on a kindergarten's playground. Fukimoto and Fujiwara are so mean and vicious, throwing tons of closed fists, stiff kicks, and full-force stomps to different parts of Senshu and Yamamoto's bodies, while also working like a well-oiled machine during all of their tandem offense. The face team responds with equal viciousness and some really great house of fire spots, especially Yamamoto's spears and Senshu's lariat barrage. Everyone hits their bombs so well, but more than that, everyone is just so explosive in everything they do. A common trend among Kurisu trainees is vocalization, and everyone here is always yelling or cursing at each other in a way that makes all of it feels so heated. Is there the occasional instance of sloppiness, a slip-up here or there? Absolutely! Even considering that, this match has such a genuine spirit to it. It feels like a fight, a wrestling match with so much emotion pouring out of that ring. Every person here deserved the world; the fact that Fukimoto is the only one working at a higher level nowadays is a damn shame.
Match Rating: A-
Takafumi Ito vs. Ikuto Hidaka (ZERO1 09/12/2012)
We end our journey through the faces of Kurisu Gym with two of the earliest members, and two men that went on very different paths in their careers. Hidaka and Ito joined around the same time, quickly becoming best friends, before leaving around the same time as well. Both headed from Osaka to Tokyo, where Hidaka would join the Animal Hamaguchi gym and the Battlarts dojo, while Ito would abandon professional wrestling entirely and instead join Pancrase as its first homegrown fighter. Ten years before this match, Hidaka made his MMA debut in DEEP against Ito, losing via chokehold. One year before this match, Ito made his pro wrestling debut in ZERO1 against Hidaka, losing via head kick. Now, 20 years after their time in Kurisu Gym, the two face off once more as part of the Tenka-Ichi tournament. What we end up getting is a generally fun shoot style brawl, albeit one with some notable issues. I'm generally a Hidaka low-voter, and a solid amount of his bad habits shone through even with the three minute runtime. His strikes, while mostly alright, had a few moments of just looking pretty painless, and he had to shoe-in some "fighting spirit" type yelling and a dumb double head kick spot. Ito also showed some roughness to his work, but I feel more comfortable excusing him since all of his issues clearly stemmed from him being so new to pro wrestling. Still, both guys had their moments, with Ito's grappling being the key highlight of the match, pulling out some nice holds and a massive uranage. Hidaka generally did a good job of fighting back while also pulling out a bomb or two like his sick reverse DDT. Even with its faults, I still think this was solid enough, and, similar to the Okumura/Kikuzawa match covered earlier, was clear evidence that Ito had a ton of potential in him at this point.
Match Rating: B-
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