(Written by jom)
Another Spitball, another Greed match. I told you we'd be talking about him again! SED is here in a random gymnasium with the world's largest inflatable dinosaur in the background. I respect SED for making sure this show is accessible to all, even those of us who are 25 feet tall and made of PVC. This time around, Greed's in a tag with regular partner Higuchi, who looks like Greed's childhood friend that has tried to kind of clean up his act as he's grown up. He's not entirely out of the hoodlum mindset, but he's just trying to be presentable in job interviews. Yuki Toshima looks like any average indie guy in the US from 2006 to 2008, but Big Joe is anything but average. He's BIG. No false advertising here, this guy is at least a foot taller than everyone else in the ring. And wouldn't you know it, Greed delivers once again! This is a fun little tag match with lots of cool moments, mostly courtesy of Greed. He's really in the zone here with his shitheadedness, starting the match by going at Joe's eyes and never really letting up on his fouling and general misbehavior. He gets Higuchi involved and Higuchi always plays his part well, albeit he really only goes for heel stuff when Greed tells him to. Really, Higuchi and Toshima (who I exclusively called "red pants" in my notes) only exist to do solid enough juniors wrestling. Big Joe is the other star of the match for sure, throwing Greed around like a sack of shit and living up to his role as a big fucker. His interactions with Higuchi are pretty good as well, culminating in him letting loose with Vader hammers and a huge Amaze Impact. Really though, this is the Greed show for me. He's just so wonderful peppering in nasty kicks and stomps, like how he breaks up a crab done by Big Joe by just kicking him in the back of the head. Greed would've been wonderful working in actual pro feds, ideally as a midcard fouler in Z1 or BJW around this time. Even if we never got that, I'm happy to keep going through all the Greed footage going forward. Fun stuff all around, recommend checking it out just to see Greed, Big Joe, and the even bigger dinosaur.
Match Rating: B
Masao Ando vs. Yuji Yoshida (Bukotsu 09/25/2016)
Now this is that indie shit we all know and love. Two lumpy divorcees wearing bikers and kickpads laying into each other with unrelenting violence for a somewhat apathetic crowd in a small rec center in Osaka. If you had asked me about three years ago, I would probably call this a pure distillation of jomcore; my tastes have changed a lot since then, but this type of wrestling does still hold a precious place in my heart. This match does a lot to remind me of why I loved these kinds of matchups so much, working out to be the world's grimiest dick measuring contest. It's filled with full-force elbows to the nose and kicks to the jaw, along with crushing suplexes aplenty. It's also as much an auditory experience as it is a visual one: every strike has either a slap that reverberates around the room, or a thud that smashes through your soul. There's a ton of roughness in everything these guys do, with lots of moves being centimeters away from disaster. There's one moment in particular where Ando hoists up Yoshida for a waterwheel drop, and Yoshida, having seemingly never even heard of a waterwheel, doesn't even try to protect himself and nearly gets spiked on the top of his head. I've talked about it here before, but this kind of dangerous sloppiness does a lot to add to the match. The work doesn't feel clean, safe, or pre-planned, which is exactly how a brawl should feel. There are some attempts at through-lines in this match, specifically Masao Ando's attempts to apply some sort of armwork to Yoshida as things progress, but none of that really matters in any way. I respect Ando's attempts at giving this match some sort of story besides caveman MMA, but sometimes you don't need wrestling with any real brains behind it. The only brains in this match are the ones getting pinball'd around inside the skulls of these two men. The only thing that hampers this match is Yoshida's tendency to just stand around for extended periods while in control, but other than that, this is a real kickass match for people that like seeing asses kicked.
Match Rating: B+
Takahiro Tababa vs. Tatsuhito Takaiwa (IMPACT 05/04/2018)
A pretty big match for Tababa, getting the chance to face the guy who beat his ass in his debut match three years ago. It's his opportunity to show how much he's grown in the relatively short amount of time he's been a professional wrestler. Takaiwa, however, comes into this match with an entirely different mindset. Honestly, he seems to work this match as an attempt to undo the past and force Tababa out of wrestling. The way Takaiwa grapples with Tababa reminds me of the old tales of veteran workers in the 70s and 80s pulling hopeful trainees into the ring and stretching them half to death until they quit, leaving their dreams and money behind. He pulls off a ton of sugar holds and keeps searching for ways to grind down Tababa, like turning a grounded half nelson into the world's most painful crucifix. It's genuinely very stunning to see Takaiwa work like this; the guy's always had a mean streak to him, but it usually only manifested in particularly impactful bombs or even more punch behind his hits. All of that is still present here, but it's the way he rips apart Tababa on the mat that makes this stand out as one of his meanest performances ever. Tababa's eventual comebacks all land real well (it certainly helps that most of them are based around him kicking the hell out of Takaiwa), and he does a good job of milking his hope spots for all they're worth. His bombs also work out great, especially everything surrounding his holds. The moment where Takaiwa counters a Fujiwara armbar by sidewalk slamming him only for Tababa to maintain the hold really stands out as great endurance storytelling and makes Tababa look like a total badass. Wrap it all up nicely with a bow made of some truly spectacular late-match bombs and you've got yourself a damn good match. Hopefully there's more "burn your boots" Takaiwa performances out there.
Match Rating: B
Ryan Upin vs. Masked Mystery (GUTS World 02/15/2011)
Ryan Upin is probably better known as Chon Shiryu, who I've somehow never talked about on the blog?? Absolute blasphemy on my part. If you've ever seen me talk about him elsewhere you probably already know this, but I really love Chon Shiryu. He's one of the only guys in the world doing kung fu pro wrestling, and his level of consistency is pretty mindblowing. He almost has the Thanomsak Toba condition, where, even when put in matches featuring complete shitters, you can always count on him to at least deliver the goods. Luckily, Masked Mystery is nowhere near a shitter, so this ends up being a total blast. Mystery is a somewhat conventional big man worker who has very good technique and clearly knows how to work a short match, which works perfectly with the smaller and more exciting Shiryu. They work this like a pretty high level TV match, streamlining everything to give you as many cool moments as possible all while keeping the action flowing at the right pace. There's tons of little moments interspersed between the cool big spots, like Mystery keeping one leg away from Shiryu's grasp while Shiryu goes for a gory special, so Shiryu just dumps Mystery onto the ropes with the half-applied move. But really, we're here for the big kung fu moments, and Shiryu gives us plenty with suicide flying kicks and springboard kung fu stomps. I think this match is probably one of the stronger testaments to one of the best aspects of Chon Shiryu. Even while working one of the more bizarre and unique characters in the Japanese scene, Shiryu actually feels like one of the most cohesive workers in the entire world. There are a lot of guys nowadays that have "but also"'s tacked onto their character descriptions. A big man that does power moves BUT ALSO dives and flips. A high flyer that can hit spectacular flips and twists BUT ALSO big powerbombs and every other move in the book. Chon Shiryu lacks a "but also" in his character description because everything he does feels so fitting for him. The kung fu, the gory special variations, even the way he'll grapple all work towards supporting this character of pro wrestling's one true kung fu master. In the end, this match barely clocks in at six minutes, and it's a damn fun six minutes at that. The only reason it doesn't go into the A-range is because this felt like it needed a better environment than a small dojo (ideally an actual TV studio with a more vocal crowd). I patiently await the day that a promotion finally opens its eyes and signs Shiryu to work compact TV matches on a regular basis.
Match Rating: B+
Isami vs. Phantom Funakoshi (IWA Kokusai 06/12/2005)
I'm fairly certain this was uploaded by Goro Tsurumi's son. Thank you Goro Jr! I love Kokusai a lot for its bizarre monster matches and crazy arena brawls, but it did always feature some great indie junior heavy guys, both fresh in the scene and old but underappreciated. Isami is the new kid on the block after absconding from K-DOJO and transforming from a Takadist shooter into a scummy yankee, while Funakoshi has been around for years as a Showa-era wrestling idolizer. It's a bizarre pairing, but one that could have a lot of potential by virtue of the two being great wrestlers. Emphasis on could. I'm sure they've had a very good match together. They've faced off multiple times, and at least one of those times has given us a very good match. This is not that time. This is less of a wrestling match and more of a wrestling experiment, a public survey to see if certain angles can go off well. This starts with one of the most bizarre wrestling angles I've seen in a long time, where Funakoshi takes a rolling solebutt 30 seconds into the match that stops him dead in his tracks. He's stunlocked so long that Isami has time to do the full Sweet Chin Music charge-up and still hit the move, all while Funakoshi is just standing there bent over like he just knocked back a pack of original Four Loko's. This leads to Funakoshi being so knocked out that Isami has to abandon a suicide dive spot (?) and go out to try and wake him up (??), only for Funakoshi to wake up and start being incredibly aggressive. I genuinely cannot tell if this is meant to be some bizarre worked shoot injury angle or some sort of concussion work or anything. It's borderline nonsensical, something you can only vaguely interpret. The actual match that follows is... fine I guess? Funakoshi does some alright bullying and armwork, and there's a cool enough spot where Isami takes too long getting back into the ring after a corner knee sends him flying out that Funakoshi pretty easily dodges his returning superkick and dumps him on his head with a suplex. There's just too many whiffs and botches and weird angles to really even process what's going on half the time. The match goes to a "15 minute time limit draw" when the actual runtime was barely 12 minutes, only to then be restarted and continue with the weird botches and vacant atmosphere (there were barely 15 people in the building but you could've told me they were all cardboard cutouts with how this match appeared). To be clear, this isn't irredeemable wrestling: Isami and Funakoshi do enough cool stuff to warrant some commendation. That being said, this match is bad. I still don't understand why half of it happened. I respect the attempt at experimentation, and Kokusai is one of the few places you could really try to do stuff like this, but this was a complete flop.
Match Rating: D+