Goto Ippa 08/26/2007

              (Written by jom)

     Somehow, this is the blog's first dip into any sort of Goto project. Considering how long I've been doing this (plus how many Goto feds have existed), it feels almost too absurd to be true, but it is. Goto Ippa is also the most ridiculous starting point, mostly because of how hard it has been to come by footage of the promotion. Thanks to developments over the last year or two, we've been able to get our hands on a handful of shows, and this is one of the most interesting thus far, featuring one of the few big time Goto singles matches of the time period. As an outright Tarzan Goto idolizer, it is my duty to report on all known activities of the big bastard to make sure the people are informed on any and all Tarzan Goto-related matters. So get yourself a bowl of chanko and strap in. Asakusa Indies Arena Fight Club awaits.

Black Bart vs. Chappie Kimura

      Aaaaah, Black Bart. Secretly one of my more difficult agendas from this era of indies is that Black Bart could've been one of the best juniors of the scene. Solely from the minuscule amount of footage we possess of his already short run, he comes off as one of the coolest and most capable juniors of his era. He comes out to a crazy ass remix of "Spinning Toe Hold" and throws the snappiest kicks ever, all while being entirely willing to throw caution to the wind for the sake of doing cool shit. Case in point, he starts this match with one of the riskiest suicide dives I've ever seen, nearly decapitating a fan on landing. The rest of this match actually stands out as being a little more controlled than the start, as Bart and Kimura work a pseudo-shoot style affair full of stiff kicks and slick matwork. Kimura, for his part, is a very interesting rookie, as he possesses a more noticeable roughness than usual but makes up for it with amazing offense. These guys spend the match going back and forth with head kicks and scary neck bumps, to the point that for all the weird pauses and slight miscommunications that occur, I really can't bring myself to care about that stuff. Too much of this match is off the chain for me to be primarily focused on the faults. Overall, it's a good match with flashes of something really special. It's a real tragedy that Black Bart's career ended in the way it did (too depressing and long-winded of a topic to get into here, so If You Know You Know), but damn did he give us some good work before he left the business. 

Shimizu No Gohaku vs. Wild Bear

    About halfway into watching this match, I began to mostly take notes on how well this would fit into an IWE card from 1981. Wild Bear puts on a bearhug? Very IWE of him. Shimizu goes for the running senton and misses? That would probably go over big in IWE. At some point Wild Bear even does the airplane spin into backflip combo which is just a flat-out IWE spot. Really though, pacing-wise and structure-wise, this was more akin to something Mighty Inoue would've put together in the early 80s compared to anything the other indie guys of the 2000s were doing. Shimizu and Wild Bear work a slow and methodical match based around working holds and throwing back clubs, and for the lack of excitement in half of the match, it all comes together as a pretty competent piece of work. I really enjoy Shimizu's big running sentons (which he does in the exact same way Mighty Inoue would do his flipping ones), and Wild Bear's slow descent from throwing nice headbutts and fistdrops into outright ball-targeting offense was fun to see. Also, unrelated to the ring work itself, but Wild Bear comes out to a theme song that sounds like something a NOAH main eventer would use, which is a very funny choice of music for a career Goto Ippa worker. This kind of match isn't going to blow anyone away, but as someone that really loves IWE and this genre of work, I had a good bit of fun with it.

Mountain High vs. Asuka Ichigeki

     I really wanted to love this match. Asuka Ichigeki is a karateka that comes out to crazy heavy metal. Mountain High is a masked boxer that comes out to what sounds like a ripoff of Atari Teenage Riot. My expectations could not have been higher; alas, this isn't very good. There are moments of worth for sure. Both guys hit very hard and Ichigeki especially pops off a bunch of combos. Mountain High's gut punching is nasty and his eventual face punching in the last part of the match is really brutal. However, Mountain High spends most of this match trying to do strike exchanges. He throws punches almost exclusively in response to Ichigeki kicks, at certain points just standing around and doing nothing while Ichigeki sells and seemingly tries to get him to really lay into him. It takes nearly 10 minutes for Mountain High to finally start throwing combos and actually try to win, instead of just standing there like an idiot waiting for Ichigeki to throw another kick. Ichigeki, god bless him, tries his best to make it work, and really does set Mountain High up for greatness at a few points, but it never manifests in any meaningful way. The finish also ends up as a wet fart due to a ref screw-up, but I can't entirely blame the ref was the planned finish was only a slightly less wet fart in its own right. In the end, this is one of the most uninteresting different style fights I've seen in years, and the one thing a different style fight should never be is uninteresting. 

Iori Sugawara vs. Musashi Oyama

     Outside of the main event, this was easily my most anticipated matchup for the show, and thankfully it mostly delivered on its promise. Oyama and Sugawara are the two most capable workers on the show thus far: Sugawara is a super charismatic dickhead that throws razor sharp kicks, and Oyama is an old head grappler hell-bent on brutalization via wristlocks and armbars. There's a lot of interesting back and forth in this one, especially regarding limb work. Sugawara is really frantic in the way he kicks at Oyama's legs and slaps him into kneebars, and he's just as frantic on defense whenever Oyama counters said kneebars into more complex holds that force Sugawara to scramble out. At some point though, the match becomes more concerned with Oyama's own legwork, as all of those counter holds have softened Sugawara's legs up enough for Oyama to change tactics and begin targeting them with a vengeance. Even with some moments not being the most clean thing in the world, this is a real testament to the abilities of both men, as they get to play to their strengths and really get everything out of the smaller moments. It's honestly more similar to Mumeijuku's matches than anything else, and really makes me wonder why neither guy ended up working there around this time.

Barbed Wire Boards: Tarzan Goto vs. Tomonobu Matsumoto

    The spiritual successor to Goto/Miyake, almost exactly 10 years later. Once again, Goto stands across the ring from one of his trainees in a barbed wire boards match, and, once again, Goto decides to use this as more of a lesson in suffering than anything else. About 95% of this match is Goto torture. If you don't care for Goto torture, I can imagine you walking away from this feeling unfulfilled. As a guy that really likes Goto torture, however, I certainly walked away from this a happy man. The thing that makes Goto's control work so good is not only how great he is at brutalizing, with one of the best arsenals of strikes and bombs ever assembled into one rotund Shoko Asahara-esque man, but also how much he works to make it clear that his victimizing comes from a very special and hateful place in his heart. He's outright vindictive, going beyond the call of duty to make sure his opponent suffers as much as possible. When one or two chops would get the job done, Goto throws seven. When a single stab would get the message across, Goto stabs four or five times instead. It does a lot to take the violence and really make it mean something. Matsumoto, for his part, is a fine victim. He's a little less capable than Miyake was whenever it was Miyake's turn to suffer one of these beatings, but he's never in a position where he detracts from the match. His comebacks are fiery and his elbows land pretty damn flush. I certainly think he could've done a better job with his blading, but I really only bring up such an annoyingly minor point because he spent at least a minute trying to draw more blood and couldn't figure it out. Goto at least fills the blood quota with his usual deep blading, so I have no complaints there. If you're a fan of Goto making a trainee reconsider this whole wrestling deal, and you've got about 25 minutes to spare, it'd be worth giving this one a watch.

KAGEKI 04/21/2000

              (Written by jom)

    This is the show where KAGEKI decided their first top champion via single elimination tournament (plus two funky little second round matches). I've put off watching this show for a long time, mostly due to the fact that the entire first round is horrifically clipped, which would always put me in a bad mood whenever I would turn it on. At least, I thought the first round solely existed as a clipped mess. Turns out I'm an idiot and whoever uploaded the show online is The Great Deceiver: while I was under the impression that this was a VHS release, this was actually put on SKY-A TV, and the show was broken into two halves. The horrifically clipped first round was actually just quick highlights, as first round matches were shown in full a week before! Thanks to a friend of mine I finally have both broadcasts, so I might as well write about it. 

First Round: Azteca vs. Chocoball KOBE

    Company founder (and therefore strongest pick for the tournament) Azteca takes on flash-in-the-pan sleazeball shooter KOBE. Azteca is here in a very bold but usual mask, complete with little white fangs and the yellowest hair ever, which is a strong way to start the AZTECA MASK WATCH I will be partaking in as we go through this show. KOBE does not have a mask but it significantly cool even without one. He's probably the most forgotten Kitao Dojo graduate to have done anything of note, with all respect to BATAyan and the bald guy from the Jericho show. Considering just how little has made tape of him, it'd probably be pretty damn easy to make a career comp, and someone should! He's kind of like if you smashed Mochizuki and TARU together into one man and gave him a bad spray tan, stiff and athletic while also not being afraid to foul it up. He starts the match hot with a punch to the face and one of his ludicrous backfists, and he maintains that energy while on top of Azteca throughout the match, laying into him with the big kicks while also pulling out some interesting holds like a La Casita turned into an armbar. Azteca, for his part, has already begun his transformation into the Local Liger, and carries himself with a similar kind of staunch confidence, but his actual moveset falls more into the Choshu category of having five moves that you do really really well. His lariat is cracking and his kneel kick floats without losing impact. More than anything though, he's got the expressions to make a full bodysuit and mask work, and he knows when to take back the wheel from a heater like KOBE. It all comes together into a pretty fun albeit unspectacular face/heel type of match, which I'm happy to see regardless. 

First Round: Onryo vs. KAZE

    So this is less than a minute long, which somewhat limits the amount of words I can reasonably write. I will say that, generally speaking, I do appreciate a good sub-minute match, with "good" usually being up to whether that runtime makes any sort of sense. Takao Omori ruining Jun Akiyama in seven seconds is one of the coolest and boldest booking decisions of 90s All Japan, and, even if I wasn't in love with it like others were, the Iizuka/Izuchi quick kill UWF match was probably the most interesting way GLEAT could've set Izuchi up as a monster shooter (even if it had zero ramifications on his career after that). All of that is to say that this match is fine I guess. It starts hot, keeps the match hot, and then ends hot. KAZE, four months into his career, is already clearly a talented worker, and he nearly kills Onryo with a rana which is a great way to get a big thumbs up from me. Onryo hits his usual cool stuff and also has a cloud of smoke puff off of him when KAZE dropkicks him really hard. For what it is, it's cool.

First Round: Yutaka Fukuda vs. Daiyu Kawauchi

    It's always cool to see the most time given to the rookie matchup in one of these tournaments. Fukuda and Kawauchi would both go on to do greater things than anything they ever did in KAGEKI, but here they're two fresh-faced youngsters in Highspots-esque bad gear, born from the fed's dojo and ready to start figuring themselves out. They play into the style differences hard, with Fukuda hunting for armbars and hitting big kicks to soften Kawauchi up, and Kawauchi responding with power spots and big lariats. It goes beyond the moves and into the methodology as well: Fukuda is a three-dimensional fighter, pulling off a wide variety of strikes and suplexes and big shocking aerial moves to keep Kawauchi on his toes, while Kawauchi is closer to a raging bull repeatedly running head-first into a wall, just waiting for it to crack. I wouldn't dare claim that this is the cleanest piece of work (Fukuda nearly explodes his own asshole with an under-rotated 450), but considering the limited experience either man had at this point, this is really awesome stuff, borderline great as a complete match with an undeniably stellar finishing stretch.

First Round: Nasty Black Panther vs. Guerrero Diablo

    Easily my most anticipated match of the first round, but one that only somewhat delivers on expectations. This is, sadly, a little too unserious. Diablo and Nasty Black Panther (GENTARO with a sick mask and womanizer gimmick) are the two most popular heels in the company, and they start off about as high-octane as you'd hope, before quickly settling into funny haha pro wrestling. I get it, NBP is always at least a little bit of a jokester, and that's probably the best direction to go with a heel vs. heel match if they don't wanna commit to something more heinous, but I can't deny that the joke goes on a bit too long for my liking. It does lead to some good bits, especially NBP accidentally hitting the space rolling elbow on the ref, only to continue through with the bulldog like he's on autopilot. Plus, the actual moves and sequences they pull off are awesome, like NBP's Asai moonsault and Diablo's Diablo Driver. It's an enjoyable match, but it's also one that could've been the best of the first round, and instead ended up in 3rd place.

Second Round: Azteca vs. Shigeo Kato

    Now THIS. This right here. This is the shit I'm looking for. On paper, Azteca/Kato is a pairing that has potential, but I came into it prepared for a fine enough segue encounter, especially considering this is just another run on Azteca's ladder to the main event. Instead, the two of them deliver a legitimately great face/heel encounter, full of smart old school wrestling and genuinely interesting control flow. Azteca (this time wearing a more red mask, complete with little devil horns and a gaping maw) once again delivers good top guy work, but Shigeo Kato is far and away the most interesting part of this one. A man displaced out of time, his 2000s Japan work feels more fitting in a TV studio in 1984 than Tokyo Battle Sphere in 2004. He hunts for Figure Fours like the best of them, and isn't afraid to poke an eye or use the ropes for leverage. As stated before, Azteca is at his best when facing an outright heel, and this comes together as probably his second best big time singles match of this era, only behind the Diablo title match from 2002 that stands as my favorite KAGEKI match in general. Azteca is THE guy coming out of this match, with the type of furious anger in his punches held by the best hometown babyfaces, and the crowd happily bit on every kneel kick or enzuigiri he pulled off. I really can't say enough about this match. A strong casemaker for both guys as masters of local crowd pro wrestling.

Second Round: SAITO vs. Guerrero Diablo

    A reminder that sometimes, things are just going too well. Not that this match is bad. Hell, it was probably cool! Emphasis on the "probably" because this is CLIPPED. My heart is broken. What we get looks fun though, with Diablo jogging over to the face entrance as SAITO's theme starts playing to bumrush him behind the curtain. He does some nasty backwork, SAITO takes a ridiculous flat-back spill to the outside, and Diablo even gets to hit a Diablo Driver. SAITO's comeback work in response is fun, albeit we only see him do two moves thanks to the clipping. I can't really say that this was good or bad, but it probably leaned more towards good considering what we have.

Semi-Final: Onryo vs. Azteca

    What a strange state of affairs this match is. Azteca comes out with a blue oni-type mask (the worst of the three masks so far but still good), which makes me think he's gonna be evil and fight demon with demon. Not really, no. Onryo spends a lot of this match being weird and janky, which isn't too unusual for him, but also entirely devoid of a hook. For as a strange of a worker as Onryo is, he's usually able to hook me with some of his work, from the complete car crash antics to the esoteric grappling to whatever else. Here, he's seemingly going through the motions as much as he can, and Azteca does little to motivate him. The biggest issue with this match is that it has zero heat and an obvious winner, and neither man really tries to make me believe otherwise on either front. The most interesting spots come when Onryo continues Kato's earlier legwork, and when Kato himself appears to run interference and try to help Onryo win. It says a lot that all of Onryo's best work existed because of Shigeo Kato. This is closer to white noise than pro wrestling, and I feel like my brain has been entirely wiped clean.

Semi-Final: SAITO vs. Daiyu Kawauchi

    Thankfully, this is a return to form. Great high-spec juniors work here, as SAITO tries to llave Kawauchi to death and Kawauchi responds with his usual bull-headedness and lariat mindset. The early grappling is great and very emblematic of this, as SAITO completely outmatches Kawauchi and Kawauchi can only respond by chopping him from the ground or overpowering him to escape a bad position. SAITO, only a few years into wrestling himself, is already such a master at this. All of his work is so well-executed, from his perfect dropkicks to his massive hurricanranas. Seeing the future Super Shisa pull out some crazy aerial stuff is awesome too, like the missile-esque suicide dive he hit near the middle of the match. Kawauchi, for his part, is once again great as a hulking big man junior, catching SAITO with stiff shots and manhandling him well. The one thing that only just barely damages this match is the finish, which is clearly at least a little fucked up, but that does next to nothing to affect the overall quality. Similar to the Fukuda match earlier, I wouldn't go so far as to call this great, but it's clearly a sign of better things to come from both men.

Final: SAITO vs. Azteca

    Great conclusion to the tournament. SAITO and Azteca deliver probably the best possible match the two could have, complete with llave exchanges, big dives, and tremendous escalation. I appreciate Azteca (in a new version of the mask from round one, now with gold trim instead of yellow) being the only man capable of battling SAITO in llaves as the only guy to face him so far with actual lucha training. SAITO truly gets to flex his muscles in that regard here, especially his penchant for bizarre bridges and handstands. The sequences and counters the two pull off go so well too, unpredictable and interesting without ever going so far into being bullshit dancing or anything like that. In practice, this match is SAITO and Azteca having the customary big main event of the time, while cutting out the middle heat portion in favor of going directly into the bombs after the llaves. The bombs themselves rule too, from SAITO's impressive cradles and suplexes to Azteca's real dangerous looking brainbuster. The match even ends with a great super finisher type move, which feels appropriate and totally works as the finish for a match like this. Overall, another great match from Azteca, and a strong ending to a pretty damn good tournament.

IWA Kakuto Shijuku 07/16/1995

             (Written by jom)

     Returning to the Yong Dong food stalls always fills me with a joy & comfort I don't really find anywhere else. There's just something so home-y about it. For all the bizarre monsters and strange gimmicks, it's wrestling that caters well to the mostly drunk and casual crowds. IWA Kakuto Shijuku has always served as a recalibration point for when I need to throw on an hour long tape and have a good time, and this is probably one of my favorite Kakuto Shijuku tapes yet, serving as both the usual Kakuto Shijuku madness combined with a bunch of IWE tribute wrestling. Let's get into the thing.

Akihiko Masuda vs. Hiroshi Watanabe

      Biblically accurate young boy wrestling. Masuda and Watanabe are destined for greater things, only a few years away from already becoming major fixtures of the indies, but here they are as black trunks rookies throwing big kicks and suplexes aplenty. It is entirely one-dimensional pro wrestling, but it's earnest in its simple approach. Masuda has a beautiful spinning heel kick that I've never seen him do as Great Takeru, and Watanabe's suplexes are all performed perfectly, especially his fantastic bridging German. The clipping is pretty hardcore here (it's an hour long tape with eight matches to cover), but I really couldn't care less about clipping nowadays, and everything they showed was awesome. It's not hard to see why both guys turned out as well as they did when they had the execution down so well this early into their career. 

Best 2/3 Falls: Masahiko Takasugi, Isamu Teranishi, & Apollo Sugawara vs. Shigeo Okumura, Mitsunobu Kikuzawa, & Crusher Takahashi

    This is mostly the uncs getting reps in before the big reunion battle royal in the main event, but it's a fun time. Due to the clipping on the tape, we see basically nothing offense-wise on the part of the rookie trio, albeit all three are spirited in their being demolished. I could've rectified this by watching the available handhelds of the show on YouTube, but I didn't feel like doing that to be quite honest, so Mitsunobu Kikuzawa will have to settle for solely being a victim of Takasugi's 18 wheeler-esque hip attacks. The vets all get their own moments to kick ass, and Sugawara especially showed out with an awesome Arn-style DDT and a nasty lariat. Once again, more of a clip package than an actual match, but a very fun clip package indeed.

Goro Tsurumi vs. Katsuzo Oiyama

     Tsurumi celebrates his 25th year as a wrestler by having a gauntlet-type affair with two of his old IWE compatriots. Here he's facing Oiyama, who I've never seen before this but seems to be a former sumo that basically vanished after IWE died, based on his performance here, his disappearance was kind of a tragedy, cause this rocked. Lots of big punches and chops and headbutts, meat and potatoes wrestling that never regresses into "I hit you, you hit me" slop you're more likely to see nowadays. Oiyama, for a guy dressed like a big baby, hits like a motherfucker, throwing some mean chops and even meaner headbutts. Still, this is a controlled contest, never going entirely off the rails even with how heated some of the striking gets. Just a fun ass match from two fun ass workers. 

Goro Tsurumi vs. Jiro Inazuma

     And this one is even better! Inazuma (otherwise known as Gerry Morrow) actually just passed away a few days ago, and I've always meant to give him the proper deep dive since he's a real great worker and trained basically every famous wrestler to come outta Canada in the 90s. This one is more technically-minded, with some nice grappling and smarter spots between Inazuma and Tsurumi, but it also cranks up the violence as Inazuma throws straight punches to the face and Tsurumi responds with nasty backfists. All of Inazuma's headbutts are so good too, especially his jumping ones where he comes down like an avalanche onto the skull. Another good times kind of match, but once again, there's something really bubbling beneath the surface here.

Jiro Inazuma vs. Katsuzo Oiyama

    This is where it boils over. Once again rough and violent in the IWE way, hitting all the right buttons for this to end up as a perfectly solid match, only for Inazuma to really start targeting the leg. Oiyama takes umbrage at this, probably offended that Inazuma would do limb targeting to a man who hasn't worked a match in over a decade, and responds by GRABBING HIM BY THE EYE and hitting the nastiest chop of the whole night. This very quickly morphs from another heated half-brawl like the previous two into one of the nastier confrontations of the 90s, with both guys grabbing each others throats and hitting low blows over and over again. Inazuma unleashes some super mean uppercuts and Oiyama tries to cave his head in with headbutts. It's definitely the closest anything on this show has gotten to IWE's more chaotic brawls, and it ends up being a great conclusion to the super sick Tsurumi 25th Gauntlet Thing.

Chain: Super Uchu Majin vs. Masanobu Kurisu

    I have no idea who Super Uchu Majin is. When I saw him appear in Go Gundan, I thought he might be Shoji Nakamaki, but here he is working in Yokohama the exact same day that Nakamaki is working in Tokyo. Regardless, he throws great punches and lariats so he's cool in my book. He's also not at all the main focus here, as Kurisu puts in a really wonderful performance. The way he hunts for headbutts is awe-inspiring, snaking around Majin to find the perfect spot on the jaw to try and break with his skull. He also goes outside and drinks beer in the middle of the match which is objectively a really awesome thing to do. The chain really doesn't matter and this ends in a complete fuck finish, but it's a fun match overall. That fuck finish does bring out an angry Tsurumi, and it can only lead to one thing...

Goro Tsurumi & Super Uchu Majin vs. Masanobu Kurisu & Uchu Majin X

    Impromptu tag match! This goes less than two minutes and still gets clipped at some point. Maybe I'll watch those handhelds later after all. What we get here is really awesome, guys just beating each other around the ring with super stiff chops and punches, wrestling that puts hair on your chest. Really not much else to say there. I wish it went longer I guess, but the nature of the beast means that it did exactly what it meant to do.

IWE Memorial Battle Royale

    Just a damn good time. "Damn good time" seems to be the theme of the show (and every Kakuto Shijuku show for that matter), so this is a perfect way to send the fans home happy. Every guy seems very excited to get in the ring and do some brawling, to the point that Ryuma Go and Jiro Inazuma both preemptively come out before their names are even called, hanging out by the apron until they can jump in and get to working. Peak of the match is easily Oiyama getting the Charlie Brown treatment, tricked into trying to slam Sugawara only for Inazuma to push him over. I guess that makes Sugawara the football? As always, my analogies make more sense in my head than on paper. Really though, this is fun stuff, chicken soup pro wrestling that would appeal to fans that appreciate IWE, old men, food stall villages, or anything even tangentially connected.