FIGHTING FOR FUTURE: The Indie Revolution That Never Was

                             (Written by jom)

     The indie scene of 1990s Japanese wrestling, like all booming industries, was a wild west. In the wake of SWS's closure, groups collapsed as quickly as they arrived, and wrestlers changed affiliations with the pace of machine gun fire. Hiroshi Itakura, for instance, started his 1994 as a member of Masashi Aoyagi's Seishin Kaikan karate dojo (exclusively as a wrestler, as far as I'm aware), moved to Aoyagi's new promotion Shin Kakuto, and then capped off his year by joining WAR when Shin Kakuto went belly-up. On the promoter's side of the equation, Tarzan Goto renamed his own company twice within a span of five months. These cases weren't anomalies - they were the norm. It was a time of changes and experimentation, a "do first and ask questions later" landscape where money marks were plentiful and everyone had a grudge.

    Looking across the decade, most promotions, regardless of how long they lasted, at least made it through the front door. False starts were exceedingly rare, and usually very dramatic whenever they did occur, such as with Mitsuteru Tokuda's JET'S debacle. Among those few face plants, however, none were more magnificent, or more publicized, as the complete failure of FFF. What started as a fascinating concept for uniting a divided field quickly turned into a prime example of just how tumultuous the business really was. 

The Genichiro Tenryu Haters Association

     Like most great stories from the 1990s indie scene, the groundwork was laid with years of simmering tensions. In September of 1994, Takashi Ishikawa left WAR, taking the first generation Arashi (Dunktane/Daikokubo Benkei) and manager Hiroshi Sakashita with him. While the reasons for their departure have never been elaborated on, it clearly wasn't on the best of terms, evident by the complete lack of cooperation between WAR and Ishikawa's new company, Tokyo Pro. However, Ishikawa (as far as I'm aware) never took any direct shots at Tenryu with his booking, and any unresolved beef was left to be mulled over behind closed doors.

    Things would change a year later, when WAR's longtime junior ace Masao Orihara was forcibly retired by WAR president Masatomo Takei, as a result of Orihara's lacking performances in his matches. Orihara took fellow junior stalwarts Shinobu Tamura and Hiroshi Itakura with him on the way out, and all three landed in Ishikawa's Tokyo Pro. Now Tokyo Pro had two major WAR workers that had left on bad terms, and it wouldn't be long before a third, even more important one, arrived on Takashi Ishikawa's front doorstep.

    At the end of WAR's Korakuen Hall show on October 28th, 1996, Hiromichi Fuyuki, one of the company's top stars, declared that he would be leaving the company, taking Fuyuki-gun stablemates Jado and Gedo with him. Their first stop as independent workers? Why, Tokyo Pro's Ryogoku show in December, of course. That took the tally up to 3 main event WAR defectors, along with the midcarder friends that had joined them. Clearly, Tokyo Pro had a plan, and everyone, especially Genichiro Tenryu, was paying attention.

Schemers Commence Scheming

    One more defection took place between the exits of the Orihara faction and Fuyuki-gun, albeit one that people took the least notice of at the time. In early 1996, Akio Sato left WAR to join the struggling IWA Japan. Sato had been both a solid hand midcarder and the booker of WAR for two years at that point, following the end of his tenure as the WWF's far east liaison. Like Ishikawa's exit, the reasons for Sato's departure from WAR have never been explained, but may have been closer to a "just business" situation than anything beef-related. In IWA, Sato took charge as the managing director, working to breath new life into a company that had been struggling financially since the day it opened. However, Sato seemed to have greater ambitions than what IWA could allow, and around the same time as Fuyuki's departure from WAR, Sato announced his own departure from IWA, poaching the company's top heel acts in Tarzan Goto, Mr. Gannosuke, and Flying Kid Ichihara, collectively known as "Shin FMW".

    Less than a week later, Akio Sato held a press conference with Tokyo Pro president Keitaro Ishizawa, where he announced his intentions to cooperate with Ishizawa "as a person" (clearly stating he would avoid taking a position within Tokyo Pro), while also declaring his goal of "unifying" the indie landscape, which Ishizawa explained as creating a "last bastion" for independent wrestling in the face of heavy financial losses across the industry. Ishizawa also discussed the prospects of having both Tarzan Goto and Hiromichi Fuyuki on future shows, as both had been involved in very public departures within the last week, and stated that the two shared Sato's vision, with Sato acting as a coordinator between all of these individuals regarding the idea. 

    Takashi Ishikawa was quickly brought into the fold, as well as Yoji Anjo, who had become a major player in Tokyo Pro with his Golden Cups stable. It was decided that the next Tokyo Pro show in Ryogoku would be the group's final event, leaving the stage open for Sato and Ishizawa's revolutionary new project.

Tokyo Pro is Dead, Long Live FFF

    The Tokyo Pro Ryogoku show on December 7th was, generally speaking, a mess. Less than seven thousand people showed up to watch Takashi Ishikawa get "injured" (more on that later) in Fuyuki-gun's indie debut match, cutting it drastically short, before then witnessing Yoji Anjo angrily give up his position as on-screen TPW president after the main event, leaving Tokyo Pro fans incredibly confused as the curtain closed on the promotion.

    Only a few days later, Akio Sato, Keitaro Ishizawa, Hiromichi Fuyuki, Tarzan Goto, Yoji Anjo, and Masao Orihara held a press conference to formally announce the new organization that Tokyo Pro would be absorbed into, named "FIGHTING FOR FUTURE", or FFF for short. Ishizawa clarified that all of Tokyo Pro's previous wrestlers would be part of the new FFF group (including regular foreigner Abdullah The Butcher), with the notable exceptions of Hikaru Kawabata, Shigeo Okumura, Daikokubo Benkei, and Takashi Ishikawa, who had all chosen to not sign the new contracts. Ishikawa's absence especially seemed to set off red flags for some, which Ishizawa tried to downplay by stating that the group would still be involved in the "union" that FFF would be establishing. FFF's schedule for January was also provided, with the "SCRAMBLE" debut show in Korakuen Hall on the 10th and twelve shows to follow as part of the "STRAIGHT" series. In all, the press conference seemed to make clear that FFF was set to be a new top dog on the indies, with a consistent schedule, big stars, and a goal with the greater good of the scene in mind.

    Genichiro Tenryu had something to say about all that.

Thunderstruck

    Only six days after Tokyo Pro's final show in Ryogoku, WAR ran its own event in the same venue (with four thousand more fans in attendance), where two matches of particular interest to this story would take place. In the show's main event, Genichiro Tenryu defeated Nobuhiko Takada, the figurehead and top star of UWFi. Takada's involvement in the show was a strong example of UWFi's penchant for playing both sides of the fence, as the company had top stars working with both WAR and FFF. That's more of an interesting tidbit than anything serious, but it's something I thought was worth mentioning.

    The much more shocking story to come out of WAR's Ryogoku event was the presence of Takashi Ishikawa's Tokyo Pro forces, as Ishikawa, Benkei, Kawabata, and Okumura all appeared on the show in matches and a backstage angle after Tenryu's match. The fact that Ishikawa was in fine working condition only six days after a leg injury bad enough to abruptly end Fuyuki-gun's indie debut isn't lost on me, although I'll refrain from making any statements regarding the validity of the injury. A few days after the event, Ishikawa held a press conference to clearly announce that all ties between himself and the FFF crew were cut, and that his New Tokyo Pro group would be working alongside WAR and the PWF.

    But what was the PWF? The PWF, simply put, was Tenryu's most direct shot at FFF and what it stood for, made official around the same time as WAR's Ryogoku show. The Pro Wrestling Federation was Tenryu's new conglomeration of indie groups, including IWA Japan (who were especially happy to help Tenryu considering Sato's betrayal and the Shin FMW poaching), BJW, Kitao Dojo, WYF, and Samurai Project, all of whom pledged to cooperate exclusively between each other. In one move, Tenryu had cut off FFF from the rest of the major independents, dooming it to exist on its own island. Sure, the indies still had smaller companies to align with, but how many of those groups would willingly oppose the PWF? At best, FFF would be able to bring in the occasional freelancer, a far cry from their "unify the indies" mantra.

    Still, even without any notable promotions to join together with, FFF had a strong core roster, that lower indie freelance talent pool to take from, a vision that everyone on top agreed to, and the money to make it all happen. I mean, considering all these big talks of extensive January touring and saving the indies from financial turmoil, they had to at least have the money, right? Right???

Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride

    As already mentioned, Tokyo Pro, up until its closure, had stayed deep in the red for some time. FFF, therefore, would be inheriting that debt, or at least one would assume that to be the case. Now, I've heard two different stories regarding how FFF planned to circumvent this debt, so I'll let you be the judge. The first, more realistic story, is that FFF had simply planned to rely on Ishizawa's own company outside of wrestling. Tokyo Pro had been doing the same thing, but Ishizawa and Sato were adamant that Ishizawa's company was doing much better this time around. The second story is that Ishizawa tried to force Yoji Anjo to shoulder the debt of Tokyo Pro by having him be the "president" of the company when it closed. While this story is significantly less believable, it's also much funnier, and I almost hope it's true.

    Regardless of which one actually happened, the truth of FFF's funds became apparent when news broke of Ishizawa asking UWFi's director Ken Suzuki for a 5 million yen loan. Wrestlers began to question Ishizawa about how much money he actually had available, only exasperated by Ishizawa repeatedly delaying the checks for Tokyo Pro's final event. In a meeting with the FFF roster, Ishizawa told them that the checks for the Ryogoku show would go out on the 9th, but this only led to wrestlers being even more concerned for FFF's future, and some of these wrestlers had hit their breaking point. On January 5th, Mr. Gannosuke and Flying Kid Ichihara appeared on FMW's first show of the year, rejoining the group and leaving FFF (and Tarzan Goto) behind. Other FFF members began putting out feelers with companies and former coworkers regarding where they could go once FFF failed, and these pleas only increased once it became known that FFF's debut show had barely sold any tickets. Still, FFF made no public statements, and the deposit on running Korakuen had been paid, so FFF SCRAMBLE was still on the table.

    That is, until two days before the show.

    On January 8th, 1997, FFF sent a fax to the Shu Pro magazine office, explaining that the FFF SCRAMBLE show would not be happening after all, and every scheduled event for January tour would also be cancelled. This announcement coming so close to the show date meant most people that had bought tickets didn't have time to hear the news. Not that it mattered, since, at least according to Shu Pro, only three people had bought a ticket ahead of time. Still, the fans that did arrive were greeted by FFF staff, offering ticket refunds as well as copies of the FFF SCRAMBLE poster and pamphlet. When one fan asked Yonezawa, FFF's front office manager, about why FFF couldn't run the show, Yonezawa responded that there was no one left to wrestle.

    To give Ishizawa a little credit, he did at least give everyone their checks for the Ryogoku show. All of those checks bounced and Ishizawa disappeared into the night, but it's the thought that counts, isn't it?

Who'll Fight for the Future Now?

    Following FFF's death (or whatever you would call it since it wasn't born in the first place), the roster dispersed across the indies. Crusher Takahashi joined back up with Ishikawa and New Tokyo Pro. Great Kabuki led Masao Orihara and Akihiko Masuda into IWA Japan, who were happy to have Kabuki as the new company president. Anjo and the Golden Cups formed KINGDOM with some of the former UWFi roster (yes, UWFi died in the middle of all of this). Masanobu Kurisu mostly stuck to his own promotion TEAM KURISU and IWA Kokusai. The entirety of Fuyuki-gun found a home in FMW, alongside their Shin FMW/FFF compatriots Gannosuke and Ichihara. Tarzan Goto and Ryo Miyake kept Shin FMW alive, both on the smaller indies and in WAR, where Goto and Tenryu engaged in a long feud over the next year. Shinobu Tamura and Hiroshi Itakura called it quits following FFF's death, but both would return as masked men in IWA Japan as part of Orihara's Mobius project. Akio Sato, disillusioned with the business, cut all ties with it and moved back to the United States with his family.

    FFF and its complete failure has raised a lot of interesting discussions over the years, but one that I saw on an old 2chan board years ago has always stuck with me: did FFF ever even matter in the first place? I mean, it's a cool concept, but was it ever going to revolutionize the industry like Ishizawa and Sato claimed? Even in the perfect universe where Tenryu never starts the PWF to counteract the company, FFF is still just the same Tokyo Pro roster as before, just with Fuyuki-gun and a snazzy new logo. What future was FFF fighting for? And did FFF dying stop us from ever knowing about it?

    Shu Pro, who seemed to take an incredible amount of glee in FFF's troubles (and who have been an incredible resource for this article), seemed to answer that very question themselves. In the January 28th issue of the magazine, immediately after the section covering FFF's demise, Shu Pro placed a full page article covering BJW's rising young star, Yoshihiro Tajiri. Tajiri, at this point, was only three years into his career, and had just faced Shinjiro Otani in the Tokyo Dome as part of the NJPW/BJW mini-war. It's a glowing piece, allowing Tajiri to relish in getting his first Dome appearance while also making him out to be the next big thing for the scene.

    Maybe it was just happenstance that the Tajiri article was placed next to the FFF article. Knowing Shu Pro in the 90s, there's a 50/50 shot it was meant to be any statement at all. Still, it answers the question for me. FFF would've been cool. I would've enjoyed it. But it wasn't needed. The scene was going to prosper without it, as evidenced by the fact that it did, indeed, prosper without it. There was no need to fight for the future. The future was coming anyways.

    But hey, that Fuyuki/Goto singles match would've kicked ass. Tenryu, you're on the shit list for that, buddy.

The Eternal Suffering of Takagi Sanshiro: DDT From June & July 2000

                            (Written by jom)

     I generally tend to avoid mish-mash tapes like these just so I don't have to deal with weird blog formatting that annoys me, but this one has been screaming for my attention from the DDT folder on my hard drive. It's not every day you see a TV broadcast featuring a promotion's top star getting his ass beaten on three separate occasions, let alone all in unique ways. Sanshiro Takagi put himself on the cross for DDT's prosperity, and it's only right that we witness him receive the stigmata. 

06/29) Sanshiro Takagi vs. MIKAMI

     MIKAMI's heel run after coming back from his IWA PR tour didn't last very long. I suppose he had the "too cool" issue (he was just too easy to root for), along with probably ten other reasons for why he turned face only a few months into his return. Since then, he's had a handful of individual heel performances, but he's never gone on a prolonged heel run. That makes this match almost heartbreaking because heel MIKAMI is something else. MIKAMI goes beyond the usual cockiness and bravado into a much crueler sort of work, full of little potshots and scrapes while cranking the heat up to eleven for all of his usual spots. He's still the athletic freak of nature he was before, but all of his athletic feats feel so much more pointed, more focused on hurting than wowing. He's also not afraid to throw punches, ranging from his fantastic worked ones to some jarring shoot ones, and his picks apart Takagi with big bombs like his horrifying swan dive dropkick to Takagi's knee. Takagi is always pretty solid on the back foot, and his comebacks land really well, especially thanks to MIKAMI's willingness to bump like a maniac and cry to high heaven while in Takagi's holds. It comes together to allow the two to work some really great sequences and have a natural back-and-forth flow while never losing the plot of MIKAMI being the biggest son of a bitch alive. Considering the roughness of some patches, the somewhat abrupt finish, and the unfortunate clipping, I wouldn't really call this a great match, but it has most of the elements of one, along with one of MIKAMI's sleeper greatest performances ever. I hope I one day get to peek into the alternate universe where MIKAMI's heel run lasted much longer.

07/06) Yuki Nishino vs. Naoshi Sano

    Power violence squash match. Naoshi Sano comes out in the world's largest t-shirt and hits some poses. Nishino comes out dressed like Tazz, complete with black towel and being very short. Sano gets a hot start going with a full-force dropkick and a bunch of hard chops, and then Nishino hits a single chop harder than any of Sano's and everything goes to hell for our favorite lovable loser. Yuki Nishino is a crowbar with a mean streak and Sano is just a bump in the road for him. Sano's beating is so scary that I almost considered changing the article's title to "The Eternal Suffering of Naoshi Sano". Nishino revels in violence and comes at Sano like a rabid dog. Nishino throws headbutts like he's trying to chase down his opponent, to keep them from escaping the CTE like some kind of pussy. Nishino throws lariats like he's trying to break their nose. Yuki Nishino is a demon. Another name for the "they don't make wrestlers like this anymore (and maybe that's a good thing)" file.

Poison Sawada Black vs. Mitsunobu Kikuzawa

    I have no idea why Sawada is "Poison Sawada Black" here. It's clearly a transitional phase between regular Sawada and JULIE, but it mostly consists of him having weird paint on his eyes. This match entirely exists for Kikuzawa's manager to get into heel manager shenanigans and accidentally win the Ironman Heavymetalweight belt off of Kikuzawa. The wrestling that comes before and after this is just fine. Kikuzawa has a great dropkick and Sawada does a cool rear naked choke spot, but absolutely none of it matters and the crowd does not care. Kikuzawa does an Onita-style promo after the match because who's gonna stop him.

Showa vs. MIKAMI

    We love Phantom Funakoshi, don't we folks? Here he is as SHOWA, a masked gimmick that let him crank the showa-era wrestling tributes up to eleven, so I have to assume it's his dream come true. And this is a great match! It's got a couple moving parts to it, and both guys are so talented at everything that each story to the match is told excellently. A lot of this match's early portion is focused on grappling, with both guys making good movements on the mat and getting to show their stuff while being entirely in character. Showa pulls out some big time old school holds like the bow & arrow, and MIKAMI counters with face claws out of headlocks and double boot rakes. All the bigger spots, from both men's dropkicks to the late-stage bombs, feel so well-built considering the early match work, and they usually come swiftly and naturally. In a way, this feels like the kind of thing Mumeijuku would put on years later, with more of a 2000s juniors tinge to it. MIKAMI is also the coolest wrestler ever and his bombs are incredible. I don't mean to ramble on about how cool he is after already slightly doing that in the previously discussed Takagi match, but man, he's just so cool. Nobody has ever hit sentons like MIKAMI. The match's bullshit finish is very out of nowhere but fits the general vibes of the match itself, and it's a really fun way to wrap up such a good little match. Definitely one worth going out of your way to check out.

Sanshiro Takagi & Exciting Yoshida vs. Koichiro Kimura & Thanomsak Toba

    This era of DDT, as discussed before on the blog, was weirdly reliable when it came to running bizarre hybrid shoot-style tags. The mix of WARist crowbars and martial arts expats led to a good handful of out-of-this-world brawls where guys flew at each other from across the ring to punch each other in the face. Sanshiro Takagi is decidedly not part of the usual crowd for these, but some sort of demon unlocks from his heart when put in the ring against Toba (probably caused by Toba getting up too early after the match-starting People's Stone Cold Forearm), and it turns this match into a highlight of the genre. Takagi's willingness to throw down is something to behold, throwing chops as hard as he possibly can and chucking out teep kicks to Toba's ribs every time Toba starts getting a little too hot at the wheel. Toba, of course, sells everything like death, ragdolling and bending his own body in weird ways in response to being yanked around. He also never calms down and turns every one punch into five punches because nobody else can combo like him. Kimura and Yoshida play second fiddle to both of their tag partners, but they each get extensive time to prove their worth, from Kimura's relentless soccer kicking and shoulder-dislocating crossface, to Yoshida's Hamaguchi tribute act and unhinged no-hands headbutts. Would I place this right beside the very best of the DDT shoot tags? Not exactly, but it's probably only a notch or two below the Ishii/Rider vs. Toba/Sasaki's of the world. Who knew Takagi had this kind of match in him? For all my stiffness freaks in the audience (assumedly all of you), this is essential.

07/13) No Rope Barbed Wire Death: Sanshiro Takagi vs. Atsushi Onita

    Arguably the biggest match in Sanshiro Takagi's career, at least up to this point. Takagi, the charismatic ace of the indie scene's new hotness, takes on the charismatic ace that built the indie scene itself. I have to assume most people had the same guess as to how this match would be worked, myself included: complete fireworks brawling. That was exactly how Onita had been working his matches for the last two years, and Takagi was the best opponent for a singles match of that variety. This match, however, is not complete fireworks. I'm still not exactly sure what you would even call it. The match starts hot, then enters some early slow grappling, and then just... stays there for about 15 minutes. It's jarring, confusing, and, more than anything else, a complete betrayal of expectations. And it also makes complete sense, in a way. Atsushi Onita has spent most of his career working these matches against either larger, stronger forces, or hellions more malicious than him. He's almost always played the underdog, at most standing on equal footing while still fighting from underneath. Sanshiro Takagi is not more imposing than Onita, nor is he more malicious. Sanshiro Takagi is the top guy of a new indie, and Atsushi Onita is at the top of the world. There has never been a greater power discrepancy in the history of Onita deathmatches than this one. So Onita, faced with a foe weaker than him, finally playing the one in control, simply wrestles him to death. He puts on facelocks that bend Takagi's head nearly 180 degrees, and drops his knee onto Takagi's face with his full body weight. When Takagi gets a little fired up, he punches him as hard as he can and slaps on tight sleeper holds. It's textbook rookie annihilation, the kind of beatdown old trainers would give prospective trainees to try and make them quit the dojo. Atsushi Onita is young boy'ing Sanshiro Takagi in the biggest match of Takagi's career, and I buy it. It's also, sadly, not perfect. 15 minutes is a long time for something like this, especially with the expectation that a ring surrounded by barbed wire sets, and it gets a little too slow and uneventful at some points. For as invested as the crowd is, you can definitely tell they're just as tired as you are by the time things really heat up. That heating up doesn't feel particularly natural either, as Onita and Takagi talk shit to each other in an armbar until Onita decides to give up on his rookie-beating and throw Takagi head-first into the wire. Once they reach that point, the match turns into exactly what you would expect: tons of wire bumps, tons of powerbombs, all the big kickouts and yelling you assumed would happen in the first place. It's great, and it's what I wanted. Having said that, I really do think there's something to that 15 minutes. Maybe it could've been cut down or worked a little differently, but it's the kind of match development you could only get from a mind like Onita, and I love that it happened, even if it didn't go as well as it could've. Even with its faults, this is still a great match, and it leaves one to wonder just how much farther it could've gone with a few tweaks.