West Japan 01/18/1996

                           (Written by jom)

     Speaking candidly, this is my third attempt at a show review post in the last two weeks. I set up the formatting for an SGP show and watched the first match before getting sidetracked by the new NPW/NWD footage, and once I had finished that post up I no longer had much interest in visiting Ultraman Robin's turf. A few days later, I started and got about 60% of the way through reviewing an IWA Japan show from 2001 before throwing in the towel (not a bad show per se, but one marred by nasty clipping and a botched finish that took all the wind out of my sails). I can feel that this one is a winner, though. The Halloween season is upon us, and what better way to celebrate the festivities than with one of Mr. Pogo's most gruesome performances ever? Let's take a journey to the west. 

The Jackal & Osamu Suganuma vs. Shunsuke Aijima & Kenichi Kawasaki

     Very clipped but very fun. This is pretty much our only footage of Suganuma until 2004, and it's incredibly bizarre to see him be such an ass-kicker. I've always been a fan of the guy, both as a comedy worker and as a steady hand in the midcard, but this is the most he's ever appeared to have top guy potential, lighting up Aijima with nasty slaps and hitting him with really great bombs like his dangerous-looking powerbomb. Kawasaki is maybe even more of a surprise than Suganuma, throwing stiff kicks like a D-league Battlarts guy. I'm used to Kawasaki wearing oversized t-shirts and carrying around a beer gut, so him being a thickly-built shooter just doesn't look right. Aijima and Jackal (the future Kuishinbo Kamen) are fine enough as well, perfectly capable but just not included much in the footage shown. I feel like if we had the full thing this would be shared around in our little circles as a standout rookie tag from the era, but what we get still satiates the hunger.

Masahiro Hashibe vs. Doku Gas Mask VX

    Hashibe is one of those Malenko Dojo boys who populated random scum indies around this time, a la Cannonball KAZU and Tsunehito Naito. He's got Adidas brand gear and hits pretty damn hard, so he's fine by me. The real draw for this match is getting to see Tobita in the gas mask with a big ass flamethrower, which seemingly gave him the confidence to throw meaner bombs than usual. His piledrivers all hit with that usual force and then some, and his powerbomb looks like a barely-averted disaster. He's so awesome. Perfectly fine match, both guys look good and Tobita threatening the lives of fans with a flamethrower always makes me smile.

Magma Inferno vs. Bio Franken

    Magma Inferno is probably Mitsuteru Tokuda, and Bio Franken is probably Hiroshi Hatanaka, but those are both gut calls more than anything else. Franken has the same all-red manager that Gas Mask had on the last West Japan show on tape (which I talked about here many moons ago). I assume this is just the manager for every midcard masked freak in the company, kind of West Japan's Kim Chee. The wrestling is okay I guess. It's nothing special, but matches like this are more concerned with letting the fans see a big freak like Bio Franken than having quality in-ring action. All of red manager's kendo stick stuff is awesome so I'm happy.

Great Nobushi Thunder Flame vs. Guerrero Diablo

    Easily the most that Diablo has ever looked like a Solar trainee. I've always known he had this kind of performance in him, but actually seeing him fly around the ring with arm drags and big dives is another story. It's very cool! Diablo does a lot of fun stuff here, pulling out a couple different aerial spots while also incorporating the fouling he would be known for later, probably because he has "RUDO" written across his back. Flame is another West Japan exclusive gimmick, one that I'm half-convinced is some sort of Hayabusa clone in the same way that Great Takeru was. He's fine! He does very little to inspire besides a nice suicide dive but he's also perfectly competent. There's a sad botch at one point near the end but otherwise this is pleasant local juniors action.

Hiroshi Hatanaka & Akihiko Masuda vs. Kenichiro Yukimura & Yasuhiro Morinaga

    This match is clipped and it PISSES ME OFF!!! Every match before this has been clipped as well, but this one is especially painful considering what we do get. Masuda and Hatanaka are here representing Tokyo Pro, looking to squash the West Japan bug by defeating future ace Yukimura and other future ace Morinaga (AKA Kyoshiro Suizenji; shoutout to Chris fuckin' Yeelord). Masuda and Hatanaka are a well-oiled torture machine, both talented at working the mat while being unafraid to hit nasty knee drops and smashing lariats. Every time there's a tag they make sure to get as much double-teaming in as possible, which actually elicits boos from the crowd! Do you realize how hard it is to get an indie crowd to seriously boo people, especially around this time? It helps that they get color from both Yukimura and Morinaga (neither man's color moment makes it onto the tape), and Yukimura especially is bleeding pretty heavy by the end of the match. Yukimura and Morinaga fight off the onslaught very well with lots of dropkicks and desperation. Morinaga's dives into the ring to break up every hold or pin are so awesome, and each one gets a massive pop from the crowd. It all wraps up to be one of the most interesting interpromotional feud matches from this period of the indies, almost entirely because it's the first in a while to generate real heat and benefit from it. I know some uncle in Kumamoto has this match in full somewhere in his garage. Give me a call man, I need this like a fish needs water.

Free Weapons Street Fight Death: Ho Des Minh & Mr. Pogo vs. Masashi Aoyagi & Mitsuteru Tokuda

    I've neglected to mention so far that the audio for this tape is absolutely fucked. Not in a completely unlistenable/completely inaudible way, but fucked enough to be of note. It plays into this match more than any other because this is the only match to receive entrance footage, where it sounds like each guy is coming out to harsh noise. Honestly, for a match like this, it works very well. This is complete pandemonium from bell to bell, kicking off strong with a violent Pogo/Tokuda brawl and mostly riding the wave of that matchup for the next twenty minutes. Aoyagi and Minh are both great in their own right though, especially Aoyagi. Everything he does is so cool and he carries himself so well that it takes his already kick-ass karate offense and multiplies the coolness by ten. Minh is more of a whipping boy for the faces here, but he's a great bumper, and most of his offense consists of fouling, so he gets a big passing grade from me. Seriously though, this is all about Mr. Pogo taking Mitsuteru Tokuda to the coldest parts of hell with some of his most vicious torturing ever. He puts his scythe to use all over Tokuda's body, from trying to cut his ear off to stabbing his inner thigh as an anti-air technique. Tokuda bleeds heavy from every stab wound, especially the ones on his face and stomach, and all his comeback consist of him throwing his limbs at Pogo as hard as he can, which is probably what I would do if I was always trying to fight Mr. Pogo. It's a pretty wonderful ace performance from Tokuda. His final one too, as he'd leave West Japan soon after this show before failing to launch his new promotion JET's. What a way to end an ace run. Really great match, a strong way to cap off this generally sick slice of prime indie sleaze.

West Japan 06/21/1995

           (Written by jom)

Masahiko Kochi vs. Kenichi Kawasaki

    West Japan starts out their only Korakuen show right with a batch of rookie matches. Kawasaki is a complete unknown, I tried looking into him but couldn't find any info at all. Kochi is a personal favorite of mine, a really solid worker in his prime who could throw some really hard kicks and had an amazing spinning wheel kick. However, this was not even a full year into his career, so I honestly wasn't expecting much.

    It's pretty good I came in with that expectation because this match was nothing. While the whole match was about 12 minutes long, this was clipped down to not even 2 minutes (the beginning of a show full of mostly unnecessary clipping). Kawasaki was fine, doing a cool roll-up at one point, but that's really his only contribution worth noting. Kochi was also mostly fine, he actually threw some of those kicks I was talking about and even did a wheel kick, but it wasn't done that well. The match ended after Kochi reversed a small package into his own small package.

    Again, this wasn't bad or anything, but overall what we got made this out to be a very nothing match.

Rating: C

Toyonari Fujita vs. Diablo

    Now here is a match I had some hopes for. Fujita is of course the future Magnitude Kishiwada, taking on fellow future Osaka top heel Diablo. Both guys are very early into their careers, with Fujita having debuted less than 2 years prior to this, and Diablo being only 8 months into professional wrestling (while also wearing some very different gear than what we'd come to recognize him for). Even though both guys were definitely still getting their acts together, I did have some confidence this would be good.

    Luckily, I ended up being right about that, at least based on what we saw. Diablo sadly wasn't shown getting much offense in, however of the few things he did, they pretty much all rocked, especially this great diving headbutt by him.

    However, the real star of the match was definitely Fujita. The way he worked here was in sharp contrast to how he would end up working only a few years later, as the wrestler Fujita was at this point was more akin to the IWA Japan juniors guys than anything else. He hit some great dives, nasty suplexes, and capped it all off with a pretty gnarly powerbomb. 

    Eventually however, both of the competitors were unable to get a pinfall or submission before the 20 minute time limit ran out, resulting in a draw. The fact we were only shown three fucking minutes of this match is pretty annoying, but at least the three minutes we got to see were pretty damn solid.

Rating: B-

Doku Gas Mask vs. Crusher Takahashi

    Crusher Takahashi is one of my favorite guys on the sleaze scene, a worker with his heart on his sleeve and an undying love for Terry Funk, capable of throwing punches and selling in a way that would almost definitely make Funk himself proud. Doku Gas Mask is of course the one and only Survival Tobita, playing the gimmick that introduced him to the world of flamethrowers, a world that he would embrace for the rest of his career. To truly cement that, here's Mask's "pre-match promo", which is just him walking up the Korakuen stairs with flamethrower in hand:

    While the match overall didn't give me much to say, this was just so much fun. Takahashi is a wonderful babyface with a great punch who can sell his ass off for anything and everything Mask throws at him, and Mask is great as a monsterish force of nature, throwing some really gross headbutts: 

    There were some nice interactions involving Mask's mostly ineffective manager, some person in all red with a big stick. Neither guy really did anything notably great in terms of moves, but the way this was worked and how invested the crowd got made this a total blast. Eventually, Mask won by reversing Takahashi's spinning toe hold into a small package.

    After the match, Mask attempted to incinerate Takahashi with the flamethrower, but Takahashi was able to catch his arms, fighting him off and just chucking the flamethrower out of the ring. Mask tried to throw a chair at him from the outside but Takahashi caught it and threw it back, and Mask's manager attempted to do the same but his chair ended up hitting off the ring post and flying back at him, to the glee of the audience.

    This match was again clipped down to just around 2 minutes, but the overall match was only about 8 minutes long so this really didn't hurt as bad as the last two. Both guys played their roles really well and the crowd were so into everything they were doing. Just a great fun old school match featuring two guys who are genuinely great at delivering that type of match.

Rating: B+

Black Hole & Fumio Akiyama vs. Hopper King & Koichiro Kimura

    As you can see from the title of this match, this one is actually on YouTube, courtesy of the wonderful IndyPuroresu channel. This match had a ton of potential just from the names, as it features four dudes with awesome attires and fucked attitudes going at it in a "shooting style" tag match. This was probably the match I had the most hope for on the whole show, and my lord did it deliver.

    Akiyama was great here, fighting with a real ferocity to everything he did, at one point sweeping out Kimura's legs and just going nuts on him with strikes. Pretty much everything Akiyama did felt so legit, he really felt like he was fighting for his life against Rider and Kimura for the whole match. Black Hole was great too, acting as like a weird space alien judoka version of Vader. For a lot of offense thrown his way, he would just absorb it with his big fuckin belly like a god, and he threw some real stiff clubbing blows in combination with some absolutely beautiful throws.

    Kimura was an absolute beast during his times fighting. He had some absolutely awesome moments like ducking a head kick from Akiyama to pick his other ankle, or when he just started brawling with Akiyama and Black Hole. Hopper King (aka Super Rider) was probably the best part of this whole match however. He threw some fucking amazing punches and kicks, absolutely obliterating whoever he was in the ring with at any time, while also doing some awesome grappling on the mat. 

    Eventually, the match ended in one of the best finishes I've seen in a long time, which I honestly won't even say since you should really go out of your way to check this match out. It's less than 10 minutes long and absolutely worth your time. Just an insanely stiff fight, real sleazy bati-bati featuring four of the best at working a style like this.

Rating: A-

Hiroshi Shimada, Kenichiro Yukimura, & Shigeo Okumura vs. Hiroshi Hatanaka, Masaru Toi, & Mitsunobu Kikuzawa

    Following up that insane intergalactic shoot-style match, here we have a who's who of the 90s sleaze scene. Shimada is a big fucker with some great athleticism, Yukimura is a solid juniors worker, Okumura is a pretty nice rounded wrestler, Hatanaka is an absolute bruiser, Toi is a pretty sweet juniors guy, and Kikuzawa is (at this point) another solid all-rounder.

    This was pretty damn good, albeit not reaching my expectations but still being a pretty fun watch. Everyone had a moment to shine or two, with Shimada probably putting in the best performance. He was an absolute beast here, just chucking Toi and Kikuzawa around like they weighed nothing while also having a really awesome segment where he used Kikuzawa and Toi against each other like they were human battering rams. Kikuzawa was able to put on a great performance too, getting some revenge on Shimada later in the match with this absolute beauty of a suicide dive:

    Around this point, the match breaks down, with tons of brawling on the outside. Hatanaka is able to get in the ring with Yukimura and while Yukimura is able to get some nice offense in, he's no match for the absolute monster that is Hatanaka, with Hatanaka's onslaught leading to this borderline unprofessional beatdown:

    After this, Toi hit a crossbody on Yukimura for the win. Overall, I think the match was pretty solid stuff, however it did feel kinda disjointed and some people like Okumura and Toi contributed far less than I would've liked them to have.

Rating: B

Flag Deathmatch: Mitsuteru Tokuda vs. Ho Des Minh

    Just like the shooter tag match, this match has also been uploaded to YouTube by IndyPuroresu. The rules of this match are pretty simple: to win, you have to pin your opponent with their flag on top of them. Ho Des Minh is the weird Chinese militant gimmick of Poison Sawada, coming to the ring with a god damn combat knife like he's planning to murder Tokuda. Tokuda at this point was the top guy in West Japan, and it seems that he and Minh had been feuding for a while up to this point. 

    Honestly, the best way to describe this match is that it just fucking ruled. Tokuda and Minh brawled like mad all around the arena, throwing each other into chairs and going nuts with some awesome spots, like Tokuda doing an amazing judo throw on Minh while Minh was on the top rope. They also were both able to do some crazy table spots, such as this absolute beauty of a DDT by Minh:

    Or this genuinely insane suplex by Tokuda:

    This may be surprising, but I'm actually going to leave talking about the match at this. The whole match is less than 10 minutes just like the insane tag, and some of these spots just have to be seen to be believed. A top-tier hardcore brawl with an insanely hyped up crowd, this is a career performance from both Minh and Tokuda. Definite recommendation that you check this one out ASAP.

Rating: A