Spitball Reviews #7

          (Written by jom)

Greed vs. Takashi (SED 05/24/2009)

    So... what's SED? Well, SED (short for Safety Enjoy Delight, maybe the least intimidating combination of words in wrestling history) is an amateur promotion started in 2003 that has generally been pretty active for the last 20+ years. They've run over a hundred shows, almost all of which are available on YouTube. I really appreciate the effort put into not only preserving all of these shows, but also in making them available to the public. I know literally nothing about SED or anyone involved outside of that, and this is the first SED match I've ever seen in full. Honestly, after checking this out, I'm definitely interested in watching more SED going forward! This is by no means a perfect match, or even really a great match, but it has a lot of cool stuff going for it. Takashi is the world's 2nd most blatant Naomichi Marufuji idolizer (Seth Rollins will never lose his crown) and Greed, besides having an AWESOME name, has a really cool look as "Y2K Hoodlum #2." They work some damn good juniors sequences considering the lack of actual pro training, with Greed doing an especially quality job of blending quick moves and transitions with nice heel work. He's also got a good knack for making his stuff look as mean as possible, putting some real snap on his dropkicks and throwing quick low blows regularly. As this is 2009, both men are absolutely obsessed with combos, which, while cool to a certain extent, is more funny than anything. Singular moves in this match are rare, and I never really needed to see things like a three amigos into an impaler or a superkick into three neckbreakers, but I guess I do appreciate the creativity. There are also some genuinely awesome moments of creativity, like Greed's wristlock Air Raid Crash, or Takashi's step-up guillotine leg drop. It's all the type of work you can tell is being done by amateurs, but as someone that appreciates the wrestling spirit in many forms, I see an abundance in these two. Also, Greed punching and kicking Takashi in the face fucking rocked. Expect to see more of Greed on the blog at the bare minimum. 

Match Rating: B-

Okonomi Man & Tortuga vs. El Enigma & Super Cacao (CMLL Japan 11/23/1999)

    CMLL Japan always had a really cool assortment of Japanese indie guys to fill the undercard, and here's four staples of the tours getting to battle it out. Okonomi is the future Hayate, Super Cacao is Nosawa, Enigma is MAZADA, and Tortuga is... Tortuga! This is really four Japanese guys getting the chance to show they know lucha too, and by God, they really seem to know lucha. Cacao is especially in the zone here, working the mat with that wonderful flowing kind of grappling seen in lucha that really keeps the action going and the spots rolling. Okonomi is just as impressive, maybe a little more stilted than Nosawa but easily more physically capable, and the sequences between the two are probably the closest thing to authentic lucha in this match. El Enigma is probably the most interesting part of the match, at least to me, as he actually knows how to work a match with this kind of pacing and format but does a damn good job of integrating his MUGA roots into his contributions. He gets the highlight of the match when he hits Tortuga with the dreaded nutshot uppercut directly into a real God Damner of a german suplex, the type that folds you up enough to fit into the carry-on luggage heading back to Mexico. Tortuga, IWA Japan trainee and career Guy That Exists, definitely falls in last place for this match, but even he has his moments. He's got a nice bit of snap to his arm drags and works pretty cleanly for a guy that showcased his absolutely awful push-up form on a previous CMLL Japan show. Even with this match being based around everyone getting cool stuff in, there are still some nice moments of a larger story, like Cacao and Enigma ripping into Okonomi's mask and really beating the hell out of him. It's fascinating to know that even before Gurentai existed, NOSAWA and MAZADA innately knew how to foul effectively as a unit. Even with this clipped down to about a third of the actual runtime, this still ends up being pretty damn fun.

Match Rating: B-

Masao Ando vs. Yoshihisa Mio (GENTEN 04/19/2015)

    A massive shout out to my good friend Ciel. This is one of his favorite matches ever, and probably his biggest find in his obsessive searches for any and all information regarding his favorite wrestlers. He originally stumbled across the file of this match on Yoshihisa Mio's abandoned blog, and only in the last year or so have we found that Mio himself posted the match to YouTube four years ago. This is in Masao Ando's MMA gym, where the ring ropes are literal ropes and the mats seem to be paper thin, laid on top of solid concrete. On Ando's old blog, he explained that he felt "love at first sight" when seeing Mio for the first time, and on that whim challenged Mio to face him in the main event of his produce show. I guess it was just obvious to everyone that this match would be great, and they were all damn right. This is incredibly tight professional wrestling, the kind of work where nothing is given up without struggle and everything is a process of breaking down the opponent. The matwork in this match is amazing, no two ways about it. Mio is such a fast grappler, moving across the mat with borderline Tamura speed and hunting for limbs like a starved wolf. Masao Ando, meanwhile, is a complete beast of a man himself, able to at point completely manhandle Mio and force control. The way he drags and flips Mio around almost enters the territory of disrespect, and when he finally gets around to doing more pro wrestling moves, a lot of them are just Ando treating Mio like a ragdoll. Every single bump on the World's Thinnest Ring Mat sounds like utter death. I have to imagine Ando is just a lunatic and wanted to force all the wrestlers on this show to suffer in the same way he suffers sparring in this ring on a regular basis. Honestly, I have nothing else to say that wouldn't spoil major moments of the match. Click on the link and check this out. The match is only 11 minutes long and there's no time wasted. Even with the very pro wrestling moments of this match, I have no qualms declaring it one of the best shoot style matches of the last 10 years.

Match Rating: A-

Antonio Koinoki vs. Genichiro Tenryu (WGWF 05/31/2010)

    The majority of Tenryu's best matches of the last 10 years of his career can be classified as "beatings." Old Man Tenryu wakes up on the wrong side of the bed and decides to make it someone else's problem. KENTA, Kengo, and many more were given the closest thing to a death sentence in the great sport. This is Antonio Koinoki's turn in the electric chair. Antonio Koinoki is, for all intent and purposes, a comedian; his wrestling is a joke by design. He is an inadequate Inoki, failing at the most basic spots and constantly finding ways to hurt himself doing the most innocuous things. So, how does an old Tenryu in a bad mood respond to an actual professional wrestling comedian? With maybe his most violent performance of the 21st century, that's how. He beats Koinoki within an inch of his life with some of the most ruthless punches, kicks, and chops Tenryu's thrown in his entire career, bloodying up Koinoki's mouth and legitimately putting an imprint of his boot's laces on the side of Koinoki's face. But, if you can look beyond the violence for just a moment, this match is a truly special performance for Koinoki, and one of the best examples of Tenryu's silent storytelling in this period of his career. Tenryu tells the entire story of the match through his facial expressions, going from general annoyance and frustration at this stupid jokester doing his little twirls and ineffective Inoki spots, to complete and utter rage at Koinoki's refusal to stay down. But for Koinoki, this match is proof of his resolve as a wrestler. He does all of his regular spots and eats shit as usual, but Tenryu's violence is some real life-or-death type stuff, and when put in the hot seat, Koinoki decides to keep on fighting to prove his worth as an actual wrestler, clenching his teeth and throwing his own live rounds no matter how ineffective they are. That's almost the magic of this match. Koinoki's ineffectiveness starts as just a joke, but soon turns into the crux of the match, evolving from a funny little gag to the one thing Koinoki has to overcome no matter what. He never does overcome his canonical weakness, but the enzuigiri that rattles Tenryu is all he really needs. Antonio Koinoki has the soul of a professional wrestler. Tenryu just had to rip the soul out for people to see it.

Match Rating: A-

Masashi Takeda vs. Koichiro Kimura (Kazushigumi 06/02/2009)

    Damn man, I miss when Kazushi Miyamoto posted matches from his old promotion to his YouTube channel. There's still a lot that hasn't been released, but nowadays he's too preoccupied with vlogging and hypebeasting to return to his roots. Kazushi, if you're reading this, just know I would gladly drop all plans and turn this into the official Kazushigumi blog if you uploaded all the full shows to your channel. Anyways, what an insane matchup, both on paper and in practice. This is rookie-ish Takeda still rocking that shooter brain pattern against old and fed up Koichiro Kimura. Takeda has an awesome look here, sporting some slick black trunks and white boots along with the customary MMA gloves (this is a "Kazushi Gumi Comprehensive Rules" match, which basically means it's an MMA ruleset but worked). And man, do they get some mileage outta the gloves. There's a ton of closed fist punches to the face and body from both men, but especially Kimura, who really loves to throw a shitty little jab to the jaw right before doing anything in this match. There's some really nice mat grappling moments from both men, with Kimura doing his MMA terminator schtick and Takeda fighting for survival with massive bursts of energy and impressive technique. The best work in this match absolutely comes from when these ideologies butt heads, like Takeda getting sick of Kimura's head stomps by flying to his feet and letting loose with wild haymakers and throws. Really, even though this is happening in Kazushigumi, this almost feels like it comes from an alternate world Fu-ten, where Takeshi Ono started the promotion instead of Daisuke Ikeda. Now I'm thinking about a theoretical Masashi Takeda Fu-ten run and I'm getting sad that it didn't happen. Really though, this match does enough to fill the void in my heart in that regard. I honestly really want to give this the full-on "A" rating, but I do think a few too many strikes land without the right amount of oomph (maybe more the fault of the venue's acoustics than the combatants), and it needed to go just a little longer with maybe one or two more big moments. For what it is though, this is a real Ass Kicker, God Damner, etc. A Match That Fucks The Butt and things of that nature.

Match Rating: B+

Mumeijuku 08/02/2008

     (Written by jom)

    I'll be honest; I need a break from Onita Pro. Not a long one, but a break nonetheless. I really love the promotion, and I've enjoyed writing about it so far, but at this point, I've done four straight Onita Pro posts. I'm a little tired of writing about it, and I'm sure you're a little tired of reading about it. Luckily, Hasegawa's got me covered.

    If you're reading this and somehow out of the loop, diamond in the rough promotion Mutoha has been doing online sales for close to a year now, after myself and a bunch of other complete nerds practically begged them to start selling matches to foreigners. Beforehand, getting our hands on Mumeijuku/Mutoha footage was extremely difficult, mostly relying on YouTube uploads and the rare case of someone getting their hands on a DVD release. However, through Hasegawa (an editor with ties to Mutoha along with other indie promotions), we've finally been able to get direct access to a plethora of footage (mostly from Mutoha, but also a lot from indies spanning four decades) we would've never seen otherwise.

    I've been meaning to write about some of the footage I've gotten from Hasegawa for a long time. Sadly, the beginning of the online sales coincided with my complete loss of motivation for blogging, and I only really got that motivation back through having a focused project in the form of the Onita Pro reviews. I'm back in the zone though, and Hasegawa just started selling this event, so I thought what better show to cover. This is only the fourth show in the promotion's history, back when it was still called Mumeijuku, and the card is absolutely stacked, so I'm excited to dive in.

    One last note before getting into the pontificating. If you have any interest in this event, or would be at all interested in purchasing some of the hundreds of matches Hasegawa has made available in the last year, you can contact him here. I'll be avoiding discussion of match finishes for this post in case this inspires anyone to actually get the show themselves. Mutoha is easily the most interesting and consistently great promotion in the world, and any purchases you make go directly towards supporting the promotion. They've been going through rough times financially and only plan to run one show this year, so show some love and maybe we can convince them to run one more. That's all the begging from me. Onto the review!

Daisuke Kamata vs. Leonardo Takatsu

    Leonardo Takatsu? Cool guy! I've seen maybe two full Takatsu matches in my lifetime along with clips from Occupation, but he's always seemed like a worthwhile judoka. Meanwhile, I've never seen a Kamata match before. I've definitely got a few, but I've just never sat down and watched them. All I actually know about him is that his retirement match against Syuou Fujiwara is apparently amazing. That's really all I have to say about either guy.

    Similarly, I have very little to say about this match. It's a fine match! Just not in a particularly interesting way

    Kamata brings very little to the table here. He works this like a young boy (he's only two years into his career and has only worked 10 matches before this, so it makes sense), throwing kinda worthless forearms and doing very basic grappling. He also initiates a lot of strike exchanging, and I grew tired of that pretty quickly. However, Kamata's basic grappling is still good, and Takatsu does a damn good job of making the grappling a lot more interesting. He works almost like a rookie different style fighter, rough around the edges when it comes to execution but still able to do a lot of really fascinating work. His leg picks and hold transitions in this match are all great, and he does some nice matwork throughout. He also throws some really loud chest chops, so that helps make the constant strike exchanges more bearable.

    As a whole, this was a solid outing. I wouldn't say this is something you should go out of your way to see, but Takatsu's definitely someone I'm going to need to keep more of an eye out for.

Match Rating: C+

Hideya Iso vs. Kosei Maeda

    Now this has a lot of potential. Here's two of the founding fathers of Mumeijuku, battling it out for the first time ever. Iso is a real mystery. I have no idea how he actually got into pro wrestling, who trained him, or even when he first debuted. The first Iso appearance we know of is in a tag match on a Bungee Takada produce (which Hasegawa recently posted to YouTube! You should watch it, the match is great). His second appearance, and I'm not making this up, is in the main event of an Onita Pro show in Korakuen Hall. Sadly, we won't be getting to cover that show as it was untaped, but I've seen a photo that confirms he was there. I also know he was originally affiliated with a group called NCL (couldn't tell you what that stands for). One day, I'll actually start asking around to find out who Iso is and how he started his career like that, but for now, we're all in the dark.

    Maeda, meanwhile, is a lot more of an open book. He's one of those guys who you could find pretty much everywhere on the indie scene in the 90s and 00s. He used a ton of masked gimmicks (including all of the Tokai Bushidos) and tended to do fun juniors work. However, according to people like GENTARO, Maeda's greatest happiness was found doing visceral matwork wrestling as himself. Considering that, it's no surprise that Maeda is considered just as vital to the Mumeijuku/Mutoha ethos as Hiroshi Watanabe. Those two were the architects of the in-house style, a style that persists to this day, and Maeda was the staunchest defender of the deliberate grappling and patient flow of the promotion's marquee matches. He's someone that secretly stood head and shoulders above the majority of the wrestling world in terms of pro wrestling IQ, and Mumeijuku was the one place to give him a chance to show that off.

    This match feels special. 

    It's weird, because as I mentioned at the start, I came into this with the belief that the match had a lot of potential. I already knew they could deliver, and that they most likely would. And yet, I still didn't set that bar high enough, because this match clears the bar by a mile. From the first time Maeda and Iso lock up, there's a magic in the air. A feeling that these two fully understand what to do, that they subconsciously have already planned this match out beat for beat. That's what this match kind of feels like. It's natural, but in a perfect sense. At no point do I watch this match and feel like I'm watching pre-planned spots, but everything just goes so well that I almost can't imagine it being anything else.

    Mumeijuku's ideology, at its core, is human struggle. It is a battle of the body. It is a challenge to see how far the will can guide the vessel, and how much one will can endure being battered by another. It is an ultra-traditionalist view of professional wrestling, one that relies almost exclusively on the ability of the wrestlers to convey pain, struggle, and fortitude entirely through physical combat. This match is Mumeijuku. Every hold is wrenched, and every counter is tight. Everything in this match is a struggle. Nothing in this match is earned without effort. Iso and Maeda grunt and pull and rip each other apart on every hold, every transition, every single little moment. It's all a fight.

    There's a moment pretty early on that feels like a strong statement of what the match is as a whole. Iso, in an attempt to take control quickly, goes for a double leg takedown. It's an easy way to gain a strong foothold, and it's the type of move that you'd see executed effortlessly in a lot of matches. Iso does this when Maeda is still at relatively full strength, without being stunned or inundated in the slightest. As such, Maeda punishes him for this, first simply shutting down the takedown attempt, then carefully twisting Iso's body around, before finally locking in a deep side headlock. It's a strong mood-setting moment for the match. Nothing either man does in this match will be done with ease or without backlash. If you want to accomplish anything, you have to fight. You have to create opportunity rather than hope for it. You cannot hope to win a battle without putting yourself through one.

    I tend to avoid talking about professional wrestling philosophy and things of that nature because it feels like a slippery slope. Simply observations turn into grandstanding, which turns into making a fool of yourself. It's not hard to start off with a genuinely good point and lose it in a subconscious attempt to create something bigger than the point itself. I'm fully aware of this. I still think this philosophy talk is incredibly fitting and important here though, because I don't know if I've seen many other Mumeijuku matches that feel so representative of the promotion's philosophy, as well as why I enjoy said philosophy so much. Off the top of my head, GENTARO/Watanabe and GENTARO/Arai are the only matches I can think of that truly fit the bill. Maeda/Watanabe from the first Mumeijuku show ever is within the realm, but this feels like such a strong piece of work that it blows that match out of the water.

    I feel almost uncomfortable giving this match the grade it's getting. This is the second match on a five match show. This is a match I've only ever seen once. It feels wrong to give it a score this high. Truth be told, part of me wants to take that last step, too. I'm not going to, because I need to give this at least one more watch a few weeks from now when I've cooled down on it. At that point, if my feelings remain the same, I'll probably pop back in here to make the appropriate change. Regardless, what a god damn match. What a god damn match.

Match Rating: A

Daisuke Masaoka, Shun Mizuno, & Kazuma Nishi vs. Shota, Masashi Takeda, & Kazuhiro Tamura

    So... where do we go from here? How about Tokyo vs. Aichi BITCHES?! This is a STYLE-E vs. DEP match, and if you read those two promotion's names and got excited, congrats! You are one of the probably twelve people that would pop for that. I popped for it though, and that's all that matters to me. 

    For everyone that has a life, STYLE-E was the pro wrestling promotion started by all of Kiyoshi Tamura's trainees in the early 2000s. A lot of staple indie guys of today's scene got their starts there, primarily Tamura trainees like Masashi Takeda, MJ Paul, and TAMURA (Kazuhiro, no familial relation to Kiyoshi), along with guys like Shota who just went through the pro wrestling training aspect of U-FILE CAMP. Nobody seems to actually know who was running the U-FILE pro wrestling classes when Shota trained there, but timeline-wise, my bets are on TAMURA and AKINO. 

    Meanwhile, DEP (full name Daiwa Entertainment Pro) is a promotion started a few years after STYLE-E based in Aichi. Lots of the more popular Aichi workers nowadays spent their early years in the promotion, including Michio Kageyama, Daisuke Masaoka, and Toru Sugiura, just to name a few. Mizuno and Nishi are two guys that also got their starts in DEP, albeit neither of them stuck around in wrestling for long. This is actually the first time I'll be watching either of them, and considering Aichi seemingly had a machine printing out good wrestlers like clockwork around this time, I'm excited to see how they fare here.

    God, this match rocks. Really, it's perfect way to follow up the last match. Instead of trying to match Iso/Maeda in Mumeijuku-ness, these six stick to what they know best: super high energy juniors work. This is easily one of the most accessible Mumeijuku/Mutoha matches I've ever seen. The DEP guys and the STYLE-E guys have prebuilt heat simply from representing two different promotions, and they do a great job of maintaining that heat while keeping everything moving at such at fast pace.

    The DEP team really show out here in a big way. All three do a great job, all in different ways. Mizuno is a pudgy rookie and he works exactly how a pudgy rookie should work: lots of yelling, lots of spears, and lots of diving headbutts. It was one diving headbutt, but considering how low the roof is in Nishichofu, that's still a lot of a diving headbutt. Nishi is equally impressive, coming in with blatant Masaaki Mochizuki ripoff gear and working like a guy that studied Mochizuki tapes without actually learning karate (but in a good way). He throws a bunch of hard kicks and lets loose with some big forearms. He's probably in the match the least, but I appreciate everything he brought to the table. Masaoka is easily the star of his team though, and maybe the whole match. As someone that's really only see Masaoka working as a deathmatch guy, seeing him do lightning-quick juniors work with full commitment and perfect execution is pretty stunning. He's blatantly inspired by TAKA Michinoku, and honestly? If TAKA ever brought him into K-DOJO as TAKAcito, I'd buy into it. He feels like the next coming of the guy, and does a ton of really awesome work outside of the TAKAism too, like a wild sliding knee strike and a beauty of a moonsault.

    The STYLE-E team is equally impressive. Even only three months into his career, Shota already has pro wrestling down to a science, hitting everything so smoothly and positioning himself perfectly for every spot he's involved in. To be this dependable of a hand with such a short amount of time as an actual wrestler is absurd, but of course Shota's the one to fit the description. Tamura and Takeda are both in the zone just as much as Shota is. They're rattling off their respective spots like nobody's business, and Takeda even gets to pull off some new moves, like a weird double underhook powerslam I've never seen him do before or since this match. I guess he decided to leave it in the workshop after this night. It was a cool move though, so he should bring it back. The best work the STYLE-E team does in this match is easily their tandem moves though. The three have a great sense of chaining moves together, and even hit the KDX pose with the STYLE-E hand sign. If you're gonna be a trio of dominating juniors workers trying to break down a team of plucky upstarts, you might as well take lessons from the best of the genre.

    I was ready for this to be a pretty good match. A decent follow-up to the potential classic that happened before it, mostly worth talking about because of how fascinating it is to see FREEDOMS main eventers Takeda and Masaoka squaring off before either of them were even in the deathmatch world, let alone six years before they'd face off in their current home promotion. However, this really overdelivered, and helped to reset the show as a whole. A vital match for the card, and a kickass match on its own.

Match Rating: B+

Ken Kataya, Bungee Takada, & Fugo Fugo Yumeji vs. Diablo, Kaoru Nemoto, & Kazuhiko Matsuzaki

    From six juniors to six heavyweights. We're pulling out the big guns here, as trio of general good guy attitudes Kataya, Takada, and Yumeji take on the dastardly Diablo, Nemoto, and Matsuzaki. Is Matsuzaki that evil? I don't feel like he usually is, but he's teaming with two notably evil guys here. Maybe he's moonlighting as a bastard. I think I've talked about everyone in this match before, so I'm not gonna do it again. Just know I think all six of these guys are cool, and this match is, on paper, pretty sick.

    Paper reflects reality, because this match is, in fact, pretty sick. It's incredibly "heavyweight" styled wrestling, so how much you enjoy this match probably depends on how much you enjoy that type of work. I've somewhat grown tired of the style over time, but these guys keep it interesting and do a lot more work than just heavyweight stuff, so it keeps me entertained throughout the runtime.

    The heel team is pretty awesome here. Nemoto is the weakest link, throwing some not good hammer fists and being a little underwhelming at first, before throwing a couple good punches and reeling me back in. He probably does the least outwardly interesting work of the three, but his work is still consistently solid and he's a nice addition to the team. Diablo is the main bad guy of the three and lives up to that position well, stomping and kicking Takada's arm and constantly bending the rules in his favor. He also has a real nice lariat and he hit it a good few times in the match, so I was happy. Matsuzaki is the highlight of his team though. Matsuzaki is kind of the ultimate reliable hand, working for over thirty years without losing much of a step. All of his execution is crisp, and he knows exactly when do what he does. He wrestles like he's got eyes all over the ring, and this was another textbook performance from him. He also throws really awesome strikes so that definitely helps. 

    The faces also contribute some great stuff here. Takada spends most of the match getting his ass kicked, but he gets a few opportunities to fight back, throwing some nice kicks and just generally doing good work. Kataya is a little rougher around the edges, but he's got some nice fire and his bigger bombs all rule, especially his piledriver. Fugo is definitely the most notable guy from the face side of the ring, entirely because he only comes in to hit big moves and be cool. His house of fire spot in the match entirely consists of him throwing headbutts and hitting backdrops. There's not much else to say. What more could you want?

    I think that this is definitely a step down from the last match. While the last match started strong and kept escalating to bigger moves and spots, this match was just generally solid for the entire runtime. I did enjoy all of the work in the match and I'm never unhappy about getting to see guys like Matsuzaki, Diablo, and Fugo, but it wasn't anything you'd need to see.

Match Rating: B-

2/3 Falls: Shigeo Kato vs. Hiroshi Watanabe

    The main event is here. On one side, you have Hiroshi Watanabe. The ace of Mumeijuku. The king of the style. The bastion of everything the promotion stands for. On the other, Shigeo Kato. Another person that has strong feelings for more traditional wrestling, but in an entirely different sense. Kato is a heel down to his bones. A man who embraces the villainy of old. If Watanabe is the last believer in the classic Japanese style, Kato is the final follower of Ric Flair-esque territory technical heel work. In a way, there's no two men more similar in the Japanese indie scene at this point than these two. And at the same time, they couldn't be any more different.

    The match reflects this pretty damn well. Kato and Watanabe both stick to the essentials of pro wrestling, taking weapons from the arsenals of the 60s and 70s, while still feeling like entirely unique individuals. If Iso/Maeda was a battle of physical endurance, then this match is a lot more concerned with mental fortitude. Rather than being a back and forth contest of two men trying to pick each other apart, this match is all about Watanabe's will to survive Kato's onslaught.

    Kato is a total bastard in this match. Early on, he's cheating at any and every opportunity, raking and gouging the eyes while going for cheap shots and quick tricks. The earliest lockup in the match ends with Watanabe against the ropes and Kato raking his forearms across his face, and that kind of petty work just never goes away. Kato, all throughout the match, kicks at Watanabe's face. It's never really one big moment when he does it. Instead, they all happen right before or after a more notable spot, or as a passive action in-between two larger actions. They don't do a ton of damage, nor does Kato probably want them to. They hurt just enough to pester and frustrate Watanabe, to drive home who's in charge.

    Because of all those little bug bites, Kato's real stingers feel much bigger. When Kato starts drilling Watanabe with piledrivers, it's not just a noteworthy moment because the piledrivers look great. The piledrivers are exclamation points at the end of a long paragraph of torture. Torture that, as the match goes on, becomes more and more targeted. Kato goes for the leg pretty early on, but somewhat abandons that target to instead go for every part of Watanabe's body. After the first fall however, Kato's mentality changes, and he very quickly starts shooting for Watanabe's left leg. There's a ton of super creative work here, from some awesome rule-bending involving Watanabe's boot to Kato's toe kicks transforming into shin kicks. The bombs of the match also morph into leg targeting. There's one spot on the outside of the ring that I really wish I could talk about, but it's the type of moment you just have to see for yourself. It's been a long time since I've seen a spot where borderline-parodic screams of pain like the ones Watanabe let out feel entirely earned.

    Speaking of Watanabe, what a guy. In the face of Kato's rule-breaking and disrespect, Watanabe stands firm on his beliefs. He fights back with incredible displays of athleticism and conditioning, tight submission work, and a fiery spirit. There's something incredibly endearing about Watanabe's work. I've heard friends describe him as a poor man's Inoki, and I don't think that's entirely inaccurate, although it certainly has some negative connotations to it. Watanabe is, at his core, an Inokiist. Not in the Twitter buzzword kind of way, but in the real kind of way. He's much closer to Yuki Ishikawa than he is to Kazuyuki Fujita. Watanabe is a firm believer in the power of fighting spirit, of standing your ground in the face of insurmountable odds and never saying die. It's a goofy spot, but every single time I see Watanabe get into his "take a swing wise guy" stance, I get the biggest grin across my face. Watanabe fights for a professional wrestling that doesn't exist anymore, and Mumeijuku is his only refuge to embrace that wrestling in full.

    This match isn't perfect though. I have some critiques, albeit not strong ones. The first fall of the match, while really good, does feel a little loosely worked, especially compared to Iso/Maeda. The finish for that fall also comes pretty abruptly, and I'm not sure if I love that abruptness (the crowd seemingly agreed with my mixed feelings based on their response to the fall). The second fall is pretty much perfect to me, so I have nothing to say there. However, I do think the third fall ever so slightly betrayed the previous one. I understand why it's worked the way it is, and I do think it's still really good, but if the execution had been slightly different, I'd be a lot higher on it. Also, I actually enjoyed the way the match ended, although I already know some people who have issues with it.

   Overall, this match, even with those faults, was great. Kato and Watanabe tapped into the pro wrestling they excel at, and they both played their roles incredibly well. The two have a rematch a few months later, and I'm praying that Hasegawa is able to unearth that show in the future. Just based on this match, I know they've got it in them to really craft together something monumental.

Match Rating: A-

STYLE-E 03/21/2009

                   (Written by jom)

Shota vs. Takeshi Tengu

    Takeshi Tengu is a Hanzo Nakajima trainee who primarily works for Nakajima's Wrestle Gate promotion (the same place Yuya Susumu and Seiki Yoshioka got started). That's really all I can say about him, as I've never seen one of his matches before this. Shota I've seen much of though, as he's currently a personal favorite in the 2022 wrestling landscape. He does a ton of Eddie Guerrero type stuff, has some great worked punches, and his team with Kenichiro Arai as Hattoshite Good is so much fun to watch. However, the Shota here is very different from the Shota many of you probably have seen before. This is him not even a year into pro wrestling, being a trainee from the U-FILE CAMP pro wrestling class and making his debut in April of 2008.

    The match itself was pretty solid overall. Tengu did some alright juniors stuff, hitting a good one-handed bulldog and a pretty cool cartwheel into flashing elbow. Shota meanwhile was fine, he had some nice grappling towards the start, he threw a nice enzuigiri, and the highlight of the match was definitely this beautiful german suplex he hit near the end:

    And that's really about all that happened. This was short (about 5 minutes long), worked in a really basic way, and ended when it probably should've. Not really worth seeking out or anything like that, but overall this was fine and it was cool seeing Shota so early into his career.

Rating: C+

Shoichi Uchida vs. Yukihiro Abe

    Shoichi Uchida is a guy I've seen a good bit since he tends to hang around the Kansai scene. He's been a mixed bag so far with some of his matches being pretty fun and some pretty boring, but he does do some pretty sweet samoan drops so it's hard for me not to be a fan. Abe meanwhile is someone I've yet to see in action, but from the looks of it he's a DDT guy who never really ended up getting anywhere big. He came out to Cruel Angel's Thesis and wears EVA-01 gear though, so obviously DDT must've been missing out.

    And this ended up being true because Abe was awesome in this match! His grappling was actually pretty damn good, really flowing on the mat early on. He hit some pretty nice dropkicks too, especially one after Uchida kicked out of a roll-up. On the topic of roll-ups, that was the best part of Abe's offense by far, doing a ton of different ones including this beautiful counter one that looks like a reverse Gannosuke clutch:

    Uchida, for his part, was solid enough. He never really did much that impressed me or anything, but he also never did anything negative either. Towards the end he did start to hit some cool things, like the nice flowsion below and some cool samoan drops.

    This was better than the last match, albeit not by much. It had some cool moments though, and I'm definitely interested in seeing what else Abe has done that's made tape.

Rating: B-

AKINO, Kyosuke Sasaki, & Shuji Ishikawa vs. Chon Akitoshi, Masa Takanashi, & Toshihiro Sueyoshi

    I haven't seen a ton from Takanashi or Sueyoshi but they both have cool looks. As for the rest, I've seen enough work from those four to say I'm a fan of them all, especially Sasaki who for my money might be the best U-FILE trainee in terms of pure shoot style ability.

    This ended up being solid. The face team were absolutely the highlights of the match. AKINO is awesome as a tenured hard hitting wrestler, and ended up probably being my favorite part of the match. She threw some really awesome kicks and hit one particularly awesome backdrop. She also did some genuinely funny comedy stuff towards the beginning, I couldn't understand anything she or Takanashi were talking about but the fact she just refused to stop trying to talk over him was great. Sasaki was also good in that same role, coming in and just beating people up. It didn't feel like he was in a ton but when he was he did some cool stuff. Ishikawa was great as this giant monster, throwing big boots and manhandling everyone. He had the spot of the match too when he threw Akitoshi into the ring, as seen below.

    The heel group (members of the Heisei D-Shingun faction led by Ken Ohka) was also pretty good, albeit definitely not as good as the face side. Akitoshi is awesome, doing kung fu diving side kicks and shit like that. He also did some really great arm targeting stuff on AKINO, really showing how he's not just a one-trick pony with the kung fu. Takanashi was alright but god he made me mad sometimes. In terms of good he did hit a few cool moves like a leg lariat thing he did near the end, and some of his heel work was genuinely pretty good, but man he just would not stop overselling. About 50% of the time, if you hit him slightly hard he was going to flop around on the mat like a fish out of water, and it was some of the dumbest selling I've ever seen. I understand that Heisei D-Shingun is meant to be a heel faction full of guys that are over-emotive and it's meant to be somewhat hokey, but every time he did that and other horrible sells it just took me out of the match. Sueyoshi on the other hand was about as good as Takanashi but was bad for different reasons. He just felt relatively weak and untrained compared to everyone else, throwing nothing forearms and hitting moves sloppily, like he literally only started training a week before the match. At least he got to somewhat redeem himself by hitting this combination with Akitoshi:

    I think this was somewhat better than the last match, but not by a ton. It had some pretty fun moments throughout but when 2/3rds of one of the teams are lame ducks, there's a ceiling to how good the match can actually be.

Rating: B

Masato Shibata vs. Hiroshi Kosakai

    This is for Shibata's RCW International championship, a title he won from Kosakai, who originally won it at River City Wrestling in 2007 while on a short US tour. At this point, the belt was pretty much a title owned by MAKEHEN/Team Vader, so it makes sense for two MAKEHEN boys to fight for it here. Masato Shibata is the future Mad Paulie, who at this point is just a shooty hoss and a big mark for Vader (a very good combination in my own opinion). Kosakai meanwhile is a guy who I've gotten very hyped up on in the past few months, first seeing him appear on one of the Occupation of the Indiez reruns and then getting more and more into his work as I sought out more full matches. He's a hard-hitting shooter who throws some crazy knees and punches, and he has a really awesome look to him too with the silver/white/black gear and the big arm tattoo. 

    God man, this match rocked hard. Kosakai was fucking great here, throwing some disgustingly stiff kicks all over Shibata's body, but especially to his leg. He really beat the shit outta Shibata's leg, not only throwing kicks but also stomping on it and really trying to rip it apart with different holds. He didn't just throw kicks though, with the combo shown below being probably the best strike combo he did the whole match. He also somehow hit a fucking brainbuster on the 300+ pound Shibata, which I truly cannot fathom even though I saw it happen.

    Shibata more than held up his end of the match though, probably putting in an even better performance than Kosakai. His leg selling during the main portion of the match was great, even doing a running corner move with a slight limp so he could still do his moves but keep the logic of the match going. He threw some absolutely gnarly chops too, with the noise they made being WALTER level, and he also threw some vader hammers with such reckless abandon I'm shocked Kosakai didn't get legitimately fucked up by one. The best part of his whole arsenal was the suplexes though, with this combination genuinely getting me to laugh and say "holy fuck" under my breath.

    Now, did this match have some faults? Of course. Kosakai and Shibata both had no-sell moments, and Kosakai had some "KING'S ROAD~!" type shit with a one count kickout which, while significantly less offensive than usual due to the execution of the following spots, was still unneeded. But even with this, I still think this was an absolute blast, with both guys going balls to the wall throughout. A really great match, one that makes me wanna start a new comprehensive series for Kosakai ASAP.

Rating: A-

Keita Yano & Tetsuhiro Kuroda vs. Masashi Takeda & Jaki Numazawa

    This looks like a really fun bullshit match on paper. Yano is of course a beast, one of my personal favorites and even this early into his career he was doing a ton of fun stuff (even if he hadn't lost his mind and gone joker mode yet). Kuroda is kinda divisive among people I know but I personally enjoy his work usually, doing some fun spots and having a solid lariat. Takeda is a generational talent, while Sasaki is my favorite shoot style guy from U-FILE CAMP, Takeda is definitely my favorite overall wrestler, and in my opinion might be the greatest "deathmatch" wrestler of all time. Numazawa is another really fun deathmatch guy, and absolutely able to hold his own in normal matches too.

    And this ended up being a fun bullshit match in execution! Yano was pretty sweet here, doing his usual work but also incorporating some chair stuff into it. He hit a pretty cool combo of a codebreaker with a chair into the Yurikamome, and he also hit this awesome springboard dropkick onto Takeda with Takeda's head on a chair, as seen below. Kuroda meanwhile was fine, he didn't do anything out of the ordinary for him and he kept the match going.

    Takeda and Numazawa were both menaces here. Both frequently used chairs and Numazawa even became the only person to use a weapon besides a chair by hitting Kuroda with the ring bell. Takeda was pretty awesome here just doing his thing, hitting some cool moves like a dropkick with Keita seated in, you guessed it, another chair, as well as a pretty sick german suplex. Numazawa actually was even better in this match in my opinion, doing some really fun brawling and hitting Yano with a michinoku driver onto a pile of... wait for it. CHAIRS! The sickest spot of the match also involved a chair, and it was downright horrifying, with Takeda and Numazawa hitting a suplex on Yano onto an open chair, completely snapping the back of it.

    In the end, this ended up being pretty fun, albeit nothing must-see. No real big takeaways or anything, just a fine match featuring some cool spots and overall doing everything it needed to.

Rating: B

No Rope, No Escape: Ken Ohka vs. Kazuhiro Tamura

    This match had been built up for a good bit of time, with Ohka leading Heisei D-Shingun (a stable made up of DDT regulars and also Toshihiro Sueyoshi) with the intent of taking over STYLE-E, and Tamura leading the frontlines in fighting this invasion off. He actually lost the title to Masa Takanashi in late 2008, as well as losing a singles to Ohka at the end of the year, but he regained the belt at the show before this one, leading to the two leaders of their respective groups facing off in a match without any ring ropes (the name given for the rules is actually what they called it, which is beast). Ohka came out with his stablemates and Akitoshi flying the Heisei D-Shingun flag, while Tamura came out flanked by the rest of the STYLE-E roster draped in a STYLE-E towel.

    Wouldn't you know it, this match was a lot of fun too! Tons of great bullshit spots featuring both teams, which we will get into, but I must at least show you the first one before saying anything else because it fucking ruled:

    Ohka was pretty awesome here, doing a ton of cool heel stuff and working strongly from the top. He had some nice punches and cool spots targeting the stomach like this crazy gutwrench gutbuster and his signature rolling fireman's carry. While some of the stuff he did towards the beginning was kinda meh, he absolutely turned it up in the latter half of the match. Best spot of the night on his part was the disgusting spear pictured below. His cronies in Heisei D-Shingun also played their part perfectly, constantly getting involved and being general assholes, eventually leading to the wild brawl that would cause both teams to leave the match.

    Tamura, meanwhile, was the absolute king in this match. He layed in some awesome kicks and did some crazy big moves, like an insane spear counter into an armbar. He was really awesome in the role of the underdog too, getting the crowd behind him pretty damn well. The stuff he pulled off towards the end was awesome too, especially this absolutely blasting head kick:

    The finishing stretch was fucking insane too, with both guys looking to genuinely destroy the other's brains (Ohka using headbutts and Tamura using head kicks), and honestly just that finishing stretch made this match worth watching. Overall, a really fun main event, and a great way to end the show.

Rating: B+