Kazuaki Mihara vs. Katsumi Oribe
Two of Maruyama/Tigers Mask's trainees square off to start the show. Oribe is nicknamed "Karate Boy" and comes out in satin pants with a gi belt design on them. This irrationally infuriates yet greatly intrigues me. Mihara meanwhile is out with with an absolutely insane mohawk and looks about 50 lbs heavier than he is today, so good on him for getting fitter.
Sadly, this match has less to talk about once the bell rings than before it even started. Mihara was fine as the one in control, doing some okay power moves and throwing some kinda hard chest chops. Oribe just wasn't that good though. He only threw a few kicks throughout the entire match and, while fine, none of them seemed good enough to warrant literally being nicknamed "karate boy". The rest of the time he threw some meh chest chops. Finish was solid with Mihara barreling through Oribe with a nice lariat before hitting a well-executed landslide for the win.
Not that good of a match, I guess it worked as an opener but genuinely, I can only sum up my feelings on Katsumi Oribe with one image.
Rating: C-
Bull Armor TAKUYA vs. Naoshi Sano
Not many better ways to rebound from a disappointing match than with Naoshi motherfuckin Sano baby. Sano's one of my favorite sleaze indy guys, able to do some genuinely good wrestling when he's in the zone but almost always entertaining regardless. Bull Armor TAKUYA is a guy I only saw for the first time a few days ago, but Chris can vouch for me when I say that he's pretty sweet. He was in a battle royale from a 2007 Riki Office show and at one point did an MDickie running flex taunt into a corner splash, which immediately made him one of Chris' top sleaze boys. However, that was 2007, and this is 2015. In 2007 TAKUYA was absolutely jacked, but here he looks more like Akebono than Chris Masters. This may sound like a negative, but, as my friend Ciel put it:
In terms of the actual match, it ended up being a pretty fun one. TAKUYA and Sano both have their own bits that they like to do, and more often than not those bits meshed pretty well, such as when Sano would do his "not a powerful wrestler" bit combined with TAKUYA's "extremely powerful wrestler and also evil laugh" bit. TAKUYA has not only gained weight in the last 8 years, but has also seemingly lost brain cells, because he was just going absolutely insane during the match. At one point he started like yelling and swinging his arms around, with both of them ending up in a flex pose. He then went completely silent for about 3 seconds before starting to do his weird evil laugh thing and ran in place for 10 seconds. I'm not entirely sure what this bit is meant to be but credit to him for the creativity.
The actual wrestling during this match wasn't particularly great or anything, but it was totally serviceable for the type of match they were doing. TAKUYA throws some real thunderous chops a few times, and Sano is more than game to do a little bit of hard striking of his own. TAKUYA also does a pretty sweet Vader bomb at one point, but soon after would get rolled up by Sano, resulting in Sano's victory.
While this wasn't anything special in terms of the "action", this match still ended up being a lot of fun thanks to the really enjoyable personalities of the two involved. Comedy can be hit or miss for me but this was definitely a hit.
Rating: B-
Osamu Suganuma & Kuishinbo Kamen vs. Takoyakida & Otoko Sakari
Y'know how I literally just said "comedy can be hit or miss for me"? Well, hello Otoko Sakari. Glad you could be here to demonstrate the latter option. If you don't know, Otoko Sakari is the comedy gimmick of the legendary Alexander Otsuka, one of my personal GOATs and an undeniably amazing wrestler in his prime. Otoko Sakari, meanwhile, fucking stinks. I've never been a fan of someone's whole gimmick being based around their private areas and gross-out humor, so whenever I see genuine all-timer Otsuka trying to force people to eat his gross ass through a loincloth, it just makes me really sad that I'm not watching him do actually cool stuff. Anyways, there's three other people in this match, including Kuishinbo Kamen (an example of good comedy wrestling!).
I don't have a ton of notes for this match because sadly, about half of it was Sakari spots, and I just cannot bring myself to note down every time he presented his asshole to an audience member. Takoyakida wasn't great either, as he pretty just did a "funny haha" voice and pointed at his ass a few times. He might've done more but he was so nothing in the entire match I can't remember. I will say that in terms of good comedy, Suganuma and Kamen brought it in spades. Suganuma is of course the 3rd Ebessan (after Kikutaro and Flying Kid Ichihara), so he's able to do some pretty fun comedy spots such as trying to hit a running senton only to fly about 5 feet off target. Kamen is of course the best part of this match, a genuine all-time great of the comedy wrestling genre. He was an absolute dickhead this entire match, pummeling Takoyakida with closed fists and low blows. This of course culminated in maybe my favorite spot of the whole match, where Kamen does this:
What an asshole!
Unsurprisingly, the actual wrestling was pretty solid as well. Both Kamen and Suganuma are pretty damn good in the ring, with Kamen continuing to be impressively agile over 20 years into his career at this point, and Suganuma doing some pretty cool moves as well. Takoyakida was fine, about as forgettable as a wrestler as he was as a comedian though. The most impressive/depressing part of this match was definitely Sakari, as shockingly, he could seemingly still go at this point. Maybe it was because he didn't have to work at the usual hard pace he does, but he was able to pull off the best giant swing I've ever seen him do in the 2010s. This is depressing because it happened in an Otoko Sakari match, meaning almost immediately after this he went back to trying to force his opponents to eat his ass. The match ended soon after with Suganuma hitting a genuinely great Musou for the victory.
I think that when you look at this match outside of the Otoko Sakari stuff, it was actually kinda good. Kamen and Suganuma were both really enjoyable, and Takoyakida was perfectly fine as the guy taking all of their cool moves. However, the Otoko Sakari stuff was at least half of the entire match, and it wouldn't be right to not consider just how bad and even boring some of it made the overall match. If you enjoy that type of comedy I guess this match would be up your alley but my god I just can't bring myself to like it.
Rating: C-
Magnitude Kishiwada, Tadasuke, & Shuji Ishikawa vs. Naoki Sakurajima, Mineo Fujita, & HUB
After three matches that ranged from meh to flat-out bad, I really needed to see something that made sitting down for this tape worth it. This match had made me excited from the second I saw it listed on the show, so going into this I was hoping that this would be the match to help me recover my drive and push me to actually stick around the the main event. Honestly, I'm a little disappointed in myself though. Why would I ever doubt that this match would kick ass?
Not a single person in this match did a bad job on this night. Genuinely, I think every person delivered what they were meant to deliver. Sakurajima was the whipping boy for the face team, taking the brunt of the major offense and being targeted by a particularly malicious Kishiwada for most of the match, which only lead to his eventual comeback against Kishiwada being that much more impactful. Fujita was also doing great as a whipping boy in this match, albeit he got significantly more offense in. Fujita's a guy that I have extremely mixed feelings on, as on one hand he's an extremely talented juniors guy who was quite possibly the greatest WMF trainee out of the few to come out of the promotion. On the other hand, he's fully committed himself nowadays to his "EROTIC VIOLENCE" gimmick, and as said before, gimmicks based around cock and balls just aren't my thing. He's a perfect example of an exceptional wrestler who completely squanders any interest I'd have in him because he has a stupid, gross gimmick. In this match though, that isn't the case, as while he's near the peak of his wrestling abilities he also hasn't taken on the gimmick of a pervert yet so he's significantly more enjoyable. Tadasuke was pretty similar to Fujita in this match actually, being the clear whipping boy for the face team while also acting as a good spoiler, shutting down different comeback attempts. I think he definitely performed at a lesser level than he could, but that was less because of his own efforts and more because he just wasn't the center of attention at any point really.
In terms of the best performances though, that mark definitely goes to HUB and Shuji Ishikawa. HUB was undeniably the best part of the face team, hitting all his usual spots to perfection. I'm a sucker for moves involving grey-area weaponry, and HUB's tail whip is maybe the best of that category. He's also just a genuinely amazing juniors wrestler, and even at one point hits an insane diving senton onto Kishiwada and Tadasuke stacked on top of each other. However, the best wrestler not only on the heel team, but in the entire match, was for sure the big dawg. He actually acted as the backbone for the entire match, guiding the ebbs and flows with his actions and consistently being the one to push the match forward positively, keeping it from entering into flat-out move spamming or losing heat. Ishikawa is also just one of the best of his style, and he was in full-form on this night, doing some insane power moves like a stun gun to Fujita where he threw him like a lawn dart into the ropes. He also popped off multiple of his disgusting knees, culminating in this absolutely nutty one to Fujita:
Soon after this, the faces were able to get the advantage, with Tadasuke eventually being put down for the 3 count after being hit with a swanton bomb from Fujita followed by a beautiful frog splash from HUB.
This was an absolute barn-burner of a match. It's honestly hard to say more than that. It went almost 20 minutes, yet at no point do I think it felt like it was going long. Every person got their moment to shine, and even if I think Tadasuke should've gotten a little bit more in the match, overall this is still one of the best 6-man tags I've seen in a very good bit of time. A wonderful palette cleanser of a match in preparation for the main event.
Rating: A-
Atsushi Maruyama vs. Daisuke Sekimoto
For anyone that doesn't know, Atsushi Maruyama is the real name of one Tigers Mask, a common fixture of the Osaka scene. In all honesty, I've always been split on Maruyama. I think that while he's definitely talented in the ring and is a good lucharesu guy, I've always felt that his strikes left a lot to be desired, and his "Tigers Suplex" is one of the worst tiger suplexes I've ever seen. However, Sekimoto is a true future Hall of Famer (for whatever Hall of Fame he'd be able to be entered in) so I had faith that even if Maruyama shit the bed, Sekimoto would make sure this match was still at least good. In good news though, Sekimoto totally didn't need to carry the match, as Maruyama very much held up his side of the encounter.
The match's overall story was pretty good. Maruyama spent a lot of time attacking the limbs of Sekimoto, throwing some hard strikes at the legs while primarily focusing on targeting the right arm of the muscle monster. He threw some genuinely nasty kicks to it, as well as pulling out some pretty nice submissions like a tight kimura. He also was able to pull off some pretty cool maneuvers, like countering a lariat by backflipping before locking in a tight manji-gatame. Sekimoto was in peak form here, continuing to show why his mid-10s were probably the best years of his entire career. He absolutely obliterated Maruyama with some mean chops and forearms, and also threw Maruyama around like a child with some insane suplexes. Of these suplexes though, none of them were as impressive as his outside-in deadlift german suplex, where he seemed to pick up Maruyama so casually that I genuinely didn't register that he was lifting him until he was actually starting to suplex Maruyama.
In terms of criticisms, this match definitely was not perfect. Maruyama was hit-or-miss with some of his strikes, the biggest miss being his high kicks. Maybe it was because his low and mid-kicks were so vicious, but when he started throwing ultra-light thigh-slappy high kicks at Sekimoto, I genuinely lost interest in the whole Maruyama control segment. Also, for a lot of the earlier portion of the match Maruyama depended a lot of some pretty boring rest holds. Sekimoto isn't exempt from criticisms either, as the end of the match, while good, entirely ignored the last 90% of the match. Sekimoto was able to take control from Maruyama and started to just hit all his big match-enders, throwing two nasty lariats before hitting his beautiful deadlift german suplex for the win. While this finish was sweet in isolation, it entirely ignored the 10 or so minutes of Maruyama hyper-focused on the right arm of Sekimoto (the arm that Sekimoto hit those last few lariats with mind you). I'm not saying that Sekimoto shouldn't have hit his ending combination, because it was awesome. All I'm saying is that if that was what the ending was going to be, maybe working over his right arm wasn't the best move.
Overall, this was a really good match between two guys who had enough chemistry to make going 20+ minutes mostly work. While I have gripes with the ending and some of Maruyama's offense choices, I can't deny that he performed well overall and definitely exceeded my expectations. Was this match better than the one before it? Absolutely not. But it told its own story and at bare minimum, I'll be thinking about that outside-in german for a while.
Rating: B
