Comprehensive Super Rider #5

            (Written by jom)

    How long has it been since the last one of these? Two YEARS??? Jesus Christ. It's about time we jump back on the Battle Hopper and ride into the night with our good friend, Mr. Shooter Super Rider. 

Super Rider vs. Uchu Power X (PWC 05/09/1996)

    PWC's two big bad shooters collide in the holy temple. This is a "No Rope Escape Instant Knockout" match, which means that there are no rope escapes and any shot that would usually initiate a down count will instead immediately end the match. This is a match that demands perfection in fighting. Any slip-up can be catastrophic, and any door left open may be the path to defeat. Rider and Uchu, however, are two legitimate monster shooters, and this feels like the closest the sleaze indies ever came to delivering a superfight. Everything that happens here is struggled for and fought over. There are counters on counters to an almost comedic extent, like Uchu's armbar-countering slam being countered into a heel hook by Rider, only for Uchu to counter that by keeping himself standing and slapping the taste out of Rider's mouth. That leads me to my biggest compliment for this match: it never felt like they were holding back. Especially with a match type like this, there's almost an expectation that they would rein it in and avoid throwing real killshots, focusing entirely on the groundwork to fill time. While matwork does make up a good chunk of this match, there's absolutely enough stand-and-bang to keep me happy, and every strike is thrown full-force. Kicks let out shotgun blasts and shoteis ring my ears as much as it rang theirs. Even with my glowing evaluation, it's not a faultless match. Especially around rounds three and four (this is five 3-minute rounds, by the way), this match slightly suffers from the RINGS problem; that is, some of the matwork just doesn't have enough happening to keep me locked onto the match. There's just a bit too much sitting in mount position to ignore, even if it happens so little that it only barely affects my enjoyment overall. To all the shoot style fans in attendance, seek this one out. It's the sleaziest UWFi midcard classic you've never seen. 

Match Rating: A-

Super Rider vs. Hayato Mashita (RJPW 06/17/2010)

    Hayato Mashita is not someone I have any particular interest in. He's probably the least interesting Sayama trainee of them all. Don't get me wrong, I've seen him in good matches, but I'd be hard pressed to say he was the reason any match was ever great. He's always had the problem of being particularly rough around the edges and generally boring compared to his peers in the world of 21st century shooters. Having said all of that, this is probably one of his best performances ever. Mashita is legitimately mean here, jumping Rider before the bell and letting loose with kicks, punches, and headbutts aplenty. He also does a perfectly fine job of targeting Rider's hurt leg, kicking it out and working it over with holds just enough to make it an understood problem for Rider. He's still very rough, but that roughness lends a lot to the grittiness of his beatdowns, so it somewhat works out for him. He also still has no idea how to run the ropes three years into his career, and his kicks are embarrassingly quiet, but I just appreciate how god damn motivated he was here. Anyways, Rider ruled as usual. He's no longer a spring chicken, but he's still got a hop in his step and a snap in his kicks. His rolling elbow is gnarly and his suicide dive is, well, suicidal. He even busts out the rare diving RIDER ELBOW, which not only looked really cool, but also gave me a great photo for the top of the blog post. It's not a great match, and it's certainly nowhere near the last one we talked about, but I had fun with this one. A real feather in the cap kind of match for Mashita, but just another Thursday in the office for Rider.

Match Rating: B-

Super Rider & Wild Pony vs. Junichi Hanawa & KURO-OBI (H-Production 08/11/2024)

    We've reached the big '24. Kamen Shooter Super Rider is 62 years old. A documentary on his career and current life has just premiered in Japan. No, really! I haven't watched it yet (and I have no idea how I would) but it's really cool to see something like this made. Rider's such an important figure in both MMA and pro wrestling in ways that very few people know or realize. Anyways, here's Old Man Rider wrestling in the world's smallest bar, working in a ring with chain ropes and so little room outside of it that both teams have to stand on the same side of the "apron" when outside. We're so deep in the muck here that we're practically swimming in it. Look beyond this strange environment filled with anime girl masks and moth beasts though and you're left with a pretty damn good match. This is the oldest of the taped Old Man Rider performances, and while he's clearly slowed down, he's still moving a lot better than a man in his 60s should, with his grappling against KURO-OBI being particularly inspiring. It's fascinating to see him doing restless sprawling and scrambling against a masked shooter in 1996, only to skip forward 28 years and see him do it again. This time around it's a little less hungry and a little more "two brown belts having a somewhat spirited spar," but the hold escapes feel desperate enough that the rolling never enters into unserious territory. Outside of this work, the match is generally Rider and Wild Pony attacking Hanawa's leg, and they do a good job of wearing it down convincingly. Pony might actually be my favorite part of the match sans Rider. He's worked under many names and you've probably never seen a single one of his matches, but Pony is a long-time scum indie veteran, and he's clearly so damn good from the small handful of his matches we have. He busts out some nice leg snaps and stomps, along with nailing a beautiful heel kick late in the match. He also hits a super snappy body slam as a kill move at one point, which actually works because the Tokyo Underground Arena ring might be the worst thing to bump on in the whole world. Hanawa and KURO-OBI are both cool enough and play their parts well, but the Rider and Pony team is really what keeps you paying attention here. Another fun outing from Rider and further evidence that we should try and track down as much footage of Wild Pony as possible.

Match Rating: B

Comprehensive Super Rider #4

        (Written by jom, photo credit to Extreme Party)

Super Rider, Asian Cougar, & Yuki Nishino vs. Ni Hao, Thanomsak Toba, & Takashi Sasaki (DDT 11/25/1999)

    I cannot say enough how great it is that so much early DDT has appeared throughout the years, because good lord, what a murderers' row. I've talked a lot about most of the people in this match, but somehow, I've never talked about Ni Hao before this. It makes sense considering just how little of his work is available, but really, every time a prime Ni Hao match is found, it feels like a cause for celebration. Ni Hao was Koki Kitahara's protege and the crown prince of CAPTURE, working at the top of CAPTURE cards while also starting the original REAL BLOOD with Tomohiro Ishii. He's a scrappy as hell shooter who can do tight grappling while throwing bombs with the best of them, usually working as a fired-up underdog but sometimes showcasing a mean streak reminiscent of his mentor. I honestly believe that Ni Hao could've been something special in pro wrestling given more exposure, and in an alternate universe, he was one of the top prospects of the dying days of the first Battlarts.

    With a match like this, I would usually focus on the best performers, only giving a little bit of time to the lesser men. That's gonna be hard to do for this match though, because everyone was fucking killing it! Rider and Ni Hao were of course my focus points for the match, and they had some magic lineal Sayamaist exchanges throughout. Their work together was the slowest of the match, but it absolutely worked with both guys being really deliberate and fighting for all their holds. Even with noting how slow they worked though, Rider served as the pace-setter for this match by rushing Ni Hao with an insane running Rider Kick right when the bell rang (shown below) before just flinging himself out of the ring with a huge suicide dive. Their work against other wrestlers was really cool too, with Ni Hao busting out a huge waterwheel drop on Nishino and Rider having some pretty awesome exchanges with Toba.

    Toba and Sasaki were the perfect asskickers to put with Ni Hao to build a total monster team. Toba was sadly not in the match as much as you'd hope, but he always made the most of his time, peppering guys with nasty punches and throwing cracking kicks. His aforementioned work with Rider was really cool, and he also got a nice moment with Nishino where Nishino just ate all of Toba's strikes before getting nearly knocked out cold by a brutal right hook. Sasaki was also on point here, coming in and throwing mean kicks while also dropping dudes on their heads with big lariats and a dangerous D-Geist. This team even had some really nice chemistry as a unit, doing some awesome combos including this one where Sasaki and Toba each threw a stiff as hell shot before Ni Hao dropped Cougar on his head with a german suplex:

    Nishino and Cougar both did some really immense stuff in this match as well. Nishino came into this match painfully aware of the asskicking he was gonna get from the Ni Hao/Toba/Sasaki trio, and decided to make sure he got his own licks in, throwing some thunderous chops and busting out a few huge moves like a perfect powerslam he hit on Ni Hao. He even got this really awesome hulk-up moment with the trio were all beating down on him, throwing those gross chops of his at Ni Hao and Sasaki before smashing Toba with a brutal headbutt. Cougar wasn't as much of an asskicker as the other five in this match, but he still held his own with some truly awe-inspiring spots. Cougar is, in my opinion, probably one of the best "spots" guys ever, tending to work matches focused entirely on pulling off the Cougar classics, but making sure every time to integrate them into the match as smoothly and naturally as possible. There were slingshot leg drops galore, and every single one of them fucking rocked, especially the ludicrous one he hit on Sasaki while Nishino had him held over the top rope. Cougar's moves outside of the slingshot leg drops rocked too, especially one amazing dive he hit on Sasaki. Really, he was the most dependable guy in the match when it came to doing crazy shit, and he did as much crazy shit as he could.

    In the end, Cougar missed a big diving headbutt on Sasaki, leading to a decapitating lariat from Sasaki getting the win for his team. As a whole, this match was great, just lots of smash-mouth wrestling and insane moments. There were absolutely some slight botches and a few moments of roughness, but none of it ever really detracted from the match. Only real point of criticism I can levy at this is that it made me sad that we never got a Ni Hao/Rider singles match in CAPTURE, as that would've probably been the perfect environment for them to do the gritty matwork and stiff striking they showed off here. Other than that, awesome stuff from early DDT, and a great showcase of the talents of all six guys involved.

Rating: A-

Super Rider vs. Junji.com (Battlarts 01/28/2001)

    Two years later, we are in Tokyo FM Hall for a B-Rule match between Rider and Junji.com (AKA Junji Inazuma AKA Mach Junji AKA Junji Tanaka). B-Rule is a pretty complex ruleset, with the wrestlers only being allowed to grapple while also sharing five rope breaks rather than having a set amount for each of them. Any time either of them uses a rope break, the overall amount of allowed breaks will go down (ex: one person grabbing the ropes twice and the other person grabbing them three times would result in all the rope breaks being used up). After five total breaks have occurred, the ref will no longer break up a hold when someone is in the ropes. If a match goes to a time limit draw, the winner is decided based on who grabbed the ropes the least amount of times, and if both are equal in rope usage, the loser is the one who grabbed the ropes first. This probably seems overly complicated (it is), but it's resulted in some really awesome and creative spots before, so I personally enjoy the ruleset a good deal.

    This, of course, ended up being a very cool little match, with Junji and Rider approaching the match with pretty differing ideologies on grappling. Junji primarily utilized his speed rigid technique to constantly hunt for holds he knew how to apply, using more basic holds like cross armbars and rear naked chokes that he could confidently execute without having to worry about spending too much time thinking about the hold. Meanwhile, Rider was all about fluidity and slick movement on the mat, looking out for stray limbs to latch onto and transitioning between holds to find the right way to apply the most amount of pain. 

    Outside of solely the grappling, there were some really interesting story beats primarily based around Rider and his aggressive style of working. At multiple points, Rider had to fight back his instincts telling him to throw punches or kicks (with the ref having to remind Rider over and over again that this wasn't under Seikendo rules), and a few times, Rider took a little long to let go of holds when Junji had a rope break. This culminated pretty well when Rider took a few extra seconds to let go of a kneebar, and in response, Junji busted out a lightning-fast kneebar of his own immediately after, forcing Rider to go straight for the ropes.

    It wasn't long after this though that Rider put on a deep STF, forcing Junji to use the final rope break in the match. Both men kept the intensity up as they approached the ending stretch, and Junji got his own chance to do some creative work, using the ropes to pull himself up while Rider had him in a kneebar and gain enough leverage to apply a tight cross heel hold. Rider would get revenge for this however, as when Junji had him in a front necklock soon after this, Rider kicked himself off of one of the corners, breaking the necklock by slamming down Junji hard. Without hesitation, Rider pounced on him and got a perfect cross armbar in for the tapout victory.

    I thought this was really good for what it was. It never entered into full-on great territory for me, but instead stayed at a very solid level of quality before finishing with a fun and well-built ending. Grappling matches like this are definitely an acquired taste, but if you're able to ride along for pure matwork and drama derived from holds and transitions, then you'll probably enjoy this match too.

Rating: B+

Super Rider & Tiger Shark vs. Hideki Hosaka & Kazuhiko Matsuzaki (RJPW 12/07/2012)

    Back to normal pro wrestling, we are now 11 years older and in the midst of WAR~! For god knows how long, Sayama and Atsushi Onita have been leading their armies into bloody and violent conflict (a lot of multi-man tag matches), and of course, first lieutenant Super Rider is here to fight on the front lines. He's teaming with favorite of the blog and fellow Seikendo trainee Tiger Shark against Hideki Hosaka and Kazuhiko Matsuzaki. Hosaka is really just a wrestler that exists, a solid enough worker who has never really inspired any strong feelings in me. Matsuzaki meanwhile is  one of the most consistently great indie guys of the last 30 years. With pro wrestling training under Ryuma Go and karate training under Masashi Aoyagi, he's been practically built to be one of the best sleaze indie guys in the world, and getting to see him at any point is always a treat.

    Once again, Rider delivers a fun enough match. The invader army of Hosaka and Matsuzaki were pretty cool here, mainly Matsuzaki. He was throwing some really nice worked punches and when he got to do some offense he busted out some great shit like his signature flying neckbreaker drop and the beautiful backdrop suplex shown below. Hosaka was mostly nothing here as always, but he did at least have one very fun moment where he stopped a pinfall attempt by attacking the referee. Dumb shit like that just appeals to me a lot, I don't know what else to say. 

    The real stars here were Shark and Rider though. Tiger Shark was really able to step up in this match and was honestly borderline great, especially in the ending stretch. He threw hard kicks, pulled off some really nice big moves like a weird snap side powerslam and a mean tombstone piledriver, and the moonsault he hit on Matsuzaki was an absolute thing of beauty. That moonsault led directly into the finish too, as when Matsuzaki kicked out, Shark immediately grabbed his arm and locked in the always awesome Shark Death By Lock II to get the win for team Real Japan.

Nearly 13 years to the day, Rider once again started the match with an insane suicide dive, this one being even crazier than the one he hit on Ni Hao as he actually flew over the guardrail and into the crowd. The Super Rider suicide dive is slowly becoming one of my favorite dives ever because this guy really throws himself out of the ring like he has a death wish. While Rider mostly stuck to busting out the classics like the Rider flying cross chop, Rider flipping senton, and Rider elbow drop, the Rider classics are my jam so I was having the time of my life. Plus, he hit another suicide dive later on in the match. This man was 50 years old busting out planchas for fun. Absolute legend.

    This match wasn't some incredible epic or anything like that. It was a throwaway midcard tag match on a throwaway Real Japan show (and Real Japan itself is a throwaway promotion). However, there was still some really fun stuff going on here, and the ending stretch between Shark and Matsuzaki was awesome. Plus, two different Super Rider suicide dives. What more can you ask for?

Rating: B

SHARK WEEK! #1: Tiger Shark

               (Written by jom)

    Guys, gals, and non-binary pals, welcome to one of the greatest international holidays in the history of international holidays. A celebration so sweet they made it a week. That's right baby, it's Shark Week! A week to enjoy the most dangerous yet most beloved aquatic animal, with great program's such as "Air Jaws: Top Guns", "Rise of the Monster Hammerheads", and of course, the always lauded "Shark Women: Ghosted by Great Whites". Hell, this year's festivities are even being hosted by legendary IWA PR alumni, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson! However, with all these wonderful TV programs being hosted by a former professional wrestler, I got to thinking about something that has always been in the back of my head: "why doesn't anyone celebrate the greatest sharks in wrestling?". Well, I now have something of a platform, so if nobody else will, why don't I?

    For the next week, I'll be posting not one, not two, not four, but THREE different articles speaking the good word of three different professional wrestling sharks. And if we're gonna be spending a whole week talking about them, why don't we start with one with some real legacy? In comes Tiger Shark, evil nemesis to Super Tiger and RJPW's resident shark-themed Sayama trainee. No ifs, ands, or buts about it, this guy just rocks. He feels like he's way more of a protege of Sayama than any of the other tigers, regularly busting out both stiff strikes and impressive aerial maneuvers. While nowadays he's abandoned the Tiger aspect entirely and set on his own as Blue Shark, we'll only be looking at some of his work as Tiger Shark in this post. Now, on with the article~!

Tiger Shark vs. Ryuji Walter (BattlArts 08/30/2009)

    This is just such a kick-ass match on paper. I've already talked about how much Shark rules, but as I've been consuming more and more of reborn BattlArts, I've come to realize just how based Ryuji Walter is. He's a tubby shooter wearing a singlet, kickpads, and MMA gloves, with all three being in black and silver, which is just a really awesome color combo. He also has a really interesting story as a wrestler too, as he was raised in the United States and became a bouncer, before training under Boris Malenko and working the low American independents. Eventually, George King (a fellow indy worker who had gotten opportunities to wrestle in Battlarts previously) introduced Walter to Ishikawa, resulting in Walter returning to Japan and becoming a member of the promotion. He also booked some crazy produce shows, so Ryuji Walter, if you somehow end up reading this, please DM me on Twitter so I can pay you a lot of money to watch them.

    Ryuji Walter, similar to his gear, was pretty damn sweet in this match. He had some awesome pro-wrestling type stuff mixed into his shoot style stuff, like countering a takedown with a DDT or hitting a real nice vertical suplex. The best contributions he made to the match were, of course, his punches. He really laid them in like he always did, throwing them at Shark's chin like there was a big target painted on it. He also really peppered them whenever he could, throwing one or two almost always when he was on the ground with Shark. Probably my favorite moment during the match was when Walter, sick of Shark's many kick combos throughout the match, just went full-on braindead mode, completely shrugging off some middle kicks to fire off punches with such force that he fell over from swinging too wildly. That type of "no thought only punch" type of violence is just sorely missing in today's wrestling.

    Shark also did really damn good in this match, albeit maybe not as good as Walter. He threw some great kicks as he always does, and his own pro wrestling spots were solid (except for one elbow drop which just absolutely whiffed). His tombstone is absolutely horrifying too, so seeing him bust it out here was pretty great. He did kinda slow the match down a couple times with middling mat work, but he was competent enough to never completely shut the match's momentum off, and when he would get into a hot streak or pop off a counter it was always really awesome to see.

    Overall, this was pretty awesome in parts, but as a whole did lack some of the solid connective tissue needed to elevate this to greatness. That being said, it clearly showed that both guys were pretty sweet in this style, and a Ryuji Walter "comprehensive" series may or may not be appearing in the future.

Rating: B

Tiger Shark vs. Hikaru Sato (RJPW 09/08/2010)

    Sato is Minoru Suzuki's sole protege and he's pretty damn solid. He's got some good kicks and while in 2022 he has some aspects of his work I definitely do not like (the drunk selling on every single strike can take a fucking walk), at this point he's pretty much a pure MMA crossover type wrestler.

    Shark did pretty solid in this match just like the last one. He integrated more pro wrestling into his moves this time, such as hitting his honestly horrendous standing moonsault (even though it's ugly as hell I still love it for some reason). His kicks were on point and his grappling was better than the last match, although not too much better. Probably the best moment he had all match was this awesome sequence into the Shark Death by Lock:

    Sato also did well here. Honestly it's hard to elaborate more than that, he just did pretty well. His kicks were solid, his grappling was fine, and he did have a pretty cool spot of transitioning an ankle lock into a backdrop. He didn't do anything that really wow'd me besides that, but he never did anything that really hurt the match either.

    I feel like this definitely wasn't as good as the previous match, although it was still solid stuff. Everything they did came off mostly good, it was just a case of neither guy doing too much that I could call great or anything.

Rating: B-

Tiger Shark vs. SEIKEN (Battlarts 05/22/2011)

    Back to Battlarts, this time to see Shark take on SEIKEN. SEIKEN is a guy that, from some research I've done previously, seems to have been a member of B-CLUB (the Battlarts amateur wrestling club) before transferring into Seikendo. I've seen him in a match against Kengo Mashimo in FUTEN where he impressed me greatly, so coming into this I had some level of high hopes for the match.

    This was probably Shark's best performance yet. He threw kicks harder in this match than he did in any other, and he felt a lot more aggressive and violent overall, really taking it to SEIKEN throughout the match. He also pulled off his pro wrestling stuff better than he did in the Walter match, hitting one of the best standing moonsaults I've ever seen him hit, as well as a disgusting corner dropkick. Probably the best thing he did in the match was this axe kick though, which absolutely destroyed SEIKEN:

    SEIKEN meanwhile fucking ruled, throwing kicks that were even harder than Shark's and fighting in such a scrappy and hard way. He did some really awesome stuff in this match, like throwing headbutts at Shark's midsection while mounted and basically just button mashing his strikes whenever he could get even the slightest opportunity to go on the offensive. His stuff in the finishing stretch of the match was awesome too.

    This was just a fun, short, intense shoot brawl between two Seikendo trainees. Definitely Shark's best work from the three matches I went over, and hopefully I'll be able to talk more about SEIKEN on the blog eventually. 

Rating: B+

Comprehensive Super Rider #2

              (Written by jom)

Super Rider & Super Uchuu Power vs. Kazushige Nosawa & Sanshiro Takagi (DDT 03/25/1997)

    This is the main event of DDT's "Prelaunch Battle", which basically means the show was meant to be a preview of what people could expect from DDT once it officially launches. Starting your promotion with two of the founders taking on shoot style spacemen is truly next level wrestlebrain, so it isn't shocking Takagi has been able to grow DDT into being the possible #2 most popular promotion in Japan.

    Takagi and Nosawa were pretty sweet here, both were really energized and constantly fighting Uchuu and Rider in really scrappy ways. Both guys were throwing some hard dropkicks all throughout the match, especially Nosawa who threw a really gross one especially at Uchuu to break up a submission. Takagi meanwhile was already very clearly the top guy in the promotion, with everyone chanting his name and some big comeback spots towards the end, peaking with this beauty of a tornado DDT:

    Super Uchuu Power (Koichiro Kimura) was undoubtedly the star of the show. He was an absolute killer here, doling out some nutty strikes and hitting insane slams. He was lariating Nosawa and Takagi like they owed him money, and the way he treated Nosawa especially was borderline hard to watch, constantly destroying him with crazy moves like a double tombstone piledriver. The nastiest thing he did to him though had to be the powerbomb shown below, the bounce that Nosawa got off of being slammed onto the mat was horrifying.

    While Rider wasn't able to perform at the same level Power did, he more than held up his portions of the match, dishing out some great kicks and cool pro wrestling spots. His kicks especially were pretty awesome, doing some great jumping rolling solebutts and at one point accidentally hitting Power with a great Rider kick.

    The overall match did have some iffy pacing and the extended length of it led to some spots that felt like they were almost repeating, but overall this was a damn cool fight. In terms of history, this match is extremely important too, as it set the stage for the first few years of life for the eventual juggernaut that is DDT, so on that front it's definitely worth checking out.

Rating: B+

Super Rider vs. Takeshi Ono (BattlArts 06/02/2001)

    This is a rematch to the Korakuen match reviewed previously on the blog. Last time, I thought that while a good amount of the work was really awesome, some iffy pacing and the lack of interest from the crowd left me somewhat disappointed in the final product. Hopefully, now that they've gotten some more experience working together, those problems will be alleviated and they'll pull off the match I know they can.

    Takeshi Ono was, in a sense, pure Takeshi Ono here. He did the usual awesome strikes, slick grappling, and great selling, all at the usual high level he did it at. This was also a great piece of evidence to support my belief that Ono is maybe one of the greatest "targeting" wrestlers of all time. When Ono picks a spot of the body to go after during a match, he's truly vicious as hell, and in this match he totally wrecked Rider's leg, with tons of gross kicks and submissions that honestly shock me didn't actually fuck up Rider's leg.

    Super Rider was going pretty damn crazy in this match too though. He met Ono on the mat with some superb grappling, doing some awesome submissions like one particular counter into an armbar. He also brought the goods with striking, at one point throwing a real sick high kick that Ono sold like death. While he didn't have as many high spot type moments as Ono, the stuff he provided helped keep the match's intensity at a level not at all seen in the previous match they had.

    This match was kind of insane, because somehow, the crowd was even less interested during this one than the Korakuen one. However, even accounting for the near silence during the match, this fucking rocked. While the last match they had was more of a fun creative juniors type match with bomb segments and more emphasis on spots, this was just a total grappling fest while still retaining the creativity of the last match. The late match bomb throwing was amazing too, and my god the actual finish ruled. It even only went about 7 minutes, so genuinely, go out of your way to see this.

Rating: A-

Super Rider vs. Tomohiro Ishii (RJPW 03/01/2009)

    This match was brought on by GBH member Ishii seemingly laying out a challenge to Rider. Ishii needs little to no introduction, around this point he was no longer the sleazy indy guy that Rider had previously faced in 2000, but instead a full-on NJPW roster member. Whether or not that made him better or worse is up to your interpretation (it made him worse).

    Ishii was a solid bruiser in this match, doing a ton of heel type work. He threw Rider around outside and hit him with chairs, and he took cheapshots whenever he could. He didn't really do anything particularly special, but he was entirely competent in the role he played and he did throw this killer lariat:

    Rider was totally off the bean in this match though. He started out doing his usual stuff but as the match went on he got progressively more angry and more aggressive, eventually busting out full-on shoot headbutts. The big turning point was when Ishii had manhandled him on the outside some, and Rider decided "fuck this", whipped his shirt off, and started throwing closed fists at Ishii's midsection. Getting this level of violence from Rider wasn't easy at this point, so it was awesome to see him get this pumped up.

    Eventually, the match ended in a DQ after Ishii ripped off Rider's mask, leading to Rider putting on his old Hopper King mask and brawling around with Ishii for a couple more minutes. Overall, this had some pretty awesome moments but did leave me wanting more. Sadly, the GBH invasion would go nowhere after this (mainly because GBH practically died a month later) so we never ended up seeing a rematch between the two, but what we got was solid enough.

Rating: B