IWA Kakuto Shijuku 07/16/1995

             (Written by jom)

     Returning to the Yong Dong food stalls always fills me with a joy & comfort I don't really find anywhere else. There's just something so home-y about it. For all the bizarre monsters and strange gimmicks, it's wrestling that caters well to the mostly drunk and casual crowds. IWA Kakuto Shijuku has always served as a recalibration point for when I need to throw on an hour long tape and have a good time, and this is probably one of my favorite Kakuto Shijuku tapes yet, serving as both the usual Kakuto Shijuku madness combined with a bunch of IWE tribute wrestling. Let's get into the thing.

Akihiko Masuda vs. Hiroshi Watanabe

      Biblically accurate young boy wrestling. Masuda and Watanabe are destined for greater things, only a few years away from already becoming major fixtures of the indies, but here they are as black trunks rookies throwing big kicks and suplexes aplenty. It is entirely one-dimensional pro wrestling, but it's earnest in its simple approach. Masuda has a beautiful spinning heel kick that I've never seen him do as Great Takeru, and Watanabe's suplexes are all performed perfectly, especially his fantastic bridging German. The clipping is pretty hardcore here (it's an hour long tape with eight matches to cover), but I really couldn't care less about clipping nowadays, and everything they showed was awesome. It's not hard to see why both guys turned out as well as they did when they had the execution down so well this early into their career. 

Best 2/3 Falls: Masahiko Takasugi, Isamu Teranishi, & Apollo Sugawara vs. Shigeo Okumura, Mitsunobu Kikuzawa, & Crusher Takahashi

    This is mostly the uncs getting reps in before the big reunion battle royal in the main event, but it's a fun time. Due to the clipping on the tape, we see basically nothing offense-wise on the part of the rookie trio, albeit all three are spirited in their being demolished. I could've rectified this by watching the available handhelds of the show on YouTube, but I didn't feel like doing that to be quite honest, so Mitsunobu Kikuzawa will have to settle for solely being a victim of Takasugi's 18 wheeler-esque hip attacks. The vets all get their own moments to kick ass, and Sugawara especially showed out with an awesome Arn-style DDT and a nasty lariat. Once again, more of a clip package than an actual match, but a very fun clip package indeed.

Goro Tsurumi vs. Katsuzo Oiyama

     Tsurumi celebrates his 25th year as a wrestler by having a gauntlet-type affair with two of his old IWE compatriots. Here he's facing Oiyama, who I've never seen before this but seems to be a former sumo that basically vanished after IWE died, based on his performance here, his disappearance was kind of a tragedy, cause this rocked. Lots of big punches and chops and headbutts, meat and potatoes wrestling that never regresses into "I hit you, you hit me" slop you're more likely to see nowadays. Oiyama, for a guy dressed like a big baby, hits like a motherfucker, throwing some mean chops and even meaner headbutts. Still, this is a controlled contest, never going entirely off the rails even with how heated some of the striking gets. Just a fun ass match from two fun ass workers. 

Goro Tsurumi vs. Jiro Inazuma

     And this one is even better! Inazuma (otherwise known as Gerry Morrow) actually just passed away a few days ago, and I've always meant to give him the proper deep dive since he's a real great worker and trained basically every famous wrestler to come outta Canada in the 90s. This one is more technically-minded, with some nice grappling and smarter spots between Inazuma and Tsurumi, but it also cranks up the violence as Inazuma throws straight punches to the face and Tsurumi responds with nasty backfists. All of Inazuma's headbutts are so good too, especially his jumping ones where he comes down like an avalanche onto the skull. Another good times kind of match, but once again, there's something really bubbling beneath the surface here.

Jiro Inazuma vs. Katsuzo Oiyama

    This is where it boils over. Once again rough and violent in the IWE way, hitting all the right buttons for this to end up as a perfectly solid match, only for Inazuma to really start targeting the leg. Oiyama takes umbrage at this, probably offended that Inazuma would do limb targeting to a man who hasn't worked a match in over a decade, and responds by GRABBING HIM BY THE EYE and hitting the nastiest chop of the whole night. This very quickly morphs from another heated half-brawl like the previous two into one of the nastier confrontations of the 90s, with both guys grabbing each others throats and hitting low blows over and over again. Inazuma unleashes some super mean uppercuts and Oiyama tries to cave his head in with headbutts. It's definitely the closest anything on this show has gotten to IWE's more chaotic brawls, and it ends up being a great conclusion to the super sick Tsurumi 25th Gauntlet Thing.

Chain: Super Uchu Majin vs. Masanobu Kurisu

    I have no idea who Super Uchu Majin is. When I saw him appear in Go Gundan, I thought he might be Shoji Nakamaki, but here he is working in Yokohama the exact same day that Nakamaki is working in Tokyo. Regardless, he throws great punches and lariats so he's cool in my book. He's also not at all the main focus here, as Kurisu puts in a really wonderful performance. The way he hunts for headbutts is awe-inspiring, snaking around Majin to find the perfect spot on the jaw to try and break with his skull. He also goes outside and drinks beer in the middle of the match which is objectively a really awesome thing to do. The chain really doesn't matter and this ends in a complete fuck finish, but it's a fun match overall. That fuck finish does bring out an angry Tsurumi, and it can only lead to one thing...

Goro Tsurumi & Super Uchu Majin vs. Masanobu Kurisu & Uchu Majin X

    Impromptu tag match! This goes less than two minutes and still gets clipped at some point. Maybe I'll watch those handhelds later after all. What we get here is really awesome, guys just beating each other around the ring with super stiff chops and punches, wrestling that puts hair on your chest. Really not much else to say there. I wish it went longer I guess, but the nature of the beast means that it did exactly what it meant to do.

IWE Memorial Battle Royale

    Just a damn good time. "Damn good time" seems to be the theme of the show (and every Kakuto Shijuku show for that matter), so this is a perfect way to send the fans home happy. Every guy seems very excited to get in the ring and do some brawling, to the point that Ryuma Go and Jiro Inazuma both preemptively come out before their names are even called, hanging out by the apron until they can jump in and get to working. Peak of the match is easily Oiyama getting the Charlie Brown treatment, tricked into trying to slam Sugawara only for Inazuma to push him over. I guess that makes Sugawara the football? As always, my analogies make more sense in my head than on paper. Really though, this is fun stuff, chicken soup pro wrestling that would appeal to fans that appreciate IWE, old men, food stall villages, or anything even tangentially connected.

MERRY KURISUMAS! Holiday Greetings & Haphazard Beatings From Kurisu & Sons

           (Written by jom)

    Happy holidays! Hope you've all been well since the last time I put the proverbial pen to the proverbial paper. A combination of a busy life and brutal indecision has kept me away from the blog. I've planned out and cancelled at least three different large-scale projects meant for the blog since the last post in October, and I'll surely think up and scrap a few more before the year ends. Now don't fret: I do have a special project planned for the blog in the coming months for any of you that would care about a thing like that, and I plan to continue the Spitball Reviews series as well. I've escaped my rut, just in time for the holiday season. To celebrate, I'm writing about one of my biggest hyperfixations in wrestling: the Kurisu lineage. Masanobu Kurisu's influence goes far beyond instances of extreme liberty-taking, as Kurisu's gym (appropriately named Kurisu Gym) was the birthplace for a number of notable names, ranging from actual megastars to some of the scummiest sleaze indie workers you've ever seen. As this holiday is truly all about family, let's check in on what the Kurisu household has done over the past thirty or so years. 

Masanobu Kurisu vs. Keigo Kurihara (WAR 01/05/1994)

    The only match on the docket to not include exclusively Kurisu trainees, as this match features papa Kurisu himself. The Kurisu WAR run can generally be defined as "fun." He's still a bastard, a purveyor of chair-based violence, but he's also a fan favorite, more than happy to please the crowd with all his antics. Keigo Kurihara, meanwhile, is one of the many forgotten karatekas in wrestling history. Based on the commentary, he comes from Masashi Aoyagi's Seishin Kaikan dojo. As such, this is worked as a different style fight, a format Kurisu is deceptively adept in. One of the core tenants of different style fighting is the presence of different styles. It seems on the nose, but wrestlers choosing to focus entirely on certain aspects of their work to counteract their opponent is vital for the format. Masanobu Kurisu never has to worry about this problem because he's the most "pro wrestling" pro wrestler to walk planet earth. He's a real angry beast with all his stomping and slamming, dragging around Kurihara by the legs and recklessly throwing him out of the ring. Kurihara is able to get little bits of vengeance through his karate, but he's definitely a little floatier than most of the other Seishin Kaikan guys. Still, when his strikes land, they land, and when they don't, Kurisu is there to punish. Is it the best Kurisu different style fight? No, not by a long shot. Still, it's a perfectly fine match in an incredible genre, and the crowd eats it up. Hard to go wrong here. 

Match Rating: B

Green Fire Okumura vs. Blue Fire Kikuzawa (PWC 02/16/1995)

    It feels bizarre to cover this match in this blog post. This is a first round match from the rookie tournament on the Stray Dog Legend show, an event that honestly deserves its own coverage on the blog. I'm sure I'll at least talk about the main event in the future, once I finally bite the bullet and start working on my Shunji Takano dissertation. Anyways, Okumura and Kikuzawa are two of the earliest Kurisu trainees to make a splash on the wrestling scene, and this is especially early into their runs. Even if you combined both men's careers at this point, it still wouldn't be close to a year of experience. Still, they're here to rock the house, and they do so in style. Both men have their bombs that they throw incredibly well, and they pad everything out with solid matwork and quality pacing. Kikuzawa is a ball of fire with his flying kicks and insane suicide dive, while Okumura is always trying to crush him with massive lariats and a beauty of a moonsault. It's a real popcorn match from the halfway point onwards, lots of flash with enough substance to keep it worthwhile. Considering just how early both men are into their careers, this is a real feather in the cap and a clear sign that both had big things ahead of them.

Match Rating: B

Akira Kawabata vs. Tadanobu Fujisawa (Pro Wrestling X 03/30/2002)

    Seven years later, two more Kurisu trainees are brought in to rock the house. This takes place a few years after the J2000 exodus (more on that later), and there's a good chance this is the most exposure the final generation of Kurisu Gym trainees ever got before the gym shut down in 2004. Kawabata and Fujisawa are a significantly more experienced than their first generation counterparts were in the previous match, as Kawabata debuted in 1998 and Fujisawa debuted in 2000. More contrasts come in the match itself, as rather than working a fast-paced junior style bombfest, Kawabata and Fujisawa are more interested in heavyweight hits and deliberate grappling. It doesn't land perfectly, but that's not entirely on the two of them. They're wrestling for nobody but themselves, as the crowd can't be bothered to care. Nobody came to see two Kurisu rookies have a slower-paced and orthodox match. Everyone's here for Onita theatre, and these two are not on the bill. Still, they make the best of it, with both men hunting for armbars and pulling out some cool spots, like Fujisawa's early spear to cut off a shoulder tackle exchange, as well as Kawabata's gross kicks and shoteis. The match's slower moments really feel slow thanks to the silent crowd, but a lot of the work does hold up pretty well. I hope these two know that somewhere out there, there's a dude from the United States that appreciates this match a lot more than the people in the crowd did.

Match Rating: B-

Kenji Fukimoto & Takuya Fujiwara vs. Riki Senshu & Junpuku Yamamoto (J2K 11/07/2004)

    A little bit of an info dump before getting into this. J2K is a rare existence: an exodus fed formed out of an exodus fed. In 1999, Hiroaki Moriya led a exodus from Kurisu Gym to form his promotion J2000. The majority of Kurisu Gym wrestlers left with him, including Ryo Tamiyasu, the future Riki Senshu. Only a few years into J2000's existence, cracks began to form between Moriya and the duo of Tamiyasu and Kenji Fukimoto. Tamiyasu eventually decided to retire in 2002, hosting the retirement event in his newly-formed promotion, J2K. Within a year, half of the J2000 roster would leave to join J2K alongside Tamiyasu and Fukimoto, and Tamiyasu would return in 2003 to act as one of J2K's top stars. It's such a fascinating tale of wrestling politics and individual visions leading to the Osaka sleaze indies being run by two different groups of Kurisu trainees. Now, regarding the match at hand: I love this match. I've probably seen it ten times. It's one of my favorite matches to come out of the Kurisu family, with all four guys willing to go buck wild on one another while having a match on a kindergarten's playground. Fukimoto and Fujiwara are so mean and vicious, throwing tons of closed fists, stiff kicks, and full-force stomps to different parts of Senshu and Yamamoto's bodies, while also working like a well-oiled machine during all of their tandem offense. The face team responds with equal viciousness and some really great house of fire spots, especially Yamamoto's spears and Senshu's lariat barrage. Everyone hits their bombs so well, but more than that, everyone is just so explosive in everything they do. A common trend among Kurisu trainees is vocalization, and everyone here is always yelling or cursing at each other in a way that makes all of it feels so heated. Is there the occasional instance of sloppiness, a slip-up here or there? Absolutely! Even considering that, this match has such a genuine spirit to it. It feels like a fight, a wrestling match with so much emotion pouring out of that ring. Every person here deserved the world; the fact that Fukimoto is the only one working at a higher level nowadays is a damn shame.

Match Rating: A-

Takafumi Ito vs. Ikuto Hidaka (ZERO1 09/12/2012)

    We end our journey through the faces of Kurisu Gym with two of the earliest members, and two men that went on very different paths in their careers. Hidaka and Ito joined around the same time, quickly becoming best friends, before leaving around the same time as well. Both headed from Osaka to Tokyo, where Hidaka would join the Animal Hamaguchi gym and the Battlarts dojo, while Ito would abandon professional wrestling entirely and instead join Pancrase as its first homegrown fighter. Ten years before this match, Hidaka made his MMA debut in DEEP against Ito, losing via chokehold. One year before this match, Ito made his pro wrestling debut in ZERO1 against Hidaka, losing via head kick. Now, 20 years after their time in Kurisu Gym, the two face off once more as part of the Tenka-Ichi tournament. What we end up getting is a generally fun shoot style brawl, albeit one with some notable issues. I'm generally a Hidaka low-voter, and a solid amount of his bad habits shone through even with the three minute runtime. His strikes, while mostly alright, had a few moments of just looking pretty painless, and he had to shoe-in some "fighting spirit" type yelling and a dumb double head kick spot. Ito also showed some roughness to his work, but I feel more comfortable excusing him since all of his issues clearly stemmed from him being so new to pro wrestling. Still, both guys had their moments, with Ito's grappling being the key highlight of the match, pulling out some nice holds and a massive uranage. Hidaka generally did a good job of fighting back while also pulling out a bomb or two like his sick reverse DDT. Even with its faults, I still think this was solid enough, and, similar to the Okumura/Kikuzawa match covered earlier, was clear evidence that Ito had a ton of potential in him at this point.

Match Rating: B-

Onita Pro 06/27/1999

 (Written by jom)

    Okay, so y'know how I said I'd have a new Onita Pro review every two weeks? I meant five weeks. But maybe the next one will come out in three weeks! Or one week? or maybe two after all. I don't know. You don't care. Onto the review!

Survival Tobita vs. Pinch Hitter Joe vs. Rey Pandita

    This is a Saitama Pro offer match. It's presented with the tagline "THIS IS ZERO" and contested under "Survival Three Way Fuckin' Dance" rules. Every time I write one of these Onita Pro reviews, I will call Atsushi Onita a visionary. Allowing fellow visionary Tobita to run something like this is further proof of his position in the pantheon of sick ass wrestling bookers.

    Once again, who the fuck is Rey Pandita? I still have no idea who's under the mask, but honestly, I'm fine with that. Rey Pandita is Rey Pandita, and he's here to ruin someone's day with psychologically-devastating bits wrestling. Also, who the fuck is Pinch Hitter Joe??? Probably Naoshi Sano, but that's besides the point. While Pandita is absolutely an Onita gimmick, Joe is a Tobita gimmick through and through. The story goes that Tobita planned for a "man from a manhole" to be in the match. However, due to some sort of bodily fluids issue, the man couldn't make it to the show. So, a pinch hitter named Joe has taken his place.

    Survival Tobita gets his own introductory paragraph because he's the coolest motherfucker ever. My Tobita bias is probably not much of a secret (I have a whole series on the site dedicated to singing his praises), but truly, has there ever been a more powerful entrance than this one? Tobita stomps out with a cigarette in his mouth, raising the plunger over his head and using his open hand to high-five the fans. He's also using Elephant Kashimashi's "Namida no Kazu Dake" as his theme on this occasion, which, while not my favorite Tobita theme (nothing will ever be better than "Gastronger"), is probably in my top five at the very least. 

    This is a match of many phases, all of which are pretty fun. We start out with the usual comedy three-way spots (triple lockup and interrupting holds) before Pandita and Joe start teaming up on Tobita. It's around this point that I realize Pandita might be Mitsunobu Kikuzawa. There's just something about the way he pantomimes that reminds me a lot of Ebessan. Pandita is also built pretty similarly to Kikuzawa around this time, and Kikuzawa really began his time under Onita in Onita Pro, so everything seems to line up. Also, Joe pays dearly for trusting Pandita when Pandita starts trying to get one over on him, leading to a Gedo Clutch from Pandita eliminating Joe. The golden rule of Onita Pro: never trust Rey Pandita.

    At this point, the match takes a sharp turn: Pandita becomes Genshi Enjin Virgon. He starts doing all of the Virgon-isms (prowling around, hopping up and down, running into the crowd) and the monster music begins playing over the speakers. The crowd is barely invested which hurts my soul, but they still do some fun stuff, with Tobita bumping like a madman for every Pandita push and Pandita doing a good job of pretending to be Virgon. Tobita eventually hits his piledriver and locks in a figure four necklock for the KO victory.

    Honestly, not much to say about this one. It's an extremely surface-level match, and while it never does anything bad, it also never does anything particularly good. I love Tobita and I was fascinated by Pandita's Virgon tribute performance, but it really just made me want to watch more of the Tobita/Virgon matches. Pinch Hitter Joe also certainly existed. This was a fine enough opener for the show.

Match Rating: B-

Masanobu Kurisu vs. Kengo Takai

    Atsushi Onita is a monster. I take back everything good I've ever said about him. Booking this match should get you arrested. A young Kengo Takai, only a year into his professional wrestling career, is taking on Masanobu Kurisu. This is nine and a half years after the Kurisu/Akiyoshi slaughter, and here we have another case of Onita putting a plucky rookie against the king of killing rookies. Truly, these matches are the sins that will weigh heavy on Onita's soul in the afterlife.

    This goes roughly like you'd expect. Kurisu (with a shitty little ponytail) is actually a lot more giving in the early portion of the match than he was against Akiyoshi. He throws some mean headbutts and stomps, but he also lets Takai throw some big strikes of his own, and even bumps for him on a few occasions. However, Kurisu gets his hands on some chairs and all of that cooperation goes out the window. With chair in hand, Kurisu is an agent of pain. He throws an unprotected shot to the head in this match that almost made me turn away from the screen. Takai committed the crime of accepting a match against Masanobu Kurisu, and Kurisu is his executioner.

    Even after the initial chair assault, Takai still fights back, and even gets a good string of offense going, culminating in a big diving headbutt. That's probably Takai's biggest strong suit in this match: his fire. Shoji Akiyoshi had a lot of fire in him in the infamous 1989 squash, but Takai's fire feels a lot more outwardly expressed. He's yelling out to the crowd, almost hyping himself up to try and fight this old behemoth he has no chance of beating. Of course, Takai waves his muleta in front of the bull a little too much. His attempt at throwing some shoot headbutts gets no-sold. Kurisu entirely brushes off a dropkick and goes back to '89, letting loose with the headbutts, head stomps, and punt kicks that made him infamous. He even flings Takai back outside to throw more unsafe chairshots, before finally, mercifully, killing Takai with the Kurisu Special (a llave that I can't even begin to explain, but it looks like it could've snapped Takai's neck).

    This, like many "Kurisu vs. guy he can take liberties on" matches, was uncomfortable. Was it the most abhorrent of the genre? Absolutely not. Kengo Takai should pray to his god that this was a decade beyond Kurisu's peak of cruelty. But, like many of the matches from that genre, it also kinda rocked. It may be weird to say this, but there's something special about these types of young boy matches. They're full of work you could never see today. We as a society have improved enough to silently ban these matches from happening. And yet, there's something bizarrely entrancing about them. They're the ultimate fights for survival, genuine David vs. Goliath matches. Even if you're vocally cheering for the Goliath, you always silently pray for this David to have a slingshot. They never do. But one day someone might. It's an awful genre of match to exist, but I will never stop enjoying it.

Match Rating: B+

Combat Toyoda, Crusher Maedomari, Miss Mongol, & Shark Tsuchiya vs. Emi Koizumi, Killer Iwami, RIE, & Tsuppari Mack

    Fun fact! Half of this match is already retired. This is a reunion tag for a bunch of the FMW-raised women's wrestlers, and there's a lot of people here I've never seen before. Specifically, I haven't seen Koizumi, Iwami, or Mack before this match, and I've never seen RIE in this gimmick (but I've seen a fair number of Bad Nurse Nakamura matches and she fucking rules). This is also Combat Toyoda's one-time return in the form of an actual match. I don't really count battle royals as returns because there's an entirely different energy to battle royals than pretty much all other wrestling.

    Speaking of energy, this is a match all about having fun. And wouldn't you know it, it was fun! If you came into this match expecting some sort of serious clash between the face-painted freaks and the plucky underdogs, you'd probably be disappointed. This was around 85% just bits and goofs, but you could tell everyone was having a blast. 

    Any time one of the retired faces would do anything, everyone would clap and cheer (including the heel team). Toyoda gets to come in and run wild at least once, and it's cool to see her still put some power behind her lariats. There's a very fun spot near the middle where RIE does a great rolling cradle, and Koizumi completely botches her attempt at one right after. Then the faces and heels all start hyping her up, and she gets the strength to pull off a great one. If I had to pinpoint one person as a highlight, it'd probably be Tsuppari Mack, who kept hitting Maedomari in the face with a book or something. She was cool and I might need to seek out some of her work from when she was actually an active wrestler.

    All in all, I had a fun time watching this. Maybe it wasn't the most engrossing thing in the world, but that's fine. It was a real "getting the band back together" type of match, and you can't not enjoy that, at least a little bit.

Match Rating: B

Atsushi Onita, Nise Onita, & Sambo Asako vs. Katsuji Ueda, Masashi Aoyagi, & Shooter #1

    For the first time in blog history, Nise Onita is here. Nise Onita, for anyone that doesn't know, is Toshiyuki Moriya, a bonafide legend of the Japanese indie scene. Even if he wasn't always the greatest worker in the ring, he was a vital part of many important promotions from the time, and places like DDT wouldn't have become the monoliths they are without Moriya's help. Also, I'm gonna be referring to him as Moriya throughout the review, because calling him Nise sounds weird, Onita would be confusing, and Nise Onita is too long.

    Moriya is actually the primary focus on this match, as this kind of serves as an initiation into the Onita crew. Ueda and Aoyagi beat his ass over and over again, and Moriya bumps for it all because, canonically, Moriya is an incredibly weak wrestler. If Onita was a normal wrestler trying to become a God, Moriya was a normal man trying to become Onita. Moriya does get some offense in, with a lot of "swinging for the fences" strikes filled with some real passion. Both Aoyagi and Ueda crush him as much as they can, and Aoyagi especially takes exception to Moriya's fiery attempts at fighting back, at one point just raining down mounted punches on Moriya's head, busting Moriya wide open.

    Onita and Asako are both in more "supporting act" roles here rather than being at the main stage (both men still have to wrestle in the main event after all). Onita does get some great moments to shine though, and the crowd becomes rabid when Onita and Aoyagi finally get to face off. The crowd in general were super into the match here, cheering a ton of Moriya and getting unglued whenever one of the martial artists popped off a strike combo. Eventually, Ueda uncorks a punch to the back of Moriya's head, and the referee calls for the bell.

    Moriya cuts a promo after while covered in blood and he does all the Onita-isms, which gets a big pop from the crowd. The camera then cuts to backstage, where Moriya is laying on the ground, still covered in blood, in Onita's jacket.

    Honestly? I thought this was pretty damn good. Ueda and Aoyagi got to let loose with their awesome martial arts stuff, and Onita had a few moments to reignite the old different style fighting spirit within. Moriya was the real star of the match though, and he did a really great job of selling like a motherfucker. He fully understood how to do the Onita style of work, and it came off as very endearing. Asako and Shooter (oh yeah he's in this match) were pretty much nothing here, but the other four played their roles very well, and I enjoyed it as a whole. 

Match Rating: B

Anywhere Fall Street Fight: Masao Orihara & Shooter #2 vs. Exciting Yoshida & Sanshiro Takagi

    Takagi is BACK! I assumed on the last show that Takagi was challenging Luther and Hannibal to a match, but this makes a lot more sense. Takagi and Orihara had been feuding for a few years at this point (and still had another year to go before the feud ended), and this is their first encounter in Korakuen. Takagi is teaming with regular partner Exciting Yoshida and Orihara is with "Shooter #2." The original Shooter #2 was Ryo Miyake, but no telling if that's who's under the mask here.

    This starts off with Shooter and Takagi getting into a scrappy fight while Orihara throws a comically wide chair swing that Yoshida sells by jumping away. This is a pretty great precedent setter for the match, as all the actually cool stuff comes from Takagi and Shooter brawling around Korakuen, while a lot of the very funny/not good work involves Orihara and Yoshida.

    The best wrestler in this match was probably Shooter #2, who I can very safely say is Koichiro Kimura. He was just working how he usually does, only in a black mask. Him and Takagi went on a little tour of Korakuen, checking out the lobby and the hallways, before eventually landing in the crowd where Shooter started throwing a bunch of really gross kicks before crushing Takagi with a double arm suplex in the bleachers. Kimura is a really underrated worker when it comes to his versatility, and this match really helped to show just how capable he was in a brawling context. He brawls the exact way you'd hope for him to, basically doing all the same ruthless shoot style work he usually just, just on concrete instead of in a ring. I am, of course, a hardcore Kimura agenda pusher, but that doesn't change the fact that he ruled here.

    Orihara, meanwhile, fucking stunk. He really couldn't be bothered to put any effort into his work here, or at least it didn't seem like it. He did a very goofy spot with Takagi early on where they dodged each other's clothesline attempts six or seven times, before doing another stupid spot with Yoshida where they casually no-sold brainbusters back and forth. Yoshida was kinda meh here as well. he wasn't as offensively bad as Orihara, but his brawling was uninspired and his in-ring work was just acceptable.

    The match culminated with Shooter and Takagi (who was solid enough hyping up the crowd and letting Shooter kick him) doing some nice heated brawling on the Korakuen stage, before Takagi hit a fucking german suplex on Shooter to get the win. It was a really gnarly way for the match to end, so at least they wrapped everything up on a high note.

    I have very mixed feelings on this match. Takagi was cool and Shooter rocked, but Yoshida wasn't good and Orihara sucked. If this was just the Orihara/Yoshida stuff, I think this would be in the Ds range. If it was just the Takagi/Shooter work, it would be closer to a B+. I'll just split the difference in a positive way because the finish was crazy.

Match Rating: C+

No Rope Barbed Wire Double Hell Street Fight: Atsushi Onita, Mitsunobu Kikuzawa, Sambo Asako, & Shigeo Okumura vs. Genichiro Tenryu, Hiroshi Ono, Ichiro Yaguchi, & Shoji Nakamaki

    Once again, no big explanation needed. This is pretty much the same match on paper as the main event of the last show, only this time Kikuzawa and Ono have been thrown into the mix, and the stipulation has gotten bigger. Also, Tenryu is here in a button-up and tie this time around. He's all business.

    Just like the first Onita Pro main event, this was a ton of chaos and brawling, so attempting to run down the match spot-for-spot would not only be a fool's errand, it would also make for shitty writing. Instead, I'll focus on the most important wrestlers in the match.

    Firstly, let's talk about Onita and Tenryu together. They're the team captains, leading their armies into battle, and their interactions are of course the big draw. As always, they did great together. All of their encounters were equally violent and dramatic, with Tenryu letting loose with an enzuigiri within a minute of the match starting and Onita getting the boys to help him do a spike piledriver on the big man (using a chair since the top rope wasn't available). They also rehash the chair bash spot I loved from the last match, but this time Tenryu was very clearly just punishing an already hurt Onita rather than throwing a chair out of desperation. It felt like the natural evolution of the spot considering Tenryu was in control for much more of this match than he was in the previous one, and did a great job of continuing to isolate Onita from his partners.

    Speaking of Onita's partners, Shigeo Okumura. What a fucking guy. In the last review, I mentioned that Okumura came off as a million bucks, but this is the match where he truly felt like he near Tenryu and Onita's level power-scaling wise. One of the first spots of the match was Tenryu pulling off a whip cancel to keep himself from going into the wire, only for Okumura to dropkick him into the barbs anyways. Okumura constantly ran roughshod over the match, throwing chops and punches at anyone in his way and never staying down too long. He even pulled off another save like before, keeping Tenryu from killing Kikuzawa long enough for Onita to come back in and regain control for the team. I don't know how you can see his performances in Onita Pro and not walk away thinking that he had a monster of a traveling brawler career hidden within him.

    Finally, we need to talk about Mitsunobu Kikuzawa. I haven't been silent about my distaste for Kikutaro. Most of my issues stem with the plethora of matches he's had against women, because sadly, I just don't really find sexual assault funny! And his many intergender matches are filled with creep spots. I'm aware that Kikutaro's non-intergender work is an entirely different world, and I enjoy a lot of it, but I just can't ignore his VKF career. 

    All of that being said, I've always thought that Kikuzawa was a real missed opportunity, as all of his unmasked work that I've seen has been very good. This was probably one of his best performances ever, as he took the role of designated team victim for the Onita army, and my god, was he a victim. Tenryu made it his mission to force Kikuzawa to leave the industry in this match, constantly punching him in the jaw and chopping his throat, which Kikuzawa sold like hell. Kikuzawa also took the most insane spot of the whole show, a monkey flip from the ring to the barbed wire on the floor from Tenryu, which Kikuzawa sold the same way I reacted when I hit a rough bump riding my bike downhill at 13 and did a full flip directly onto the small of my back on the poorly paved road. Kikuzawa was here to die, and although he fought back as best he could, but by the end of the match, he was left bathed in own blood while wrapped in barbed wire (just like Onita was in the last main event; I see what's going on here). But he survived. He survived and made the decisive final attack for his team. Kikuzawa's body attack with his barbed wire-wrapped chest led directly into Onita's match-winning powerbomb. Kikuzawa went through hell in this match, and used that hell to win.

    After the match, there's this visually beautiful moment where Onita, Okumura, and Asako all work together to unwrap the wire around Kikuzawa, before Onita grabs his water bottle and pours it over his own head, dripping onto Kikuzawa's crimson visage and washing some of the blood away. In a sense, Kikuzawa was baptized into the Onita sphere of wrestling in this match, and this was the actual baptism.

    This was a clear sequel to the last Onita Pro main event, so it's worth comparing the two. A lot of the spots from the last match happened in this one as well (even a few of the same botches), but this match also brought a lot of new stuff to the table, especially when it came to the whole "double hell" part of the match. I do think this one slightly falters compared to the first Onita Pro main, as it doesn't stay as consistently chaotic, and the action-less parts of the match are more noticeable. Still, this match was fucking great. Again, I have bias for Onita Pro main event brawls, but I do feel like this was a very worthwhile sequel to one of the best matches ever. 

Match Rating: A

    I think this was a little worse than the previous Onita Pro show. While this show never had anything as bad as the Hannibal tag, it also felt like it never truly reached the highs of the first show, and the stagnation in quality really hurt the flow of the full show itself. The main event was still great though, so that keeps it from escaping the B-tier. Overall, solid stuff, and I'm still excited to continue going through Onita Pro.

Show Rating: B-

Onita Pro 05/13/1999

                 (Written by jom)

    Ahhhh, Onita Pro.

    It's not much of a secret, but I'm a total sucker for skeezy Japanese indie wrestling. It's the scene that I dove into when I saw the branching paths of being a wrestling fan before me, and I've maintained a long-term loving-yet-unhealthy relationship with it for at least five years now. While I've thankfully expanded my range of wrestling consumption beyond the shindies of Kansai into scenes like the shindies of Tijuana, I'll probably always keep myself locked into this world of bizarre masked gimmicks based on inside jokes only the workers get and sociopaths no-showing events with less than 50 fans, for better or for worse.

    Onita Pro (I bet you can't guess who runs this fed) is probably one of the most fascinating sleaze-adjacent feds ever (feels weird to call a promotion full-on sleazy when they've Korakuen as much as Onita Pro has). It's a pure distillation of the Japanese indie scene of the time, with guys from promotions you've never heard of getting some of their only chances to work in front of larger crowds, let alone to make it onto TV. Where else would you find an underground juniors tag followed up by a UNW offer match? Onita has always been a guy with a really special vision for wrestling (one that I absolutely adore), and the fact that he spent 1999 having explosion deathmatches in NJPW while also booking a promotion with a murderer's row of sleaze scene names as regulars is truly why he's the GOAT.

    Even though I love Onita Pro as a concept and I've really enjoyed the matches I've seen from it, I've only seen maybe two full shows. I've always wanted to do a deep dive into the fed, going through every single taped event to experience Onita's vision in full, so why not write about it? I have no idea what type of schedule these posts will follow, but I'm hoping to get a review out every two weeks at the very least. Who knows, maybe I'll get distracted with a homework assignment and take another year to do a blog post again. Onto the review!

Yusaku vs. Rey Pandita

    Who the fuck is Rey Pandita? Cagematch says that Violencia and Flying Kid Ichihara worked under the gimmick at different points, but it's 100% neither of those guys. I guess the world may never know. Yusaku is here though, so I am a happy man. He's only a year into wrestling too! Sadly he's given the jobber entrance treatment, but I can't imagine Korakuen Hall going wild for a Yusaku Shimoda entrance in 1999. He's wearing all gold gear with a bleach blonde mullet though, so he looks like a much cooler Shane Douglas. Pandita comes out wearing a burger king crown throwing candy into the crowd, which is a great first image for a promotion's first ever taped show.

    This follows the basic formula of agility versus power, as Pandita has some lucha acumen and Yusaku really likes Vader. He's already got some pounds on him too, although he's not yet reached the level of BIG that he would ten years later, so his power level is much lower. Pandita commits to styling on Yusaku throughout this match, including psyching him out on a dive only to slap Yusaku on the back. This confuses Yusaku, who thinks his brother Daisaku did it, and gives him a big shove. To Pandita, this is all fun and games, but he may have just sown the seeds for a family to rip itself apart.

    Pandita continues to style on Yusaku until he misses a moonsault. Yusaku promptly picks him up and casually crushes him with a pumphandle emerald flowsion for a two. Yusaku then goes for a lariat but gets drop toe hold'd by Pandita, and then Pandita does a Gedo Clutch while posing for the cameras to get the win.

    This was a perfectly fine piece of work, albeit weirdly paced with a few odd moments, especially the finish which just kind of happened. Yusaku was fine though, and Pandita styling on him was fun. Hopefully Pandita can showcase his abilities in MUGA-esque matwork on the next show.

Match Rating: C+

Asian Cougar & Phantom Funakoshi vs. Exciting Yoshida & Takashi Sasaki

    DDT! One of Onita Pro's defining traits was the massive presence of DDT on all of the shows. I guess Onita was just a big fan of Sanshiro Takagi's vision, something I'm very thankful for because this got us some of the first TV exposure for the DDT crew (outside of having show highlights appear on STV news broadcasts).

    This match is... good. I'm gonna do some individual performance breakdowns here because this match was basically just all four guys trying to get themselves over, they still worked together and cooperated to do moves but it was pretty obvious that the main goal for these guys was to try and get booked on more Onita Pro shows.

    Takashi Sasaki is probably the weakest guy here. You can kinda feel it with how he's wrestling, but he's in a lab mindset, just busting out random moves and seeing what works. He does some nice kicks and hits a few gross diving knees, but he also does some weird suplex gutbuster things and hits a diving knee drop 69-style, so it just looks like he's trying to diving teabag Funakoshi. Sasaki also never hit the D-Geist for some reason, even though he was absolutely doing the move by this time. Maybe one of those fucked up suplexes was an attempt at it? I couldn't tell you.

    Cougar's also not a faultless worker here, but he's got a much better idea of who he is, busting out some of his trademark wild leg drops. There's this great moment in the latter half where Funakoshi has Sasaki gripped by the neck while he's laying on the apron, trapping him there for Cougar to hit the guillotine leg drop. It kinda felt like a moment from a gorey horror movie where the killers hold a guy down while one of them chops his leg off, and you just have to watch the poor guy squirm around and suffer. Cougar isn't perfect in this match when it comes to execution though, and the crowd laughs at him a few times for his botches. He also doesn't do his biggest signature spot (the tope atomico suicida). It's Korakuen! Do the spot!!!

    Exciting Yoshida does some awesome Animal Hamaguchi stuff and throws sick ass headbutts, but also hits an insane spinning tombstone and a big diving leg drop. Sasaki kicks him a bunch and he sells by slowly falling over every time. He's a bomb-thrower, but also an easy one to beat up. Not much else to say, wrestling needs more glass cannons like Yoshida. 

    And then Phantom is the coolest wrestler ever. He's a hardcore lover of 70s wrestling, so all of his high spots are indian deathlocks and snapmares. Every time the match felt like it was about to go too far into experimenting and botching, Funakoshi would tag in and hit a few suplexes and suddenly all is right in the world. Sasaki can invent as many bad moves as he wants because Funakoshi knows the exact time he needs to trip Sasaki and do a japanese rolling leg clutch to pull me right back in. He hit a release tiger suplex that nearly killed Sasaki and I sprung out of my chair like a jack-in-the-box.

    The finish ends up being with Sasaki and Cougar, but they luckily keep it short and sweet. Sasaki nails a real disgusting lariat for a two count, and then Cougar counters an attempt at another one into a cross-arm german suplex for the three. Sasaki, of course, immediately no-sells the move to get up and complain to the ref that he kicked out. Man, Sasaki really wants  me to hate him, huh?

    In a strange way, this felt like it was both overambitious and underachieving. They had all the pieces to put together a great match, and ended up only completing half of the puzzle. At the same time, it felt like one guy was using the rest of the pieces to try and create a whole new puzzle. Does this analogy make sense? Whatever. Good little match, even if I know it could've been much more. I pray that Funakoshi keeps popping up on Onita Pro shows going forward. Damnit, I just remembered he's retiring later this month and now I'm sad. God bless you Phantom.

Match Rating: B

Street Fight: Yoshiko Tamura & Yuka Nakamura vs. Crusher Maedomari & Shark Tsuchiya

    Putting these four in a street fight is inspired. Onita just can't be beat. I don't know if I've ever seen Tamura or Nakamura in this type of environment so I'm already very excited. They slot into it well with their street fighter gear, which just looks like they're going into a very fashionable war. Maedomari and Tsuchiya respond with black shirts and black pants. "This is no time for fashion", they say. "This is a time for bloodshed."

    Maedomari and Tsuchiya jump the faces before the bell rings and we're off to the races. Lots of brawling around the ring, most of it isn't worth talking about but everything Tsuchiya does rules. Tsuchiya beats the hell outta scared little Nakamura like she owes her money and smashes a microphone into her face a bunch. Then a little later on she goes wild on both women with a barbed wire sword. I love Shark Tsuchiya so much. Maedomari is cool too though! She and Tsuchiya (I can't not talk about Tsuchiya) do some crazy tag moves throughout, culminating with a gut kick/snap backdrop driver that's as funny and as violent as it sounds.

    I guess I should talk about Tamura and Nakamura too. They were fine! Nakamura is good at getting beat up, and I love how she sells for the Tsuchiya sword attack like she's just been cut in half in one of those old samurai movies. She also throws some absolutely awful punches at one point, but redeems herself with a crazy ass roll-up counter out of a chokeslam. Tamura is alright as well, albeit I remember like nothing she did besides screaming a lot. Not in a "I'm in pain" kind of way, just screaming whenever she got the chance to. Why do so many joshi wrestlers do that? Can they please stop?

    Maedomari wins the match for her team with a gross chokeslam, and she even sits on Nakamura and counts the three with her fingers because some of Tsuchiya's coolness has rubbed off on her. Not a ton to complain about here, just a fun little match. Tsuchiya is the best and I hate everyone that hates her.

Match Rating: B

Dr. Hannibal & Dr. Luther vs. Katsuji Ueda & Sanshiro Takagi

    Hey, it's the funny internet guy! The guy that goes Blehhhhh~ in AEW! Is Luther culturally relevant anymore? Deadlock haven't mentioned him in at least a year. Anyways, he's here with fellow weird Canadian Hannibal (different from the other weird Canadian Hannibal wrestling today) and they're facing a real kickboxer (Katsuji Ueda) and a fake Steve Austin (Sanshiro Takagi). Onita, vision, etc. Hannibal and Luther come out and do the chaotic running through the crowd shit, except they're in straight jackets and keep trying to headbutt people. I already hate Dr. Hannibal because he's literally just walking around with his head turned sideways and that's it. This guy is a phony. Dr. Luther meanwhile is throwing chairs into the crowd and threatening fans, like a real worker.

    I don't even know how to talk about this match. Ueda does kickboxing to Dr. Hannibal and Dr. Hannibal responds with bad strikes and his shitty sideways neck stance because he has no idea how to be a psychopath. Luther and Takagi tag in and they work at a really fast pace before doing a pretty wild brawl on the outside. Luther has become le funny internet wrestler guy but he was actually pretty damn awesome in Japan, and Takagi is a deceptively good wrestler for a guy who's only really known for liking Stone Cold.

    Eventually they get back in the ring and Takagi pulls out MR. SOCKO, APPLYING THE MANDIBLE CLAW TO DR. LUTHER. The WWF had a stranglehold on Sanshiro Takagi's life in 1999. He hits a few other moves before trying to win with a meh impaler DDT, only for Dr. Hannibal to throw what looked like a full cup of powder into his face. Luther hits a German Suplex for a 2.9, and then Hannibal comes back in and dumps even more powder on Takagi. I wonder if this is how British Bulldog looked when Bret found him before Summerslam 1992. Katsuji Ueda runs in to stop Hannibal's cocaine-based assault with some kicks that probably hurt like a bitch. Then Luther hits a genuinely great kneel kick and a rope-walk bulldog and wins.

    Takagi cuts a promo after and challenges the two psychopaths (well, one psychopath and one pretender) to face him and Exciting Yoshida in a street fight on the next Onita Pro show. This was just really bizarre. Luther was honestly the standout with his antics and actually good wrestling (albeit the move he won with really didn't feel like a finisher). Takagi was fine and him just ripping off WWF moves was funny. Ueda did kickboxing and I like kickboxing so I can't complain about him. Dr. Hannibal offends me on a spiritual level and I could probably do a better job of wrestling than he ever did. Please find a real psychopath like Luther to replace this stain.

Match Rating: C-

No Rope Barbed Wire Street Fight: Atsushi Onita, Sambo Asako, & Shigeo Okumura vs. Genichiro Tenryu, Ichiro Yaguchi, & Shoji Nakamaki

    No reason to have a big opening explanation for this match. If you're reading the blog, you most likely know who all of these people are. At bare minimum, you know who Onita and Tenryu are. That's all you need going into this.

    I fucking love this match. The first time I saw this was in a random late-night voice call with a few friends. None of us had seen this match before and I thought it sounded great on paper, so I just threw it on. We rewatched the match at least two more times within the span of 24 hours. It felt like striking oil in your backyard while digging up some weeds. What we thought would be a fun "send the fans home happy" kind of brawl between some great wrestlers ended up being one of the most chaotic, dramatic, and all-around insane matches I've ever seen.

    There was way too much going on here to try and properly run down everything, so instead, here's a list of some notable spots:

- Tenryu holding Onita's head down and repeatedly punching him in the forehead

- Onita doing the classic baseball slide wire dodge only for Tenryu to do his own into Onita's face (countering baseball with baseball)

- Yaguchi vanishing from view for a few minutes only to reappear bathed in blood

- Tenryu throwing a chair into Asako's face really hard

- Okumura saving Asako from more damage by rushing Tenryu and then punching him a bunch in the face

- Onita swinging a table onto the top of Nakamaki's head like Whac-A-Mole

- Okumura choking Tenryu with his wrist tape (Okumura felt like the best mid-tier Memphis brawler ever in this match)

- Yaguchi DYING

    And that list is less than half of the craziest shit that happened. The match never slowed down, just constantly bashing you over the head with violence and chaos like the many chairs bashed over the head of Sambo Asako. Now, there were a solid handful of moments that you could call "botches" or "mistakes", and I'll happily admit that some of them were probably not planned. But if you see these moments and think "this makes the match worse", you're stupid. This is a fight, a brawl, and brawls are messy. Brawls are uncoordinated. Brawls aren't about doing everything perfectly, they're about trying to do anything you can to hurt who you're fighting. Of course you're gonna slip up every now and then, that's just a part of brawling. What matters is how you recover, and every single time a "mistake" happened, not only did it usually still look insane, it was also always recovered from incredibly well.

    I think the spirit of this match comes through the most in a spot near the halfway point. Onita and Tenryu are down, already broken by the damage dealt to both of them so far in the match. As they both start to get up, Tenryu notices a chair, immediately grabs it, and lunges over to throw it into Onita's face. It's the type of moment that takes this from a wild chaotic brawl into something with a real sense of spite and fury behind it. Before watching this match, I believed in Tenryu and I believed in Onita. Hell, I believed in everyone here. Spots like this are why I believe in the match itself.

    No rundown of the finish, because you really just need to see it for yourself. In fact, you need to see this whole match for yourself! It's up there as one of the best Onita brawls ever, and if you enjoy those matches in any way, shape, or form, you have to watch this. Life-changing pro wrestling.

Match Rating: A+

    In terms of the show as a whole, this was a mixed bag. I don't think anything on the show was truly bad (outside of everything Dr. Hannibal did), but there was a lot that never really moved me. As it stands, it felt like a good starting point for Onita Pro. Most of the less interesting stuff feels like it'll naturally get better with time. The DDT crew will complete their individual journeys of self-discovery, Onita will book better women to lose to Maedomari & Tsuchiya, and Pandita will only grow stronger in his ability to style on people. Add onto all of that one of the best matches ever in the main event, and I feel like this show left me pretty satisfied in the end. I'm excited to see where we go from here.

Show Rating: B