(Written by jom)
K-WEST was a sub-promotion run by K-Dojo wrestlers SATOSHI and Tadanobu Fujisawa, meant to be the K-Dojo equivalent for the Kansai region (to the west of Chiba, K-Dojo's home). It was officially endorsed by TAKA himself, and they held dojo matches once a month. I'm not really sure how long the promotion ran for, but the latest I can find for one of their shows is 2011. It's closed down nowadays, but lives on through its spiritual successor, Fujisawa's Bukotsu promotion.
TAKA Michinoku vs. Jun Masaoka
TAKA Michinoku needs no introduction, an all-star junior who's been all over the world, and in terms of K-Dojo he's responsible for training some of the best wrestlers of the 21st century. While Masaoka might be pretty well known nowadays, doing work for GLEAT and other major indies, this is Masaoka not even a year into wrestling, having only joined local indy fed Manyo Pro a few months prior to this.
This had a pretty obvious "young boy gets dogwalked by vet" match style going into it just by looking at the participants, and they ended up following it to a T. Masaoka at this point really had nothing going for him besides being able to do a solid dropkick. TAKA meanwhile seemed very aware of the fact there were at most 20 people in the building, so he phoned it in hard. I wasn't expecting this to be some kind of classic, but it was disappointing to see just how little effort TAKA put into this. TAKA ended of winning (of course) with the Just Facelock.
This match wasn't really bad or anything, but it wasn't good either. A perfectly nothing match, which honestly I should've seen coming considering Masaoka was so early into his career.
Rating: C
Sawako Shimono vs. HARU
Speaking of people who are early into their career, here's Sawako Shimono! While she's best known nowadays as the owner of Osaka Joshi Pro and Rina Yamashita's trainer, here she was just a total rookie. In fact, Shimono had her official debut one month after this match, so technically she hasn't even debuted as a pro wrestler at this point. HARU meanwhile is mostly a mystery, but seems to have been a member of Hiroaki Moriya's J2000 promotion.
Whenever these "pre-debut exhibition" matches happen, usually the quality of the match entirely depends on how well the more experienced wrestler can keep the match flowing. Mistakes are expected from the rookie, so it's up to the vet to make sure those mistakes don't entirely derail the match. In this match, HARU wasn't able to do that at all. She was fine doing her own moves, like throwing some thudding forearms and hitting a pretty awesome running senton, but she consistently messed up the execution of her own moves, which is really not something you'd want happening when you're facing a rookie. Shimono was shockingly good for someone who hadn't even debuted yet, hitting a few running knees that looked pretty sweet. This match really fell apart towards the end though. HARU hit a crossbody on Shimono and had her down for the 3 count, but for whatever reason the ref didn't count the 3 and the match continued. Immediately after this, HARU sloppily hit a Vader bomb, and once again the ref just chose not to count the 3. The bell rang anyways though, confusing pretty much everyone. The ref and the wrestlers just went with the flow and acted like the pinfall was in fact a clear 3 count.
This was really rough, and not in the good way. You can clearly see that both HARU and Shimono have the potential to do some really good stuff, but that just wasn't the case here. The match was already not that good up to the finishing stretch, and the ref fucking up two separate pinfalls really didn't help to bring it back.
Rating: C-
SATOSHI vs. OLA
SATOSHI and OLA are two guys that I genuinely know next to nothing about. SATOSHI seemingly worked K-Dojo pretty sparingly for a few years and now wrestles for Bukotsu but OLA is entirely a mystery. For some reason, going into this match I had a good feeling that this would be solid, and I guess I can see the future because I ended up being right.
Both guys worked this match extremely tightly, with some nice limb work done by both guys (OLA targeting SATOSHI's leg and SATOSHI targeting OLA's arm). SATOSHI's striking was also very notably good, throwing some real hard bombs throughout the match (OLA's striking was solid, but definitely not at SATOSHI's level). Probably the best strike thrown by SATOSHI the entire match was this beauty of a dropkick, which made such a gross sound upon connecting with OLA.
I will admit however, this match wasn't all great, as whenever OLA was in control the match did lose some steam. While the work he was doing was solid, it just wasn't kept interesting a lot of the time. SATOSHI also could be a little bit boring but was definitely much better in keeping me engaged. Eventually, SATOSHI hit a really nice northern lights suplex into a kimura for the win.
Overall, this was a nice tightly worked match between two guys who seemed to be pretty solid wrestlers just from this match. OLA is fine and I'd enjoy seeing more of him, but SATOSHI I'll definitely be looking out for in the future.
Rating: B-
Yoshihiro Kawaguchi & Southern Cross vs. Bull Armor TAKUYA & Mahoroba
For two reviews in a row, it is Bull Armor time. TAKUYA is back, teaming with Kansai indy stalwart Mahoroba to take on the team of Riki Office's Kawaguchi and Southern Cross. I honestly know very little about Southern Cross, but I've seen his name pop up a few times while looking for DVDs.
This wasn't good. Usually I leave statements like that for the end of the review but I honestly don't have a ton to talk about. TAKUYA was the definite highlight of the match, dressed like Survival Tobita and throwing mean chops and hard lariats. He even did some of his signature flexing spots which I'll always love. Mahoroba was fine, nothing special from him but nothing especially bad either. Kawaguchi and Cross completely sucked. Kawaguchi seemed a lot worse off than we last saw him in Riki office, as while he still seemed to be solid overall he kept messing up his own moves, the biggest example being when he sloppily applied a cross armbar which made me particularly mad considering the way he set it up looked awesome in concept. Southern Cross might not have any redeeming qualities in this match, nothing he did sparked interest in me at all and he generally coming off like he had never wrestled a day in his life. The match eventually ended with TAKUYA hitting a botched thunder fire powerbomb, but I did kinda like how it ended up even if it was clearly unintentional.
I'm not entirely sure just how long this match went, but I remember feeling like it had gone 30 minutes. In actuality, it definitely didn't go past 15. I'm once again happy to see more TAKUYA but I wouldn't be opposed to not seeing much else from the other 3.
Rating: C-
Kazuki Niimura vs. Tadanobu Fujisawa
Kazuki Niimura was a JWA Kansai wrestler who also worked a little bit of Osaka Pro, and although that's really all I can find about him in terms of information he did come out with a very awesome theme song so I was pretty much ready to be a fan of him from the start. Tadanobu Fujisawa meanwhile is a Kurisu trainee, which meant I immediately was ready to be a fan of his as well. After the last four matches left a lot to be desired, I had not much hope for this match in terms of overall quality. I guess they were saving the best for last though, because this fucking ruled.
From the start, both guys worked with a level of intensity that no other match had even come close to having. While the OLA/SATOSHI match was definitely pretty tightly worked, this one was worked even tighter, with Niimura and Fujisawa throwing some real heavy hits for the entirety of the match. Niimura really came off as an unsung technical star here, doing some great grappling as well as throwing some awesome strikes. Most notably however, his suplexes were absolutely astounding, with the snap gutwrench suplex shown below being one of the best moves done throughout the whole show.
That's not to say Fujisawa didn't deliver on his half of the match. Far from it, I honestly believe he did even better than Niimura did. He was an absolute menace with all his striking, throwing some absolutely gross forearms and headbutts, as well as doing some nasty boot scrapes. He also hit one of the best spears I've seen in a good bit, with it almost turning into a spinebuster on the way down. Probably my favorite move he did all match though was this absolutely disgusting sliding knee. It was definitely extremely basic, but it absolutely worked through how vicious it was, and the way it was executed really sold how much of a drag-out brawl the match had become.
And then came the finish. To preface this, I had originally tried to do research on a number of wrestlers from this show before watching, and Niimura's cagematch profile had one interesting note. In the tidbits section, they listed that in February of 2010, Niimura had gotten a cervical spine injury while wrestling, leading to his immediate retirement. I'm not sure why, but for some reason, it just didn't click with me that this match was taking place in February of 2010. Fujisawa picked up Niimura and hit a gnarly single underhook impaler DDT, and Niimura didn't move an inch for the rest of the tape. Fujisawa pretty clearly saw that there was something wrong, and after hitting the lightest of stomps to test if Niimura would sell (to which he did not), he immediately told the ref to check him, which resulted in the match being called off entirely. After this a really gruesome scene plays out, with TAKA and a few others coming out from the back to help Fujisawa with trying to help Niimura and get him medical attention. The only thing I can compare this to is the Misawa footage, and even though I knew that Niimura didn't meet that same fate, I was genuinely horrified for him.
I sadly haven't been able to find any info at all on how he's doing today, but at the barest minimum there's been no word that he was paralyzed or killed by the move. This was a really depressing end to an amazing match. Honestly, up to the finish, this was nearing the level of the Fukimoto/Senshu brawl in terms of amazing wrestling. Everything was so violent, the match flowed perfectly, and just in general everything worked. If you can handle bad injuries I think this is absolutely worth watching, as although this was Niimura's final match it was also one of the best matches I've ever seen from the sleaze scene. It's absolutely worth your time to appreciate just how great of a wrestler this guy was, along with how good Fujisawa is.
Rating: A-
