Man DDT used to be awesome, what the fuck happened to that company?! This was 6 dudes who have no problem cracking each other hard cracking eachother really hard for 11 minutes. Fujisawa is a Kensuke Sasaki lookalike doing a tribute gimmick, and while that would result in a lot of lame jokes nowadays here he plays his shtick completely straight. He makes for a really effective underdog and comes back throwing hard crowbar lariats. Super Uchu Power is so menacing and awesome in these matches, like Super Dragon without the humor, in a match where everyone is working stiff he cracks dudes extra hard, anytime he is in there with Fujisawa you expect him to kick that poor little dudes face in. MIKAMI also has no problem hitting stiff dropkicks and just crushing dudes with full bodyweight sentons and double stomps, how have I never heard anyone talk about how awesome that guy is?! Toba is of course the man punching everyone in the face. He had some particularily great exchanges with Takashi Sasaki (man I’m pissed about how that guy wasted the rest of his career) and busted out some fun out of nowhere rollups. The match was a grandstand Toba exchange in the finishing stretch away from reaching into EPIC territory and these guys were working an undercard match on a small show, why don’t we get pro wrestling this cool anymore?!
Tanomusaku Toba vs. Hiroyuki
Nozawa (DDT 3/16/2008) - FUN
This was from DDTs Hard Hit shootstyle shows. Nozawa is an MMA fighter and kind of underdog against Toba here. Fun structure where Toba is anticipating Nozawas attacks early on to land some big KO blows until Nozawa is able to anticipate Tobas counters and finally able to bring the match to the mat where can score. Once again, Toba proves himself to have a knack for the dramatic finish, in this case Nozawa has only one point left and is frantically bombarded with strikes until he is able to catch a submission and get the surprise tapout.
Tanomusaku
Toba & Koichiro Kimura vs. Sanshiro Takagi & Exciting Yoshida
(DDT 7/6/2000) - EPIC
This was from the early period when DDT wasn’t yet a full on entertainment company but rather a diverse style blend that reflected the sleaze indies of the 90s that preceded it. This was a great sprint. I would’ve liked it a bit more if it was more of a straight up destruction of Takagi & Yoshida at the hands of the Toba/Kimura crowbar team, but it still ended up being really good. Takagi can be hit or miss with his WWF imitation shit, but the opening segment where he caught a Toba barrage and dropped him with a deadlift uranage followed by a People’s Elbow spot was kind of badass. Lots of violent exchanges throughout with Toba & Kimura throwing serious potatoes, there is an awesome floor brawling section between Takagi and Toba that looked like a street fight. Kimura was put over as a real monster at this point, whenever he would come in he would just crush dudes with kicks and bombs. He also did all those BattlARTS level violent saves that whenever someone put a submission on Toba he runs in to kick their head in. Exciting Yoshida is a guy who was doing an Animal Hamaguchi tribute act, and this is probably his finest performance ever. The cool thing about Toba is that he gets guys who are otherwise dull to throw potatoes and come up with realistic comebacks, and that was the case here. Him and Yoshida were just brutalizing each other, and the finishing run that saw Yoshida throwing brutal shoot headbutts and Otsuka level suplexes was totally awesome. Our boxing gloved hero just keeps delivering the good shit.
Tanomusaku Toba & Chotaro
Kamoi & Ichiro Yaguchi & Exciting Yoshida vs. Kengo Takai &
Yusaku Shimoda & King Lion & Kurokage (DDT 3/25/1998) - SKIPPABLE
Well, this was the flipside of watching old Japan indy wrestling. Boy there were some shitty wrestlers in this match. Yaguchi has to be among the worst Japanese wrestlers ever for someone who got booked so much, and Kamoi is like a super shitty version of Toba. There was also a heel valet with boxing gloves that would run in to hit shitty punches, really no reason for this amount of shitty boxers in a match that has TOBA. Takai continues to be brutally bad at his role, really barely hitting anything, and King Lion is some guy in a singlet and a goofy mask who looked like your big brother play wrestling a pillow when he was in the ring. Tobas punches and spin kicks looked awesome as always and he did a great turnbuckle run into a springboard move (which gives me my clickbaiting GIF of the week), but yeah. Outside of the Toba parts and a brief moment when Super Uchu Power ran in to brawl with Kazumasa Nihei this was just bad.
No comments:
Post a Comment