West Japan Pro Wrestling was a promotion founded inspired by the success of Michinoku Pro, bringing in some unique masked gimmicks while utilizing the tried and true cast of 90s Japan sleaze characters. They also had a shootstyle division. The promotion was struggling since they had no main draws and the outsider workers they hired (ranging from Shunji Takano to Poison Sawada) kept leaving. Not much of this promotion is around, so the little that is there is worth analysis. And this commercial tape gave us one of my all time favourite indy sleaze matches
Masahiko Kochi vs. Kenichi Kawasaki
Kochi is a thick, kickpadded SPWF boy. Kawasaki is also very thick, mulleted and kickpadded. They work a quasi-shootstyle match which is sadly clipped down to them kicking each other hard before a flash finish occurs.
Guerrero Diablo vs. Toyonari Fujita
Guerrero Diablo went on to become the even less originally named DIABLO, Aztecas longtime arch enemy in the KAGEKI promotion. I think he was trained in Mexico and he was rocking a very cool 90s lock here with a sleazy mask, black T-shirt and shorts. Toyonari Fujita is of course, the man of a thousand masks mostly known as Magnitude Kishiwada. This was also clipped and I really would've liked the whole thing. Fujita gives Diablo the business with chairs, both guys have ridiculous distance on their flying moves, and Fujita hit these cool bridging suplex before the time limit ran out. Yeah, they went broadway~! I love me a sleaze indy broadway. Still hoping out for a handheld of this to appear.
Dokugas Mask vs. Crusher Takahashi
Dokugas Mask is Survival Tobita in a gas mask. He does this awesome entrance where he storms through the crowd with a blowtorch. Eat your heart out, Leatherface! We got about 1 minute of the match but it was 1 minute of Takahashi throwing nice punches and Mask hitting some cool headbutts. Crusher Takahashis Terry Funk worship act is really cool.
Koichiro Kimura & Hopper King vs. Black Hole & Fumio Akiyama
A bunch of legit martial artists and strange masked gimmicks step up to work a more surrealist BattlARTS match. Lots of nasty potatoes and credible shootstyle exchanges. Black Hole was inspiring - a fat dude with a genuinely cool mask, clubbing Vader like blows and judo throws. Hopper King is Super Rider and doesn't hold back with the kicks. Most importantly this had the kind of chippy fighting that elevates pro wrestling. Loved how Kimura wouldn't accept Akiyama breaking up his submission attempts. Then Kimura tried tooling Black Hole only to get rocked by those swinging fists. Even the crowd brawling was fun and the finish absolutely nasty. This was everything.
Masaru Toi & Hiroshi Hatanaka & Mitsunobu Kikuzawa vs. Shigeo Okumura & Kenshiro Yukimura & Hiroshi Shimada
We get about 5 minutes of a 21 minute match :( What was shown looked like a fun SWS tag with lumpy guys potatoeing each other, hitting cool power moves and being generally brawl-happy. Really liked Kikuzawas big wipe-out dive aswell as the gorilla press from tiny Kenshiro Yukimura. Hatanaka is the SWS veteran and he was stiffing everyone in this path. The finish is a crossbody from the top and that rules.
Flag Death Match: Mitsuteru Tokuda vs. Poison Sawada
Flag match means they just had to drape their opponents flag over them to pin them. Poison Sawada was doing his evil facepainted Vietnamese Ho Death (or Des) Minh gimmick here. I've been unsatisfied with much of what I've seen from Sawada in this era but this match hid his problems well. It was just a straight up brawl where Tokuda was juicing immediately and they went to town on each other with chairs and tables. Tokuda had one or two cool martial arts moves which is enough for me to like him. But you can tell their intention was to impress the audience with those table bumps. Ho Death Minh was super over and drawing chants, even though he was playing an evil foreigner gimmick. I guess cool facepainted guy wins over martial arts guy in black pants #48. This was under the 10 minutes but they showed the whole thing and it was a fun way to cap off the show.
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