This was very much a mid 90s high school gym scum indy show.
Madness vs. The Wolf
THE MADNESS emanates the kind of terrible fascination typical of sleaze indy wrestling. He's just a big guy with a skull mask and a green flanel shirt. His entrance theme is just gurgling swamp sounds. The match was better than you'd expect. It was pretty basic, but The Wolf will kick you really hard and THE MADNESS has a nice powerslam. Being able to do 1 or 2 moves well will get you far enough in my book and this was decent like an approximation of a good WWF Superstars match in a japanese high school gym.
Cosmo*Soldier vs. Azteca
Azteca is the most mediocre junior in all of Japanese wrestling history, but I'd say he was decent in WYF as opposed to KAGEKI where he just got really into being the poorest mans Liger. Cosmo*Soldier had yet to reach his peak as a botchtastic wannabe hybrid shooter junior that he would become in 1997, but he flies way into my heart in this match by hitting hilariously miscalculated dive into nothing. This really wasn't good or anything but it made me laugh.
Hiroyoshi Kotsubo vs. Hirofumi Miura
This was Hiroyoshi Kotsubo actually being pretty good. Lord knows that
guy sucks working BattlARTS and Futen, but will have a good performance
on the most niche shows. This was like a scrappy BattlARTS match with
Kotsubo being aggressive and working takedowns on suplexes. Miura is
some karate gi wearing scum who tries kicking hard but Kotsubo just eats
him. This ended up just a squash, although the finish with the GI choke
was badass.
Onryo vs. Shinichi Shino
Shinichi Shino is a W*ING guy who it seems was struggling to find his identity at this point. He looked like a mix of several different wrestlers. Onryo at this stage is really pretty useless outside of dives and taking nasty bumps. This was mostly Shino in control and only allowing Onryo to hit his spots which is how you carry Onryo. I wouldn't say Shino was particularily good here, but he kept things moving and the match ended up short enough to be alright.
Masayoshi Motegi vs. Shinigami
Bless our lord and saviour Motegi. He tries so, so hard to get a watchable match out of Shinigami. On the other hand, he is likely responsible for letting guys as shitty as Shinigami into the business. I will respect him for shouldering the burden, though. Shinigami is terrible, but there was one nifty moment where Motegi was working over his leg and put a Figure 4 on him. Shinigami then got up, seemingly no-selling the leg work but then his leg gave right out. It was a pretty cool bit of convincing zombie-like selling. Motegi ends the match with a cool submission that was like an STF without the face lock and Motegi leaning all the way on the zombies injured leg. Also Onryo hit a dive off the balconies during this, setting the Onryo dive count on this show to 4. The match still blew, though.
Arashi & Osamu Tachihikari vs. Shinichi Nakano & Kamikaze
Shinichi Nakano has to be like the japanese Black Terry, putting in
subtle great performances in the most grimy unexpected places. Problem
was that he barely was in the match. He is in a great opening section -
where he gets his bandaged shoulder torn up - and a great end section
though. Between that, there are way too many segments involving
Kamikaze. The parts were Kamikaze was controlling were terrible as he
was constantly calling spots in a really obvious manner. Arashi &
Tachihikari may be the least of the WAR heavyweights but they are still
OK delivering a beatdown. The end was great as Tachihikari ended up
bloody. Nakano delivered some nasty as fuck stomps to the cut and a
running punch that was Daisuke Ikeda levels of wild. There was also a
great spot where Nakano, seemingly beaten, pulled Tachihikari in
position for Kamikaze to hit a surprise flying move. Nakano smashing
Tachihikari in the face with a chair repeatedly for the 10 count was
also way more violent than I expected for a high school gym main event.
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