BJW 1/ 2/1998

 

BJW 1/ 2/1998

Neftaly vs. Miho Kawasaki

Shunme Matsuzaki vs. Shadow VII

Yone Genjin vs. Naohiro Hoshikawa

Kendo Nagasaki & Gennosuke Kobayashi vs. Masayoshi Motegi & Makoto Saito

Katsumi Usuda & Ikuto Hidaka vs. Tomoaki Honma & Minoru Fujita

Gedo & Jado vs. Yoshihiro Tajiri & Ryuji Yamakawa

Jason the Terrible & Shoji Nakamaki & Mitsuhiro Matsunaga vs. Great Pogo & Shadow WX & Shadow Winger

 

Aaaaand of course a 1998 indy show opens with a forgotten japanese girl wrestler and a luchadora working quasi lucha exchanges. This and the other first 3 matches are really clipped so it's mostly just to get a quick laugh, but what they showed of the ladies match wasn't bad. Neftly hits a nasty senton and wins with a nifty powerbomb variation. Matsuzaki is a sad case as he always looks ridiculously polished (for a guy in the second match of your typical sleaze card) and always gets saddled in some non match, in this case against a mexican Mini-Mr. Pogo (sorry Ricky Santana, you're better at lucha than garbage brawling). All these BJW undercard matches quickly devolve into crowd brawling shenanigans. I would've liked to see more of the BJW vs. WYF tag – because Motegi is GOOD and Saito is COOL and I am actually liking Nagasaki with his nice back elbow and quick bursts of wrestling and actually dangerous floor brawling. The unrecognizable rookie Kobayashi is yet another indy guy who doesn't know how to take Saito's springboard moves properly which almost feels like a rib at this point.

 

So they actually showed the BattlARTS vs. BJW dudes tag in full and it's AWESOME. I am not playing a trick on you here, if that match happened in BattlARTS it would have a good shot at being the tag MOTY. It's not a BattlARTS style match but it has enough cool shootstyle matwork and stiff shots throughout to keep you entertained, and the whole thing is just ridiculously tight, innovative stuff. Hidaka & Fujita are all skinny and young but they join the 98 GAEA crew by looking spunky, inventive and super talented. Pre-bumpfreak Honma is good as your kickpadded guy who sells really well, can work a kneebar or two and gets kicked in the head by Usuda. Usuda looked like a badass black belt tumbling with some purples trying their best to push him. He is a stoic shooter guy with some really spectacular counters and he always works really well with these indy juniors he can just rip apart and this was no exception. I also liked that because Hidaka and Fujita are scrawny 1 year rookies any basic move on them looks like a plausible finish. But the whole thing was just a bonkers match with breathtaking lucha meets shootstyle submissions and counters and nasty double teams and some brutal stand up exchanges (Usuda just dropping bombs) and yeah this is just the kinda gem you hope for when going through this old stuff. Also, great moment where Honma botches a springboard move so Hidaka just pounces on him and they beat the shit out of eachother. That's how you cover up a blown spot.

There was no way in hell that Jado/Gedo vs. Tajiri/Yamakawa could follow up the workrate of the previous tag and they wisely didn't try. They worked more of a US style tag with Gedo and Jado bringing the heel cutoffs and punches and rope stun guns and Figure 4s and what not. Pretty bread and butters stuff but it wasn't a bad match and I always enjoy checking out young Tajiri who is such an ultra sharp wrestler with the kicks and lucha flying moves and so forth.

The main event – well, you know what you're getting. Mostly wandering brawl with 2 guys occasional rolling into the ring to do stuff, then back out. In between that you get shots of Winger putting a headlock on Matsunaga backstage and strolling up the stairs. There were a few cool individual moments, such as the big Nakamaki dive to open the whole thing, Pogo hitting some Tenryu kicks on a bloody Matsunaga, Matsunaga hitting karate kicks and the Undertaker walk on the balcon, Pogo bringing out a barbed wire drill and Jason working Jason spots. This was falls count anywhere so there were also some cool spots where they had multiple referees and fans on the outside would count along when a nearfall happened. Finish is Jason working his „resurrection“ spot a bunch (yeah Shadow WX you loser you're not going over JASON) and winning with a god damn Northern Lights Bomb. Jason The Terrible is indestructable and it rules.

This show top to bottom was not as good as the IWA Japan stuff but it had an absolute killer obscure gem in Usuda/Hidaka vs. Fujita/Honma (I totally expect one of you granddads to tell me how eveerrrryone put that one on their VHS comps back then and talked it up as a **** 3/4 match on random obscure DVDVR offshoot boards). Everything else delivered as you'd expect and I always enjoy checking out a random card like this. 

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