Koki Kitahara Documentation Project #7

 Genichiro Tenryu & Koki Kitahara & Masao Orihara vs. Shiro Koshinaka & Masashi Aoyagi & Kengo Kimura (WAR 10/21/1992) - EPIC

WAR vs. New Japan is one of those few transcendental occurances in wrestling history. This whole match is just from another planet, insane heat, crowd booing and cheering everyone at the same time, dueling chants breaking out, and everyone engages in super uncooperative, violent exchanges. The star of the match is Tenryu as he comes in constantly like a force of nature, there’s an amazing moment where he takes a piledriver on the floor, then cleans house and the camera pans away revealing he has blood streaming down his face, but our boys Orihara and Kitahara are fantastic supporting players. Orihara is young an super fired up, taking big beatings and always firing back, at one point he gets into a fight with Akitoshi Saito who’s outside the ring in his gi and it seems the place comes unglued. Kitahara is right at home in this kind of scrappy match, throwing kicks like baseball bats and looking in shootstyle holds all while drawing baffling heel reactions, I wish he had been in the match a little more. And the Koshinaka/Aoyagi/Kimura was just kicking ass like you wouldn’t believe. Kengo Kimura may have had the night of his life, he is old but he was kicking and punching guys in the face all while acting like a jerk and taunting Tenryu. This was a nice reminder of how much pro wrestling rules.

 

Koki Kitahara & Pierroth & Dr. Wagner Jr. vs. Rayo de Jalisco Jr. & Vampiro & Atlantis (CMLL 9/23/1994) - GREAT

Koki Kitaharas stay in CMLL lasted about 4 matches. Japanese wrestlers working Mexico for a brief stint usually doesn’t produce great matches, and I was expecting Kitahara to tone his act down, maybe work a bit more like a junior… but boy, I was wrong. This is classic Kitahara acting like a psycho material. He was hellbent on kicking the dogshit out of Vampiro here. Seeing Kithara punting someone in the face on the floor of Arena Mexico is something else. Pierroth and Wagner also seemed to have had it with Vampiro. I imagine he was being a coked up joker on his stay or something, because they were really pasting him with punches and clotheslines, while being absolutely unwilling to make him look good or bump for him in any way. Really one of the meanest rudo performances I've ever seen. It makes for a pretty compelling match as Atlantis and Rayo De Jalisco basically only make sporadic appearance while Vampiro gets his ass kicked and tries to fire back only to get beaten up some more. In the second fall, Vampiro was hitting his own goofy martial arts kicks and I was starting to groan, but then Kitahra elbowed him in the jaw hard and kicked him in the face some more. After the match Kitahara and Pierroth immediately jump on Vamp with Kitahara raining punches on his face and Pierroth looking like he was either trying to protect Vampiro or choke him out. Either way, it’s rare you see an ass kicking like this in Arena Mexico since they banned blood. I’m wondering why it’s not talked about more, but then again, digging up this stuff is what this blog is for.

 

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