So IWA Japan continues to be the most watchable non-MUGA promotion in 1998. The awesomeness of IWA Japan is sorely underappreciated, so allow me to breakdown the ingredients that makes a fun indy card!
The „who are these guys“ improbable fun opener! Yuji Kito & Yoshiya Yamashita vs. Turtuger & Hiroki Achiiwa.
It's 4 rookie nobodies beating the shit out of eachother! Even the turtle guy is laying it in, in between jokes! The ref hits a suicide dive! Brutal elbow drops and kneedrops that land with full weight and bad intentions! Nasty boston crab finish!
The tease! Cosmo Soldier vs. Hidetomo Egawa.
This was 6 minutes clipped down to 2 and a half. The full match was probably an awkward botch ladden mess, and I wanted to see every second of it! Awkward attempts at shootstyle/lucharesu style experiments and cool suplexes!
The utterly bizarre! Freddy Krueger vs. Katsumi Hirano.
Freddy Krueger and a blonde japanese guy in a black gi hit the mat! Krueger has a noisy sleazy glamourus valet! Krueger puts the Fujiwara armbar over like a champ, while everyone is eyeballing the whip carrying lady.
The spot-a-ton! Asian Cougar & Palomino vs. Akinori Tsukioka & Kyohei Mikami.
Match contains half a dozen leg drop variants and half a dozen tope atomicos! They hit ALL the spots. Match is actually fairly competitive. Palomino, the masked Ikuto Hidaka, looks ultra polished working pseudo lucha exchanges. Tsukioka lands an Asai Moonsault into nowhere! Swank moves and dives are rolled out. An almost unrecognizable Mikami hits the neat-o Victory Roll into Kneebar because that was en vogue in 1998. Tsukioka does another insane thing which the camera misses completely! They go BROADWAY (but we will never get the full experience, because they clipped a few minutes from the bout.) This match was praised in an old DVDVR and is still fun today. Manly and whip ass etc.
The girl match! Emi Motokawa & Sumie Sakai (Jd') & Sachie Nishibori vs. Momoe Nakanishi & Nanae Takahashi & Miho Wakizawa.
It's somewhat light hearted and also mayhem! They do all the moves. The AJW girls don't look good! Neither does Motokawa. Sakai tries a moonsault off the top to the outside and NOBODY catches her at all! The announcer calls it a „Flying Sausage“ everytime a chubby wrestler attempts a flying bodypress. Nishibori hits some nice flying headscissors, but probably isn't polished at anything else. They already had the foxy S&M valet earlier, why have this match be overly cute? Bring back Chiharu Nakano.
The sleazeball fest!
Keizo Matsuda & The Great Takeru vs. Masao Orihara & Takeshi
Ono - FUN
The Not So Great Takeru is in his goofy Power Rangers costume!
Masao Orihara & Takeshi Ono are the Tonpachi Machine Guns, and they
will kick you in the balls a LOT. Takeshi Ono actually works STIFF.
Golly gee he is roughing up those IWA Japan dudes. The Machine Guns are
slick and sloppy at the same time, if that makes sense. This was mostly
an extended squash for the guns, which is a good thing, because Takeru
ain't so great, and Matsuda with his wrestling school level leg drops is
laughable. Takeru atleast lays in his spin kicks and hits a moonsault
kneedrop. Orihara hits the stupidly gorgeous Orihara moonsault to the
outside following a spider german suplex to make up for all the horrible
moonsault awrygoings of the evening. Likely the classiest thing he's
ever done.
The crusty main event! Great Kabuki & Kendo Nagasaki vs. Shigeo Okumura & Keisuke Yamada.
Kabuki train 98 continues! Everyone in this match gets WALLOPED and it rules. Yamada & Okumura get all uppity and Nagasaki fucking wastes them both with chairs. Kabuki & Nagasaki turn into the worlds lumpiest Anderson brothers and procure some brutal armwork and stomps, with Nagasaki rocking the shoulder dislocating Armbars. It's improbable and strange and great. Kabuki hits his awesome fist drop and starts working the ARMPIT CLAW and it's fucking gross. Okumura & Yamada are not technically great but they are willing to smack the shit out of the crusty old bastards and in return get punched in the face, elbowed in the chin and kicked in the throat a LOT. Kabuki & Nagasaki actually have enough cardio to keep things moving for 15 minutes and we get a handful of great spots and thrust kicks. FEAR THE GREEN MIST! Also, SICK piledriver finish. I loved this.
No comments:
Post a Comment