Konaka Pale One vs. ONRYO, 666 1/10/2022
It‘s the spooky ghost vs. The spooky yoga master. No way on earth I wasn‘t gonna love this match. Onryo looked rough as hell, seemingly gassing and flubbing things, but thanks to Konaka the match still ended up being good. Indy guys like him deserve a ton of credit for mixing their more esoteric inventive offense with super solid old school wrestling. He can do both elaborate fancy stuff like the absolutely insane Asai DDT into the sukhasana pose as well as hit a really great basic knee drop, set himself up for a posting in a fun way and work a snug sleeper. Not to mention his throat chops. All in all Konakas stuff feels like the best possible cross of modern day juniors wrestling and an old US territory TV match. Konaka also did a good job selling Onryos filler legwork and making things like the figure 4 look like a struggle. Things pick up in a big way for the finishing stretch thanks to Onryo uncorking his big bombs, with Konaka getting absolutely spiked on a Tiger Driver. The ending mix of impact moves, Konakas cleverness (using a surprise corner choke to set up a springboard move was really great) plus Onryos propensity to end matches with pin combos and/or blasting his opponenent with radiation dust was super cool. And Konaka countering the Onryo clutch has to be the spot of the year. This was a bit sluggish here and there due to Onryo but if Konaka has a few more performances like this he might make a run for sleeper wrestler of the year.
Yujiro Yamamoto vs. 801 Kenichi & Yu Shimizu, Sportiva 3/9/2022
I am counting this as a handicap gauntlet match, because Yamamoto faces both opponents in matches with a 10 minute time limit right after another, and he has a pretty great performance here going 20 minutes against these scrubs. Kenichi had a lot of grappling with Kenichi not being very useful but Yamamoto being good enough to carry things. Surprisingly Kenichi had some nice suplexes and Yamamoto built some good stuff around that. Really dug Yamamotos shoulder dislocating armbars from underneath. Kenichis vader hammers were really ugly but he got tagged hard by Yamamotos kicks and open hands. Shimizu match was just a rush. I thought Shimizu was gonna suck from his flabby look and shitty opening dropkick, but he had some solid submission work, and he was game to get hit really hard. Yamamoto just bludgeons him with nasty stabbing elbows and kicks. There was this great moment where Shimizu went for an abdominal stretch and Yamamoto battered his way out of it. Great Yamamoto performance.
GENTARO vs. Tatsuhito Takaiwa, FREEDOMS 7/9/2022
Why they had to JIP this one? What we saw was damn good. Basically
Takaiwa braining Gentaro with disgusting elbows and lariats and Gentaro
trying to contain him with some excellent arm attack work. Gentaro
looked really good like the hair to a Nishimura type but doing his own
thing. Loved all the submission attempts and his beautiful suplexes.
Takaiwas selling wasn't super expressive but he sold that he was pushed
to the limit and his arm was bothering him which is more than you can
expect form Takaiwa. The ending turned into a Takaiwa bombfest but the
actual finish was memorable with Takaiwas arm going limp on a lariat and
Gentaro getting punched in the face in really nasty fashion. Last
counter was a thing of beauty.
No comments:
Post a Comment