RIP Goro Tsurumi

 

Goro Tsurumi & Animal Hamaguchi vs. Great Kojika & Motoshi Okuma, AJPW 11/3/1977

A rare lock at pre-heel turn Goro. This is JIP 10 minutes in so unfortunately we don‘t get any young Goro matwork, but what we got was really fun. Plenty of Goro and Animal running wild on offense. Animal is notoriously an offensive dynamo and his dropkicks, airplane spin etc. all looked great. Goro also shows a big offensive variety, throwing big dropkicks, as well as things like a swinging neck breaker, kitchen sink etc. Of course the best part were Goros punches which he lands right to the throat. Okuma and Kojika are as good a pair of nasty bastards as you need them to be, trying to rip peoples nose of, generally being really vicious etc. Also loved all of Okumas headbutts. 3Rd fall was the kind of heated bloody affair you want from these 70s matches, Goro takes a bunch of postings and takes a beating while selling his life draining out of him. Needed a couple more Tsurumi punch combos to be epic, but Kojika taking the win with a surprise knee off the top to the back of the head was quite great. This was really fast paced, heated, and fun.

 

Goro Tsurumi vs. Fumihiro Niikura, NOW 12/11/1992

This low key ruled. Stubborn, uncooperative veteran battle with a few great moments, mostly Niikura punching Tsurumi in the face. We start nice with Niikura bitchslapping Tsurumi in the ropes. Tsurumi goes right to try and work over Niikura with some toe kicks, but Niikura connects a leg kick. Clearly neither of these guys are taking bumps. They work the mat for a bit with Tsurumi doing a cool rolling, really hooking Niikuras arms and shoulders, and Niikura twists out into an armbar in slick fashion. They stand up and now things get really good as Niikura starts raining his awesome crazy punch combos on Tsurumi. Tsurumi gets fired up and tries to fire back with his own cool punches and backfists but Niikura is better and keeps hitting awesome punches and kicks. Niikura has a really great counter where Tsurumi tries for a Fujiwara armbar but Niikura reverses it into one of his own. He tries it again but Tsurumi kicks him in the balls and pins him. And not a single bump was taken!