They decided to run a cool one night tournament with some interesting participiants for this show.
First Round: Manabu Hara vs. HERO!
HERO! is of course HARASHIMA in his kind of bland masked gimmick. They mesh very nice on the mat, ‘shima has no problem doing smooth shootstyle matwork and Hara mostly dominates the action dominating on the ground and hitting a big suplex, as well as totally stonewalling Harashimas attempts to do anything pro style. I imagine a 10 minute match between them would’ve been pretty good, at 5 minutes this was still a neat bit.
First Round: Kyosuke Sasaki vs. Naoki Numazawa
I’m not sure if Numazawa was a full time death match guy at this point. He was really schlubby in his ill fitting boots, shirt and tights. Sasaki kicks him a bit and Numazawa kills time with solid but boring offense. Sasaki wins with ease. Nothing match but it made Sasaki look strong going into the second round.
First Round: Mineo Fujita vs. Masanori Ishikura
Yes, Ishikura! They got a lot of kickpadded shooters for this tournament. This was 6 minutes and for two indy juniors doing a vacuum junior match it wasn’t bad. Fujita has really pretty execution on all his stuff and Ishikura hits a big jumping knee in his face. Transform this to a WCW b-show and it would have made a great addition to any b-side comp tape.
First Round: Daisuke Sekimoto vs Kunio Toshima
The longest match in the first round even though it had the most basic workers. It was still a pretty good match with Toshima working like Otani. No kidding, he was doing big boots, face washes, springboard dropkicks, working over Sekimotos arm something fierce. Toshimas single minded determination on attacking Sekimotos arm, gnarly big boots and Sekimotos affinity for single-minded matches made this a pretty good encounter. Also, Sekimoto actually sold all that armwork and Toshimas stubborn arm attacks made an armbar finish plausible.
Semi-Finals: HERO! vs. Kyosuke Sasaki
This went 12 minutes and it was the DDT vs. U-Style encounter you never knew you craved. The do a bunch of really nice slick matwork. Sasaki looks really good here kicking the crap out of ‘shima and working a nasty neck crank. HERO! stuck to junior offense but they had a fun dynamic going. They also reference the finish of the first round HERO match so that was a nice touch.
Semi-Finals: Daisuke Sekimoto vs. Mineo Fujita
Fujita tries rushing Sekimoto at the start and hits some offense. Then Sekimoto comes back and hits some offense, pretty much gobbling Fujita up. I liked Fujitas tricky pin attempt but this was extremely forgettable.
Finals: Daisuke Sekimoto vs. HERO!
Opening WoS-like hold exchanges were kind of cool. Sekimoto is so bulky it looks really cool when busts out a smooth takedown, and HERO has a really pretty Santo headscissor. After a big HERO dive, Sekimoto did some nice work on his mid section. Unfortunately they kind of stopped being on the same page for a minute and the rest of the match ended up being listless randomness. Sekimotos lack of intensity was really jarring, like he looked like he was about to check his watch the whole time.
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