Mutoha Customer Reviews

The group known as Mutoha is probably one of the most interesting things going on today. They are staunchly indifferent to the general trajectory of the current wrestling landscape and instead resolve to convince fans of the awesomeness of mat-based matches and weird rulesets. You can now directly buy their stuff for about 2 bucks per video from @itako18jp on Twitter. The process is really simple, ask them to DM and you will receive a message, then give your PayPal email adress and select what you want, then you can download and will receive a bill to your PayPal later. You can find their general selection here and sometimes you will also receive something extra. I will be reviewing matches as I purchase them to give you a general idea of why you want this stuff, and you do want this stuff.

 

Yasushi Sato vs. Konaka, 7/21/2018

Quirky technical match between two of the greatest to ever do quirky technical matches. I think at one point Konaka looked in the greatest submission anyone has ever done on Sato in this. It was pure yoga demon insanity. The rest of the match was really great too. It was a 15 minute Ironman Match with 2 count pinfalls, so… they did a lot of unique stuff. Sato was dominating with his knack for pin combos and out of nowhere Russian Leg Sweeps so Konaka had to come up with something. Great sense of struggle over the pinfalls/submissions and Satos suplexes were really cool as usual, and the psychology was truely excellent. Absolutely tremendous stuff, basically a 5 star match as far as technical matches in Japanese bars go, this kind of whacky creative oddball scientific match was really the best thing going in Japan at the time.

Hiroshi Watanabe vs. Konaka, 4/21/2018

This was “just” a rounds match so it didn’t have the insane creativity of Konaka/Sato but it was still really excellent. Watanabe is super athletic for an old guy just bouncing around effortlessly and hitting cool hip throws that I’ve only seen done by old timey French workers before, so you know he was on to some different level. Konaka is once again really good, always doing something interesting. These guys are no worse than your top flight WoS or lucha matworkers. The hold for hold stuff was really good and I dug the exchange of llaves in the last round. It caps out at 3 rounds so it was more of a taste than a full blown epic, but maybe another match between them is somewhere that really breaks the scale.

Hideya Iso vs. Taro Yamada, 1/13/2020

Another really good match from Mumejuku. Very mat based as you expect. Iso has that Osamu Kido-like vibe, he’s a dumpy technician who doesn’t look like much and doesn’t do fancy moves but he has that easily overlooked kind of charisma and he can pull out some cool crafty stuff. This was Isos best performance that I’ve seen and Yamada looked like one of the best wrestlers in the world. It was pretty much Isos traditional, basic skillset vs. Yamadas llave holds. Several really good mat exchanges here, I especially liked Yamada pulling off a Paradise Hold in plausible fashion. They just went out and wrestled so there wasn’t some kind of exceptional story although I was rooting for Iso to upset his opponent. Sometimes you just want to watch two guys wrestle for 20 minutes and they delivered. Gnarly finish. This stuff is why Mumei was maybe the most important promotion in the world during that time period.