Satsuki Nagao vs Shuji Ishikawa
It’s nice to see Ishikawa return to his Fu-Ten roots of just potatoeing the fuck out of people in quasi-shootstyle matches. This didn’t feel quite like a BattlARTS or Fu-Ten match, it had bit much of those back and forth elbow exchanges, but once in a while they would try to nuke each others brains with a sick headbott or knee and it was a spectacle. I’ve never seen or heard of Nagao, looking him up on Cagematch tells me he might be… sorta… a big deal on the small scales of Japanese indies? He’s with Tochigi Pro, challenged Akitoshi Saito for a title in NOAH last year, what ever that means nowadays. Having my first look at him in this match I thought he was a black trunks rookie, there to get mauled by the bigger Ishikawa, and it does feel a bit like that with Nagao eating a big beating and unable to get Ishikawa off his feet etc, but Nagao ends up surviving much longer than expected and getting bigger and bigger hits in on Ishikawa including just straight headbutting him in the face, maybe even to the point where I thought it was a little too much as he survived a sick dragon suplex and then the actual finish looked a little weak. Anyways I am nitpicking this match too much, they potatoed the fuck out of each other and it was a really fun opening match, end of story.
Masashi Takeda vs Kosuke Sato
Hey its Kosuke Sato. I enjoyed him when he was in CAPTURE for a hot minute. And look Takeda gets to do shootstyle! This starts with Takeda bullying Sato because Takeda iis a Tamura trainee even 12 years after Style-E so clearly the superior shooter. Sato comes back biting Takedas wrist because despite his chiselled body and boyish looks, he is a filthy BJW boy after all. Takeda ends up bleeding from his ear after grappling. I imagine sudden bleeding has to be a big problem for death match wrestlers in their daily lives. In this case it’s not even just a little smear of blood, its a full on gushing wound that keeps spilling blood. Sato manages to get some comebacks and when he does he hits these cool big leaping dropkicks where he makes sure to kick Takeda right in the head. He hits a lovable messily executed shootstyle bodyslam that is full of struggle and goes to choke Takeda out, with Takedas blood all over his body and even getting in his mouth. Sometimes you just gotta watch some filthy blood drenched gruesome pro wrestling like this. Started out just solid like a BJW or DDT undercard match with shoostyle elements but once they got to the bleeding and gritty fighting it got really great. Takeda is perfectly good as a shooter with cool submissions and sick suplexes, its a pity he gets to do this kind of match only once in a while.
Yuki Ishikawa & Tyson Maeguchi vs Super Tiger II & Tanomusaku Toba - FUN
A fun BattlARTS style midcard tag with some kickboxing mixed in. Ishikawa can still roll out and have cool exchanges with STII just like he did in from 2008-2011 all the time. I thought it was just gonna be a friendly grappling exchange with Ishikawa schooling his opponent and pulling out cool reversals, but then STII dropped a fucking Killer Kowalski level knee on Ishikawas face, making things more intense. Maeguchi basically was all kickboxing, and he does throw some fun combos, him sparring a little with the Tiger was fun, and Toba did his “I am too old for this shit but I can still dodge you and punch you in the face at any time” thing which entertains. The real money match up here is Ishikawa vs Toba which is a real sleazeball shootstyle dream match, unfortunately their exchange lasted only about 30 seconds but it was still nice we got to see that.
Brother Yasshi vs Dan Tamura
First few minutes had some very good amateur-style matwork with Yasshi once again busting out a cool Honda-ish arm takedown and Tamura throwing his opponent around, including hitting a pretty nutso German suplex. Unfortunately the match kind of turned into a mediocre indy match which looks really awkward on a show like this.
Fuminori Abe & Takuya Nomura vs Manabu Hara & Hikaru Sato
I’ll be honest, I thought this was hurt by being overly long, some goofy ropework and I dislike how Abe seems to turn everything into a joke. But fuck that, they decided to beat the fuck out of each other from the get go and the spirit was absolutely there. Lots of fun chaos and hard hitting. Sato coming in and looking like a badass was surprising and great. Hara also always looks great when it’s time kick ass. We get lots of fun chaos and plenty of violent exchanges with some great extended segments towards the end only slightly marred by the weird decision to include some rope running. Sato may have been the best guy in the match, he really comes into his own in this style, really feels like a late blooming for him. Thought the match needed a bit more Nomura and less Abe, Nomuras out of nowhere grittiness is great. This match was a blast, not mindblowingly great, but definitely a blast.
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