Exploring various Japanese YouTube Channels

Masao Ando vs Yuki Toyoura, R-Planning 8/25/2024

Cool match up since Masao Andos is everyones favourite thickly built indy shooter boy and Toyoura is a mysterious guy with origins in JWA Tokai. Since Ando also has history with the JWA sphere that makes this interesting. And they deliver a really fun indy big boys match! Ando is really cool here as always kicking his opponent really hard and attacking his arms with painful looking submissions and hard kicks to the shoulder. Toyoura had some impressive offense including a huge dropkick and even bigger springboard dropkick which was impressive since he doesn’t exactly look like a small guy. He also wasn’t afraid to fire back with hard chops. Short and fun match with the right spirit being in place.

 

 

 Manabu Hara vs CHANGO, 10/1/2017

This was such an interesting match, and pretty much entirely due to CHANGO. Not that Hara is bad, but Chango brings such a fresh vibe with his animalistic vibe and unconventional tactics. He's not exactly a shoot grappler, but he's not a push over on the mat either. His scrambling, trying to pounce on Hara and grabbing limbs was a lot of fun and it made for a cool match up. CHANGO baiting Hara into doing a macho exchange and then hurting his leg was a really smart moment and should be stolen by pro wrestlers everywhere. Chango then proceeded to give Hara a good working over with a few unique leg attack spots. There were cool moments such as Hara having Chango in an anklelock while upside down, as well as a cool tarantula-esque leg stretch in the ropes that was pretty unique. Chango then proceeded to try and win the match with the old WWF No Mercy trick of locking in a submission on the floor and waiting until the countout. The finish was this great sequence of CHANGO trying to pin Hara with Hara reversing into armlocks repeatedly and CHANGO doing all these great pins. It really was some fine fine wrestling. 

 

Koji Kanemoto & Badmax Fujinaga vs Tatsuhito Takaiwa & Yusaku Ito, Kasuyaro Pro Wrestling 7/1/2018

What a sleaze soaked wonder of a match. This was a shortlived Fujinaga/Yasshi promotion it seems, seems this was held in a small club room or something. Imagine going to your local venue to see legends the caliber of Kanemoto and Takaiwa kick the shit out of some local guys. Seeing Takaiwa and Kanemoto lock up here and doing some hard hitting wrestling was quite enjoyable. Takiawa is old, slow, still hits heavy like a track. Kanemoto is quite a bit more nimble and hasn’t lost much of a step at all. He was good as ever being a prick here kicking the crap out of people. The real story are your sleazebag shooters Fujinaga and Ito, though. You could tell they were both hyped to be in the ring with legends and they were laying everything in extra hard, and both of them took some hard as hell beatings from the big names. Ito especially gets at it with Kanemoto and it’s a lot of fun. I really liked how Kanemoto, instead of falling into a macho exchange, just judo tripped Ito and then locked in a smothering Dragon Sleeper. We do get all your Kanemoto and Takaiwa signatures – the nasty face wash, the jaw cracking lariats, and there’s even a brief segment where they face off. The finishing run is Fujinaga vs Ito, and while Fujinaga is a bit of a clumsy wrestler he gets in some good hits carried by the energy of the lineup that he is in. Ito is ever reliable as your sleaze karateka with cool kicks who will occasionally try to maul someone with headbutts. As a match this was pretty much your typical indy main event tag formula with the stiffness and sleaze factor dialed way up and it was immensely enjoyable.

 

BATOS CAFE 2/23/2020

 Manabu Hara vs. Onryo

It's BattlARTS vs. WYF baby! Just 20 years late! Onryo in his broken down old age has become a good little worker and this was a ton of fun. Opening grappling where Onryos radiation dust kept annoying Hara was really fun, and Onryo produced a nice highlight when he caught Hara in a neat pin combo. They made it clear the ghost wasn't on Haras level as a grappler but he could do hang on and maybe do something ghostly to catch the shooter. Onryo controlling by working Haras leg was a bit trite and didn't mean much. The finishin stretch on the other hand was made fun by Onryo busting out some surprisingly slick moves while Hara just tried to armbar the zombie. Satisfying match up.

SUSHI vs. Kagura

Kagura is some sleaze junior in a cheap skull mask. He seems to be decently athletic. This was a slow junior match and kind of trite. They really needed to work some decent basic opening exchanges or something. SUSHI I think has worked AJPW but he really doesn't show much at all here, and he was supposed to be the face, Kagura did all the somewhat cool things. Crap finish too.

Yasu Urano vs. Hiroshi Yamato

Wow! Surprisingly fun match. Is matwork becoming trendy on the Japanese indies now or something? I'm here for it. They honest to god did some pretty good matwork here. Urano had these neat leg stretches and takeovers and looked like he should be with the Mumejuku crew. There was also a sequence of duelling strait jacket holds that was straight out of WoS. Yamamoto looked pretty decent. They also went into a sequence of armdrags at one point that felt honest to god spontaneous and cool. The finish wasn't as exciting as they went for comedy for some reason. Still, I probably should watch more of these guys.

Yuki Ishikawa vs. GENTARO

This was all grappling, if you can get into match that is all matwork you will like this. Honestly thought the grappling here was up there with Yuki Ishikawa vs. Carl Greco. Ishikawa is a bonafide master at this stage, and GENTARO is really tenacious and matches him. They make no secret that Ishikawa is dictating things with all the awesome and unusual stuff he was doing, which makes the match. GENTARO doesn’t get to grapple often but he’s really good at it. He kept locking in hammerlocks and short arm scissors from odd angles and it made it feel like Ishikawa was facing a 50s grappler. Several amazing moments (the painful leglock battle, all the choke attempts including GENTAROs sleeper, the leglock/head and arm choke battle, the ending) and Ishikawa honestly looked like the GOAT.

Yuiga vs. Rion Mizuki vs. Tatsuhito Takaiwa vs. Minoru Tanaka

On a show full of serious undercard matches, they do a weird 4 way dance where they break every other minute to drink shots. Some solid individual exchanges here, especially dig Yuiga who's such a crowbar, but everyone just did their bread and butter and you can imagine there wasn't much depth with the stipulation. I would've rather seen this run as a tag as I imagine Yuiga and pretty boy Mizuki vs. the junior vets would've been pretty cool.

THE LIBRARY

More Japanese YouTube Channel Explorations

 

Rikiya Fudo vs. Raito Shimitsu (?? 12/22/2019)

When I watched Raito Shimitsu vs. Yuki Ishikawa, I was hoping he would get more interesting stuff like this to do. Well, I don’t know if “getting the bricks beat out off of you by Fudo in a chain ring match” technically counts, but it sure is something. This goes 5 minutes and is basically the worlds greatest WCWSN squash. Fudo is a great stiffer Finlay in this, just beating the life out of Raito with sick vader hammers, lariats and chops. His ground moves may be even more devastating as he just drops his entire body weight into an elbow drop or senton. His big splash that left Raito gasping for air looked absolutely sick. Raito gets 1 or 2 brief moments of offense, including a nice judo throw, but his Karelin Lift gets denied and Fudo just finishes him like he owed him money. Very short, very violent. It was a good bout. 

Yasushi Sato vs. Masamune (Mumejuku 6/3/2018)

Unexpectedly, a pretty great match. Masamune is a masked indy guy who was trained in Mexico. I have no idea what got into them here, but they hit the mat and had an outstanding match. Starts with a bunch of cool amateur matwork and cradles and then develops really well into this intense battle that felt like it could have taken place in Coliseo Coacalco. I know Yasushi Sato is a Mumejuku regular so probably used to doing matwork heavy matches, but I was surprised by how well Masamune did here. Both guys had some brilliant holds, especially dug the whacky leglocks which were set up really well, and there were a number of nifty spots. Really loved Masamune catching Sato on the knee drop and him braining Sato hard with an out of nowhere Tiger Feint Kick after a rope break, aswell as the crazy rolling pin he broke out. Also loved both guys randomly going into escrima pummeling like 15 minutes into the match, which lead to Sato hitting his awesome deadlift belly to belly suplex. Finishing stretch was built around Sato trying to lock in his grapevine/straight jacket hold signature move and Masamune fighting it off in different ways. Sato further establishes himself as the king of the Russian Leg Sweep by hitting another awesome one. Really really compelling stuff, I’ve no idea how these guys bothered to put this much intellligence and technical skill in a non-mainstream match for a small audience but I’m glad we got to watch.

Mr. Gannosuke vs. Manabu Hara (Batos Cafe 4/3/2018)

Awesome match, which may actually be the best Gannosuke singles I’ve seen, which is crazy to say about a match that happened in 2018. I guess random uploads from Japanese micro indy related YouTube channels are the new gold. I think this was during Gannosukes retirement run so he was bringing the goods. First half of the match is all matwork. Suruga is obviously younger and more athletic and pushing the pace, so Gannosuke breaks out a bunch of awesome Fujiwaraesque counters. Totally didn’t know he had that in him. Second half Suruga continues to dominate by laying into Gannosuke with kicks and palms, I also did not expect a 48 year old has-been-coasting-for-years Gannosuke to eat that kind of stiff punishment. It’s really all about whether Gannosuke is tough enough to survive and break out a counter or whether the younger wrestler will blow him away. Gannosuke is of course a really fun tricky pro wrestler, he can always turn a match around by just kicking someone in the balls or busting out his awesome Gannosuke Clutch, and he fires back with some crowbar lariats and big bombs of his own. No idea what’s been going on lately with so many awesome unexpected Japan indy matches popping up but I love it.