JWA Tokai 6/18/2017

 Naoto Akita vs The Scary Mummy Man

Akita is the super rookie of Tokai Pro Wrestling, I think. The Scary Mummy Man is.. well.. a mummy. There was some undead comedy here, but it still felt like a competitive match, so it was kind of enjoyable. The Mummy reminded me a bit of Shinigami and Akita did a lot of judo based moves, which was kind of cool, tho it was still far from a serious match. I kind of enjoyed it and it was over quickly.

Black Nyantaro vs Hakaru

What I’ve seen from Hakaru before has been good, as he seems like a wrestler with good ground game. Unfortunately there wasn’t any of that here, it was Hakaru doing dirty tactics and brawling, trying to unmask his opponent. Hakarus headlock punches looked very good, aside from that it was kind of boring. I’ve never seen Nyantaro before, and he just did some back scratches early on, which did not make me very interested in him. In the last 3rd both guys came alive and became more energetic. Nyantaro had some cool lucha libre holds and moves, just that made me think a more ground-based match would have been better. Well, not every match can be like that, and this night Hakaru choose to be a straight villain and unmask his opponent.

Yasushi Sato vs Super Taira

A promising match up on paper, that turned out to be an excellent match. Super Taira is a really interesting wrestler – he does some lucha libre, he is skillful on the mat, but he can also hit hard kicks and flying armbars like a shooter. The groundwork here was great, with Taira using his lucha libre llaves to tie up Sato. Sato looked outmatched by his opponents crazy holds, though I loved the one weird submission he busted out to in turn Taira in a knot. Eventually Taira would start to attack Satos arm and shoulder with some vicious kicks, with Sato really being in pain. Sato would lock in a boston crab, but he had to release to hold because his arm was too damaged in a pretty cool bit. The second half was full of great counters and submissions, with Taira having numerous awesome counters to Satos Russian Leg Sweep. The pin combos, Russian Leg Sweep teases and narrow 2 counts were fantastic. Sato busted out a lot of great stuff too, he hit a fantastic out of nowhere belly to belly suplex that hit Taira hard, a Terry Funk punch combo and even flying off the top rope. I love Yasushi Sato as the master of mat wrestling that he is in Mutoha, but the man has an amazingly diverse skillset. He was outwrestled by Taira here and so his one game changer was the Russian Leg Sweep. I also loved Super Tairas cross armhold submission. Great stuff, with both guys looking like great wrestlers.

Koichi Wakikaido & The Ninja & Ultraman Robin vs Shadow #1, #2 & #3

This is my first look at the seemingly never ending match series between Wakikaido, his hero friends and the Shadows. If you look at JWA Tokai results these teams must have faced each other a hundred times. Right away this becomes a surreal trip as they take pro wrestling logic to the absurd. Because wrestlers can’t fight back when being moved around, the Shadows put everyone in a headlock and then just walk around the arena. Wakikaido wrestles slower than Giant Baba, but he still has impeccable timing. Ultraman hits a really nice spinning headscissor somehow. The Ninja is dressed like an imitator of the Great Sasuke and he’s actually really energetic and even hits an Asai Moonsault. Baffling and fascinating stuff.

Cosmo Soldier & Chojin Yusha G-Valion vs Hiroshi Toyoda & Yuki Toyoura

It’s my first time seeing JWA Tokai originals, Hiroshi Toyoda and Yuki Toyoura. Of course, we all know Cosmo Soldier is a legend, and G-Valion is always cool to see. The early goings of this match were basic, but executed with some struggle that made it interesting. Of course Soldier is one of the all-time most interesting wrestlers, you never know what he is going to do next, he is like a force of chaos. In this case things got interesting when Cosmo hit Toyodas leg with something that was between a springboard leg drop and a low dropkick. Immediately Toyoda fired back with a low dropkick that hit Soldiers leg hard. After that, the match turned a lot more aggressive. I really liked the team of Toyoda and Toyoura here. Toyoda seemed like a really cool wrestler, he was this short guy with very explosive powerful moves and a really hard elbow smash. Toyoura was the tallest guy in the match, and while felt a bit awkward (he was only wrestling about 2 years at this point) he also had lots of devastating power offense, and he swung his arms and body with force into his opponent. The fun of watching a bunch of wrestlers you know nothing about is seeing what they can do and not knowing what comes next, and this ended up being an exciting ride for that reason. 

 

To top it off Valion and Soldier also worked hard busting out cool stuff, and the highlight was easily the brutal open hands Soldier started throwing at Toyoura. Long quality main event, which absolutely makes me want to see more of the world of JWA Tokai.

 

The Library

IWA Japan SPRING BREEZE 3/13/1998

 

Takeshi Sato & Tortuga vs. Cosmo*Soldier & The Great Takeru

Masao Orihara & Hidetomo Egawa vs. Perseus & Akinori Tsukioka

Benkei Daikokubo & Katsumi Hirano vs. Nuruka & Shinigami

Sumie Sakai vs. Emi Motokawa

Keisuke Yamada & Keizo Matsuda & Shigeo Okumura vs. The Great Kabuki & Ryuma Go & Tarzan Goto

 

Well I'll be damned, because this was a damn cool little card where every match delivered something worthwhile. Well, except that tag with Benkei and Shinigami maybe - aaaahhh let's not talk about it! The opener was a cool little junior's match which they totally should not have clipped. Cosmo Soldier always adds a sense of unpredictability even to standard opening exchanges. He will hit a stiff dropkick and then start working mount and then hit an insane tope con hilo, all in the span of 90 seconds. Same for the 2nd match, which had some nice hate filled exchanges and sleaziness. The semi main event was like the perfect 90s match to put on a VHS comp - just one nifty move after another. Also, impeccable fashion sense that both girls displayed! Color combinations like this will never come back. Wrestling in 1998 was a blast.

 

Keisuke Yamada & Keizo Matsuda & Shigeo Okumura vs. The Great Kabuki & Ryuma Go & Tarzan Goto - EPIC

Leave it to a bunch of sleazy dudes and old geezers to have one of the funnest bomb throwing sprints of the year. You know any match with Tarzan Goto & Ryuma Go in it is pure money. If you don't, I hereby decree it. I was expecting a wild brawl, but they mostly stay in the ring and stick to the all star team of Tarzan/Go/Kabuki waffling the shit out of the sleaze greenhorns. Matsuda & Okumura aren't all that great, but that DOES NOT MATTER because they were here to get punched in the face and kicked in the throat a whole LOT. The exchanges between Goto & Yamada were insanely gory and easily the highlight of the match. I also unexpectedly loved Kabuki, who is supposed to be way over the hill and corpse-like at this pound but still BRINGS it - by doing what he always did: throwing punches and thrust kicking dudes really hard. I can't believe people widely don't like this dude - even his nerve hold was awesome! He was KILLING the poor guy with that nerve hold. I imagine if this had a grand stand exchange between Goto & Yamada at the end or something this would have been near all time level, but as it stands it was basically 3 badass vets waltzing in to kick the shit out of anyone and it kind of ruled. Also, do not watch this match if you dislike lariats, because this had about 30 of em.

THE LIBRARY

TARZAN GOTO DOCUMENTATION PROJECT

Wrestle Yume Factory 1/28/1996

This was very much a  mid 90s high school gym scum indy show.

Madness vs. The Wolf 

 THE MADNESS emanates the kind of terrible fascination typical of sleaze indy wrestling. He's just a big guy with a skull mask and a green flanel shirt. His entrance theme is just gurgling swamp sounds. The match was better than you'd expect. It was pretty basic, but The Wolf will kick you really hard and THE MADNESS has a nice powerslam. Being able to do 1 or 2 moves well will get you far enough in my book and this was decent like an approximation of a  good WWF Superstars match in a japanese high school gym.

Cosmo*Soldier vs. Azteca

Azteca is the most mediocre junior in all of Japanese wrestling history, but I'd say he was decent in WYF as opposed to KAGEKI where he just got really into being the poorest mans Liger. Cosmo*Soldier  had yet to reach his peak as a botchtastic wannabe hybrid shooter junior that he would become in 1997, but he flies way into my heart in this match by hitting hilariously miscalculated dive into nothing. This really wasn't good or anything but it made me laugh.

Hiroyoshi Kotsubo vs. Hirofumi Miura

This was Hiroyoshi Kotsubo actually being pretty good. Lord knows that guy sucks working BattlARTS and Futen, but will have a good performance on the most niche shows. This was like a scrappy BattlARTS match with Kotsubo being aggressive and working takedowns on suplexes. Miura is some karate gi wearing scum who tries kicking hard but Kotsubo just eats him. This ended up just a squash, although the finish with the GI choke was badass.
  

Onryo vs. Shinichi Shino

 Shinichi Shino is a W*ING guy who it seems was struggling to find his identity at this point. He looked like a mix of several different wrestlers. Onryo at this stage is really pretty useless outside of dives and taking nasty bumps. This was mostly Shino in control and only allowing Onryo to hit his spots which is how you carry Onryo. I wouldn't say Shino was particularily good here, but he kept things moving and the match ended up short enough to be alright.

Masayoshi Motegi vs. Shinigami

Bless our lord and saviour Motegi. He tries so, so hard to get a watchable match out of Shinigami. On the other hand, he is likely responsible for letting guys as shitty as Shinigami into the business. I will respect him for shouldering the burden, though. Shinigami is terrible, but there was one nifty moment where Motegi was working over his leg and put a Figure 4 on him. Shinigami then got up, seemingly no-selling the leg work but then his leg gave right out. It was a pretty cool bit of convincing zombie-like selling. Motegi ends the match with a cool submission that was like an STF without the face lock and Motegi leaning all the way on the zombies injured leg. Also Onryo hit a dive off the balconies during this, setting the Onryo dive count on this show to 4. The match still blew, though.

Arashi & Osamu Tachihikari vs. Shinichi Nakano & Kamikaze

Shinichi Nakano has to be like the japanese Black Terry, putting in subtle great performances in the most grimy unexpected places. Problem was that he barely was in the match. He is in a great opening section - where he gets his bandaged shoulder torn up - and a great end section though. Between that, there are way too many segments involving Kamikaze. The parts were Kamikaze was controlling were terrible as he was constantly calling spots in a really obvious manner. Arashi & Tachihikari may be the least of the WAR heavyweights but they are still OK delivering a beatdown. The end was great as Tachihikari ended up bloody. Nakano delivered some nasty as fuck stomps to the cut and a running punch that was Daisuke Ikeda levels of wild. There was also a great spot where Nakano, seemingly beaten, pulled Tachihikari in position for Kamikaze to hit a surprise flying move. Nakano smashing Tachihikari in the face with a chair repeatedly for the 10 count was also way more violent than I expected  for a high school gym main event.

THE LIBRARY