Koki Kitahara Documentation Project #14

Genichiro Tenryu & Koki Kitahara vs. Super Strong Machine & Hiromichi Fuyuki (WAR 2/24/1994)  - EPIC

4 tubby guys beat the fuck out of eachother and it rules, what else is new? The opening minutes were really fun logical pro wrestling. Fuyuki was fired up, ready to take down Tenryu and kick Kitaharas ass. He also looked shockingly good doing sympathetic selling as he got awkwardly kicked in the chin and face repeatedly etc. Kitahara loves demolishing other dudes with kicks but ends up having his leg taken out in a simple spot that looked great. His leg selling was very good as his kicks became mostly useless. Tenryus hot tag was really fun and different as Fuyuki just bitchslapped him out of the ring and proceeded to kick Kitaharas ass some more. Tenryu then hands out some Necro level chairshots only to get brained himself. Super Strong Machine is not a very charismatic dude compared to the others but he is really fun here blindsiding guys, just constantly ramming people in the back of their necks with lariats and chairs when they would least expect it. Tenryu kind of played the role of the megastar who looked like he was on the verge of defeat, always looking like he was gonna go „Damn now I'm REAL fed up!“ and then he would get bonked in the head again. Really cool finish. I'd say this isn't quite up there with the high end WAR material but for the genre this is must watch anyways.

Kitahara & Ishinriki & Takashi Ishikawa vs. Koji Kitao & Masaaki Mochizuki & Akio Kobayashi, WAR 7/17/1994 - GREAT

Pretty cool short match. The first part of this was to put over Kitao as an unstoppable monster, and they actually make him look like such. He devastates Ishikawa and Ishinriki, but Kitahara is able to make some dents in him, which is a pretty cool role for Kitahara to be in. Then Kitao tags in Kobayashi (not sure why, he was destroying everyone) and immediately we get some scrappy violent exchanges starring a pissed off Kitahara slapping the shit out of a snot nosed karateka. Ishinriki also looks good doing wild sumo flailing and throws against the karatekas. Mochizuki frantic exchanges were great. I‘d Ishikawa trying to grab Mochizuki and trying to yank him over the rope also felt crazy. And Kitahara was the man in this.

 

Koki Kitahara vs. Nobutaka Araya, WAR 7/13/2000 - GREAT

One of these violent and out of control spectacles you only really get when two scuzzy thick guys (preferably with mullets) face each other in a WAR match. It looks like Araya is drunk or something here, most of what he does is hit Kitahara with hard crowbar shoulderblocks, awkwardly flopping about the place as Kitahara beats on him, and acting weird and psycho. It takes a look to look up there with Kitahara in the psycho department but Araya does it here. At one point he puts his hands on Kitaharas second Nihao, and it felt like a very real moment where shit was about to go down. And Kitahara looks just disgusted with him and kills him with nasty blunt force kicks. Awkward, violent, seedy match, pure Wrestle And Romance

KOKI KITAHARA DOCUMENTATION PROJECT

NOW FIRE ENDLESS BATTLE 2/14/1993

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxxqLxVAjdg

1. Kishin Kawabata vs. An Che Honn

2. The Equalizer vs. Kim Chon Hyon

3. Buddy Landell vs. Rod Price

4. Hisakatsu Oya vs. Alex Porteau

5. Manny Fernandez vs. Apollo Sugawara

6. Ishinriki vs. Hiroshi Hatanaka

7. Atsushi Onita & Kendo Nagasaki vs. Goro Tsurumi & Umanosuke Ueda

  This was another really fun NOW card! We start with 2 singles matches starring obscure korean workers. Korean pro wrestling seems to have a similiar history to japanese pro wrestling only that it kind of died off over the years, but it's such a great unknown on the english speaking internet. In a different universe we are all raving about korean pro wrestling while nobody knows who Rikidozan is. I've only seen glimpses of korean wrestlers and all of them were from japanese promotions pitting them against japanese workers, which I assume is kind of a barrier, assuming there is a language barriere there and these workers come from different backgrounds and styles. Plus, with 1992 undercard indy matches, you mostly check them out for curiousity, especially when such illustrious names as Kishin Kawabata and The Equalizer are in them. And these undercard matches delivered all you can ask for. Kawabata vs. An Che Honn was pretty much a showcase of fun offense – with Kawabata hitting big headbutts, kicks to the spine, biiiiig jumping elbow drops and sentons – and An Che Honn hitting some pretty agile junior offense. The korean was doing standing moonsaults, backflips, flip sentons where he landed with his hip first in really hurty fashion. Dare I say, was this guy an unknown innovator from 25 years ago? Or was he just imitating what he saw on Peruvian wrestling tapes from 20 years prior? Then he hits this cool punch/kick combo and I'm all on board for the Korean Pro Wrestling train. Eitherway, that match didn't have real structure as basically Kawabata went back to offense immediately after An Che had hit his spots, but it was a fun showcase. Kawabata wins with a big leaping elbow drop and that rules. The next match had slightly better structure – I've never seen The Equalizer before and he looks like a fake Kevin Sullivan – google tells me he was a Kevin Sullivan gimmick brother – apparently he was in WCW. If you are a Fake Sullivan superfan you probably need to see this match, because it's like a really fun WCW TV match for a minute. Equalizer works „I'm bigger and you can't knock me over“, and Korakuen Hall pops when the obscure korean finally bodyslams him! Fake Sullivan hits a BIG second rope legdrop! Kim Chon Hyon hits all kinds of fun out of nowhere kicks! Equalizer brawls his way to the countout finish, and because the camera guy filming this is kind of slow you don't really get what's happening. After the match Tsurumi comes out and looks pissed at the koreans!

 

Landell vs. Price – this is what US Indy workers working japanese promotions used to look like!! Tubby blonde dyed white guys who don't care about impressing anybody and instead just work a psychologically sound match! And well I'll be a son of a bitch, because these two go out of their way to work a Southern BattlARTS match! They hit snug elbows, thundering chops and hurty looking punches and toe kicks, and also work fun drop toe holds and fireman carries into leg rides on the ground. It was a slow paced, deliberate match, mind you, but damn! I wanna see more wrestling like this!! You are probably thinking to yourself „Oh you lying german bastard. You spent 4$ on this tape and now you are imagining things to trick yourself into thinking this was good.“ Well bugger off, because this low key ruled. Price absolutely clocks Landell with a stiff clothesline out of nowhere. Landell works snug wristlocks and toeholds (inbetween Wooo!s for the crowd) only for Price to come up and punch him in the cheek. Price blocks a surfboard so Landell goes for a single leg crab instead and kicks Price in the ribs while holding that. Price fights out of an armbar and locks in a UWF leglock which Landell sells like a Figure 4 with his shouders down for the pinfall. Landell comes up limping and Price immediately follows up with more snug lowkicks. What the hell is happening?? Landell dares Price to take him down, who promptly does just that. Landell fights off the Price takedowns – including one by doing an awesome Fujiwara sprawl and now the crowd is really digging all this was we move closer to the 20 minute mark in a match with a 20 minute time limit. They really go broadway here and work nearfalls for sleeper holds and Figure 4s. Prices last move before the draw is a 10 Punch in the corner for a close 2 count. This was such a weird broadway but they really did a pro job working a sound match that won everyone over.

 

After that we get two more matches featuring US guys. IT'S HISAKATSU OYA vs. THE PUG!!! And they hit the mat!! Damn, is NOW scientific wrestling central of the 90s japanese indy scene?! Oya looks better here than he did in both BattlARTS and MUGA. He really wrenches Porteaus t shoulder and arm with some snug holds. Porteau is on the very, very bland side here. He has a nice headlock punch though. But before The Pug can bore you to sleep Oya absolutely KILLS him with the backdrop suplex! Golly!! Nasty Oya submissions and that insane bump are totally enough for me to give this the Full Japan Indy Point. Next up is Thee Manny Fernandez vs. Apollo Sugawara. And that was a fun short match too. Fernandez has the Finlay mullet and his charisma and mannerisms shine through even on a handheld. Match was fun in that short WCW TV match way. Sugawara still has really nice dropkicks and Fernandez takes a really nice backdrop bump for him. Fernandez also hits some really nice slug clotheslines. He also wins with a nasty shootstyle toe hold which is unexpected and rules, like pretty much everthing on this card so far.

 

Ishinriki vs. Hiroshi Hatanaka was, unlike pretty much everything else on this card, something you could've shown to your average juniors loving 90s smark and he would've agree that it was a cool match. Two pudgy juniors go 20 minutes and there are some big nearfalls down the stretch. I really enjoyed the match as they did a good job filling the time, these two guys have really good looking basics, really fast explosive shoulderblocks and armdrags etc. Hatanaka looked especially good, hitting lariats with a ton of snap, big kneedrops and leg drops, really nice powerslam etc. His Fujiwara armbar counter may have been the highlight of the match. He also hit at one point a huge legdrop that looked like it would shoot KO someone and Ishinriki was either legit knocked loopy or Ishinriki is really good at selling „I just had a 280 pound japanese dude drop his weight on my jaw and I don't know where the fuck I am“. It's this kind of match that gets you really over with japanese crowds and they both came out looking like they should've been kings of the indies but instead they just completely fell off the map in the mid 90s. I thought the match could've been really great with a little more stiffness and hatred – they tease flaring tempers in the first minute and never really follow up – or maybe some kind of more pronounced story, but they achived what they were going for without hiccups and this was just a really cool match to see.

 

The main event was all about the superstar charisma of Onita as the crowd is absolutely white hot for him. Unfortunately once again some kind of sports entertainment crept into it as Ueda refused to cooperate with Tsurumi. To be fair, Tsurumi looked good here, and the guys potatoeing eachother sections were fun. Tsurumi was doing the backfists before the were cool and hitting nice punches, also Nagasaki has ridculously great kicks here, just trying to boot dudes heads off, plus Manny Fernandez was at ringside with a kendo stick. But once again the match ended early. The coolest thing to come out of this was a brief Manny Fernandez/Tarzan Goto face off which is the greatest match of the 90s that never happened.

 

So there you have it. Two really good matches, fun undercard, lots of coolness throughout, Tarzan Goto in a funny 90s getup... I'm all on board for the NOW hype train by now.

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Tarzan Goto Documentation #8

Tarzan Goto & Great Sasuke vs. Mr. Pogo & Masaru Toi, Michinoku Pro 12/10/1993 - EPIC

Pretty insane match. Starts of hot with a mix of fast junior exchanges and violent brawling. Normally Mr. Pogo just dishes out offense and doesn't take much, so Goto just beating the shit out of him and bloodying him with punches and chairs looked like something else. We get Pogo wailing back on him with a boot, and Goto bleeding and doing a great hulk up. I loved how Goto capped of what was his shine segment in the match by grabbing a kendo stick and beating the snot out of Toi and Pogo. After that we move onto the meat (and blood) of the match: Pogo stabbing Sasuke in the back. Ultra grizzly stuff and has to be in the Top 5 craziest things Sasuke has done. Sasuke trying to crawl across the ring with that piece of wood stuck in his back was like something out of a messed up hillbilly gore move. Gotos hot tag did not disappoint as he just destroyed everyone in his path. Great classic tag structure executed in a very early 90s Japan way.

2/3 Falls: Tarzan Goto & Masanobu Kurisu & Gran Hamada & Masashi Aoyagi & Kazuhiko Matsuzaki vs. Shiro Koshinaka, Ryo Miyake, Ishinriki, Arashi & Ryuma Go, Wrestle Aid Project 5/2/2005 - GREAT

Yes, you‘re reading this match up right. Just an absolute murderers row of lumpy sleaze gods potatoeing each other. I had no idea Go was still running shows in the 2000s and of course he put this monster match up together. He and Ishinriki were pretty fun here while Miyake was mostly just there to bleed and get potatoed, but the stars were Kurisu, Aoyagi and Goto. Goto was kingsized here, having a heated exchange with Koshinaka (Koshinaka always matches up well against tubby ex-AJPW guys in bumblebee colour schemes) and putting his trademark bloody beatdown on Miyake, while Aoyagi threw a bunch of great looking kicks and Kurisu was Kurisu. Whole match had barely any wrestling moves, just old guys potatoeing each other. Matsuzaki didn‘t do much on offense but was willing to bleed and eat the pin. Pretty much exactly what you want from this matchup.

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LLPW DANCING HEROINE 5/29/1994

 Michiko Ohmukai vs. Leo Kitamura

Hey look, it‘s Michiko Ohmukai. Kitamura has been around a while, but Ohmukai squashes her completely smacking and stretching her and connecting some nasty knees to the back of her head.

Jenn Yukari vs. Michiko Nagashima

Pretty bad match. There were some attempts at armork and some violent kicks, but the whole thing as pretty sloppy and directionless. Blew the finish, too.

Carol Midori & Mizuki Endo vs. Miki Handa & Yasha Kurenai

Bigger and better match than you expect from midcard joshi. This was quite scrappy and all 4 beat the hell out of each other. I‘m used to kickpadded girls bringing the stiffness in joshi, so this kind of WCWSN style snug ork was a nice surprise. Some big forearms, back elbows and hip drops. Kurenai and Handa mostly kicked ass, with Midori and Endo fighting back valiantly. Midori had some fun athletic moves and Kurenai looked really good. Girl who wrestles like a pissed off, staff wielding Akira Taue adds some nice grounding to a joshi match. Add in some cool 90s nearfalls (people flipping out for a Vader Bomb or running powerslam) and you have yourself a fun little discovery.

Harley Saito & Eagle Sawai vs. Noriyo Tateno & Rumi Kazama

This started out very good. It was pretty much a total slobberknocker from the Saito & Sawai tandem. Sawai was just running over people with body checks and lariats, and Saito was killing it throwing stiff kicks and slipping into shoot submissions. They ended up picking Kazama leg apart in Anderson bros fashion. Tatenos hot tag was kinda lame – she just hit two moves, then tried a surfboard hold on Kazama, failed and then tagged out. I was fine with Kazamas selling initially, she stumbled around, hit some cool one legged kicks to Sawais face – but then her leg was never brought up again. Kazama and Tateno dominated way too much of the ending section. There was a badass moment where Sawai stormed into the ring and went Steve Austin on everyone with the chair, but I wanted Saito and Sawai to be put over more as the dangerous unit they had been through the first half of the match. Instead Kazama and Tateno did some lame outside brawling. The finish was a nasty move, but the match ended in kinda weird fashion. Eh, I grew new respect for Sawai from this.

Shinobu Kandori & Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs. Ishinriki & Utako Hozumi

Hozumi is Ishinrikis bride, so that makes for a fun dynamic. This was a light hearted match that was worked competitively and never exposed the business. Fujiwara sells pretty much how you expect for Hozumi. The Fujiwara/Ishinriki sections were fun, with some cool wrestling and a surprising amount of stiffness. There was one moment where Ishinriki palmed Fujiwara pretty hard on the ground, and then stomped on his head. Another singles match between the two would‘ve been amazing. Hozumi was sloppy here and there but the finish was between her and Kandori and really cool. This was kinda more like a 2nd match on the card comedy tag than a main event but I had fun.

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Assorted Japan Indy Wrestling

 

2/3 Falls: GENTARO vs. Masamune, VKF 9/23/2008

Borderline modern classic where they go balls deep going 60 minutes, and succeed. Who knew GENTARO would be the modern day Jack Briscoe having all these 60 minute epics? This starts with both guys doing some fun matwork before they settle into the main groove of the match: both guys doing gruelling body part work and struggling over basic holds. Gentaro starts the fun by working over Masamunes arm and Masamune defends himself by cinching tight headlocks and working his neck. Gentaro kept trying to force a tap with armbars while some of Masamunes holds damn near seemed to pull his head off so the work never got stale. They end the first fall on a cool note and then settle into doing some dueling legwork. The transition from armwork/neckwork into the legwork was pretty impeccable as they didn‘t just move on to do another thing, there was a logical shift in necessary strategies. Duelling legwork was also pretty intense and bordered on a Destroyer classic. Gentaro sunk in some Figure 4s and there was a great moment where Masamune countered one of them by grabbing Gentaros leg and trying to twist it off. There‘s also some absolutely stellar work around Gentaros Sharpshooter. I was expecting them to keep grinding it out on the mat, but they settle into a cool finishing run with some great pin attempts, nearfalls and choice counters, while keeping the focus on the leg stuff. Last move was just a thing of beauty. Yes this was slow and a bit repetitive in parts, but both guys did a phenomenal job struggling in and out of holds, and it all felt spontanteous. Really a gem of a match, if you are the kind of purist who can get into a cool 40 minutes of brainy duelling limbwork.

 

DAISAKU & YUSAKU & Naoshi Sano & YOSHIYA & Ishinriki vs. Masayoshi Motegi & Hirofumi Miura & Shinigami & Fukumentaro & Shigeo Kato, NMC Pro 10/21/2001

Fun sleazy brawl with zombies, karatekas and wrestlers brawling all over the building, bleeding, and taking mean bumps. There is a car at ring side and a good chunk of time is spent with guys taking nasty bumps into the car. Sano was quite the whipping boy here, taking a fisherman buster on top of the car, and another one on top of a truck, before getting carved open with a hatchet. These guys all have no problem working stiff and throwing big suplexes so the non brawling portions were cool too although the match suffered a bit from having only one camera.

WAR 6/30/1994 Part 1

 Nobukazu Hirai vs. Yuji Yasuraoka

Yasuraoka may have been the pinnacle of 90s wrestling fashion. He wasn’t at his most extravagant here, but looked like a total gangster coming In with his mullet, baggy pants, martial arts belt and shoes.This was a basic opening match upgraded to WAR-appropriate level of violence with both guys really cracking each other when throwing hands and trying to rip each other in half with half crabs. Starts a bit slow but gets going good with Yasuraoka busting out his cool high spots and Hirai trying to crack his jaw with some mean elbows. Also, because it was the 90s, when they do moves they do cool moves like flying back elbows or sidewalk slams, and execute them with real thud. Hirai may have been at this best as a WAR opening match guy potatoeing his fellows and hitting big elbow drops, and he even wins this match with a really cool huracanrana into a neck crank. Very satisfying.

Hiromichi Fuyuki & Jado & Gedo vs. Hiroshi Itakura & Ichiro Yaguchi & Hideo Takayama

It’s nice to get a full version of that NSPW main event. And this was a pretty great match. Everyone looked good potatoeing the shit out of each other. Fuyuki was so great here punching and stomping these kickpadded wannabe shooters into oblivion, at one point even doing a Terry Funk combo, and as usual there were numerous cool cut offs and double teams from Fuyuki-Gun. Yaguchi was doing a sambo gimmick here, and he is a lot better as a dimestore Volk Han with cool kicks than as a shitty facepainted brawler. At one point he just ragdolled Gedo with a cool wrist throw and that was probably the coolest thing he ever did. Itakura was cool here working fast paced junior sequences with Jado and Gedo, and Hido was there to kick, bleed and get the life beaten out of him. Miss when wrestling was simple and violent.

Dos Caras & Bret Como & Chris Jericho vs. Ashura Hara & Arashi (Benkei) & Super Strong Machine

Now this is a WAR 6-man, baby. And… this went the absurd length of 30(!!!) minutes! It ended up not being a bad match, too! Dos Caras was great here, being pretty much a highspot machine and doing lots of amusing shtick to fill the time, such as challenging Arashi to a posing contest, and trying to unmask everybody else. He was the only on his team to hit a dive! Como and Jericho are more interesting thumbling with some fat sumos than doing their regular junior stuff, and Hara potatoeing them was amusing. And the Arashi sections manage to not stink, even though that guy couldn’t do anything besides some sumo pummeling at this point. After the time runs out Team Caras is awarded the victory. Talk about going to lengths to have Hara and his mates not drop a pinfall.

Great Sasuke, Masao Orihara & Shiryu v Koji Ishinriki, Masanobu Kurisu & Takashi Ishikawa

Man, every match on this card is a main event. This was pretty great too. It was basically a straight WAR match that saw Kurisu and Ishikawa potatoeing guys while the junior side saved their highspots for later, no trained monkey show here. Loved the Kurisu/Shiryu opening segment which saw Kurisu meeting Shiryus lucharesu tendencies by hitting a rope walk armdrag, and also Kurisu stomping and chairing Shiryu really hard. Ishikawa may have been even more vicious as he was kicking Oriharas head like a football. Orihara looked pretty great here (rocking an ultra spaced out 90s look too), and the crowd was insanely hyped for Sasuke, even though he did very little in the match. Ishinriki was wearing a Jason Vorhees mask in this for some reason and basically only in the match to eat the pin while Kurisu did the bulk of the work headbutting guys into oblivion. Finish was great with Sasuke, Orihara and Shiryu hitting a damn triple missile dropkick on Ishinriki before Ishinriki powerbombs Sasuke only for the actual legal man, Orihara to roll him up.

Genichiro Tenryu & Koki Kitahara & Animal Hamaguchi vs. Kendo Nagasaki & Ryo Miyake & Kishin Kawabata - GREAT

Well, it’s a bunch of beefy dudes potatoeing each other. Almost like this is WAR or something. This was one of the most one sided matches so far as Kitahara and Hamaguchi just mercilessly potatoed Miyake and Kawabata. I think both Miyake and Kawabata got in like a combined 5 offensive moves in this match. Kawabatas piece of offense was a really nice dropkick that caught Tenryu in the mouth, and Miyakes was a pretty pathetic looking dropkick cause Miyake sucks. Other than that, they were there to get kicked in the face and elbowed in the throat by Kitahara and Hamaguchi. Kitahara looked like a killing machine, just killing these poor guys, and Hamaguchi dropped some hard elbows and samoan drops. The match built to a Tenryu/Nagasaki face off, and while it was pretty brief it was cool with Nagasaki smashing Tenryu in the face with chairs. Every match on this card is overdelivering like mad and this was also really cool considering this could’ve been a nothing squash.

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WAR 1/5/1994

Masao Orihara vs. Norman Smiley

Oddly enough, Norman Smiley fit perfectly into WAR. I've yet to check out his mexican work but this may be the best stuff he's ever done. He was allowed to work as this tough as nails shooter who would dominate on the ground and potatoe dudes with nasty shots. Basically an UWF version of Regal. His holds looked clinical and when it was time to kick Orihara like a dog he wasn't playing around. I imagine if Smiley had faced Hashimoto in a big match or something we'd all be Smiley superfans. Orihara works as a Smiley opponent because he is CRAZY and will bust out unexpected highspots. Worth checking out.

 

Great Kabuki vs. Nobukazu Hirai

They start exchanging some solid armlocks before we get to the juicy part: Kabuki punching Hirai in the face. Hirai is spry, firing back bringing out some junior spots, but this was over almost as quickly as it began.

Ultimo Dragon vs. Ishinriki

 

This was very much an Ultimo Dragon match, although because this is WAR they potatoe each other on a level above your typical junior affair. Dragon uncorks some nasty spin kicks, and Ishinriki fires back with sumo clotheslines, palm rushes almost killing Dragon with a suplex. I pefer Ishinriki in heavyweight slugfests but he is a fun junior.

 

Mil Mascaras vs. Pierroth Jr.

 I enjoy watching Mil Mascaras grapple, but you can imagine how much offense Pierroth Jr got in here. It felt like a miracle that he was able to make Mil take a bump.

 

Shiro Koshinaka & Tatsutoshi Goto vs. Ashura Hara & Hiromichi Fuyuki

Another round of beefy dudes clobbering eachother. This wasn't peak WAR interpromotional material, but I still probably liked the best out of all the matches on the show. Particularily because the whole match felt thoroughly violent, and Fuyuki and Koshinaka were really at each other's throat. They randomly broke out into this super violent exchange that lead to a poor sap getting punched repeatedly and all was right in the world. I continue to enjoy Goto in these Heisei Ishingun tags as old guy with 2 moves who comes in to lariat and backdrop fools and nothing else, altough there was some sloppiness on his part. Hara's career was winding down but he could still take some big bumps. These matches pretty much write themselves but they still work in some things you won't expect.

  

Genichiro Tenryu & Koki Kitahara vs. Keiji Muto & El Samurai - FUN

 

WAR interpromotional tag that lags a little behind the standard for those due to Mutoh and Samurai not being quite up to the violent standards that these matches have. You watch these matches for some kind of violent showdown to happen and these two aren't the types to bring it. Kitahara was also unusually subdued. However I'd still recommend this for Tenryus amazing performance. He would really eat the fuck out of Mutohs flimsy offense and looked great flying around to put over the match. Add in the usual dose of signature Tenryu face kicking, throat chopping, powerbombing and lariating madness and have yourself something fun. 

 

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KOKI KITAHARA DOCUMENTATION PROJECT 

Koki Kitahara Documentation #5

 Koki Kitahara & Shinichi Nakano vs. Yoshiaki Fujiwara & Ishinriki, SWS 4/18/1992 - GREAT

SWS style tag with Fujiwara thrown in the mix. So you have tubby juniors exchanging brutal spin kicks and lariats at a fast pace and Fujiwara throwing in some lightning fast counters and hitting the mat. The 3 young guys are really good and Fujiwaras presence adds just what this kind of undercard match needs. Ishinriki is a former sumo who works like a junior and junior who used to be a sumo is much better than junior who used to be a gymnast. He hits some big dive and also nice palm rushes and lariats. Kitahara and Nakano look good hitting the mat with Fujiwara. Highlights include Fujiwara hitting a huge Bas Rutten style body punch for a near KO aswell as trading some brutal battering ram headbutts with Nakano. Fujiwara fits really well with these energetic dudes. Apparently this match got **** from Meltzer proving he had some taste at one point. It has a few big moves and nearfalls too. 

 Koki Kitahara vs. Shinichi Nakano, WAR 5/26/1996 - GREAT

 These two are like the ultimate pair of 90s outlaw sleazebags, so I'm pretty salty about this being clipped. Still, we get a quite great pissed off 6 minute match here. Nakano comes in with a bandaged shoulder and Kitahara is such a spectacular asshole just tearing him up. Really kicking the piss out of him with stomps and kicks that don't feel held back at all. Nakanos selling is great and when he comes back he comes back like a house of fire throwing the greatest punches you've ever seen, maybe because he was trying to punch Kitaharas jaw out legit (a Shinichi Nakano documentation project may be in order). Gritty, simplistic finishing sequence built around Kitahara catching Nakano in nastier and nastier submissions. This was the stuff.

Koki Kitahara vs. Akitoshi Saito, NJPW 2/5/1993 - GREAT

You look at this match up and you go „Well, these are two guys who are not afraid to kick somebody in the face“. And that's what happens in this match. It's also NJPW vs. WAR (or Seishinkaikan vs. WAR?), so it had the kinda heat those matches have. These guys were just crushing eachother, Saito was hitting some really devastating mid kicks aswell as knees to face, and Kitahara in return kicked him in his face and bald head a bunch. Kitahara pouncing on Saito with mount punches, leaving Saito to come out with a big red spot of blood on his bald head is something that only happens in 93. The referee blew the finish a little on this one but for two mean asskickers stepping up and kicking the shit out of eachother this delivered.

Koki Kitahara vs. Tatsuo Nakano, UWFi 5/27/1996 - GREAT

Pudgy mulleted japanese dudes beat the fuck out of each other for your entertainment. Tatsuo Nakano is just the master of this kind of brutal under 10 minutes brawl, and Kitahara is Kitahara. Starts out with a pretty intense scramble to the outside. Nakano of course gets a bloody nose, hard to see where, so he gets up and fucking breaks Kitaharas nose with a knee of his own. I was surprised he may have out-stiffed Kitahara in this one. Kitahara does throw one absolutely disgusting leg kick though which Nakano sold accordingly great. Short and intense but you already knew that.

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