WMF Marvelous Days 7th 12/27/2003

 GENTARO & Yuko Miyamoto vs. Junji Tanaka & Mineo Fujita

Junior opening match! This was JIP and I really would‘ve liked the whole thing. Junji is such a fun technician to throw into a match worked at a fast pace, really mixes it up nicely with all these athletic juniors. GENTARO is just super sharp, and he will also turn around and throw nice punches. Miyamoto was in young lion trunks here and already looking really polished and athletic. He hit a springboard diving headbutt with crazy distance and later almost killed Fujita with a brutal lariat. Fujita also looked good busting out cool flying armbars and triangle chokes. Everything looked good and they never lost a step, this gets the full indy point for these kind of fun little matches.

Yoji Anjoh & Koichiro Kimura & Ricky Fuji vs. Mr. Gannosuke & Chocoball Mukai & GOEMON

What a match up. Pretty fun stuff for the WAR 6 man-like randomness of it all. Anjoh was fun mugging and throwing punches, Kimura was stiff, Fuji and GOEMON did some cool ratboy exchanges together (did either of them ever face Yoshinari Ogawa?), and Mukai was cool trying to stand up to the shooters and putting his weird finishing hold on people. Gannosuke was basically Choshu here, just hard lariats and sharpshooters and it was cool. I was hoping for a Gannosuke vs. Anjoh faceoff but the Anjoh/Mukai finish was also pretty nice. Everything you can ask for from a random undercard 6 man.

MIKAMI & ONRYO vs. Asian Cougar & Tomoya Adachi

Spot after spot, but if you want spots, these guys will deliver pretty much the best you can get. Cougar had switched his stuff up a lot since the 90s, and he still had a bunch of crazy moves out of nowhere. Sleaze lucharesu boy Tomoya Adachi is a cool addition too and he looks good, really liked his reverse wheelbarrow hold which lead to Cougar once again flying in with a leg drop. MIKAMIs athleticism is crazy during this time, his dive looked like he just jumped from the ceiling, he also busts out a huge moonsault elbow drop, and a big swanton bomb from the top of a ladder. Ladder stuff was fun as they didn‘t take too long setting everything up and they pulled everything off. Loved all the Onryo character moments during the finishing stretch. This was a lot of fun.

GARUDA vs. Tsubasa

Garuda already had suffered a bad neck injury at this point that would cut off his career, but for a guy with a neck injury, he was pretty good in this. Very solid match. Tsubasa showed a lot of spunk, bitchslapping Garuda, taking him out with a spectacular dive, hitting a flip senton and then kicking Garuda in the face etc. He even targeted Garudas bad neck. Pretty good match although it suffered a bit from too many junior matches on this card.

Dick Togo & Tetsuhiro Kuroda vs. Kazuya Yuasa & Seiji Ikeda

Solid if a bit by the numbers heel performance by Togo & Kuroda, cutting off the two young lions. Ikeda was this pudgy guy that they were trying to turn into something, and he had pretty good fire. Kurodas stuff doesn‘t annoy me as much as usual because he is supposed to be an annoying heel here, and he even sets up stuff for Togo in nice ways here and there. Togo was the best guy in the match getting fire out of these schlubby youngsters and hitting really high end sentons. Given a bit more tenure Togo could‘ve done the impossible and amde Kuroda matches watchable on a regular basis. Young guys were kinda bland so it doesn‘t amount to anything more than a solid formula match.

Genichiro Tenryu vs. Mammoth Sasaki

This is what you buy the show for. Tenryu lowers himself to filthy WMF to teach their boy Mammoth a leason. I think I liked this more than Tenryu/Kojima, as from memory this had more awesome Tenryu moments, a bigger asskicking and young Mammoth trying to take down the legend. The opening moments had some fun tubby guys rolling on the mat moment before Sasaki decides to really go for it to which Tenryu responds by simply taking him down and torturing his bad leg a bit. However Sasaki won't let up and soon both guys are throwing punches. Mammoth decides to start the garbage brawling by taking the match to the outside to which Tenryu responds „Sure, you can have it“ and smashes a fucking bottle on his head. Tenryu keeps flinging stuff at Mammoth and really puts a WAR sized assbeating on him just kicking him in the face and pasting him with lariats over and over while Mammoth is selling all big and sympathetic. I wish the 2^nd half were a little less one sided altough Mammoth gets in a good one on Tenryu when he smashes him with the chairs (to a befuddled „He's doing this to ME?“ reaction) and he gets over big just for the amount of punishment he is able to survive before going down. 

The Library

Takeshi Ono Documentation #20

Takeshi Ono & Ryuji Hijikata vs. junji.com & Urban Ken, BattlARTS 9/7/2000 - GREAT

 BattlARTS undercard tags then were a thing of beauty, and this was another real goodie. A bunch of juniors who aren't really stereotypically shoot stylists or juniors thrown together to do indy wrestling with that solid BattlARTS style groundwork. I enjoyed all these guys building up a solid match from the ground, and Ono as usual stood out above everyone hitting a bit stiffer punches and kicks and doing submissions a bit slicker and nastier than everyone else. It really picks up for the second half in a big way as you get junji and Ken running wild, junjis Animal Hamaguchi moveset feels really fresh, he busts out a choice Samoan Drop into a nasty kimura and then hits these really cool falling headbutts to the shoulder. They go bigger than you expect from an undercard tag as Ken and Ono look awesome, Ono doing his usual ultra slick reversals and strikes and Ken hitting awesome tackle moves, his style is really fun. Honestly felt like a great discovery thanks to everyone putting their working boots on and looking their best for that ending run.

 

Takeshi Ono & Takahiro Oba vs. Manabu Hara & Kengo Mashimo, FUTEN 5/30/2010 - EPIC

Super violent high end FUTEN main event tag. 4 crazy guys trying to batter each other to death with rotten kicks and wild swinging hands. It's a testament to Onos ability that he still looks super dangerous in a match where no one is holding back, he was trying to crush peoples faces with kicks and knees the whole time. Hara and Mashimo kind of form an asskicking force together, Mashimo is really solid in his usual role as a ratty thick guy who will beat you. Hara may have had the night of his life here as he was beating on people like he meant to kill them and locking in slick submissions. While there isn't a ton of matwork I really enjoyed the couple brief sections mostly starring Oba. Oba honestly looked pretty great here as well as his violent clubs and caveman strength spots are so unique, honestly he is another reason why we need the whole FUTEN back catalogue. Obas reckless attacks were interesting throughout without veering into goofy territory and there were some well inserted more pro style spots in. Finishing run was Ono vs. Hara and may have been one of the best ending runs ever done in this style, Hara was brutalizing Ono who kept evading and coming back to plant a knee in his face or just punch his jaw out. 20 minutes of awesome and one of the more mindblowing FUTEN matches of the year.

Takeshi Ono Documentation Project

Takeshi Ono Documentation Project #13

 

Takeshi Ono vs. Junji.com, BattlARTS 10/1/2000 - GREAT

As much as I loathe Ono not getting main events in the early 2000s anymore, he was just a great undercard wrestler having these awesome 7 minute quasi shootstyle WCWSN matches. This match was a banger, damn great for a junji.com match. Junji, to his credit, went at him hard and was just fierce trying to take Ono to the mat and heelhook him, who in turn blasted him with kicks from all sides. Onos agile striking is so great as he kicks you in the face even when you are working the other side of his body. The ending run was veering into EPIC territory as there were a number of super slick submissions and Junji fighting like mad.

Takeshi Ono & Mick Tierney vs. Katsumi Usuda & Rasta the Voodooman, BattlARTS 10/15/2000 - FUN

This happened at a martial arts club way out in Okinawa. It‘s crazy shows like this aired on TV. The match was just a really fun 5 minutes. Ono matched up with Usuda and that is a quality matchup. Even on a small show these guys traded some stiff kicks and punches. I also really enjoyed the Tierney/Rasta matchup. Tierney was a WWE development guy who somehow ended up in BattlARTS and it‘s fun to watch a big buff US dude give his impression of a shootstyle match.

Takeshi Ono vs. Katsumi Usuda, Futen 11/24/2010 - EPIC

Really great match which was basically straight shootstyle with FUTEN level violence and aggression. Ono was leathering Usuda with kicks and punches both standing and on the ground, and Usuda was just trying to slip beneath and take him, with Ono having to figure out counters to the takedowns. The finishing run was just fantastic and up there witht he best UWF main event endings, just at a faster pace. Ono was against the ropes by Usudas counterwork until he busted out an ultra slick move of his own.

 

TAKESHI ONO DOCUMENTATION PROJECT MASTER LIST

Takeshi Ono Documentation Project #10

 Takeshi Ono vs. White Moriyama, FUTEN 1/30/2011 - EPIC

I loved this, a real testament to the greatness of Ono. This was Moriyamas (initial) retirement and while he has never shown much, he was game to engage in a FUTEN level war. Normally you‘d associate retirement matches with feel good moments and the retiree getting their shit in, but that wasn‘t the case here as Ono was incredibly vicious throughout and just trying to turn Moriyama into a pulp. Just a super competitive match even outside the violence, really dug the opening grappling with Ono stuffing Moriyamas takedown attempts and doing some excellent guardwork. Onos relentlesness however may have been at its peak here as he caught Moriyama with a nasty stomp during a scramble in the ropes and then just demolished him with sick punches and kicks and ungodly knees. Ending run felt shockingly epic for a Moriyama match as he uncorked some gnarly head spiking suplexes while maintaining a sense of struggle, Moriyama getting a bloody nose and trying not to get punched out, refusing to die on his sword while getting his face perforated by Onos kicks etc. It works because of how bad Ono was stomping Moriyama earlier, that Moriyama reaching deep and trying to hang on actually feels epic. Strong contender for the greatest retirement match I've ever seen, and its all Ono.

Takeshi Ono & Junji.com vs. Ikuto Hidaka & Tiger Mask IV, BattlARTS 2/14/1999 - FUN

Fun match which may have been BattlARTS hybrid style at its most experimental. These guys were going back and forth from working lucharesu exchanges to shootstyle mat scrambles. Hidaka and Tiger Mask IV tore it up. Ono looked great too, but he spent too much time on the apron. When he was in the ring he went from kicking and punching people really hard, to working cool submissions, to stooging like an expert rudo. Junji was in most of the time and he is the weakest guy in the match, although still decent when he wasn’t hitting sloppy dropkicks. Cool match which felt hard fought, but I wanted more Ono content.

Takeshi Ono & Masao Orihara vs. junji.com & Ricky Banderas, BattlARTS 4/26/1999 - FUN

We only got about 5 minutes of this, which is too bad because it looked like a really good match. Junji cleaning house was fun, and Orihara and Ono are real fuckers beating the piss out of him. Banderas seems really out of place in this but does fine dropping some bombs. Finish is spectacular with Ono hitting a spider german, Orihara moonsaulting over him before Ono dives outside and Orihara gets the win with an abdominal stretch of all things. Tonpachi Machine Guns rule, man.

 

TAKESHI ONO DOCUMENTATION PROJECT MASTER LIST

Takeshi Ono Documentation Project #9

 

Takeshi Ono & Ryuji Hijikata vs. Kengo Mashimo & Junji Tanaka (BattlARTS 11/5/2011) - GREAT

Futen crew gets together on the last BattlARTS card. Hijikata and Tanaka were solid in this, working pretty stiff, but not really BattlARTS style. Ono was on another level, however. All of his strikes were ultra vicious and when he was working over Tanakas arm he was trying to crush him. Really good if you want an 11 minute highlight reel of what makes Ono so great. The ending run is him trying to maul Tanaka with punches and kicks while Tanaka is able to make a few well timed comebacks until Ono catches him. Onos punches are so great, most wrestlers when throwing hands will throw some weak hands before a big shot, Ono however is constantly pressuring him tagging Junjis jaw and kidneys. Even when he’s working over Junjis body it looks like he’s perforating him. I’m a fan of Junji but the greatness of those exchanges is a pure testament to Ono.

Takeshi Ono vs. Masaru Toi, Rainbow, Promotion 3/21/2002 - GREAT

 Even though this went only about 7 minutes, I fought this was pretty much the perfect shooter vs. old deathmatch guy match. TakeshiOno, in what is apparently his only match that year, looked great blasting Toi with kicks and punches. Even when Toi grabbed his barbedwire bat, Ono still took him down easily. Toi going for the chairs was great. He looked to crush Onos ribcage with a stiff solebutt and then a massive kneedrop. Ono constantly refusing to let Toi get in his offense easily kept the match unpredictable. Really good little clash.

 SASUKE & Chabinger & Sasuke Performa 346 vs. Sasuke The Great & Masked Tiger & NANIWA (M.Pro  2/3/2002) - GREAT

A bunch of ninjas and sleazy masked dudes fly around in Korakuen Hall! By no means is this a great match, but it is a great bizarre indy spectacle. They bring out a bunch of ladders for this so you know what that means. Match includes: lots of preposterous Sasuke highspots (including the apron tope) and ladder-related awrygoings! Chabinger abusing everyone with his weird wooden mini table! Great Sasuke disappearing and reappearing, changing between his Great Sasuke/Sasuke the Great personae! Takeshi Ono in a mask hitting dudes with high kicks! Orihara looking good! NANIWA doesn't know how to do the Naniwa Elbow! Great Sasuke hitting some REALLY stiff kicks! Sanhshiro Takagi in a mask handing out stunners! After the match everyone sits down and they have a beer. Osamu Tachihikari comes out too. Rating: watch if you can laugh at Sasuke getting a ladder flung at his head.

 

TAKESHI ONO DOCUMENTATION PROJECT MASTER LIST

2002 MOTY PROJECT MASTER LIST

Indy World 7/22/1998

 Perseus vs. Hidetomo Egawa

We join this 6 minute match 90 seconds in progress. Perseus is a scummy indy junior with a cool look, and Egawa is Masao Oriharas boy, although he was a flavourless rookie here. This goes straight to both guys uncorking their big moves, which look good. Egawa kicks out of Perseus triple powerbomb, but takes the pin after a superplex, which rules.

Mach Junji vs. Ryuji Hijikata

This was similiar to the previous match, JIP to them hitting their big moves, but had the extra level of BattlARTS stiffness. Hijikata clocks Junji in the back of the head with a lariat and works him over with kicks, Junji fires back with massive open hand strikes. Really nice shoulder-popping armbar sequence here. This goes to a time limit draw and I wouldn't mind if a handheld showed up to give us the whole thing.

Chihiro Nakano & Miyuki Fujii vs. Kyoko Ichiki & Chiharu

We only get about 5 minutes of a 16 minute match, but what was shown was full of swank moves and counters. Rolling armbars and legbars were hot shit in 1998 so everyone here was doing them, inbetween Chihiro Nakano clocking people with high kicks. Chiharu is an SPWF girl who looked pretty bad in SPWF matches I've seen but was fine here, she had a cool reversal from a samoan drop lift into a rolling armbar and a nice suplex. Ichiki also looked good here, hitting a Sabu chair dive, cool victory roll into legbar move, cool flying knee attacks and a nasty finish where she crushed Nakano with a rolling senton.

Yumiko Hotta & Kumiko Maekawa vs. Manami Toyota & Takako Inoue

We get 8 of 17 minutes. I didn't like this as much as the previous joshi match, I don't care much for what Toyota and Inoue bring to the table, although the match was savaged somewhat by Hottas and Maekawas cool kick variations.

TAKA Michinoku & Asian Cougar vs. Masao Orihara & Palomino

What do you think happens here? They nuke eachother with highspots nonstop, fuck all rhyme or reason, but the match stays short enough to not piss you off. The first 2 minutes of the match have 5 Michinoku Drivers – with TAKA eating 3 of them in a row and laughing about it a minute later. If you can get over that kind of idiocy, there was some fun to be had here. Cougar and Palomino bring the highspots, Cougar hits about half a dozen guillotine legdrop variations, and Palomino has nice height on a standing huracanrana and a great tope. TAKA and Orihara add some character work – meaning middle fingers and low blows. Taka also flops his dive and ricochets into a bunch of teenage girls. The most important thing is that this didn't overstay it's welcome and didn't do a bloated, tryhard finishing run.

Tarzan Goto & Masashi Aoyagi & Azteca vs. Dick Togo & Shoichi Funaki & MENs Teioh

Big badass brawl pitting Goto against Kaientai (who are all in WWF gear and have Yamaguchi-San with them), but mainly Goto against Togo. I loved the opening, which has Goto attacking Yamaguchi only to be hit by big Togo diving senton. Then chaos ensues and Togo is recklessly flying into chairs. Easily one of the better „opening brawling“ segments I can remember from a match in Korakuen Hall. Togo ends up busted open and has his cut worked over. Togo gives a really great performance here, and Goto and Aoyagi are great working the cut (Azteca is decent too).Goto uses foreign objects, while Aoyagi throws punches and kicks at Togo's face. Goto is so great here as a grotesque lumbering psycho destroying the little dudes, and Aoyagi working exchanges with Kaientai and laying into them with kicks is all kinds of fun too. It gets to the point where Goto gets ready to carve people up with a broken beer bottle and you wonder how Kaientai are gonna get out of this alive. I actually loved the sports entertainment twist right before the finish too as it resulted in a badass character moment from Aoyagi. Match probably needed a big dive train or something, but as it was it was a spectacular fight.

Ryuma Go & Yoshiaki Fujiwara & Tatsuo Nakano vs. Hiroshi Itakura & Yoshiaki Yatsu & Shigeo Okumura

This was a really fun trios where guys mostly run in to do fun shit. Itakura likes to throw stiff kicks, but ends up taking a big beating and ends up suplexed into a bunch of chairs. Fujiwara was mostly slapping the taste out of people's mouths and Nakano, for a UWF guy, mostly focussed on bringing hurty looking strikes, at one point raining punches to the back of Itakura's head from back mount. Go was off the chain here and acted like a crazy motherfucker you wouldn't want to confront, ramming into people with headbutts like a madman. Yatsu and Okamura were decent enough but mostly this was a showcase for the fun stuff the Fujiwara/Nakano/Go dream team could do.

 THE LIBRARY

Takeshi Ono Documentation #5

Takeshi Ono vs. Carl Greco, BattlARTS 11/5/1997 - GREAT

1997 was probably the period where you could take almost any random BattlARTS match and it would be the #1 best match to happen in 2020 for months. Carl Greco was a barefoot machine here, lord in heaven what a great grappler he was. This is all about Ono trying to out-slick the beast. Some absolutely fantastic grappling and holds here, and Ono throwing strikes feels like he's trying to equalize the situation in order to not get steamrolled. Great nearfalls here, including an absolutely awesome Octopus Stretch that Ono sunk in like he wanted the tap out more than anything else in his life. This was a second match on the card and went eleven minutes, you get the sense if they had gone for a slightly more grandiose finishing stretch with some big strike exchanges and near KO this would've moved into serious MOTYC territory, but for that type of second 11 minute match on the card this was damn great.

Takeshi Ono & Manabu Hara & White Moriyama vs. Daisuke Ikeda & Brahman Shu & Brahman Kei (FUTEN 4/24/2010) - EPIC

FUTEN baby. Ultra-stiff fast paced basically shootstyle brawl where everyone lays into each other with the stiffest punches, headbutts and lariats pro wrestling has ever seen. This is not even remembered as one of the greater matches from that brief but sweet run of FUTEN actually making tape in 2010, but it’s chock full of fantastic and violent exchanges. Just the opening exchange with Ikeda and Hara trying to pulverize each other was fantastic. I have seen some people object to the Brahmans in Futen before, but they are fine here, working stiff and their comedy spot was over quickly and didn’t derail the match. One of them also had this sick leaping headbutt. Hara looks great coming in for his hot tag crushing everyone, and Moriyama is really good in his fired up youngster role. Ono isn’t in the match a ton but he looks great lighting up dudes with punches and kicks and stretching them with nasty submissions. His exchange with Ikeda was insane and the highlight of the match by far. Ikeda was working this match like an injured but still super tough and dangerous beast. His chemistry with Ono is really no worse than his chemistry with Yuki Ishikawa, except Ono is in more of an aggressor role. The finish is between Ikeda and Moriyama and basically about Moriyama trying to slowly chop the boss down and getting met with brutal punts kicks and straight rights. Absolutely dope material, it’s too sad FUTEN only started regularily releasing DVDs in 2010.

 

Takeshi Ono & Junji.com vs. Azteca & Daiyu Kawauchi (BattlARTS 2/12/1999) - SKIPPABLE

I would’ve liked to see how the KAGEKI boys would mesh with the BattlARTS crew, but they only showed about 30 seconds of this. Seemed like a pro style match with the only Ono content being a nasty double stomp and him octopus stretching young nondescript Kawauchi for the finish.

 Takeshi Ono & Yuki Ishikawa vs. Daisuke Ikeda & Katsumi Usuda, BattlARTS 1/21/1997 - EPIC

This was some truely high end BattlARTS tag team action. The first thing you notice is how on point all 4 guys on the mat were. The opening exchanges felt slick like U-Style matwork and always highly competitive, with the violence upgraded to BattlARTS standards. The brutality was of the charts here. The "tag team partners running in to make the save from a submission" where some of the must vicious I've seen and felt like PRIDE ground stomping, Ikeda at one point started throwing mule kicks on the ground, and Usuda and Ono threw some kicks that looked like nobody would get up from them. Man I don't even care whether there was a story or anything this match because the work was so frantic, hard fought and believable and sold so, so well I was 100% engrossed the entire time. The match also felt like it could end at anytime: at one point, Ikeda got his leg worked over with a few kicks from Ono and nice holds by Ishikawa (note the teamwork there), then Ono landed a series of skull crushing kicks on him. Ikeda believably beat the count, but his entire body language was such that you could see he was moments away from being finished, so he did the only reasonable thing and quietly slipped to his corner to tag out before collapsing like a broken man. That may have been my favourite moment of the match and it made the finish feel even sweeter where it feels like Ishikawa and Ono have the match in the bag and Ikeda just comes in and turns Ono's lights out to set up the finish. All 4 guys had career highlight performances, Ono did some stuff on the mat only he could do, Usuda stepped up big time and Ishikawa and Ikeda had some incredible exchanges together. Great, great match and a really compelling fusion of top notch shootstyle matwork, brawling and top level stiffness.

TAKESHI ONO DOCUMENTATION PROJECT MASTER LIST