More from Cosmo Soldiers YouTube channel

     Cosmo Soldier & Tadahiro Fujisaki vs. Takeshi Sato & Yuji Kito, WYF 1998/3/15

Wrestle Yume Factory is one of my favourite promotions ever. WYF undercard matches like this are like pro wrestling in a lawless wasteland. There is a hearty dose of BattlARTS/WARish violence, general anarchy and an infusion of raw spirit that you don’t find like this often. It’s chaotic and glorious. This goes 15 minutes so they have some time. The first half of this was a lot of tight headlocks and groundwork, guys trying to ground each other but explosions did happen. Takeshi Sato who is IWA Japan scum is the first to really start the shenanigans as he lays with kicks hard as a brick into people. He goes for something like a dropkick or a high knee that lands awkwardly and his first instinct is to kick the other guy really hard again. Pro wrestling is a struggle against yourself as much as your opponent. Cosmo Soldier is likely here to just kick someone in the ear to get out of a hold, or dropkick them flush in the face. His dropkicks looked amazing and he is spirited trying to grapple it out with a kickpadded adversary. There’s hardly any rope running here and it makes the whole thing resemble a more serious wrestling match in the vein of BattlARTS. What these guys lack in polish they make up tenfold for by sheer willingness to bring the fight. Takeshi Sato continued to be a fiend here, randomly hitting one of the hardest enzuigiris I’ve ever seen to Fujisakis skull. Later Cosmos leg randomly gives out on him (element of chaos) and Sato would swiftly punish him by just landing this immensely beautiful and cruel high kick to his head. Fujisaki was pretty surely and great here too, working really solid early on, cinching headlocks, grabbing half crabs and leaning back hard, later uncorking his trademark hard headbutts, uncontained open hand strikes and lariating Sato straight in the face for all his sins. His turnbuckle headbutt spot looks so brutal, literally every member in the front row had their mouths open from amazement with how he drove into his skull into another persons face. Cosmo also had one of his finer days besides his leg giving out. I loved how he just absolutely spiked Sato with a uranage. Sato, of course, rolled out the ring to clutch his aching neck, and Soldier immediately followed up with a big dive. Nice and spontaneous, everyone here was living in the moment. Kito was sticking to fairly basic stuff at this point and he’s solid, his big spot was a double knee drop off the top that looked pretty hurty, and took a back-hitting headbutt from Fujisaki and got spiked on his neck by his big suplexes like a champ. Second half of this match is just a frenzy with guys trying to knock the soul out of each other, everything having maximum force and violence. Random spin kick from Takeshi Sato? Yeah, looked like it made the other guy reconsider his life choices immediately after taking it. Soldier going for his big cancun tornado? Yeah, this might as well kill the guy. At one point Fujisaki, when breaking up a submission made sure to really dig his foot into the other guys face before stomping like he was trying to crack a particularily tough walnut. Nothing held back, just for this small gym audience and a lone camera filming this to end up in storage and somehow on YouTube 28 years later. Comparing a match like this to something like Flair/Steamboat would be like comparing Cannibal Corpses A Skull Full of Maggots to the Moonlight Sonata. But sometimes I wanna listen to Cannibal Corpse. I love my Wrestle Yume Factory and this delivered hard.

Kishimen vs. Kuraudo Kondo, KAGEKI 2009/2/15

Who is this mysterious Kishimen? Perhaps Cosmo Soldiers cousin from another dimension. Online sources tell me Kuraudo Kondo is a student of Masashi Aoyagi. That might mean that he took a karate class of Aoyagi once when he was a teenager, or it might be the truth. Kondo looks like a UWF fighter, and he actually fights like a student of Aoyagi, e.g. he kicks a lot and he kicks really really hard. This is also in a kickboxing ring so you know any fall in that ring hurts like hell. Kishimen takes him down to hit a really hard elbow to his face. A not-clean break later Kishimen waffles Kondo some more with open hand hits and then absolutely spikes him with a shootstyle-DDT on his head in that unforgiving kickboxing ring. This causes Kondo to have enough of Kishimen and just starts kicking the absolute shit out of him, absolutely not holding back on any of his kicks, and slamming him right in the middle of that unforgiving ring. Kishimen takes back over with a damn abdominal stretch and it’s all awkward violence from here on. Kondo continues to hold absolutely nothing back on his kicks and I’d like to see more of his short career. Kishimen flies ass-first into Kondos face twice in this match, at first it seemed like an accident, but the second time you fully understand this man was trying to break his opponents face with his ass. Kishimen ends up cranking the nastiest chickenwing crossface I’ve ever seen for the tap. If the previous match was A Skull Full of Maggots then this is like Last Days of Humanity or Rompeprop, or your little brothers band sloppily covering Carcass or Autopsy where the singer loses his voice halfway into the song and just starts screeching… eitherways, still pretty enjoyable violent chaos.

Cosmo Soldier & Raging Bull vs. Tadahiro Fujisaki & Shigeo Kato, WYF 1/23/1998

The WYF streak continues. This starts with all these guys working holds and hitting the mat, and it has the vibe of something like a MUGA match but with that rugged WYF charm. Looking at this match is like looking at a wrestling fractal, you see deeper and deeper flourishes and details even in usually mundane things as all these guys have a unique way of doing things, and sometimes will bust out things that no one else would think of doing such as the slick entry into a stepover armbar Cosmo does here to get out of a sleeper hold. There’s some genuinely slick stuff going on between Fujisaki and Cosmo, but a big part of the fascination is that these guys might just pop each other in the mouth in totally uncalled for ways or suddenly kick someone in the face to get out of a hold. Really exploring how you can break submissions in painful ways, either by driving our own foot in someones face or having your partner come in and dropkick them right in the skull. Kato is all about ratty old school ways to hurt opponents, and doing things like randomly squeezing a cravate really hard. Raging Bull is this odd guy from Texas who somehow ended up getting trained at the WYF dojo, he’s unspectacular in the sense that he will tag in and just hit some elbow drops, but he’s kind of likable as he realizes he needs to make this stuff look urgent, so he doesn’t dull things. As always with these matches the first half is ground-based and solid peppered with guys potatoeing each other in uncalled and unpredictable ways. There are some hard Fujisaki headbutts, but things really start kicking when Cosmo breaks out of a hold by kicking Kato in the head, following with a sick enzuigiri also to the head and then absolutely spiking him with sick uranage before stubbornly trying to snap his arm. Things really get cooking in the last 7 minutes or so with all kinds of awesome scrappy action and details. You get chaotic and wild, such as Cosmo eating some reckless face stomps from Fujisaki only to grab onto his wrist and slingshot him across the ring, really making the absolute most of ‘I need to get this guy to my corner’ in an unconventional way. There are more violent submission breaks, Kato wincing in pain after taking a basic double axe handle to his bad shoulder and deciding to absolutely spike Cosmo with some mean piledrivers. The finishing run ends up being Cosmo vs. Fujisaki and it’s pretty much 3 minutes of gold. Loved how Fujisaki would stop a charging Soldier by just grabbing on to his face then headbutting him right between the eyes, then almost knock his head off with one of the hardest lariats I’ve ever seen. There’s also this amazing moment where Cosmo tried to reverse into a Fujiwara armbar, Fujisaki would stomp on his ankle really hard and Kato came in at the same time just obliterating him with superkick to the face, then Fujisaki would dump him with these awesome Otsuka-esque deadlift suplexes. Just a multitude of awesome things happening at once, and it made for a really exciting finishing run built on the solid build up of this match. Also gotta love Cosmo for being able to pull off something genuinely impressive like a big leaping rana or cool jumping kick despite all his flaws. He ended up pulling off something chaotic for the finish too and that rules. Another chapter in the book called Why Wrestle Yume Factory Was Awesome And I might Name My Three Children Cosmo Soldier, Tadahiro Fujisaki and Raging Bull

Cosmo Soldier vs. Koji Niizumi, KAGEKI 7/22/2017

I am always interested in Koji Niizumi. From what I’ve seen, he’s just this crazy hard hitter who makes people cry for their momma. To my surprise though, Cosmo Soldier was the unhinged one here. He was laying into Niizumi full force constantly, smacking him in the face, bending his legs at nasty angles with cool and unusual submissions and landing some of the hardest stomps you’ll ever see. Cosmo Soldier was so hellbent on trying every evil idea he could come up with here it made me long to see Niizumi tee off a bit more, so when he does it’s really satisfying. When it was time to give the beating back Niizumi was hitting Soldier with elbows and lariats that looked like they would take years off someones life. It built to some fine fine moments of really violent and fun pro wrestling. It seems Cosmo had overreached at the end and gassed himself out leaving him open for Niizumi to kill him off with an elbow that looked harder than the one Misawa knocked out Hansen with. A well earned victory in this title match that deserved that name. I really wish I could see more of Niizumi but until then these rare appearances of him are gems.

Cosmo Soldiers YouTube Channel Pt. 2

 

Cosmo Soldier & Hakaru vs Oga Nozaki & Hiroshi Toyoda, KAGEKI 7/20/2014

Cosmo Soldiers continues to deliver the gems on his YouTube channel. In this match we get a look at Oga Nozaki and Hiroshi Toyoda! For those who don’t know, they were the #1 and #2 guy of JWA Tokai in the 2010s so it’s awesome to get a look at them. Oh and Hakaru is there too! And wow this is a really good match. Really scrappy with everybody hitting each other insanely hard with open hand strikes and elbows, and breaking into elbows and dropkicks even from basic movements. A number of unpredictable moments here, which made this feel a bit like a WAR tag. Toyoda was this energetic guy with jeans shorts, he mostly stuck to basic elbows and lariats and exploders and he looked good. Nozaki, the JWA Tokai ace for over a decade, had a bit of a mysterious aura with his bowl cut and dark pants. He liked to throw really hard kicks and go for submissions on the ground but also had some explosive agility. His jumping enzuigiri was awesome, and I liked his flair for the handspring elbow. The handspring elbow is a kind of goofy move but he made it cool in this match by hitting it pretty fast without much addo. He had no problem going toe to toe in violent exchanges and at point he almost shattered Cosmos face with a jumping savate kick that was Daisuke Ikeda levels of sick. So yeah I liked Oga Nozaki a lot on this. Cosmo was also in the match a lot and as always he is always balancing between genius and chaos. He does slip up here and there and there were moments where I couldn’t tell if what he was going for came out as intended, but I think it actually added to the match in some ways. And he also had lots of moments of good wrestling. His dives were amazing, and he brought some evil violence to the match with his double stomps, aggressively slapping guys around and his sickening headbutt to Toyoda. Hakaru was the guy I would’ve liked to see more, he was actually a lot of fun immediately trying to snap an arm. He looked scrappy in a cool way. The match is elimination rules so we get an unpredictable finish, and a cool ending run between 2 guys that was really really good. This was a cool look at some really obscure guys and it really delivered a lot to enjoy.

Cosmo Soldier vs El Samurai, KAGEKI 2010/8/1

Wow, El Samurai! A really fun match where the main appeal is to see Soldier throwing everything he’s got at Samurai. Seriously, Samurai gets a lot of bombs dropped on him in this. There is some cool scrappy matwork and then Soldier comes dropkicking Samurai hard in the ribs from odd angles. Samurai punches Soldier in the face because he’s the man and there are some really stiff exchanges with both guys really clapping each other with open hand strikes. And then you have Soldier hitting this NJPW legend with double foot stomps and suplexing him and just coming up with all kinds of things, in his own somewhat clumsy ways. It’s unusual to see. Samurai has never been a guy who hits a ton of offense, and the few things he does he picks pretty well here. It actually builds to a quite big ending where you really wonder if the indy sensation could put the old legend away.

Cosmo Soldier & Super Taira vs Koji Niizumi & Kitai Kubo, KAGEKI 2011/2/27

 

Awesome battle, the kind that will erase all negative memories from your head and make you remember why you love wrestling again. Niizumi and Kubo are two really obscure wrestlers. From what I can tell they have been KAGEKI mainstays so it’s really hard to find any video of them if you don’t live in Japan. Judging from this match they are an absolute monster team. Niizumi is just a beast, he wrestles like a WAR guy from the 90s who will hit psychotically hard with his elbows and kicks. His jumping knees look like they could kill a person, and I also really liked his one jumping kick. This also takes place in a boxing ring so you know when something like a german suplex or northern lights bomb is hit it’s even harder than in a regular wrestling ring. Everybody was hitting insanely hard in this, with the masked guys coming flying with dropkicks to the face. Taira is also great here, he doesn’t look like the type but he can really dish out and take some crazy strikes, including those awesome jumping kicks. I am mostly used to seeing Taira as grappler but he looked like a total asskicker going toe to toe against someone like Niizumi. Cosmo also brought the violence and a few unique and violent spots, he was pretty straightforward here. Kubo wasn’t tagged in as much as Niizumi but he also looked really fun, he seemed a bit like a sleazy Hiro Saito type with his mullet and pants, he did one hell of a job helping out his buddy though and coming at people with rastand brutal lariats. This match is just a blast, just 4 really cool wrestlers going hard and raining hell on each other for 20 minutes, and awesome to check out, made me want to see more of Kubo and Niizumi because they were killers here. So Cosmo if you are reading this, thank you so much, it’s amazing to see this stuff even 14 years later.

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 Cosmo Soldier vs Kenta Kosugi, KAGEKI 5/6/2023

Very good match with Kosugi looking like a beast and Cosmo trying everything in the book to crack him down. Soldier hanging on to headlocks and sleeperholds and booting Kosugi in the face early on reminded me of a smartly worked early 90s AJPW match. Soldier was hitting insanely hard, both trying to crack Kosugis jaw with european uppercuts and laying really hard kicks into his body, and he had a few classy moments such as a really graceful sweep into a submission, as well as a great upside down scarecrow submission hold. Kosugi powering out of Soldiers holds was epic and he looked like a monster manhandling Soldier and ragdoll tossing him into the buckles. It builds to this really nasty finish with Soldier trying to chop through Kosugis neck with weird sideway hitting lariats and Kosugi just trying to chokeslam him through the ring. Really good, honestly probably the best singles match I’ve seen of our man Cosmo.

Cosmo Soldier vs Yoshikazu Taru, WYF 10/5/1997

Pretty fun 5 minutes. This was probably the most asskicking I’ve seen Taru dish out. He sure was confident putting a beating on Soldier here. Soldier can hit some quick takedowns but he eats lots of hard kicks and even karate chops from Taru. It looks like it’s gonna be a one sided trashing but the Soldier is able to land an awesome punch to the head and then fly recklessly into TARU with his awesome fast flip dive. It looks like Soldier can mount something, but then he knocks himself loopy while trying a suplex and seconds later is KO’d by a big Taru high kick. Fun for all the things people like indy scum wrestler vs karateka matches, and condensed into 5 minutes too.

Cosmo Soldier vs Makoto Saito, WYF 1997/5/18

This appears to be taking place in the WYF Dojo, so that alone is amazing to see. The match is fun too, as it’s basically raw unpolished BattlARTS style. Lots of tight grappling and evil strikes with both guys weaving in some big moves to keep it exciting. Saito looks really cool here, really peppering Soldier with sharp kicks. Soldier tries a few things, some come off well, like his out of nowhere headscissor takedown, some are slightly ill fated, but the spirit was there. Nothing here locks planned and it’s just really raw and uncooperative stuff. Not for the faint of the heart but sometimes a raw messy fight like this cleans the soul.