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.

 

2025 Wrestling Week 13

 Yuki Ishikawa & Nobuyuki Kurashima vs Masao Ando & Takahiro Tababa, Tatsuo Nakano Anniversary Show 3/23

Tatsuo Nakano just casually books everyones dream match. I think every since I found out about Tababa and Ando existing I've fantasy booked them showing up in BattlARTS, so now we got this crossover finally and it's really cool. This is mostly cool grappling although Ando and Tababa still lay in some vicious kicks here and there. Ishikawa is still a superstar at grappling and he does pick some cool submissions from the big boys. And he is not afraid to get kicked really hard by Tababa. Kurashima looks good as always - I mean, I guess he is around Andos age and not as old as Ishikawa, but since he is such a perennial undercarder I keep being surprised what a fine wrestler he is. Tababa just bowling into people with reckless shoulder blocks was highly amusing. Overall nothing mindblowing here but a good ~12ish minutes of indy shootstyle action from our heroes which is more than one can ask for in 2025. Still, one has to wonder how good Yuki Ishikawa vs Masao Ando in 2001 could have been.

 

2025 Wrestling Roundup

K-WEST 10/29/2010

 Rare show from a mini promotion that was vaguely associated with K-Dojo! They have some cool dudes like Tadanobu Fujisawa and Masao Ando.

Takuya Iijima vs. Daisuke Masaoka

Solid undercard match. Iijima is a very fun big boy who throws cool kicks and knee drops that land with full bodyweight. He also had a cool Hashimoto-esque leg sweep that was unexpected. Masaoka does the bare minimum here working Iijimas leg and winning with a basic leglock in somewhat lazy fashion. Wouldn‘t mind to see more of Iijima.

SATOSHI vs. Southern Cross

Two interesting looking guys. Cross has a stark light blue outfit and mask, while SATOSHI looks like a dorky version of TAKA Michinoku. They tried to have a mat based contest. It was pretty basic but alright. SATOSHI had two nice suplexes at the end. Not much else to write home about.

 

Tadanobu Fujisawa & Dyna Mido vs. Masao Ando & Yuji Yoshida

Damn, I wasn‘t ready to see Masao Ando super buff and chiselled here. I thought that guy always had the tubby physique but he looked like a specimen here. His wrestling was very good, too. Early goings here were really good, reminded me a bit of a 90s NJPW Jr match. Mostly basic ground based stuff executed in really tight and interesting ways. Everybody was working super stiff, too, especially Andos kick that almost seemed to burst a guys chest. Fujisawa was also very good here as he knows how to be a violent prick. Dyna Mido was good early but kind of flubbed his brief run of offense during the second half. Unfortunately they don‘t deliver the Ando vs Fujisawa showdown that was the most promising match up in here. Nice stuff otherwise, love getting to check out guys like Ando and Fujisawa.

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Bukotu 9/25/2016

Kaoru Nemoto vs. Takeshi Michibata

For a low level regional indy opening match, this was pretty fun. Nemoto is this cool thickly built old dude with a suck mullet and cool skull trunks design, who wrestles like kind of a tribute to a Hiro Saito being a troll with a nice backdrop suplex. I enjoy that kind of heel act and he did a decent job punishing Michibata who is as generic an indy junior as they come.

Michio Kageyama vs. KB

Kageyama is the next nice surprise on this show. He looks like a mini-Gannosuke but was really good working over his opponents arm here and picking him apart with kicks. KB looked quite pathetic and untrained, like a middle aged businessman randomly decided to get in the ring and got booked by paying the ring rent, but his offense was restricted to a minimum. I want to see more of this Kageyama guy.

Toru Sugiura & Dyna-Mido & AK vs. Hideaki Sumi & Takeshi Irei & Naoki Ito

This was also pretty good for a midcard 6 man tag. The trio around Dyna-Mido did a good job playing enforcers and putting a beatdown on young Naoki Ito, who did a decent fired up black trunks youngster performance. I especially enjoyed Sugiura just working people over with kicks. Sumi is this grouchy karateka who doesn't pull his strikes at all and he's great. He hit this cartwheel kick to a guys face and it was awe-inspiring. Really want to see more of that guy. Irei is a thickly built guy with nice suplexes who apparently came from Apache Pro. I remember absolutely nothing about AK but when your name is "AK" I guess you just set up not to be memorable.

Yuji Yoshida vs. Masao Ando

This was a nice surprise. Two tubby guys with kickpads hitting each other hard and basically doing a sleazy WAR match. No stupid back and forth strike exchanges, they just battered each other with kicks and elbows. I wonder about Andos background because he shows up consistently on sleaze undercards and is a cool fatboy shooter. I've never heard of this Yoshida but he's old, very lumpy and takes and gives punishment well. There was a gnarly moment where Ando lifted up Yoshida for a waterwheel throw and just dumped him on his head. Too bad Yoshida just did a shitty looking single leg takedown to comeback. The finish was fun though with Ando getting dumped with some big suplexes, way bigger bumps than you'd expect from a local show in front of 50 people. Not polished but it was fun.

Kenji Fukimoto vs. SATOSHI

Fukimoto is a Kurisu trainee who can be a really great sleaze brawler, but he was paired with a guy who seemed green and brought absolutely nothing to the table. Fukimoto just carefully strung this dude through the match. A waste of Fukimoto, but at least he wore some really cool facepaint.

Tadanobu Fujisawa / Daisuke Masaoka vs. YU-ICHI / KENJI

Fujisawa looked damn good here. Apparently he's another Kurisu trainee and he gave a 100% Kurisu performance. He was punching and kicking people flush in the face and cracking them with grueling headbutts and chairshots. He displayed good timing and selling too, so he wasn't just a crowbar. Brawling around the ring was actually good and closer to IWRG than the lazy shit you usually get on Japanese indy shows. The other people in the match weren't bad, but nothing to write home about either. But the match had a structure where the veteran team of Fujisawa and Masaoka were isolating their opponents and killing them, and I was into that. I lost a bit interest with the trained monkey stuff of Yu-ichi and KENJI, but fortunately Fujisawa was there to run in and tag people with Takaiwa lariats. The finish was great as Fujisawa just kicked the guy in the face hard. No theatrics or setup, just kicked him in the face and pinned him. As far as I'm concerned Fujisawa is another candidate for the list of must see Japanese sleazeballs, but his tape history is extremely limited.

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