FU*CK Cool Pro Wrestling 1/2/2008

 Hideki Shioda & Lingerie Muto vs. Chief Shinigami & Konaka

This Chief Shinigami is NOT the Shinigami from Wrestle Yume Factory. This guy is some tubby pasty dude doing some kind of native american gimmick. It’s horribly poor taste, so just right for FIGHTING ULTIMATE CRAZY KINGS. Konaka is wearing a striped sweater and dungarees along with his usual facepaint. I think it may be a reference to a horror movie or something but its a very cool look. Chief Shinigami is a menace too immediately thwarting all attempts at wrestling by hitting guys with foreign objects. After like 30 seconds of in ring action they start brawling in the street. Really taking their time to explore this quiet Japanese neighbourhood to the fullest. Konaka almost gets thrown into a ravine. Sawa hits a Mutoh style elbow on the concrete. Konaka at one point vomits some green slime on the street. Then they find some dog poop in the street and try to shove someones face in it. They find what looks like a shrine with a Torii. They pray at the shrine. Then they brawl at the shrine. After deserating a holy site they move on to fighting on a playground. There’s piledrivers and backdrop suplexes and shining wizards on the sand. A slide is used. They move further on to brawling in the middle of a busy street with cars going by. Some ladies are waiting with their bikes, and Sawa goes and snatches a bike riding it away. Imagine just waiting for the bus or something and then a cross dressing wrestler with a bald cap shows up, takes your bike and rides it away. After getting off he kicks at one of the ladies too. The match ends when Sawa puts a figure 4 on Konaka (again, on the concrete) and Konaka reverses it. A fitting crafty technical ending to this fine opening match.

Shoichi Uchida & Takaku Fuke vs. Hideaki Sumi & Mexican 69

Mexican 69 is a fat guy in a mask. He’s a typical FU*CK style wrestler, meaning he tries to wrestle but the outcome just comes out as bizarre. It’s really its own genre of surreality. Sumi is great, he is a crazy karateka who wrestles like a modern day Masashi Aoyagi, and he does have some actually nice shooty exchanges with Fuke here. Uchida is also a good wrestler but saddled working opposite Mexican 69. At one point some women in the crowd  broke into a weird choir-like singing, so I guess they were in on it too. Then the wrestlers go for a stroll in the street again with Sumi and Fuke trading chest kicks and locking in shoot holds in the neighbourhood. At one point Uchida rides past them on a scooter, having Mexican69 on his back. I would take major TV stations hostage and broadcast this stuff to the masses if I could. The fight moves in front of the Torii shrine from the previous match, but Sumi and 69 will have none of it and they quietly walk back to the ring. There is probably some subtext there about the fans excitedly following the wrestlers outside and then having to walk awkwardly all the way back next to the elderly Pancrase legend Takaku Fuke. The match ends rather unceremoniously as Uchida tries and fails to wrestle Mexican 69.

Killer Master vs. Magnitude Kishiwada

Killer Master for some reason is dressed looking a lot like Badboy Hido. This match goes as such: Master touches Kishiwada, and immediately is thrown outside and eating stiff chairshots. Kishiwada then walks Master outside to the street, to the site of the Torii. There he chops Master some, puts on an abdominal stretch, throws him into a wire fence, and then walks him back to the ring. Wrestlers are like kittens – when you grab their scruff they are just paralyzed and have to go along with whatever you want to do. Anytime Master tries anything he gets waffled by Kishiwada in a way that indicates Kishiwada has little regard for his opponent. Back in the ring Master is eating more stiff offense from Kishiwada. Kishiwada puts a Figure 4 on Killer Master and Master gets a megapop from the 12 or so people watching when he actually reverses it. Master gets a brief comeback but quickly he gets blasted by a nasty lariat to his face, and then goes down to a basic back senton.

Hideki Shioda & Killer Master & Takaku Fuke vs. JAIL & Konaka &Magnitude Kishiwada

Kishiwada works the mic some, which I guess prompts this match. Konaka is still in the sweater and dungarees. They brawl briefly to start, before the Konaka/JAIL/Kishiwada trio quickly start isolating Killer Master. JAIL actually has a cool look wearing a mask and striped convict outfit. He also seems competent. Master actually gets some offense in but he flubs nearly everything he tries. Once again he takes some nasty hits from Kishiwada. And Konaka looks like a mighty competent wrestler too. He locks in a series of cool submissions on Master and a triangle choke gets the tap. Yes, Master lost the match before he could even make a tag. Things work differently in FU*CK.

Hideaki Sumi & Mexican 69 vs. Hideki Shioda & Munenori Sawa

Sumi and Sawa speed tagging each other was great, I’d love to see a singles match between them. Then they tagged the other 2 guys in and things got weird again. 69 did that weird comedy move where he super slowly rolled over his opponent. It seems that Shioda wants to try, even hitting some snug strikes and a nice spin kick which exaggerates the subsequent weirdness of the exchanges even more. Sawa and Sumi do another cool 30 second exchange. Then Sawa gets isolated, doesn’t even make the hot tag, just comes back and wins really quickly. The match last like 5 minutes. Baffling.

The Library

Assorted BattlARTS

Munenori Sawa & Yujiro Yamamoto vs Manabu Hara & SEIKEN, BattlARTS 8/21/2011

Really good scrappy match from the last days of BattlARTS. Everyone beat the shit out of each other and never backed down. Sawa cut down the goofiness, but things definitely got more serious when Yamamoto stepped in the ring. He had some intense exchanges with both Hara and SEIKEN. SEIKEN is a pretty fun character to insert into a BattlARTS match, as he doesn’t have much grappling and just tries to KO people with nasty head kicks, it makes for a cool contrast. There wasn’t a ton of grappling but Yamamoto in the brief moments did some really cool stuff. Haras brief hot tag trying to crack Sawas jaw was pretty great, too. Sawa trying to dive at Hara who was outside was pretty crazy and immediately lead to another chaotic, scrappy exchange with SEIKEN. Fun chaotic ending run with lots of stiff blows. I miss BattlARTS.

Yuki Ishikawa & Munenori Sawa vs Super Tiger II & Manabu Hara (BattlArts - 11/16/2008)

The early goings are a bit slow, tho there are a few neat moments. Hara cranks Ishikawas neck with a nasty headlock then hits him with an out of nowhere kick to the face. There's a pretty heated exchange between Sawa and STII with Sawa trying to headbutt him in the guard about 8 minutes in a flick is switched and Hara and Tiger start fucking pulverizing Sawa with brutal kicks. After that it's off to the races as they deliver a brutal beatdown on Sawa. Some breathless exchanges ensue with guys tagging each other full force, headbutts, slaps, kicks to the head. The finishing run is Super Tiger II unloading his spectacular kick arsenal on Ishikawa. STII has some crazy kicks, and he nails them all here. I also really liked the violence of Sawa and Hara trying to prevent each other from making a save. As usual with Ishikawa there are some tremendous submissions. Last 12 minutes of this or so were some of the most brutal and best BattlARTS action of the new millenium for sure.

Ikuto Hidaka vs Yuta Yoshikawa, BattlARTS 12/21/2008

Really good 10 minute match. Hidaka was hellbent on destroying Yoshikawas mid-section here, making this forever one of the greatest matches in the "matches where a guy gets his mid section destroyed" genre. Early goings were no-nonsense as Hidaka was relentless going after Yoshikawa with great looking body shots and knees, it felt like an aggressive U-Style match. When Yoshikawa takes it too the mat it actually feels like he needed to take it to the mat. Yoshikawa is low standing at this point but his brief run off offense is nice, he is able to hit a big suplex that actually feels earned and follows up blasting Hidaka with a kick. Yoshikawa punching away at Hidakas arm/shoulder was a nice touch. Hidaka denying a flying armbar, but eating a punch to the face seconds later was great. Eventually Hidaka took Yoshikawa out destroying his guts with knees and spin kicks that looked brutal. Very nice stuff and cool to see Hidaka doing something different when he could've just hit his usual spots instead.

Tanomusaku Toba Documentation #23

 MIKAMI & Tanomusaku Toba vs. Daichi Kakimoto & Chou-un Shiryu, DDT 5/23/2007 - FUN

Another JIP match. But we get 5 minutes of total action with Shiryu doing a bunch of awesome stuff and Toba getting ragdolled around. Shiryus whacky kung fu kicks and dives are truly awesome. He also hit this awesome foot stomp off the top of Kakimotos shoulders. Then it was time for Toba to punch Kakimoto in the face and they did some manly exchanges. Can’t ask for much more from a clip like this.

Tanomusaku Toba vs. Daichi Kakimoto, DDT 6/3/2007 – FUN

JIP once again. Common, 2007 Samurai TV editors, give me a complete Toba match! This looked insanely good as it was basically all straight punches, crowbar lariats and ragdoll suplexes. You can watch a lot of Toba stuff but he still surprises you with what he busts out, in this case hitting a cool rana. They reference the finish of the above tag, and the finish of this one is insane.

Tanomusaku Toba vs. Shuji Ishikawa, DDT 2/7/2007 – SKIPPABLE

Well, not all of these can be good. Toba was good as always, punching Shuji in the face, but Shuji was really lame and weak and the match had a shitty run in finish.

Tanomusaku Toba & Munenori Sawa vs. Kota Ibushi & Hoshitango, DDT 8/5/2008 - FUN

Clipped but holy fuck I‘d kill to see this in full. Everyone has boxing gloves and they are beating the shit out of each other. Even Hoshitango is swinging hard and eating huge blows! Toba and Ibushi take turns hitting each other in the face as hard as they can. Then Toba and Ibushi are brawling on the floor. Finally everyone is in the ring and just beating on each other like its real life Super Smash Bros until Toba hits a huge dropkick. God I really hope the uncut version of this is sitting somewhere because this looks like EVERYTHING.

Tanomusaku Toba Documentation

Tanomusaku Toba Documentation #20

 Tanomusaku Toba vs. Munenori Sawa, DDT 5/4/2007 - GREAT

Okay – the bad first: it‘s JIP. We still get 7 minutes of blistering action between these two, and every second of this was just great. Just Toba having superior striking and cracking Sawa with nasty punches left and right and Sawa trying to soften him up. This version of Sawa was great – he was just fired up, no jokes or theatrics, and giving and taking hard. They make the back and forth hitting actually compelling, and there were some great spots such as Toba getting ragdolled by suplexes or Sawa jumping right into a Toba punch. They really needed to give Toba more matches like this, I can‘t think of much better undercard stuff than two crazy guys beating the snot out of each other in a quick exciting match.

 

Tanomusaku Toba & MIKAMI vs. Poison Sawada JULIE & Super Uchu Power, DDT 8/25/2002 - EPIC

This was the finals of a tag league and they went 25 minutes. Pretty much 4 cool indy characters doing a Kings Road style epic and succeeding. We get a quick start and then it's pretty much all action. This may have been the most I've enjoyed Poison Sawada, he doesn't have much athletic ability or stiffness but he displayed great timing, had some genuinely impressive exchanges with MIKAMI and is just a really cool character with his green mist and hypnosis spots. In a 2022 world where most wrestlers feel so fucking dry and generic a guy like Poison Sawada JULIE feels like a real wrestling genius in comparison. TOBA was generally awesome dishing it out and getting ragdolled around, leaping into the scenery to spin backfist people in the head at just the right moments. MIKAMI did his usual huge highspots, timing them really well for some awesome moments, and Uchu was a destructive space force as usual. These 4 deliver exactly what you expect and want from them, and this maybe ended up being even a bit better than expected. The only blight is they clipped about 5 minutes from this, but you don't really notice anyways, and the match had more than enough to enjoy

Tanomusaku Toba Master List

BattlARTS vs. Team DERA 2/20/2011

 Yujiro Yamamoto vs. Takashi Miyamoto

Takashi Miyamoto is a skinny guy who wears blue/white martial arts pants right out of the 90s, so he‘s immediately overy with me. Yamamoto at this point was the king at getting really good undercard matches out of not so good wrestlers. This is another example. Here he‘s really working dominant grappler, blocking Miyamotos kicks, taking him down and stepping on his face. Miyamoto gets pissed off and nails him with some stiff kick combos so Yamamoto in turn fires back slapping the taste out of his mouth and more nasty face stepping. Miyamoto continues to get on my good side hitting a neat STO. Easily could‘ve been a whatever match, but we got some nice scrappiness and interpromotional hatred.

Bison TAGAI vs. Shun Kasagi

Kasagi has a T-Shirt and baggy trunks like late 90s Mitsunobu Kikuzawa. He also has a kickpad on one foot and no kickpad on the other~! Tagai controls this on the ground to start and it‘s just fine. After some shootstyle matwork Tagai puts a pro wrestling headlock on Kasagi so he can do something too. Kasagi hits some actually nice kicks. Tagai then hits some shitty looking missed clotheslines and other shitty looking offense. I thought it was gonna end there, but Kasagi comes back and hits a really shitty looking dive and a befuddling botched nothing and this is going way too long now. I forgot how bad TAGAI was.

Keita Yano vs. Konaka=PALE ONE

Keita Yano had become the joker, he was still a BattlARTS guy, but his heart was with doing weird collages of technical wrestling at old school shtick at this point. These two nerds do some WoS tribute matwork full of Johnny Saint spots. They would become better matworkers later on, but were clearly just making baby steps here. I liked Konakas modified Figure 4 but he didn‘t do anything outstanding otherwise. At one point they exchange Abby style throat chops with high pitched yelling. Yano wins with a nice knee trembler where he pulls his kneepad down before hitting it. Fun match for what it was.

Alexander Otsuka & Kenji Takeshima vs. Kengo Takai & TAKASHI

TAKASHI has a fun 90s getup with distinctive colour scheme. This was a fun indy tag. Takai is cool as old guy trying to defend his territory. Nothing outstanding, but he had a cool seciton rolling with Takeshima, and was fired up. Otsuka slammed guys hard and everyone else was throwing potatoe shots. TAKASHI mostly got stretched but when he got to he fired back with stiff elbows and kicks. He got to have a cool moment dropkicking Otsuka in the back of the head when he went to suplex Takai, which set up Takai hitting a gnarly reverse brainbuster on Takeshima for the win. Perfectly enjoyable action.

Munenori Sawa vs. Shigehiro Irie

They decided to let the young guys have the main event, and they made the most of it and beat the shit out of each other. Actually Sawa would retire that year while Irie would go on to own the decade on the Japanese indies. This was Iries humble beginnings, as Sawa stomps and slaps the hell out of him. Almost all Irie has is being really tough and trying to hammer Sawas face in with brutal elbows. Sawa had some goofy tendencies around this time, but he cut it out and to be fair had one of his best performances ever. He was running the show here, and did it well by grounding Irie with some good matwrestling and most importantly trying to beat the soul of him. The one sided nature of the match totally worked and it built to some supremely violent strike exchanges and bomb throwing in the last few minutes with Irie trying to gut it out. I also really appreciate Sawa did not go for his Mutoh tribute signature moves and instead just turned Iries lights out with punches. Good shit and felt like one of the better indy mains of 2011.

 

The Library

The Call of the Underground #3

 

Fugofugo Yumeji & Yoshihiro Takayama vs. Kenji Takeshima & Johta, EXIT 1/1/2015

Wow, Takayama enters the underground! This was raw, unfiltered brutality. I‘m pretty sure the only plan they had going into this match was that they were gonna beat the fuck out of each other for 15 or so minutes and call it that a day. And that they did. Takayama wasn‘t in the match much, but Fugo absolutely held up his end. He just had one brutal exchange after another and his chemistry with JOHTA was Ikeda/Ishikawa esque. You can tell these two loved killing eachother. Johta blasted Fugo in the face with some crazy enzuigiris and Fugo, as usual, unloaded his headbutts. There was a fun moment where Johta went to headbutt Fugo only for Fugos hard skull to fire back on him. Takeshima was also in this match and mostly ate punishment aside from trying to grapple here and there. And he just got slaughtered by Takayama for the finish, just ending a bloody mess. That said Fugo is looking awesome in these EXIT brawls.

Fugofugo Yumeji & Sanshu Tsubakichi vs. Munenori Sawa & Keita Yano, EXIT 8/24/2008 

More Fugo mixing it up with BattlARTS youngboys. The confines of the EXIT chain ring really force Yano and Sawa to cut out their bullshit and they just have a short violent match. Lots of neat mat brawling sections here, Fugo and Sawa are especially intense opposite each other, forearm across the face, throat chokes etc. Fugo and Sawa beating on each other is great. Once again, Sawa learns to respect the dome. The finish is great as Fugo has an armlock cinched in and Sawa tries to break it up but can't because Fugos skull is indestructible. Another really good little match.

Fugofugo Yumeji vs. Nyudo, ?/? EXIT

About 90s seconds of both guys trading ear drum shattering slaps. Yumeji hits the big headbutt and it's over. Some kind of point has to be made about Fugo turning up simplicity and violence to the maximum with his project.

Tanomusaku Toba Documentation #5

 

Tanomusaku Toba & Tsunehito Naito vs. Tomohiro Ishii & Tomohiko Hashimoto (DDT 5/26/2001) - EPIC

More good shit from the early DDT shootstyle division. This was a crazy thaiboxer teaming with an a UWF trained grappler against a straight judoka and a killing machine, you have to love it. Toba/Ishii exchanges were once again so fucking violent and great. Initially Ishii was blowing off Tobas strikes and just mauling him. This whole match Toba really works like a guy who is too small to have enough hitting power to KO the big guys right away, but he will absolutely pummel guys with shots until he is able to land a big one. I dug Naito here, having some cool judo vs. UWF style grappling exchanges against Hashimoto, throwing some great neck-spiking suplexes and reversing an STO into a backdrop in a pretty great spot. I also loved his little floor browling section with Ishii where he threw a reckless dropkick with Ishii launching a chair right back at him. I continue to enjoy Tomohiko Hashimoto as a guy with nothing but cool judo throws, and he was ragdolling the shit out of Toba with his throws and suplexes and even a cloverleaf giant swing at one point. TOBA was great as he usually is in the matches, throwing crazy kicks and punches while absorbing said massive beatings and bumps on his own. I probably would’ve preferred a Toba vs. Ishii ending run, as you could tell Hashimoto is limited and pretty green here (not sure if his early judoka phase wasn’t actually his peak as he spent the rest of his career as a crummy garbage brawler), but the Toba vs. Hashimoto end run was about was well put together as you can do thai boxer vs. judoka, with Hashimoto throwing out crazy suplex and Toba backhanding the shit out of his face.

Tanomusaku Toba vs. Tomohiko Hashimoto (DDT 5/21/2002) - FUN

Talk about a contrast. Hashimoto has no strikes and is a judoka, Toba has no grapples and is a thaiboxer. It could have been a pretty esoteric match, but they made it digestible for their mainstream audience. Toba punches really hard and hits big dives, and Hashimoto tosses the fuck out of him. Really good example of Tobas ragdoll bumping as Hashimoto just threw him around like a child. It was like a 5 minute match (probably for the better) and I would think this is what US TV matches could look like in a cool parallel universe.

Tanomusaku Toba & Kota Ibushi vs. Munenori Sawa & Yuta Yoshikawa, DDT 4/1/2007 - GREAT

4 youngins beating the soul out of eachother. Ibushi was wild here, he really should've kept working like a slap-happy kickboxer instead of turning into a flip machine. Even in a match where everyone is throwing potatoes Toba stands out, he throws his combos a little faster than everyone else, really understands how to anticipate his opponents strikes, and he lands his big punches with a slightler bigger thud than everyone else. Whenever he gets put in a submission, the intensity increases drastically. I remember Yoshikawa being pretty hit and miss in his BattlARTS days, but he looked good here putting some stretches on Toba early on and giving Ibushi a nasty facewash later. His section with Toba was an easy career highlight. And then you had that bare knuckle boxing finish. Great stuff.

Tanomusaku Toba & MIKAMI vs. Munenori Sawa & Sanshiro Takagi, DDT 5/10/2010 - GREAT

Good times. Munenori Sawa was a shot in the arm for DDT at this point. He and Takagi had formed "Team Hentai". This was basically a mindless spotfest, but the spots were cool and unpredictable and there were enough violent Toba exchanges to push this into GREAT territory. Starts with a cool shootstyle floor brawling section between him and Sawa. Sawa could be pretty good at this time as an asskicker, and when he went for his Muto tribute spiel Toba punched him in the face hard, so that was good. MIKAMI did a bit of a weak looking reverse lungblower early on which is the kind of shit I don't want in my wrestling, but he looked good for the rest of the match. He is a bit trickier, a bit slicker than your typical junior and when he brought his ladder into play the spots were cool and unpredictable. Takagi had a bit of a bumbling middle aged cop vibe at this point, but he still had very good chemistry with TOBA.

TANOMUSAKU TOBA DOCUMENTATION PROJECT MASTER LIST