Tanomusaku Toba Documentation #7

 Tanomusaku Toba & MIKAMI vs. Kota Ibushi & Daichi Kakimoto, DDT 12/28/2005 - EPIC

Spectacular indy match upgraded to a Toba-style stifffest. Ibushi was way better here than in their 2008 singles. In that match he played kind of a moronic overdog to Tobas underdog, here he is underdog while Toba demolishes him and it’s way more compelling. Tobas initial flurry of KO’ing Ibushi over and over was great and it set up a great Ibushi offense where he was kicking the crap out of Toba with a serious sense of pissed offness. So obviously I loved the Ibushi/Toba slaughtering each other sections, but MIKAMI and Kakimoto hold up their own. Kakimoto is a really fun thick guy who throws suplex and potatoes people with elbows and lariats, which is exactly the kind of simplistic pro wrestlers. I’ve seen people call MIKAMI a poor mans Marufuji before but from everything I’ve seen he is worlds better than Marufuji. MIKAMI really knows how to time his stuff, knows how to fly into the scene with a thudding missile dropkick or flying rana at just the right moment. He knew Ibushi and Toba were gonna be stiff and understood he had to land his stuff with real oomph to it. His senton to Kakimoto may have been among the most crushing moves I’ve ever seen. He and Toba also exhibit great veteran chemistry working several cool cutoffs against Ibushi and Kakimoto. The finishing run was grand with several twists and turns and a few epic saves, but didn’t overstay its welcome. I’m surprised this match doesn’t get more play, really stiff, compelling action with enough athletic moves to keep even a more casual audience entertained, the perfect hybrid of 90s and 2000s Japan indy action.

Asian Cougar & Tomohiko Hashimoto v Showa & Tanomusaku Toba (Onita Pro 10/28/2001) - GREAT

DDT crew bringing the goods on a random Onita mark show. I am 99% sure Showa is just Phantom Funakoshi in a cheap mask doing a tribute gimmick, which is not as cool as him just being a guy who happens to wrestle like the old stylists. Still, match was quality shit between 4 juniors who all have unique styles and personalities.. Starts great with Hashimoto ragdolling Toba around and dropping him on his head with a crazy Randleman like throw. We get everyone doing their cool shit, Toba busts out his apron kick, nice dive train etc. Asian Cougar seemed to be holding back at first, and it made his big spots later seem cooler. There was an unfortunate moment where Toba slipped on a double team move, but other than that he was the Toba we all love, kicking hard, punching guys in the face, and getting spiked with some of these throws.

Tanomusaku Toba vs. Shintaro Karasu, Onita Pro 5/4/2001- FUN

Shintaro Karasu is a flier who looks like a mini Hayabusa but with a weird birdlike mask. Normally he’s just your average spotty undercarder, but he takes a pretty big asskicking from Toba here and responds in kind with big swinging open hand strikes and a nasy solebutt. They only showed a few minutes from a short match, would’ve liked to see the whole thing, but it serves as a nice career highlight for the mysterious Shintaro Karasu.

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Tanomusaku Toba Documentation #4

Tanomusaku Toba & Super Rider & Neo Winger vs. Phantom Funakoshi & Exciting Yoshida & Yuki Nishino (DDT 12/22/1999) - GREAT

Wonderful matchup, the kind that exemplifies the charm of 90s indy sleaze. Everyone here is a unique character with their own style, and they mesh really well. Rider was in his goofy Seikendo suit and working a mix between highflyer and submission wrestler while almost knocking himself out on dives, Funakoshi a mysterious MUGAesque technician, Exciting Yoshida a goofy IWE tribute heel, and of course our boxing gloved hero Toba. Toba really is the MVP in this match potatoeing everybody and always getting the best out of everyone, when you are facing Toba you are guaranteed to get punched in the face, so everyone fires back with unusual piss and vinegar. I especially loved Nishino crushing him with sick running headbutts. Phantom Funakoshi always looks like a real worker in these matches, working fun MUGA vs. Seikendo exchanges against Super Rider and channeling Fujiwara when he was facing Toba, I’d love to see more of him. Exciting Yoshida was a bit weird, he kept trying to no-sell Toba and getting punched and spin kicked in the face, and also did a bunch of banana peel heel spots, then again he also worked a sick headbutt exchange at one point so I can’t hate the guy. There’s also more shootstyle floor brawling involving Toba and a crafty finish between Super Rider and Funakoshi. Neo Winger blew, but wasn’t in the match much. Really everything you can ask for from a match up full of random indy dudes from forgotten sleaze feds (how often do you get Nihei Gumi, Seikendo, DDT and SPWF representatives in one match?).

Tanomusaku Toba & MIKAMI & Kengo Takai vs. Masahiko Orihara & Neo Iceman & Onryo (DDT 1/30/2000) - FUN

This had some shady guys typical of DDT at the time. Masahiko Orihara is a Masao Orihara clone in a goofy mask, and kind of wrestles like a poor mans Masao Orihara, while Neo Iceman looks like a guy who forgot his wrestling gear so he enters the ring in street clothes and a random mask they had lying around. Both guys were okay though, aside from one funny moment where Orihara went for an RVD move and fell on his head. Takai was in the rookie underdog role and kind of rough, he blew his clothesline and dropkick, how the hell can you not hit your clothesline and dropkick when you’re a japanese rookie? That said Toba had an awesome moment where he came in and worked over Neo Iceman with stiff blows, and I continue to leave young MIKAMI, he gets good exchanges out of everyone and when he’s throwing out highspots he’s just crushing dudes. Onryo was good but these two carried the show. Kind of an undercard tag with some rough and some nice moments, but I had fun.

Tanomusaku Toba & MIKAMI vs. GENTARO & YOSHIYA (DDT 11/30/2001) - EPIC

Great great match, a true hidden hidden gem. Even knowing that Toba can be really great, MIKAMI being pretty good around this time and GENTARO very talented, this far exceeded expectations. Mostly because the psychology in the match was super, and everyone played their role to perfection. MIKAMI comes into this with a cast on his wrist, and he does a really great almost Misawa-ish wounded ace performance here. He really sold that shit to absolute perfection, being wary of it the entire match, being unable to follow up his own moves etc. Toba is great here throwing wild strikes, and then GENTARO & YOSHIYA swoop in with a fantastic Anderson Brothersesque performance isolating Toba. These guys were really zoning in on Tobas leg, and while the legwork wasn’t sold in a major way (the main story was Mikamis wrist) it was really good and Toba got ragdolled hard, he is so tiny that even something like a Shinbreaker can be made to look brutal. Thought Gentaro looked just amazing here, and Yoshiya was fun as a Taue-ish big dude booting peoples heads off and acting like a dick. Toba punching Yoshiyas lights out was really fun, and then we get to the awesome finish. Really tremendous stuff, it’s insane how things like this fell under the rug when this kind of smart+brutal pro wrestling is a direction Japanese wrestling should’ve kept going in.

Tanomusaku Toba vs. Shinjuku Shark (Apache Pro 12/30/2007) - GREAT

Shinjuku Shark is a boxer who has been working sleaze indy shows since forever. With his shaggy hair and lanky frame, he looks kinda like Tobas dad. But he never had a big run in any promotion, mostly doing sleazy shit in promotions like FMW, while Toba at least has a series of DDT main events to his name, not to mention that Shark can’t use his feet. Shark is essentially the underdog here and Toba dominates him early until Shark is able to down with him with a big surprise punch. After that it’s like the last 5 minutes of an epic FUTEN match with both guys trading big combos and Shark mostly coming back using his toughness and puncher’s chance. You don’t really expect much from a match involving two boxing gloved guys but I actually ended up wanting this to go longer.

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Tanomusaku Toba Documentation #3

 

  Tanomusaku Toba & MIKAMI & Takashi Sasaki vs. Great Takeru & Phantom Funakoshi & Asian Cougar (5/25/1998) - GREAT

Good times with the DDT crew. You see, these guys can do some basic matwork and exchanges, put a match with a solid structure together and have no problem crushing each other with big highspots and stiff blows, which is absolutely enough for me to have a good time. I continue to be impressed with Phantom Funakoshi, his arm popping submissions are awesome, and he basically holds his team together, as Asian Cougar is just a highspot freak and the Great Takeru is just pure mediocrity. Funakoshi and Toba have a particularily great exchange where both guys keeping baiting eachother until Funakoshi grabs a series of armbars, Toba gets pissed off and demolishes Funakoshis shoulder with a series of nasty strikes. This was really early into Tobas career but he looks awesome, his punches were a bit less showy than later, he did lots of ducking and stance movements, but he still had such a cool variety of strikes and was willing to get crushed by his opponents spots, he also busts out the springboard wheel kick which is an awesome reckless spot from a guy not wearing shoes. Speaking highspots, Asian Cougar is an absolute psycho in this rolling out dive after dive and crushing dudes faces with the gnarliest leg drops you’ve ever seen. Really you can watch a ton of old japan indy wrestling and always come out with refreshed appreciation for the crazy ways of Asian Cougar. Mikami and Sasaki are in their infancy stage but they do well here and Mikami is over as the DDT homeboy to have an exciting finish with even Takeru. Such cool stuff, checking out Tobas career is an awesome journey.

Tanomusaku Toba & Tomohiko Hashimoto vs. Super Uchu Power & MIKAMI (DDT 7/19/2001) - GREAT

So much fun to be had here, DDT missed the boat big time when they stopped doing hybrid shoot matches like this. Tomohiko Hashimoto is all judo throws at this point, and he and the pure striking based style of Toba make a fun team. MIKAMI for a junior can handle himself with the shooters, he hit an awesome flying armbar counter to one of Hashimotos throws, and generally sticks to offense that requires little cooperation, mostly just hitting cool sentons and open hand strikes. Super Uchu Power is totally awesome in this match, the shooter alien is such a great menacing monster crowbarring dudes with kicks like baseball bat shots, locking in shoulder popping shoot submissions and dropping ridiculous bombs. He also works some really nifty exchanges with Hashimoto, there is a cool moment where the alien goes for a gi choke and Hashimoto reverses into a Fujiwara armbar, and several great spots centered around Super Uchu Power trying to block Hashimotos STOs and other throws. Toba narrowly avoiding destruction and and catching the beast with some hard punches and backfists was great. The finish was between Toba and MIKAMI and while it wasn’t as epic as the best Toba faceoffs it was fun.

Tanomusaku Toba & Ranbo Yoshida Okuntun vs. Kota Ibushi & KUDO (DDT 8/8/2007) - EPIC

This was from a Shin FMW style show where Kota Ibushi was in every match. It was also kickboxing style tag where everyone had gloves and there were rounds. It easily could’ve been bad, but it ended up pretty awesome. We get some slow opening sparring between Toba and KUDO before Ranbo Yoshida (who I assume is a legit kickboxing outsider) tags in and rules the show the with awesome Eddy Gordo style handspring kicks. The 2^nd round begins, Ibushi & KUDO start brawling and now we get kickboxers fighting up the entrance way in their gloves. For some reason floor brawling in Japan with dudes who wear gloves always is way better. The 3^rd round is just an awesome Rocky style frenzy where everyone is throwing down and blocking punches with their face. I thought Toba/Ibushi was gonna be the obvious final pair, but instead Ranbo tagged in, decided to stiff up Ibushi with some hard knees to the gut and we got more chaotic fighting. I can’t believe Japanese wrestling just collectively decided to stop having these kind of crazy spectacles and instead just quietly replace them with slogs of soulless elbow exchanges.

 

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Brief thoughts on SPWF 6/14/1995

 
SPWF  6/24/1995

1. Hiroshi Osumi (Shinjuku Shark) vs. Masahiko Kochi
2. Exciting Yoshida vs. Phantom Funakoshi
3. Toyonari Fujita vs. Dangerous Uchida
4. Made in China & ??? vs. Mr. ??? & ??
5. Ichiro Yaguchi & Isamu Teranishi vs. Kishin Kawabata & Hiroshi Hatanaka
6. Kuniaki Kobayashi & Great Kabuki & Kengo Kimura vs. Yoshiaki Yatsu & Masa Saito & Riki Choshu

SPWF may be the least of the 90s mud show indies, but SPWF shows are always a nice novelty. I liked Yoshida/Funakoshi, Funakoshi was doing some kind of technical heel gimmick, his technical stuff looked good and I liked how he went to choke his opponent and then hit a knee drop to the throat. Yoshida was doing an Animal Hamaguchi tribute act and then he hit this really reckless tombstone piledriver. Main event was pretty much a greatest hits show that pleased the crowd, with the two novel additions to the usual Choshu tag formula, 1995 Yatsu and Masa Saito not doing anything special. Karate pants guys were more than solid, though. Nothing else stood out really but I prefer this kind of serious pro wrestling over todays joker indies.