Assorted Japan Indy Wrestling

 

2/3 Falls: GENTARO vs. Masamune, VKF 9/23/2008

Borderline modern classic where they go balls deep going 60 minutes, and succeed. Who knew GENTARO would be the modern day Jack Briscoe having all these 60 minute epics? This starts with both guys doing some fun matwork before they settle into the main groove of the match: both guys doing gruelling body part work and struggling over basic holds. Gentaro starts the fun by working over Masamunes arm and Masamune defends himself by cinching tight headlocks and working his neck. Gentaro kept trying to force a tap with armbars while some of Masamunes holds damn near seemed to pull his head off so the work never got stale. They end the first fall on a cool note and then settle into doing some dueling legwork. The transition from armwork/neckwork into the legwork was pretty impeccable as they didn‘t just move on to do another thing, there was a logical shift in necessary strategies. Duelling legwork was also pretty intense and bordered on a Destroyer classic. Gentaro sunk in some Figure 4s and there was a great moment where Masamune countered one of them by grabbing Gentaros leg and trying to twist it off. There‘s also some absolutely stellar work around Gentaros Sharpshooter. I was expecting them to keep grinding it out on the mat, but they settle into a cool finishing run with some great pin attempts, nearfalls and choice counters, while keeping the focus on the leg stuff. Last move was just a thing of beauty. Yes this was slow and a bit repetitive in parts, but both guys did a phenomenal job struggling in and out of holds, and it all felt spontanteous. Really a gem of a match, if you are the kind of purist who can get into a cool 40 minutes of brainy duelling limbwork.

 

DAISAKU & YUSAKU & Naoshi Sano & YOSHIYA & Ishinriki vs. Masayoshi Motegi & Hirofumi Miura & Shinigami & Fukumentaro & Shigeo Kato, NMC Pro 10/21/2001

Fun sleazy brawl with zombies, karatekas and wrestlers brawling all over the building, bleeding, and taking mean bumps. There is a car at ring side and a good chunk of time is spent with guys taking nasty bumps into the car. Sano was quite the whipping boy here, taking a fisherman buster on top of the car, and another one on top of a truck, before getting carved open with a hatchet. These guys all have no problem working stiff and throwing big suplexes so the non brawling portions were cool too although the match suffered a bit from having only one camera.

Wrestle Yume Factory 1/28/1996

This was very much a  mid 90s high school gym scum indy show.

Madness vs. The Wolf 

 THE MADNESS emanates the kind of terrible fascination typical of sleaze indy wrestling. He's just a big guy with a skull mask and a green flanel shirt. His entrance theme is just gurgling swamp sounds. The match was better than you'd expect. It was pretty basic, but The Wolf will kick you really hard and THE MADNESS has a nice powerslam. Being able to do 1 or 2 moves well will get you far enough in my book and this was decent like an approximation of a  good WWF Superstars match in a japanese high school gym.

Cosmo*Soldier vs. Azteca

Azteca is the most mediocre junior in all of Japanese wrestling history, but I'd say he was decent in WYF as opposed to KAGEKI where he just got really into being the poorest mans Liger. Cosmo*Soldier  had yet to reach his peak as a botchtastic wannabe hybrid shooter junior that he would become in 1997, but he flies way into my heart in this match by hitting hilariously miscalculated dive into nothing. This really wasn't good or anything but it made me laugh.

Hiroyoshi Kotsubo vs. Hirofumi Miura

This was Hiroyoshi Kotsubo actually being pretty good. Lord knows that guy sucks working BattlARTS and Futen, but will have a good performance on the most niche shows. This was like a scrappy BattlARTS match with Kotsubo being aggressive and working takedowns on suplexes. Miura is some karate gi wearing scum who tries kicking hard but Kotsubo just eats him. This ended up just a squash, although the finish with the GI choke was badass.
  

Onryo vs. Shinichi Shino

 Shinichi Shino is a W*ING guy who it seems was struggling to find his identity at this point. He looked like a mix of several different wrestlers. Onryo at this stage is really pretty useless outside of dives and taking nasty bumps. This was mostly Shino in control and only allowing Onryo to hit his spots which is how you carry Onryo. I wouldn't say Shino was particularily good here, but he kept things moving and the match ended up short enough to be alright.

Masayoshi Motegi vs. Shinigami

Bless our lord and saviour Motegi. He tries so, so hard to get a watchable match out of Shinigami. On the other hand, he is likely responsible for letting guys as shitty as Shinigami into the business. I will respect him for shouldering the burden, though. Shinigami is terrible, but there was one nifty moment where Motegi was working over his leg and put a Figure 4 on him. Shinigami then got up, seemingly no-selling the leg work but then his leg gave right out. It was a pretty cool bit of convincing zombie-like selling. Motegi ends the match with a cool submission that was like an STF without the face lock and Motegi leaning all the way on the zombies injured leg. Also Onryo hit a dive off the balconies during this, setting the Onryo dive count on this show to 4. The match still blew, though.

Arashi & Osamu Tachihikari vs. Shinichi Nakano & Kamikaze

Shinichi Nakano has to be like the japanese Black Terry, putting in subtle great performances in the most grimy unexpected places. Problem was that he barely was in the match. He is in a great opening section - where he gets his bandaged shoulder torn up - and a great end section though. Between that, there are way too many segments involving Kamikaze. The parts were Kamikaze was controlling were terrible as he was constantly calling spots in a really obvious manner. Arashi & Tachihikari may be the least of the WAR heavyweights but they are still OK delivering a beatdown. The end was great as Tachihikari ended up bloody. Nakano delivered some nasty as fuck stomps to the cut and a running punch that was Daisuke Ikeda levels of wild. There was also a great spot where Nakano, seemingly beaten, pulled Tachihikari in position for Kamikaze to hit a surprise flying move. Nakano smashing Tachihikari in the face with a chair repeatedly for the 10 count was also way more violent than I expected  for a high school gym main event.

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