Tarzan Goto Documentation #15

 Tarzan Goto & Mr Gannosuke vs Jado & Gedo, WAR 7/7/1995 - EPIC

Molten heat for this match, you think the FMW guys must have killed someone to be this hated while scumbags Jado and Gedo are treated as gods by the WAR loyalist. The match begins hot with Goto kicking ass and punching people in the face, then it settles down into a fun segment of Jado and Gedo shining with their array of double team moves and the crowd amusingly cheering every dirty move they do. Then it gets hot again, as Jado eats a nasty surprise powerbomb, which he sells as an awkward landing on his shoulder, and Goto immediately capitalizes by attacking the shoulder. Goto is pretty great destroying a guys shoulder while acting like a scumbag. Just the way he would casually crush Jado with a big splash and then mockingly bitchslap him was amazing. The last third of the match sees Jado and Gedo getting destroyed and trying to protect each other while making desperate pin attempts. Gedo getting bloodied and then looking like the life was going out of him while Goto rained punches on his head was some great simplistic brutal pro wrestling. It was clearly inspired by the famous AJPW tag from the month before but the drama worked really well and the desperation was palpable. Great match with a ton of violence heat and drama with Goto looking like an evil monster as usual and Gedo and Jado doing a great job playing the more sympathetic bastards.

Tarzan Goto & Grigory Verichev vs Sabu & Horace Boulder, FMW 5/24/1992 - GREAT

What a certified crazy match up. The match ended up being pretty damn great too, really the kind of wild chaotic spectacle you only get in the 90s. It delivers everything you want basically being an all out brawl from the get go with a breathless pace and no time. Goto was absolutely killing Sabu here, launching tables or chairs at his head, there was tons of blood, Verichev in his gi launching dudes around with huge suplexes. Horace Hogan is perfectly fine as a big sleazy dude that will flatten the smaller guys with lariats and occasionally something odd like a stiff missile dropkick. At one point the Sheik does a run in to stab Goto in the face. Goto was great as usual both taking a big beating, bleeding, kicking ass, and coming back lariating peoples heads off. Also you get Sabu and Goto throwing punches and that's really cool. Gritty finish too.

Tarzan Goto & Shinigami vs Yuiga & Drake Morimatsu, Yuiga Produce 10/30/2004 - FUN


A match that is, thankfully, centered around Yuiga vs Tarzan Goto. Yuiga is a Kurisu trainee so she is really tough, and she looks credible going all out to try and take down the big man. Goto of course delivers a hellish bloody beatdown. Shinigami doesn't drag down the match much, and Morimatsu is fine though she does little. The story of the match is Yuiga as she engages in a bloody battle with Goto. The barbedwire boards actually make this feel like a warzone rather than a standard deathmatch and Yuigas judo throws were great. Goto delivers his usual beatdown, nothing mindblowing if you have watched him a lot but it always delivers. A GREAT match from Yuigas standpoint and a FUN entry into Tarzan Gotos resume.

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WYF Endless Shout 1/8/1998

 Watch

Shigeo Kato vs. Raging Bull

Raging Bull is some foreigner who somehow ended up working a few WYF shows around this time. This was almost like a TV studio squash with Kato working over Bulls arm for 7 minutes before tapping him out with a carny hold. Bull only clubbed his way out of Katos holds a few times and went down pretty easily. I think Kato did his job well here so I thought it was a cool little match but nothing must watch.

 

Tadahiro Fujisaki vs. Makoto Saito

Really good match which leaves you with a few realisations: 1. these two kids were insanely talented to have a random indy sleaze undercard match this good 2. damn, that's actually Fugofugo Yumeji and some dork from Dragon Gate before he went to Dragon Gate? 3. These two totally could have and should have been the Yuki Ishikawa and Daisuke Ikeda of sleazy King's Road style, but it just ended up not happening. AAAAAHHHHH it's maddening!! All that squandered potential!!! It's even worse than watching the kids in GAEA!! But, atleast I can watch this match and fantasy book an ideal fed centered around these guy propagating their own vision of brutal & intricate junior wrestling.

This match is a lot like two NOAH heavies having a really fun undercard bombfest. It's not flawless, but the potential for this to grow into something beautiful was there. Fujisaki has the cool wrist clutch suplexes and submissions and Saito brings the stiff spin kicks and hurty looking junior offense. The build to the finish was especially cool as it was like a mix of an AJPW "super finisher" and NJPW "You keep blocking this move, so I will use that to set up another move" moment.

 

Masashi Aoyagi & Cosmo*Soldier vs. Masayoshi Motegi & Azteca

Solid long match. The thing with these guys is you want them to bust out reckless highspots and have scrappy exchanges, so when they churn out a more polished match you‘re almost a little disappointed. That said Motegi proved himself an intelligent worker here. While his initial exchange with Aoyagi was not as heated as it would‘ve been in a 1993 W*ING vs. NJPW match, it was clear Motegi was trying to give Aoyagi as little space as possible to unleash his dangerous striking. Later, he decided to do some really solid backwork on Soldier to set up some cool submission holds. Everyone else was solid here but the match wasn‘t crazy or weird enough for a WYF undercard bout. Soldier had 2 good dives but he really needed to botch some moves.

Shinichi Shino vs. The Wolf

This is the Wolfs retirement match (although he would come back to work for WWS a few years later), which adds some emotional connection and heat. Shino isn‘t very good, but he can work a hard hitting match, and The Wolf gets in some nice kick barrages on him. Frantic pace and the crowd was really into it. I liked Shinos spinning Dragon Sleeper and his big powerbombs.

Onryo & Shinigami & Hirofumi Miura vs. Masakazu Fukuda & Hiroyoshi Kotsubo & Kamikaze, WYF 1/8/1998

Up to a point this was a really good 6 man tag. Everyone here is not super polished, but willing to take and dish out some punishment, so you got a bunch of fun scrappy exchanges. For example, Onryo sandbacked a Fukuda suplex early, so Fukuda just dropped him on his head. I also enjoy these hybrid wrestlers taking on these whacky zombies. Even Shinigami was entertaining as you got moments like KAMIKAZE turning his Iron Claw into a Fujiwara Armbar and then Shinigami would work over his stomach to set up the stomach claw. Even the Kotsubo/Miura section was good as Miura punched him in the face and Kotsubo would spit on him and hit a stiff spinning backhand. Control section on KAMIKAZE was really good, he got a table thrown on his head, bled a bunch, ate chain punches etc. The segment where he backdropped Onryo on top of Shinigami and then hit his spectacular Spaceman Moonsault while bleeding was incredible and like something out of a high level CMLL trios. Unfortunately the match fell apart a little when they had Kotsubo and Onryo engage in a long segment, they really needed to tag in Fukuda instead. KAMIKAZE looked great though spiking Onryo on his head and the ghoul outgrappling the guy in the singlet was funny.

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Tanomusaku Toba Documentation Project #14

 Tanomusaku Toba vs. Masashi Takeda, Hard Hit 7/20/2008 - FUN

Deathmatch boy Takeda wasn't half bad at shootstyle at this point. Fun grappler vs. striker match. Takeda hits some explosive takedowns and suplexes and Toba hits some brutal counterpunches. It seemed to be hitting at something bigger, but it as a fun little match. Especially dug that sick deadlift suplex Takeda hit on Toba.

Tanomusaku Toba & Seiya Morohashi vs. Tomohiko Hashimoto & Nobutaka Moribe, DDT 3/27/2005 - SKIPPABLE

Seems the quality of DDT was nosediving by this time. I didn't really care for 3/4 of the guys here. Hashimoto is a guy who has worked FUTEN so he can hit and get hit and had one or two fun exchanges, but doesn't really do anything outstanding. Toba was Toba, he had a few fun moments where punched and kicked guys hard and also ate the fuck out of a Moribe Complete Shot at one point, he also played a pretty decent Ricky Morton to a boring control segment from Hashimoto and Moribe. That sad it wasn't anything that would justify enduring the mediocre guys in this.

Tanomusaku Toba vs. Keisuke Ishii, DDT 5/23/2010 - FUN

This was Toba punishing a rookie, which he does pretty well. Mostly Toba punching and kicking young Ishii really hard, while Ishii makes some scrappy young boy comebacks. Toba actually puts Ishiis boy offense over as dangerous and there was quite a high level of violence, for example Toba kicking Ishii in the face to escape a half crab. Fun 5 minutes.

TANOMUSAKU TOBA DOCUMENTATION

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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