E-Cosmos: Kansai vs. Style-E 2/21/2010

Yosuke Takii & Kabuki Kid vs. Yutaka & Dyna-Mido

Fun indy opener. Takii is always cool to see and he really palmed and kicked the hell out of Dyna-Mido. Dyna was fun as a plucky young guy with a simple moveset, and Yutaka had a cool hot tag busting out a big headscissor and nasty face dropkick. Kabuki Kid wasn’t much at all but didn’t drag things down. This was short enough and had a good pace to leave you with just enough before you got tired.

Yuki Tanaka vs. Kyosuke Sasaki

Sasaki was doing a face painted gimmick with one glove on his hand and part of a heel faction. A cool match in theory as both these guys have kickpads and aren’t afraid to hit hard, but it was pretty short and to add to that the match had a run in, even though Tanaka quickly unmasked the guy and threw him out. It felt like wasted potential.

Masato Shibata vs. Shigehiro Irie

Young Irie is so low on the totem pole he gets almost squashed Shibata. This had some good chunky boys forearming each other hard and crashing into each other with their blubber stuff and Shibata has some nice gnarly offense, stiff Vader Hammers and huge suplex that Irie bumps big for, but I wanted a bit more. As a 6 minute big boy sprint it was pretty good though.

Kazuhiro Tamura & Masashi Takeda vs. Masanori Ishikura & Takaku Fuke

This was more like it. A slick shooty indy tag with plenty of fun smooth mat scrambles. It’s too bad we don’t see Ishikura much because the guy is really good and can hang with a pair of Tamura trainees on the mat no problem. I’m usually down on Fuke but he had his working boots on and let his opponents look really good. Takeda looked really good here, it’s regrettable he didn’t do clean wrestling more often because his knee strikes and suplexes are fantastic. The ending with Ishikura and Tamura wailing away at each other with Ishikura clocking Tamura with nasty headbutts was hard as all hell. Really enjoyable fast paced match, absolutely worth watching.

Tadanobu Fujisawa & Shoichi Uchida vs. Choun Shiryu & Ken Ohka

This had a lot of zany heel stuff and run ins from heel faction on Shiryu/Ohkas side. It was effective but it prevented much wrestling from happening. Heel antics aside Shiryu was awesome here as usual and probably salvaged the match with his brilliant kicks. The guy is just too cool flying into the scene to Kung Fu kick people in the face and hit odd 619s. His brief exchange with Uchida was really cool and I bet a 7 minute match between the two would be absolutely dynamite. Uchida brings some cool touches, I really liked his Oklahoma Stampede where he cleared the other guy off the apron, his big emerald fusion and dropkick to the back of the head etc. I was hoping to see Fujisawa kick some ass but he barely got to do anything although he did hit his awesome looking knee at one point. Ohka was pretty much a big nothing aside from his kooky getup. It was still a good match with Uchida and Shiryu being absolutely worth seeing.

The Library

Assorted Japan Indy Wrestling

 

GENTARO vs. Takaku Fuke, VKF 3/12/2009

GENTARO was on a roll doing weirdo lengthy Bret Hart infused MUGA matches during this time period. Fuke has looked pretty weak post U-STYLE, but he was good here. This was a smartly laid out 2/3 falls match. The first fall had some cool scrambling with GENTARO grappling the shooter in a very pro style manner but doing everything in a snug fashion before Fuke casually taps him with an achilles hold. That hold has to be the most basic of all but GENTARO does a great job putting it over like death. The rest of the match is built around GENTARO trying to take out Fukes leg – including hitting some great chop blocks and the obligatory Turnbuckle Figure 4 with Fuke trying to grab shootstyle holds which GENTARO sells like death. There is a great build to the figure 4 including Fuke busting out some killer reversals. Last couple minutes were pretty great with Fuke trying to KO him and GENTARO desperately trying to grab the leg. The match reminded me a bit of those recent NJPW big matches built around limb work except this was about 40 minutes shorter so less bloated and neither guy looked silly at any point

Billy Scott vs. Daijiro Matsui (KINGDOM 6/20/1997)

Matsui could have had a pretty decent run as a shootstylist judging on his performance here. This was a total grappling sprint, both guys doing some high end slick mat wrestling getting in and out of holds. There was one moment where Scott landed a punch that bloodied Matsuis eye in nasty fashion, but other than that it was all grappling. Scott hit a pretty great belly to belly at one point. Loved Matsui selling the finish, too.

Masao Orihara vs. Original Tiger Mask (RJPW 9/26/2005)

Pretty great match which has to go down as one of Oriharas finest performances ever. The match went 30 minutes, but it was laid out in such a way that Tiger wasn’t required to do any selling, and Tiger didn’t gas out (or at least not in a way that hurt the match), so it worked. So you have Tiger doing all his cool fatman flying and spin kicks and Orihara making scuzzy comebacks, using chairs and taking a big beating. The last 10 minutes ruled as Orihara got his shoulder demolished with kicks and joint popping armlocks but refused to quit and made all these awesome comebacks while getting further demolished by Tigers kicks. When the time limit runs out it feels like a victory for Orihara for gutting it out and lasting against a technically superior opponent. It was a really cool piece of pro wrestling storytelling that felt closer to a real sport than any workratefest and way better than any braindead nearfallfest that usually caps off long matches like these.