GWE Watching: Masaaki Mochizuki

 

Masaaki Mochizuki vs. Tiger Mask IV, Michinoku Pro 3/10/2001

Fun match between two juniors who like to kick hard. Mochizuki had a some scumbag seconding him who kept interferring on his behalf. It didn‘t detract from the match much and made for some fun moments. Tiger Mask IV looked slick. Mochizuki controlled a bit and he looked good potatoeing TMIV. The groundwork was a bit like a curt angle match as they just slapped on a hold and waited for the other guy to make the ropes. Good match overall.

 

Masaaki Mochizuki vs. Magnum Tokyo, Toryumon 7/1/2001

The first 10 or so minutes of this were really good. Mochizuki was super fun here working over Magnum with stiff karate punches and kicks. He was like a Mini Akitoshi Saito. Tokyo‘s counter armwork was really good but had no consequence at all. There was one moment where Tokyo hit a tornado ddt to the apron in a great spot but instead of going for a cover just robotically moved on to work Mochizukis arm because that was what they had planned for the match. The second half dipped pretty hard with lots of interference from Mochizukis posse. Tokyo is athletic and had some good spots particularily the springboard ranas, but most of his offense looks so dainty and weak. Some of it barely seemed to graze Mochi. Finish run had maybe a fun strike exchange but overall was just the usual 2.9999 fest. This could‘ve been better.

Masaaki Mochizuki vs. CIMA, Toryumon 4/14/2001

This was fine in terms of the moves they did, but was soul crushingly dry and uninspired. Both guys did heel spots, neither of them showed any fire, and they were going through their stuff so robotically that it felt like watching a match simulated by a computer. Mochizuki worked over CIMAs legs, which of course ended up being meaningless. As with the above two matches, there was also plenty of outside interference and more silly buggers going on with a plastic case. The finishing run had 1 or 2 cool moments but my god. This went 13 minutes and felt like an hour.

Masaaki Mochizuki vs. Minoru Fujita, Michinoku Pro 6/18/2000

I loved both these guys in the 90s, but man this was rough. They botch 2 moves in the opening sequence and it seems Fujita got injured. What followed was Mochizuki dragging Fujita around the arena for what felt like 5 minutes, lazily kicking him in an attempt to give him time to recover. Fujita kept dragging himself through the match although obviously things were off rails and they seemed to didn‘t have many ideas. They did some pretty lazy submission work. Fujita didn‘t even do the Reverse Viper Hold. This felt 10 minutes too long.

Masaaki Mochizuki vs. Great Sasuke, Michinoku Pro 6/25/2000

Fun match. This was one of those Sasuke performances where he lets his opponent kick the shit out of him and takes a bunch of reckless bumps to put him over. There was no outside interference, but Mochizuki brought a ladder and the ref went down for like 5 minutes at one point so they could do the ladder spot. You are supposed to be a martial artist, Mochizuki, your hands and feet are lethal weapons, wtf do you need a ladder for? Mochizuki kicked hard and at one point unloaded a nasty fist right to Sasukes jaw. Kinda silly finish as Mochizuki hit a Dragon Suplex but pinned himself with an improper bridge. I guess the morale is karate guys shouldn‘t do suplexes.

Secret Base 10/20/2009

 

Kinya Oyanagi vs. Skayde Jr.

Fun opening match. I‘m guessing this is actually Skaydes kid. He wrestles like the actual Skayde but is way skinnier. Oyanagi has some cool llaves of his own and bases well for Jrs. Stuff. A cool 7 minutes.

Spark Aoki & Go vs. Kazuhiro Tamura & Masashi Takeda

Fun sleazy undercard quasivshootstyle match. Dig Takeda as a deathmatch scarred punk who will kneebar you. Spark Aoki was in the tall awkward kid phase of his career here, and he got the shit slapped out of him. Go didn‘t really impress, but he was smart enough to tag out so Aoki could drop the fall. Not a fan of K. Tamuras thigh slappiness, but his submissions are cool. Overall, a satisfying match due to the abuse of Spark Aoki.

Frank Ohashi & Ferist vs. Kamui & Mineo Fujita

Pretty forgettable indy lucharesu match. These guys aren‘t very athletic, don‘t have much personality and don‘t do anything complex. The match also went far too long at 19 minutes with way too many nearfalls for your midcard match.

Kinya Oyanagi & Satoshi Kajiwara vs. Jun Ogawauchi & Masa Takanashi

Ogawauchi is another ex T2P guy who looked pretty talented but had his career derailed by injury. The opening Oyanagi/Ogawauchi matwork section was really fun. The rest of the match was a let down as Takanashi and Kajiwara had the same syndrome as the guys in the previous match. Once again, there were too many pointless nearfalls. Oyanagi was fun doing his thing though and was the only guy who showed any personality.

Mototsugu Shimizu & Yamada Man Pondo vs. Jun Kasai & Jaki Numazawa

This was your typical plunder brawl made better by the fact that it felt like it was the two deathmatch kingpins invading Secret Base to slaughter their boys. Shimizu & Pondo bleed and showed good fire and Kasai and Numazawa are decent dickhead heels. Finishin run was rather standard but the match felt shorter than the previous one.

Bear Fukuda & Masaki Okimoto vs. CHANGO & Amigo Suzuki vs. Takeshi Minamino & Manjimaru

3 ways are pretty dumb. 3 way tags are even dumber. They realized this too and didn‘t try at all. Apparently Okimoto is RASSE but didn‘t do anything cool.

THE LIBRARY

GWE Watching #3: Kazunari Murakami

Kazunari Murakami & Yuki Ishikawa vs. Alexander Otsuka & Ryuji Hijikata, BattlARTS 9/23/1999

 This Murakamis BattlARTS debut and his 5th(!!!) match ever. Talk about being a natural. Murakami mostly does straight shootstyle exchanges with Otsuka here, which are great. Murakami is really aggressive and Otsuka is of course really great at trying to dive past the striking range and going for a suplex. Hijikata was fired up and had one of his better outings ever. Him and Ishikawa mauling each other was some prime BattlARTS psycho material going on. At one point Hijikat went for mount and Ishikawa just punched him in the jaw like it was bare knuckle MMA. Hijikata also nearly dislocated Murakamis arm with a nasty flash armbar. Finish saw Ishikawa just obliterating him with possibly the stiffest enzuigiri I‘ve ever seen. Another pretty great BattlARTS tag. 

 

Yuki Ishikawa & Mohammed Yone vs. Daisuke Ikeda & Kazunari Murakami, BattlARTS 11/9/1999 

Murakamis influence is felt strongly here. He wasn‘t yet the mugging demon, but he was morphing into it, and he brought a hell of a lot of fire. The opening minutes were just a wild old fight. You know things are heated when even Yone is bringing it! Murakami was the focus, but Ikeda came in and reminded everyone who he is by having an insanely violent exchange with Ishikawa. I love Murakami busting out the judo throws. He was a worthy stand in for Ono as Ikedas gloved partner. It builds to a pretty extended an excellent finishing run. Highlights include some sickening muscle busters and Ikeda nearly putting Yones lights out with a chokehold. Yone seemed to be seeing stars following that. Great finish. This went 19 minutes, flew by and was just another great BattlARTS tag. 

Kazunari Murakami & Naoyuki Taira vs. Carl Greco & Yuki Ishikawa, BattlARTS 9/20/2000 

I think this is the first match where it becomes apparent just how much contempt Murakami has for Ishikawa. The match was a really good mix of straight shootstyle exchanges between Taira and Greco and wild brawling between Murakami and Ishikawa. Man, is Murakami just the greatest "aggressive wild offense" wrestler ever? Just wreaking havoc with kicks and punches on his opponents. The spill into the crowd followed by the intense faceoff was just great. Murakami is so aggressive that when they spill to the floor it actually feels like a really dangerous moment. Taira is really fun here throwing both fancy kick variations and hitting the mat. He and Greco have great chemistry. I dug the finish as it was just a series of intense mat exchanges before Greco was able to clamp on one of his special holds. They tease Murakami making the save, but he is too busy with Ishikawa to bother. Great pull apart post match. I imagine this stuff had people in 2000 salivating at the thought of a Murakami/Ishikawa singles match. 

 Kazunari Murakami & Mitsuya Nagai vs. Yuki Ishikawa & Carl Greco, BattlARTS 10/1/2000 

 This is really a lead in to the Murakami/Ishikawa singles, and what a lead in! Murakami is the Murakami we all know here. Match is all about wild assaults, evil glares, and some wrestling. Him and Ishikawa may be among the most exciting matchups in puro history. I like how Ishikawa didn‘t even wait for Murakami to ambush him and just went at him immediately. Murakamis wild striking looks great. Also, Carl Greco was really great, but you already knew that. The brief minute of grappling he and Murakami did was awesome. Nagai is solid here but thankfully Murakami hating Ishikawas guts is the focus. More post match going at each other, as it should be!

2002 MOTY Project Update #13

 

6. Elimination Match: Mitsuharu Misawa & Naomichi Marufuji & Takuma Sano & Yoshinari Ogawa vs. Akitoshi Saito & Jun Akiyama & Makoto Hashi & Yoshinobu Kanemaru, NOAH 1/20/2002

Really great elimination tag which was exemplaric of what made 2002 NOAH so good: unique characters, interesting match layouts, and everyone playing their role to perfection. Great start with Sterness trying to rush only for crafty Ogawa to attack Akiyamas injured shoulder. Marufuji is mostly pinballing around here, and doesn‘t do anything stupid. I loved Hashi here, as a low ranked guy who can hit really heavy thanks to being gifted with an indestructible skull, and how he would fly into the ring with random headbutts like a bomb dropping. The crowd reaction to him rushing Misawa with headbutts was awesome. Kanemaru was also surprisingly effective as a scuzzy heel junior. Everything that came after the match turned into a 4 on 1 was damn near perfect and just brilliant pro wrestling. Ogawa rules so hard and this teamwork with Misawa was on par with their peak Untouchables work. Akiyama trying to let his junior partners pin Misawa as a fuck you only for it to backfire was a nice touch. Great selling and they had the crowd going bonkers without any head drops or dangerous bumps at all.

52. Masao Inoue & Tamon Honda vs. Takeshi Morishima & Takeshi Rikioh, NOAH 1/20/2002

Really great Masao Inoue performance. And also a nice reminder that heavyweight wrestling can be smart and not just shoulderblocks and strike exchanges. Double Takeshis try pulling a 2 on 1 on Honda to start only for Inoue to come in and save the day with eye rakes. Some entertaining guardrail shenanigans ensue. Inoue and Honda trying to choke out Morishima was really great, as was the random apron bulldog Honda busted out. Inoue hitting a neckbreaker after the chokehold just makes so much sense. I really liked how Morishima and Rikioh tried avoiding Hondas headbutts. Then, in a great spot, Rikioh grabbed Honda by the head and just flung him across the ring. Rikioh and Morishima punishing Inoue wasn‘t super interesting in terms of what they did, but was made entertaining by Inoues excellent selling. Inoue manages to look pathetic even when he‘s hitting offense as he just kind of awkwardly staggers across the ring and then flops into his opponent. Hondas hot tag was great as he just hit an out of nowhere crowbar lariat and immediately went for the Olympic Hell. Inoue trying to prevent Morishima from making safes was also really entertaining. Crafty Inoue during the finishing stretch trying to upset the big boys and building to his Torture Rack finisher was excellent and I like how Inoue can make smart decisions even when his plans don‘t work out. Morishima doing the axe bomber to piss off Takao Ohmori was a nice touch.

2002 MOTY MASTER LIST

Assorted World of Sport

 

Steve Wright vs. Brian Maxine, 12/2/1972

Steve Wright was just a skinny young man here, but what an athlete. Maxine was like the British Jerry Lawler. He came to the ring wearing a crown and threw flyers into the audience. This was a match that drew nuclear heat. Maxine tuned down the flamboyance in the ring and was just a hard nosed, knuckle-grinding heel. His use of his knuckles and forearms to grind the hell out of Wright reminded me of a certain Tony Oliver. He grinded his knuckles into Wrights kidneys, his eyes, the forearm across the throat, and the crowd just hated him for it. It‘s a wonderful thing to see a crowd eat up a subtle heels antics like this. Also really dug the subtle hanging choke he did. It was very unique, violent looking stuff. The first round is mostly both guys attempting holds and cartwheeling and rolling out of them. When Maxine first takes a back bump the crowd just erupts. By the second round they were rabid to see Wright put an armhold on Maxine. It was true peak of the art of face/heel working stuff. Wright played the role of the hot headed young athlete extremely well. He had some great looking flying headbutts and took some really good looking bumps. The finish was great as Wright is leading 1-0 but twists his leg on a dropkick. He tries to keep going but Maxine takes him down into an almost PANCRASE leglock and Wright has to quick after going 1-1 with the champion. Some people find the injury finishes in WoS word but I thought it was a good way to have a young guy look strong in his defeat to the champion. Whole match was just tremendously well put together and the heat was magic.

Masambula vs. Tony Charles, 9/2/1972

I was expecting Masambula, the African Witchdoctor to be this really hammy character. I mean, British Wrestling had guys getting hypnotized in the ring and attacking their partners. But this was a fairly straight forward match. Not a ton of shtick from Masambule, just some mild verbal jokes and a lot of wrestling. It was almost a disappointment. The wrestling was very nice, though. Masambula had a cool way of doing things. Dug all the leg grapevines and headstands. Charles was rocking the sideburns and as usual looked like quite the grappler. The match remained a friendly contest and never really ramped up in intensity but Masambula was worth seeing.

GAEA JUNCTION 4/12/1997

 

Sonoko Kato vs. Sugar Sato

We get about 8 minutes of a 15 minute match. As usual we got some unique counters and transitions, although it didn’t set my world on fire because Sato is just not very interesting. It didn’t help that the ending run was built around Sato trying to submit Kato who had a bad leg with her dreaded kneebar only to fall to a random rollup. Good for an opening match I guess.

Chikayo Nagashima & Sakura Hirota vs. Rina Ishii & Toshie Uematsu

Typical GAEA rookie sprint action. The more young Hirota I watch the more I am annoyed she retired to comedy wrestling later because she was quite good in her role. The match was built around Uematsu and Nagashima having to protect their younger partners. It didn‘t have a ton of depth and once again we didn‘t get the full match, but it was solid stuff.

Chigusa Nagayo & Makie Numao vs. Meiko Satomura & Sonoko Kato

Another really good hierarchy driven GAEA match. Nagayo had been crushing her rookies, including in 2 on 1 situations, so Satomura and Kato were frantic in trying to not get blown away. Really good heated fighting here, with both of them just firing away at the legend, with Nagayo retaliating with some precise and often extremely well timed kicks. Nagayo blowing off Katos dropkicks and Kato immediately putting on a sleeper was another great, clever spot. Numao didn‘t get in much offense and played underdog to Nagayos overdog, although she does get to look badass unloading kicks at Satomura. She was also great during the finishing run busting out rad lucha rollups into shootstyle submissions, something that was quite state of the art in 1997. I‘m stunned how perfectly laid out these GAEA tags are, as this is the kind of stuff that should warrant a ton of praise and interest even from joshi sceptics. Watching everything in order helps, I guess, but the action here speaks for itself. They just did a great job establishing both the Nagayo as ultra-dangerous as well as the Numao as vulnerable underdog dynamic. Regretably only about half the match was shown.

KAORU vs. Akira Hokuto

Intelligent bombfest. KAORU gave her all here, and Hokutos selling of initially putting her opponent down and then slowly falling apart was pretty great. It’s fascinating how KAORU turned from an AJW undercarder to an excellent secondary player in GAEA hanging and banging with legends. I would’ve liked the match to be more focussed, and there was some no selling (particularily the insane reverse northern lights bomb from Hokuto), but all in all, it was the quality match that all their quality interactions in tags so far in the year have been hinting at.

THE LIBRARY

Koki Kitahara Documentation Project #9

 

Koki Kitahara vs. Masahito Kakihara, WAR 7/21/1996 - GREAT

Kakihara at the time was kind of UWFis budding young hope and raking in wins over guys like Kensuke Sasaki, so it was fun watching Kitahara teach him a lesson here. For some reason the UWFi boys except Sakurabas weren‘t strong matworkers and Kitahara does a cool job containing Kakiharas youthful aggression and countering him. Of course, as soon as Kitahara gets the advantage he almost boots Kakiharas head off. Finish was pretty great as Kakihara went on another juvenile attack only for Kitahara to doge him and unload with an eardrum shattering smack before catching Kakiharas retort kick with a badass ankle capture.

Koki Kitahara & Yuji Yasuraoka vs. Masaaki Mochizuki & Arashi, WAR 10/11/1996 - GREAT

This was a clipped match which is annoying as the stuff that is shown looks really good. Tons of brutally stiff blows. The match was centered around the Kitahara/Mochizuki interactions. Mochizuki is Kitahara's boy, which means Kitahara is legally obliged to murder him, which the crowd also senses. Yasuraoka mostly gets kicked in the face, but busts out his really spectacular dive in an awesome moment right after Mochizuki blows his fancy springboard attack and gets mauled by Kitahara for it. Even Arashi busts out a reckless spinkick in this! WAR was a magical place.

Kazuo Yamazaki & Takashi Iizuka vs Koki Kitahara & Nobutaka Araya, WAR 12/13/1996 - GREAT

I like Araya a ton, but this was all about Kitahara being a violent punk. Interpromotional matches is where the man thrives as they supply the perfect environment for him to punch people in the jaw, stomp faces and generally act like a jerk. I was pleased that he got to be competitive with Yamazaki, too, who carried himself like a star in this (although I would‘ve liked him to do more shooty stuff).

 

KOKI KITAHARA DOCUMENTATION PROJECT MASTER LIST