PRO-WRESTLING FUJIWARA GUMI Show #30 5/23/96

Fegero v. Bruiser Okamoto

PAS: Okamoto is a Bukka Dojo guy which was a group/promotion which Masaki Mochizuki used to come from. I used to watch a lot of scum Japan indies back in the day (RIP Scott Mailman). I have no memory of Fegero though, he had a nice dive and that is what I will give them. This match was full of suplexes where it looked like the person throwing them, didn't know how to throw them and the person eating them couldn't eat them properly.

TKG: What has happened to our beloved PWFG? They are playing to an audience of about 16 people in seats. A whole bunch of people seem to be up on the balcony but not sure if those are paying customers or the maintenance staff. The ref also is some guy in a hideously ugly red shirt with the kind of design on the front that you'd expect to see on the back of a ski jacket. And then there are these two guys wrestling in your opener. What has become of PWFG? This was a fucking mess. Just one botched ugly looking suplex after another. Match ends when Okamoto starts punching Fegero in the ropes and then punches the ref for DQ. Punches looked nice. Match-not good.

Apollo Sugawara v. Hiroshi Hatanaka

TKG: You get the sense that these two might be fine additions to any six man tag. Guys with enough polish to do a rope run section, a bodyslam and then tag out, maybe a rope run section and then a side suplex and then go for top rope move only to be caught Flair style powerslamed into ring and then both tag out. Point is they need to tag out. Instead they just run the ropes, hit a bodyslam, then run the ropes hit a sidesuplex, then do a bodylslam then another bodyslam. Then there is a reversal of a bodyslam. You keep waiting for them to tag out but its a singles match and there is no one to tag out to..

PAS: Suguwara is an ex-IWE guy and we are a long way away from IWE. Apparently Hatanaka worked WWC. Like Tomk said if this was Sugawara/Goro Tsurumi/Mighty Inoue v. Hatanaka/Invader 1/Ricky Santana this would be fine even in 1996. However it was a long singles that seemed to lap itself a couple of times

Hiroaki Tsushima v. Jun Kikuwada

PAS: Tsushima represents a kickboxing academy that is apparently Senseied by a masked guy in a Gilligan hat and red sweater. Kikuwada is an unknown indy scum junior. It starts out as a terrible mixed match, but after the first round completely breaks down into an amazing clustefuck. Kikuwada posts him and just starts potatoing seconds. I mean he is working tender as a lamb with his opponents, but is just crushing random teenage kickboxers. We have a kendo stick, W*ING arena tour and barbed wire boxing gloves. Terrible but totally awesome.

TKG: So you start thinking this is going to be your standard kickboxer v wrestler rounds match and then it becomes clear that these guys can't pull that off and it becomes... FUCK I have no idea what it became. This was unbelievably bad and filled with way too much amusing shit to not love it. Tsushima reps the C. Kobayashi Memorial Boxing Club which seems to be filled with random nerdy looking guys in jeans. Dojo is run by a guy in an evil clown mask. Tsushima and Kikuwada work incredibly loose and shittily with each other but absolutely waste the seconds. Match seems to end when an eight year old kid runs in wearing barbed wire covered boxing gloves, he gets thrown out and in the process Kikuwada gets a hold of a belt and hangs Tsushima with it. I have absolutely no idea what was going on in this match.

Don Arakawa v. Tsubo Genjin

TKG: This was clipped to hell and no way to really tell what happened in the match.

PAS: I liked Arakawa's nose tweaking and eye poking. Didn't get much from Genjin Masao

Orihara v. Onryu

TKG: Onryu was around in 96? Who knew. Clearly at this point Orihara doesn't think Onryu is on his level and he just wastes Onryu. Kills the zombie dead.

PAS: Onryu did get in one dive, but this was a complete squash. I would like to see this match today as Orihara has only gotten scummier and Onryu is no longer a rookie zombie, but the pre-emanate living dead in wrestling.

Mr Pogo/Toryu v Dick Slater/Masanobu Kurisu

TKG: This was clipped. For a Mr Pogo match this appeared to have no blood and no plunder. Most of what we got to see was Slater working Toryu in ring and that was perfectly fine wrestling. Who knows what else was going on?

PAS: You didn't get enough of this match to get a sense of it. We didn't even get a chance to see Kurisu potatoe anyone. Slater looked like the more shot Dick at this point.

Yoshiaki Fujiwara v. Dick Murdoch

TKG: thank god they clipped and jip'd everything else because we get to see this in full. It looks like the audience has actually filled up over the course of the show. I mean it isn't fill for the main event but a whole lot more folks watching then at the start. I was expecting to enjoy this match but I wasn't expecting it to be this good. They start it off with Fujiwara as guy who backs opponent into corner and then wastes him with punches...while Murdoch is working guy with really nasty ways of taking apart opponents arm on the mat. So all the roles are switched and your waiting for them to righten themselves. They work a really great headscissor escape attempt section. Normally in these type of things a guy will do a Muga escape be put back into headscissor, do another escape get put back in, etc. What made this so neat is that it wasn't just that Fujiwara had a variety of ways to try to escape a headscissors but Murdoch had a variety of different ways to push his opponent down and keep him in the headscissors. Match had all the guys signature spots plus really neat ways both guys tried to avoid and escape their opponents signature stuff.

PAS: It seems pretty trite in a Dick Murdoch review to talk about how great his punches are, but goddamn are Dick Murdoch's punches great. Short jabs, big rights, beautiful uppercuts, just mixed it up and they all were gorgeous. Of course Fujiwara has some of the best punches in wrestling history too, and they had lots of really great exchanges, with Fujiwara being sneaker and not wanting to box heads up with Murdoch. Speaking of turning tables, Murdoch is actually the first guy to try a Fujiwara ambar, which Fujiwara counters by making a pyramid with his head and legs to relieve pressure, then spinning out to counter. Murdoch then counters Fujiwara's armbar attempt by twisting at the knee. It was an awesome bit of mat wrestling by both guys, and just a small piece of awesome in this awesome sandwich of a match.

Read more!

PRO WRESTLING FUJIWARA-GUMI Show #29, 11/19/95

Takeshi Ono v. Mohamed Yone

TKG: I'm assuming that Ono's opponent is Yone. The Lynch list for this show is full of question marks. Yone is tall and not a ton thicker than Ono. I mean everyone is thicker than Ono but Yone is still skinny. Yone gets in one absolutely nasty kick but this is mostly the Ono kick and scramble all over opponent to get submission show. Thats a show I tend to enjoy.

PAS: Yone did have a great missed koppo kick after the one nasty landed kick. Middle of last year I saw Super middleweight contender Alan Green fight an ex-sparring partner Donny McCrary in a ESPN2 card. Green outclassed the guy, but his opponent nearly KO'ed him with a lucky punch, had him on dream street. McCrary couldn't settle down and finish Green though, he was just hurling wild punches, that is what that koppo kick kind of felt like. An outclassed guy got a lucky shot and was recklessly going for broke

Alexander Otsuka vs. Takeshi Okano?

TKG: Again assuming here that Otsuka's opponent is the future Winger. Otsuka pretty much controls this match. Some nice suplexes, nothing as spectacular as the most spectacular Otsuka suplex, but still a bunch of nice throws. Winger gets in the flash victory by reversing a leg lock into an ankle pick.

PAS: This was fun. Possible future Winger was pretty non descript, but wasn't afraid to land bad on his skull. The flash victory ankle pick was pretty awesome, as Okano was about to tap, but was able to grab the ankle and nearly rip it off.

Katsumi Usuda v. Oishi

PAS: The name had a question mark next to it, so his full name will be lost for posterity. It is pretty common when they run different style matches in Japan for the big name outsider to bring in a underling to work an undercard match. I assume Oishi is a Murakami student, but the funny thing is that he is a brown belt. Murakami couldn't even bring another black belt to work the undercard?

TKG: This went a little over a minute and really nothing to see here.

Yuki Ishikawa v. TAKA Michinoku

PAS: This was joined in progress which I was pretty salty about. At different points of my life each of these guys have been my favorite wrestler in the world, and I am pretty sure I hadn't seen them wrestle each other before. We got most of it though, and it was pretty great. Really counters on top of counters, as TAKA would use his speed to avoid and check most of the things Ishikawa was trying, but when it got onto the mat, he would be countered by Ishikawa's skill. Both guys were throwing bombs too, especially TAKA's nasty elbows to the back of the head. Wish I could have seen it all, but it didn't disappoint.

TKG: Ishikawa's submission attempts were really awesome here as he'd go through all these stages in order to reach a submission. First he'd isolate the body part, then he'd fight to completely extend it, and only then would he go and try to twist it into unnatural positions. On the one hand it was awesome, on the other it was disorienting as he'd go through this whole process to secure a submission when TAKA would just go and slap one on. Fun match, wish I had seen more.

Gladiator/Hisakatsu Oya v Daisuke Ikeda/Mark Ashford

TKG: So it's PWFG v. FMW and pretty much a mess. Mark Starr has a nice superkick and decided to work straight pro style. So you never really had the "fish out of water/PWFG guy out of element" feel to his sections. And well Ikeda is a brawler to begin with so not really a story of contrasts. Oya looks awkward at points, like he had never taken a DDT before. The bulk of the match is spent with Ikeda and Oya brawling in the chairs while Gladiator and Mark Starr worked in ring. Really felt like you should have Starr and Gladiator brawl outside ring and have Ikeda and Oya do the fighting in ring. Just felt backwards. Match was a mess.

PAS: This was mercifully clipped, as we got about 8 minutes of 22. Pretty shitty with no one being any good at all. Luckly Gladiator did neither a suicide dive or a hanging vertical suplex, so we weren't tempted to make any tasteless jokes.

Murakami v. Yoshiaki Fujiwara

PAS: Murakami is a Karate guy who mauled Usuda on an earlier show to set this up. This is joined in progress too, which sucks, because one of the things that makes these kind of matches great is the slow build to blow up, and this was joined mid blow up. There is a DQ finish with Fujiwara jumping Murakami at the start of the round and getting a mount and raining down punches which is apparently illegal in this style. They have kind of a fun pull apart between dojo's, but this match felt like a missed opportunity.

TKG: Yeah I was stoked at the potential for this match up and really you fuck it up by having it jip'd. Post pull apart Fujiwara throws his own students out of ring so he can be a man and shake his opponents hand while still pissed at himself for fucking up. He's bitter but he needs to shake and then raise his opponents arm to be true to himself and the sport. ROH! ROH!

Great Sasuke v. Shoichi Funaki

PAS: This was a Sasuke singles match with all that entails. Sasuke was fine, he did his pair of insane dives, and his offense was good. Sasuke wrestles kind of the same always, so the quality of the match will usually depend on what the opponent brings to the table. Funaki did very little to add to the match, so in the pantheon of Sasuke singles matches this finishes pretty low.

TKG: I expected Funaki to rep PWFG but he kind of comes out and hits a dive in his first move. Sasuke controls most of the match on the mat and then has the better dives of the two. Fuanki has some fine mat work and some mediocre dives but Sasuke just has far more interesting stuff no matter what he's doing and well I never bought Funaki as a challenger and had no reason to care about the match.

Read more!