FUTEN- 4/9/09

PAS: MOTHERFUCKING FUTEN

TAKA Michinoku vs Shoichi Uchida

TKG: Hey it’s a TAKA match with no superkicks. This is our first taste of Futen. Stylisitically it is worked as a basic undercard indy juniors match with no rope running and a bit more matwork. While there was no rope running, there still was lots of running offense. I don’t think I’ve seen Uchida before, and TAKA does a yeoman’s job of selling for his power offense and lots of really loose crossfaces. I can’t imagine wanting to watch Uchida v a guy who can’t sell as well as TAKA.

PAS: Yeah I didn’t get much of a sense of Uchida, but he didn’t do a ton for me. Most of the match was worked around Uchida’s crossface and TAKA’s facelock. I guess you don’t need a really tight crossface to buy it as a finish in 2009, but it had the look of a Helmsely crossface.

Kengo Mashimo vs Shinjitsu Nohashi

TKG: I was kind of expecting more Mashimo stiffness. Surprisingly, Nohashi was the guy who brought more stiffness to the table for the body of the match. Nohashi had some nasty face stomps and running headbutts. Got the sense that these guys have a touring match worked out and instead of doing something different here, just tried to force it in.

PAS: You don’t expect the midget Shinzaki to be the guy laying it in, but his stomps were by far the highlight of the match. I do prefer these kind of modified Indy juniors matches to whatever Keita Yano is supposed to be doing in BattlArts undercards, but it isn’t anything special.

Mitsuya Nagai & White Moriyama vs Shu Sato & Kei Sato

TKG: Nagai hasn’t had a good match in ages and he looked like complete crap running in for his hot tag fired up offense. Thankfully he wasn’t in this match much. I kind of liked White Moriyama here as his offense was good looking and he was good at working the face in peril role. The Satos are odd in that their stuff can either look super super gentle or absolutely nasty with no middle ground.

PAS: Moriyama comes in with a bandage on his face, and by the first couple of minutes it gets kicked off, and you see a nasty gash on his cheek. It nicely adds to the violence of the Sato’s kicks. I really liked the early Moriyama mat work, he had really fast amateur rides. The Sato’s were pretty good at bringing their indy shtick and working it in this environment, they landed a really stiff top rope dropkick for example.


Koichiro Kimura vs Hayato Jr Fujita

TKG: This was mostly Fujita bringing it to Kimura with Kimura occasionally catching and twisting the fuck out of Fujita. I don’t remember Kimura working like this before. He sold Fujita’s stuff well and when he put him in a sub they were some of the most twisting dislocating subs you’ll see in pro wrestling. I especially liked the half crab he put n for a near fall in the middle of match.

PAS: Fujita is a guy who I have really enjoyed in the past, but he seemed to be pulling his kicks a bit. Kind of weird thing to be doing in Futen of all places. The violence of Kimura’s submission made up for the lack of violence in the strikes though.


Daisuke Ikeda & Takeshi Ono vs Manabu Suruga & Takahiro Oba

TKG: So the thing with Hara is he’s always been a guy who doesn’t sell on the level of the top level BattlArts guys. But here he is really spectacular in role of underdog babyface. I mean this is the best I can ever remember Hara looking. I don’t know what really to make of Oba. He’s really charismatic and has lots of awkward ogreish offense. Not sure if he’s over in a legit Rufus R Jones way or in a more ironic Hack Myers way. But his stuff amused me. But for lots of this it didn’t feel like it mattered who the faces were. As this was just a spectacular Ikeda/Ono as MX performance where they whipped out all their shit allowing both faces to work long in peril section. Ono for a guy who I haven’t seen in forever was as nasty and disdainful as I remember him.

PAS: Just a totally spectacular match. Ono and Ikeda are an amazing heel tag team, like a super violent Anderson brothers as they spend much of the match isolating each guy and murdering them. Ikeda is so great at stopping people from making saves, when Ono is torturing Oba, Ikeda and Suruga(Hara) have this mini Greco pummeling brawl while Hara tries desperately for a save. The finish run with Ikeda and Suruga is as great as any Ikeda v. Ishikawa struggle. They have this spectacular finishing punch section, which combines a violent BattlArts punch exchange with a almost Lawler v. Mantel fatigue war. I don’t remember seeing Oba before, and he had some super goofy shit, but in some way it worked well. He kind of kept throwing himself at the heels in weird way, including smashing Ikeda in the face with his taint. And don’t forget about fuckin Ono who was as huge a cunt as he was ten years ago. He may have been the best guy in the match, stomping, kicking and twisting guys in pretzels. I am going to want to watch it again, but it feels on first watch like the 2009 MOTY.