W*ING v. Fujiwara Group 3/02

Tomokai Honma v. W*ING Kanemaru, Shoji Nakamaki, Hidoh

PAS: This was a death match graduation gauntlet as I assume Honma was on his way to his undercard All Japan stint. This really felt like an exhibition with a three opponents kind of running through their specialties. Honma bleeds a bunch and gets awkwardly powerbombed on his head, but this never really felt like a match

TKG: I guess there was some sort of build. Honma has to last five minutes with each guy and its not like each five minute segment had Honma going through lighttube boards and barbed wire. Instead first five minutes was Kanemaru doing floor brawling, next five has Nakamaki intro a barb wire board, next five has Hidoh introduce the lighttube board. Does that count as build?

PAS: There was a point in the early part of this decade where I really liked Japanese indy juniors wrestling, and these two along with Onryu were big reasons why. This was a total train wreck though, Cougar had a nice legdrop, but this was a bunch of blown and awkward spots. I am concerned that if I revisit all of this stuff I will have to reevaluate these guys, because this sucked a dick.

TKG: I kind of expected these two guys to have a touring match worked out by this point. I mean this is 2002. These guys have wrestled each other for years. But this wasn’t as worked out as the worst Fleish/Storm, Shelley/Jacobs or Sydal/Delirious match. It didn’t feel like these two had an idea of what to do with each other.

TKG: The W*NG guys and Fujiwara guys meet in a wine cellar to determine tourney brackets. Pogo looks like ary Busey talking nonsense while everyone else looks away in embarasment. After dinner Pogo gets a blows fire on a caricature of Fujiwara to get his team psyched up.

Masaru Toi v. Takeshi Ono

PAS: This was the second most intriguing match on paper, and while I would have liked it to be longer, it delivered for a short match. Toi is a guy famous for potatoing people, but he took the worst of it, getting kicked square in the face a bunch of times, as well as eating some nasty body shots. Toi fired back with some chairshots and a nasty top rope double knee. Feels like these two have a great main event on a Goro Tsurumi fed in them, but this was kind of short undercard match.

TKG: I don’t know if I think of Toi as being a guy who delivers potatoes so much as veteran in multiperson match who hold stuff together and has cool old man highflying. They start with basic wrestling feel with Ono eventually doing the dickish “I won’t participate in BS rope running wrestling thing” move. Toi responds to the shooter going “pro-wrestling is BS” by grabbing for the weapons and dropping Ono on stack of chairs.

Sato v. Hiroshi Shimoda

PAS: This was worked BattlArts style with Shimoda using his fatness, Roy Nelson style to stymie the skinner Sato. Shimoda was kind of awesome in this, doing all kinds of little cool spots, stepping on Sato’s foot to get control, really laying on him in the amateur rides. I loved the finish with Sato squirming out of a powebomb into a choke sleeper. Shockingly good for two guys I have never heard of.

TKG: The Japanese Pride open weight thing can be silly but played out fine here. I haven’t watched any 21st Century W*NG, but wouldn’t mind seeing what became of Shimoda. Shimoda does a really neat fat guy feint where he claps his hands above his head, distracting Sato so he can go in for a takedown. Made me nostalgic for playing rugby in my younger days. Skinny guys can feint by quick feet movements. Fat guys on the other hand if they plant their feet in one direction..that’s where there feet are going to stay planted. Fat guys need to do really ridiculous broad theatrical movements and yell “Hey look over there!” if they want to create misdirection. The clapping above the head was just a really fun fat guy fake out spot.

Mr. Sakai v. Tomokai Honma

TKG: I have no idea who Mr Sakai is or why he represents Fujiwara. He’s in a really cheap wrestling outfit with the Japanese sun on his belt and a cardboard tiara that says Mr Sakai on top of his head. He has a nice asai and I kind of liked part of the set up for the finish as they fight off the ropes on the ramp. But this was the least of your Fujiwara v W*NG matches thus far.

PAS: Pretty short, but outside of the nice dive, pretty bad. Man Honma may have been a Ryuji Yamakawa creation. The finish of this match was especially shitty as Honma hits a Thunder driver on the ramp where Sakai’s head doesn’t even come close to hitting the ramp. It’s W*ING if you aren’t going to recklessly injure your opponent, what are you doing there?

Osamu Tachihikari v. Gran Sheik

TKG: Ok. So I was wrong. This is the least of your Fujiwara v W*NG match ups. Gran Sheik is an L.A. lucha heavyweight who works like a really poor man’s Rey Sr or Kiss. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen him work the mat this much. He is about as impressive on the mat as he is doing stand up brawling.

PAS: There was a couple of nice open hand chop exchanges, but this was some dull fat man wrestling. Osamu Tachihikari was a guy who got Internet cult status based on his fat face, hair and pockmarked skin, but he was the least of your man breasted WAR dudes

Yoshiaki Fujiwara/Yuki Ishikawa/Katsumi Usuda v. Mr. Pogo/Hidoh/Shoji Nakamki

PAS: I was hoping for more of a clash of styles with the Fujiwara team using shootstyle to counter the garbage wrestling. Instead we get a basic W*ING match with a short arena tour and Pogo winning by choking Fujiwara with a chain. This ties the series at 3 and there is some mike work to set up a big Captain’s Fall elimination with everyone from each team. This was basically a big brawl with some fun Usuda asskicking, and a suprsingly good Gran Sheik v. Ishikawa punch exchange, but it ends pretty quickly with Fujiwara tapping Pogo with the armbar. Pretty disappointing for something that looked awesome on paper.

TKG: The opening six man match was really nothing. I don’t even remember the arena tour. Just Pogo taking off his boot hitting Fujiwara and then hanging him. I was kind of stoked to see captain’s fall just for the chance to see more Shimoda. But that never really broke down into individual match ups. Instead you have this all over the place brawl that has almost a Battle royal feel where there is lots of stuff happening but never any focus. Lots of cool Ishikawa exchanges as the section of him vs Hido looked like something I want to see as an actual match, surprisingly the same is true of the section of him vs Gran Sheik. Fujiwara’s exchanges also were also a blast as he traded with Nakamaki, Hido, Shimoda and Pogo.

W*ING Kanemaru v. Mitsuhiro Matsunaga

PAS: This felt kind of desultory. It was a W*ING show, so this had to be the main event, but it didn’t feel like there was any purpose beyond that. For some reason they kept turning out the lights, so large parts of this were in the dark. The finish was sort of a crazy balcony dive by Matsunaga which is pretty crazy to try in the dark.

TKG: They’re wrestling in the dark. It’s 2002, so this is pre Rick Saloman popularizing night vision technology. Or is that something that Paris picked up from the Harajuku girls? I’ve heard people mock death match workers for killing themselves in front of small crowds. But at least keep the lights on so that small crowd can see you killing yourself. Doing it with the lights out so no one can see it is bizarre.