SEGUNDA CAIDA DECLARES WAR!!! 2/10/93

WE DECLARE WAR

Yuji Yasuraoka v. Chavo Guerrero

Fun match. Chavo really felt like Negro Navarro plus cool suplexes. He broke out some really cool looking llave matwork, including an awesome headstand leg stretch. He also layed in some nasty punches and uppercut, and ended the match with pair of sweet looking throws. Yuji was pretty much luggage, but he didn't screw anything up, and had a nice pescada. This really made me want to track down all of the 90's Chavo, as he really had the nasty veteran feel that I love so much in current IWRG dudes.

Hiroshi Inomata v.El Samurai

This is the second time I have seen this match up, and much like their March match it was perfectly acceptable undercard juniors wrestling. Inomata has 90's undercarder offense, lots of drop kicks and such. Samurai gives him some moments, and then finishes him off. El Samurai stuff looked slick, I especially liked his chicken wing, but this kind of faded from memory moments after ending.

Koki Kikahara v. Nobukazu Hirai

Kitihara is a consistent winner on these shows, but this is the best Hirai has looked. Started a bit slow, but kicked into a nice gear. Kitihara has some of the nastier kicks around, and was flashy then usual hitting a hellacious spin kick to the mush and a great wheel kick too. I also loved Kikihara breaking up a Hirai near fall, by just punching him hard in the jaw. Besides taking a beating, Hirai delivered some shots. He had a nasty spinning DDT and some big elbow drops. It is pretty fun to watch undercard guys like this try to steal the show, Kitihara really deserved a bigger career, and Hirai probably did too.

Ultimo Dragon v. Bestia Salvaje

Many years ago I somehow wrangled my way into a job doing play by play announcing for a lucha libre pilot taped in Monterey Mexico. Out of all the awesome guys who worked the show (Satanico, Tajiri, Blue Panther, Solar, Lizmark ect.) Bestia may have been the most badass. He beat the piss out Pancho Tequila, scared the shit out of me by shoving the announce desk, and booked his own angle by picking a fight with Cham Pain who was doing Color (in an alternate universe that feud should have been the Buzz Sawyer v. Tommy Rich of the 2000's). He was one of those guys who you truly appreciate by seeing him do his thing live. Ultimo has been pretty underwhelming during this project, but you put him in with an excellent CMLL rudo he can hold his own. We get all the parts of lucha match in one fall, cool opening matwork, including Ultimo jacking Santo's headstand headscissors, big throws, big bumps and big dives. Bestia is a grubby looking ugly dude, who really doesn't look like an athlete, but has some spectacular speed and height on his stuff. He does look like a guy who will kick the shit out of you, and he does that in spades as well. Great stuff, I saw a ton of Tiger Mask matches for the 80's project where he would drag amazing luchadores into crap sandwiches. Whatever I say about Ultimo, he lets guys like Bestia do their thing.

Haku/Curtis Iaukea v. John Tenta/Yoshiro Ito

This was pretty much a textbook midcard WAR heavyweight tag. Some barrell chested dudes are going to chop and kick each other 20% harder then they would do if this wasn't in WAR. Those types of matches are always going to be at a minimum entertaining, but this one didn't go much past that. Ito and Haku were especially nasty, but Iaukea (who isn't Prince Iaukea, but King Curtis's legit son, why the fuck was there a worked Curtis Iaukea son anyway? WCW was weird) was pretty awkward and the match kind of fell apart at the end.

Ashura Hara vs. Takashi Ishikawa

These guys had an awesome brutal battle on the debut show, and their rematch lives up to it. This starts a little slower, as both guys work holds for a bit at the beginning. These are guys who can put on a headlock, as they look like they are fresh squeezing grapefruit juice. When they start pounding each other it is as violent and awesome as you expect. Ishikawa's stomps to the head and Hara's headbutts were the highlights, and both guys threw cringing lariats. Ishikawa has some pretty impressive agility for a tubby dude, he gets wasted off the apron by a Hara lariat and takes a big bump to the floor. In addition he hits a really pretty pescada. 2010 Puro has a bunch of really stiff wrestling, the thing that makes this so much better is that these guys are really great at selling fatigue and brutality. This isn't two guys exchanging shots with no long term impact, every shot takes the kind of toll you would expect it to, and at the end they look like they crawled through land mines.

Great Kabuki/Masao Aoyagi/Akitoshi Saito v. Genichiro Tenryu/Kodo Fuyuki/Masao Orihara

The structure of this match was very similar to other WAR six man from this time period. Orihara gets beat on, with the higher ranked guys coming in to make really violent saves, and deliver some shots. I liked this one more then other similar six man's because your HI team is a team that can lay in a beating. Saito, Aoyagi and Kabuki will fuck you up, and they really do WAR proud in their stomping of Orihara. Tenryu of course gets his shots in, including splitting open Saito with short kicks. Tenryu and Kabuki have great chemistry, and I always love when they square off. Kabuki is so good at timing his superkicks, and he just obliterates Orihara at the perfect moment. I did think this rewound itself a bit, we could have used one less section of Orihara in peril, as that was a beat they returned to multiple times, but this was a great match to close a great show.