Best of Japan 2000-2009: Ryuji Yamakawa vs. Tomoaki Honma, BJPW 1/2/00

1. Ryuji Yamakawa vs. Tomoaki Honma, BJPW 1/2/00

This match was what got me back into death matches years and years ago. I'm pretty sure the first tape in most tape traders' collection was some sort of death match. Either the IWA Death match tourney, or some FMW tape, or a W*ing comp, or the Sabu/Funk Born to Be Wired match, or something like that. My first tape I traded for was a compilation of all sorts of death matches, from fire to barbed wire to one with a live snake. The tape blew my mind. I don't know what I was expecting, but the tape was weirder in ways I hadn't thought about. I thought the matches would be big spectacles, not sad little events in half empty gyms fought by pudgy guys in jeans, with no production value. It may have been foolish to expect glamour from something called "death matches", but somehow it was seamier than I expected, not so much due to the violence, but for the realization that the payoffs for rolling around in glass couldn't be that big when the promotion appeared to be holding its show in a parking lot and didn't seem to have an actual ring. So I had bought into the gimmick of death matches, and quickly realized it was a gimmick . Although good lord in retrospect I should probably be thankful I wandered into something as harmless as Japanese death matches. It's hard to say why death matches appealed to me yet something like Faces of Death or Mondo Cane sounds like my worst type of nightmare that I wouldn't be able to unsee. But whatever the appeal, it faded fast as the matches just didn't have enough substance to hold my attention. And then Yamakawa and Honma arrived and added death match insanity to the strong style of wrestling that teenage me was becoming obsessed with.

Feeling out process here is really good as they both really struggle around the barbed wire boards. Soon Honma gets thrown into one of the boards, but awesomely runs up the board and backflips away from it, then throws Yamakawa into it. Honma has a really great running elbow, too. We go wandering through the crowd for awhile, getting tossed into some chairs, wandering while grabbing each others' heads...and then Yamakawa gets powerbombed on the stage...and then gets brainbustered...and is busted open. And things are getting awesome. Yamakawa has really great kicks to Honma's dome.

Back in the ring and they fight on the apron, and Honma is great as he throws his full body into preventing his bod from getting suplexed from the ring to the floor, breaks free and blasts Yamakawa with a running elbow (all of Honma's roaring elbows were brutal in this, which is nice since I had no problem buying them as a finish) that sends him flying to the floor and Honma hits an out of control somersault tope. And we then get a series of absolutely insane spots, like powerbombs into barbed wire, Yamakawa takes a rana to the floor into barbed wire, a fucking rana off the top to the floor through barbed wire, and the whole time that giant nail board is looming at ringside. This whole thing is just nuts, and just as much fun 14 years later.


BEST OF JAPAN MASTER LIST