2016 Ongoing MOTY List: Orihara Goes for GUTS

64. Masao Orihara v. Daisuke GUTS World 2/23/16

PAS: It feels like we need a deep dive into recent Orihara. Here he is going after the GUTS world title against genial Misawa cosplayer Daisuke and it is pretty boss. Orihara looks like he hasn't lost a step since his scumbag peak in the early 2000s. He still looks like a guy who runs one of those weird Tokyo bars where girls dressed like Teddy Bears jam their toes into businessmen's mouths, and he still has some super crisp and brutal offense, great looking punches, and elbows, awesome piledriver. Meanwhile Daisuke is pretty much all rolling elbows, but they look pretty good, and he has a great Sliding D. match was pretty great from jump street, and built to an exciting finish.  Orihara is a secret 2016 Puro superworker.

ER: It's weird that almost 30 years into his career, this is my favorite Orihara. It was fun seeing him die on bumps and crash and burn on missed flying moves, but now he's full on Yakuza button man Fit Finlay and it's the best. His style is relentless as he uses his whole body to constantly attack the mononymous Daisuke. Daisuke could never catch his breath as Orihara was always there with a punch, kick, elbow, boot toe, fat flipping senton, knee, or hip attack. He would start an attack standing, and keep attacking all the way down: punch Daisuke to his knees, knee him in the side of his head while he's on his knees, kick him in the head while he's on the mat. A wrinkle I loved about the match was Orihara being tempted to go back to his flyer roots, and that being the thing allowing Daisuke to make his way back. Orihara misses two big moonsaults at two different times of the match, and Daisuke is right there to hit his aforementioned Misawa elbows, and they were very nice elbows. At no point did Daisuke look on the level or Orihara, so I appreciated the ways they had Daisuke get back into things. But yeah, Orihara, man who has seen some shit I would not believe, has unexpectedly become one of my favorite workers in the world.

2016 MOTY MASTER LIST