2018 Ongoing MOTY List: MAMMOTH!

30. Mammoth Sasaki/Toru Sugiura vs. Mr. Gannosuke/Yuko Miyamoto FREEDOMS 3/22

ER: Ah Mammoth Sasaki, guy I would possibly be 5th or 8th most excited about on an early 2000s FMW card. Why are you so good in this match that I will now have to go watch a bunch of 2018 FREEDOMS!? I have a different wrestling watching life than I did in 2001. I had a LOT more free time then, and a lot less responsibility. Now that wrestling is the most accessible it's ever been, and I am the busiest I've ever been, it's very easy for me to lose track of any given Japanese indie worker for 15+ years. I don't remember the last Tatsuhito Takaiwa match I watched, but you know he's still out there doing his thing. And then a match like this floats along and suddenly Mammoth is filling all of those Tenryu/Morishima gaps and it gives me this weird nostalgia feeling of a time when Japanese wrestling was my favorite wrestling. Mammoth is MAMMOTH in this, throwing painful as hell shoulderblocks with Gannosuke, throwing big chops with a perfect surprise jab to Miyamoto, nice snap powerslam, and then going on this kickass finishing stretch with big lariats, a gorgeous brainbuster, huge deadlift gutwrench powerbomb, and a finish worthy Falcon Arrow. The guy looked awesome, and the nice pacing and great use of partner saves made up for some dodgy Miyamoto/Sugiura stuff. Miyamoto wears pants like an early 2000s east coast indie worker, but doesn't seem as good as Dewey Cheatum.  Sugiura is a Mammoth trainee and looks decent-ish at times, his elbow drops are okay (and I like that he's at least attempting classic elbow drops) and his back bump missile dropkick hits hard, but really this match doesn't bump up until Mammoth starts using Sugiura's corpse as a weapon. Mammoth gets a hot tag and throws Sugiura's tagged out tired body into a nasty corner lariat, then gives his partner a huge front suplex into a pinfall attempt. The saves down the stretch are all awesome. Gannosuke cares not about what happened to garbage fed stars like Misawa and Kobashi, he is 50 and will still take a huge suplex on his neck. Gannosuke gets a great nearfall of his wonderful leg trip backlside that somebody needs to steal, and I loved Mammoth reversing it into a powerbomb when Gann tries it again. Mammoth strung together finishing stretch killshots like a classic Kings Road main eventer, just smartly laid out shots and great finish teases. Mammoth!

PAS: I remember Mammoth having a moment as the next hotness around the turn of the century. There was a Tenryu singles match I remember loving in 2003, and then I don't think I heard hide nor hair of him for 15 years, and here he is rocking it out. For tubby sons of Tenryu, I like him way better then Ishii. I agree that the Sugiura vs. Miyamoto stuff wasn't great, but I liked Sugiura vs. Gannosuke a fair amount, I thought his one two elbow smash combos looked cool, and he had a nice bodypress. Gannoseke vs. Mammoth was the main event though and that was great. Big thick clothesline, and big backdrops it felt like a real throwback Puro heavyweight battle. I loved that Gannoseke backslide, what a cool move, and the doctor bomb counter was nifty. It really takes some mining to find cool Puro these days, but this was a little nugget of gold.


2018 MOTY MASTER LIST