Fujiwara Family: Battle and Art Professional Wresting 10/22/19

PAS: The dream is still alive! We found a couple of Battle and Art Pro-wrestling shows which appears to be a Yujiro Yammamoto fed which uses the remnants of BattlArts guys still active.

SR: Battle And Arts Pro Wrestling, baby. BAP is not quite the Fighting Detective Team that was the original BattlARTs, but it is closer to the original than the Canadian Battle Arts offshoot in that this is indy wrestling with some shootstyle elements + Yuki Ishikawa singles matches. 

Manabu Hara/Takumi Sakurai vs. Raito Shimizu/Super Macho Monkey

SR:This was an opening match that was generally good when Manabu Hara was in the ring and I guess acceptable when Sakurai was tagged in. Sakurai works this like your typical indy worker who just does one thing after another in hopes of eliciting “yeah, that was a cool move” reactions, which is not really my thing at this point in my wrestling fandom. I liked the weird leg submission he busted out. Super Macho Monkey is a guy who sells supplements and while he has a good body and looks decent rolling on the mat with Hara, when he was doing standup sections he definitely felt like a hobbyist. Raito Shimizu is a stocky rookie who works low level indies like A-Team and Heat-Up, and he did show a bit more personality doing some power spots which gave me hope for his Yuki Ishikawa singles match on the next show.

PAS This was decent, Hara is still good and clearly a step above everyone else in this match, although I though the coolest thing in this match was Sakurai's rolling leg submission. Shimizu has a weird strong guy body, big chest but smallish arm, he had a couple of nice power spots including a move where he just powers his opponent from a powerslam position into a fireman's carry position. Inoffensive under card stuff which fulfilled it's role. 

Shuichiro Katsumura/Shiyo Karasawa/Toshiya Kawarai/Maori Kawashima vs. The Blue Shark/Koichi Takemura/Tatsuhiko Nakagawa/Josh O'Brien

SR:Promising 8 man tag looking at the guys involved. Takemura and Nakagawa are a couple middle aged guys in karate gis who don’t seem to have an extensive background in wrestling. There must have been dozens of middle aged karate guys like these who just decided to get in the ring working these Japanese scum indy shows and I always enjoy when I get to check them out. Blue Shark is Tiger Shark (lost the license to being a Tiger I guess) and Josh O’Brien is a US guy whom Cagematch lists as being trained by Tajiri and who has worked CAPTURE. On the other side you had a bunch of sleazy looking goons. Karatekas + Sayama trained guy + scum indy shooter vs. a bunch of Oriharaites would’ve been an awesome 90s Wrestle Yume Factory or Shin FMW semi main event but in 2020 as a second match on the card it suffered a bit from lack of energy and weird structure. There were some chinlocks early on that were definitely not necessary and they decided to have one of the scummy heels as a face in peril which was pretty weird. Katsumura is a case of a guy who looks good doing shootstyle matwork (he has a nice brief section with Blue Tiger here) but then he decides to work like a lowest of the low indy heels and he just becomes completely uninteresting. That said this was a lot of fun when guys were just kicking and punching each other, the eventual hot tag was surprisingly decently executed and I loved all the segments involving middle aged karatekas, Blue Tiger and O’Brien looked good filling time and I loved the fist drop finish.

PAS: I really dug this, semi-untrained guys in Gi's is right in my wrestling sweet spot (Complete and Accurate Kazuhiko Ogasawara coming in 2023!). I thought Blue Shark looked solid and one of the really fit looking guys on the other team (bear with me here) had really stiff kicks and a nasty double stomp. O'Brien is a guy I have never heard of, but had some fun power spots, and seems like a guy who should at least be getting spots at whatever Indy runs wherever he is from. Top rope fist drop finish ruled, what ever Gi guy threw it really landed it with no give at all, just punched the guy right between the eyes. 

Yuki Ishikawa vs. Yoshihiro Horaguchi

SR: This is what we bought this DVD for, and it did not disappoint. Yuki Ishikawa is the GOAT and draws the house everytime, but in fairness to Yoshihiro Horaguchi, who is some livelong indy undercarder, he did well for himself here. This was stupidly great and may have been better than any instance I’ve seen of Yuki Ishikawa trying to carry Keita Yano or even Munenori Sawa. Horaguchi just rushes in and pounces on the old man, he knows he has no chance outskilling Ishikawa so he goes for the punch-out landing big elbows on the ground  and thudding kicks and stomps. Meanwhile Ishikawa is mostly locking in great counters from his back here. It’s a kind of match Yuki Ishikawa has always been brilliant at, but this post-Canadian excursion and trained in BJJ Ishikawa is even better at it. Just one great sweep and submission counter after another. This felt less like shootstyle and more like to guys trying to kill each other in a phone booth, they were almost never letting up and when they weren’t grappling, they were trying to crack each others jaws and sometimes kidneys. Even though Horaguchis grappling was rudimentary, it all felt really intense thanks to the super close up camera work and he had no problem getting punched in the face by Yuki Ishikawa. Finish was this downright ridiculous sequence of attempted submission reversals strung into further submissions, it felt like something Negro Navarro would do.

PAS: This was fucking awesome, and exactly the kind of thing you organize funding drives to buy random scum indy Japanese shows for. I thought Horaguchi understood exactly who he was in with and what he needed to do. He comes forward with really stiffness and force, he can't out skill the master, but he might be able to overwhelm him. Ishikawa was like watching Demien Maya, he sits in the cut absorbing Horaguchi's big shots, and waiting for him to slip up. I loved the triangle that Horaguchi put on, and all of the different ways that Ishikawa moved to counter and reverse his way out of it. Finish was completely awesome with Ishikawa running through a gambit of different submission attacks with each Horaguchi counter ensnaring him deeper in the web before Ishikawa finishes him off with a hammerlock rear naked choke which was totally awesome looking. 

Mister Cacao/CHANGO vs. Nobutaka Moribe/Keita Yano 

SR:Mr. Cacao is a guy who is mostly notable for making masks, gear and sometimes uploading cool unseen CMLL Japan matches to his YouTube account. CHANGO is an Ultimo Dragon trainee who got lost in the shuffle. Moribe is an ex-Michinoku Pro guy. And Keita Yano has to be among the most deranged looking individuals in wrestling at this point. Union jack trunks, furrie boots, joker makeup, white button shirt, a towel around his neck and his face looking creepy and emaciated like a drug addict, I would be more comfortable with my daughter marrying any toothless redneck working US deathmatch shows over this dude. This was a lucharesu style match and while it was never gonna be as spectacular as the best matches in that style, it was surprisingly decent. Mr. Cacao must have tagged with legendary luchadores 500 times so he can do this kind of formulaic match, Chango was working hard and doing some cool shit, and Yano seems to have gotten somewhat decent at doing matwork since working with Negro Navarro. Yano still had to shoehorn some tape nerd spots into the match but it irritates me less when it happens in this kind of match than when he does it in a BattlARTS match. Still, they should’ve switched this to the 2nd match on the card and moved the tag with the karatekas up to semi-main event status.

PAS: I haven't really seen Yano since he was irritating me on BattlArts shows in 2009, but man he has really fallen on rough times, what a creeper. This was solid stuff without ever really advancing past that. Cacao is a pro and I am always going to have some fondness for him for money marking cool CMLL Japan shows. I liked CHANGO in this he had a couple of fun roll ups and moved with some pace. I felt like this was always about to hit a gear it never did, but it on the plus side of the ledger anyway.

Yujiro Yamamoto vs. Katsuo

SR: Katsuo is a Dragon System guy who used to be Cyber Kongcito. I assume he is Yamamoto's friend or owns the ring or something and that’s why he gets to be in the main event. Well, apparently he also works pretty high up the card at Hokuto Pro Wrestling (another indy that Hisakatsu Oya runs).  He was this stocky guy in a singlet and a weird hairdo, kind of like a parallel universe Fugofugo Yumeji. And just like Fugofugo he was game to have a nasty slugfest. This was Katsuo laying a brutal WAR sized beating on Yamamoto, big chops, crowbar lariats, jaw loosening elbows and open hand strikes, skull cracking headbutts, the whole deal. By the end of it Yamamatos chest was a nasty shade of red and his bell seemed seriously rung. This had some back and forth strike exchanges, which can get tiresome, but I thought the purpose was to showcase Katsuo as a tough monster as he kept shrugging off Yamamotos attacks, so I bought into them. Yamamoto was working this not really like a shootstylist and more like an indy wrestler with a shootstyle gimmick, which I don’t like as much, but he timed his comebacks well and cut Katsuo down with some precise strikes of his own. Very suitable main event and I would like to see more of this Katsuo now.

PAS: This owned. It wasn't a BattlArts throwback as much as it was a Zero One/WAR throwback. Katsuo is 9/10ths Kurisu in this match, laying a unhealthy beating on Yamamoto, eggplanting his chest with chops and drilling him with echoing headbutts and sick clotheslines to the meaty part of Yamamoto's neck. At one point he just traps Yujiro's arms and brain damages him with a clonking headbut. Yamamoto fired back with some shots of his own, but was mostly absorbing a big time ass whipping. I liked his final run, where he just lays out Katsuo with a whip kick to the jaw which felt like a payback for all of the spuds thrown his way. This is the kind of sick shit I really enjoy watching, wholly recommend.