Tarzan Goto Fire Blows a Signal in the Sky

 

Tarzan Goto/Mr. Gannosuke vs. Kendo Nagasaki/Yuichi Taniguchi IWA Japan 7/5/95 - EPIC

ER: Have we been fools for ignoring IWA Japan this whole time in our focusing on WAR and FMW and New Japan Russians and all else? Where have the IWA Japan champions been? This is fucking WAR baby, this is fucking all time great 80s Memphis, it's the kind of inter promotional Japanese realism that has aged perhaps greater than any other kind of 80s and 90s puro. The first VHS tape I ever traded for after getting the internet was a 6 hour IWA Japan/FMW/W*ing comp. It started everything. I had literally no idea what to expect when I put in this tape and within minutes I was watching 11th generation videotape wrestling of Sabu and Terry Funk and two guys whose identifies were too foreign and pixelated for my teenage self to recognize seemingly burning alive in an outdoor ring that gets dangerously engulfed in fire. And now it feels foolish that I didn't just exclusively spend my wrestling time watching every single IWA Japan match since. IWA Japan existed in its own bubble and yet they were out here having the same kind of body bruising, exclamation-inducing fights. Phil sought this show out when he found out Cactus/Kurisu happened on it, and I saw this intriguing Tarzan Goto interpromotional tag right before it on the video file and decided to just let it play through while I finished something up. 

That's when I fell in love all over again with IWA Japan. This whole tag was what we all seek in wrestling. Everybody was great. I watched it for Tarzan Goto - somehow the Biggest Miss from our corner of pro wrestling fandom, a man we all came around to late and can't explain how it happened - was as good as expected, but this was every person at their peak powers. Has Kendo Nagasaki always been this good? He's a monster here. Is he a monster everywhere? Have we missed on Dragon Master in the exact same way we missed on Goto? This is interpromotional invader shit and Kendo treats Goto and Gannosuke like a couple asshole outsiders, especially going after Gannosuke. Gannosuke is a guy I love, but this was a shitheel Gannosuke who is like a Jamie Dundee level opportunistic prick with a mustache who will run into the hardest clotheslines possible and circle like a buzzard when he smells blood. And there is blood, because they bust open Yuichi Tanigucihi - a guy less than 20 matches in his career who of course is one of those era psychos who is still wrestling in Japan and has like 2,000 matches - looks like a gigantic 12 year old and hits clotheslines like an angry Morishima, and when the match settles into Goto and Gannosuke getting real blood red heat from a rabid Korakuen crowd, we achieve nirvana. The brawl through the crowd was so charged and violent, Nagasaki passionately defends Taniguchi like grumpy murderer era Jumbo, and Goto is this piece of shit southern worker who stirs the pot the entire time, this incredible blend of Zbyszko and Bunkhouse Buck and Riki Choshu. These are the toughest guys ever built wrestling real strong style, nothing but headbutts and shoot clotheslines and Kendo Nagasaki throwing what look like heavy fucking tables without a single fuck given where they land. This is an IWA Japan blog now. 

PAS: My goodness what a discovery. This isn't as good as the famous FMW Texas Death Match, but it is pretty damn close, and is a match which basically has no profile at all. This actually starts like a standard tag match with Nagasaki taking young Gannosuke to the woodshed smacking him with hard forearms and stretching him on the mat. Goto and Taniguchi smack each other with hard clotheslines and headbutts as well, and it feels like a cool WAR heavweight stiff fest. Then it inevitably spills to the floor and all four guys start trying to brain each other with heavy wood tables and chair shots. Taniguchi looks like someone took a power drill to his face, and Goto and Nagasaki are in hog heaven fling furniture. Truly chaotic brawl, a ton of Moondog energy. As a community we have long since reevaluated Tarzan Goto and elevated him to the heights he deserves, is it time to reinvestigate Nagasaki?

Tarzan Goto/Mr. Gannosuke/Dennis Knight vs. Keisuke Yamada/Hiroshi Ono/Shoji Nakamaki IWA Japan 7/5/95 - GREAT

PAS: This was the same night of the all-timer tag we wrote about above, and was a hell of second act. This is basically just Goto and the boys mauling the white shirted IWA undercard kids. It started with Yamada and Ono doing some awkward but forceful dives, but their advantage was short, and Goto starts fucking people up. Hitting them with hard clotheslines, barbed wire board smashing, and even some attempted hammer murder. It is pretty one sided and ugly with a couple of moments of hope by the white t-shirt boys. The finish dragged it down a bit with a Cactus Jack run in, where he beats down Goto with offense that didn't look as good as anything else in the match.

ER: Tarzan Goto came out in his finer-than-Kawada robe for a tag match earlier in the evening and bloodied up the chubbiest Nagasaki trainee in IWA, smirking his way through a tag where people hated him, dropping elbows like Stan Hansen, letting Gannosuke take extra punishment while he leaned on the ropes, showing nothing but aloof disrespect...so of course he comes out for the main event and does it all over again. Big Dennis Knight is with them this time and there are barbed wire boards everywhere, and the FMW boys do nothing but slam and smash the blue jeans/white shirt IWA Japan doo wop gang into this barbed wire. Hilariously, Tarzan Goto draws real heat the entire time by avoiding most of the barbed wire entirely. Team FMW is throwing hooking clotheslines to necks and beating up the home town boys like an Unstudly Stable and I loved how the IWA boys kept fighting no matter how much of a losing battle it seemed like they were in. Just as Gannosuke hit a wicked piledriver on Taniguchi earlier in the night, Knight hits a wicked one here (being careful to not plop his butt down into the wire) and the IWA crowd HATES their Memphis bullshit. Somehow Cactus Jack is the worst guy on this entire card, and his involvement for the finish is the only weak part of this match, running in and hitting awful Hitman elbows off the middle buckle, the worst offense anyone hit the entire match. If you leave Cactus out of this and finish the match literally any way involving the people in the match, this is another classic.