Found Footage Friday: Wrestle Yume Factory~!

Wrestle Yume Factory 8/11/96

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The Madness vs. The Wolf/Cosmo Soldier

MD: A handicap match. Madness is a huge guy with a skeleton mask that he adjusts all the time. Wolf and Soldier start well with Soldier drawing him in with a test of strength challenge and Wolf attacking from behind. They have a flurry of offense but get tossed off on a double pin and really this is just a matter of time until he catches them, and catches them he does. Some of his stuff looks great. He has this suplex into a bodyslam of sorts which is brutal. Some, like his strikes, just kind of look ok. There's a great moment of Soldier bursting off from the side of the screen to break up a pin at one point, and another great one of a roll through pin out of nowhere which almost works. It goes on a bit too long after that though and even though they get one more flurry including a tornado DDT, it's inevitable and after a power bomb, Madness drops one on top of the other for the pin. This had a pretty good balance of protecting Madness but having Wolf and Soldier chip away at him effectively, I thought.

Basara vs. Masakazu Fukuda

MD: I'm not sure we've ever written about Basara here but he had a mask with a big white mustache coming out of it and hair on top the head. Fukuda was mid 20s here and died tragically in 2000. Basara controlled early. He had an answer for everything Fukuda tried and Fukada didn't have an answer. Fukada would take Basara down and try strikes but get his arm caught. They'd get in a headbutt war and Fukuda would get crushed and bump across the ring. When he took over it was by getting in and under and hitting a uranage, first a throw which opened up the match, and then the rock bottom version to win it later. In the middle Basara asserted himself as they ended up hitting bombs to a degree. Basara had a second rope senton and power slam and Fukuda got under him to take him over in a sort of Beach Break. They both threw dropkicks (Basara's surprisingly good). I'm not sure this kept the same narrative focus once it opened up but in general it was fun just to see them throw things at one another. 

Shinichi Shino vs. Shinigami

MD: Shino is later on Fukumen Taro. Shinigami is a blast. He's got caked on grey/green makeup like a ghoul and it's honestly a great look that no one really uses. Plus the gloves and the black coat/pants that makes him look as much like a Castlevania monster as a movie monster. He lumbered down to the ring upsetting chairs and driving fans away. Shono was all pluck and fire. Powerslams and clotheslines but he threw himself into all of them. He capitalized on a missed dropkick and took it to Shinigami, including tossing chairs on him on the outside, but nothing really worked. Shinigami turned it around, buried him under a row of chairs, and then splashed the chairs. Looked like a great bit but it was on the wrong side of the ring so we only had the sense of it. His big move was a claw-assisted uranage and frankly, it's a wonderful piece of business. He dragged Shino into the ring with the claw before hitting it and then down the stretch hit a top rope one before pulling him up and hitting a bridging one. Post-match he went after the timekeeper for no reason and I quite enjoyed the time I spent with Shinigami.

Hector Garza/Silver King/Onryo vs. Masayoshi Motegi/Super Crazy/Kamikaze

MD: All action trios with some great names. I'd say everyone looked pretty good here (Crazy maybe the most dubious if I was pressed), but Silver King looked like one of the best in the world. He was matched up with Kamikaze early and that was the best of the pairings. Everything broke down and we had some very loose rudo beatdown structure on Onryo a couple of times especially, but this was the sort of match where Silver King was just going to super kick someone in the face and take over. Dive train was sensational and Garza looked great in the final pairing. You knew what you were going to most likely get here, but they gave it to you, and that's the important thing. There was also this great bit where Silver King went for a powerbomb onto Garza (his own partner) and alley-ooped him into a splash which looked so smooth that people should reverse engineer and steal it. Variety is the spice of life and this absolutely fit into such a weird and varied card.

Horiyoshi Kotsubo vs. Hirofumi Miura

MD: (EDIT: According to Sebastian I got Kotsubo and Miura confused, so just flip them in the below. I haven't done that in a while). Horiyoshi Kotsubo is Tsubo Genjin. Here he has a karate gimmick with a black gi, the sides of his head shaved, a goatee, and nunchucks. But it's Miura who's fun here. It's scrambly to start, but Miura goes to the slaps first. Then he hits a great spinning backfist and later on a very quick tree-of-woe/short dropkick combo. Kotsubo has some nice pokey punches in a mount at least, and he wins it with a submission that is very hard to explain but certainly novel, starting with a STF but then barring the other leg. Not a ton to say about this one but I need to watch that Aoyagi vs. Miura match Phil covered here now. 

Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs. Shinichi Nakano - GREAT

MD: I've spent a lot of time with 1989-1990 Shinichi Nakano, and quite a bit with him from the years prior, and there isn't a whole lot there, let me tell you. He was fine. Absolutely fine. Inoffensive. Sometimes could show some fire. He wasn't the guy you wanted in a Jr. Title match (not relative to Fuchi or Momota or Inoue or Joe Malenko) or in a tag, except for maybe if that tag was against guys like Hansen and Tenryu. Then he could take a beating and come back with a bit of fire only to get beaten down once more. Actually, 1989 Fujiwara vs 1989 Nakano would have been a blast.

Thankfully, this was pretty good along those lines too. Nakano was older, more grizzled, but a ton of this match was him doing something, paying for it, and getting beaten and stretched by Fujiwara, which really, is exactly what you'd want. Early on, he tried to push Fujiwara into the corner. That didn't go well for him. Fujiwara turned him around, punched him in the face, and then played to the crowd that he slapped him instead, all before goozling him in the ropes. Later on, Nakano tried again to stomp Fujiwara in the corner and the greatest defensive wrestler of all time, snatched his foot midstomp and hit a rare dragon screw leg whip, just like that.

At one point, he did have some success with things Fujiwara had less defense against, armdrags, leading to a cross arm breaker and Fujiwara escaping to the outside. He then got some nice clubbering in with Fujiwara on the apron stretched over the top rope. All well and good if he didn't try for a posting, but he did, and you can't slam Fujiwara's head into the metal connector obviously. Headbutts ensued, followed by Fujiwara doing his own mirrored clubbering and then hilariously teasing a dive. 

What else did Nakano try? Oh, a leglock. Went ok for a bit until Fujiwara snatched a leg of his own and slowly and patiently worked things all the way around so that Nakano was on his stomach and Fujiwara was bending a leg back. And then down the stretch, he hit a power bomb and a suplex and locked in a half crab, but he couldn't put Fujiwara away and when he went back to the well for another suplex, everyone watching knew exactly what was going to happen. Fujiwara jammed it and jammed Nakano down right into the armbar. While I may have hoped that Nakano had become some sort of secret master over the 90s, what I can say about him instead is that he was still a good sport, and that gave Fujiwara lots of room to stretch (figuratively, literally, metaphorically, however you want it).

PAS: This was pretty much a Fujiwara one man show, Nakano was a fine sparring partner, wrestling chicken stock but Fujiwara bought all of the spices here. Of course those are incredible spices, countering everything Nakano tried, backing him into the corner and working him over. I have written time and time again about how Fujiwara is the greatest defensive wrestler of all time, and here he is again throwing up another countering masterpiece as easy as a Nikola Jokic 40/14/12 stat line. The kind of thing that would be legendary for anyone else is pedestrian for him.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE FUJIWARA

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AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 12/22 - 12/28 Part 1

AEW Collision 12/25/25

Jon Moxley vs Orange Cassidy 

At the ten minute mark, Orange Cassidy found his pockets.

He'd weathered the onslaught, the bullying, the shouts, the shoving, and finally the strikes. 

He remembered who he was. Yes, the kicks he laid in on Jon Moxley had more behind them than usual without the standard playful preludes, but he had remembered his true strength: the mind games, the way he was the one who threw his opponent off his game and snuck out a win when least expected.

And like his Conglomeration members and associates, Mascara Dorada, Kyle O'Reilly, Roderick Strong, and his sometimes partner, Darby Allin, he saw the cracks in Jon Moxley, both mental and physical, clearly, as if for the first time, and he honed in on that leg, softening him up for an Orange Punch.

But Moxley rolled to the floor and the moment was lost. Cassidy once again gave in to emotion, to the weight of the last few years, to trauma, and yes, to fear. To panic.

Every Jon Moxley match in the C2 so far has been about Moxley, though, of course, his opponent and their own struggles and journeys played into them in a secondary manner. This one though? This was about Orange Cassidy, and because of that, when Mox's back was well and truly against the wall, when he needed a win to save his own life, he entered into a situation where he had all but won before the bell had even rung. It may have looked like anything else in those first few minutes, and it may have almost become something else at that ten minute mark, but the result was all but inevitable from the get go.

In 2023, at the end of a long, arduous run as International champ, a run where he put himself up against every challenger, where he kicked off Dynamite week after week after week, where he ran his body to the ground, Cassidy crashed into the wall that was Jon Moxley. Through a fluke injury, Mox lost the title and Cassidy regained it from a third party, but a few months later, he had to face his demon again at Full Gear 2024. Cassidy didn't just survive, didn't just retain his title, he triumphed, showing Moxley and the world the strength within. 

It came at a cost. In pushing himself so far, Cassidy became someone he never wanted to be. That facade of apathy and sloth was yanked off of his face, shades broken and discarded. But it was over and he had won. 

That's not how wrestling works, though. The story never ends. Jon Moxley understands that better than anyone. He's not fighting for a single victory, for a single championship, for a single celebration. He claims to be trying to change the tides of time, the fate of the future. He's trying to shift  the path of history, to set the world turning back on its proper axis. If you are to believe him that is. Even if you don't, you can't deny that he understands the notion well enough to manipulate others, well enough to know the costs.

Time marched on. The fight was eternal. One year later, Cassidy was forced back into an even more untenable position. Moxley had turned his back on the fans and torn down AEW's heroes. Those that remained had nowhere else to turn than to a man with a good heart, who cared more than he'd ever admit, and who beat Moxley once before. Cassidy found his strength anew, led a charge, but ultimately came up short due to the numbers game and was left beaten, bullied, bleach poured down his throat.

So maybe some of his allies and friends saw Moxley for what he seemed to be as of late, a wounded animal, a man who had lost his way and was on the verge of losing so much more, but Cassidy couldn't help but see the monster that still lurked within. Instead of holding back, controlling the tempo, eliminating Moxley from the tournament and maybe from even more on top of that, he charged right in, unleashed ten count punch after ten count punch. He saw the Moxley of a year ago, of two years ago, the Moxley that he could be once again and he couldn't relent. Because of that, he wrestled Jon Moxley's match, played right to his strengths.

And Moxley well knew it. Cassidy held his own for long minutes, stayed in the fight. He was consumed by a fire within him, by the horror before him, by the trauma he carried, but he drew a panicked, fevered strength from it nonetheless. This was the Orange Cassidy of Jon Moxley's world, the one he had created, a fighter, a warrior, a berserker. 

It wasn't until Moxley berated him, yelled, put up a fit, because for all of his fighting, it wasn't enough for Mox, that Cassidy remembered who he truly was. By then, however, it was too late. Moxley escaped, drew Cassidy back outside the ring, back into his domain. Cassidy maintained an advantage on the outside, but now he was caught between two worlds, himself but not himself, able to see at the light of the end of the tunnel but dragged back into the darkness by his heel. 

He grasped at Moxley's damaged leg, but without his usual control, without the laser-focus of O'Reilly that had allowed Kyle to defeat Moxley. He hit Orange Punch after Orange Punch, but not a single one landed correctly. Despite appearances, he no longer had the inner balance to strike true. And, desperate himself, clinging to a false advantage that might have looked to the world to be the truest thing imaginable, he went for the leg one last time and was rolled up by Moxley for a relatively easy three. 

Despite his fear, Orange Cassidy stood up against the darkness he had known, a darkness in his heart, but in doing so, in charging forth when he should have laid back in wait, he played right into Jon Moxley's hands, as fortuitous an outcome as Mox could have hoped for, because he only had one hand left to play. 

But as Cassidy now knows all too well, the fight never ends. A wrestler's story can only end one way, when the heart, body, brain, and soul all break down too much to continue. Cassidy earned a respite, a moment to recover, to reevaluate what he had become and what he might still become. For Moxley, however, World's End is now before him. He's fallen so far, but by climbing back up by the skin of his teeth, he only has so much farther left to fall if he fails.

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