Best of Japan 2000-2009: Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Toshiaki Kawada, AJPW 3/31/00

Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Toshiaki Kawada, AJPW 3/31/00

Damn this was a really cool sprint. I don't think I've ever seen this, as I had no memory of a 15 minute Misawa/Kawada match. The fans realize really early that these two were going for the killshot, as a Kawada powerbomb 6 minutes in gets huge buzz as a false finish. AJ fans buying a finish 6 minutes into a match is pretty awesome. And even though this was short by AJ main event standards it wasn't really "greatest hits played faster and lets rush to the finish". It was smartly worked with both guys going for finishes early, both trying to put the other away fast. It made the tone of the match totally different from any of their other matches (that I've seen) as you go into those seeing them try and wear the other down and it's not like you're watching perfunctory NJ opening matwork, but you know you're not getting a finish any time soon. So I love how the fans immediately picked up on the fact they were seeing a different style from these two. It didn't feel like they were going for flash pins or anything though, it just felt like they were trying to take the other out of his element and maybe surprise him.

In hindsight Misawa and Kobashi really come off like bullies in their matches with Kawada. Not with how stiff they work, but more in the way they sell his offense. They both take furious beatings from him no doubt, and he dishes it out, but it's almost like they just treat his offense like it does less damage than their own, no matter how painful it looks when Misawa takes a shin right to the teeth. Kawada has awesome comebacks and his selling is superb (he does a little stumble here into a crashing faceplant that looks so wonderful, and I cannot imagine most other workers doing it and not looking like total drama queens)…but I keep getting a sense during these matches (most of the time without knowing the results ahead of time) that Misawa and Kobashi are just kind of letting Kawada get his stuff in, before they decided "okay we're gonna finish this now". Like they just treat his offense as painful…but not anything that could ever put them away.

This match had tons of cool wrinkles. I loved that Kawada set up a kind of desperation Ganso Bomb and Misawa did a "oh shit he's really gonna do it!" quick headscissors to escape. Miswa's elbows are so sick here. Either Kawada is the master salesman or he just found out the hard way from experience how a man falls after getting elbowed in the face a bunch. They did do a lot of "I kick you, I elbow you" manly spots, and these two make them more interesting than most, but it's still always a tiny degree silly looking. That aside, really loved this match. Loved the feel, the ring work from these two during this era was super tight and knowing their history and their moves always brings a sense of familiarity to things. Awesome match I'd never seen before.


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Best of Japan 2000-2009: Vader vs. Kenta Kobashi, AJPW 2/27/00

Vader vs. Kenta Kobashi, AJPW 2/27/00

Wearing tons of rib tape into your match against Vader seems about as smart as letting your friend with a gambling addiction hold onto your giant money pile for the weekend. Vader is going to go after those ribs like he had an expiring gift certificate to Tony Roma's, and the rib injury you were trying to heal will only be made worse. Unless, of course, it doesn't get made worse, which is the main problem with this match.

It was still a good match, and a lot of the work within was good. But for the main event of a big show, and a Triple Crown title change, it was lacking. Vader looked awesome, picking apart Kobashi's ribs and also picking apart Kobashi's face with punches. Vader closing in on a slumped Kobashi in the corner was a scary, abusive visual. Kobashi cowered, Vader hunkered over him throwing lefts and rights, stopping to adjust his knee pad, and then smacking Kobashi again like he hadn't already learned his lesson. I loved the nasty elbow drops to the ribs and the stiff Vader bombs, getting full body extension on each one. What gets lost a lot in Vader's last big AJPW/NOAH run, is that he was 45 years old at this point. Most gigantic 400+ lb. men in their mid 40s don't often get athletic compliments tossed their way. "That mammoth middle aged man just hit a beautiful splash." More often than not that sentence would instead read, "That mammoth middle aged man suffers from sleep apnea." But gigantic 45 year old Vader hits all these awesome elbow drops and then takes all these ridiculous suplexes that men his size and certainly of his age shouldn't be able to take. And I'm not sure what side I fall on with the "Vader shouldn't bump so early and often" as I get it, but at the same time when you're dropping the title in the main event to the physically largest native worker in the promotion, that seems as good a time as any to go up for a few extra suplexes.

My main gripe with this match and the thing holding it back from being better, is that Kobashi wraps them ribs, Vader crushes them ribs, but then Kobashi gotta Kobashi. He still hits a moonsault with no ill effects, still tosses around a 400 lb. behemoth, still seems like he's inevitably going to win. I noticed this in the earlier Kobashi/Kawada match, where even though Kawada took 70% of that match, there was always an underlying feeling that Kobashi was generously letting him get his shit in, before the inevitable conclusion. It seems odd to be whining that a winner lets his loser look good in defeat, and he does indeed allow them to do a bunch of offense and control large segments. But there is something he does in these matches, whether it be brushing off offense too quickly or peppering in his comebacks at the wrong time, that makes it seem like his victory is just a matter of time.


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Best of Japan 2000-2009: Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Jun Akiyama, AJPW 2/27/00

1. Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Jun Akiyama, AJPW 2/27/00

Well let me be the first person ever - online, in person, really actually anywhere - to state that this right here is a great, excellent match. I've always heard matches described as "passing the torch" but usually that seems like an observation that's only able to be made in hindsight. But this match gave off that vibe for the whole thing. You can feel the sea change, of Akiyama stepping up as the ace, and nothing about it felt cheap or forced. Some matches you can look at all day and find different psychology or in-match stories, and some of them may have even been intended by the wrestlers, and not just projected by us, as nerds. But this match lays its very simple story and structure right out in the open, in the same way the Rude/Steamboat iron man did, but also different in a 100 ways. It's just a flat out classic match, hitting all the right notes and nailing all of the peaks.

I was a major fan of latter days cranky old gunslinger forced servitude ace Misawa, and elements of that are already peeking through in this match. The sighs are heavier, the "I'm getting too old for this shit" faces and long pained squints are more noticeable than they had ever been. There are hardly any wasted moments in this match, with a pacing that is among my favorites in a match ever. I'm not going to run through a move by move analysis as I imagine it's been done to death for a match like this. But everything about this match was just so damn good.

Apart from the pacing and the story, the most impressive thing was the execution. Both guys laid into everything and all the moves looked picture perfect. When you imagine Misawa locking in his crossface chinlock, you picture it like this, with his arm forcing Akiyama's nose into his brain. There's just not a missed moment or clumsy move in the whole match. Misawa looked as crisp and on point in this match as I've ever seen him, maybe ever. From delivering killer moves like his climb up dropkick in the corner, stiff senton, nasty elbows; to taking the moves nastier than most humans would take them, like flying chin first into the ring barrier, taking an Exploer off the apron like a nut, getting dumped on his head a bunch, taking all the knees to the face, Misawa just looked incredible here.

So yes, if you've somehow not seen this match at this point in your life, you clearly need to. Just flawless execution, storytelling, pacing and incredible build. All the peaks and valleys really mean something to the match and it's just too damn satisfying.


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Best of Japan 2000-2009: Kintaro Kanemura vs. Ryuji Yamakawa, BJPW 2/22/00

3. Kintaro Kanemura vs. Ryuji Yamakawa, BJPW 2/22/00

Kanemura is always a sleazy favorite of mine and man he is a monster to start this one, doing the most plausible RVD "throw chair you catch I kick" possible, flattening Yamakawa with two nasty fat sentons (one big one off the top, the other off the top to the floor right after Yamakawa gets tossed from the ring through a folding chair fort). But Kanemura just plays big in general. He's like Adam Dunn in that he hits big when he hits, and misses big when he misses. Yeah he crushed Yamakawa with a couple sentons, but he also caved in his own chest on a missed turnbuckle charge and flew horizontally like a frisbee into the ring post in one of the greatest postings I've ever seen. Picture Sandman taking his trademark ring barrier bump, but into the ringpost. I need to start tracking down current Apache Pro.

There is so much brutality in this and like a total sicko I kept wanting more. Kanemura drops Yamakawa on chairs with the Axe Driver? Mooooore. Yamakawa gets powerbombed off the stage through a table below, except he's lined up poorly so basically only the back of his head goes through the table? Yesssss. I will rewind. Both men are savagely stupid in this, with Kanemura never quite topping his ringpost bump but still leaning way into clotheslines. Yamakawa throws one that really knocks Kanemura sideways, like a drunk guy running face first into a lamp post (and only kinda makes up for getting concussed through a table and getting dumped through tons of chairs). Aside from all his cool offense, Kanemura is also Necro Butcher-precise with his chair shots and table shots. For a man who looks like he has zero muscle, Kanemura swings a full table at Yamakawa's face with the strength of Giancarlo Stanton hitting a ball into the upper deck (jeez can you tell baseball season has started? Maybe these comparisons would fit better if I were reviewing Osaka Pro).

I was praying for some stupid spots and reckless behavior in this one, and it beyond delivered in stupid sleaze. And while the whole thing was overkill, it never felt like overkill to me. It felt like two freaks REALLY wanting to win and I thought the build was great. Plus there's just something beautiful about the waves created by a man in tight white pants getting thrown through dozens of shiny folding chairs.


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Best of Japan 2000-2009: AKIRA vs. Koji Kanemoto, NJPW 2/20/00

AKIRA vs. Koji Kanemoto, NJPW 2/20/00

I knew something was gonna give. The work was too good, they were kicking and stomping each other too hard. And then in the lamest Shyamalan twist possible, it turns out that Kanemoto has BIONIC KNEES! AKIRA is stomping away at them (and AKIRA is a guy with some great stomps), tearing Kanemoto's kneepad off, stomping some more and Kanemoto is feeling it. He hit knees on a moonsault, and AKIRA started after that poor knee of his and didn't let up. Kanemoto is screaming and clutching his knee...and then, it turns out, kicking at his knee makes him STRONGER! Suddenly he's begging for AKIRA to stomp on his knee, even turning it and adjusting it so AKIRA can stomp on every single part of it. All those joints and muscle fibers, he wants every one of 'em stompled! Stomping on that super vulnerable and easily injured part of the body would seriously cripple most humans, but it gives Kanemoto ENERGY! So AKIRA keeps stomping, and Kanemoto keeps getting stronger, and everything about it is the dumbest thing ever. And then it doesn't matter as Kanemoto gets shoved into the ref, dropkicked (brutal dropkick with insane height from AKIRA) and dragon suplexed for the loss anyway. Wah wah.

It's quite a shame, as 80+% of this match is really great. Really the first 6 minutes are totally awesome. Kanemoto and AKIRA go at it like Wild Dogs (or erm Mad Dogs I suppose) with Kanemoto dishing nasty leg kicks and ripping AKIRA's forehead appliqué off (with AKIRA screaming like in a dubbed Shaw Bros. flick) and hits a beastly corkscrew moonsault. AKIRA is a great heel in this and really puts over the knee work well. It started falling apart on AKIRA's comeback, as the match had been all Kanemoto, and then he (sorta) hit knees on a moonsault, then AKIRA got up, hit a bodyslam and then a big splash and was fully in control. A missed moonsault and bodyslam seemed a little too light to get Kanemoto selling just as much as AKIRA up to that point, who had taken a 5 minute beating at that point.

It's too bad the structure went from hot to questionable to laughable, as the actual execution from both guys was top notch.



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Best of Japan 2000-2009: Vader vs. Toshiaki Kawada, AJPW 2/17/00

2. Vader vs. Toshiaki Kawada, AJPW 2/17/00

Well this was great. I had actually never seen this match before. They cram so much cool stuff into 14 minutes, and it's kind of a tidy synopsis of everything that got me into puro in the first place. Both guys were vulnerable hardasses, match had all sorts of turns, both guys took nasty shots, both guys turned in great selling performances, and it had a nice easy story that they were able to branch away from at a moment's notice.

We start with Vader circling and cornering Kawada like an animal, holding out his arms to seem even more imposing as he approached, acting like a giant one-man police netting. Kawada eventually solves that by just running boot first at Vader's face. Kawada goes on a tear for the next five minutes, staying one step ahead of Vader, avoiding his big bombs, front kicking Vader's face, kicking out his knee, at one point giving Vader a back suplex and then delivering punches from the mount. It sounds normal, until you stop and think about how strange it is to see somebody in 2000s All Japan using punches. At that point I'd occasionally seen Kawada break out one punch against Misawa, but to see him lacing into Vader on the mat was wild. Vader's selling throughout was awesome, desperately reaching for the ropes just to keep himself standing while Kawada destroyed his knee. Kawada also traps him in the corner and mauls him with Vader style bear attacks, just smacking Vader around with fists and his inner forearms. It's awesome and hilarious enough that it's clear to me and everybody in the crowd that those actions will result in a nasty Vader receipt later. Vader puts them over huge, feebly trying to escape through the ropes to the floor while Kawada kicks at him. Vader gets so desperate he eyepokes Kawada!! But Kawada still levels him with a clothesline.

But all it takes is Kawada letting up for a few seconds. He goes to charge Vader and Vader greets him with his leaping double bear paw body attack. And then it's Vader's turn.

Vader beats the hell out of Kawada, plants him with a powerbomb, pays back that receipt on the corner by dishing out 9 straight hard rights and staggering him hard with a left hook. Kawada sells as great as Kawada here, trying to stagger away from Vader and falling into the ropes. Vader squashes him with a Vader Bomb, and there's a cool part to the story here as Vader keeps trying to do more Vader Bombs, but Kawada keeps rolling out of the way. Sometimes guys really get stuck trying to finish a match/fight a certain way, even when it just makes more sense to stomp the holy hell out of them. Vader getting blinders on about hitting more Vader Bombs allows some minor recovery for Kawada. Kawada stops one of the Vader Bombs by just getting up and grabbing Vader's leg. I loved that. He couldn't do anything more than just hug his leg, just to stop his move. Vader looks down confused before just belting him with punches to the side of the head.

But Kawada still gets tiny comebacks throughout, sneaking in kicks to Vader's legs which start to show damage. Vader's selling is incredible with these, just subtly limping around and struggling to pick Kawada off the mat. Eventually Vader's power is too much as Vader hits him with another of many huge clotheslines and fists and locks in a tight pin (Vader's pins were also awesome in this, hooking the legs and clasping the hands. Kawada really had to fight to kick out every time. Type of thing most workers don't ever think about).

This had the feeling the whole time of two incredible workers at the top of their game having an absolute battle. I loved all of this.


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Best of Japan 2000-2009: Aja Kong vs. KAORU, Gaea 2/13/00

1. Aja Kong vs. KAORU, Gaea 2/13/00

Aja Kong is my favorite female wrestler of all time and this match is one of my favorite joshi matches of all time (at least it was when I saw it over a decade ago) so I had tons of excitement to rewatch this one. Up until 2000 I had not seen much joshi. I'd seen Bull Nakano in WWF and WCW, and the Kong/Asari Raw match, and the only women's wrestling I had seen that was actually *from* Japan were a couple matches from FMW tapes. So then young me sees this match and was blown to pieces. I haven't seen this match in years and years and it was crazy how much still seemed fresh in my brain.

KAORU is all on fire to start and running circles around Kong and it rules, until she bites off more than she can chew and gets cute, and misses a senton off the top to the floor TAILBONE FIRST through a table. And then we get a brutal (to the shock of everybody) Aja Kong ass beating. Kong tosses her all around the building and god bless KAORU for taking the insane beating. Kong starts bouncing the broken table pieces of KAORU's face, then a couple chairs off her face, then piledrives her on the floor and runs her face first into a wall. And KAORU is busted open and Aja Kong does not give a fuck. All the speed vs. brute strength stuff works great here, with KAORU going back to the plan and ducking around a bunch of Kong backfists and playing dirty right in step by smacking Kong a bunch with a trashcan. However, again, zero fucks were given by Kong. In a crazy moment KAORU goes for a moonsault and lands face first into Kong's boots (while somewhere, a young Mistico was watching and thinking "I like that so much I'm gonna do it EVERY match!") and then when KAORU charges Kong, Kong just alley oops her in one of the more spectacular spots in wrestling history, with KAORU clearing the ropes and just crashing and burning onto the floor. It's like Kong thought of going for a hotshot, but just launched her 15 feet instead. Amazing.

Now it's Kong's turn to get cute and it costs her too. She goes for a dive and KAORU matadors her right into a table, then proceeds to beat the life out of Kong with a piece of broken table and THEN hits her top rope senton through the table (this time with Kong actually on it)! And somehow things get even more sick, as KAORU blocks a spinning backfist with the broken table and then begins slicing and smashing Kong's arm with the broken table. Kong is BLEEDING from her ARM!! Even sicker than Vader blading his chest. And forgive me for flipping out about Kong throwing KAORU to the floor earlier, because KAORU then moonsaults directly onto Kong's arm...while holding that broken table piece. I mean it looked like it just legit crushed Kong's arm.

One of the great things about the match is that all the transitions happen when either worker gets to fancy or starts playing outside their comfort zone. Kong starts to pile on and get cocky, that's when KAORU starts peppering her with stuff. KAORU starts foolishly trying to do power moves or string too many moves together? Kong backfists the hell out of her face. Kong goes to the top rope? KAORU dumps her vertically on her head with the grossest Michinoku Driver you have seen in your life. Kong should have probably died. All of this was so violent. Both women dished out furious beatings, KAORU getting punched and kicked in the face (finished off with a double backfist!) and Kong letting KAORU shine.

This match was just completely brutal. There were so many stiff shots, nasty spills and yet at no point did anything feel like overkill. Everything built, all the shifts in momentum happened logically and it was just one awesome oh shit moment after another. One of the most violent spectacles in wrestling history. I LOVED this.


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Best of Japan 2000-2009: Naoki Sano vs. Minoru Tanaka, BattlArts 1/30/00

Naoki Sano vs. Minoru Tanaka, BattlArts 1/30/00

Believe it or not, years ago *this* match was my introduction to BattlArts. Not Ikeda or Ishikawa clonking coconuts and essentially signing verbal contracts guaranteeing that by the age of 50 they will wander the streets aimlessly, forget to pay bills and not recognize family members. Nope. When I first watched BattlArts my favorite type of wrestling was juniors wrestling. Phil and I have joked that we used to buy WAR shows for the Ultimo Dragon matches, now we fast forward through those matches to get to the old lumpy fatsos punching each other. But when I was a teenager, it was all cruisers. I heard of Tanaka and was into the idea of a cruiser that did a bunch of neato kicks and fast spinny matwork, and this was a match of his that was talked about a lot at the time. I watched it a bunch back then, but have not seen the match in probably over a decade.

And boy, for a match with tons of cool stuff, it does not add up to a very satisfying experience. There were tons of awesome moments. You could have made a killer 3 minute music video set to a Jim Steinman song (erm, I guess half of a Jim Steinman song...) and I'd think it looked like an incredible match. But there was just no narrative and nothing tying anything together. Tanaka is a guy with a couple of cool tricks (I remember how much I flipped the first time I saw Sano catch a kick, throw a strike and saw Tanaka catch the arm into a rolling armbar) but now it comes off more like a guy who saw a Volk Han tape, like when American indy guys saw their first T2P or Johnny Saint match. Sano looked great and attempted to keep some consistency, throwing out clues to Tanaka by stretching his knee or rubbing it, but Tanaka would just stick to randomly throwing out flashy submissions to any random limb, just because they looked cool. Sano had some killer stuff in this, including a spring-loaded missile dropkick that launched Tanaka almost into the ref, and THEE nastiest spin kick you've ever seen in your life, just perfectly catching Tanaka right under the chin in the most brutal way possible. And in maybe the perfect way to encapsulate the entire match theme, Tanaka immediately no sells it and goes for an armbar.


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BEST OF JAPAN 2000-2009 MASTER LIST

So Ditch threw together a big giant Best Puro of the 2000s ballot with over 300 matches. I figured I could start watching them (with no realistic intention of getting to all of them any time soon) and keep a running ranking of my own. Phil will occasionally chime in with his thoughts. Project seemed like a fun way to revisit a bunch of matches from my late teens, when I was really getting hooked on all foreign wrestling. Some of these matches I've seen a bunch over the last decade plus, others I haven't seen since the year they happened, a few I've never seen at all. Should be a fun trip.


1. Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Jun Akiyama, AJPW 2/27/00
2. Aja Kong vs. KAORU, Gaea 2/13/00
3. Vader vs. Toshiaki Kawada, AJPW 2/17/00
4. Kintaro Kanemura vs. Ryuji Yamakawa, BJPW 2/20/00
5. Shinya Hashimoto & Takayuki Iizuka vs. Naoya Ogawa & Kazunari Murakami, NJPW 1/4/00
6. Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Toshiaki Kawada, AJPW 3/31/00
7. Toshiaki Kawada vs. Kenta Kobashi, AJPW 1/17/00
8. Genichiro Tenryu vs. Kensuke Sasaki, NJPW 1/4/00
9. Ryuji Yamakawa vs. Tomoaki Honma, BJPW 1/2/00
10. Vader vs. Kenta Kobashi, AJPW 2/27/00
11. AKIRA vs. Koji Kanemoto, NJPW 2/20/00
12. Naoki Sano vs. Minoru Tanaka, BattlArts 1/30/00

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Best of Japan 2000-2009: Shinya Hashimoto/Takayuki Iizuka vs. Naoya Ogawa/Kazunari Murakami, NJPW 1/4/00

1. Shinya Hashimoto & Takayuki Iizuka vs. Naoya Ogawa & Kazunari Murakami, NJPW 1/4/00

I hadn't seen this match in years and it's still completely awesome. Ogawa and Murakami are like the ultimate evil anime boss battle, with their high and tight fades and their super arched eyebrows. But I'm not convinced any wrestler in history has looked like more of a badass than early decade Hash. The shag, the sideburns, the fat karate bellbottoms. And he's got blood in his eyes in this one. Everybody here gets to shine, with Hash punting Ogawa around the ring, Murakami throwing wild Ralphie-on-Scut-Farkus mounted bombs, Ogawa bringing the dickheaded aloof, and Iizuka having maybe the best moments in the whole match. I love how dickheaded Ogawa can make the STO look, like he's just overpowering everybody and forcing them onto the mat. But I lost it when Iizuka flies in from nowhere with his dropkick, and him locking in the rear naked choke on Murakami, Murakami starting to fight up, and then Iizuka flattening him out was epic. The crowd was so damn hot for this, and it was so cool hearing a wave of jeers when a triangle gets held too long, or the excitement when Hash blocks a judo throw. So much great stuff here.


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Best of Japan 2000-2009: Genichiro Tenryu vs. Kensuke Sasaki, NJPW 1/4/00

2. Genichiro Tenryu vs. Kensuke Sasaki, NJPW 1/4/00

Just as the match yesterday was the Kawada show, this match was all Tenryu show. Sasaki's offense hits hard like it should but if his opponent isn't game to take all his dangerous/sloppy offense then the match will suffer. But Tenryu is a man and more than holds up his end and ends up crafting a good match. Tenryu's selling in this is epic, especially when they start throwing punches. Tenryu starts peppering Sasaki with jabs and Sasaki just starts throwing haymakers (that look like something Sasaki has never tried throwing in a worked setting before, so many of them look like they hit Tenryu flush on the jaw). The way Tenryu spends parts of the match with wobbly legs, squinted eyes as he lightly feels at his jaw, grabbing his head and neck after getting dumped on his head, are just a master class in selling. Both dudes hit hard and that's what everybody wanted to see. Even Tenryu starts shying away from Sasaki's chops by the end. I can't tell you if that was because his chest was ground lumpy meat at the point, or if he was actually beginning to realize a longer match story arc of Sasaki finally overpowering him. Tenryu is a complete lunatic in this getting brainbustered and dumped on his head with the Northern Lights Bomb. Sometimes set-up takes longer than I remembered (like Tenryu's top rope German especially) and there was more lying around than I remembered. Sasaki kinda gasses out early and often so we hit a few different breathers in the match, but both guys are at least good at making the moves look like they're doing something. But Tenryu man. That guy was the goods. His selling was epic here, but I loved his two desperation enziguiris, loved his full elbow drop to back of neck onto a kneeling Sasaki, just a great performance.


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Best of Japan 2000-2009: Toshiaki Kawada vs. Kenta Kobashi, AJPW 1/17/00

1. Toshiaki Kawada vs. Kenta Kobashi, AJPW 1/17/00

Really dug this match even though Kobashi stuff kinda bugs me more now than it used to. It felt like there was some hierarchy stuff here which kinda made the match structure odd. Kawada got what felt like 2/3 of the offense but the way Kobashi sold still made the match feel like an extended squash. No matter what Kawada did it would eventually lead to Kobashi just popping up and going back in control. No matter how much he temporarily sold offense it always had the feeling that there was no way Kawada was going to win. Kawada, however, was just as awesome as you remember Kawada being. Kawada's running yakuza kick is one of my all time favorite moves. He has his awesome haircut with the neck fringe and the shaved sides and parted top. He looked like he could play percussion in M83 or work as a barista at the downtown Stumptown. All his kick combos were amazing, his glazed eye stares were a good as ever, and some of his individual moments of selling were all time classic. At one point Kobashi levels him with a manly clothesline, Kawada kicks out and struggles up to his feet, and as Kobashi comes off the ropes to deliver another Kawada's knees buckle and he collapses to the mat before Kobashi makes it to him. Beautiful. Even if his selling lapsed when convenient, there's no denying Kobashi took a furious beating here, and bumped big for a large guy. Him flying off the apron and into the guardrail from a Kawada yakuza kick was epic. But this match was all about how awesome Kawada was. Big strikes and really knew how to put over Kobashi's big moves, whether it was getting bounced off the mat with a massive powerbomb, or not backing down from that infamous match ending short arm lariat.


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Best of Japan 2000-2009: Ryuji Yamakawa vs. Tomoaki Honma, BJPW 1/2/00

1. Ryuji Yamakawa vs. Tomoaki Honma, BJPW 1/2/00

This match was what got me back into death matches years and years ago. I'm pretty sure the first tape in most tape traders' collection was some sort of death match. Either the IWA Death match tourney, or some FMW tape, or a W*ing comp, or the Sabu/Funk Born to Be Wired match, or something like that. My first tape I traded for was a compilation of all sorts of death matches, from fire to barbed wire to one with a live snake. The tape blew my mind. I don't know what I was expecting, but the tape was weirder in ways I hadn't thought about. I thought the matches would be big spectacles, not sad little events in half empty gyms fought by pudgy guys in jeans, with no production value. It may have been foolish to expect glamour from something called "death matches", but somehow it was seamier than I expected, not so much due to the violence, but for the realization that the payoffs for rolling around in glass couldn't be that big when the promotion appeared to be holding its show in a parking lot and didn't seem to have an actual ring. So I had bought into the gimmick of death matches, and quickly realized it was a gimmick . Although good lord in retrospect I should probably be thankful I wandered into something as harmless as Japanese death matches. It's hard to say why death matches appealed to me yet something like Faces of Death or Mondo Cane sounds like my worst type of nightmare that I wouldn't be able to unsee. But whatever the appeal, it faded fast as the matches just didn't have enough substance to hold my attention. And then Yamakawa and Honma arrived and added death match insanity to the strong style of wrestling that teenage me was becoming obsessed with.

Feeling out process here is really good as they both really struggle around the barbed wire boards. Soon Honma gets thrown into one of the boards, but awesomely runs up the board and backflips away from it, then throws Yamakawa into it. Honma has a really great running elbow, too. We go wandering through the crowd for awhile, getting tossed into some chairs, wandering while grabbing each others' heads...and then Yamakawa gets powerbombed on the stage...and then gets brainbustered...and is busted open. And things are getting awesome. Yamakawa has really great kicks to Honma's dome.

Back in the ring and they fight on the apron, and Honma is great as he throws his full body into preventing his bod from getting suplexed from the ring to the floor, breaks free and blasts Yamakawa with a running elbow (all of Honma's roaring elbows were brutal in this, which is nice since I had no problem buying them as a finish) that sends him flying to the floor and Honma hits an out of control somersault tope. And we then get a series of absolutely insane spots, like powerbombs into barbed wire, Yamakawa takes a rana to the floor into barbed wire, a fucking rana off the top to the floor through barbed wire, and the whole time that giant nail board is looming at ringside. This whole thing is just nuts, and just as much fun 14 years later.


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