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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Found Footage Friday: SABU~! NISHIMURA~! COSMO SOLDIER~! WILD BOYS~! MOONDOG~! DANTE~!

Wild Boys vs. Dante/Moondog Power Slam Championship Wrestling 9/17/93

MD: Not going to lie, I can't tell Jordan and Neely apart in a cage. That's going to make this problematic because while I think Jordan is the one in the post match angle, I'm not sure. If I'm wrong, accept my apologies here. The actual action here was pretty brisk. Maybe six or seven minutes total of a match but it was nonstop. There was a chair in the cage and that defined almost everything that happened, with the Wild Boys controlling early. Everyone ate the cage well here too, including the Moondog but it was those chairshots that stand out. Dante was able to take over midway through including a number of shots off the top where he use the cage to steady him. Wild Boys mounted a heated comeback and got a roll up win, but one left the ring post match and the manager trapped the other in there. The beating was bad enough but then Moondog threw a fireball and it nearly became a riot scene as everyone was rushing to get him water and there was some deep Nashville concern at play given the selling and how close to the ring everyone had been.

ER: I had no idea what to expect from this match, as I didn't know anyone in the match until I saw it was an actual Moondog and not just some guy working Mudshow Moondog. So Larry Latham is in there and that means I know who Dante is, and the Wild Boys are in jeans and sneakers with full heads of hair, like 75% scale Bart Gunns. Latham was 40 going on 70, Dante was a white goof in a mask, and the Wild Boys were southern boys in jeans. Except it was like Rock n Rolls vs. Russians in a cage that was sturdier than you'd assumed when your brain was in Mudshow Mode. The Wild Boys are the perfect punch-backers, firing punches that kept getting better the longer they were in the cage, Dante taking really strong bumps hitting the cage and falling to the mat holding the ropes to desperately stop his momentum. Dante took bumps like a more hinged cage match Bobby Heenan: not as spectacular, but the same As A Manager energy to make up for Moondog Spot's old man shutting down comebacks and taking chair shots. Dante was the one taking back body drops, Moondog was the one with the clout to shut down the Wild Boys with a single shot. The Wild Boys had honest babyface energy that kept getting stronger the more they were allowed to fight, and I loved the quick fireball escape. Moondog gets the hell out of dodge before most people can even figure out what happened, and the ringside concern for the burnt Wild Boy is so sincere and serious. I don't know how many people in frame were In On It or were genuinely concerned and helping out as a Good Civilian, but I'd buy any number from Zero to All. 

Sabu vs. Osamu Nishimura Lima, OH 8/7/94

MD: Blurry ten minute sprint. I thought Sabu might work more towards Nishimura since it was a rare opportunity and that they might start on the mat, but there really wasn't much of that. They only lingered there towards the end and then not for long. If anything, Nishimura worked towards Sabu, which was what the crowd hungered for anyway. That even meant a relatively early dive.

One great strength of Sabu is that he was very giving. He had the luxury of being so because he could grab a chair at any point and become instantly credible. That's what happened here. Early on he ate a clothesline on the floor and the dive and a subsequent dropkick in the ring but the second he introduced the chair, everything turned on its head. His strikes looked great too and I don't know if that was Nishimura leaning into them or the video quality of the tape. A second chair attempt backfired on him down the stretch and Nishimura hit some real bombs (a German and a nasty Power Bomb) but Sabu survived and overcame with the chair yet again. The Facebuster is one of those moves that looks almost more nasty when it's not coming off the top because of the short period between start and finish. Part of me wanted a bit more of Sabu hanging on the mat but this was probably the right match for this crowd on this night and it's hard to fault it overall.

Cosmo Solider/Super Taira vs. Koji Niizumi/Kubo KAGEKI 2/27/11 

MD: A Sebastian special obviously. Speed and finesse vs size and toughness as everyone worked hard for a non-stop twenty minutes. Kubo had the size and hit like a truck while still able to move. Niizumi had precise, stiff strikes. And Cosmo and Taira stayed in it by utilizing double teams and quick shots. I will say that Taira, while hitting as hard as anyone in the match, did bug me a bit by not registering shots that were coming his way, even when Niizumi was starting to come back and fire back, for instance. There were plenty of times where Cosmo would go for a lift or a suplex and barely get the guy over and that just added to what was going on. My favorite bit of all of this might have been when he turned Niizumi's crab attempt into an ankle lock with the Fujiwara headstand twist, but there were a lot of little slick bits like that throughout. The back half had things moving at a machine gun pace but it was all interesting enough that you didn't mind much, and other than Taira, everyone was register what was happening consummately. The finish sort of came out of nowhere on a rana but you got the sense almost anything that was happening could have ended it, so it was as good a way to exit as anything else. 

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