Found Footage Friday: R2W!? TARZAN~! FUJIWARA~! ORIHARA~! KURISU~! GORO~! AOYAGI~! NOSAWA~!

R2W True Winner 1/28/98

Akira Kawabata vs. Kenji Fukimoto

MD: Hey, it's an opening match. These guys hit the mat hard. My lasting memory of it will be the sound of them doing so again and again and again. Constant noise in this one. You weren't going to get much crowd noise as this place was either sparsely attended or people just hadn't filed in yet (we'll see on later matches). But for this crowd and this spot on the card, they worked hard. I will admit it was a little "your move, my move" or in this case "your earnest offense ending with a half crab, my earnest offense ending with a half crab" as they went to that well again and again. Cross arm breakers too, but mostly half crabs. And the transitions weren't much to write home about, a couple of caught kicks, a couple of opportunistic shots. Lots of rope breaks. After one, Kawabata hit a waterwheel drop and locked in a cross armbreaker of his own for a quick tap. 

ER: It's weird that Akira Raijin was just in TNA for a couple years. What a stupid promotion. Here he is young and has baby fat, working a young lions match with another Kurisu guy. Kurisu Young Lions sound like they should create some horrific violence, and while we didn't get there I felt it rose to something prickly by the finish. I found the matwork scrambles engaging and could have seen a lot more before we moved into the half crabs. Fukimoto had this charming thing where he would stumble over his own feet no matter what he tried, but not in a clumsy way? It looked more like he was putting his whole body into everything, overly committing his weight, and would lose his footing if Akira shifted. They don't budge on a stiff shoulderblock, Akira has a wicked spinning heel kick, and the submission trading at the end felt like Fukimoto was seriously trying to make Akira tap by putting his full weight into half crabs. No prior limb work was necessary, he was trying to fuck up Akira's knee and lower back. When Akira made the ropes and put a hand on his love handle, I don't doubt that lower back was sore. Fukimoto's quick armbar looked like it might get the tap as Akira kept missing the ropes with his swiping boot, but once he got there and earned the break he had much better ring placement with his armbar. 

Chihiro Nakano vs. Misa Okada

MD: Can't say I'm too familiar here. Okada had facepaint and crosses on her gear and a size advantage. Nakano was pretty spry and had a clear technical advantage. Lots of great struggle early on be it over a headlock or Nakano trying to hit a slam or just getting her legs up to block kicks. Okada was able to impose with her size but Nakano was quick to come back with kicks or a flash takeover. At one point Nakano stopped and screamed at Okada only to get run over anyway. When Nakano finally did hit the slam she could have made a slightly bigger deal out of it before hitting the kneedrop. There were a couple of bits of weird positioning where Okada wasn't quite where she wanted her to be and moving her took away just a little snappiness/plausibility maybe. The stretch had some very tricked out stuff though, including some nice roll throughs into leglocks by Nakano and a great go behind into a bent-in-half German by Okada. Eventually though, one of those leglocks did Okada in. Not the smoothest thing at times but great effort overall.

ER: Nakano is a Tarzan Goto trainee and looked confident, while Okada looked much less trained and much less confident. Okada had no idea how to sell offense, she only knew how to take one specific kind of back bump. Any strike that landed, and offense that landed, she froze; but if it was something where she could do her one kind of back bump - a measured, disconnected from impact, wrestling school back bump - then brother you know she was falling to her back. Nakano had to actually slow down her work because Okada kept freezing and not blocking anything. I appreciated how sound Nakano's snapmares were, how she cast a long arc and actually looked like she was flinging Okada onto her back. Nakano was, at times, moving around a corpse and it's a miracle the match looked as much like a match as it did. Okada really gave Nakano nothing to work off, even though Nakano was the one almost always in control. Hilariously, Okada breaks out two gorgeous suplexes during the finishing stretch, a German and a high bridge northern lights, and they were so unexpected because nothing else she did looked anywhere near as good as those suplexes. We needed more of her folding Nakano rather than being mystified by what a kick is supposed to be doing. 

Kazushige Nosawa vs. Masashi Aoyagi

MD: Oh hey, these guys I know. This went pretty much like you'd expect. Aoyagi came out striking, knocking Nosawa all over the place with kicks and throat shots. Lots of variety, with a spin wheel kick, spinning kicks, roundhouses, axe kicks, etc. Nosawa got a few leglocks and even caught a kick and slammed an elbow down on the knee which let him take over for a minute or two, but when Aoyagi had enough he took over with a corner charge that sent him out of the ring, coming back in with a overhand chop off the top. When he lost the gi jacket, you knew it was over, and one kick later, it was. He was quite nice to Nosawa after the fact though, so I guess despite the beating, he could be glad he didn't draw Kurisu instead.

ER: Nosawa is in a green and orange singlet with yellow fringe down the sides, and with his faded red kneepads he looks like he's wearing the fringed singlet version of Tito Santana's El Matador gear. Aoyagi is in a black karate gi and shows no emotion. It's so cool Aoyagi became a NOAH lifer after the first decade plus of his career spent as a karate guy whose style often didn't fit into other feds (in a way I liked). Misawa had such a great eye for talent, all the Japanese veterans and indy scum guys he brought in fit the style so well. He had that vision that led to karate guys like Aoyagi and Akitoshi Saito, BattlArts guys, the kind of mixed fight/background guys that Baba didn't want in Kings Road. 

But what surprised me about this, is that I appreciated what Nosawa brought more than what Aoyagi brought. Aoyagi, a decade into his career, looked like the guy less aware of how to put together a wrestling match. The crowd was rightly into him because of his aura and gave the first somewhat noisy reaction of the night to his big spinning heel kick, but this got good when Nosawa took over and made it a fight. When Nosawa caught a kick and turned it into a hyperextended kneebar, it looked like something that could have actually gotten a quick tap from Aoyagi. Nosawa stood up and knocked Aoyagi around much more than I expected. The way he hammered Aoyagi's leg and threw a dropkick to the kneecap was fired up tough stuff, and his running dropkick to Aoyagi's chest was 0.7 on the Joshi Dojo scale, knocking him dangerously back into the ropes. Fans had been reacting to Aoyagi from his first kicks, but Nosawa had to win them over by establishing toughness. 

Aoyagi removes his gi (!) before delivering his match winning roundhouse to the chest. Nosawa was recovering from a near fall spin kick that could have hit better, and the gi removal was the right call. I've never seen anyone remove their gi as a Lawler strap spot, let alone the stoic Aoyagi, who for all the expression he was showing may have just been removing it because he was hot. 

Yuka Shiina vs. Kiyoko Ichiki

MD: Kiyoko Ichiki came out to Heaven is a Place on Earth, so that's how we're starting this one. She did great to start too, ambushing Shiina and tossing her into the (empty, so, so empty) chairs and then grabbing a chair and hitting a triple jump plancha to the floor like she was Sabu! Then she wiped out completely on an inner springboard attempt and Shiina took over. Ok, ok, I had to stop to watch the rest of the match and Ichiki is pretty great actually. She's definitely someone who went under the radar as best as I can tell. She had mean, mean shots, would step on both hands at once to jump on them, would do a mare and then hang on to the hair to bridge to the next move. Speaking of bridges she had one really clutch bridge out of a pinfall late that was a killer moment too.

But they also did a ton of STUFF down the stretch. This had a sunset flip power bomb and a top rope armdrag. Shiina won it with a series of missile dropkicks including one that was like a sniper rifle to the back of the head. Definitely an ambitious match but they hit the mark more often than not and kept things chippy and mean-spirited the whole way through. I'd like to seek out some more of her stuff.

ER: I instantly fell in love with Ichiki when she came out to "Heaven is a Place on Earth" because you can tell she really loves the song. She waits to enter so the song can build, she takes a circuitous route to the ring so the song can play longer, and at the bell she ambushes Shiina and drives a knee into her hip. I don't know where cagematch got the 1,200 attendance number, but I think these Tarzan Goto indies were cooking some books, as was Japanese tradition. The bulk of this match focused on meanness and had great energy, and that was the stuff that carried this. I liked it less when they went into a few pin sequences that felt out of place for the match they had been working. Despite the pin sequences looking fine, you can tell the crowd also thought they were unnecessary, as they were some of the only parts that got meek reactions. 

No, you wanted Ichiki jamming the sole of her boot into Shiina's face and both stomping and stretching the other's knees. Ichiki's triple jump plancha looked awesome, whatever joshi trainee did a great job of making it look like she was actually checking on Shiina while getting into position to help catch the dive. Shiina's dropkicks all looked really good, punctuated by how quickly she was able to get to an elevated position before delivering them. She gets quickly to the middle buckle before jumping around with the kicks, all in one fast motion, and later delivers the same from the top. There was one moment where Shiina slipped climbing the ropes, that would have been a good time to acknowledge the work done on her knee, but instead she just looked frustrated and climbed back up. No matter, the crowd bought into this because it was good, and the loud ring made every impact of the top sound huge. 

Masanobu Kurisu vs. Goro Tsurumi

MD: Tsurumi was around 50 here. Kurisu was a couple of years older. Kurisu held out a hand. Tsurumi didn't shake it. Kurisu gave him the middle finger. Why would you antagonize Kurisu? Why would you antagonize Tsurumi? This was a war and is, as much as anything else, why we go back and watch these things. Sometimes something is everything you'd want from a pairing. This was probably more.

Kurisu was the early aggressor, brutal shots interspersed with insulting slaps. For the most part though, it was like attacking a giant tree trunk. Tsurumi absorbed everything, even stomps, and then, to Kurisu's misery, the tree trunk started to hammer back with headbutts and shots of his own. Eventually, Kurisu finally opened things up by grinding is foot in Tsurumi's face, getting him to the floor, and burying him in blue plastic chairs. 

Tsurumi decided to get back at Kurisu by prying off an arm, working it int he ropes and then bending it on itself to step on the elbow once or twice. Kurisu returned favor by prying off a leg and forcing Tsurumi into the craziest split imaginable, something you wouldn't imagine this big fro-clad older warrior would be able to manage. Kurisu stayed on the leg, putting it on top and working it. There were little moments of whimsy among the violence here, Tsurumi grabbing at the ref for not breaking it, for instance. Then when Goro took back over and slammed a chair repeatedly into a prone Kurisu and then knocked him off the apron, Kurisu tried to toss a chair into the ring, failed, and then walked right over and sat down in one of those blue chairs, making a scene of it. 

Things devolved into both men working king of the mountain or pulling each other out and walking to a far wall to slam each other's head into it, or trying to use the post, only for the ref to intervene one too many times and get manhandled for his trouble, calling for the DQ. It should have been unsatisfying but it was pretty much the only way this thing was ending. Our last image is of Kurisu bringing in a trash can to try to cause a bit more chaos but finally just giving up on it all. Hell of a thing, this one.

ER: The exact kind of fun, disrespectful old man fight you would want when you see a Kurisu match, with the great twist that old man Goro is actually the one being disrespectful! Kurisu was out here working a regular (i.e. Great) stiff old guy match with sharp chops, forearms that actually look good, headbutts to the jaw and face...and then Goro is the one who turns up the heat with chops to the damn neck and the kind of punches that can only lead to bad things. Tsurumi has the kind of short stiff punches - several variations, lefts and rights, right to the chin and mouth - that fucking KURISU has to sell. Kurisu is an expressive, loud seller, letting out multiple loud yells after getting dropped to his knees with stomach punches. Kurisu, forced unexpectedly to scream his own screams, is forced to make Goro scream.  

Kurisu does this by bending Tsurumi in a way I've never seen Tsurumi bend. Kurisu steps on Goro's instep and forces him into a splits, and the way Goro screams when Kurisu gets him in a wishbone...you never could have convinced me that 50 year old Goro Tsurumi could do the splits. Kurisu stands on the man's back and neck AFTER forcing him into a splits and brother, I don't think I've never seen anything like it in a wrestling ring. Old man Tsurumi is somehow so flexible that I don't think a stump puller would even work as a submission on him. Their fighting is so good, trading shots that all feel like direct reactions to the strike that just landed. Kurisu kicks him in the knee, Goro back chops him in the neck, Kurisu slaps him across the face, it all feels like escalation and a response that says, "Oh yeah, you old fuck? How about this?" 

Kurisu starts throwing chairs into the ring and it builds to a great moment where Kurisu angrily drags a chair to the ring just to use it as a step up to the apron, a hilarious moment in a fight just before the fight is thrown out. 

Mitsunobu Kikuzawa/Shigeo Okumura vs. Crusher Takahashi/Masao Orihara

MD: This could have been a super indie tag five years later (maybe without quite as many low blows?). Really, this is 18 minutes of Orihara (and to a somewhat lesser extent Takahashi) being an absolute jerk. Pure cruiserweight bully stuff. It starts with him chucking the flowers out of the ring. It ends with him killing Kikuzawa (Ebessan/Kikutaro) with a sit out power bomb for the win and leaving the ring with a backlip just because he can.

In the middle, it's just one nasty piece of offense after another. On a lockup, he kicks the leg out brutally. He hits Kikuzawa with a pile driver where he turns to face all four sides of the ring before dropping him. He jams a rana off the top with the meanest sheer drop power bomb. And in between there's all the connective tissue of headbutts, kawada kicks, raking the eyes, that you'd want. Takhashi has a killer brainbuster and one of the meanest snap suplex you'll see too. And then to their credit, Kikuzawa was scrappy, headbutts, throwing himself at his opponents, and a nice leaping tornado DDT.

There was a completely absurd bit in the middle where Orihara would pile driver Okumura, Okumura would snap back up, Orihara would hit a low blow, do it again, and he'd pop up. He'd get one of his own before Orihara finally kept him down with the third. It was entertaining at least. It knew it was absurd and leaned into it. Nothing boring about this match even though it was pretty much a one sided mauling with a bit of hope/retribution here or there. 

ER: Awesome tag with a ton of pride and ego and bad attitude. It's a given that a match with Orihara would have bad attitude, you just never know who exactly he's going to take it out on. Before their opponents are even entering, Orihara shoves the ref with one palm to the chest. Orihara shoves the ref not in the way a heel would, but in the way a bully who does this to someone every single day of their life would. He is one of the most watchable wrestlers and seems like the most unpleasant prick. Crusher does not match Orihara's asshole energy but he understands his mission. He's the one who goes after Okumura's taped up shoulder. Orihara does not target existing injuries, he just focuses on finding how many ways he can kick Okumura in the face. 

Everyone is catching strays. Kikuzawa almost gets his nose busted when Okumura tags out while throwing Crusher into the corner, as the throw whips Crusher's elbow back into Kikuzawa's face. There's some great face in peril work as they isolate Kikuzawa. Orihara throws punishing corner clotheslines, drops Kikuzawa with a brainbuster, the spikes him with a piledriver after showing it off to people on every side of the ring. I get excited for such a great piledriver, and I had no idea we were yet to see several of the most disgusting piledrivers ever to be publicly inflicted on a man. There's a real nasty double team when Crusher locks on a Boston crab so Orihara can come off the top with a double stomp to Kikuzawa's back. 

There's a great bit where we learn that Kikuzawa has the head strength of a Tongan, where Orihara starts dishing out headbutts and does more damage to himself. Orihara is always unprofessional, always a punk, but he's also a gifted salesman with great ideas. I love the way he staggered and dropped himself to his knees after repeatedly, stubbornly headbutting Kikuzawa Fifita. It leads to us witnessing some horrific neck and spine trauma as Orihara and Okumura refuse to sell each other's piledrivers, several times, even though you can see how badly their heads are connecting with the mat on each one. These are some of the most disgusting piledrivers I've ever seen, just intentionally stuffing head and neck into the mat. The way Okumura's legs whip forward on each one just focuses more of the impact and I have no idea how they kept getting up. To add perfect insult to certain injury, Orihara swiftly kicks Okumura in the face before delivering his final one. Imagine already knowing you're going to be dropped full weight onto your head, ducking down to wait for it, and getting a fast kick to the nose and teeth before it happens. That's Orihara, baby. 

Ichiro Yaguchi vs. Rikio Ito

MD: I don't know. Do you guys know about Ichiro Yaguchi? We've only done one match of his ever on SC. He's a big guy, dressed in sort of blue scrubs with holy crosses on them, in red. He has a phantom of the opera deal and long bleached blonde hair. He comes out to Hell's Bells and has Kiyoko Ichiki with him. He's a character and is bombastic, over the top. Plays to the crowd, the ref, his opponent, though not quite as consistently as I'd like. Anyway, they sort of hit each other hard, I guess. My favorite part of this was Yaguchi making a huge deal out of turning Ito over for a Scorpion Deathlock like he was Choshu, arm up in the air, wide stance. Ito immediately forced his way out and stepped on Yaguchi's throat. I got a kick out of that. This ended in a double countout after which Yaguchi chucked out the ref and raised Ito's hand. I don't regret watching it. Yaguchi could have had a pretty fun Onita match at this point but he spends a few years later fighting Nise Onita instead (though he's with him a lot in the 2010s and I don't really want to know this honestly. I just want to get to the Fujiwara vs Goto tag).

ER: Yaguchi has undeniable presence, a big dude with black metal face paint and crosses on his gear. Had he come out to King Diamond rather than "Hells Bells" I would have considered doing a full Yaguchi deep dive with Matt. Black Metal Mr. Gannosuke sounds like one of the coolest Japanese wrestlers of the 90s, even if this dude doesn't wrestled anywhere near as well as Gannosuke. Ito might be the better worker, Yaguchi feels like kind of deadweight (but not in a way that's fully detrimental to the match). Yaguchi is so-so Gannosuke, Ito is so-so Arashi, and honestly I wish a lot more wrestlers now were so-so versions of 90s Japanese scum guys. I really wanted Ito to go through with his press slam, because it looked insane that he was even attempting it from a deadlift. It was used only so Yaguchi could slip out, but I appreciated the ambition. Ito had better clotheslines, but if Yaguchi learned to do Kabuki-level throat thrusts he could have been a legend. Crowd loudly boos the count out finish, as they should. I suppose we need to keep Yaguchi and Ito strong for the next weird empty show in a giant convention center. 

Keisuke Yamada/Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs. Katsutoshi Niiyama/Tarzan Goto

MD: Best as I can tell this was the first encounter between Goto and Fujiwara. They both toss the flowers out into the crowd to start. Yamada wants to start but Fujiwara doesn't let him and that means Niiyama leaves the ring so Goto can come in as well. This is still a sparsely attended crowed relative to the single level rows of chairs around the ring but they do realize that they're about to see something entirely novel.

It's a game of inches to start, Goto prying an arm off. Fujiwara works him into the corner and batters him though. Then he starts with headbutts with dramatic hairpulls to keep it when Goto tries to shove him off like they were working in the WWWF or something. Fujiwara tagged Yamada (who would be Black Buffalo) in. Yamada was incredibly game in this match. That didn't mean he didn't run right into Goto's crashing weight and go down though. I'd say Niiyama was much more of a weak link, but that primarily meant Fujiwara and Yamada would take back over on him as opposed to letting him hit dubious offense. That let them control for a few minutes before Goto finally took over on Yamada.

The rest of the match wasn't the direct Goto vs Fujiwara match up we might want but it was indirectly wonderful. Goto took it all out on Yamada instead, taunting Fujiwara, rubbing it in his face. At times Yamada would heroically fight back, showing wild fire, only for Goto to cut him off like only he could. At one point, Fujiwara had enough and dragged Niiyama into the ring, punishing him, but Goto didn't care one bit, not like Fujiwara seemed to care about Yamada. 

Yamada finally got free from Niiyama and made a big hot tag. They were able to play the numbers game for a minute but Fujiwara was too much and got the armbar on Niiyama. People streamed from the back to interfere, taking Fujiwara out of the match and leaving things Goto vs Yamada. You'd think that'd be the end of it, but Yamada had one last huge heroic moment, reversing a whip into a barbed wire board. Goto survived that and slammed him down upon it for the win. Things completely broke down after that but as best as I can tell, this never led to anything. Still, so much of what we did get here was iconic.

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New Footage Friday: CRUSHER TAKAHASHI!! SANTO! PANTHER! KASH! GUIDO!

El Hijo Del Santo/?/? vs. Blue Panther/Willy Cortez/?

PAS: No idea when or where this was from or who most of the guys in it are. The youtube site has a lot of Willy Cortez matches, so maybe it is run by him or his kids or something. Santo looks young and spry, so maybe sometime in the 90s? Although Santo looked young and spry when I saw him live last year, so who the fuck knows. The other luchadores in this match are pretty replacement level, but fine. Cortez and a guy in a yellow mask have a nice armdrag exchange and the third rudo had a nice tope. You are here to see Santo vs. Panther though, and they don't disappoint. I loved the early matwork, Santo refusing to give up the back and hanging onto the ride was so cool, and Panther is so smooth in between holds. I really dug the beatdown on Santo too, as it felt like it riled up the crowd, there was a point where it looked like people might rush the ring. Any chance to see legends like this must be taken, and there are some more cool looking matches on this channel for future weeks.

MD: To me, this is a definite find. We have some brilliant flashes of Santo and Panther working each other over the years, most especially outside of CMLL/AAA (Japan, UK, Monterrey), but here we have three great exchanges in a match that was otherwise pretty good. They're the third pairing in the primera and the matwork they do here is different than anything I've ever seen out of the pairing. It's much more amateur style, a lot of them riding one another or jockeying for position, building to lucha flourishes and throws and ending with an effective leap up to a 'rana. It was something you don't usually see in lucha, especially from guys as stylized as Panther and Santo. The second exchange was super-high end rope running, with Santo unleashing super athletic twists to his headscissors that weren't part of his usual repertoire, including a pretty amazing one out of a mare position. Then, in the segunda into the tercera, Panther just bullied him about. He served as the anchor for the rudos, the center of gravity that everyone came to as he held his opponents for shots and directed traffic. There was a sequence where he kept placing Santo's head over the top rope from one side of the ring to the other so that his partners could lay in kicks and clothesline his neck from the outside. In the tercera, it devolved into some really effective mask pulling, building to Santo drawing some rudo miscommunication and having a big comeback. I thought the finish was slightly unfocused as it veered off of the Panther vs Santo match-up at the very end but ultimately this showed us something new from a pairing for which one might have assumed we've seen everything there was to see.


Kid Kash vs. Little Guido HRT 3/12/13

MD: Kash had to come out there and get the heat for Sabu not showing up. He pinned it on Canadian border control and heeled on the crowd for it before calling out Fonzie to second him since he had nothing else to do. He followed that up with a bit of stalling and picking fights with the crowd to start. That let Guido be a bit more of a face, though this was definitely a 2013 post-modern smarmy crowd. They were more or less into his comebacks and even clapped along while he was in a hold (though with terrible, out of practice, rhythm). This went about ten if you include the stalling and was a prelim match to set up a triple threat for some sort of belt later on. The early feeling out process was really good as they went at it on the mat. Once they got going, Kash was a solid bully with harsh cutoffs even as Guido kept making organic opportunities for himself. I don't think they quite built to a moment of definitive comeback but everything was crisp and believable, including the miscommunication that led to the finish. Two skilled journeymen working what was unmistakably an indy match, but working it hard and entertaining and looking good in the process.

ER: This was on one of those odd shows where some Canadian fed flies in 9 or 10 old ECW guys to draw 300 people to an cultural community center, but instead of the workers attempting to badly recreate ECW atmosphere and ring carnage, they just work like good pro wrestlers. Now, Kash's stalling mic work was straight out of ECW, as I can't personally remember the last time I've heard someone call people "retarded" this many times in one minute. But he draws heat (though you see, this crowd is very smart, so they are in on the joke and there are dozens upon dozens of them that cannot wait to show off their own comedy chops), and stalls well. The scrambling matwork was aggressive and looked good, and both threw armdrags that looked like they were trying to dislocate shoulders. Their offense wasn't about big highspots, just crisp execution of some of their known tricks, with Guido's Sicilian Slice looking especially good, and Kash is expert at jumping into moves like that. This is the kind of match that stands out at the end of the night when you're driving home, solely because of execution, and you need guys like this on a show that also has Gary Wolfe.

Crusher Takahashi vs Shota 7/21/13

MD: I was (and to be honest still am) completely unfamiliar with these two, but this is the most watchable thing you'll come across this week. Takahashi is a big Japanese journeyman who has a penchant to do tortuous things that you wouldn't expect a guy his size to do, all with an extra bit of oomph due to his mass. When he bridges back in the deathlock, or even stretches the leg over, the whole ring shakes. He has this methodological matter-of-fact way of moving but then explodes around the ring, like with the rolling toehold that set up the finish. Shota, on the other time, is spry and fiery, but also the most consistently over the top seller I've ever seen. At least in this match. He's constantly making noise, constantly wagging a limb or walking something off. It makes me wonder how much of the oomph was Takahashi landing stuff and how much of it was Shota selling during and after the fact. Which is actually how the best wrestling is supposed to work. Given his opponent and the size differential, it never feels like too much selling. He's still staggering around in his comeback but that sets up the finish. Honestly, he came off as a more vulnerable Randy Savage. Like a plucky babyface underdog Randy Savage, as his entirety of his offense were punches (including in the corner), a double axe handle off the top, a neckbreaker, and the misguided top rope elbow drop which tweaked his hurt leg and let Takahashi recover. I almost don't want to see more of him because I can see how the act might get old, but in this one twelve minute match, it was great.

SR: Crusher Takahashi, baby. He's a worker who has basically been doing a southern wrestling tribute working Japanese scum indies since the 90s. I've kind of enjoyed him then as a decent enough guy who could throw a nice punch, but at some point he turned into a genuinely good worker, and this was his showcase match. I am likely to enjoy any fat aging wrestler who throws a great punch (which Takahashi does here), and he did some really great southern scientific type matwork here, which he makes look great. That kind of western style matwork doesn't get much praise as US guys just kind of stopped doing cool matwork at some point in the early 80s, but he was working those toe holds like he was about to dislocate his opponents knee. He also had this really great bridging indian deathlock, and his punch/knee combo in the corner looked like it loosened a few teeth. I didn't get much from Shota during the opening portions here, but I actually liked how he punched his way back to offense, and his selling off the leg as he kept slowly destroying himself was really cool. Really good little match which made me want to go back and check out the rest of Takahashi's maestro back catalogue.

PAS: There is a guy working like Bobby Jaggers in Puro indies? Why isn't this guy headlining New Japan? Loved this, such an anachronistic match for the 2010, all heavy elbow drops and Indian deathlocks. Takahashi has a hard right hand, some punishing looking Alabama mat work and sells well for Shota. Shota was kind of working this like Brett Wayne Sawyer, selling big, hitting some basic highflying moves and losing to a figure four when he can't keep his shoulders off the mat. What a weird wonderful little match.

ER: This is the kind of Japanese wrestler that people need to be recommending to me. I hadn't heard of either of these guys, but Shota is dressed like a pre PG-13 Jamie Dundee and Crusher has hairier thighs than Dutch Mantell, so we get a little bit of Memphis in a small Japanese club. I understand Matt's hesitation to see another Crusher match, worried that the act might get old, but I think the thing that gives this style legs (super hairy legs) is that neither guy plays this for a gag. THAT would make the returns diminishing, but I see nothing in their movements that show they are working this style for any other reason than southern style is the best. Shota as undercard Randy Savage is an accurate descriptor. Mid 90s Savage formula saw him eat a beating for the first 80% of a match then just come back with a quick bodyslam and flying elbow. Shota eats the beating in the first half, makes the comeback, but still loses. Crusher works him over with great matwork, the kind that feels like Ricky Morton working holds rather than the more perfunctory New Japan matwork, working hard Indian deathlocks and floating over to control the arm. There's no wink. This isn't a Japanese Tik Tok teen doing phonetic Bill Engvall routines, this is a hairy Japanese man with a belly working punches and joint based matwork. Shota's left hands are better than his right hands, though I liked the grinding glancing elbows he threw with his right, while Crusher has several great worked punches. Crusher had a nice headlock punch and a straight right hand, and Shota's best punches might have been whenever he threw a couple body shots to comeback. This bridging deathlock finish looked really painful, and I liked how it was set up by a Shota elbowdrop that actually hit (but also caused him to land on his worked over knee). We definitely need to dig deeper into Crusher's catalogue. It would be foolish of us not to.

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