Found Footage Friday: WRESTLE YUME FACTORY~! KITA KANTOU GROUP CUP TAG TOURNAMENT~! ABSOLUTE KILLERS~!

4/29/97

This show is available from @itako18jp on Twitter who is really doing incredible stuff making this incredible rare footage available. Send him some money.

Azteca/Basara vs Tadahiro Fujisaki/Wolf

PAS: I am going to forgive a lot of sins if you just lay it in violently, and all four of these guys are wrestling like 90s indy puro guys. Fujisaki is the young Fugo Fugo and he brings the violence even as a pup. Real thump on all the forearms and kicks from all four guys. There was one bad looking whiffed Azteca kick which The Wolf sold anyone, hope Fujiwara cussed him out backstage for that, but otherwise everything looked good, and Basara especially had a sick run of nasty offense near the end of the match. The way you want to start out a tag tourney for sure. 

MD: You do sort of spend the whole match waiting for Basara to get back in and then when you do, you're rewarded for it. He's basically Super Strong Machine with a beard on his mask and slightly different, but just as impactful offense. He came in, absolutely trucked Fujisaki with three of four huge and nasty power moves like a waterwheel slam and power bomb before crushing him with a frog splash only to get rolled up quickly to end it.

Before that, you had a long stretch of Azteca vs Wolf and they were matched up well, taking it up and down with gritty matwork, pretty nasty kicks (some that hit far better than others) and just enough flash, Azteca's somersault senton and Wolf's spin wheel kick in the corner, for instance. Pretty fun way to start this thing off, even if I miss Basara already.

ER: The first thing you notice about Basara is his excellent mask, with long mustache and billy goat's beard like he's the Lorax, or a shabby Pei Mei. Then you notice that he's wearing capri tights, and has an upper body that looks like baby Masa Saito. Any Japanese wrestler who opts for the capri tights is automatically one of the most dangerous men in the room, but add in a budding Masa Saito body and you know they're a menace. I liked everyone here, thought each person brought something. Azteca and Wolf were near style mirrors, throwing kicks with similar speed and style and each having their own way to work a headscissor. Azteca threw a KO kick a foot over Wolf's head, which was really the only misstep, but I also liked how Azteca sold Wolf's kicks more than Wolf sold Azteca's. Wolf had a spinning heel kick in the corner that landed with real thump, and his high bridge fisherman's suplex looked so good and had such a tight grip that I bought it as a nearfall. But this match was all about Basara's hot tag, where he simply entered the ring and forced his will on Fujisaki. Headbutts, a sidewalk slam that looked like he was aiming to concuss, a senton that aimed to land as heavy as possible, and a frog splash that was big enough that it felt like a finish. I liked the real finish, where Fujisaki reversed a vertical suplex into an inside cradle, because Basara looked like he was really straining to complete his suplex while Fujisaki was weighting him down into a cradle, believably dragging him down into a loss. 

Kamikaze/Masakazu Fukuda vs. Hiroyoshi Kotsubo/Masayoshi Motegi

PAS: Another fun WAR tag with really stiff guys working stiff. Kamikaze is just a super fun wrestler to watch, and he especially turns it up at the end, with a really nasty stiff clothesline and a bunch of tubby highspots which landed hard. The Motegi and Kotsubu team is a bit generic, but work and land hard. They definitely put the right team over though. 

MD: This was good from bell to bell. I thought Kotsubo and Fukada worked especially well together, lots of tricked out reversals including one great fight over the arm at one point. Motegi asserted himself the most, taking over pretty much every time he came in, though they were able to isolate his leg and tear it apart a bit mid-match. There was one slap fight between him and (I think) Fukuda and I could have used more of that, especially since the only match with him. Fukuda and Kamikaze opened things up with basically the first real double team flurry of the match to pick up the win on Kotsubo.

ER: I'm kind of used to Motegi being one of the guaranteed worst guys in any given match, which isn't even so much a diss to Motegi, but more that he is often in matches with more interesting guys. Here he looked like young aggressive Rusher Kimura and was teamed with a real punk in Kotsubo. Kotsubo was super aggressive on the mat and worked holds like a bully, flattening guys out just to punish. This got real good when Kamikaze stopped being a pushover and started throwing Kawada kicks at Motegi's forehead then kicking him straight in the kneecap to drop him. He was really bending Motegi's leg on a kneebar, and that knee work came back spectacularly late in the match when Kamikaze broke up a bridging German with a sweeping kick to take out the bridge and make Motegi yell. Motegi made this great one legged tag out, throwing a knee and pushing off his good leg to leap toward Kotsubo, and Kotsubo came in and immediately threw a backfist at Kamikaze's cheekbone, demanding the weaker Fukuda tag in. Kotsubo's victory roll triangle on Fukuda felt like something he really should have been reserving as a finisher, but it was no doubt cool as hell. Motegi takes a Kamikaze clothesline the way Rusher would have, and him getting blown up by that clothesline makes his crucifix reversal of Kamikaze's next clothesline even better. I bit at that nearfall for sure. The ending was tight, real smooth, with a Kamikaze corkscrew senton straight into a Fukuda top rope double stomp, straight into a Kamikaze moonsault. Each of the three hit flush, and Kamikaze's sitout powerbomb was strong. 

Ryo Miyake/Tarzan Goto vs Shigeo Kato/Shinigami - EPIC

PAS: This match was really awesome, pretty classic Japanese tag structure with a veteran teaming with a younger protege. Goto is the perfect guy to be a  veteran mauling a younger guy, and Kato shows a lot of fire, including a great looking dive over the top rope. Goto also does some fun work stomping and punching Shinigami's claw hand.  Miyake has a generic look, but puts some really thump behind everything he threw. Great greasy diner version of an All Japan tag.

MD: This was everything I wanted from this match up. Kato and Shinigami were the world's best Kane and X-Pac basically. Kato was scrappy as hell, fighting great odds against Goto and Miyake. They had such a size advantage, could put so much more into their strikes, and then when they really went to town on him, it was with chairs and the bell hammer. He still flung himself headlong at them though, including literally with a huge flip dive.

Goto knew what he had in Shinigami though. They built to the two facing off (though Kato tried to run at Goto again before reluctantly making the tag). Of course Shinigami went right for the claw, but Goto was ready, stomping on the hand and then dragging the fingers over the ropes. That just built the anticipation for when he got it later reaching up from underneath to lock it in. He hit his claw slam on Goto and even the top rope one on Miyake but Kato wanted back in there and did well with a frog splash and pile driver, but Goto isolated him and mercilessly crushed him to eliminate he and Shinigami from the tournament. Goto and Miyake are basically not fair here.

ER: Remember when we, as tape traders, thought Tarzan Goto was "a fat load"? I know we weren't seeing the breadth of Goto's career when those comments were made, but he is one of the all time "everyone was initially wrong about him" guys in our circle. Were we all turned off by his sloppy appearance? The very thing that would make him stand out as an instantly unique presence in 2026? Whatever I first thought of Goto after seeing him on my first wrestling tape, a 9th gen 8 hr deathmatch comp, he now obviously looks like an ideal pro wrestler. Like Hashimoto. We got Tarzan vs. Tenryu (it rules) but we never got Tarzan vs. Hashimoto, but it's Goto performances like this that make it so clear that he was a sloppy man's Hashimoto. Goto had the perfect mix of Kurisu shoot stiffness and incredible worked offense. He is capable of headbutting a man hard enough to scramble both brains, or working one of the tightest safest worked headbutts possible. He will kick you in your spine as hard as possible or throw one of the more ungodly chokeslams I've seen, but he also has perfect worked punches, as if he worked Memphis in the mid 80s or something. Every clothesline he throws is the best clothesline on the entire show. He has such a fantastic left hook delivery, unlike anyone else's clothesline. His brainbuster was 100% the kind of move that should finish a match, but several things he did were the kinds of things that should finish matches. He is a presence. 

Kato and Shinigami - a man who seems like he is working an Alabama Onryo gimmick - are so small that you know they're going to be massacred, but I like how drawn out the massacre was. The ending was never in doubt, but this was not a 7 minute mauling, this was a match that gave Kato time to fight. Yes, it also gave Goto more time to fight, and that's what gives us Tarzan literally breaking a folding chair over Kato's face, giving him a wicked atomic drop on a table that did not budge even slightly (so he just slammed Kato as hard as he could ass first on a table), even smashing his head with the ring bell hammer! The match going nearly 20 minutes made Kato looks stronger just because of how much violence he withstood. Miyake is a Goto protege and is shaped exactly like Greg Valentine and throws elbows almost as hard as Valentine. He even walks like Valentine! Well, like a 5'7 Valentine, but still I had to go check when Valentine's first Japan tour was (five years after Miyake's birth, sadly). Kato shows constant fire and gets a great late match run against Miyake, hitting a frog splash with real impact (for his small size) and shockingly piledriving the much heavier Valentine Son. He spikes him good, too, so I guess his murder by Goto brainbuster was justified. 

Shinichi Nakano/Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs. Rikio Ito/Shinichi Shino - FUN

MD: Cleverly done but not too much of a match. Ito and Shino attacked right as Fujiwara and Nakano were entering the ring and they controlled on Nakano for a while. This included a half crab and an over the shoulder backbreaker. Both were broken up by Fujiwara, the latter with an awesome punch to the ribs.

Transition had Fujiwara break up a top rope move from the outside setting up a Nakano superplex. Then they tried to put Fujiwara into a crab, never a good idea. Finish had Nakano go for a Fujiwara Armbar and then both partners coming in for tandem stomps when Ito tried to break it up. Nakano got another Armbar in there to take it. They'd be working again so they kept this one straight and to the point.

PAS: This was a pretty nifty opening match, with Ito and Shino trying to turn it into a brawl, and then got dragged into Fujiwara's world. I really liked how Nakano kept going for the Fujiwara armbar, like he was trying to show his mentor what he had learned. Fujiwara is of course my favorite, but I liked how little he was in this match, he was like the shark in Jaws, and this was the first act of the movie, he is coming, but right now he is lurking. 

Tadahiro Fujisaki/Wolf vs. Gokuaku Umibozu/Masashi Aoyagi - GREAT

MD: I guess Umibozu and Aoyagi had a bye of some sort. Umibozu is Hirofumi Miura and this is an absolute mauling. Wonderful stuff. Aoyagi, of course, hits like a truck, or a tree trunk. He hits very, very hard.

Umibozu is fascinating though. There's this casualness to how he lays shots in, just slaps out of nowhere and sort of effortless kicks. Occasionally, Fujisaki and Wolf get some hope. Wolf tries about six different leglocks or twists in a row and Umibozu just casually snaps a kick over to knock him off. There's no real relief for them. If you're not getting the taste slapped out of your mouth by Umibozu, Aoyagi is cratering your chest in. In the end, Fujisaki managed a dragon sleeper, but Umibozu just brought up a couple of knees, rolled him over, hit a Scorpion Death Drop and then put his skull through the mat with a fisherman's buster. Serene violence, this one.

PAS: This owned, it is fun to see Fujisaki who would go on to be one of the all time great Puro crowbars as Fugo Fugo under the learning tree with a pair of all timer asskickers like Aoyagi and Umibozu. Aoyagi just put so much sauce on every shot, he throws chest punches like he is trying to defibrillate a flatline patient. Umibozu is like a hyper violent Orange Cassidy, he doesn't seem to be giving a huge fuck about the match, but everything he lands is horrifying.  

Takashi Okamura/Yoshikazu Taru vs. Kamikaze/Masakazu Fukuda

MD: And Okamura and Taru would be the other recipients of the bye I guess. First few minutes of this made me think it was going to be a mauling but it had one of the hottest finishing stretches I've seen in a while. Gripping stuff. They started hot too with Taru almost KOing Kamikaze with a high kick and then Kamikaze returning the favor with some straight punches that dropped Taru.

Once it got going and Taru came back and got the tag, Taru and Okamura did a pretty damn good job dismantling Fukuda and Kamikaze though. Okamura's shots were just nasty and varied. Honestly, Fukuda and Kamikaze did stay in it more than I thought they would, with Fukuda fighting out of the corner and Kamikaze hitting big offense on Taru and the two of them unleashing their combo in the corner that won them the first round match. It's just that whenever Okamura came back in he mowed through the opposition.

Stretch had them unloading on Taru. Tons of great offense including a deep deep exploder by Fukada. When Okamura came in, Fukada caught a foot and jammed an elbow down on the knee. But Okamura came back with the craziest jumping spin kick. Neither side could put the other away though. Finally, Okamura hit a Northern Lights but Fukada shifted somehow into a cross arm breaker breathtakingly and Okamura rolled him up for three. Hell of a finish.

PAS: This was really a hidden classic, just an incredible match between four guys most people haven't heard of. I love a Gi guys vs. Wrestlers match, with our Gi guys beating chunks off of the wrestlers and the wrestlers responding with big suplexes and Kamikaze's fat boy flying. Matt is right about the finishing run, it was as cool a back and forth spot fest finishing run as I can ever remember seeing, As intricate as your MPRO matches, but with everything given a chance to breath and the shots landed with brutal force. It feels like something which would have an incredible reputation if we had it in April 1997, as opposed to it showing up like magic nearly 30 years later. 

Ryo Miyake/Tarzan Goto vs. Gokuaku Umibozu/Masashi Aoyagi-GREAT

MD: I don't think it was until this match that I really appreciated just how many styles were represented here. Miyake and Goto were over the top and wild, downright hardcore while also being big and beefy and hard hitting. They ambushed Umibozu and Aoyagi to start. Aoyagi was able to fire back in the ring but Miyake held his own and hit a dive on him. That did some damage to his leg though and Umibozu was able to dig down on it right until Goto had enough and broke a chair over his head.

After that they leaned in hard on opening Umibozu up. He'd fight back a bit but get shut down by a Goto headbutt. He finally fought his way back against Miyake, hitting a DDT and unleashing Aoyagi on him. Lots of brutal offense especially in the corner until Goto had enough and started swinging a chair again, this time getting fed up and nailing the ref too. Things devolved into chaos (and a DQ) and chairs flying in and out of the ring. I can't say I didn't want to see Goto and Miyake up against Fujiwara but there really are no wrong answers at this point.

PAS: What a tournament this was, just great styles clash after great styles clash. Really a throwback to early days FMW here, with a pair of karate guys against wild brawlers.  This is the first time Cagematch listed Goto and Aoyagi against each other, but it feels like they have years of history. Just a pair of awesome characters whose differences work well in tandem. Both guys seem like unstoppable forces in different ways, and it just makes sense that everything broke down into a DQ, I was able to snatch a singles match between them in the same bulk buy and I can't wait to check it out. 

Shinichi Nakano/Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs. Takashi Okamura/Yoshikazu Taru-GREAT

MD: It's telling that Okamura and Taru were absolute killers in their last match and Nakano and Fujiwara really had their number here. They got their pound of flesh on Nakano with some nasty shots but it wasn't nearly the same. Also interesting is that this was more of a "moves" match from Fujiwara than most, and he's not really known for that. 

Okamura pressed him in the corner to start but he got underneath him and hit sort of a slightly exploding belly to belly. He followed it up with a headbutt and this driving body slam where he sort of lost him and sort of choke him down (Nakano actually hit one similar later so it might have just been an Okamura thing, but it worked for me). After Nakano's comeback (just a single strike out of the ropes but it was a nasty one), he hit another belly to belly on Taru followed by a pile driver. They had some nice kicks (but then so did Nakano) but they never really had a chance here.

PAS: I love when Fujiwara has contempt for someone, he spent much of this match sneering at Taru and Okamura, parrying their kicks and just showing contempt. It is such a great pro-wrestling vibe, and it always makes any comeuppance he gets so satisfying. Fujiwara and Nakano run the table here, but every shot Okamura and Taru land is awesome because it so visibly pisses off Fujiwara. 

Shinichi Nakano/Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs. Gokuaku Umibozu/Masashi Aoyagi-GREAT

MD: Despite being the finals, things go along pretty much how you'd expect early on. Fujiwara and Aoyagi match up very well. Fujiwara gets one very good sweeping takedown. No real advantage. Likewise Nakano and Umibozu. Nakano has more of a meat and potatoes style honestly, and he does take over with that. But then something happens right at the edge of the camera. Fujiwara takes off his boots. When Nakano gets that advantage and tags, Fujiwara enters barefoot. This cannot be a good thing.

And it is not. He immediately kicks Umibozu a few times and starts punching him in the face. Then he punches him some more, headsbutts him, and tags in Nakano who rolls him out and smacks him in the skull with a chair. Fujiwara makes it back in not long after and punches Umibozu more in the face. This is not going well for Umibozu. He fires back on Nakano finally, but Nakano hits one of the best recoiling shots I've ever seen to floor him. Umibozu finally is able to get a sweeping shot and redirect Nakano into his own corner but that was a hell of a mauling for a few minutes there. Barefoot Fujiwara, my god.

They fight even (including Fujiwara matching kicks with Aoyagi) until they catch Nakano laying by the apron and take over on him. They get a modicum of revenge on him until he's able to hit an enziguiri out of nowhere and tag Fujiwara in. Umibozu and Aoyagi still have the advantage though, right until we enter the Fujiwara headbutt comedy hour. I'll be honest, as entertaining as this was and as much as I would have loved it in a vacuum, this feels like the sort of thing that should have been in an earlier round. It does lead right to the finishing stretch where Fujiwara holds Aoyagi at bay while Nakano finishes Umibozu off with a power slam and Northern Lights to win the tournament. Lots of good stuff here. I just had that one nitpick.  

PAS: This match was so close to an all-timer level. Fujiwara taking off his boots to show Aoyagi "I can kickbox too Motherfucker" was one of the coolest wrestling moments I can remember. I have watched so much Fujiwara in the last 15 years, so great that he still haws songs I haven't heard before. Umibozu and Aoyagi are such asskickers, that they met barefoot Fujiwara shot for shot, and really laid an asskicking on Nakano. I agree with Matt that the Fujiwara ringpost hard head comedy spot kind of cuts off the momentum of the match a bit, and it never really gets back up to the violence inferno of the first 14 minutes. Despite the third act problems, I really loved this match, and this tournament was truly incredible stuff. Well worth the 10 bucks or so.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE AOYAGI

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE TARZAN GOTO

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE FUJIWARA

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Found Footage Friday: HANSEN~! GORDY~! PARK~! FAKE KONNAN~! KENDOS~! MOCHIZUKI AND FRIENDS~!

Terry Gordy vs. Stan Hansen AJPW 6/8/90

MD: We only had around seven minutes of this previously and those seven minutes are pretty much what you'd expect, a super hardnosed finishing stretch between two monsters with gold on the line. I went through every single match we have on tape for 1989 and 1990 All Japan over the last five years or so, and, of course, we keep getting more, both in this format and with handhelds, but it's always enjoyable to push at the conventional wisdom and see how it holds up. I may have mentioned this before, but one of the biggest surprises of 1990 AJPW was how Baba dealt with the loss of Tenryu. This show obviously has Misawa vs Jumbo, right? And yes, there is a push throughout the year to promote Super Generation Army vs Tsuruta-Gun, but that often wasn't the main title scene for the back half of 89. When it came to the Triple Crown and the tag titles, it was foreign hosses up and down, Hansen, Doc, Gordy, Spivey, and even a bit of Bigelow thrown in for good measure. Off to the side you had Land of Giants and Abby and Kimala II, and even Andre. Big dudes. They couldn't present the larger than life force that was Tenryu, so they compensated with more conventional giants on top, all the while giving time for Misawa, Kawada, Kobashi to develop and become more and more credible. It was a giant bandaid and the flip flopping of the Triple Crown is a great example of it.

With the full footage, what we see here is a title match style fight between two absolute monsters. They work it like Jumbo would often work his title matches, on the mat and with holds, but with these two that meant wrenching of necks and grinding of faces, just brutal stuff, power against power, with technique only utilized to open the door for more rough and tumble hurting. It's twenty minutes of the two of them throwing every imaginable strike at one another, just laying it in and meeting each other half way. On some level, every time they dropped down to a hold felt like a momentary mercy, because at least they weren't absolutely smashing each other, but then you saw the hold and just how hard they were struggling against one another to put on the pressure or how to escape and you realize that there's no mercy in a world where there's a title between Hansen and Gordy. It all escalates towards moments of opportunity, Hansen hitting a lariat out of the corner as Gordy goes to the well one too many times, Gordy (who survived that lariat only by rolling out of the ring) ducking another wild flailing arm to sneak in his DDT. Ultimately, Gordy couldn't hit the powerbomb. It was never a case of a simple block though. It was Hansen going up and getting squashed in his attempt at self-preservation, bodies clashing and crashing in unique, visually striking ways. Gordy decided that the only way he could really get an edge on Hansen down the stretch was that corner clothesline, turning his body into a freight train thundering across the ring. Hansen hit that first lariat out of it, and then later on he got an amazing roll up nearfall, and in the end, stopped it just long enough to duck and create distance for a second lariat and the win. This was the sort of program that had to carry the company though, so post match Doc rushed into prevent the celebration and to destroy Hansen. Really an amazing title match now that we have all of it. People should go back for this.

PAS: Holy hell what a war, on first impression this felt on the level of the absolute best Gordy matches ever, and in the same tier as the Hansen All Japan bangers. It felt like these guys were both taking things personally almost from the beginning. There are some really grinding collar and elbow tie ups, and Hansen took Gordy into the corner and popped him hard right on his ear, and from that point on it felt like a series of escalating receipts by each guy, getting uglier and uglier. Every facelock, kneebar, stomp and punch felt like it was getting out of hand. The little stuff was awesome, and the big stuff was huge and incredible. Hansen takes an incredible bump and sell on Gordy's DDT and we get a couple of incredible Hansen lariats. Post match was awesome too as Hansen may be the only person on earth who can look momentarily credible brawling one on two against the Miracle Violence Connection.  This feels like as good as a discovery as we have ever had in this project, an all-time great match in a way which is just completely missing from pro-wrestling these days. Loved every second.

ER: It's wild to find out this late in the game that Misawa/Jumbo might not have been the best match at Budokan on 6/8/90. Getting the missing two-thirds of a Triple Crown Title change 35 years later makes me think that All Japan was suppressing the footage of the better match that night so as not to overshadow the then-biggest moment of Misawa's career, because now we know how special Gordy's transitional Triple Crown loss really was. Somehow, we are still finding matches that raise the stock of two different legends. This is one of the greatest Stan Hansen singles match performances of all time, and it might be the actual greatest singles match performance of Terry Gordy's career. The full footage gives us such a captivating fight between two killers, Gordy coming off as a man who has no plans on losing his new title, forcing Hansen into one of his finest ever vulnerable performances. Hansen sells more in this match than any match I've seen, and he is amazing at it; Gordy comes off so mean and so punishing that it gives us the gift of a Stan Hansen match where he's working from underneath for longer stretches than you've seen. What a gift. 

We never got to see all of the matwork in this special affair. That's always the first thing that goes. But Gordy and Hansen work the mat in a way we will never see again, and rarely saw then. This was not two men going for guard passes, this was two huge men shoving each other around on the mat, a constant struggle lock-up turning into fight from their bellies, both men laid out but applying full pressure to the other. Every quick headlock turns into more super heavyweight mat resistance, any attempt to pick up the other man turns into both men falling on top of each other and fighting more from a horizontal position. Te best part of the matwork? Each man punching the other's downed body from their knees, in a way that looked more like a alley mugging gone murder. More matwork should have Terry Gordy punching down from his knees like he's stabbing an intruder. 

Hansen flattens out on a Gordy attempt at a double leg, Gordy pancakes Hansen when Hansen's body goes out from under him blocking a powerbomb, a Gordy DDT spikes Hansen and drops his full weight on Gordy; Gordy can use Hansen's size and aggression against us, and it leads to Hansen more desperate than we ever get to see. How many times have you seen Hansen get slumped in a corner, resting on the bottom buckle to hold himself up. How many times have you seen Hansen absorb an impact and drop to his knees or stomach, fall on his face, fall over the bottom rope. Terry Gordy makes Stan Hansen fight like a desperate man and I can count on one hand the number of men who have effectively done that. Stan Hansen desperately pulls Gordy by the trunks from his knees just to bury his head in Gordy's stomach, behavior you never see Hansen need to ever entertain. Look at the way Stan Hansen scrambles for three different cradling leveraged pins, and how they're three of the best pins in any title match. Hansen was using his off balanced weight and trying to force and keep Gordy's shoulders to the mat in ways he never has to do with anyone else. Terry Gordy was one a higher plane and never flying higher, and we get to see a Stan Hansen who is actually coming up against something dangerous. 

But also? Stan Hansen rocks Terry Gordy's shit on multiple crowd gasping occasions. There might be nothing I love seeing more in pro wrestling than Stan Hansen kicking a downed man with his entire lower leg. Every Hansen kick to the length of any man's body gets the exact same celebratory reaction from me, a Guaranteed Oof. I revere Guaranteed Oofs. Their durability provides consistent comfort in ways we shouldn't take for granted. I would scream the ugliest scream of my life if Stan Hansen had kicked me in the chest or kneed me in the cheekbone the way he did Gordy, and I would be left with neck pain for life with either of his Out of Nowhere/Always There lariats. Any match that has a surprise Hansen western lariat that doesn't lead to the finish, is swung blindly, at eye level, making Budokan jump to its feet, it's a guaranteed great match. 

Stan Hansen doesn't work the lariat into any match for the hell of it. He has plans in store when the lariat works as a mid-match reset, a way to slow his beating and stop a hungry zombie. Terry Gordy loses his Triple Crown - he looked so fucking cool and convincing carrying those three belts, that a Japanese man was holding a large Confederate flag at ringside. How fucking weird is that? - three days after winning it, but he beat Stan Hansen so bad that Hansen had to use a Desperation Lariat. This was one of the greatest matches of the 90s, and of two guys who had eras of great matches. 

It will never be like this again.  

Kendo Star/Kendo/Monarca vs. Principe Island/Konnan/Hombre Bala CMLL 1990?

MD: Another week, another young Park match. These really do help the guy's already stellar case as he's fascinating to watch here. First of all, tho3 ugh, this Konnan el Barbaro, being not the Konnan but instead some tree trunk like big lug, was kind of just there. It was funny towards the start of the segunda where he was jumping up and down to feed all of Kendo and Kendo Star's flourishes but with no life to it. He did take a crazy bump that we barely saw upside down into the chairs during the comeback so good for him there. He also had a pretty swank furry jacket, so that was something. Hombre Bala matched up well with Kendo Star to start, and may have been a central pairing though it was hard to tell.

Really, we're watching this for Park though, and he was paired with Kendo and the two of them meshed perfectly. Kendo was a guy who knew how to be theatrical, knew how to play to the crowd, knew how to come off like a Star, and he knew how to get the most out of a petulant bastard like Park. They were able to rope run and feed for each other and everything else, but they had a great bit where they just got in each other's face, escalating from stares to slaps to pushes to a dropkick from Kendo with Principe Island charging back in only to slump in a fit of unreleased angst. The beatdown was fine, but Principe was outside for a good chunk of it. I did like the double stretch they took the fall with, like a rudo version of la estrella. The comeback came when they were really laying it in on Kendo with a triple team and saw some big bumps like the one from Konnan. Finish was clever, as the refs were tied up with the other four doing some spots in the corner and Principe slipped in a brutal foul on Kendo. It got overturned post match but everything stayed chippy and hot. The Kendo vs Principe Island rivalry was prime for a hair match. Again, he was just so emotive and seething with upstart energy in these matches. It's crazy to think that he had most of the rest of his career as a mask and didn't lose a bit of the charisma.

Masaaki Mochizuki/TARU/Takashi Okamura vs. Masakazu Fukuda/Kamikaze/Hiroyoshi Kotsubo WYF 3/20/1997

SR: This was the first match between these 6 guys. All their matches are great, and this is in Korakuen Hall and feels especially wild because WYF fans hate the karate guys at this stage, so it feels ultra heated.  Match was pretty much the perfect mix of shootstyle and WAR-esque potatoes/scrappiness with that trademark WYF levels of unpolished, dirty fighting. Early goings were really good as WYF guys kept their opponents grounded in scrappy fashion. Even Kotsubo looked really good as he kept taking downs with explosive shooting takedowns, at one point even leading to both guys tumbling outside and brawling on the floor.  Kamikaze is impeccable in these matches, kicking people in the face, hammering a guy with punches and taunting the karatekas further. Fukuda also looked great - just hurling dudes with suplex that looked insanely forceful, and trying to crush peoples face with dropkicks and stomps. Buko Dojo guys started breaking out their kicks later and it's everything you can ask for. There's a pretty great dive sequence, Mochizuki flying at people with kicks, Buko guys breaking up pins and submissions with nasty kicks etc. Even the Kotsubo vs Taru matchup which is really shit on paper ends up being good. WYF was striking gold with  this feud in 1997, and I'm so happy we get the beginning of the feud, really heated and violent from the get go.

MD: As familiar as Sebastian is with this stuff, it's a stretch for me. It's good to stretch though. If this is new to you, here's a cheat sheet. On one side, Taru has the shinier black vest. Okamura has the mullet. And Mochizuki has the white letters on his back. On the other, Kotsubo has the singlet, and Kamikaze has the frosted tips for his hair. That's about all you need along those lines. What I love about this is that it seems to encompass just about every style of pro wrestling except for hiding the object. It's presented, more than anything else, as shoot-style adjacent, with a lot of strikes and struggles for holds, but the fact it's a six-man (and I love tag wrestling in this setting) forces pro wrestling nonsense on it right from the get go; I'm talking controlling in corners and coming in to break up holds or even to join them. You'll have guys rolling around on the mat or throwing kicks and then immediately Mochizuki will be training slaps with Kotsubo or doing dropkick/spin wheel kick spots where they crash into each other. It takes itself seriously and treats everything with weight and respect while still building up to over the top stuff before dragging it back down to more fundamentally sound grappling or sparring. Fukada will toss people around. Things will spill out to the floor. The crowd pops for just about every piece of impact. And it all builds to dives, top rope moves, and bombs. They're able to layer it throughout the match and put weight behind the impacts, underpinning it all with animosity, so it never quite feels like excess no matter how much they squeeze into twenty minutes. 

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2019 Ongoing MOTY List: Ishikawa & Fujiwara Team Up

16. Yoshiaki Fujiwara/Yuki Ishikawa vs. Minoru Tanaka/Hiroyoshi Kotsubo Holy War 2/8

PAS: Even in 2019 Fujiwara and Ishikawa are a true dream team. This is an exhibition rather then a super heated tag, but if it's an exhibition you want, Fujiwara and Ishikawa are going to exhibit some things. I really liked the standup exchanges with Tanaka and Ishikawa, Ishikawa uses head movement nicely to avoid some shots but eats a big high kick. Kotsubo (a BattlArts guy who also worked as Tsubo Genjin) and Fujiwara do a lot of matwork with Kotsubo using power, but falling into Fujiwara's little traps, I especially loved him using his foot to put on a leglock from the guard. A good start for the year of Ishikawa!

ER: I actually had no idea Kotsubo was also Tsubo Genjin. I remember seeing him on a 2005 Futen show and thinking he was an untrained former amateur wrestler. Whoops. But this is a fun 10 minute falling out, me watching Minoru Tanaka and Yuki Ishikawa go at it in 2019 like teenage me getting into shootstyle so many years ago. Tanaka is a guy I loved then, whose style didn't age with my tastes, but I sure liked him and Yuki going at it here. I loved him popping Yuki with a high kick, and Yuki's slip and fall sell in the ropes before Tanaka hits him with a great hard dropkick to the chest. Kotsubo matches up nicely with Fujiwara, and it's fair since he and Tanaka were the young lions of this match (at a combined age of 97), and some of the best parts of this were Fujiwara and Kotsubo rolling on the mat with Fujiwara trying to catch a limb. Kotsubo even smacked the hell out of Ishikawa with a couple of brutal palm strikes down the stretch; you can really see Yuki's head whip back hard on one of them, a great combo. The finish was so cool it actually made me exclaim aloud, watching alone, a total classic Fujiwara moment: Kotsubo goes for a single leg takedown and Fujiwara throws his weight forward, hooking Kotsubo's outstretched arm with his own leg and stretching it for the submission. I didn't realize what Fujiwara was pulling until Fujiwara was already pulling it, and it felt like I realized Kotsubo was sunk the same moment Kotsubo realized it.


2019 MOTY MASTER LIST

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