Found Footage Friday: PRE-MUTA SCALE MUTO SCALE~! BUZZ~! NEW VS. NOW~! BIGELOW~! FUJINAMI~!

Buzz Sawyer vs. Keiji Muto NJPW 7/21/87

MD: This episode of NJPW TV wasn't in the usual sets over the years. It had fallen through the cracks. There's very, very little written about this match, for instance, and the match deserves to have a lot written about it. It's wild. I have some questions about this episode of TV actually. There are some hype pieces before the matches and I don't know if they were just clipped out of how I usually watched NJPW or if this was a different show but they are cool and of the times. Laser lights and noises as you see Buzz posing and stuff.

Muto was Space Lone Wolf here, coming out to Final Countdown. He was getting a push as the young guy in NOW but he really felt like an outlier here. His stuff was smoother and more theatrical than anyone else in the company. He didn't fit in against the UWF guys, for instance, but since he was the only guy like that, he stood out. Buzz, is, of course, way over the top here, funny faces, noises, whining, etc.

At first this is a normal match with Muto controlling the arm and Buzz hitting the floor and Muto hitting the handspring elbow in the corner. But then Buzz tosses Muto out and they end up sort of under the ring with Buzz biting him and obviously some big blading happens here, as they both comes up bloody. Buzz works the wound: headbutts, biting, a chairshot. Muto bites to break a hold and they slam each other's head into the mat. It's pretty glorious carnage by this point, exacerbated by Muto punching the wound in the corner and Buzz hitting a snap suplex on the floor. All the while, the blood masses all the more. Muto reverses a suplex. Buzz gets his power slam. Muto tries for a desperate roll up out of nowhere.

It builds and builds, but to what? It builds to Buzz getting knocked out of the ring. He staggers, stands, arms extended, welcoming, blood running down his face. I've never seen a man waiting for a dive quite like this. He invites it. He longs for it. He wants nothing more than for Muto to embrace his in this grisly bloodletting, for the two to become one there on the floor. He craves an escalation of the violence, an increase of the danger, for flesh to hit flesh and bone to crash against bone.

And Muto, Space Lone Wolf, a boy becoming a man before everyone's eyes, does not disappoint him. 

The match is shortly thereafter thrown out, a heap of bodies and blood, but what a ride while it happened.

ER: Buzz is no longer working as Mad Dog, here he is some kind of ill, demented, disease riddled dog. He's weepy, he's weird, he sometimes appears to be crying, he mainly appears to be unwell. It's a totally unique take on the unleashed monster gaijin. He's not out and swinging at a soul, he's like a rabid dog who goy sprayed by a skunk and he's just wandering around and sort of whimpering, effects of the rabies hitting his system hard. Every time the camera cuts to Muta in the ring, he's wearing an expression of concerned distrust, no clue what this diseased dog has in store.

As he works over Sawyer's arm, Sawyer howls and whimpers and you can see a version of this match that doesn't build to blood and stays Sawyer fighting through arm work and I can see an interesting match there...but it plays so much better as Muto using it as a way to restrain a large unpredictable animal before he breaks free from his restraints. I don't know if I've ever seen a scene like Buzz holding Muto on the floor of the gym for so long, biting at his head. It goes on long enough that it almost seems like the illusion is broken, as it always looks like a man holding a smaller man down solely for the purpose of gigging his head, but the longer it goes it dips into the wrestling illusion being broken and back into something Not Supposed To Be Happening. The more young boys swarm, the more it feels like this diseased animal had done something unpredictable even for him. When Muto comes up bloody, I admittedly expected there to be more, but I also don't think there are many instances of Muto bleeding before this. The truly shocking thing happens just after, when Muto gets his first chance to bite Buzz back, and it is truly disgusting. Muto digs the entirety of his full lower jaw of teeth into Sawyer's forehead, and when he pulls away Sawyer has so much dark crimson on his face and chest that I said aloud "Muto fucking bit him FOR REAL!?" 

Buzz Sawyer has this magical blood that behaves differently from any other bleeder I've seen. His blood is not free flowing. He tried several times, earlier in the match, to bust himself open by slamming his head into the railing, but he only ever got a stain. Now, cut open, his blood does not flow free but it flows in spurts, when attacked. I don't know if I've seen bleeding like this. He spurts blood after Muto bites him...then it stops. Until Muto rans him into the ringpost, and then a new batch gushes out all at once, repainting his body. It's fascinating. The whole things ends in a mess, Buzz staggering around to let everyone in the arena see the damage, Muto looking shell shocked. I love the use of Sawyer's signature bump, flying out backwards through the ropes from a dropkick, and I loved him simply standing up from the floor, arms raised. He flies through the ropes and rises from the depths like Michael Myers standing up after a shotgun blast, and Muto knows his only chance is to ignore rules and referees and just try to escape intact. 

Every new piece of Buzz Sawyer footage adds to his legacy, the type of person who we will likely never see in pro wrestling again. Shape, look, attitude, style. We're not getting any of that back. Celebrate this.  

 

Antonio Inoki/Yoshiaki Fujiwara/Masa Saito vs. Akira Maeda/Kengo Kimura/Nobuhiko Takada NJPW 7/21/87 

MD: This was right in the midst of the NOW vs NEW feud where instead of having, for instance, Choshu's Army come in and declare war on everyone, they positioned all the old guys (and Muto) against all the younger guys. Inoki, Fujiwara, and Saito were sort of the leaders of NOW. Maeda, Fujinami, and Choshu were the leaders of NEW. This meant that Inoki could be positioned against all of the other top stars and none of them could be positioned against each other. It was a real frustrating state of affairs that only lasted a couple of months even if it did make for at least a couple of fresh match ups. It also absolutely killed Kengo Kimura's momentum. He was one of the hottest acts of the year having turned on Fujinami (in a Choshu-esque way) at the start of the year and disappearing to "learn boxing". 

Regardless of how frustrating the overall feud was, just given the people involved here and the potential match-ups, this was going to be fun and heated. This wasn't a subtle feud either. The commentary more or less outright said as the NOW team came out that they were trying to protect their spots and they presented it as a battle between fathers and sons (or at least older and younger brothers).

We never got that satisfying Inoki vs Maeda singles match but it was always exciting to the crowds when they faced off in a setting like this. Even before getting the towel off, Inoki charged him here. But all of these match-ups were exciting. The fans wanted to see Fujiwara vs Takada after a year and a half of the two being on the same side. Saito vs Takada was fresh (and felt unlikely). Fujiwara vs Kimura was particularly chippy with Kimura using that boxing skill in the corner (and some slaps) and Fujiwara fighting out. And Inoki vs Maeda when they finally faced off? Well Inoki was a genius in framing it. He took a tag from Saito and time just stopped with a huge pop. Takada was in the ring and he saw Inoki poised to enter and tagged in Maeda, and the place went nuts. It was a minute of awesome scrapping with a rolling kick and the spin wheel kick and headbutts and a half hatch suplex and Inoki scrambling his way to an advantage and Maeda jamming it. Just what you'd want until Inoki made the tag.

But even that was okay because the tag was to Fujiwara so now the crowd got THAT match up. That's the way a match like this worked. Fujiwara did get swept under, and I've seen enough of these, that for him to be the one to take so much offense in the match and work from underneath, well, I knew the ending midway through this bit of heat. It was chaotic enough but he was going to get the armbar on out of nowhere, and he did. All of this did feel larger than life. The feud was a failure but not necessarily because the action wasn't good or fans didn't like specific match ups. It's just that it didn't give them everything they wanted most. 

Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Bam Bam Bigelow 7/21/87

MD: This is usually a solid match up, but maybe not as fun as Bigelow vs Choshu, for instance. They'd wrestle a notorious 3-match series in early 1989 which was about making Fujinami as champion look as dominant as possible as he was teaming with Inoki and Choshu, wherein he won all three matches. 

This was well before that. It's sub-five minutes but I think we get most of it. Bigelow (who came out with a chair threatening the crowd effectively) dominated to start, just clubbering and power moves. I wouldn't say that it was the best clubbering in the world, but it worked. Fujinami came back by ducking a clothesline and leapfrogging Bigelow but then he crashed into Shibata's dad who was reffing. I can only assume he was supposed to crash into him right after the leapfrog which would have been a great visual, but instead, he came up short and had to clothesline him by accident, which came off as pretty funny. Bigelow used this to get a chair and smack Fujinami. He went for a top rope splash with the chair (with Japanese letters on it) on Fujinami, but Fujinami rolled. I'm sure he was supposed to get all the way out of the way but instead he ended up tripping Bigelow on the way down, which was another great visual, this one made better by the miscue. 

If it went to a finish right after that, this would have actually been very effective and one of the better sub-five minute matches I've seen in a while. Instead, Fujinami threw an enziguiri but then Bigelow went out and eventually over the rail for the DQ instead. Ah well. 

ER: This was like going into an ice cream shop intending to buy a scoop, but getting enticed by the different flavors on display, getting a few different tasty samples on those little wooden spoons...and then you realize the samples scratched that sweet itch and you back out of buying a scoop, annoying every employee in the shop. It's over before it really begins, but contains several moments of intrigue, most of them from the young red singleted Bigelow. You expect a couple big bumps, and get them. Toward the end of the match he ocean crashes over the top to the floor off a dropkick, then takes a faster and even cooler version of that bump going over a guardrail. While I wasn't sure which type of big bumps we'd get, I was expecting them. The neatest things were the things I wasn't expecting. Bigelow had an almost fistdrop turned into a single hand choke. I've never seen Bam Bam do a fistdrop, and this was not intended to be one, but it very clearly was one, just with different intentions. Then a huge missed splash off the top, that turned into a much weirder and cooler and bizarre looking moment. Bigelow had set a chair over Fujinami before going up top, but Fujinami rolled out the way of the splash a bit late. What this wound up doing was causing a fluke log roll effect, where Bigelow was going to splash flat on the chair, but instead his ankles caught Fujinami mid-roll and it whipped Bigelow into a face plant on the chair. A much worse bump than was planned, but much cooler in an unintentional cool accident way. 

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There Ain't No Better Way of Killing Time Than Loving Tony Halme

Tony Halme vs. Shinya Hashimoto NJPW 12/26/90 - GREAT

ER: Upload King Roy Lucier just helped me fill in a gap in my Halme viewing, but giving us the very first Hashimoto/Halme "Different Style Fight". We still (to my knowledge) don't have his Soul Taker fight, but having the first Hash fight is great. And this is a match that relies mostly on Hashimoto's facial selling, his body selling, and his powerful charisma. Halme was mostly in there as stoic Ivan Drago, immediately battering Hashimoto's body with huge hooking shots. Hashimoto was really theatrical here, going down from shots in big twisting twirling tumbles, holding his body while crying out in anguish, yelling out to ring boys for help when needed. Halme wasn't great at selling Hashimoto's shots, leaning back on the ropes while absorbing kicks, getting pushed across the ring by kicks before coming back with a haymaker; but with a charisma fireball like Hash doing the emotional work, Halme didn't need to be great at selling. He needed to come off like a T-800, a guy who was going to keep coming forward until his mission was complete. 

Hashimoto was great at peppering in big moments, keeping the crowd riled by throwing nothing but big kicks, including a great moment where he hits his rolling spin kick that bounces Halme off the ropes and tumbling back over Hash, but Hash can't capitalize due to tweaking his knee. And that knee becomes the great story of the rest of the fight, as Hashimoto gets more aggressive with takedowns (a big judo takedown starts the 3rd, and we get a terrific bit of physics involving Hash kicking Halme into the ropes, Halme rebounding back, and Hash staying low to use Halme's momentum to throw him. We got several strong visuals down the stretch, of Chono hurriedly taping up Hashimoto's knee during the round break, the sad final shots of Hashimoto unable to put weight on his leg so just absorbing shots while taking a knee, still trying to figure out a way to win before the stoppage. Had I been in the crowd, I would be dying to see the return fight. You know Hashimoto wouldn't be the type to blame the loss on his knee, but every fan there was thinking "If he didn't come up limping after that one kick, Halme would have had no chance". Their Different Style rematch wouldn't happen for another 9 months.

Tony Halme/Bad News Allen/Scott Norton vs. Shinya Hashimoto/Riki Choshu/Keiji Muto  NJPW 4/16/92 - GREAT

ER: I could watch trios matches like this on an endless loop and never be bored with pro wrestling ever. Throw together 6 guys of various talent levels, let them do their thing for 10-15 minutes, it's a pretty tough formula for pros to screw up. And this is a match filled with cool pairing possibilities, I like seeing every one of these nine potential match-ups, and they all ruled. They all know exactly what they're doing (well, maybe except Muto, who flips into the ring pre-bell and almost falls on his face, but saves it by continuing the bit and purposely stumbling while throwing his shirt to the crowd), and before the ring intros Halme starts slowly making his way over to the babyface side of things, trying to silently intimidate, and Choshu is having none of it and slaps him the second he gets too close. And again, all the pairings in this are cool. It starts with Norton and Choshu, and Norton is already such a clear star that the crowd is chanting for HIM instead of Choshu! They run into each other with hard lariats (as you'd want) and Norton drops a heavy ass elbow. Bad News and Muto do some really fun hip toss exchanges, and the crowd is already buzzing when it's clear Hash and Halme are going to throw down. 

They do their whole thing: Halme throwing big hooks to the body, Hash flying back with kicks, and I love the violent grace that Hashimoto's spinning heel kick whips through opponents, like a scythe through a wheat field. I really loved Bad News in this. He's the best kind of glue here and, at nearly 50 years old, that's appropriate as he will make fine glue at the factory. He's the dude breaking up submissions with multiple headbutts, he's the guy running distraction on the floor, he's the guy directing his two mammoth white goons to destroy the NJ favorites. Oh, and Allen's fistdrop off the middle rope was sublime. This was all about the gaijin separating Muto from his boys, and it was a great formula. The match honestly could have kept going this same was for another 20 minutes, there were still plenty of untapped match-ups. The abrupt go home ending is the only thing holding this back from being EPIC, as the in-ring was as much constant fun as it looks on paper. But, it was one of those "okay everyone suddenly swarm into the ring and pair off immediately, and don't save your partner in that sharpshooter 2 feet away from you" finishes that tend to happen in these matches. "Hey why did 4 of the 6 guys suddenly jump to the floor to brawl? Oh." Still, this was awesome.


COMPLETE AND ACCURATE TONY HALME

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And Now These Three Remain: Faith, Hope and Love. But the Greatest of These is Yoshiaki Fujiwara

Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs. Dick Murdoch NJPW 10/10/82 - FUN

PAS: One of the coolest things about this NJ HH trove is the chance to see early 80s Fujiwara. I guess this is young Fujiwara although he looks like he is in his mid 40s. Much like the Slaughter match this would have been better five years later, when it would have been competitive. This was more like a competitive squash, but as you might imagine the execution on the simple things in this match was off the charts. Murdoch is so great at working a simple armbar and wristlock, Fujiwara tries a bunch of different adjustments to get out of it, and Murdoch is constantly twisting the wrist in different ways, such masters at work. I also loved how Murdoch kept bionic elbowing Fujiwara's hard head and how frustrated he kept getting, only to get smacked with headbutts. Fujiwara is pretty overqualified to work as Rufus R. Jones, but he is a great Rufus R. Jones.


Yoshiaki Fujiwara/Seiji Sakaguchi/Keiji Muto/Nobuhiko Takada/George Takano vs. Riki Choshu/Tatsumi Fujinami/Akira Maeda/Super Strong Machine/Kengo Kimura NJPW 10/6/87 - EPIC

PAS: The treasure trove of NJ HH footage delivers us what seems to be a previously unearthed New Japan 10 man elimination match. The other Elimination matches finished very high on the NJ DVDVR 80s sets, and this might be a slight step below a MOTD level, it is still really awesome. This was worked at a super sprint pace which works well with all of these guys in this match, and with Choshu, Muto and Fujiwara we have some of the greatest sprint wrestlers ever. I actually really loved Takada in this, he was about as violent as I have seen him, he really kicks the shit out of Choshu and at one point mounts him and lays out some nasty ground and pound. I also love Sakaguchi as a big bruiser chucking people around, he kind of felt like a proto Akira Taue in this. Kind of an odd match structure as the Choshu team gets a four on one advantage on Fujiwara at the end. We get an awesome Stone Cold moment where the crowd in chanting for Fujiwara as he tries to fight everyone, but while he gets a near fall or two, it would have been cooler if he had gotten an elimination before going down. We did get a great Choshu lariat on the finish and Fujiwara sells a Choshu lariat better then anyone. Still that was a minor complaint for an otherwise awesome match. Had no idea this match existed until a week ago, and it was such a treat to have it show up.


COMPLETE AND ACCURATE FUJIWARA

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Masashi Aoyagi Don't Read that Daily News

Masashi Aoyagi/Kengo Kimura/Great Kabuki/Shiro Koshinaka vs. Hiroshi Hase/Kenji Muto/Masahiro Chono/Tatsumi Fujinami NJ 8/2/93s-sGREAT

I pretty much universally enjoy a Heisei Ishingun multi man match. You get a lot of moving parts, doing things, some gang beatdowns and a dope Kabuki uppercut or two. Aoyagi was really fun in this, he gets his eye bruised up at one point, at seems to be adding some mustard to his shots afterward, he really brain kicks Chono at one point. He also ends up eating all of the big moves to lead up to the Dragon Sleeper submission. Hase had a couple of big throws, Koshinaki hit some guys with his butt, the crowd got into it, overall some fun stuff.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE AOYAGI

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Yoshiaki Fujiwara Cannot Carry All The People Because It is Too Burdensome For Him

Yoshiaki Fujiwara/Tatsumi Fujinami/Riki Choshu/Keiji Muto/Hiroshi Hase vs. Great Kabuki/Kengo Kimura/Shiro Koshinaka/Tatsutoshi Goto/Michiyoshi Ohara NJPW 3/21/94 - GREAT

This is a 10 man 2/3 falls gang fight, with Heisei Ishingun facing off with the New Japan boys. The NJ 10 man matches are always great (at least the 20th Century version, fuck if I am going to watch some Bullet Club mess). Really enjoyed Muto in this, this is a match with a lot a clubbing brawlers, so having an infusion of high level athleticism really brings something different. Of course I love some clubbing brawlers and there was a lot of great clubbing here. Our boy Fujiwara is great in these matches, you aren't going to see any of the high level mat work, but you are going to see him choking Koshinaka with a rope and headbutting him in the temple. I think this needed the heat of the Fujiwara v. Saito singles match, that most of this was more wrestling match then blood war. Still the wrestling was good, and I was really surprised at HI going over like that, with Goto hurling Muto off the top rope with a nasty uranage.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE FUJIWARA

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2017 Honorable Mention: 1993 in 2017?

Great Kabuki/TNT/Great Muta v. Tatsumi Fujinami/Riki Choshu/Hiroshi Hase Keiji Muto Produce 7/26

ER: Without knowing who was involved in the match, someone could have said to me "Hey, a trios match just happened in Japan where the average age of the participants was literally 60 years old..." and that really all the information I would have needed to convince me. Vega is the youngster in this one, clocking in at 53 and looking like he's working a Headhunter C gimmick. Kabuki is the oldest at 69, and it honestly wouldn't shock me if he was older. Everybody in this is probably better than expected, especially Hase who to my knowledge hasn't even wrestled in a decade. He's still got a crazy muscular chest and Hitler mustache, and while he adorably couldn't quite stick a kip up, he did a freaking 17 rotation giant swing on Kabuki. After the swing he stumbles around, does his old hip swivel taunt at Muta, and then staggers right into a great TNT lariat. TNT was super chunky here but can still go, and I'd really like to see him in a match with younger guys. His spinning heel kick still looks exactly the same. Hase gets thrown into chairs, scattering poor elderly wrestling fans; we get several instances of mist, with Riki getting sprayed by Muta, Kabuki accidentally spraying TNT, Muta, Muta accidentally spraying Kabuki; We get a Riki lariat, Muta still moves fairly spry and lands a coupld Shining Wizards on Hase (including a brutal one in the corner), and Hase impressively finishes off the match with a flat out awesome uranage and an even better northern lights. He did them on freaking TNT, the biggest dude in the match, and really hoisted him up and over. This was 16 minutes of smiles and good feelings.

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It's Gruesome That Someone So Handsome as Regal Should Care

Lord Steven Regal v. Keiji Muto NJ 11/3/95 EPIC

Regal was so great in Japan, an alternative universe where he spent the 90's working All Japan or New Japan or WAR would be a universe I would like to visit. Muto really doesn't bring a ton to this match, he had some nice slaps and chops and a pretty moonsault, but this was a Regal show. Regal was such a nasty fucker here, stomping on Muto's inseam, elbow him in the eye, palming him in the temple, it was a brutal mauling and really made a match without a ton of action really compelling. The finish with Regal sort of trying a moonsault was a little silly, and it really felt like the wrong guy won. Still these are minor complaints for such a pretty bit of violence.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE REGAL

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SEGUNDA CAIDA DECLARES WAR!!! NJ 2/5 + 2/16 + 6/14/93

WE DECLARE WAR

Genichiro Tenryu/Ashura Hara/Takashi Ishikawa v. Kenji Mutoh/Akira Nogami/Shinya Hashimoto NJ 2/5/93

Pretty much exactly what you want out of this match up on paper. Hashimoto and Tenryu have a couple of nasty little scuffles building up their big singles matches, while the lumpy pissed off duo of Hara and Ishikawa mug the fuck out of Nogami. One thing we definitely got out of the 80's New Japan set is that Akira Nogami will take as big an asswhipping as anyone in wrestling history. After we go back and forth for a while, the WAR team kick his ass up and down the ring. Hashimoto isn't in this match a ton, but after Nogami gets pinned he attacks Tenryu and looks like he tries to take his eye out. More of a teaser then a great match, but a nice teaser.

Genichiro Tenryu/Ashura Hara/Takashi Ishikawa/Koki Kitahara/Ricky Fuyuki vs. Riki Choshu/Tatsumi Fujinami/Osamu Kido/Hiro Hase/Takashi Iizuka 2/16/93

These kind of Puro gang fight 10 man are one my favorite types of wrestling matches. This is 2/3 falls rather then elimination style and goes nice and long so each guy gets to stretch out a bit. We know what the WAR guys bring to the table, they are going to try to kick, stomp and punch divots in your skull. Tenryu is probably the greatest all time at throwing cheap shots, and he is constantly cracking folks from behind.The NJ guys really shine here as well. Fujinami and Iizuka probably take the biggest beating and both are masterful at receiving and firing back. Kido isn't in as much, but he pulls off some awesome flash armbars, really putting over his suddeness. Hase has a weird cool way of eating offense, I loved his sell of Fuyuki's clotheslines, and is great at catching people in sudden suplexes. Choshu is the BMOC, and he is as good an Ace as there has ever been. He gets the pins in both falls, as is so great at coming in and cleaning house.

Genichiro Tenryu/Takashi Ishikawa v. Shinya Hashimoto/Michiyoshi Ohara 6/14/93

Unlikely but true, in a match with Hashimoto, Tenryu and Takashi Ishikawa the star was Michiyoshi Ohara. He start out by spitting at both WAR guys and is totally great as the firery underdog getting the shit smashed out of him. There is a great moment early in the match where Hashimoto is getting worked over, and Ohara reaches out, gets the hot tag, comes in like a house of fire, only to get obliterated by an Ishikawa elbow. We get some more tastes of nasty Tenryu v. Hashimoto, inlcuding a great fight for a brainbuster, which includes Hashimoto just popping Tenryu with a Cro Cop high kick. Ishikawa and Tenryu are guys who will beat on someone, Hashimoto is a great hot tag, and Ohara is very good here taking a beating. We have all of the elements for an excellent traditional tag wrestling match, add the additional juice of interpromotional distaste, and you get something truly excellent.

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All Japan Real World Tag League 11/20/10

These Puro tourney Project always tend to flame out (SLL's G1, my attempt to get through the BOSJ), but this is a tourney with Joe Malenko and Tamon Honda so we might make it.

Dark Ozz/Dark Cuervo/MAZADA vs. Kaz Hayashi/Shuji Kondo/BUSHI

This had its moments, but it was underwhelming at the end. There was some pretty lucha exchanges with Hayashi and one of the fake Charlie Mansons. I have been watching a bunch of MPRO six mans and back in his Shiryu days he was one of the best at quick armdrag and rope running. Ozz (or maybe Cuervo) has a really nasty finishing piledriver. Still much of this was pretty sloppy and awkward looking. It kind of sucks that AJ sends their rookies to IWRG but brings over AAA guys, this match would have been much better with the Terrible Cerebros or Oficiales as the rudo team.

TARU/Minoru/Voodoo Mask vs. Masanobu Fuchi/Tsuyoshi Kikuchi/Tamon Honda

Not a long match, mostly comedy stuff with Kikuchi making faces at TARU. I am always happy to see Honda as he got to break out some Olympic Hell and his great deadlift German. This was undercard trios match, and really worked that way. No one was going to stretch out, they were going to do some shtick and hit some spots and go home.

Hiroshi Yamato vs. Keiji Muto

This was Muto diffidently squashing a young guy. He looked kind of bored and it resembled the laziest of Inoki New Japan matches. I remember Yamato kind of stinking up Black Terry matches in IWRG, but he seems to be someone they are pushing and I don't see any point in something like this.

KENSO/KONO vs. Seiya Sanada/Manabu Soya

I hadn't seen any of these guys before (outside of Kenzo Suzuki), and was pleasantly surprised at this ending up decent. First part of the match wasn't much, mostly Soya throwing clotheslines and KENSO choking folks with his scarf. The match built to a nice exciting finish. KENSO has a really cool looking dive and he hit it twice, and Soya and KONO did a cool near fall exchange with KONO hitting a nasty knee drop, not sure if I recommend the match, but I dug the end.

Masakatsu Funaki/Minoru Suzuki vs. Osamu Nishimura/Joe Malenko

This was as fun as I was hoping it would be. Malenko didn't look like he missed a step. We got a long awesome Malenko v. Funaki mat stand off in the beginning of the match which really had the feel of watching Navarro or Panther work holds. Suzuki and Nishimura had a really cool mat opening too, I loved the twists they put on the MUGA headscissors stuff. The match was pretty good when it sped up too, Malenko and Suzuki throwing headbutts on the floor was sweet. The draws you end up getting in these kind of tournaments can be kind of a buzzkill, but the finish run was awesome with Suzuki trying to lock on his sleeper and Malenko countering it with an ankle lock and both guys fighting over it. Really good stuff and I am hoping all of the Malenko shows up.

Taiyo Kea/Akebono vs. Suwama/Ryota Hama

Wow, I was pretty shocked at how much I dug this. Really had the feel of a solid WAR tag with a bunch of big heavyweight dudes pounding on each other. I always love battle of monsters and while I don't really get the sense Akebono or Hama are very good, their exchanges really felt like a pair of Bison smashing into each other. I was also really into Suwama v. Kea, their opening mat work was pretty great, with Kea doing some awesome amateur rides. The middle portion of the match was just guys pounding on each other, there is a great spot where Suwama just slams Akebono with short lariats until he finally chopped him down. Finish was really cool, Suwama had a very cool wobbly sell of a suplex, and you buy Kea getting the pin as a big moment.

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