New Footage Friday: WAYNE! KOJIMA! HARA! GANNOSUKE! ROCKWELL! ALEXANDER! I QUIT!

Andrew Alexander vs. Ace Rockwell NWA Chattanooga 6/24/11

PAS: This was the blowoff of a feud which started with Alexander pissed he didn't make the PWI 500, and ended with him piledriving Rockwell's father to set this match up. Both of these guys are hidden gems of the 2000s Southern indy scene, and this match had just the right amount of craziness without ever pushing over into deadening overkill. I liked how this started as a fist fight, and bled into something more sadistic. Alexander going Marathon Man on Rockwell's teeth with the pliers was sick shit, as was the waterboarding. I liked how they set up the chair couch early in the match, only to have it sit their like Checkov's gun until the finish. Lesser matches would have had that spot in the first five minutes and then had it forgotten about at the end. Loved the pathos of the finish with Rockwell cuffing Alexander to the ropes, duct taping his mouth so he couldn't say I Quit and just beating on him, only for Rockwell's dad to come from the crowd and tell him "Son he has had enough." Southern fried gold. I have liked both of these guys in the past and this exceeded expectations for me. 

MD: Hey, this was good. Given the nature of I Quit matches, how there can be a lot of dead time and mic work, I thought (while watching this) that I might have to cut this up and talk about how one part or another was really good but that it didn't come together as a narrative. Or that it would have been a "good 18 minute no DQ match but..." I apologize for the lack of faith. Both guys worked hard from the get go here, and then smarter later on. The transitions were good (Alexander charging in and getting back body dropped over the rope early, Rockwell spending too long setting up the row of set up chairs later on, both guys bumping over the top twice for a couple of momentum shifts with a classic comeback in the middle and an opportunistic heel pile driver at the end, Rockwell's low blow during the first handcuff spot). The escalation with the pliers was ghastly and immediately turned the match's heat up. Most importantly, they paid off the chairs being set up 100% correctly, as i t was the last big spot of the match. The use of duct tape to prevent Alexander from saying I Quit was pretty brilliant stuff and perfect moment for a blow-off to a feud in a world where heels really, truly get comeuppance, which is the best pro wrestling world possible.

Damien Wayne vs. Satoshi Kojima SAW 5/3/14

MD: This was sort of the WCW Randy Savage special. Wayne came in early to ambush him at the bell and took most of the match. His stuff looked good, including the great elbow drop off the top, and Kojima made sure to stay an active participant, but it built to a banana peel, here a second missed elbow drop, the quick clothesline, and the pin. Post match Rob Conway came out to make a challenge. Wayne looked good for getting so much in on the champ, even in a short time, but there wasn't a ton to this.

Mr. Gannosuke vs. Manabu Hara Batos Cafe 4/3/18

MD: Nice, measured surprise of a match with plenty of build and escalation that feels earned and hard-fought. Gannosuke was around 50 here and he's fascinating to watch, a resilient scrapper journeyman. He can hang on the mat, though Hara's going to have the advantage 90% of the time. That 10% of the time is when Gannosuke does something outlandish and unexpected, something implausible but entirely believable. They stay exclusively on the mat for a while, and then go back and forth between being on the mat and doing some stand-up stuff to break it up for a bit too. It means that when the bombs come, they're welcomed and when they stay, they don't really overstay their welcome. Knowing the length of the video helped and hurt here because it made you know that Hara's early submissions (no matter how intense and well executed they were) weren't going to do it, but they talk to each other a lot post-match, so it meant the slight worry I had at around the 20 minute mark that this was going to just keep going and going was unfounded. The finishing stretch was full of Gannosuke's stuff (and he had a lot of it) but I would have liked one more tease of Hara's cross armbreaker towards the end. Otherwise, no complaints from me.

SR: Awesome match, which may actually be the best Gannosuke singles I’ve seen, which is crazy to say about a match that happened in 2018. I guess random uploads from Japanese micro indy related YouTube channels are the new gold. I think this was during Gannosukes retirement run so he was bringing the goods. First half of the match is all matwork. Suruga is obviously younger and more athletic and pushing the pace, so Gannosuke breaks out a bunch of awesome Fujiwaraesque counters. Totally didn’t know he had that in him. Second half Suruga continues to dominate by laying into Gannosuke with kicks and palms, I also did not expect a 48 year old has-been-coasting-for-years Gannosuke to eat that kind of stiff punishment. It’s really all about whether Gannosuke is tough enough to survive and break out a counter or whether the younger wrestler will blow him away. Gannosuke is of course a really fun tricky pro wrestler, he can always turn a match around by just kicking someone in the balls or busting out his awesome Gannosuke Clutch, and he fires back with some crowbar lariats and big bombs of his own. No idea what’s been going on lately with so many awesome unexpected Japan indy matches popping up but I love it.

PAS: Gannosuke's rep was always as a sneaky mat worker amongst the FMW dudes, but I didn't think he had this in him. It was a very Fujiwarish performance, which is about as big a compliment as I can give. Hara is way more athletic, but Gannoseke has the guile and kept catching him. When Gannosuke unloaded his big offense at the end it  was great, those lariats had to give Hara some Ikeda flashbacks, all hard upside the head with the bony part of the arm. I would have liked to see one more Hara offensive run during the end, but was better than just weird, which is kind of what we were promised by the matchup. 

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Fujiwara Family: Battle and Arts Pro Wrestling 2/11/20

Yoshihiro Horaguchi vs. Sho Karasuno

PAS: Karasuno kind of wrestles like an indy scum version of Masao Inoue, which is style I dig. A ineffectual schmuck who can goof his way to an advantage. He gets beat on at the beginning of the math including Horaguchi pushing him face first into the corner and tenderizing his kidneys with forearms. Karasuno is a able to get a bit of an advantage by chop blocking Horaguchi and does some fun leg work before falling to a deep boston crab. Nothing really shoot style about this, but a fun opener. 

SR: Very basic opening match. I’ve seen Yujiro Yamamoto carry Sho Karasuno to a good match working another micro indy called RAW, which runs shows with no ring and just a bunch of judo mats instead. Karasuno continued his Masao Inoueish streak in this match, doing some finger manipulation stuff, but also rubbing me the wrong way when he did some geeky stunners and DDTs to Horaguchis leg. Horaguchi worked over Karasunos back with some stuff shots indicating he may be entertaining even when not partnered with Yuki Ishikawa.

The Blue Shark/Baisen TAGAI vs. Superhuman Hero G Valion/Super Macho Monkey 

SR: The last BAP card we saw was a bit all over the place, I like how for this show they adapted a matchcard formula similar to late 90s IWA Japan shows on Samurai TV which is kind of my favourite japanese indy wrestling, starting with a basic match and building up through a series of fun undercard matches to a main event. This match was in the Takeshi Sato & Tortuga vs. Cosmo’Soldier & Akinori Tsukioka spot of a semi-shootish juniors tag. It wasn’t quite on that level but I had fun. Tagai was more annoying than Tortuga, as he kept shoehorning his comedy into the match, he seemed to be making fun of Zack Sabre Jr. style wrestling, which is a weird thing to do on a show main evented by Keita Yano who does serious Zack Sabre Jr. ripoff wrestling. Chojin Yusha G Valion is another maniac who came up from the SPWF dojo and started his own wrestling cult, he has annoyed me on the few SPWF Dojo shows that I’ve seen but he looked decent here and didn’t derail the match like I thought he would. 

PAS: I wasn't into this, there was some nice shooty exchanges between Shark and Valion early, and a couple moments later in the match, but I thought Tagai was crap here. Just shoehorning in lame comedy spots with Monkey, felt like a midwest indy bathroom break match. The moments of good were really out weighted by the bad. 

Yuu Yamagata vs. Anzu Chamu 

PAS: Yamagata is apparently 44? She has been wrestling 20 years? I have never heard that name, and I wouldn't claim to be a Joshi expert, but man there are a lot of random wrestlers in Japan. I gave this a couple of minutes, which was mostly bad forearms by Yamagata and posing by Chamu, ARSION this was not.

ER: Phil's description of why he skipped this match kind of made me interested in seeing this match. I don't think it was a good match, but I found Anzu Chamu charming and possessing genuine underdog relatability. Her offense was as weak as can be, but she looks like a pop star and I assume has several hundred weird Twitter accounts dedicated specifically to her. She's enough of a weenie that she draws actual sympathy, and I think if Yamagata had laid in a beating at a quicker pace this could have been good. Chamu was sympathetic enough that I'd probably feel too bad seeing her get annihilated by a monster, not sure I could celebrate an Aja Kong or Chigusa Nagayo style mauling the same. Her ineffectiveness had charm.  

Macho Pump/Nobutaka Moribe vs. Shigeyuki Kawahara/Takumi Sakurai

PAS: I gave this a chance, too. Pump and Moribe came in masked and in Rey Bucanero shirts and beat around Kawahara and Sakurai a bit. It felt like it went on forever though, without much of a pace difference. The undercard of this show hasn't been doing it for me.

9. Yuki Ishikawa vs. Raito Shimizu

SR: Great, great match that may have been even better than the Horaguchi match from the last show. On the previous show, I said Raito Shimizu showed some promise for this upcoming singles match. I’d say this match way overdelivered on that promise. This was just fantastic and way better than just “Yuki Ishikawa carrying a rookie”. Obviously Ishikawa magic was at play here, the man can do no wrong at this point, but Shimizu held up his end. He really held up his end both hitting the mat and showing personality. At any rate there’s no reason why a guy like Shimizu should be stuck in Z-level indy undercard matches after this. Shimizu is a big boy and this was built around Shimizu trying to even the match by throwing and slamming Ishikawa hard. Of course Ishikawa is 50 years old and beaten up so that made all the crowbar throws look even harder. And Ishikawa is great at coming up with counters to prevent the throws. Really dug Shimizu's selling as he would clutch his arm or neck after escaping from a submission to put over how bad he was torqued. Damn fine performance, and I hope this isn’t the last time Raito Shimizu is booked into a match like this. 

PAS: Man Yuki Ishikawa was a king in this. I have seen Ishikawa carry young guys a lot (much of 2010s BattlArts was Ishikawa carrying guys on this show), and this was one of the better of those matches. Shimuzu brought a ton to the table. He is this rawboned country strong kid who just tosses Ishikawa with big throws. Ishikawa is in his 50s and has a bad back and takes a bunch of really hard slams, each one really made me cringe. Shimuzu wasn't completely lost on the mat either, he uses his strength to power out of some submissions and locks on a nasty gator roll. Ishikawa is master, he constantly uses his grappling to counter the suplex attempts, sometimes locking stuff in mid-air, and absorbs throws to lock in Shimuzu when they both land. It is just a matter of time, if you don't take Ishikawa out, he is going to take you out and eventually locks on a hammerlock into a straight armbar for the tap. Ishikawa is putting together an all timer of a post 50 year old run, and I came away from this wanting to see more Shimuzu.

ER: You get a real sense that old, bad back Yuki Ishikawa could work a captivating match against me, so when he has someone with a cool set of skills it's a given that he's going to work something great. Shimizu is a guy who none of us have ever seen, who is built like a smaller Big Japan guy and is intent on trying to throw Ishikawa onto his head or twist his head off with a series of gator rolls. Ishikawa is a master at using his weight and leverage to attempt to block those throws, tangling Shimizu's legs on Karelin lifts and often turning them to his advantage. Shimizu's determination is really fun to watch, and the crowd picks up on that too. It's infectious watching a guy who is almost certainly over his head and has to know he's going to get tapped but doesn't know how, and the it's great hearing the crowd get behind Shimizu's mad charge into potentially getting ligaments torn. And Ishikawa is someone who will put cruel strain on your ligaments. 30 seconds into the match he is already digging his knee into the meat of Shimizu's calf as he passes guard, locks in a hard guillotine off another Shimizu lift, and has some nasty focused attacks on Shimizu's ankles. You want to harness your deadlift strength? Good luck with that, let me know how that goes when Ishikawa twists your foot backwards. I loved how active both men were, while not entirely neutralizing the other. There was a lot of movement and it always went somewhere, not just movement for the sake of it, and Shimizu really looked like someone who belonged. 

Manabu Hara/Keita Yano vs. Yujiro Yamamoto/Katsuo

SR: Fun indy main event tag built around the main matchup of Hara vs. Yamamoto. Those two had some slick U-Style exchanges early which really made me long for a straight shootstyle match between them. They are both a lot more beaten up than in their primes from 10 years ago, but they still had no problem throwing some surprisingly dangerous suplexes and really smacking each other. Yano, to my surprise, did not ruin the match. He was mostly kept out of it and his one brief run of offense consisted of some stretches which worked. I also enjoyed Katsuo once again as a crowbar trying to crack skulls. The finishing run was a bit of an indy run with shootstyle touches, so I dug it. The next BAP in 2021 is announced to have a Yamamoto/Hara main event, so let’s see if we can unlock that too. 

PAS: I thought this was a blast. It ticked some of the same boxes as the great FUTEN tags, although not at that exalted level. Hara and Yamamoto are the best of that second generation of BattlArts guys and they go after each other here, flying into aggressive grappling and winging big shots and suplexes. Yano still isn't for me, but he mostly stayed out of the way and had some cool Sabre Jr. style stretching submissions which actually worked against Yamamoto. Katsuo is a heck of discovery. 2020 wrestling needed a Takashi Ishikawa and he delivers the step too far clotheslines, forearms and headbutts you want out of crowbar. I didn't love the crowd brawling, and the restart confused me, but this built to a big crescendo and had some pretty high end moments. 

ER: This didn't really work for me. For a 25+ minute tag, it felt really meandering, and much of it never gelled as a tag match. A lot of this felt like a series of singles matches with no kind of tag flow, and Hara/Yamamoto was the only good singles match, all those exchanges were really good. Hara is definitely my favorite of the late BattlArts guys, and veteran Hara is cool in ways he wasn't in 2010. He has this narrowed aggression and confidence and can still surprise with speed. I liked the scrambling a lot and I like how they built up to Yamamoto coming in down the stretch and throwing him with a sick uranage (sent the ref scrambling out of the way) and some suplexes. But those spirited moments of Yamamoto and Hara kept getting slowed down by Keita Yano doing unconvincing exhibition holds. They never made sense, as Yamamoto - who worked fast, engaging, cool exchanges with Hara - is now suddenly powerless to defend against any hold Yano slowly put him in. Yamamoto had to lie there barely moving, suddenly unable to counter any slow motion World of Sport hold. The singles match combinations that weren't Hara vs. Yamamoto also felt like they each went on a bit too long, without really advancing, sometimes repeating sequences as if they were stalling for time. The sudden finish, restart, and then apparent time limit draw really didn't help things. I liked how Yamamoto got his big moment roaring back at the restart bell, but the ending wasn't satisfying for me. I'm excited for the Hara/Yamamoto singles that may exist, but this tag kept losing me.  

2020 MOTY MASTER LIST

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Fujiwara Family: Battle and Art Professional Wresting 10/22/19

PAS: The dream is still alive! We found a couple of Battle and Art Pro-wrestling shows which appears to be a Yujiro Yammamoto fed which uses the remnants of BattlArts guys still active.

SR: Battle And Arts Pro Wrestling, baby. BAP is not quite the Fighting Detective Team that was the original BattlARTs, but it is closer to the original than the Canadian Battle Arts offshoot in that this is indy wrestling with some shootstyle elements + Yuki Ishikawa singles matches. 

Manabu Hara/Takumi Sakurai vs. Raito Shimizu/Super Macho Monkey

SR:This was an opening match that was generally good when Manabu Hara was in the ring and I guess acceptable when Sakurai was tagged in. Sakurai works this like your typical indy worker who just does one thing after another in hopes of eliciting “yeah, that was a cool move” reactions, which is not really my thing at this point in my wrestling fandom. I liked the weird leg submission he busted out. Super Macho Monkey is a guy who sells supplements and while he has a good body and looks decent rolling on the mat with Hara, when he was doing standup sections he definitely felt like a hobbyist. Raito Shimizu is a stocky rookie who works low level indies like A-Team and Heat-Up, and he did show a bit more personality doing some power spots which gave me hope for his Yuki Ishikawa singles match on the next show.

PAS This was decent, Hara is still good and clearly a step above everyone else in this match, although I though the coolest thing in this match was Sakurai's rolling leg submission. Shimizu has a weird strong guy body, big chest but smallish arm, he had a couple of nice power spots including a move where he just powers his opponent from a powerslam position into a fireman's carry position. Inoffensive under card stuff which fulfilled it's role. 

Shuichiro Katsumura/Shiyo Karasawa/Toshiya Kawarai/Maori Kawashima vs. The Blue Shark/Koichi Takemura/Tatsuhiko Nakagawa/Josh O'Brien

SR:Promising 8 man tag looking at the guys involved. Takemura and Nakagawa are a couple middle aged guys in karate gis who don’t seem to have an extensive background in wrestling. There must have been dozens of middle aged karate guys like these who just decided to get in the ring working these Japanese scum indy shows and I always enjoy when I get to check them out. Blue Shark is Tiger Shark (lost the license to being a Tiger I guess) and Josh O’Brien is a US guy whom Cagematch lists as being trained by Tajiri and who has worked CAPTURE. On the other side you had a bunch of sleazy looking goons. Karatekas + Sayama trained guy + scum indy shooter vs. a bunch of Oriharaites would’ve been an awesome 90s Wrestle Yume Factory or Shin FMW semi main event but in 2020 as a second match on the card it suffered a bit from lack of energy and weird structure. There were some chinlocks early on that were definitely not necessary and they decided to have one of the scummy heels as a face in peril which was pretty weird. Katsumura is a case of a guy who looks good doing shootstyle matwork (he has a nice brief section with Blue Tiger here) but then he decides to work like a lowest of the low indy heels and he just becomes completely uninteresting. That said this was a lot of fun when guys were just kicking and punching each other, the eventual hot tag was surprisingly decently executed and I loved all the segments involving middle aged karatekas, Blue Tiger and O’Brien looked good filling time and I loved the fist drop finish.

PAS: I really dug this, semi-untrained guys in Gi's is right in my wrestling sweet spot (Complete and Accurate Kazuhiko Ogasawara coming in 2023!). I thought Blue Shark looked solid and one of the really fit looking guys on the other team (bear with me here) had really stiff kicks and a nasty double stomp. O'Brien is a guy I have never heard of, but had some fun power spots, and seems like a guy who should at least be getting spots at whatever Indy runs wherever he is from. Top rope fist drop finish ruled, what ever Gi guy threw it really landed it with no give at all, just punched the guy right between the eyes. 

Yuki Ishikawa vs. Yoshihiro Horaguchi

SR: This is what we bought this DVD for, and it did not disappoint. Yuki Ishikawa is the GOAT and draws the house everytime, but in fairness to Yoshihiro Horaguchi, who is some livelong indy undercarder, he did well for himself here. This was stupidly great and may have been better than any instance I’ve seen of Yuki Ishikawa trying to carry Keita Yano or even Munenori Sawa. Horaguchi just rushes in and pounces on the old man, he knows he has no chance outskilling Ishikawa so he goes for the punch-out landing big elbows on the ground  and thudding kicks and stomps. Meanwhile Ishikawa is mostly locking in great counters from his back here. It’s a kind of match Yuki Ishikawa has always been brilliant at, but this post-Canadian excursion and trained in BJJ Ishikawa is even better at it. Just one great sweep and submission counter after another. This felt less like shootstyle and more like to guys trying to kill each other in a phone booth, they were almost never letting up and when they weren’t grappling, they were trying to crack each others jaws and sometimes kidneys. Even though Horaguchis grappling was rudimentary, it all felt really intense thanks to the super close up camera work and he had no problem getting punched in the face by Yuki Ishikawa. Finish was this downright ridiculous sequence of attempted submission reversals strung into further submissions, it felt like something Negro Navarro would do.

PAS: This was fucking awesome, and exactly the kind of thing you organize funding drives to buy random scum indy Japanese shows for. I thought Horaguchi understood exactly who he was in with and what he needed to do. He comes forward with really stiffness and force, he can't out skill the master, but he might be able to overwhelm him. Ishikawa was like watching Demien Maya, he sits in the cut absorbing Horaguchi's big shots, and waiting for him to slip up. I loved the triangle that Horaguchi put on, and all of the different ways that Ishikawa moved to counter and reverse his way out of it. Finish was completely awesome with Ishikawa running through a gambit of different submission attacks with each Horaguchi counter ensnaring him deeper in the web before Ishikawa finishes him off with a hammerlock rear naked choke which was totally awesome looking. 

Mister Cacao/CHANGO vs. Nobutaka Moribe/Keita Yano 

SR:Mr. Cacao is a guy who is mostly notable for making masks, gear and sometimes uploading cool unseen CMLL Japan matches to his YouTube account. CHANGO is an Ultimo Dragon trainee who got lost in the shuffle. Moribe is an ex-Michinoku Pro guy. And Keita Yano has to be among the most deranged looking individuals in wrestling at this point. Union jack trunks, furrie boots, joker makeup, white button shirt, a towel around his neck and his face looking creepy and emaciated like a drug addict, I would be more comfortable with my daughter marrying any toothless redneck working US deathmatch shows over this dude. This was a lucharesu style match and while it was never gonna be as spectacular as the best matches in that style, it was surprisingly decent. Mr. Cacao must have tagged with legendary luchadores 500 times so he can do this kind of formulaic match, Chango was working hard and doing some cool shit, and Yano seems to have gotten somewhat decent at doing matwork since working with Negro Navarro. Yano still had to shoehorn some tape nerd spots into the match but it irritates me less when it happens in this kind of match than when he does it in a BattlARTS match. Still, they should’ve switched this to the 2nd match on the card and moved the tag with the karatekas up to semi-main event status.

PAS: I haven't really seen Yano since he was irritating me on BattlArts shows in 2009, but man he has really fallen on rough times, what a creeper. This was solid stuff without ever really advancing past that. Cacao is a pro and I am always going to have some fondness for him for money marking cool CMLL Japan shows. I liked CHANGO in this he had a couple of fun roll ups and moved with some pace. I felt like this was always about to hit a gear it never did, but it on the plus side of the ledger anyway.

Yujiro Yamamoto vs. Katsuo

SR: Katsuo is a Dragon System guy who used to be Cyber Kongcito. I assume he is Yamamoto's friend or owns the ring or something and that’s why he gets to be in the main event. Well, apparently he also works pretty high up the card at Hokuto Pro Wrestling (another indy that Hisakatsu Oya runs).  He was this stocky guy in a singlet and a weird hairdo, kind of like a parallel universe Fugofugo Yumeji. And just like Fugofugo he was game to have a nasty slugfest. This was Katsuo laying a brutal WAR sized beating on Yamamoto, big chops, crowbar lariats, jaw loosening elbows and open hand strikes, skull cracking headbutts, the whole deal. By the end of it Yamamatos chest was a nasty shade of red and his bell seemed seriously rung. This had some back and forth strike exchanges, which can get tiresome, but I thought the purpose was to showcase Katsuo as a tough monster as he kept shrugging off Yamamotos attacks, so I bought into them. Yamamoto was working this not really like a shootstylist and more like an indy wrestler with a shootstyle gimmick, which I don’t like as much, but he timed his comebacks well and cut Katsuo down with some precise strikes of his own. Very suitable main event and I would like to see more of this Katsuo now.

PAS: This owned. It wasn't a BattlArts throwback as much as it was a Zero One/WAR throwback. Katsuo is 9/10ths Kurisu in this match, laying a unhealthy beating on Yamamoto, eggplanting his chest with chops and drilling him with echoing headbutts and sick clotheslines to the meaty part of Yamamoto's neck. At one point he just traps Yujiro's arms and brain damages him with a clonking headbut. Yamamoto fired back with some shots of his own, but was mostly absorbing a big time ass whipping. I liked his final run, where he just lays out Katsuo with a whip kick to the jaw which felt like a payback for all of the spuds thrown his way. This is the kind of sick shit I really enjoy watching, wholly recommend. 

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Fujiwara Family: BattlArts Yuki Ishikawa 15th Anniversary Show 7/21/07

This show is available, along with a ton of late 00s BattlArts on IWTV

Katsumi Usuda vs. Keita Yano

PAS: Looking back on my early 2010's reviews Tom and I hated Yano as he just got completely up his own ass and started trying to jack ROH moves from tapes. I have heard from people I semi-trust that recent Yano is weird and cool, in 2007 he was hueing more closely to the style and he was a fine basic opponent for Usuda. I liked Yano starting the match with a sneak high kick to try to catch the veteran sleeping. Usuda is never not worth watching, and he throws some big hard kicks like he want to do. I also liked him adjusting his kneebar to really torque the leg for the finish. Replacement level Usuda match, but that is a nice level. 

Toshie Uematsu vs. Carlos Amano

PAS: This was solid joshi wrestling with a bunch of nifty mat counters. I especially loved Uematsu putting Amano in a kneebar, catching Amano's leg when she tried to kick out of it and putting in a figure four. Amano also had some nifty work both in the guard and trying to clear Uematsu's guard. I wish the strikes landed with some more thump, weakness there kept this from being a real standout, but it was worth watching nonetheless. 

Kyosuke Sasaki vs. Yuta Yoshikawa

PAS: This didn't do much for me. It was pretty much all striking, and Sasaki landed a great solebutt to the stomach, punt to the face combo, but outside of that there was nothing memorable. Lots of strike, make a face, other guy throws a strike exchanges, and the final KO needed to be a lot more brutal on a show with Ikeda in the main event. 

Fujita Hayato vs. Munenori Sawa

PAS: This was a way better version of the stand and trade type of match. I liked the story of Sawa having the faster hands and feet, but Hayato landing the big shots. Hayato always fit in the Fujiwara Family feds great whenever he showed up, his default is crowbar and he lands some big thumping shots. Sawa had a little more horseshit then I prefer, his Mutoh aping never looks good, and I don't know about a figure four as a finishing submission in a shoot style fight. I did like how Hayato kept slapping the shit out him to try to break the hold, by the time Hayato tapped Sawa's nose and mouth were bloody. 

Alexander Otsuka/Yuki Ishikawa vs. Daisuke Ikeda/Manabu Hara - EPIC

PAS: These fucking guys. What absolute legends. Most people celebrate big milestones like Anniversaries by inviting some friends to dinner, maybe spending a weekend in Vegas. Ishikawa spends it by inviting his buddies over to kick the ever loving shit out of each other. Hara isn't my first choice for the fourth in this tag, but he is on eleven here, from opening up the match by dropping Ishikawa with a high kick to his killer final stanza against Otsuka, career performance for him. Of course the other three are incredible too, Ikeda spends much of the match sniping, anytime Otsuka or Ishikawa puts a submission on Hara, Ikeda is coming in hot, with full force kicks to the head. Ishikawa and Ikeda also have a couple of their legendary back and forths, as nasty and grotesque and you would expect from those two. Otsuka maybe the star of the match though. He mostly faces off against Hara and eats big shots again and again trying to get close enough to unleash hell with suplexes. At one point he counters a Hara kneebar attempt by grabbing him and chucking him with a German suplex. He and Ishikawa also hit an awesome enzigiri/German combo and finishes Hara with a dragon suplex on his head. These matches are made on their final showdowns and this one had a great one.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE DAISUKE IKEDA

FUJIWARA FAMILY

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QUICK TO STICK MY FUTEN SWORD RIGHT IN YOUR NAVEL - FUTEN 4/24/05

PAS: Pretty cool to wake up and see some FUTEN show up on the internet. The main event I have seen before, but I don't remember seeing the undercard, and we get a Hiroyuki Ito sighting which is always exciting.

ER: ^^^ Phil wrote that a couple of years ago, before starting to review this FUTEN show. Up until that point all that existed of this show was the glorious main event. Then one day many years later the entire show popped up for our viewing pleasure. Phil started the review, and here we are finishing it.

Katsumi Usuda vs. Kota Ibushi

PAS: Really fun Usuda performance, who worked this like a poor man's Fujiwara. Working the young kid through some mat exchanges, milking drama off near KO's and slipping in a flash submission when it looked like all was lost. Usuda doesn't have Fujiwara's charisma (really who does) but he has that match structure down. Usuda is really great at pace changes, speeding up the match and slowing it down. There is a great part here where they are sort of sparring looking for openings and Usuda catches Ibushi with a solid shot to the chops, the match immediately kicks up a gear with Ibushi reeling and throwing shots desperately, while Usuda swarms to get the KO, when it doesn't come, the match slows down a bit again.

ER: I really liked Ibushi here. You know going in that Usuda is going to be money, but I don't know how decade+ old Ibushi was, and here he was really good. Was he good because he was standing opposite a man willing to take nasty kicks to painful areas? That was some of it, but this wasn't Usuda helping a blind man cross the street. Usuda clearly paced things but Ibushi was awesomely along for the ride. His kick flurries were manic and brutal, and the way he mixed up strikes to keep Usuda off balance was glorious. At one point he's lacing in with kicks to the body and chest, throwing slaps to the face, and Usuda is taking all sorts of punishment and the moment he starts to figure out some timing and advance, and Ibushi just surprises him with a front kick to the gut. I loved all of Usuda's flash subs (catching the arm into a Fujiwara was great) and I loved Ibushi sending Usuda on the run with kicks. One great moment where Usuda is on the ropes trying to shield himself and Ibushi just rushes for the attack. He gets paid back later with Usuda taking him out with nasty low leg kicks (watch how great Ibushi's sell is on his wobble legs). Awesome match.

Takeshi Ono vs. Hiroyuki Kotsubo

PAS: Big waste of an Ono match. He is such an incredible wrestler and shows up so rarely on video that it is a bummer to see him saddled with such a load in such a short match. Only about 4 minutes and some awful looking offense from Kotsubo, that was one of the worst clotheslines I have ever seen. Ono sells for a sec and then decides to just punch this clown out. His finishing flurry was cool, but only a taste of what he can do.

ER: This was weird but I think could have been good with some time. Ono is a good enough worker that he can drag a good match out of someone like Kotsubo if given enough time to tell some kind of story. This wasn't enough time to tell any kind of story, so what we were left with was just a short match and an awkward opponent. Kotsubo did have SOME skill, just limited. Ono is a guy who can work around limited skill. He didn't really get the chance to do that here. Kotsubo is clearly some kind of amateur wrestler, as his opening takedown and single leg floatover looked really good. But he tried to do more than that and that's when things looked uglier. For a wrestler he didn't have a very good suplex, so when he german'd Ono it was supposed to be one of those match turning point suplexes where Ono does a flip over bump and sells it as a potential KO blow, except the suplex basically looks like a rolling cradle and Ono sells it as the KO anyway. Yeesh. Then Ono gets up and kicks the shit out of him like we all wanted to begin with. Yep. We all realized "man if this was gonna only go 4 minutes, then this should have just been Ono giving this dude spinning backfists for 4 minutes."

Ikuto Hidaka & Minoru Fujita vs. Kyosuke Sasaki & Hajime Moriyama

ER: Team BattlArts/Zero-1 vs. Team U-Style! Those names all mean something to puro kids these days, right? I haven't seen much of Team U-Style, but they seemed perfectly fine here. Bland at times, kick party fun the next. Once they started kicking the veterans things got fun, and Hidaka and Fujita suddenly getting desperate against the young turks was a nice moment. We get some nice spirited moments, like Fujita and Sasaki breaking into a spontaneous slap war, Hidaka breaking out a trippy grapevine leg sub that would make Negro Navarro drool, and an awesome finishing sub where he rolls a snug double leg into an almost Texas cloverlead/dual ankle lock with several points of painful leverage. I had no idea what I was looking at, but I loved it. Match as a whole was more like several separate vignettes. It didn't totally build to a finish, but instead was a kind of series of restarts. Which is fine, and this style sometimes lends itself to that, but taken in it's segmented form it was overall fine.

PAS: I really enjoyed this. Always liked the Fujita/Hidaka tag team they were one of my favorite parts of mid 90's Japanese indy wrestling. Cool to see them pop up ten years later and still as slick. The U-Style dudes are all beasts on the mat and I loved how fast and slick all of their rolling with Hidaka and Fujita was. Lots of grabbing and twisting of limbs in nasty ways. Hidaka especially was on one, just breaking out crazy nutso limb locks one after the other, the U-Style guys were throwing the kind of thumping shots appropriate on the undercard of Ikeda v. Ishikawa. Very cool stuff.

Hiroyuki Ito vs. Manabu Hara

ER: This never totally got going for me. Similar to the previous match it felt like there were too many momentum breaks. A lot of kick, down, count, back up. Sub, rope break, separation, back up. There were moments where it threatens to get really good, where the violence almost broke out from the pack. That can be tough on shows like this, with several tough guys, all trying to out-tough the other to be more memorable. At one point Ito rushed in with a bunch of fast and nasty right kicks to the chest and body and it got really exciting, like Ito snapped and got tired of screwing around and Hara was going to respond with brutal kicks of his own. And he kinda does. But soon they're back to breaks and separations. At the end of the match it felt like they went out to do a Ikeda/Ishikawa match, except nowhere near as good, and right before an actual Ikeda/Ishikawa match. Just not enough substance here.

PAS: I really liked this. Ito is a weird wrestling genius who showed up in shoot feds in the early 2000s had awesome matches from the beginning and then disappeared again. He was one of my favorite U-Style guys and had a great short Big Mouth Loud run. This wasn't a high end Ito match, but it had a lot of the trappings which made him such a compelling wrestler. I loved how he brought the match up and down in intensity, and how he would respond to Hara's fast kicks with one or two thumping ones. There were a lot of rope breaks, but I enjoyed how the worked in and out of them, Ito was great at throwing quick kicks off of breaks.This was more U-Style then FUTEN as it was more of a chess match then a harrowing war. The kind of match which isn't done anymore, and I really enjoyed watching it.

Yuki Ishikawa vs. Daisuke Ikeda

ER: This is a legendarily violent match between two of the biggest badasses in wrestling. I think this is actually the most violent match these two have ever had, and my lord think of the ground that covers. This match is so violent that I'm not actually sure how neither of them ended up KO'd at some point. Are they this good at close-up magic? You know it's going to be a barnburner as both men start the match with their hair at 0.7 on the Big Ern Scale, with Ishikawa's dyed that fashionable blonde/platinum/gray/purple that ladies are into, beating the trend by a decade!  It's possible that he was sporting mermaid hair in whatever FUTEN hasn't shown up by now. And after the hair is checked and being fluffed by the AC, these two men destroy each other for 14 minutes, to the point where some parts of the match get difficult to watch.

Ishikawa is at his most violent here, punching Ikeda in the throat - regularly - punching him in the ribs, hyperextending his arm in an awful armbar after already damaging it with a hammerlock. Watching Ikeda rub his inner elbow while trying to flex after breaking that armbar is either next level selling, or the look of a man whose elbow is now going to be cranky every time it rains in Tokyo. And for this lifetime of elbow pain, he decides to kick Ishikawa square in the forehead. A lot. He kicks him in the neck with his left leg, and then kicks him in the ear with his right leg to catch him on the way down. He punts him right in the head and face several times. I actually looked away at one point. Every time either man got to his feet looked like a legitimate struggle, and sometimes I rooted for them to stay down. Yet once I begged for Ishikawa to stay down, he would rally, and nail Ikeda with elbows and more punches. Ishikawa locks on a choke at one point and we hear Ikeda gurgling. Mouths get bloodied. Elbows get thrown to the back of heads. Ikeda clotheslines Ishikawa in the side of the neck. Ishikawa enziguiris Ikeda in the mouth. I don't know what kind of relationship these two men have outside of a wrestling ring, but their professional wrestling relationship certainly blossomed into a strange thing that would be impossible to explain to any of your co-workers. This match is a horrific masterpiece. I think it's the best singles between the two men, making it the best singles match of one of my favorite match ups in wrestling history. These two perfected a style that few could handle, and few would want to try.

PAS: I am not sure where this match stands it the pantheon of Ikeda v. Ishikawa matches. This is the most violent, but also the most simplistic. You want simplistic and violent from Ikeda v. Ishikawa and the fact that these are two guys who have lost some of their athleticism is part of the appeal. It feels more like a hellacious battle from two guys who have already taken large pieces out of each other over the years. They had some nice wrestling scrambles, but every scramble was a set up for a violent attack. Ishikawa's punches were pretty unbelievable, they hit so hard that it actually sounded sweetened. Meanwhile Ikeda is sprinting across the ring and trying to Janakowski Ishikawa's head through the uprights. There is a section near the end where a glassey eyed Ishikawa blood dripping out of his mouth like he had a root canal, is just dropping Ikeda on his head,  can't help but think "what the hell am I watching?"  A lot of the stiff Puro wrestling today is loaded with guys trying to prove how tough they are by not selling, in this match they unloaded holy hellfire on each other, but every move took a toll, they weren't ignoring the pain to prove they were tough, the felt every bit of the agony and kept moving forward.

ER: Ikeda/Ishikawa is a true epic, and after talking it over Phil and I decided to add it as the 2005 rep on our All Time MOTY List. What 2005 matches could challenge it?!


ONGOING ALL TIME MOTY LIST

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE DAISUKE IKEDA

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BattlArts 2/15/09

( So we watched this show before the 1/10 show, thus our mutual befuddlement at the B-Rules, I get the finish of the Oikawa match now, although it is no less stupid.)


Manabu Hara & Sanchu Tsubakichi vs Fujita "Jr." Hayato & Baisen TAGAI

TKG: Either Baisen TAGAI has gotten better or everyone else is mailing it in here. Tsubakichi looked like the worst guy in this. Baisen TAGAI is a guy with lots of loose body fat, you need to kick him hard enough to get it to shake.Tsubakichi pulled his kicks. The Tsubachiki v Hayato sections were worse than the TAGAI v Tsubachiki sections. And the Hara v Hayato sections were uninspired. A good chunk of this was built around TAGAI and I enjoyed all that. Weird.

PAS: TAGAI was really entertaining, he has almost an American Balloon physique where it looks like he lost 150 pounds just has loose skin, but he did a bunch of cool shit, I especially was into his victory roll legbar. The finish of this was odd as Hayato seemed to refuse to tag TAGAI so he gets beat by Hara, There doesn't appear to be any dissension before that, or any post match angle.

B-Rules: Chihiro Oikawa vs Kana

TKG: I was really enjoying this as all the mat work was crisp and purposeful. I don't get the finish at all. Kana had three rope breaks, Oikawa had two and Kana puts Oikawa in a submission in the ropes to get the submission. I mean if Oikawa had thee breaks I could understand this tribute to ROH pure title finish but as it is I don't get it.

PAS: I wasn't paying a ton of attention to the dots, so maybe the scoreboard operator screwed up, but I really don't understand the booking of this show. Is Ed Ferrerra one of those white guys who gets yellow fever and moves to Japan? Is he teaching English to Ishikawa and mentioned he used to book wrestling?

Alexander Otsuka vs Yujiro Yamamoto

TKG: This was awesome. Yamamoto is becoming one of my favorite wrestlers to watch, he sells really well and does lots of neat scrambling for moves. And well Osuka is Otsuka; a guy who among other things has lots of neat suplexes and throws. They match up really well here with lots of Otsuka beating and tossing Yamamoto around and Yamamoto doing lots of underdog selling and scrambling for hope spots. The finish with with Yamamoto beaten down but trying last leg bar only to be lifted and dropped was just perfect.

PAS: For an undercard match this is about as good as it could get. Otsuka is so great, he may be the most innovative wrestler in the world, and what makes his innovation so great is that it fits the tight constructs of the style he works. There is a point where he tries for his giant swing which Yamamoto counters into a choke, which Otsuka counters into a hellacious brainbuster, just awesome stuff. Yamamoto is also spectacular here, he is just relentless, like a bulldog, he reminds me a little of Uriah Faber, a tiny little guy who is going to overwhelm you with his pace and strength. I am really excited to see what he does this year, he could be truly great.

Katsumi Usuda vs Yuta Yoshikawa

TKG: This is worked surprisingly even. Having seen Usuda v Yano, it took me a while to get comfortable with how even this match was worked. But once I got past that this was a really good even match. Usuda sells the fuck out of his leg and really makes it look like he's in a giant hole as result from leg work. So whenever he has an answer its really exciting. The big choke with bodyscissors that gets reversed into a leg submission by Yoshikawa is especially hot sequence.

PAS: I have not been a huge Yoshikawa fan in the past, and like Tom I initially had a problem with him dominating the early part of the match, I still am not sure how good Yoshikawa is, but I have no question about the greatness of Katsumi Usuda. Just a tremendous performance, as he did an incredible job selling every submission that he got put in, there are multiple frantic scrambles where he appears moments away from a heartbreaking loss. Even when he comes back so viciously (busting Yoshikawa open legit) it still feels like almost a heartwarming tale of overcoming adversity. This really felt like a masterful Fujiwara level performance, which as much as I have liked Usuda in the past, isn't something I would really use to describe him before.

Yuki Ishikawa & Super Tiger II vs Munenori Sawa & Keita Yano

TKG: I have no idea if Yano or Super Tiger II have gotten a lot better or if they're just working each other a bunch on random indies. Are they running this as touring match on Goro Tsurumi fed undercards? Are they training together? I mean these two guys work each other ridiculously well in this. It's completely inexplicable. Not a match with a ton of Ishikawa ( he has a really great infighting section with Sawa at one point and an ok section with Yano). Instead a match with a lot of Yano v. Tiger II and a good match. Who knew?

PAS: This was good, but not as good as the previous pair of matches. You had your two underdog young guys getting worked over by your veteran asskickers. It is a good story, but Yano and Sawa are only okay at the spunky underdog role and we had a bunch more Super Tiger II beatings then Ishikawa beatings, which is fine but not what you would want to see in a perfect world. I hope we get to see a bigger Ishikawa showcase later in the year.

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BattlArts 1/10/09

PAS: This is a B-Rules tourney, which means it is worked with RINGS rules, rope breaks and no striking. These are some guys who can work that style, although it does take the violence out of the Battlarts, which is a big part of the fun.

TKG: Pre-show they all draw slips of paper out of a hat. I don't know if that's how they determine tourney brackets or if they're running a date the wrestler raffle or what's going on.

Alexander Otsuka v. Munenori Sawa

PAS: Otsuka may be the best non old Mexican mat wrestler in the world so he is the guy you are going to want to see in a tourney like this. He didn't really do any holy fuck submissions here, but he is ridiculously smooth, and the finish looked like one of those jujitsu holds that you can believe is a real move. Something that looked real, because it looked fake.

TKG: Sawa didn't look bad at all here either. The stuff where he forced Otsuka to the ropes felt like stuff that would force a guy into the ropes.I think they blew the dot coloring but you still had his neat dynamic where Otsuka was dominating (controlling and driving the action) but Sawa would still find stuff quickly to get Otsuka at a numbers disadvantage.

Yuki Ishikawa v. Manabu Hara

TKG:Good chunks of this had Ishikawa working like Dr Tom Pritchard( always aiming at working wind and head) where even arm work was done to expose the head so Ishikawa would have easier time moving in for the choke. While Ishikawa was going for the head, Hara was always aiming for extremities. In the end Ishikawa changes plans and wins with nasty arm submission.

PAS: I didn't feel like this match had much of an overarching story, lots of cool little parts, but it felt slightly disjointed. I loved how Ishikawa dominated the positioning early with Hara catching him. Ishikawa often works these matches like a guy trained as a pro-wrestler, who will dominate you with wrestling, but is weak on Jujitsu. Even the armbar he caught Hara with at the end had him working over the arm with his elbow to weaken it, which was very pro-wrestling.

Yujiro Yamamoto v. Super Tiger II

TKG: Yujiro Yamamoto works really fast on the mat with everything he does leading to him advancing further up II. He's also the first guy on the show where you get the sense that he's a guy who grew up watching MMA. All the other matches have guys who are trying to control through wrestling. Yamamoto is the guy whose matwork feels most modern, with him trying to get the mount , trying to defend in a guard etc.II is working as the stronger guy and is really slow and plodding. Still Yamamoto is the man and this was my favorite match thus far.

PAS: I liked this a lot too, although this was way more of a one man show then either of the two previous matches. Yamamoto was completely awesome, reminded me a bunch of Ryuki Ueyama, but Super Tiger was kind of a load. This actually felt like a RINGS match with Tamura trying to carry a shitty Dutch Kickboxer. Spectacular one man show, really impressive for a young guy, but I don't know how good of an actual match it was.

Alexander Otsuka v. Yuki Ishikawa

TKG: This is back to actual wrestling based guys, doing wrestling based holds and wrestling based selling. But both these guys are really great at those things. Ishikawa goes for an Indian death lock then leans back to go for choke only to have Otsuka go after Ishikawa's hand. Ishikawa is forced to release and they go for clinch where Ishikawa gets caught in a leg lock because he's defending against the German. This is really short. The constant Ishikawa worry and defense set it apart from what we have seen thus far.

PAS: It is sort of frustrating that these guys keep working 7 minute Velocity matches. Last year we saw their awesome stiff fest 7 minute match, this year we get their awesome mat based 7 minute match. If someone edited those two matches together we would have a match of the decade contender. Don't get me wrong, on it's own this is awesome, their previous matches, were maestros carrying young guys, the shootstyle equivalent of the Black Terry v. Traumas or Negro Navarro v. Cerebero match ups. That is always good, but you want Maestro v. Maestro and this delivered.

Super Tiger II v. Keita Yano

TKG: What the fuck?? So B style is a goofy misunderstanding of ROH Pure Title Rules (in the same way that ROH Pure Title Rules was a weird misunderstanding of U-Style and RINGS). So this is essentially a long squash match with Yano getting nothing in and having to go for rope breaks five times. But I don't know if I get the actual rules here. As instead of it being guy who has to go for rope breaks three out of five times looses, it looks like the two participants have a total of five rope breaks allowed. Not like basketball where each guy gets five time outs, but instead imagine if both teams had a total of ten time outs allowed (one team could go for 7 leaving the other three,or just take all ten etc.)Once all the rope breaks are used up you can go for a finish in the ropes. So Yano uses up all the rope breaks and then wins this with a rope assisted sub. R!O!H! R! O!H! WTF? This really feels like Turkish R&B from the 70s or 90s North Korean Country and Western. Entertaining but a real misunderstanding somewhere along the line.

PAS: This match is a Game Theory problem, the rope breaks are the Tragedy of the Commons, neither actor has any incentive to preserve the rope breaks, so Yano selfishly uses up all of the rope breaks and then wins the match. The problem with this match is that it is a semi-final, Yano has exposed this huge flaw, the main event kind of has to be worked with both guys scrambling to use up the rope breaks now, or it makes no sense. He has kind of killed this match. It is like a Battle Royal, the sensible thing to do, would be to grab the bottom rope the entire match, but if someone did that, you could never run another Battle Royal. It seems like this match ended B-Style.

Yuki Ishikawa v. Chichiro Okiawa

PAS: I was pretty surprised with this match, normally Yuki Ishikawa mixed matches are sleazy pervert fest. For example Yuki putting himself in Yoshida's triangle choke so he can smell her stank. This was worked much closer to an Ian Rotten v. Mickie Knuckles match. Those matches all have this weird Southern Indian specific vibe,with Ian as your survivalist father who always wanted a son, but instead his wife died in childbirth leaving him alone with a daughter. Still the Jews and Mexicans are coming to enslave the white race so he has to be sure she is toughened up. I don't know what the equivalent fear in Japan would be (Koreans maybe) but Ishikawa is surprising great as Ian Rotten . Pretty tremendous performance as his selling is just off the charts, as he makes you actually buy kicks and punches from a tiny girl. I also loved how he slowly started taking the match more seriously, as by the end he was in a fight. Really put over Okiawa as a threat, which I figured would be kind of impossible.

TKG: I like Phil’s analogy as there was a real Sarah Connor training John Connor familial feel to this whole thing. There was a real look of pride in Ishikawa every time Okiawa kicked like a mule and bit like a crocodile. Oikawa has never come across as being particularly tough or vicious before. But fuck does she come across violent and scrappy here. Some of this is Ishikawa selling as really no one can make a kick look better than Ishikawa. But there were lots of moments of just viciousness out of Okiawa that I’ve never seen before, her mounted repeated punches to Ishikawa’s ear were especially violent. I also really liked the finish where she put Ishikawa of all people into an octopus and he went with the finishing counter. Okiawa has never looked tougher or more dangerous. Post match you have the same problem that you have after Knuckles v Rotten matches. Not only did Oikawa come off as a threat but she came off as enough of a threat where you go “Well now I don’t buy any girl being competitive let alone beating this violent bitch”.

Keita Yano v. Alexander Otsuka

PAS: Weird match. Lots of cool individual shit, Yano is really flexible, and Otsuka is really innovative in twisting a guy up into pretzels, but the Russoishness of the B-Rules lost me here. While Yano got the advantage in the previous match by using up the rope breaks and Pure titling his way to a win, here he wins by forcing Otsuka to use 3 rope breaks to his 2 rope breaks, and then winning by decision after a 10 minute draw. So he wins both of his matches by manipulating the rules in different ways. I guess it is an interesting concept, but the execution was bad. Yano basically gets squashed by Super Tiger in his opener, really winning in almost a Scott Hall puts over Hector Garzaish way. Here however he is at least Otsuka's equal on the mat, even getting more advantages. So I am left thinking, if Super Tiger steamrolls this chump, why is Otsuka having so many problems? Then after the rope breaks are all used up, you never get a sense of urgency from Otsuka. Theoretically he knows he is behind on the scorecards, but at the end it is Yano who is desperately scrambling for a submission. I got the sense Otsuka was as confused about the rules as I was.

TKG: The idea of Yano being booked as shootstyle ”Ultimate Opportunist” Edge is amusing to me. Although really if that’s the goal he should have gotten on his bicycle and ran out the time or something. I don’t know if Otsuka got hit with a nut shot somewhere in the early minutes but he was really selling wind like he was trying to recover from being nutted for good part of the match. I don’t understand Japanese micwork, so it’s possible that Otsuka’s prematch mic work was all about how the Yano-Heads had attacked him pre match with repeated lowblows but against doctors orders he was going to come and tough this match out anyway.

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