Tarzan Goto Fire Blows a Signal in the Sky

 

Tarzan Goto/Mr. Gannosuke vs. Kendo Nagasaki/Yuichi Taniguchi IWA Japan 7/5/95 - EPIC

ER: Have we been fools for ignoring IWA Japan this whole time in our focusing on WAR and FMW and New Japan Russians and all else? Where have the IWA Japan champions been? This is fucking WAR baby, this is fucking all time great 80s Memphis, it's the kind of inter promotional Japanese realism that has aged perhaps greater than any other kind of 80s and 90s puro. The first VHS tape I ever traded for after getting the internet was a 6 hour IWA Japan/FMW/W*ing comp. It started everything. I had literally no idea what to expect when I put in this tape and within minutes I was watching 11th generation videotape wrestling of Sabu and Terry Funk and two guys whose identifies were too foreign and pixelated for my teenage self to recognize seemingly burning alive in an outdoor ring that gets dangerously engulfed in fire. And now it feels foolish that I didn't just exclusively spend my wrestling time watching every single IWA Japan match since. IWA Japan existed in its own bubble and yet they were out here having the same kind of body bruising, exclamation-inducing fights. Phil sought this show out when he found out Cactus/Kurisu happened on it, and I saw this intriguing Tarzan Goto interpromotional tag right before it on the video file and decided to just let it play through while I finished something up. 

That's when I fell in love all over again with IWA Japan. This whole tag was what we all seek in wrestling. Everybody was great. I watched it for Tarzan Goto - somehow the Biggest Miss from our corner of pro wrestling fandom, a man we all came around to late and can't explain how it happened - was as good as expected, but this was every person at their peak powers. Has Kendo Nagasaki always been this good? He's a monster here. Is he a monster everywhere? Have we missed on Dragon Master in the exact same way we missed on Goto? This is interpromotional invader shit and Kendo treats Goto and Gannosuke like a couple asshole outsiders, especially going after Gannosuke. Gannosuke is a guy I love, but this was a shitheel Gannosuke who is like a Jamie Dundee level opportunistic prick with a mustache who will run into the hardest clotheslines possible and circle like a buzzard when he smells blood. And there is blood, because they bust open Yuichi Tanigucihi - a guy less than 20 matches in his career who of course is one of those era psychos who is still wrestling in Japan and has like 2,000 matches - looks like a gigantic 12 year old and hits clotheslines like an angry Morishima, and when the match settles into Goto and Gannosuke getting real blood red heat from a rabid Korakuen crowd, we achieve nirvana. The brawl through the crowd was so charged and violent, Nagasaki passionately defends Taniguchi like grumpy murderer era Jumbo, and Goto is this piece of shit southern worker who stirs the pot the entire time, this incredible blend of Zbyszko and Bunkhouse Buck and Riki Choshu. These are the toughest guys ever built wrestling real strong style, nothing but headbutts and shoot clotheslines and Kendo Nagasaki throwing what look like heavy fucking tables without a single fuck given where they land. This is an IWA Japan blog now. 

PAS: My goodness what a discovery. This isn't as good as the famous FMW Texas Death Match, but it is pretty damn close, and is a match which basically has no profile at all. This actually starts like a standard tag match with Nagasaki taking young Gannosuke to the woodshed smacking him with hard forearms and stretching him on the mat. Goto and Taniguchi smack each other with hard clotheslines and headbutts as well, and it feels like a cool WAR heavweight stiff fest. Then it inevitably spills to the floor and all four guys start trying to brain each other with heavy wood tables and chair shots. Taniguchi looks like someone took a power drill to his face, and Goto and Nagasaki are in hog heaven fling furniture. Truly chaotic brawl, a ton of Moondog energy. As a community we have long since reevaluated Tarzan Goto and elevated him to the heights he deserves, is it time to reinvestigate Nagasaki?

Tarzan Goto/Mr. Gannosuke/Dennis Knight vs. Keisuke Yamada/Hiroshi Ono/Shoji Nakamaki IWA Japan 7/5/95 - GREAT

PAS: This was the same night of the all-timer tag we wrote about above, and was a hell of second act. This is basically just Goto and the boys mauling the white shirted IWA undercard kids. It started with Yamada and Ono doing some awkward but forceful dives, but their advantage was short, and Goto starts fucking people up. Hitting them with hard clotheslines, barbed wire board smashing, and even some attempted hammer murder. It is pretty one sided and ugly with a couple of moments of hope by the white t-shirt boys. The finish dragged it down a bit with a Cactus Jack run in, where he beats down Goto with offense that didn't look as good as anything else in the match.

ER: Tarzan Goto came out in his finer-than-Kawada robe for a tag match earlier in the evening and bloodied up the chubbiest Nagasaki trainee in IWA, smirking his way through a tag where people hated him, dropping elbows like Stan Hansen, letting Gannosuke take extra punishment while he leaned on the ropes, showing nothing but aloof disrespect...so of course he comes out for the main event and does it all over again. Big Dennis Knight is with them this time and there are barbed wire boards everywhere, and the FMW boys do nothing but slam and smash the blue jeans/white shirt IWA Japan doo wop gang into this barbed wire. Hilariously, Tarzan Goto draws real heat the entire time by avoiding most of the barbed wire entirely. Team FMW is throwing hooking clotheslines to necks and beating up the home town boys like an Unstudly Stable and I loved how the IWA boys kept fighting no matter how much of a losing battle it seemed like they were in. Just as Gannosuke hit a wicked piledriver on Taniguchi earlier in the night, Knight hits a wicked one here (being careful to not plop his butt down into the wire) and the IWA crowd HATES their Memphis bullshit. Somehow Cactus Jack is the worst guy on this entire card, and his involvement for the finish is the only weak part of this match, running in and hitting awful Hitman elbows off the middle buckle, the worst offense anyone hit the entire match. If you leave Cactus out of this and finish the match literally any way involving the people in the match, this is another classic. 

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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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New Footage Friday: Brazilian Riots, Leon Spinks, Shinobu Kandori

Michel Serdan/Moreto vs. Belo/Mumia Negra Luta Livre (Late 80s?)

MD: Sometimes I'll troll around youtube looking for anything under our community's collecitve radar. There are a lot of countries out there and most of them had some tradition or another of wrestling. I don't know about you but I sure haven't seen a lot of matches from Brazil. This felt like an odd mishmash of Puerto Rico chains, celebratory babyfaces, and groin shots and cartoonish Argentinian Titanes with big, over the top symbolic offense, elaborate entrances and, you know, a wrestling mummy. The cappers on this are worth the price of admission alone, as the crowd is massive, Belo and Mumia Negra's entrance is amazing, with a marching brass band, a giant banner, and the mummy dancing. It's obvious that Serdan and to a lesser extent maybe Moreto are absolutely beloved. The ref is some guy in a hat with a cane. The crowd goes nuts for everything. The entirety of the babyfaces offense are these leaping, driving headbutts. Belo has these amazing chain gloves. The babyfaces control for most of this. Moreto eats a huge bump (with in-the-moment slow motion effects) over the top and gets carried out like a fallen hero. The bad guys take over using the chain and the numbers advantage. Serdan finally comes back with low blows. The ref throws out the match. The crowd riots. Chairs come flying in. Everyone carries Serdan out. It is absolutely nuts, yet at the same time, is the same sort of straightforward injury-heel-advantage match we've seen a hundred of times. The french match from a few weeks ago with a lot of these same elements actually. Old belief-based wrestling is universal and it's a universe I wish we were still living in.

PAS: This was pretty tremendous, even with not a ton of in ring skill. This reminded me of a huge Puerto Rico main event, Sedan isn't as good as Carlos Colon, but he appeared to be just as beloved, and the crowd was enormous and rabid. I really liked the babyfaces diving in ring tope's, Moreto's was especially cool looking. Sedan had a great looking headlock punch too, which got the slow motion camera work. Both rudos were pretty solid bumpers and stoogers, I dug the rudo comeback with some meaty chain shots. Mumia lauched Moreto clean over the top rope buckling his knee and both rudos beat on Serdan until a fan runs in and starts winging punches, leading to an absolutely chaotic fan riot. There are multiple out of control fan fights, dozens of chairs come winging into the ring and a bunch of fans rush the ring. Eventually they carry Serdan out on their shoulders. I don't think wrestling can be this anymore, and it is too bad, perfectly synched up clever chants will never be as fun as dozens of maniacal Brazilians hurling chairs.

Shinobu Kandori/Harley Saito vs. Dynamite Kansai/The Scorpion JWP 8/4/91

MD: Jetlag pushed this our way and I'm glad he did. I'm sure some of you, just for the sake of being completionists or rationalizing your Network subscription, watched the hidden gems FCW Kaitlyn vs Rosa Mendes match this week. Masochists. We watched this. This was action-packed with a burst of violence to begin, an opening third or so which was just full of hard, hard shots, outright struggle on every move/hold attempt, no fat, and still a sense of smoothness and forward motion. I really liked the transition to backwork, with Scorpion locking in a tricked out deathlock and finishing with three super precise and laser-focused shots. They meander off of that eventually allowing for a little comeback, more heat (including a great gear-change assisted dive), and ultimately a fairly satisfying finishing stretch with enough break-ups as opposed to kick-outs to make things cumulatively have some weight to them. Scorpion was a bit of a duel-edged sword, doing lots of cool things but placing some of them poorly within the match and having some trouble with others (like a half-flubbed run up the ropes arm-drag which was out of place in the midst of the backwork). The other three were spot on throughout though.

PAS: Tremendous match. The opening sections were right in my wrestling happy place, lots of brutal shots and exchanges with no one standing down even a little bit. Kansai was a bulldozer here, she would throw these forearms where she seemed to be aiming six inches past the skull of whoever she was throwing them at. She was just displacing people. Kandori vs. Kansai felt like it could have been as amazing as Hotta vs. Kandori or Kansai vs. Aja, hopefully their are some singles matches against each other. Really liked Harley as the smaller bulldog desperate to prove she is as tough as the bigger hounds in the yard. Scorpion was fun as the change of pace, everyone would be throwing big KO shots and she would come in with a springboard dive off of Kansai's back or a moonsault. She was particularly smooth, but I liked her role in the match. Kandori just ending the match by yoking her in a jujigatame was a pretty perfect finish. This really delivered on what I hoped it would be.

Mr. Gannosuke vs. Leon Spinks FMW 8/31/93

PAS: This was pre dye job Gannoseke and that dye job did a lot for his aura, he looked like a total shlub here. Spinks was working this like a 3/4 speed sparring session. He had a great looking technical combos, but wasn't throwing them with a ton of force or speed. Gannoseke sold them appropriately, Spinks did beat Muhammed Ali after all, and much of the match was Gannoseke barely getting up at 9. My favorite parts of the match were when Gannoseke would go for a take down and get waylaid by a hammer fist or hook. Post match, Spinks goes to shake Gannoseke's hand and instead clips him with a sucker punch short uppercut. Total dick move by Leon and a nice way to set up Onita coming to kick his ass.

MD: This is slight but sort of fun as a boxer vs wrestler thought experiment. I just love the nuts and bolts of how this sort of thing is put together, because obviously it's not with the sort of care that something like Spinks vs Onita would be. There are openings and there's just how much Spinks is willing to give (and how many times Gannosuke gets up); in that regard it's a bit like poor man's shootstyle, being all about openings and possibilities and what's given. Most of this is Gannosuke getting beaten around the ring, dropping for a while, and making it back up only to get mauled again. He has a couple of missed kicks. He has a couple of absolutely futile drop toe hold attempts. There's a great little rush across the ring dropkick. Once he even gets a hold on but Spinks just strikes his way out. Past the dropkick the most interesting thing here is probably Spinks getting in a jerk post-match shot. This wasn't much but it's odd enough on paper that we were almost obliged to at least check it out

ER: Phil told me to not bother watching this one because it wasn't very good, but that's crazy. Do you know how many Kandori matches are available for me to see? Only hundreds. Now how many Leon Spinks matches are available for me to see? How many times did Shinobu Kandori beat Muhammad Ali? Probably not as many times as Leon Spinks did. Leon Spinks has probably beaten Muhammad Ali in a fist fight INFINITELY more times than Kandori has. And I'm supposed to not watch Leon Spinks fighting in a tiny gym that's about as far as you can get away from Tokyo and still be in Japan?

Phil is not wrong that Gannosuke's bleached blowback really added to his aura, an aura seemingly only attained by stocky Japanese pro wrestlers (see Ueda, Umanosuke or Saito, Hiro). It makes the Mr. Gannosuke name evoke a narrow eyed yakuza sitting in a dark corner of a bar. You don't want to be summoned by Mr. Gannosuke. If you are ever summoned by Mr. Gannosuke, you know there is a 10% chance you won't be leaving that meeting alive. Here, with Spanx shaping trunks, a clean mustache and dark mullet, the name Mr. Gannosuke evokes something entirely different. Here he is Mr. Gannosuke, substitute English teacher who tries to get the kids to call him "Mr. G". He won't be gauche enough to outright tell a student in a one on one situation, "Hey, call me Mr. G." BUT, if it's the end of the school year, and a student asks Mr. Gannosuke to sign his yearbook, he would definitely write "Never Stop Learning - Mr. G".

There are three great moments in this match. The first is the opening flurry by Spinks, with the penultimate punch convincingly sending Gannosuke down to the mat, and we get a fun bit of drama as the crowd starts buzzing when it looks like Gannosuke won't beat the count. The second great moment is when Gannosuke grabs and ankle pick and Spinks timberrrrs over the way a boxer who doesn't understand takedown defense would. Gannosuke grabs a leglock and wrenches is a bit, and Spinks gets out of it by punching at Gannosuke. Then, while Spinks is getting to his feet, he starts shaking his leg out (the leg that had been worked on), looks like Rick Steiner doing his peeing dog taunt. The third great moment is after the match, when Spinks hates going for a handshake and instead smacks Mr. G. What the fuck. What an asshole jock bully. What a fully borne out heel. If I were there that day, I would be wanting to pay money to see Onita wreck Leon Spinks. This match had three great moments. How many matches have you watched in your life that didn't have three great moments?

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2018 Ongoing MOTY List: MAMMOTH!

30. Mammoth Sasaki/Toru Sugiura vs. Mr. Gannosuke/Yuko Miyamoto FREEDOMS 3/22

ER: Ah Mammoth Sasaki, guy I would possibly be 5th or 8th most excited about on an early 2000s FMW card. Why are you so good in this match that I will now have to go watch a bunch of 2018 FREEDOMS!? I have a different wrestling watching life than I did in 2001. I had a LOT more free time then, and a lot less responsibility. Now that wrestling is the most accessible it's ever been, and I am the busiest I've ever been, it's very easy for me to lose track of any given Japanese indie worker for 15+ years. I don't remember the last Tatsuhito Takaiwa match I watched, but you know he's still out there doing his thing. And then a match like this floats along and suddenly Mammoth is filling all of those Tenryu/Morishima gaps and it gives me this weird nostalgia feeling of a time when Japanese wrestling was my favorite wrestling. Mammoth is MAMMOTH in this, throwing painful as hell shoulderblocks with Gannosuke, throwing big chops with a perfect surprise jab to Miyamoto, nice snap powerslam, and then going on this kickass finishing stretch with big lariats, a gorgeous brainbuster, huge deadlift gutwrench powerbomb, and a finish worthy Falcon Arrow. The guy looked awesome, and the nice pacing and great use of partner saves made up for some dodgy Miyamoto/Sugiura stuff. Miyamoto wears pants like an early 2000s east coast indie worker, but doesn't seem as good as Dewey Cheatum.  Sugiura is a Mammoth trainee and looks decent-ish at times, his elbow drops are okay (and I like that he's at least attempting classic elbow drops) and his back bump missile dropkick hits hard, but really this match doesn't bump up until Mammoth starts using Sugiura's corpse as a weapon. Mammoth gets a hot tag and throws Sugiura's tagged out tired body into a nasty corner lariat, then gives his partner a huge front suplex into a pinfall attempt. The saves down the stretch are all awesome. Gannosuke cares not about what happened to garbage fed stars like Misawa and Kobashi, he is 50 and will still take a huge suplex on his neck. Gannosuke gets a great nearfall of his wonderful leg trip backlside that somebody needs to steal, and I loved Mammoth reversing it into a powerbomb when Gann tries it again. Mammoth strung together finishing stretch killshots like a classic Kings Road main eventer, just smartly laid out shots and great finish teases. Mammoth!

PAS: I remember Mammoth having a moment as the next hotness around the turn of the century. There was a Tenryu singles match I remember loving in 2003, and then I don't think I heard hide nor hair of him for 15 years, and here he is rocking it out. For tubby sons of Tenryu, I like him way better then Ishii. I agree that the Sugiura vs. Miyamoto stuff wasn't great, but I liked Sugiura vs. Gannosuke a fair amount, I thought his one two elbow smash combos looked cool, and he had a nice bodypress. Gannoseke vs. Mammoth was the main event though and that was great. Big thick clothesline, and big backdrops it felt like a real throwback Puro heavyweight battle. I loved that Gannoseke backslide, what a cool move, and the doctor bomb counter was nifty. It really takes some mining to find cool Puro these days, but this was a little nugget of gold.


2018 MOTY MASTER LIST

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2017 Ongoing MOTY List: GUTS Elimination

71. Dick Togo/Masao Orihara/Ryan Upin/Amigo Suzuki vs. Mr. Gannosuke/CHANGO/Guts Ishijimi/Michio Kageyama GUTS World 1/24

PAS: This was an elimination tag with hit the floor eliminations, it is a format I always enjoy in Puro, and this had a bunch of fun moments. They made the entertainment level mistake of eliminate Gannoseke and Orihara early, I want to see those sleazes match up more, and they both had cameos. Togo invents a bunch of fun ways to have "hit the floor" near falls, lots of ways to almost get knocked out and almost knock someone out. Guts was a fun energetic fat dude and CHANGO even breaks out a top rope senton which looked 85% Togo. GUTS continues to deliver.

ER: I love all these GUTS guys. My Guys, My Guts. This is really fun with pinfalls/submissions counting as well as over the top to the floor eliminations being in play. So you get silliness like 3 guys grabbing Orihara by the limbs and tossing him to the floor. And nobody seemed too interested in saving any of their partners throughout this thing. Someone would be getting pinned a few feet away and everyone would be standing on the apron leaning on the top rope. Maybe I've just been watching too much Stan Hansen lately, I'm too used to him rushing in and welting up anyone who dares attempt a pinfall on a partner of his. But this is brisk and a whole lot of fun nevertheless. Phil is right that Orihara and Gannosuke are out of this thing far, far too early, and both looked awesome in their brief runs. Orihara can make you care about a kick to the stomach, and his slingshot elbow lands fast and sharp. Gannosuke looked like a greasy freight train during his run, and his lariats hit more flush than most people in 2017 wrestling, let alone most 50 year olds. I liked his double team stuff with his not as good younger clone Kageyama, especially that quick and nasty lariat/soccer kick Total Elimination. Guts Ishijima is a spirited fat guy that will always win me over, and we got to see him splat a bunch of guys with shoulderblocks before getting wrecked by a Togo lariat. Togo was super Togo-y in this, still drives me wild with his fist drop, and I love little things like how he grapevines both legs during a small package. He's really great at teasing some over the top eliminations. We get two great ones with CHANGO catching him with a rana from the apron that almost takes both over, then we get him going for his senton only to have his partner Upin shoved into the ropes, knocking Togo off the top to the apron where he gets baseball slide dropkicked to elimination. Two really great sequences. Finish was hot with a brutal missed chairshot that tests the head and neck strength of Upin. Also of note, CHANGO's senton in this match looked even better than Togo's in this match. Lofty praise indeed. I gotta get to watching more GUTS. Do you have it?


2017 MOTY MASTER LIST

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2016 Ongoing MOTY List: Dick Togo is Back in the GUTS

69. Dick Togo/Masao Orihara/Ryan Upin vs. Mr. Gannosuke//CHANGO/Michio Kageyama GUTS World 12/3/16

PAS: These Togo and Crew trios matches are quickly becoming one of my favorite under the radar things to watch. Gannosuke is old and fat, but still can turn it on when need be, he breaks out a superplex here and has a great spot where he is just throwing rabbit punches at the back of Orihara's head. This was more of an Orihara showcase for the championship team, but Togo did have a couple of awesome runs of offense. Really liked the finish run with Gannosuke's team hitting a bunch of cool double and triple teams only to be foiled by an Orihara kick to the nads.

ER: I am really digging GUTS. Guys are lumpy and the old guys can still go! I like how someone like CHANGO gets crowd chants, just this niche group of Tokyo wrestling fans, who sees CHANGO as their Bruno for whatever reason. Gannosuke was one of my favorite Japanese indy guys SO MANY years ago, and this was the first I've seen him in ages (didn't even know he still worked), and he's still clearly a guy that I dig. He has a great aura and still brings details, like that wrenching chinlock or a little extra pop on a wild superplex. Also amusing that he's teaming with his junior doppelganger Kageyama. But yes this was the Orihara show, and I love that late 40s Orihara has now become my favorite current wrestler in Japan. He looks like a thug, and wrestles like a thug. He doesn't hold back on the littlest things, his stomps and stomach kicks and missed shots always look tighter than anybody else in a match, and he has a surprisingly deep offense arsenal for someone who can come off like a kick/punch guy. I'd love to see this get to a Orihara/Gannosuke singles match, a real battle of scuzzy late 40s dudes. My favorite thing about the match was the waves the match went in and out of. It seemed like the tone shifted several times in the match, which is kind of cool. We start out wild, go into a Team Togo control period, let the legends hit their stuff, go through a long Team CHANGO double team period, just a bunch of shifts and little stories. Orihara hits a beastly chairshot and a straight boot to the balls, and to hammer home how great he is at the little things, look no further than his small package roll up to win. He already punted dude in the balls, and then he breaks out this gorgeous small package, grapevining the loose leg and everything. Beautiful attention to little things from such a dangerous man. What I would do for Finlay to come out of retirement against Orihara.


2016 MOTY MASTER LIST

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE DICK TOGO

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