SEGUNDA CAIDA DECLARES WAR!! 2/8/97

 

1. Ryo Miyake vs. Tomohiro Ishii

ER: Miyake is representing Tarzan Goto, and Sensei Goto is lurking in the crowd just waiting to invade. Goto is sitting alone in Korakuen wearing a purple suit and a white collared shirt with the top buttons unbuttoned. He appears to have an entire row to himself and looks smug, and powerful. They cut to him a lot during the match and they're right to do so. Where can I get Miyake's yellow Tarzan Goto shirt? I would pay very good money for it. Miyake is representing W*ING and Tokyo Pro and Japanese sleaze in general and the Goto shirt is firing up Shinichi Nakano at ringside. Ishii has neon green tights, and a neck. 

It gets good when Miyake starts toe kicking Ishii in the back and side of the head as the latter was getting up. There hadn't been any kind of Kurisu energy and that sparked something. When they go into an elbow exchange, Ishii works his a little and Miyake just runs through him with extra pounce on impact. Ishii kind of tenaciously goes after a hammerlock and that's a cool Ishii I don't know. Ryo Miyake looks like Satanico crossed with Akitoshi Saito but in a fucked up way and not a cool way. Ishii lays out for a Dynamite Kid diving headbutt 2/3 of the way across the ring and this Ishii is so much better. Miyake throws a WAR level lariat running out of the corner. His single leg crab and Texas Cloverleaf looked back backbreaking. I don't think Dean Malenko had a better application and execution of the Cloverleaf any time in '97. I've seen fucking all of them. 

Miyake invites Tarzan Goto into the ring and he takes his time walking from the 15th row of Korakuen, carrying an attaché. Nakano and now Arashi get hot and riled up at the sight of Tarzan Goto in a perfect suit jacket looking The Most Dapper Tarzan Goto Can Look, meaning his stubble is only 6 days old. Koji Kitao comes down, Goto just leaves and holds court outside the building, taking questions on the street as he's hailing a cab. You ever seen a god? 

2. Onryo vs. Choden Senshi Battle Ranger

ER: This is going to be an exciting mess with more crashes than hits and I love it. Onryo's pescado sends him crashing to the ground in front of Battle Ranger, who is still wearing his cape because Onryo hid under the ring and jumped him. Ranger takes a great ringpost bump that looks greater because he's still wearing his big cape. Onryo is remembered for his bumps and risks but his worked punches are a lot better than you remember. He throws an excellent dropkick and is good at leaning into kicks, including Battle Ranger's missile dropkick to the floor, springing off the middle rope. Battle Ranger takes a fucking Jerry bump (!) and Onryo runs up the buckles and dives into him with a Jerry bump AS OFFENSE! It all looks great. 

All of Onryo's offense is tighter than I remembered, and Battle Ranger does little things like kick Onryo in the face hard before hitting an Asai moonsault, not just focusing on hitting the move but actually thinking about believably neutralizing his opponent before hitting it. There's an unexpected and fantastic fight over a rear waistlock, where Onryo keeps trying to kick back - hard - at Battle Ranger's legs but Ranger keeps dodging while holding the waistlock, before suplexing Onryo onto the back of his head. Battle Ranger looks like he damn near snaps Onryo's neck with a muscle buster and this whole thing started cool and kept getting better. We used to seek out WAR tapes for Ultimo Dragon matches and here are two better WAR undercard juniors in the post-Ultimo Dragon era. I don't think anyone was ever getting tapes for the Onryo or Choden Senshi Battle Ranger matches, because we didn't know anything then. Now we can change. 

3. Kamikaze vs. Atsushi Kikuchi

ER: Yume Factory mentioned. Kikuchi is a black trunks white boots no kneepads guy like Riki Choshu but with Tenzan's head. Their matwork is strong and tough, locked in, forearms across jaws. Kamikaze's moonsault has impact like 2 Cold Scorpio's. Kikuchi throws a lot of weight behind lunging elbow smashes and a dropkick, and jumps off the apron with a clothesline the way someone who wasn't totally thinking it through would do. He throws a butterfly suplex with real physics and hits a lariat even harder than Riki's. Kikuchi is one of our great post-peak lost WAR guys; a guy who was only around a few years during the WAR era with less available TV. We need the 1999 Atsushi Kikuchi handhelds. Every suplex thrown is stiff: vertical suplex with brainbuster drop, a German that snaps Kamikaze's legs over his body, a Kamikaze back suplex that was clearly meant to drop Kikuchi on his neck, with intent. Kamikaze returns the lariat from earlier and these lariats are Made in WAR, for WAR. A great lariat is the best roster prerequisite of any wrestling company in history. Kikuchi has no human idea how to take a tornado DDT but that's great because instead it just folds and crumples his body in a painful way. Kamikaze kicks him in the head a bunch after the match, after dropping him on his head with a fisherman's buster. Kamikaze knew WAR so well for a guy who didn't wrestle there very often. He was a natural fit who should have been a regular.  

4. Miho Watabe/Michiko Omukai vs. Sayuri Okino/Michiko Nagashima

ER: I don't know these women. I wasn't watching LLPW tapes in the 90s and I only know a few who have since. I know Watabe I guess. She's the one who looks like a small child. Watabe gets whipped around all over the ring by her hair and it's one of those women's wrestling spots from the 50s that can look so violent when done to a woman who is 90 pounds. Okino's snapmares are more violent but Nagashima's were quicker. Omukai has strong pinfall saves, always taking advantage of the situation and kicking Okino in the back of the head a few times, and Okino bumps nicely for Omukai's hot tag. Watabe can't get any weight behind her dropkick because she has no weight but she does it 20 or so times, spamming quantity, which is important. Omukai's dropkick hits like a joshi dropkick should, and she is very good at small things. Watabe has one good neck bridge spot that's very effective, and Nagashima is really good at hot girl dead eyed interference. She's like one of the Heathers, only with a kendo stick instead of a croquet mallet. 

5. Osamu Taitoko vs. Masakazu Fukuda

ER: WAR show giving us a sumo vs. freestyle match, which is why you watch WAR shows. Fukuda is listed as having a sumo background but wrestles with amateur single legs and pins like Takashi Sugiura or Chad Gable when he did that stuff a decade ago. Fukuda died tragically during the start of his New Japan career. Taitoko - the future Tachihikari - wants to treat him like a punk and Fukuda keeps fighting back against the charges. Fukuda tries to bulldog Taitoko and pretty soon (and pretty easily) gets him in mount with an elbow held across this throat. When they start hitting each other it's one of those great exchanges you get so consistently in WAR, as the much smaller Fukuda is fighting with speed while Taitoko punches him in the nose. Fukuda is small Sugiura, Taitoko is large Kamikaze. Taitoko hits harder and has a great standing sleeper, but Fukuda is relentless and hits a cool uranage on a very heavy man. Why do sumo guys always have such good kicks to the face? Were they all bullied and kicked in the face so much in training that they know how to deliver them naturally and pay them pay gleefully? Powerbombs are real in WAR. They are never faked. They are sincere. Fukuda keeps refusing to stay down for Taitoko's back suplex and powerbomb and chokeslam, all of which were delivered with intent, so Taitoko just clotheslines him in the back of the head and Gedo clutch's that wrestler of inferior style. 

6. Masaaki Mochizuki vs. Nobutaka Araya 

ER: 1997 Araya is still trying to do trunks and this boy is too beefy for these orange crush trunks to contain. Everybody's pants look a size too small in WAR and it's one of the best unsung features of WAR. Mochizuki throws six kicks to six different parts of Araya and they all make loud contact. Sumo vs. Kicker is going to be so damn good. It always is. The matwork is rugged, Araya is like Greg Valentine on the mat but his half crab moves into classic WAR torture. Araya is a real prick and he's so good when he wrestles as sadistic sumo Valentine. It's not enough to lock in a crunching STF, he starts pulling at the side of Mochizuki's eye with his fingers for leverage. Araya can really take - and sell - good kicks. He flies back into the ropes so convincingly and takes more than one cool bump to the floor. He also has a WAR level clothesline, per the prerequisite. His corner clothesline hits like Dr. Death, big impact. 

Araya drags Mochizuki's body through a good Korakuen brawl, throwing him down so hard on a bodyslam in the stands that some people around it reacted in real shock. His piledriver is perfect, and Mochizuki is bleeding, and bleeds even more when Araya starts throwing full force headbutts. Araya can absorb all of Mochizuki's good kicks, because he punches back so much harder. Araya starts suplexing him around like a corpse, then hits this killer running lariat and pounces into the cover, an excellent example of a man Trying to Put This Away. Araya even does a Valentine timberrrrrr bump after taking a kick to the face, and when he leans head and neck first into a springboard spinning heel kick it's an incredibly done nearfall. All the nearfalls down the stretch are great nearfalls because Araya starts spamming clotheslines and powerbombs until Mochizuki stays down. It genuinely felt like the real finish was Mochizuki taking as many of them as possible until physically incapable of lifting his body. This rocked in all ways, a near 20 minute match that kept getting stronger the longer Mochizuki persevered. 

7. Arashi/Shinichi Nakano vs. Yuji Yasuraoka/Lance Storm 

Storm and Yasuraoka are dressed like Fruit Stripe gum and they are one of the worst fucking teams of the 90s. Neither man looks like they belong in WAR and this match confirms that repeatedly. It's a minor miracle that Arashi and Nakano were able to make anything about this work, as Storm/Yasuraoka never looked like they belonged in the same ring as them. This is lavender tights/mullet era Arashi. Not to be fucked with. Lance Storm opts to fuck with him all match by hitting the worst offense in WAR history which leaves Arashi and Nakano wondering how to even acknowledge it. Imagine you're Lance Storm, coming into WAR, hitting your cartwheel clothesline and dropkicks that wouldn't budge a soul. Storm's matwork with Nakano is more interesting than watching him attempt any other offense. Are there any good mat-based Lance matches? The man was trained by one Hart brother for one day, there must be some matwork Lance out there. 

The match peaks when it's time for Storm and Yasuraoka's big comeback, where they manage to string together several pieces of offense that either miss entirely or land but wouldn't hurt a fly. It all starts when Lance slingshots himself to the floor with a cannonball...and launches himself far over Arashi's head, landing on his ass on the floor without making contact with a human body. Perhaps he was paying tribute to his partner, who tagged in early in the match with a slingshot senton that completely overshot Nakano. The two of them set up a kind of Total Elimination on Arashi that sees them both throw spinning heel kicks (Storm to the back of Arashi's head, Yasuraoka to the face) and both kicks mostly miss their target, so Arashi is left just standing there while they crash around him. Panicking, Lance follows it up with a dropkick that mostly misses and Yasuraoka has to hit a clothesline just so something finally connects with the largest man in the match who has been standing perfectly still this entire time waiting for anything to make contact with his body. 

You know who is a pretty badass tag team? Arashi and Nakano! They look like two men who should be able to effortlessly hit offense on Lance Storm and Yuji Yasuraoka, and they do! They are especially punishing to Yuji. Arashi lands heavy on elbowdrops, piledrives the man. When Nakano hits him with a brainbuster, Arashi comes in just to stomp him in the head, as it should be. Arashi is such a beast. He hits a big boy frog splash and an awesome nodowa otoshi where he lifts Yasuraoka up by the rear waist of his rights, then slams him forward by the throat. It's brutal having to see Lance Storm try and break up their offense to save Yasuraoka, because we are forced as a viewer to have to pretend a Lance Storm forearm had the power to knock Nakano off the apron. We are forced, as fans of wrestling, to treat Storm's silly leap to top buckle back elbow as a thing that could move a man. It's foolish. I liked how they finished Yasuraoka, him charging straight into a powerslam upon tagging in, Arashi giving him a couple powerbombs on a hard part of the ring, then finishing the job with a twisting frog splash. 

I don't know why WAR fans accepted these Fruit Stripe goofs. 

8. Genichiro Tenryu/Koki Kitahara/Tatsuo Nakano vs. Koji Kitao/Nobukazu Hirai/Hiroshi Hatanaka

ER: Not to the level of the highest of high end WAR trios, but the same kind of memorable as the best WAR trios. What made this match great, is Tenryu working simultaneously as the aace of the promotion babyface AND as a shitheel cheap shot artist. Tenryu is the god king of the promotion, the chairman, yet all match he's taking cheap shots whenever he can, kicking guys in the eye to break up pins, directing his boy Kitahara to do the same shit, that air of unprofessionalism running rampant. It is incredible to see Tenryu both humbled by Kitao, and act as a guy who doesn't want Kitao around. He cheap shots him, and takes liberties with Nobukazu Hirai just because the boy happened to be teaming with Kitao. It leads to the best parts of the match. 

Every Tenryu/Hirai interaction is good. Hirai has the fucking nerve to powerbomb him and Tenryu gets up pissed and starts kicking him in the face, then punching him in the face and eye. Tenryu tells Kitahara to do the same, so Kitahara tags in to kick Hirai in the face, but it's not hard enough so Tenryu comes back to show Kitahara how to kick Hirai in the face while Hirai is downed. Learning from the master, Kitahara tags back in and he throws even harder kicks at Hirai's head and face. This is the kind of wrestling storytelling I can follow and understand. We are all here for Nobukazu Hirai getting kicked in the face any time he steps over the plane of the ropes. It enrages Kitao while offering us nothing but joy. 

This is also a match that makes us ask the question, "Was Koji Kitao getting good at this?" The more he worked, the more his in ring confidence grew, the better he looked in the ring. This is one of those matches that highlighted his upside that was always there. How could there not be upside in a tall, 300+ pound disgraced sumo who can't control his anger? Kitao, in his large yellow pants and large yellow exposed breasts, attempted to mock Tenryu, and I loved all the exchanges between Kitao/Tenryu and Kitao/Kitahara. Kitao actually looked surprised at the fight Kitahara brought to him, as Kitahara came with hard leg kicks, and kept kicking at his legs after Kitao got dropped to a knee. When he has him suitably ripened, he tags Tenryu in, and the fireworks get bigger. Tenryu hits an enziguiri and cannonball, and you know it's good because Tenryu does that thing where he gets to his feet pumping his fist...only to turn around directly into a hard Kitao clothesline, then gets to feel what a fat boy senton really feels like. As Tenryu is recovering on the floor from his flattening, Kitao hits a baseball slide dropkick....and that is when it is officially Okay to ask if Koji Kitao Turned Actually Good in February 1997, and dare yourself to go back deeper to find any earlier moment that compares. 

The breakdown of the finish is excellent stuff, as we knew it was going to come down to Kitao and Tenryu going full unleashed on the other, and they do. Kitao is completely unmoved by two punches to the nose and rocks Tenryu with a right. Kitao walks through Tenryu's punches and throws great jabs, and anything Tenryu tries Kitao just spam blocks with kneelifts. Tenryu, getting nowhere, hilariously tags in sacrificial lamb Nakano, who gets immediately BURIED by a Kitao sitout tombstone. With Kitao distracted by a different body, Cheapshot Babyface Tenryu comes in and starts kicking Kitao in the face to chase him from the ring and bring the weaker members into the fray, because he is great at slapping and clotheslining Hirai and Hatanaka around. Tenryu's whole team is great at kicking and clotheslining and powerbombing Hatanaka. When the clear weak link of the match manages to hit Tenryu with a missile dropkick, all it does it back Tenryu into the ropes, giving him momentum to wreck him with a clothesline. This was a WAR heavyweights main event, driven by complicated relationships and in-fighting that we wouldn't understand but is tangible in all actions. 

THE COMPLETE SEGUNDA CAIDA DECLARES WAR!

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Found Footage Friday: Wrestle Yume Factory~!

Wrestle Yume Factory 8/11/96

Pick this up from @itako18jp on Twitter, he is doing god's work

The Madness vs. The Wolf/Cosmo Soldier

MD: A handicap match. Madness is a huge guy with a skeleton mask that he adjusts all the time. Wolf and Soldier start well with Soldier drawing him in with a test of strength challenge and Wolf attacking from behind. They have a flurry of offense but get tossed off on a double pin and really this is just a matter of time until he catches them, and catches them he does. Some of his stuff looks great. He has this suplex into a bodyslam of sorts which is brutal. Some, like his strikes, just kind of look ok. There's a great moment of Soldier bursting off from the side of the screen to break up a pin at one point, and another great one of a roll through pin out of nowhere which almost works. It goes on a bit too long after that though and even though they get one more flurry including a tornado DDT, it's inevitable and after a power bomb, Madness drops one on top of the other for the pin. This had a pretty good balance of protecting Madness but having Wolf and Soldier chip away at him effectively, I thought.

Basara vs. Masakazu Fukuda

MD: I'm not sure we've ever written about Basara here but he had a mask with a big white mustache coming out of it and hair on top the head. Fukuda was mid 20s here and died tragically in 2000. Basara controlled early. He had an answer for everything Fukuda tried and Fukada didn't have an answer. Fukada would take Basara down and try strikes but get his arm caught. They'd get in a headbutt war and Fukuda would get crushed and bump across the ring. When he took over it was by getting in and under and hitting a uranage, first a throw which opened up the match, and then the rock bottom version to win it later. In the middle Basara asserted himself as they ended up hitting bombs to a degree. Basara had a second rope senton and power slam and Fukuda got under him to take him over in a sort of Beach Break. They both threw dropkicks (Basara's surprisingly good). I'm not sure this kept the same narrative focus once it opened up but in general it was fun just to see them throw things at one another. 

Shinichi Shino vs. Shinigami

MD: Shino is later on Fukumen Taro. Shinigami is a blast. He's got caked on grey/green makeup like a ghoul and it's honestly a great look that no one really uses. Plus the gloves and the black coat/pants that makes him look as much like a Castlevania monster as a movie monster. He lumbered down to the ring upsetting chairs and driving fans away. Shono was all pluck and fire. Powerslams and clotheslines but he threw himself into all of them. He capitalized on a missed dropkick and took it to Shinigami, including tossing chairs on him on the outside, but nothing really worked. Shinigami turned it around, buried him under a row of chairs, and then splashed the chairs. Looked like a great bit but it was on the wrong side of the ring so we only had the sense of it. His big move was a claw-assisted uranage and frankly, it's a wonderful piece of business. He dragged Shino into the ring with the claw before hitting it and then down the stretch hit a top rope one before pulling him up and hitting a bridging one. Post-match he went after the timekeeper for no reason and I quite enjoyed the time I spent with Shinigami.

Hector Garza/Silver King/Onryo vs. Masayoshi Motegi/Super Crazy/Kamikaze

MD: All action trios with some great names. I'd say everyone looked pretty good here (Crazy maybe the most dubious if I was pressed), but Silver King looked like one of the best in the world. He was matched up with Kamikaze early and that was the best of the pairings. Everything broke down and we had some very loose rudo beatdown structure on Onryo a couple of times especially, but this was the sort of match where Silver King was just going to super kick someone in the face and take over. Dive train was sensational and Garza looked great in the final pairing. You knew what you were going to most likely get here, but they gave it to you, and that's the important thing. There was also this great bit where Silver King went for a powerbomb onto Garza (his own partner) and alley-ooped him into a splash which looked so smooth that people should reverse engineer and steal it. Variety is the spice of life and this absolutely fit into such a weird and varied card.

Horiyoshi Kotsubo vs. Hirofumi Miura

MD: (EDIT: According to Sebastian I got Kotsubo and Miura confused, so just flip them in the below. I haven't done that in a while). Horiyoshi Kotsubo is Tsubo Genjin. Here he has a karate gimmick with a black gi, the sides of his head shaved, a goatee, and nunchucks. But it's Miura who's fun here. It's scrambly to start, but Miura goes to the slaps first. Then he hits a great spinning backfist and later on a very quick tree-of-woe/short dropkick combo. Kotsubo has some nice pokey punches in a mount at least, and he wins it with a submission that is very hard to explain but certainly novel, starting with a STF but then barring the other leg. Not a ton to say about this one but I need to watch that Aoyagi vs. Miura match Phil covered here now. 

Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs. Shinichi Nakano - GREAT

MD: I've spent a lot of time with 1989-1990 Shinichi Nakano, and quite a bit with him from the years prior, and there isn't a whole lot there, let me tell you. He was fine. Absolutely fine. Inoffensive. Sometimes could show some fire. He wasn't the guy you wanted in a Jr. Title match (not relative to Fuchi or Momota or Inoue or Joe Malenko) or in a tag, except for maybe if that tag was against guys like Hansen and Tenryu. Then he could take a beating and come back with a bit of fire only to get beaten down once more. Actually, 1989 Fujiwara vs 1989 Nakano would have been a blast.

Thankfully, this was pretty good along those lines too. Nakano was older, more grizzled, but a ton of this match was him doing something, paying for it, and getting beaten and stretched by Fujiwara, which really, is exactly what you'd want. Early on, he tried to push Fujiwara into the corner. That didn't go well for him. Fujiwara turned him around, punched him in the face, and then played to the crowd that he slapped him instead, all before goozling him in the ropes. Later on, Nakano tried again to stomp Fujiwara in the corner and the greatest defensive wrestler of all time, snatched his foot midstomp and hit a rare dragon screw leg whip, just like that.

At one point, he did have some success with things Fujiwara had less defense against, armdrags, leading to a cross arm breaker and Fujiwara escaping to the outside. He then got some nice clubbering in with Fujiwara on the apron stretched over the top rope. All well and good if he didn't try for a posting, but he did, and you can't slam Fujiwara's head into the metal connector obviously. Headbutts ensued, followed by Fujiwara doing his own mirrored clubbering and then hilariously teasing a dive. 

What else did Nakano try? Oh, a leglock. Went ok for a bit until Fujiwara snatched a leg of his own and slowly and patiently worked things all the way around so that Nakano was on his stomach and Fujiwara was bending a leg back. And then down the stretch, he hit a power bomb and a suplex and locked in a half crab, but he couldn't put Fujiwara away and when he went back to the well for another suplex, everyone watching knew exactly what was going to happen. Fujiwara jammed it and jammed Nakano down right into the armbar. While I may have hoped that Nakano had become some sort of secret master over the 90s, what I can say about him instead is that he was still a good sport, and that gave Fujiwara lots of room to stretch (figuratively, literally, metaphorically, however you want it).

PAS: This was pretty much a Fujiwara one man show, Nakano was a fine sparring partner, wrestling chicken stock but Fujiwara bought all of the spices here. Of course those are incredible spices, countering everything Nakano tried, backing him into the corner and working him over. I have written time and time again about how Fujiwara is the greatest defensive wrestler of all time, and here he is again throwing up another countering masterpiece as easy as a Nikola Jokic 40/14/12 stat line. The kind of thing that would be legendary for anyone else is pedestrian for him.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE FUJIWARA

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SEGUNDA CAIDA DECLARES WAR!!! 11/9/96

1. Gokuaku Umibozu vs. Jun Kikuchi

ER: Awwww yeah! What a killer little start to a WAR show! Umibozu is a sleaze fed karate guy with cool face paint, and Kikuchi is a guy that nobody has ever heard of who probably deserves to be heard of. Kikuchi looks transported straight out of a black and white 60s JWA match, like a Rikidozan partner. He's got the same thick build, old puro moveset (butterfly suplex, back suplex, those kneedrops where your shin lands flat over a guy's chest) and a Johnny Unitas flat top. Umibozu breaks out a nasty axe kick and follows it up with a straight kick to Kikuchi's chest, then levels him with a chair shot. Umibozu throws some headbutts and I love Kikuchi's classic strong style comeback. Seriously, this guy is right out of a time machine. Umibozu dumps him on his head with a folding powerbomb and then lands rough on a moonsault that sees Kikuchi kicking out right at 3 and then yelling at the ref. These guys were both awesome and both mostly unknown, and totally delivered in a 6 minute opener. Worth it.

2. Masayoshi Motegi vs. Battle Ranger

ER: Man this undercard is delivering unexpectedly. Motegi looks like a cross between Kawada and Rusher Kimura here, and delivers a great ass beating. He hits some stiff as hell lariats and works with a heft that I don't remember seeing from him. WAR apparently brings out the badass in everyone! Battle Ranger is here to get beaten, getting in only a brief run with a rana, German suplex and a smooth headscissors, but when he goes to follow up with a plancha to the floor he runs right into a waiting chair. Then Motegi mocks his battle ready stance and hits him more with a chair. Motegi hits a stiff Dr. Bomb and then absolutely crushes the finish, initially going for a superplex only to see Ranger squirt out, so - back facing the ring - Motegi grabs him in a gutwrench and hits an awesome twisting Dr. Bomb off the top. Killer finisher. The masses can finally stop harassing me, for a Battle Ranger match has finally been reviewed on Segunda Caida.

3. Masaaki Mochizuki/Takashi Okamura vs. Kamikaze/Masakazu Fukuda

ER:  This was clipped to half the running time, but it was in highlight form, and looked good enough from the highlights. 1996 was a year where WAR brought in a bunch of rookies and young guys, and a lot of them acted like real punks (to our benefit). Mochizuki is a guy who has looked good pretty much since his debut, and he's one of the more tireless guys in wrestling. It seems like his name never stops showing up in results. Okamura was clumsy in an amusing way and has been involved in the Dragon Gate office for years now. Kamikaze is another guy who is still somehow steadily working, and Fukuda died tragically from an in ring accident just a few years later. And all brought young rookie fire here. Fukuda is tall and lanky, and Mochizuki attacks him the whole match with nasty whip crack leg kicks, but goes down like a shot for a nice Fukuda elbow smash. Mochizuki and Okamura are both wearing their baggy mid 90s karate gear (with the short cropped shirts with short yet super baggy sleeves), and apparently everybody in WAR that year was instructed to use chairshots whenever a match went to the floor. Chairshots with those thin but no doubt painful Japanese metal chairs are to WAR what being thrown into the guardrail is to NOAH. Mochizuki beats Fukuda's ass on the floor, and Okamura comes flying out of nowhere with an elbow drop off the apron that mostly misses. That was a theme of Okamura's, although in an amusing way: He was kind of clumsy but had some wild asshole energy, so he would awkwardly take a bump or whiff on a move, but always with gusto. Kamikaze hits a great space flying tiger drop, Mochizuki continues to show he's one of the best kickers in pro wrestling history, and we get a fun pull apart after the match that spills to the back (and sees Kamikaze put an exclamation point on things with a big DDT on the floor on Mochizuki).

4. Doink the Clown vs. Onryo

ER: This is a weirdly infamous match among a niche circle of wrestling fans, as it was the only major promotion match to be included on Scott Mailman's Japanese Indy Sleaze comp tape. And yes, I understand that many words in that sentence I just wrote read like "Yahoo Serious Film Festival". I don't know any of the legal ramifications of Borne continuing to use the Doink gimmick several years after his awesome WWF stint, but it's really weird he showed up on just a couple WAR shows in full Doink gimmick. He's even on this show with Bam Bam Bigelow, the man he blamed for his WWF firing. So that's all weird. The match itself is incredibly fun, with Borne working really stiff and Onryo setting up a bunch of stuff for him. It's all built around Doink suckering Onryo into attacks, and then almost all of the attacks backfiring on Onryo. Doink throws some stiff shoulderblocks, catches a leaping Onryo and turns it into a nasty backbreaker, and then does two of the best drop toeholds I've seen, with Onryo rushing at him like he didn't realize he was going to eat a drop toehold. If someone could make a drop toehold look like a shoot, it was Doink, in WAR, naturally. Onryo hits some nice forearms and does a wild tope con giro to take out Doink and his own undead buddy, really a spectacular dive (which Onryo was always good for). Back in and Doink finishes things off pretty easy with a nice belly to belly and crushing Onryo's ghost chest with the whoopee cushion. Borne looked so awesome here, it really made me want to go back and watch all of his 1993 Doink run.

5. Bam Bam Bigelow/Nobukazu Hirai vs. Arashi/Osamu Tachihikari

ER: Kind of a big meaty mess of a match, but not without its charms. Early on Bigelow sells big for Arashi, bumping backwards to the floor off a shoulderblock, then smacking the drink out of the hand of a ringside fan. He smacked it from underneath, too, so the drink flew really high, straight up into the air. Hirai is a guy with tons of energy with mostly nice looking stuff, but in this match he is also responsible for one of the funniest and dumbest moments in wrestling. He and Tachihikari spill to the floor, and Hirai just wastes him with chairshots: throwing him into the ringside chairs, beating him with the chairs, burying him in the chairs. He then climbs into the crowd and runs up the stairs of Korakuen, then runs back down them, leaps onto the guardrail, slips, and falls right onto his face in all the chairs, not touching Tachihikari with whatever the hell it was he was meaning to do. But he is committed. So he suplexes Tachihikari into the chairs, gets back into the crowd, and walks up those stairs again. He doesn't walk up as high as the first time, and he goes slower, then he comes back down the stairs, slowly, gets back on the guardrail....and almost completely whiffs on a leaping clothesline. And he appears to actually injure his knee doing all of that, as he keeps going back to it the rest of the match while everyone else avoids it. Amazing. The rest of the match isn't much. We get a nice double team powerbomb from BBB/Hirai, and Hirai finishes things with a nice elbow drop off the middle rope. The sumo guys are a fun team, but this probably should have been better.

6. Kazuo Yamazaki/Takashi Iizuka vs. Genichiro Tenryu/Nobutaka Araya

ER: Yeah baby, this is all about Tenryu and Araya working as dickhead heels in their own promotion, openly taunting the fans with their assholery. Yamazaki starts the match lacing into Tenryu with kicks, and I always loved how Yamazaki still threw kicks like a kickpad guy, while just wearing tights and boots at this stage of his career. But you knew eventually that Tenryu would get his mitts on Iizuka, and when that happens then things get real. It happens in an unexpectedly awesome way, as Araya/Iizuka are in the ring, and suddenly the camera man gets knocked on his ass, and it;s like we're suddenly watching Cloverfield and have no idea what's going on, until the Tenryu pops into view as the cameraman is filming from his back. Turns out the cameraman was focused on the ring action and got blindsided as Tenryu did a sneak attack on Yamazaki. Tenryu beats Yamazaki down with a chair, and now we officially get Iizuka alone. You knew it was coming. Iizuka is always so game for taking a beating, and he's a great babyface as I always just want him to stand up for himself. They were such great jerks, laying in a beating with stiff chops and punches, nothing fancy, but the pure joy comes when Iizuka would make a miniscule comeback, because then Araya would come rushing in to immediately break it up. And every time they did that they would triumphantly raise their arms while soaking in the jeers. Tenryu and Araya are expert ring cutter offers, and we build to a big moment where Yamazaki finally comes back and breaks up a pin, kicking Tenryu right in the eye (and few are better at selling a kick to the eye than Tenryu). We get a great moment of Iizuka grabbing a desperation kneebar, but eventually Araya and his pudginess are two much for him, squishing him with two big moonsaults. This never hit peak WAR violence, but delivered at least as much as all Tenryu WAR tags. Tenryu and Araya are a total superstar heel team, making this easily must see.

7. Jushin Liger/El Samurai vs. Lance Storm/Yuji Yasuraoka

ER:  Liger and Samurai were such a cool team around this time, no way a team like Storm/Yasuraoka could come off even half as interesting. They both seem so light compared to the expresionless asskicking of Liger and Samurai. And luckily most of the match is a Liger/Samurai beatdown, so we didn't have to see extended runs of 1996 Lance Storm offense. First half of the match is Liger and Samurai cutting off the ring and picking apart Yasuraoka. Storm gets off kinda easy this match, as most of the damage that happens to him is due to his own poor landings on flying moves. Yasuraoka is the one in there getting powerbombed roughly (like 4 times!) and getting stomped by two of the better stompers in wrestling. We get a big dive spot, with Samurai plastering Storm with a tope (sending Storm crashing back hard into chairs), Yasuraoka hits a flying...something? (knee? axe handle?) that appears to not hit anyone, and Liger wastes him with a crossbody off the top. Samurai is one of the more generous bumpers ever, making all of Yasuraoka's stuff look brutal, when it does not in fact look very brutal (also, does anyone take a German suplex more annoying than Yasuraoka? He always takes them like he's doing a standing moonsault, always landing light), and Storm has some really awesome saves, really timing them so he's flying into frame at the last second. Storm and Yasuraoka win the junior titles, even though it felt like they really didn't do enough in the match to win them. Most of the match felt like a nice Liger/Samurai beatdown, with a Storm/Yasuraoka flurry at the end. Storm hits a huge flip dive to the floor that sends Liger sprawling through chairs (and sees Storm mostly do a huge Hamrick bump onto his back. Storm also took a great bump through the ropes earlier, basically flying through the ropes no hands and splatting on his back). I'm not really excited for the Storm/Yasuraoka babyface run, but it was nice seeing Samurai waste them. Samurai is always so lean and mean, I love his stomps and wrenched in holds, his reverse DDT always lands, and his left arm lariat (both standing and running variation) is a favorite of mine. I'd love to see Liger/Samurai against Tenryu/Araya

ER: Fun show that didn't look like much on paper. Nothing here was blowaway great, but it was a top to bottom fun show, a nice way to spend a couple hours. WAR felt like more of a "normal" fed at this point, but it had tons of charm and still brought the surliness.


COMPLETE SEGUNDA CAIDA DECLARES WAR!!!

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