Fujiwara Family: BattlArts 3/25/00

BattlArts 3/25/00

Mohammed Yone vs. Ryuji Yamakawa

PAS: This was a Yamakawa match rather then an Yone match, and does a nice job of showing the variety that was on an average BattlArts card, everything wasn't Ikeda kicks to the eye. This was a fine hardcore brawl, Yone takes a suplex to the floor through a couple of tables, Yamakawa bleeds just to bleed and finishes the match with a nasty clothesline. Nothing that would go on either guys resume tape, but fun nonetheless.

Minoru Tanaka vs. Ikuto Hidaka

PAS: This was a 2000s juniors match with the only really BattlArts flavor being some knee bars and head kicks, but it was a heck of 2000s juniors match. Hidaka is really great at flying into things, diving knee bars, flying chokes, spring board dropkicks on knees. Tanaka has some cool rolling attacks too, and just hurls Hidaka on top of his head and kicks him in the face. There was a Tanaka dragon suplex which was as cool as that move has ever been thrown. Tanaka gets his knee taken apart, but sells it sporadically, which is a problem, but kind of par for the course. 19 minute Juniors matches are very much not my thing, but this was as good as that is going to get.

Shinobu Kandori/Mach Junji vs. COW COW/Takeshi Ono - FUN

PAS: Shinobu Kandori and Takeshi Ono are two of the coolest wrestlers of all time, so of course this tag match turns into a Mach Junji vs. COW COW showdown. Ono and Kandori are stuck mostly breaking up pins as COW COW and Junji face off. Not sure who COW COW was, but his execution on stuff was pretty good, nice german suplex and a stiff clothesline, so I didn't mind the match, but this was about the most uninteresting way it could have been worked.

Alexander Otsuka/Kazunari Murakami vs. Naoki Sano/Yuki Ishikawa

PAS: Look at this lineup, just four of the most badass wrestlers ever working a long BattlArts tag. We know what a great matchup Ishikawa vs. Murakami is, and it is awesome in this match too. Murakami is frenzied as usual and he and Ishikawa go after each other early with Ishikawa dumping him with a side suplex and Murakami using these amazing Judo throws. Most people think of Murakami as a guy who would just throw crazy punches and kicks and mean mug, but he had maybe the best Judo throws in wrestling history, he would just hurl the guy he was wrestling with incredible speed and tremendous force. We also got a bunch of Otsuka matching up with Sano, which is something that happened a couple of other times in tags, but was just incredible stuff. They had super fast takedowns and grappling exchanges, constantly moving and looking for the smallest advantages. These are also a pair of guys who will stretch the boundaries of BattlArts style and we also got a great tope by Sano and a pescado by Otsuka. The match breaks down first into an Ishikawa vs. Murakami final run, which included Otsuka breaking up a save by destroying Sano with a Everest German, and then a Sano vs. Murakami section with some nasty exchanged kicks and submission scrambles. It goes to a thirty minute draw which deprives us of a finish but does give us 30 minutes of these guys, so a good trade off.

Daisuke Ikeda vs. Katsumi Usuda - EPIC

PAS: Usuda is sort of the Akira Taue of the Battlarts big four, a little less flashy, a little less regarded, but equally able to deliver the goods when needed. He comes out wilding here, super aggressive and total pushing the pace to Ikeda, winging hard kicks to his head and body. You don't usually see Ikeda having to work off the back foot, it was a really cool different look for him. Even when Ikeda lands a side suplex, Usuda is able to grab an arm and work a keylock. Ikeda is able to land some big kicks of his own and one of his lead pipe clotheslines right on the ropes, I have no idea how Ikeda didn't break his forearm or Usuda's jaw or both. Finish is really great, with Usuda being a little reckless trying for a guillotine choke allowing Ikeda to slip first into a Fujiwara and then into a nasty choke sleeper which whitens Usuda's eyes. Really felt like Usuda had his number, but Ikeda was able to use his aggression against him. Maybe the most Fujiwarish Ikeda performance I can remember seeing. 

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE SHINOBU KANDORI

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE DAISUKE IKEDA

FUJIWARA FAMILY 

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Best of Japan 2000-2009: Kintaro Kanemura vs. Ryuji Yamakawa, BJPW 2/22/00

3. Kintaro Kanemura vs. Ryuji Yamakawa, BJPW 2/22/00

Kanemura is always a sleazy favorite of mine and man he is a monster to start this one, doing the most plausible RVD "throw chair you catch I kick" possible, flattening Yamakawa with two nasty fat sentons (one big one off the top, the other off the top to the floor right after Yamakawa gets tossed from the ring through a folding chair fort). But Kanemura just plays big in general. He's like Adam Dunn in that he hits big when he hits, and misses big when he misses. Yeah he crushed Yamakawa with a couple sentons, but he also caved in his own chest on a missed turnbuckle charge and flew horizontally like a frisbee into the ring post in one of the greatest postings I've ever seen. Picture Sandman taking his trademark ring barrier bump, but into the ringpost. I need to start tracking down current Apache Pro.

There is so much brutality in this and like a total sicko I kept wanting more. Kanemura drops Yamakawa on chairs with the Axe Driver? Mooooore. Yamakawa gets powerbombed off the stage through a table below, except he's lined up poorly so basically only the back of his head goes through the table? Yesssss. I will rewind. Both men are savagely stupid in this, with Kanemura never quite topping his ringpost bump but still leaning way into clotheslines. Yamakawa throws one that really knocks Kanemura sideways, like a drunk guy running face first into a lamp post (and only kinda makes up for getting concussed through a table and getting dumped through tons of chairs). Aside from all his cool offense, Kanemura is also Necro Butcher-precise with his chair shots and table shots. For a man who looks like he has zero muscle, Kanemura swings a full table at Yamakawa's face with the strength of Giancarlo Stanton hitting a ball into the upper deck (jeez can you tell baseball season has started? Maybe these comparisons would fit better if I were reviewing Osaka Pro).

I was praying for some stupid spots and reckless behavior in this one, and it beyond delivered in stupid sleaze. And while the whole thing was overkill, it never felt like overkill to me. It felt like two freaks REALLY wanting to win and I thought the build was great. Plus there's just something beautiful about the waves created by a man in tight white pants getting thrown through dozens of shiny folding chairs.


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Best of Japan 2000-2009: Ryuji Yamakawa vs. Tomoaki Honma, BJPW 1/2/00

1. Ryuji Yamakawa vs. Tomoaki Honma, BJPW 1/2/00

This match was what got me back into death matches years and years ago. I'm pretty sure the first tape in most tape traders' collection was some sort of death match. Either the IWA Death match tourney, or some FMW tape, or a W*ing comp, or the Sabu/Funk Born to Be Wired match, or something like that. My first tape I traded for was a compilation of all sorts of death matches, from fire to barbed wire to one with a live snake. The tape blew my mind. I don't know what I was expecting, but the tape was weirder in ways I hadn't thought about. I thought the matches would be big spectacles, not sad little events in half empty gyms fought by pudgy guys in jeans, with no production value. It may have been foolish to expect glamour from something called "death matches", but somehow it was seamier than I expected, not so much due to the violence, but for the realization that the payoffs for rolling around in glass couldn't be that big when the promotion appeared to be holding its show in a parking lot and didn't seem to have an actual ring. So I had bought into the gimmick of death matches, and quickly realized it was a gimmick . Although good lord in retrospect I should probably be thankful I wandered into something as harmless as Japanese death matches. It's hard to say why death matches appealed to me yet something like Faces of Death or Mondo Cane sounds like my worst type of nightmare that I wouldn't be able to unsee. But whatever the appeal, it faded fast as the matches just didn't have enough substance to hold my attention. And then Yamakawa and Honma arrived and added death match insanity to the strong style of wrestling that teenage me was becoming obsessed with.

Feeling out process here is really good as they both really struggle around the barbed wire boards. Soon Honma gets thrown into one of the boards, but awesomely runs up the board and backflips away from it, then throws Yamakawa into it. Honma has a really great running elbow, too. We go wandering through the crowd for awhile, getting tossed into some chairs, wandering while grabbing each others' heads...and then Yamakawa gets powerbombed on the stage...and then gets brainbustered...and is busted open. And things are getting awesome. Yamakawa has really great kicks to Honma's dome.

Back in the ring and they fight on the apron, and Honma is great as he throws his full body into preventing his bod from getting suplexed from the ring to the floor, breaks free and blasts Yamakawa with a running elbow (all of Honma's roaring elbows were brutal in this, which is nice since I had no problem buying them as a finish) that sends him flying to the floor and Honma hits an out of control somersault tope. And we then get a series of absolutely insane spots, like powerbombs into barbed wire, Yamakawa takes a rana to the floor into barbed wire, a fucking rana off the top to the floor through barbed wire, and the whole time that giant nail board is looming at ringside. This whole thing is just nuts, and just as much fun 14 years later.


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