2014 Ongoing Match of the Year List

15. Tomoaki Honma v. Katsuyori Shibata NJPW 8/3

ER: So, so, so so great! I loved every second of this one. Honma is just the best and really gets that underdog mentality over to an insane degree. Here he got just as much offense as Shibata, but always came across as the underdog. And it's not like he kept lucking into his offense, he's just really great at conveying his character. Shibata was great here too as a more skilled, cold asskicker who is not necessarily underestimating Honma, but at the same time almost in disbelief that he is having *this* much trouble with him. The crowd is just so into Honma here and it's incredibly infectious. I can't remember an underdog character I get this invested in, get this genuinely excited about the outcomes of his matches. Honma just commits to everything, and it makes all the difference. His shots hit big, and they miss bigger. His headbutt flying straight into Shibata's boots was heartbreaking; his hooked legs and high cradles are the most hope-filled pinfalls possible. Shibata hits tons of nasty shots in this, and his elbows with a dropkick follow up in the corner was just brutal. But it was key that he did not view Honma as a joke, and he most definitely made Honma look like a competitor here. He sold a Honma slap like Kawada taking the nastiest Misawa elbow, actually showed struggle when kicking out of Honma's high cradles. And I could have sworn he hesitated just a moment before nailing Honma with the match-ending Penalty Kick. I really did love every second of this. One of my absolute favorite matches of the year.

PAS: Yeah this was really fun, it is about the best possible version of a New Japan forearm exchange match. Both guys have established characters and hierarchies, so it isn't just two even guys 50/50ing it, it is a sprint so it doesn't out stay it's welcome, there is selling, it is just two guys standing there and making faces and both guys lay it in which distinguishes it from what ever Okada and Tanahashi are trying to do. Homna is awesome here, although he does the same kind of thing in every match which can wear a bit thin, still this is about the best Homna formula match I have seen. Loved his in ring tope to take control, and him trying to go all out for big moves and failing. Meanwhile Shibata was really good as the overdog, kicking his ass convincingly, and still portraying those moments of doubt and fear.


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New Japan Pro Wrestling on AXS TV 7/24/15 Review

1. Tomoaki Honma vs. Katsuyori Shibata (8/3/14)

So, so, so so great! I loved every second of this one. Honma is just the best and really gets that underdog mentality over to an insane degree. Here he got just as much offense as Shibata, but always came across as the underdog. And it's not like he kept lucking into his offense, he's just really great at conveying his character. Shibata was great here too as a more skilled, cold asskicker who is not necessarily underestimating Honma, but at the same time almost in disbelief that he is having *this* much trouble with him. The crowd is just so into Honma here and it's incredibly infectious. I can't remember an underdog character I get this invested in, get this genuinely excited about the outcomes of his matches. Honma just commits to everything, and it makes all the difference. His shots hit big, and they miss bigger. His headbutt flying straight into Shibata's boots was heartbreaking; his hooked legs and high cradles are the most hope-filled pinfalls possible. Shibata hits tons of nasty shots in this, and his elbows with a dropkick follow up in the corner was just brutal. But it was key that he did not view Honma as a joke, and he most definitely made Honma look like a competitor here. He sold a Honma slap like Kawada taking the nastiest Misawa elbow, actually showed struggle when kicking out of Honma's high cradles. And I could have sworn he hesitated just a moment before nailing Honma with the match-ending Penalty Kick. I really did love every second of this. One of my absolute favorite matches of the year.

2. Yujiro Takahashi vs. Kazuchika Okada (8/3/14)

Hey this was better than I expected. I don't love either man, but Yujiro was pretty good here. I really liked his delay german, but then did not like how slowly and feebly he fell into the corner after a Okada dropkick. With these guys it seems like for everything they do that I like, they do something not long after that I dislike. Rainmaker looked good because Yujiro flew into it gloriously, but right before that he holds a tombstone too long which only makes it clear that Yujiro's head came nowhere close to the mat. These two give, and they immediately take away. But, it was better than I expected, and was overall perfectly acceptable televised pro wrestling.

3. Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi (8/3/14)

This was pretty much the match I was expecting, with fine execution and problematic layout. Tanahashi talks about his injured neck before the match and how that will affect him and how he'll have to change his style, but nothing about the way he worked this match made it seem like he was changing up his style in the least. It's like those horrible band interviews where they're talking about recording their new record, and how they've been listening to a lot of Neu and Harmonia and Phil Manzanera guitar patterns, and how they're really getting influenced by these sounds....and then the album comes out and it's the same trash they've released on their previous two records. I mean Tanahashi did not do one thing differently. I hate that.

Nakamura seemed a bit hesitant in spots, and Tanahashi is clunky about getting into position for things at times. Sometimes he's just sitting there, arms at sides, waiting to be kicked. I will give him credit for always leaning face first into Nakamura's mean knees and kicks, so there's that. Finish run was pretty bad with a rote forearm exchange, then Nakamura hitting a nasty Bom Ba Ye that looked match finishing, but Tanahashi was up doing his moves just seconds later. That was a repeat trend. This was real disappointing.

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New Japan Pro Wrestling on AXS TV 7/10/15 Review

1. Bad Luck Fale vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi (7/28/14)

This was...okay? It was a real Fale-heavy match, kind of a squash for him really. They gave him a big nearfall off the grenade, which I assumed would lead to the Tanahashi comeback...but then it didn't. G1 always has some even-stevens type of wins, and this one was pretty harmless. I actually really dug the opening wristlock battle. Tanahashi did a nice job putting over Fale's grip strength, and he leaned way into all of Fale's big moves. Fairly inoffensive, good for the allotted time.

2. Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Tomoaki Honma (7/28/14)

Man the home stretch of this was so damn fun. Honma is such a great lovable loser, like a better working Masao Inoue. Even though he almost always loses his nearfalls always get me, always make me think he's going to get the upset. The brainbuster here especially hooked me. Fans buy into it too and it always makes for great atmosphere during Honma matches. Mauro does an admirable job covering for a backslide flub down the stretch, and flubbing a move like that actually works within Honma's character, especially where it happened in the match. Saying something like "that could have put Nakamura away, if only he were able to hold on to it" practically writes itself within the context of Honma. Nak himself looked a little off in spots, or else I would argue this match's placement on our MOTY list.

3. Kazuchika Okada vs. Tetsuya Naito (7/28/14)

Eh, this wasn't bad but not really my thing. Seems like I always have the same complaints about these two, and everything I complain about was right here staring back at me. Feels like a waste of all of our time to repeat all of them. Naito can bump big, but he's really bad about making those bumps mean anything. He takes the big "everybody takes this bump off the top onto the apron in every Okada match" bump, spikes himself on a DDT, but really only takes the bumps in a nasty way because it looks cool. He's still back up running around moments later. And Okada does the same thing. He gets dumped on his head with a dragon suplex, which just is used to transition into a strike exchange. It's that kind of wrestling where everything is executed wonderfully, but if you stop and think about the order of some things it will drive you nuts. But really this is all just me burying the lede, because you guys....according to Frank Shamrock....Tetsuya Naito can LITERALLY fly. Can Naito literally fly, Frank Shamrock? Really? Or can he just fall. It seemed like he just fell from a high place to me. But he assures me that Naito can literally fly. The future is now people.

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New Japan Pro Wrestling on AXS TV 6/26/15 Review

1. Tomoaki Honma vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi (7/21/14)

The emergence of Tomoaki Honma "The Perpetual Underdog" is one of the better stories of the last decade of pro wrestling. It's neat to see a former death match guy actually work his way into a respected role in the largest company. I mean, it only took 15 years so maybe we just have a case of survivor bias here, but whatever the reason I'm happy for the guy. Match itself was a fun Smackdown match, with a finish that was never really in doubt nor even teased. Honma looked really great and I loved him taking it to Tanahashi before inevitably failing. The underdog character in wrestling is so good when done well, a guy who is good but just plain not as good as the top guys, and needs every single thing to go right in matches to pull out a win. I really like Honma's offense and energy, like how he makes Tanahashi actually duck on a lariat, blocking Tanahashi's strikes with his forearms, love his sad face as he realizes he's about to take a Dragon Suplex, like his fighting spirit without any sort of actual gameplan. Honma never really had a chance, but the match was fun an competitive. Though it is a little weird how Honma came off like a bigger star than Tanahashi here.

2. AJ Styles vs. Kazuchika Okada (7/21/14)

This was clipped to ribbons but what they showed was mostly good, outside of the poorly set up Bullet Club interference you knew was going to happen. Yujiro looked fine on the run-in, they're always just set up in the lamest ways. Either Red Shoes has to just ignore that it's happening and kinda hold his arms out going "Guuuuuuuys, cahmahhnnnnn", or we get the lame set-up here: Styles gets knocked into Red Shoes, Red Shoes proceeds to be knocked out or holding his stomach for the next 3 minutes. I get why nobody would want a horrible David Manning invincible referee, but goddamn do all referees have to be gentle little Faberge eggs? Red Shoes gets bumped into, does a backward roll, and is just OUT. It's human nature to roll through something and get back up, fine or not. I've tripped and fallen while running a few times, always immediately instinctively sprang right back to my feet before my brain could even process what had just happened. But all referees are required to have fragile little bird bones so doing a reverse somersault is tantamount to crashing your bicycle into a brick wall. It's just so lazy, and so damn bad. Which is a shame, as the work between Styles and Okada was very good. Styles always makes Okada's offense look better than it is, really throwing himself into Germans, splatting off the apron from Okada's top rope dropkick and getting obliterated by the Rainmaker. Okada looked better here than in most matches I've seen, his offense was clean and in some cases spectacular. His wild running crossbody into the crowd was unexpected and killer, and he at least cut low on missed Rainmakers and got really great bridges on his suplexes. So other than the lazily set-up and boring middle portion that happens in all Bullet Club matches, this was actually really good. Shame, that.

3. Katsuyori Shibata vs. Shinsuke Nakamura (7/21/14)

Shibata is a little dry, and we had a goofy ass dated headdrop exchange in the middle, but overall this was fine. I liked the sit down interview with Shibata as he explained how he hadn't fought Nakamura in 10 years, and how different each of them were then and now. That does make it kind of weird that NJ would waste a match-up like that on a G1 tourney match, but it did make the match feel like a bigger deal. Nakamura was great during this, flying face first into Shibata's kicks, posting himself nicely, getting dumped by suplexes and setting up all of his runs nicely. Shibata always feels like a guy I want to like but always leaves me somewhat cold. I also cannot fathom how Nakamura hasn't become some sort of internet crossover gif meme at this point. How have I not been bombarded by gifs of Nakamura doing his Mick Jagger Start Me Up moves with "Haters Gonna Hate" stamped across it in large white letters. Feels like a gif that would be posted by tons of people who had no idea there was even pro wrestling in Japan. His fucking finger guns and hip shakes before hitting a series of knees have me in stitches. Nakamura always has this drunken master aura to him, this weird slithery controlled sloppiness that is wholly unique. Which was in stark contrast to Shibata's grown up young boy dropkicks and half crab style. The dopey no sold headdrop exchange was clumsily out of place, and it's a shame as Shibata's spill looked brutal, but then he just popped up and a disgusted, eyerolling "yuck" involuntarily dropped out of my mouth. I did love the battle over Nak's Bom-Ba Ye's and Shibata's Penalty Kick. Nak's BBY off the middle rope looked good, and the finish PK the Nak took flush looked brutal. The execution for everything was really great, and while the order that things weren't put together wasn't all my cup of tea, this was still plenty good.

Nothing blowaway great this week, but one of the overall better episodes as the ring work was all really good, just didn't always have great match structure to go along with it. But an hour of good ringwork is still plenty entertaining even if it doesn't result in any classics.

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New Japan Pro Wrestling on AXS TV Episode 17 Review

1. Tomoaki Honma & Yuji Nagata vs. Katsuyori Shibata & Hirooki Goto (6/21/14)

Awesome match, with a truly great Honma performance. This goes 11 minutes and is just wonderful. Honma has been having a quietly great post-deathmatch career. It's kind of surprising how little he gets mentioned because he really gets it. Here he folds a bunch of stories, character, selling and moments into 11 tidy minutes, and it's great. The stuff with he and Shibata is awesome with them stiffing the shit out of each other as they clearly try and knock each other's jaws out of alignment. Both men smack each other with total blinders on, really focused on just hitting the other really hard in the face. There's a great early moment when Honma and Nagata corner Shibata and Nagata is still hitting him in a pro wrestling kind of way, while Honma is clearly sneaking in full punches to Shibata's face, not fucking around with meager forearms. Shibata and Honma have several nice moments in this, one where Shibata punches Honma in the face as Honma just does a slow desperate collapse, and another where Shibata tries choking Honma with his boot and a test of wills begins, with Honma fighting that fucking boot and Shibata wanting nothing more than to dickishly grind that boot into Honma's chest and throat. Honma later hits a neat falling headbutt on him, and then splats temple first off a top rope attempt. Damn that looked bad. I normally do not have much use for Nagata and Goto (and Nagata's chipmunk cheek Undertaker eyeball armbar is still one of the out-and-out dumbest things in pro wrestling history), but Goto joins in the Honma shit kicking, peaking with a nasty spin kick in the corner, while Nagata contributes by hitting a nasty yakuza kick on Shibata over the guardrail. Honma gets an awesome near fall after reversing a Goto brainbuster into a small package, but eventually he is no match for Goto's goofy ass "American indy inverted DVD dropped onto his own knee" finisher. Still, awesome shit, and Honma fucking rules. Get on the bus.

PAS:Honma was awesome in this, I have really liked his new age Kikuchi act, and while there are no Jumbos and Fuchi's around to kill him, he is still really fun. Shibata is fine as a poor mans Usuda, and he lands some really killer shots. I loved the spot where Shibata twisted his wrists apart and landed a killer right hook. Goto and Nagata were very much guys in this match, but Shibata v. Honma is well worth the admission price.

2. Bad Luck Fale vs. Shinsuke Nakamura (6/21/14)

Well this was also surprisingly good. I mean, I'm as big a Nakamura fan as anybody, but Fale is a guy who doesn't ever look good during Bullet Club interference so I wasn't too excited about him in a long singles. But Nakamura was a generous and giving partner here, bumped big all over for Fale, and this worked because of that. Jeez Nakamura even did a stretcher job for him! Which is crazy. We get a pre-match sit down interview with Fale, which is one of the drier things you will ever hear. This guy showed nothing whatsoever. His tone sounded like Jimmy Snuka giving somber, remorseful testimony during his murder trial...but with better English. But damn Nakamura did a good job at wringing some interest out of the match himself. All his knees looked great, he throws my favorite knees to the stomach in wrestling. He flung himself into the Grenade, which is move that doesn't always look very good. Nakamura busts ass to make this work, and it totally did. Leans into the avalanche, gets knocked inside out on lariats, this was way better than it should have been.

After the match Karl Anderson and AJ Styles cut a pair of horrendous promos. They don't know any Japanese so just address the crowd really slowly, the way Americans think if they just talk slow and annunciate then foreigners will understand them, as if they think they were speaking to 2,000 retarded people. Both guys are microphone poison.

**NOTE: The Honma tag was awesome so we added it to our 2014 MOTY List. Link is below.


2014 MOTY MASTER LIST

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2014 Ongoing Match of the Year List

15. Tomoaki Honma v. Katsuyori Shibata NJPW 8/3

PAS: Really awesome balls to the wall sprint. Probably the best short Puro slugfest since Ikeda v. Ono. Honma is a dude I dug back in the BJPW Yamakawa days, and is great in NJPW as a Kikuchish underdog who absorbs a whomping and keeps going. Shibabta is a bit dry, but he works great as an asskicker who is looking to put this little punk down. I loved him cornering Honma in the corner and just pounding him with one-two elbows, meanwhile Honma was great at finding moments to get in his own shots, his Chico Che style in ring tope was fucking awesome, as was his running clothesline. Finish was great as Honma was starting to elbow out of the fireman's carry, before Shibata just mushed him with a back fist and then Go-To-Sleeped his head off. Really enjoyed this, this kind of thing might get me back into Puro

ER: What a bizarre and mostly unheralded career Honma has had. Everybody first heard of him 15 (!) years ago when he was the wild young stupid death match worker, and then he basically spent all of the 2000s doing opening match jobber duty in AJPW and having his matches either clipped down or edited off entirely from AJ shows. Now he's kind of weathered that and somehow come out the other side as a never say die veteran who has to be nearing 40 and takes mean beatings before eventually going down. I really dug him here, with a cool deadlift brainbuster and that neat torpedo headbutt Phil mentioned (I loved when Spike Dudley did it and Chico Che's is even better, wonder why more guys don't do it). Shibata is more of a cold mechanical ruthless killer, and his elbows are some of the nastiest things I've seen. Give Honma tons of credit for hanging in with those, but damn did those look rough. Shibata was throwing them one after another right to Honma's neck. I get a crick in my neck if I hold my phone to one side of my head too long. I loved all of Honma's little comebacks, with a nice corner charge clothesline, the torpedo, catching Shibata's leg on a kick. Shibata's attacks were incessant so Honma had to make his moments, and finally Shibata squashes this little pesky gnat with a G2S followed by a punt for good measure.


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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.


BEST OF JAPAN MASTER LIST

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W*ING v. Fujiwara Group 3/02

Tomokai Honma v. W*ING Kanemaru, Shoji Nakamaki, Hidoh

PAS: This was a death match graduation gauntlet as I assume Honma was on his way to his undercard All Japan stint. This really felt like an exhibition with a three opponents kind of running through their specialties. Honma bleeds a bunch and gets awkwardly powerbombed on his head, but this never really felt like a match

TKG: I guess there was some sort of build. Honma has to last five minutes with each guy and its not like each five minute segment had Honma going through lighttube boards and barbed wire. Instead first five minutes was Kanemaru doing floor brawling, next five has Nakamaki intro a barb wire board, next five has Hidoh introduce the lighttube board. Does that count as build?

PAS: There was a point in the early part of this decade where I really liked Japanese indy juniors wrestling, and these two along with Onryu were big reasons why. This was a total train wreck though, Cougar had a nice legdrop, but this was a bunch of blown and awkward spots. I am concerned that if I revisit all of this stuff I will have to reevaluate these guys, because this sucked a dick.

TKG: I kind of expected these two guys to have a touring match worked out by this point. I mean this is 2002. These guys have wrestled each other for years. But this wasn’t as worked out as the worst Fleish/Storm, Shelley/Jacobs or Sydal/Delirious match. It didn’t feel like these two had an idea of what to do with each other.

TKG: The W*NG guys and Fujiwara guys meet in a wine cellar to determine tourney brackets. Pogo looks like ary Busey talking nonsense while everyone else looks away in embarasment. After dinner Pogo gets a blows fire on a caricature of Fujiwara to get his team psyched up.

Masaru Toi v. Takeshi Ono

PAS: This was the second most intriguing match on paper, and while I would have liked it to be longer, it delivered for a short match. Toi is a guy famous for potatoing people, but he took the worst of it, getting kicked square in the face a bunch of times, as well as eating some nasty body shots. Toi fired back with some chairshots and a nasty top rope double knee. Feels like these two have a great main event on a Goro Tsurumi fed in them, but this was kind of short undercard match.

TKG: I don’t know if I think of Toi as being a guy who delivers potatoes so much as veteran in multiperson match who hold stuff together and has cool old man highflying. They start with basic wrestling feel with Ono eventually doing the dickish “I won’t participate in BS rope running wrestling thing” move. Toi responds to the shooter going “pro-wrestling is BS” by grabbing for the weapons and dropping Ono on stack of chairs.

Sato v. Hiroshi Shimoda

PAS: This was worked BattlArts style with Shimoda using his fatness, Roy Nelson style to stymie the skinner Sato. Shimoda was kind of awesome in this, doing all kinds of little cool spots, stepping on Sato’s foot to get control, really laying on him in the amateur rides. I loved the finish with Sato squirming out of a powebomb into a choke sleeper. Shockingly good for two guys I have never heard of.

TKG: The Japanese Pride open weight thing can be silly but played out fine here. I haven’t watched any 21st Century W*NG, but wouldn’t mind seeing what became of Shimoda. Shimoda does a really neat fat guy feint where he claps his hands above his head, distracting Sato so he can go in for a takedown. Made me nostalgic for playing rugby in my younger days. Skinny guys can feint by quick feet movements. Fat guys on the other hand if they plant their feet in one direction..that’s where there feet are going to stay planted. Fat guys need to do really ridiculous broad theatrical movements and yell “Hey look over there!” if they want to create misdirection. The clapping above the head was just a really fun fat guy fake out spot.

Mr. Sakai v. Tomokai Honma

TKG: I have no idea who Mr Sakai is or why he represents Fujiwara. He’s in a really cheap wrestling outfit with the Japanese sun on his belt and a cardboard tiara that says Mr Sakai on top of his head. He has a nice asai and I kind of liked part of the set up for the finish as they fight off the ropes on the ramp. But this was the least of your Fujiwara v W*NG matches thus far.

PAS: Pretty short, but outside of the nice dive, pretty bad. Man Honma may have been a Ryuji Yamakawa creation. The finish of this match was especially shitty as Honma hits a Thunder driver on the ramp where Sakai’s head doesn’t even come close to hitting the ramp. It’s W*ING if you aren’t going to recklessly injure your opponent, what are you doing there?

Osamu Tachihikari v. Gran Sheik

TKG: Ok. So I was wrong. This is the least of your Fujiwara v W*NG match ups. Gran Sheik is an L.A. lucha heavyweight who works like a really poor man’s Rey Sr or Kiss. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen him work the mat this much. He is about as impressive on the mat as he is doing stand up brawling.

PAS: There was a couple of nice open hand chop exchanges, but this was some dull fat man wrestling. Osamu Tachihikari was a guy who got Internet cult status based on his fat face, hair and pockmarked skin, but he was the least of your man breasted WAR dudes

Yoshiaki Fujiwara/Yuki Ishikawa/Katsumi Usuda v. Mr. Pogo/Hidoh/Shoji Nakamki

PAS: I was hoping for more of a clash of styles with the Fujiwara team using shootstyle to counter the garbage wrestling. Instead we get a basic W*ING match with a short arena tour and Pogo winning by choking Fujiwara with a chain. This ties the series at 3 and there is some mike work to set up a big Captain’s Fall elimination with everyone from each team. This was basically a big brawl with some fun Usuda asskicking, and a suprsingly good Gran Sheik v. Ishikawa punch exchange, but it ends pretty quickly with Fujiwara tapping Pogo with the armbar. Pretty disappointing for something that looked awesome on paper.

TKG: The opening six man match was really nothing. I don’t even remember the arena tour. Just Pogo taking off his boot hitting Fujiwara and then hanging him. I was kind of stoked to see captain’s fall just for the chance to see more Shimoda. But that never really broke down into individual match ups. Instead you have this all over the place brawl that has almost a Battle royal feel where there is lots of stuff happening but never any focus. Lots of cool Ishikawa exchanges as the section of him vs Hido looked like something I want to see as an actual match, surprisingly the same is true of the section of him vs Gran Sheik. Fujiwara’s exchanges also were also a blast as he traded with Nakamaki, Hido, Shimoda and Pogo.

W*ING Kanemaru v. Mitsuhiro Matsunaga

PAS: This felt kind of desultory. It was a W*ING show, so this had to be the main event, but it didn’t feel like there was any purpose beyond that. For some reason they kept turning out the lights, so large parts of this were in the dark. The finish was sort of a crazy balcony dive by Matsunaga which is pretty crazy to try in the dark.

TKG: They’re wrestling in the dark. It’s 2002, so this is pre Rick Saloman popularizing night vision technology. Or is that something that Paris picked up from the Harajuku girls? I’ve heard people mock death match workers for killing themselves in front of small crowds. But at least keep the lights on so that small crowd can see you killing yourself. Doing it with the lights out so no one can see it is bizarre.

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