By Request: Shotaro Ashino vs. Seigo Tachibana

Shotaro Ashino vs. Seigo Tachibana Wrestle-1 6/2/19

ER: I'm nowhere near involved in the current puro landscape as I was a decade ago, partly lack of time, partly my favorites retiring/dying/getting old and not being replaced by people I like anywhere near as much. So I always appreciate recommendations for things like this, something I assuredly would have never seen. And while I think it narrowly misses our Match of the Year List, there were plenty of elements of the match that made it a contender for the list all the way through. In some ways it was a fun throwback 2002 "Sell the Arm" kind of match, with Ashino muscling Tachibana around early, hitting a hard snap German, throwing him through chairs, and - in probably my favorite spot of the match - hitting a killer overhead belly to belly on the floor. I love how the belly to belly was set up, Tachibana charging into Ashino and then hitting a brick wall - that THWACK Tachibana made when he ran straight into Ashino and stopped dead - and then getting chucked. I liked the focus once Tachibana shifted to working the arm, and loved how he set it up: He kept slamming Ashino's left arm into the mat and their holding it for a pin, and after trying that a few times and maneuvered smoothly into an armbar. The threat of a good armbar added more to this for me, and Ashino did a mostly nice job of selling it. It was cool seeing him work off balance, not able to throw as much weight behind his great uppercuts, his rhythm thrown by this swinging dead weight left arm. When he would fight through and use the dead arm, his shots would land harder but the recovery would take longer, leaving Tachibana openings.

That kind of simple acknowledgment could have really taken the match the rest of the way, but they wanted to do more things, limbwork be damned. I think Eddie Kingston might be the only wrestler brave enough (Brave? Dedicated? Smart?) to work a match with a bad limb, but not be tempted to get his shit in. Not everybody is Eddie Kingston, and he has the charisma and knowledge to work a compelling match with any restrictions. Shoot, lets make some sort of Dogme 95 list but for wrestling mat restrictions and see who can make the most compelling match within the parameters. And I like how Ashino uses that dead weight arm to his advantage, but also flipped when Tachibana caught him in a straight armbar or Fujiwara. Things got a little muddled when he started working ankle locks on Tachibana. I don't think the match needed dueling limbwork, and Tachibana really had no real interest in paying attention to it, screaming nicely while trapped in them, but not long after doing deadlift squats to get Ashino up. Some of the reversals around the anklelocks were nice, and some of the slams by both were good, but we also got a standing exchange that went too long, and some questionable things like Tachibana taking three Germans and selling them by grabbing an armbar. And that stuff wasn't bad, but it felt very predictable, and that was much worse to me. It was worse because they felt like they were moving to their own path, carving out their own fun armwork story, and then at some point it became clear we were going to get more 2019 tropes because it's 2019. I liked much more of this than I disliked, and also appreciate that they kept it a tidy 15 minutes, but an interesting Act I and II moving into a somewhat unrelated and muddled and busy Act III won't usually make list.

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Dick Togo's Got No Retirement Plans, No Derek Jeters

Dick Togo/Kaz Hayashi/Great Sasuke vs. Shuji Kondo/Toru Owashi/YASSHI Wrestle 1 8/11/16 - FUN

PAS: This is a battle of MPRO vets vs. Toruyman outcasts and it probably should have been better. Seems like a lot of Japanese juniors have acquired goofy Chikara gimmicks. Sasuke keeps sitting in meditation poses, YASSHI will bite you in the dick ect. First part of the match felt like everyone needing to shoehorn in their bit, like bad improv comedians, Bob has an effeminate southerner voice and no matter what the audience suggests an effeminate southerner will do it, look an effeminate southerner works at the DMV, an effeminate southerner is serving soup at this soup kitchen so on and so forth. Match picks up a little bit when they get the nonsense out of the way, Togo and Owashi have a cool exchange with Togo lacing into that big dude and looking just as tough as Owashi even though he is five inches shorter. We also had Hayashi and Sasuke remind you of the old days when they ruled as they broke out their signature dives. Still much of this was bad junk, and me being so happy to see Togo back might have been the only thing keeping me from rating this skippable.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE DICK TOGO

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Catching Up On 2014 Wrestle-1

Taiyo Kea & Masakatsu Funaki vs. Shinjiro Otani & Kohei Sato, Wrestle-1 6/27/14

Saw this match pop up and it had four guys that intrigue me in varying ways, so figured why not? Nobody could call this a MOTY, but as a fun one commercial Smackdown tag it was plenty worthwhile. There was no real high drama but the work within was good. The real revelation is that Taiyo Kea works as great now as he ever has, and maybe better. He was a guy who I was into during the All Japan pre-NOAH exodus days. Seemed like a guy who was really breaking out around 2002, but I could never get into mid/late 2000s AJPW so I lost track of him. I assumed he was mostly retired (and maybe he is?). Here he looks like a unrelenting monster, like a guy I'd like to see matched up against Ambrose. He mixes in a bunch of cool strikes, back elbow, nasty forearms, headbutts, meaty chops, cool short-range yakuza kicks, low rolling arm drag, low superkick. He just had a bunch of cool stuff that . Funaki is always fun doing little things, like his collar and elbows. He doesn't do them the way you're used to seeing them, he turns them into more of an immediate scramble. Think less HHH "this is how you execute a picture perfect collar and elbow" and more of a grappling fight. Him grappling with Otani is fun as he's always squirming around like a monkey, looking for leverage. Funaki also brings plenty of kicks, notably his rolling kappo kick to the temple. Otani brings a big spinning heel kick and missile dropkick and while he's lost a step he's plenty functional. Sato is a fine punching bag for Funaki and Kea, and really started to shine down the stretch. I dug his tight half crab and he really got my attention with a great knee drop off the top, brutal piledriver and a sick deadlift German to finish off Funaki. So, I like Kohei Sato now. As a rule, it's probably safe to say that if a guy does a cool deadlift German, big kneedrop and a piledriver that would make Lawler smile, then I'll be into that dude. It didn't add up to a great match and there wasn't much drama, but this was plenty worthwhile and a good showcase for all the participants' current abilities.

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