Found Footage Friday: FUCHI~! INOUE~! EIGEN~! OKUMA~! OGAWA~! KIKUCHI~! MOMOTA~! KITAHARA~!

Mitsuo Momota vs. Tatsumi Kitahara AJPW 8/30/88

MD: We've covered a couple of matches on this card (The first Kobashi vs Kawada and THE V~!) but I thought we'd go back to tackle the first three. This was maybe five months into Kitahara's career and he had spent a lot of that time wrestling Momota. Momota is someone who could work comedy or Jr. heavyweight title matches, who had a connection with the crowd with his compact charisma and lineage as the son of Rikidozan. I don't think we have earlier matches between these two, but by this point, there was a lot he could do with Kitahara. They stayed on the mat for the first two thirds or so but Momota let Kitahara control the arm, working himself in and out of an armbar and selling accordingly. When things picked up, Momota was good enough to make it seem like he was in danger. At one point, as Kitahara was going for a moonsault, he did the Samoa Joe walkaway bit only for Kitahara to land on his feet and hit a dropkick. There was always the sense that Momota could put him away at any moment with a chance reversal or hold and that Kitahara might not have had the tools necessary to put Momota away. Things played out that was, as Kitahara went for one too many Irish Whips to set up a move and Momota reversed into a backslide. Still, it was a testament to both Momota and how far Kitahara had come in a relative short time that he was given so much of the match.

ER: Man this was cool. I think every single time I write about any of this All Japan footage my fingers just automatically start typing "Man this was cool". But I am not a liar and it's how I freshly feel every single time I type it. This was cool because it made me actually think about my history with Koki Kitahara. Kitahara was a guy who I really didn't even notice until NOAH, and then he just became another great part of my favorite roster in wrestling as I devoured 2000-2008 NOAH shows. I don't think I was even aware of his existence during his entire All Japan stint, but this match right here is Kitahara before he even had 50 matches under his belt. This does not, to me, play at all like a match from a guy less than 50 matches into his pro career. He's polished and has a cool moveset, but what was most striking is that the match was laid out so that he controlled the entire thing. 

I'm so used to seeing All Japan rookies get completely dominated in openers for the first year+ of their careers that I was fully expecting this to be a Momota control showcase with perhaps 1 minute of Kitahara throwing kicks. Instead, it was 7 minutes of Kitahara throwing kicks and controlling Momota until Momota hits his excellent floatover backslide (the one that I frequently say "I can't believe no modern wrestler has stolen Momota's excellent floatover backslide). Kitahara throws big kicks and works the arm, and brothers I cannot believe Mitsuo Momota of all people does a Samoa Joe walk away spot in 1988. When I saw Samoa Joe do that spot live at a 2004 PWG show, it was a revelation and my friends and I lost our minds. I never thought about where he got the idea from, and while this spot is not something I associate with Momota and I doubt Joe was actively lifting from Momota, I do now want to know where he got the idea to Walk Away. I love how cool Momota looks while walking away, and how he doesn't realize Kitahara lands on his feet, timing it perfectly so that he turns around straight into a dropkick. I swear, every single one of these handheld matches - literally every single one - has an event that feels like some kind of minor-to-major revelation. 

Yoshinari Ogawa vs. Tsuyoshi Kikuchi AJPW 8/30/88

MD: It's always striking to me that Ogawa was active as early as '86. He doesn't really start to come into his own until '91 or so. This is more like month 6 of real matches for Kikuchi, however, and he also had been put primarily against Momota (though not exclusively). It's always weird to see him in anything but the Japanese flag trunks. He already had a certain explosiveness in his movement. He took the early parts of this, which was mostly on the mat, though with chippiness - especially in his chops - Ogawa too over. He was the junior member of Revolution and obviously was trying to impress Tenryu as he just chopped Kikuchi's face off. Kikuchi came back, including hitting a massive diving headbutt across the ring that almost had me, but then he missed the dropkick. Finish was one of the world's ugliest small packages by Ogawa though it's hard to say who should get the credit (or lack of such for that). They kept this moving and past the finish, it came together pretty well. Kikuchi was definitely more of a natural than Ogawa, but it's kind of fun to imagine an Ogawa who got to stay a Tenryu disciple for longer.

ER: I love the coincidences that handhelds bring us. Kikuchi is about as young in his career as Kitahara in the match before him and, as Matt said, most of his first six months was in singles matches with Mitsuo Momota, with a handful of Isamu Teranishi and Okuma matches. We don't have most of those matches, but because of some guy most of my lifetime ago in Osaka, we have Tsuyoshi Kikuchi's first singles match with Yoshinari Ogawa. I guess it's not notable that this is the first time Kikuchi ever fought Ogawa, but they had 20 or so singles matches over the next two years and it's cool that some guy was there recording the first one. 

My big takeaways from this match were how incredible a chopper Ogawa was in the 80s, and how the All Japan mat looked so hard and unforgiving that Kikuchi would have been safer taking bumps on a sidewalk. The match wasn't a great match, but I always enjoy seeing wrestlers I'm familiar with in their infancy. Young Tamon Honda works a style I hate, six years later Tamon Honda was working a completely different style that I loved. Young Ogawa is kind of a trip. Ogawa is a guy I love who I could also possibly talk myself into describing as my least favorite wrestler on several different years of AJPW and NOAH rosters. I don't mean that as any kind of dig at Ogawa, and probably more of a statement on how much I loved so many years of those rosters. I don't think it's a secret that I like him and I've written glowingly about his specific role in Kings Road. But you watch enough full NOAH and AJPW cards and you see it's a roster filled with guys who have great execution on most of their offense and sometimes here's Ogawa throwing jabs that wouldn't break wet paper, drop toeholds that shouldn't fell a man, and a jawbreaker that relies too much on the opponent's bump. Masao Inoue is an Ogawa comp, but Inoue works his ineffectiveness into his entire being, whereas Ogawa's ineffectiveness was placed into prominence. 

And I guess it's shocking to me how much better I think Ogawa would have been as a wrestler had he stayed a Tenryu acolyte rather than becoming a Misawa buddy. Ogawa's chops here looked like something Benoit would do to Regal. Even the ones that didn't land under Kikuchi's chin or off his teeth were thrown with more force than I've ever seen Ogawa throw anything. When I think of Ogawa's offense I don't even think of him as someone who throws chops, let alone ones that would have made him the most violent junior on the 90s roster. But I think I probably would have still chosen Ogawa's upwardly angled chops over any of Kikuchi's back bumps. When Kikuchi missed a flat back bump dropkick it looked like he jumped off a Wal-Mart into the parking lot. There was no give of any kind and it boggles my mind how the human body adapts to doing that multiple times a night 150 nights a year. Seeing Kikuchi 6 months in and knowing the abuse he would endure and cause over the next 35 years...it all just makes me realize that I understand even less about wrestling than I thought. 

Also somebody tell me how Kikuchi didn't get his neck broken when Ogawa snapped it over the top rope. I really need to know. 

Masanobu Fuchi/Mighty Inoue vs. Haruka Eigen/Motoshi Okuma AJPW 8/30/88

MD: We're in 88, not 89, so Rusher's tagging with Tsurumi against Baba and Wajima towards the top of the card. That means this Eigen match will deviate from the usual formula. That formula, to refresh your memory, usually had him goading Rusher, dodging him, with Okuma taking over on Rusher's partner, then Rusher, and everything building to a the huge spit-spot moments of comeuppance on Eigen. Not here. For one thing, Inoue and Fuchi weren't going to take his shit. They're two unassuming looking guys, but I would not want to encounter them in a dark alley. They spent the first half of the match beating on Eigen and drawing Okuma away so that a tag couldn't happen. The fans found it pretty funny at first, but I think they earnestly got behind Eigen as time went on. The back half had Okuma come in, headbutt everyone, and then work with Eigen to control. With these four, you had a nice balance of of stuff that looked solid and painful and fun bits where Okuma steps on someone and hits the falling headbutt as Eigen holds them down. It built to a comeback ending with Inoue doing his cool headscissors takeover leg hook cradle. Amazingly, no spit spot. Fun, solid stuff overall though.

ER: Man I'm so in the bag for these matches and these All Japan handhelds, I think I've lost the ability to properly judge them on their merits. I couldn't tell you if this was a great match or a below average match but I tell myself that it has to be great because I love literally everything about this match. I think I say that about every one of these Eigen, Okuma, Fuchi, etc. handhelds but I mean it with all my heart. I love every single step and every single piece of offense in this match. I love every wrestler and think I would reach true nirvana just watching these guys work a 10 minute match in a vacuum as the only wrestling I consume for the rest of my life. 

This is great in different ways than other matches with these guys are great, as I'm so used to seeing Eigen being a little shit that I loved seeing Inoue and Fuchi absolutely refuse to let him be a little shit and instead just isolate him and punish him. They were great at starting with a more comedic build, finding funny ways around Fuchi preventing Okuma from tagging in and at first the spots were funny but they perfectly transitioned into it being an actual southern tag where the fans wanted notorious shit stirrer Eigen to get the tag so Okuma can start mashing frontal lobes with headbutts. The build to this match is so satisfying and I cannot stress enough how I loved every single piece of offense. Every guy lays in their strikes, and it feels like every new All Japan handheld I watch brings forth a new favorite wrestler. Literally every guy on this roster is worth deep diving, but in the last few years I have appreciated Eigen more than ever. Last year late 80s/early 90s Okuma finally clicked with me so deeply that I don't think I can even imagine how much of a badass this guy was in the 60s and 70s. Fuchi has been a known quantity to most of us for years but then a match like this makes me love him as much as ever, seeing his dedication to simple shit without needing to murder Kikuchi. But it was Mighty Inoue who really clicked for me here, a guy who looked so good in this match that he just joined the long list of all my other handheld favorites. Inoue hit like a truck, his cradled headscissors was gorgeous and snug, but it's probably always going to be his super high backdrop bump that reminds me I love Mighty Inoue. I just love these boys.  

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All Time MOTY List Head to Head 2003: Ogawa vs. Kobashi VS. Lesnar vs. Mysterio

Kenta Kobashi vs. Yoshinari Ogawa NOAH 11/1/03

ER: In 2003. this match was embraced by the people who disliked Yoshinari Ogawa as a Great Ogawa Match. A lot of people actually disliked Ogawa in 2003. Half my lifetime ago, people actually got mad on the internet about Ogawa winning the GHC Heavyweight Title off Akiyama in under 5 minutes. Scott Keith called him Rat Boy and babies cried of cronyism. I was in college. I argued about it on DVDVR, using a Mitsuharu Misawa Emerald Green iMac in a campus computer lab. Sonoma State University's Information Center and Library opened in August 2000 on the very same day as the very first NOAH show, and that information center was filled to the brim with neon-colored iMacs that I employed to argue about pro wrestling for the next 2+ years. I believed in NOAH. I traded Galavision lucha libre for NOAH tapes on those emerald terminals. I watched that Ogawa Title win on a huge screen in a media lab in that same information center, in a room that I often reserved for the sole purpose of watching pro wrestling by myself on a large screen. Two different professors got mad at me for watching wrestling in a large media room they thought they had reserved for a class, but I had reserved it first so that I could watch new NOAH shows and 90s All Japan Comm tapes. 

I watched and argued about that Ogawa title win as a college student, and I watched this Ogawa title challenge as a college graduate delivering bottled water for Sierra Springs-Alhambra, in an apartment I shared with an Armenian girl. That was my year. The year before, I was there live when Ogawa wrestled his first ever match in the United States, and while he was wearing the GHC Title around his waist I watched him trip on the stairs walking to the bathroom. Is the man just a dweeb with a powerful friend? Or was he perfectly method in playing his dweeb character to the one other person nearby - me - who also happened to be walking to the bathroom? Obviously the latter. Since wearing the GHC Heavyweight Title and tripping while walking up stairs in a Fairfield gymnasium, the year after losing that title to Takayama was spent almost entirely in tag matches, getting a late 2002 GHC Title match against Misawa and only working a couple of singles matches in the entirety of 2003. A couple weeks before this title match, Ogawa - as captain - won a Captains Fall Elimination Match by eliminating Kobashi, meaning Yoshinari Ogawa was the first man in 14 months to pin Kenta Kobashi. Still, coming into this match, even as a former GHC Heavyweight Champion, Ogawa did not seem like - nor was he treated like - a man who could pin Kobashi in a singles match. 

Nobody, not even diehard NOAH lifer fans, were treating Ogawa as a serious title challenger. Nobody thought Ogawa had a chance at winning the title. Now I suppose that nobody expected Ogawa to win it from Akiyama in 2002, but nobody expected him to win it from Kobashi in 2003. This was never going to be a quick match, win or loss, as that just wasn't an option in a Kobashi title match. No, they needed to figure out a way for Ogawa to plausibly last 25 minutes in a Real Title Match against Kobashi, which is an interesting exercise. Ogawa felt like the first Kobashi challenger who might not make it past 10 minutes, and they figured out a very fun way to turn this into a 25 minute match. I also think that the strength and weakness of this match is that it's great that Ogawa essentially trolls Kobashi into working a full Kobashi title match with him, but by going so long it also felt too much like several people had sat down and mapped out exactly how they could plausibly have Ogawa last that long. 

Ogawa does not have offense that plays against Kobashi. His short jabs don't look like they could phase him, his body doesn't look like he could lift him or hold him down, and his chest is not a chest that can sustain more than a dozen chops, and they do a great job of building this match around those facts. Kobashi sells Ogawa's offense appropriately all match. Worked jabs, a standing double stomp, or a double leg cradled pin weren't going to cut the mustard, but attacking a dude's famously fucked up knees could. And after enduring two different corner choppings with his arms stiffened and his chest puffed out as much as possible, Ogawa goes after those fucked up knees. The first time Kobashi chops him down, he literally chops the man down to his back, with Ogawa taking the chops like a man trying to keep his footing as best as possible while having a firehose turned on him. The second time Kobashi gets him in a corner and starts chopping, Ogawa wisely just plays dead like Kobashi was a grizzly bear, and when enough time passed by he runs and dropkicks Kobashi in the back of the knee, and his window opens. You can basically divide this match up into two parts: Ogawa going after Kobashi's weakness that nobody is supposed to go after, and Kobashi paying Ogawa back for doing so. 

Ogawa's knee work is really tremendous, just relentless and varied and constantly advancing, never lingering on any one attack. After dropkicking the knee, he starts wrapping it around the ringpost, removing Kobashi's knee brace and pad, standing on it, jumping on it, pulling on his leg, jamming his own knee into Kobashi's knee, dropping an elbow onto it, digging his elbow into it, bangs it off the apron several times, dragon screws that leg, works a harsh single leg crab, locks a figure 4 around the ringpost. Every possible thing you can do to fuck up someone's leg in a wrestling ring, Ogawa does it all, in succession. Ogawa can't lift Kobashi's dead weight into a suplex so he shoves him Kobashi straight into the referee, kicks him in the back of the head, and finally hits the back suplex. While everyone is tending to the referee, Ogawa actually starts drawing heat by bashing Kobashi's leg with the ring bell multiple times, including once while the leg was against the ringpost. Ogawa didn't know that this was going to be the literal last time he would ever challenge for the GHC Heavyweight Title, but he knew the only way he was winning that title was by turning Kobashi's knees into bone broth and having the match stopped due to injury. It's a great plan. It could have worked, and it was working, but it only worked until Ogawa got his face bounced off the ringpost a few times. 

Kobashi was always going to catch him, and he does so invoking the power of Kings Road to let Ogawa run into a Baba neckbreaker drop. But yeah, then Ogawa gets his face bounced off the ringpost a couple times and Kobashi hits a spinning chop to the back of his neck to bounce him off it once more, and Ogawa gets busted wide open. 

When Ogawa gets busted open - a thing not common in NOAH 

Kobashi starts throwing punches - a thing Kobashi didn't do  

Karate chopping 

Right into Ogawa's cuts

Champion's Vengeance

You can even see

Him raising up his knuckle

As he's punching cuts

Kobashi holds Ogawa up, frozen in the coolest delayed sheer drop back suplex, an elevator stopping for too long before plummeting down several floors all at once. Ogawa is powerless to prevent the delayed floatover powerbomb, barely kicking out before Kobashi leans into him with a smothering sleeper. Ogawa has one last resort, and you figured he was going to go after the balls eventually, but it's kind of a surprise that he bothered to wait over 20 minutes to do so. Are The Balls Ogawa's personal moral line? We all have our own lines that we hold at certain distance, not thinking we'll be pushed over them. But are we supposed to think that The Balls That KENTA Washed are the line that Ogawa had to be convinced to cross 20 minutes in? He needed about three minutes to make the decision to go hard after the most famously crippled knees in the company for 10 minutes straight, but attacking The Balls are beyond the pale, and baby, you know Ogawa is pale. Kobashi has literally already established that he can miss several months after suffering very real knee injuries having his legs brutalized in one match, but Ogawa has no quandary trying to shelve the top draw for a year. 

And as I ponder this, I swear that Kobashi hammerfists his own nuts to...I dunno I guess get some ball feeling back? Once Michael Myers reveals that he has no balls, it's pretty much over. Those balls have been shot through with cortisone. You can break a cinder block over those balls, and it's not going to stop the superplex and Burning Lariats. 

Lesnar vs. Mysterio Review

Verdict: 

ER: This is a great match, but felt more like a clever exercise in what it would take to get Ogawa a 25 minute match with Kobashi, than it feels like a real title match. The knee work should have drawn way more heat, and Kobashi had to endure it even as the crowd viewed it as something that "just had to be done" to grow this match from 5 minutes to 25. Kobashi's vengeance should have been more violent, even though I like him using a lot of punches for the first time in god knows when. As much as I enjoy this match, at the end of it all I kept wondering was "If NOAH weren't such cowards about putting Kobashi in the ring with SUWA, imagine how incredible Kobashi/SUWA would have been?" Champ retains. 

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Matches from NOAH 1/30/20

Akitoshi Saito/Masao Inoue vs. Mohammed Yone/Quiet Storm

ER: Silly little tag match, made sillier by the hilarious presence of Quiet Storm. At this point he looks  like he's playing the Danzig role in the Misfats, except he is somehow even shorter than Glenn Danzig. And it took me the entire match to figure out that unlike Masao Inoue's comedy offense, Quiet Storm's offense was actually supposed to look good. NOAH has always had comedy guys filling out their cards, but their comedy guys used to do some actual interesting stuff. Quiet Storm just does a bunch of weird smoker's cough "Come on baby!" as if gaijin warming up a Japanese crowd hasn't evolved one second past Jericho working WAR 25 years ago. His shoulderblocks don't look like they would budge a guy like Saito, he does one of the absolute worst drop toeholds I've ever seen, and he has all of these stupid flatliner variations (with the worst being a sliding one he delivers to a kneeling Inoue). Yone was a Batt guy but hasn't worked as a stiff Batt guy for years. Saito had some nice moments, with my favorite him buckling QS with a savage leg kick, and I always get a kick out of Inoue's foot stomps and sad sack persona. It took Inoue 18 seconds to get out of his t-shirt before the bell, and he's one of the few guys who can pull off Super Porky "cry while being hit" comedy without it being derivative. QS hit one very nice lariat down the stretch, but there was a lot of lame offense in this one.

Daisuke Harada vs. Hajime Ohara

ER: This is our first semifinal of the Global Junior League (I am more excited for the other semifinal) is a juniors main event epic with several matches to go until the main event. Harada was already doing dramatic swoons and holding his back 5 minutes into this match. I am not excited to see him in the main event, jerking and throwing his head back in a howl while selling like he's Kate Bush's Hounds of Love dance partner. Ohara doesn't throw great strikes, but I loved the way he attacked Harada's back. You want backbreaker variations? Ohara will give you backbreaker variations, all of them good. He rolls Harada from a fireman's carry into one, hits a pumphandle one, tilt a whirl, reverses a headscissors into one, drops a couple classic style in (while holding and pressing down on Harada's chin!), all cool. The problem is that Harada sells the first one exactly the same as he sells the 5th one, exactly the same as he sells the 10th one. He's already in agony, Ooooooooooomy baccccccckkkkkkkkkk, as he goes on to be not slowed down for one second in his offensive comebacks. Any of his offense that would have been done with a hunky dory back got done here, only here we had to put up with him showing all of his teeth after every move. Oooooooooit hurts my back when I do moooooooooooves! But I MUST do MOOOOOOVES! His has a lot of fruity cute  offense, stupid indy offense that needs to die, like making Ohara bunny hop into a fake armdrag that is actually a kneelift. When Harada isn't trying out for Godspell, he had a hard lariat that wrecked Ohara, and his running double knees looked like it should have absolutely shattered Ohara's jaw. That kind of brutality instead of bad acting would have really put the match ahead, but I thought the Harada drama was really bad.

Dick Togo vs. Yoshinari Ogawa

ER: This felt like a hot 1st act that segued directly into a hot final act. Both acts are really awesome, but it felt like a section was trimmed out of the middle. There pace was fast as hell throughout, so it didn't look like either was hurt or had an empty gas tank. It started with a bunch of snug fast arm twisting go behinds spun into headlock takeovers. Both guys rolling up bodies to jump from limbs to heads and back. I could have watched them work 15 minutes of just that kind of expert mat scrambling, felt more like tight World of Sport than the floaty mat stuff that started off Harada/Ohara earlier in the night. Togo works a nice surfboard and Ogawa works a killer figure 4 variation. Togo's selling in the figure 4 is really strong, as is Ogawa's in applying it. Ogawa was tightening it, occasionally kicking at it with his free boot, and when Togo finally reversed it he turned it into a nasty modified calf crusher. This is where the 2nd act should have been, but they quickly go into an energetic finishing sequence, with Togo's perfect standing dropkick, a missed senton, several close nearfalls on sunset flips and majistrals, and a battle over Togo's painful crossface. I was thinking the crossface would make a cool finish for the match, Ogawa working roll up counters to it while Togo rolled back to center them, but I was surprised the finish came relatively quickly. Maybe I was just loving this unseen pairing too much, two favorites matching up in the best way, and I just wanted even more. It's probably that.

PAS: The matwork in this was really cool, you don't see this kind of lucha maestros stuff much in Japan. This really felt like a good Primera Caida of an awesome match, but we never really get the other two falls. Both guys are killer on the mat, loved all of the work around the Indian deathlock, love that hold, it has always been a weak sister to the figure four, but it looks awesome and has a bunch of stuff you can do around it. I also loved the rolling around with the crossface, again just a nasty move with a bunch of opportunities to adjust and twist in and out. Still this felt like a bit of a tease, I wanted this to be longer and hit a couple of different notes, great appetizer, but I am still hungry.

28. Hideki Suzuki/Kazuyuki Fujita/Takashi Sugiura vs. Go Shiozaki/Katsuhiko Nakajima/Shuhei Taniguchi

ER: Take a look at Sugiura-gun! What a collection of goons, doing all of their pre-match stretching as  AXIZ is making their way out. These guys mean business, and this match was all about dishing out that business. Fujita is nearly 50, hasn't been fully involved in pro wrestling for two decades, and I like the old spry shooter for hire vibe he brings. He's lumpy, he's got that famous cinderblock dome, and he still has surprising speed. He also has no problem welting up every member of AXIZ. There is a lot of stand and trade in this match, and while that style isn't really my favorite, it's hard not to like a lot of what we get. Fujita throws deadly elbow strikes, and if you think his right hand slap hits hard, just wait until you feel the left directly after it. Shiozaki winds up with big red marks on his neck, looked like his head had been surgically reattached at the jawline. He stands with Fujita, but Fujita is pretty monstrous and just comes back with more elbows, more slaps, and gutbusting kneelifts. Down the stretch Sugiura-gun separates Taniguchi from the pack and treats him like they're jumping him into (or out of) their gang. I think it's tough to make the "guy being pinballed between strikes" look good, but I got really into watching these goons take turns trying to be the one to knock Taniguchi down. Taniguchi gets a great showdown with Fujita, where he throws some killer headbutts right into Fujita's collarbones. Taniguchi wasn't trained by any of the NOAH headbutters, but he keeps a favorite part of NOAH alive. My favorite section of the match was Suzuki vs. Nakajima, as Nakajima was the stiffest member of AXIZ, and I dug how he actually punished Suzuki. Suzuki is tough as hell, but Nakajima looked like a total badass kicking away at him, standing on his neck in the corner, and I dug the story that Suzuki was a killer in stacked attacks but kept getting wasted when separated from his pack (is the Suzuki/Nakajima TL draw a couple weeks later worth watching?). I thought this match did a great job setting up future singles matches and tags, all of which I am now interested in seeing.

PAS: This was a bunch of fun, a solid approximation of a 90s WAR six man tag. Suzuki wrestles primarily in slow burn matches with lots of matwork, but he is also great in these kind of wild brawls. Suzuki wasting Taniguchi with a spinning neckbreaker on the floor was the biggest spot of the match, as much of this was nasty kicks and punches. Shiozaki takes a big beating here, Fujita really tries to murder him, but he really needed to land something nastier then B- chops. Nakajima gets his head nearly kicked off at the finish and I love that Fujita has fully embraced crowbarhood in his old age.


7. Dick Togo vs. Daisuke Harada

ER: A fitting junior league final, and thankfully worked in a bubble. I was kind of dreading seeing Harada drama queen sell his way through his prior match back injury, but thankfully he went in as if nothing had been done to his back all evening. They work a cool juniors style, and Harada guided by Togo is so much better than Harada left to his own. Togo works a completely different match than he worked against Ogawa, and Harada really dominates him early. I like the idea that Togo and Ogawa went really aggressively at each other, and Harada runs at Dick right at the bell, nailing him with a dropkick and a fine German suplex, then crushing him into the guardrail with a great tope. Togo's selling really made it look like he pulled something in his back, just the difficulty in being dragged back to his feet alone made me feel for him, and then Harada puts an exclamation point on it with a double stomp as Togo is getting to his feet.

Togo is on the ropes for the first several minutes, and that's when we get DICK out of mothballs, opportunistically hiptossing Harada over the top (and I love how it wasn't a clean spot. Togo wasn't overtly selling the back, but it wasn't a clean leap over the top, Togo almost not having enough strength to get him over), then wraps Harada's leg around a guardrail with a dragon screw, then continues to pick apart Harada's leg. Harada not putting full weight on a leg is much more palatable than Harada selling his back, and heel DICK really starts being mean with him, throwing punches (and I don't think a single punch was thrown in his match with Ogawa), then challenging Harada to hit him back, dodging, and kicking his leg out. He kicks his leg out at a couple of convenient spots, then uses submission work on the injured leg to set up strong attempts at the crossface. We get a fantastic DICK tope con hilo, and he starts splatting Harada with pedigrees on the floor and off the middle buckle.

Togo made me buy into Harada'a comeback, eats knees on a missed senton, and Harada gets to use a weapon that I like: his fakeout punch into a hard shoulder strike to the gut that takes Togo's wind. Harada builds to a couple of big German suplexes, not always able to bridge because of his leg (and impressively not being such a baby about his knee), and I loved the sequence of Togo flipping out of one, missing a lariat but getting run into the ropes chest first, and Harada using that momentum to absolutely toss DICK on his neck and shoulders. The nearfalls down the stretch were strong, and made this come off like a real torch passing match (even though Harada has somehow wrestled way more matches than Togo), and plays as a shining example of Dick Togo not having lost a single step into his 50s.

PAS: This was really good. Togo is obviously a master, but I thought Harada brought some cool stuff to the match. All of the Togo legwork was super nasty, reminded of the period right before Sasuke had knee surgery, where every match Kaientai would tear his leg apart. After Togo smashes him with the Shiryu flip dive (a nice shout out to his KDX homeboy) Dick takes over, and crushes him with a Pepsi plunge and a pedigree. I loved how Harada desperately clutched at Togo's ankle, delaying Dick enough for him to get his knees up on the Senton. A nice bit of strategy and selling. I also really dug how he kept countering those big windup Togo punches by forearming him in the ribs and guts, Harada's body shot forearms were way nastier then his forearms to the head and I loved how he kept going back to them to slow Togo down. Harada hits some pretty solid snap Germans and you can just see Togo's age catching up to him. Easily the best Togo I have seen since his return from retirement and up there with his great retirement tour stuff.


2020 MOTY MASTER LIST

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All Time MOTY List Head to Head 2001: Hashimoto/Otsuka vs. Misawa/Ogawa VS. Santo vs. Parka

Mitsuharu Misawa/Yoshinari Ogawa vs. Shinya Hashimoto/Alexander Otsuka NOAH 1/13/01

ER: Interpromotional Japanese wrestling has always been a source of gold, with the WAR vs. NJPW and Onita vs. Karate Guys being genre standouts. Pro Wrestling NOAH rarely utilized the interpromotional feud, but did so for a scant number of memorable matches opposing Hashimoto's Zero1 in 2001 (maybe some day we'll cover the WEW feud?). One of these matches, Hashimoto/Yasuda vs. Honda/Inoue, was our inaugural 2001 champ, and that was on Zero1's ground. This tag is from three months before that match, on NOAH's ground, and had the pairing that every fan of either promotion wanted to see. The month before, Hashimoto had his NOAH debut in Tokyo, against Takao Omori. The crowd was super hot for Omori, and super excited to see Hashimoto in a NOAH ring. Hashimoto knew exactly how to work one of these Invading Big Star matches, and worked to a clearly uncooperative finish that was to plant the seed of Hashimoto being unprofessional with Misawa in this match, three weeks later. I'm surprised that the first showdown ever between two legends like Misawa and Hash was only run in Osaka, as I'm sure this could have drawn 15-20K people in Tokyo. Perhaps they established rules where Hashimoto would agree to work a smaller Osaka show if Misawa would work a larger Tokyo show, I don't know. And really, I don't care, because this match is everything I wanted.

The presentation was cool, with Otsuka and Ogawa already waiting in the ring, giving Hashimoto and Misawa their own entrances, and the crowd felt like they were chanting equally for both legends. Misawa is ever the benevolent top gun, as he lets Hashimoto totally come off like the top dog here, as Hash pie faces Ogawa all the way around the ring and refuses to take his offense seriously and keeps trying to get Misawa in the ring. I said Misawa was charitable in how much of a star he treated Hash, but picture this: Sting debuts in WWF in 2001 in a tag opposite HHH, and when Sting immediately calls for HHH to get in the ring, HHH just stares back, Sting yelling and demanding he get in the ring with him this instant, and HHH just keeps staring, whispers to his partner to handle Sting himself, and just continues holding the tag rope while not fighting Sting. Impossible, right? Well Misawa does just that with Hashimoto, and Hashimoto is great at punishing Ogawa as punishment for not getting Misawa right off the bat. I was not expecting Misawa to give that much presence to Hashimoto, and I loved it.

But what I *really* wasn't expecting was Alexander Otsuka - not even a Z1 guy at this point so basically a BattlArts guy teaming with a Z1 guy as a band of outsiders - being the superstar of the match. Hashimoto/Misawa was the entree everyone went to the restaurant for, but Otsuka is the dessert that everybody is raving about as they leave the place. I can't believe Otsuka didn't get some kind of big fed run after this match. Maybe he wanted to stay freelance shootstyle Butcher, but can we just assume that Mohammed Yone got his cushy consistent paycheck undercard BattlArts slot? Yone didn't show up in NOAH until the end of 2001, that job was probably Otsuka's for the duration of the year until they just went with the guy with the afro instead of the bald guy playing hard to get. And after a performance like this, it's no wonder they pursued him the entire year, in this scenario I've almost entirely fabricated. But Otsuka's the guy driving the outsider angle, the guy taunting all the NOAH boys at ringside.

Now, young boy attire is what puts some of these feuds into legendary status, with the genre peaking at Karate Dojo OP Surf Punk in FMW. Biggest complaint of the match is the NOAH young boys, as their emotional thermometer never rose above "Hey guys come on, let's keep things on the level and not take away from the show here", and their gear made them look like a JPOP band, all of them wearing black and red athleisure wear in different styles. Marufuji was clearly the star of the group with his baggy track suit and gelled up hair, but Izumida was the bad boy wearing black capri pants and a teen mustache; Morishima was the baby faced fat guy who is always wearing a muscle tank on the beach when the other group members in the music video are shirtless, and Ikeda is the cool guy with his open jacket and caesar haircut. Meanwhile Z1 just brings Tadao Yasuda as their giant track suit goon, and he has the crazed eyes of the dad from the I Learned it from Watching You commercial as he thrust kicks Ikeda during a post-match melee. And here's Otsuka talking shit to NOAH's resident boy band (their band name would be "NO4H"), egging them on, and then starts bullying Ogawa. But the kicker is when he belts Ogawa with a great elbow, then holds his elbow up to Misawa and points at it. That's the kind of juice I NEED. Otsuka also has a genuine claim to Best European Uppercuts - when we talk about who does what best - as nobody throws an uppercut quite like him (his is the fastest, and slices sharp, getting really fast speed for such close contact). He has a real cool showoff showcase of all his coolest throws and strikes, peaking with a gorgeous bridging German.

Perhaps Otsuka's best gift to this match is his selling, as he puts in one of those Lawler/Finlay performances where you can't imagine seeing anybody take a specific offense any better. One of the real joys of this match is seeing both ways Otsuka sells Ogawa's jawbreaker, the first time really rubbing out his jaw and flexing it side to side while getting back to his feet, and the second taking a backwards bending bump on the recoil. He's a tremendous stooge for Misawa and Ogawa's offense, knowing how to play straight to camera as he sells the drop toehold/Misawa elbowdrop like he was at the proctologist, and the way he staggers and stumbles and flies into the ropes for Misawa's revenge for that earlier taunt. Misawa's two hardest elbow strikes of the match are clearly leveled right at Otsuka's jaw, holding Otsuka's coconut with his left hand while shifting his molars with his right elbow.

The Hash/Misawa sections were fun, while never getting to a real volcanic section, with the best part being Hash stomping him into the corner and refusing to quit, leading to NO4H finally thinking he had gone too far. The match stoppages and stalls were built well into the match, and the visual of Hash stomping and kicking his way through Misawa and Ogawa was like a mad lumberjack razing a forest. Misawa's stoicism played well off Hashimoto's fire, and I loved his casual, subtle communicating with Ogawa, loved the way Ogawa finally got Hashimoto to take him seriously and knocked him down, and how he charged Hash at the finish to keep him away from Otsuka. Look at how Misawa rubs the finish in Hashimoto's face, hitting a tiger driver while facing Hash, staring at him during the whole pin, planting Otsuka just out of reach. It's such a Calmer Than You Are way to handle being the house boss. This match should have been the beginning of 4 months of different NOAH/Z1 matches, and judging how well all four player their role in this one, it would have been fabled.


PAS: I am also a Japanese interpromotinal feud superfan, but I thought this fell well short of the heights these matches usually achieve. I am normally a much bigger Misawa fan than a Kobashi fan, but I thought he looked more annoyed than filled with hate and disgust, which is what you need from a match like this. It feels like Kobashi or Akiyama would have been a better top dog. I normally love stoic Misawa, but this felt more like card filler six-man Misawa, and I needed to feel more desperation and fury from him. I liked how they kept Misawa and Hashimoto apart,  it added more juice to the times they actually went head to head, and Misawa pinning Otuska while staring down Hashimoto was great. I think Otsuka is one of the great wrestlers of the 90s and the 2000s, but he didn't pop for me here, he felt a bit steamrolled and we didn't get to see much of the killer offense which makes him so great. There are ways that the lesser partner in these matches get chances to shine, watch what Ohara or Takashi Ishikawa bring to WAR vs. NJ tags, or even Ogawa in this match, but I felt like Otsuka never got to be Otsuka. This is a great Hashimoto performance, he is an incredible interpromotional wrestler and is eager and willing to try to murder both opponents, all of the seconds, and the front row of the crowd. I totally agree that the NOAH vs. Z1 series was a total lost opportunity, but I got that more from the Z1 tag than from this match.


El Hijo del Santo vs. La Parka Review

Verdict: 

ER: I thought this was great, with a strong Otsuka performance that showcased his full range on offense and defense while highlighting his personality. That is was right next to an amped up Hashimoto performance made this extra special. This was the only time Otsuka and Hashimoto tagged, and it felt like a glimpse at a pairing with all time potential. I thought Misawa played his stoicism into brief desperation, into calm cool, and I thought it was an extremely confident performance from the ace of the company, and I love how it felt like he was disrespecting Hashimoto by insisting on Ogawa staying in longer and fighting. These feds could have had some barn burning interpromotional stuff, and I'm glad we at least got this. That said, I think the Park/Santo bloodbath is going to prove to be a tough to kill champion.

PAS: It's Santo vs. Parka for me pretty easily. This would lose to the other 2001 challengers we have put forward, and I didn't like it nearly as much as the other Z1 vs. NOAH tag. Worth watching especially for the Hashimoto performance, but not a top tier contender.

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All Time MOTY List Head to Head 1999: Misawa/Ogawa vs. Kobashi/Akiyama VS. Santo/Casas vs. Bestia/Scorpio

Kenta Kobashi/Jun Akiyama vs. Mitsuharu Misawa/Yoshinari Ogawa AJPW 3/6/99

ER: I had never seen this match before. It popped up as an autoplay after some other wrestling I was watching on YouTube, and I liked the sound of it. Kings Road is just about my favorite style, and I was just really in the mood for a big 30 minute Kings Road tag title match that I'd never seen. I liked the pairing on paper even more once I saw the timestamp. The length of the match told me this had the chance to be a real Ogawa show, and I was not disappointed. I love Kings Road matches where a less heralded guy gets put on the main stage, and the way the crowds respond to them getting one of their biggest moments. Kobashi and Akiyama were a great subtle heel team (and All Japan crowds are always great about booing everything they view as "heel behavior"), Misawa stood by his boy, and Ogawa did his best to fight back against Burning. This was Big Stage Ogawa and he ruled, but this was a match with four separate and very well done performances.

It even starts with French Catch Ogawa! Seriously the way Ogawa and Akiyama went to the mat felt unique for this era All Japan, and it was arguably the best I'd seen Ogawa look in All Japan. He was breaking out the quickest tricks, absolutely working circles around Akiyama, doing his slickest Regal-as-Boogaloo Shrimp wristlock reversals, and spectacularly tying up Akiyama's arm and sending him directly into Kobashi, with Kobashi flying to the floor. Everything's coming up Ogawa! Everybody is clearly up for a great performance, as they're all trying out unique stuff. Misawa comes in and decides to channel his lucha days, hitting a weird floating armdrag like he was a tripper Tim Horner, then working a headscissors spot in the corner. But his elbows to the jaw still stagger steps, and are returned in kind my sharp neck chops from Kobashi. I love the moment where Ogawa's luck runs out, the moment his whipping punches and jawbreakers stop working, and Kobashi starts cranking his neck in a nasty abdominal stretch. And every little turn the match takes just works, with a simple easy to follow story, and the fans along with every step.

The match had a real strong, effective use of repetition, from Ogawa repeatedly going back to his eyepokes and punches and cradles, to things like Misawa going for a senton on Kobashi, missing, bunny hopping another one to trick him so he could hit one; Ogawa just hitting double stomps on Kobashi's stomach over and over to kill time while Misawa got ready for his big splash, to Kobashi always using a big suplex (a sleeper suplex that the camera mostly misses, a half nelson tossing Misawa on his head) as a way to get Misawa out of the ring and focus the attack on Ogawa. There were so many cool individual moments, like Misawa elbowing Kobashi out of the sky, Ogawa's big hot tag where he went absolutely wild. It's awesome as it was set up by Misawa being a great FIP (taking a nasty double arm DDT and powerbomb from Akiyama, among other things), even breaking out a combo headscissors/headlock takeover on Burning to make it to Ogawa, as if Misawa was the Tommy Rogers in this relationship! Ogawa wasn't really treated like a young punk, and I loved the way he kept fighting back. His hot tag was huge, even breaking out his own tiger driver, and I loved the moment where he held Akiyama in a sharpshooter and refused to break it as Kobashi kept throwing harder and harder kicks and chops. I don't think I've ever seen Ogawa get this much offense against two big dogs, and it lead to a dynamite home stretch.

These four were absolute masters at timing throughout this match, never more evident than the hot final 10 minutes. We get expert level nearfalls (an Ogawa inside cradle after Akiyama misses a knee into the buckles made me leap forward in my seat), last minute saves, big double teams, and somehow manage to make it seem - every second of the match - that any person in the match could realistically get the pinfall win. The Kings Road formula was built on hierarchy, of knowing who in every match were equals, of knowing who was most likely to take the fall, and in those simple hierarchies it became clear when someone was acting out of rank. This match on paper screamed "Ogawa is taking the fall!" and lo and behold, Ogawa did take the fall. BUT, it wasn't apparent that he was going to take the fall until the actual moment the ref counted 3. Kobashi and Misawa beat the hell of each other on the floor (with Kobashi hitting an unhinged lariat to get them both there), and Ogawa and Akiyama rush just as quickly in the final minute as they did in the first minute, and I kept thinking Ogawa just might pull this one off. But when he didn't, it didn't matter, because nobody came out of this one looking like a loser.

PAS: Among hardcore tape trading wrestling fans I am a low voter on Kings Road All Japan. The absolute Mount Rushmore stuff holds up really well, and I dig a bunch of the stuff on the margins, but your step below elite stuff has never really connected for me. Akiyama got really good in NOAH, but All Japan Akiyama always felt a little bloodless, he had a ton of technical skill, but just ran through that technical stuff without much color or flavor. Having Kobashi in the roll he played in this tag negated most of the things which make him interesting to me as well, he is great as a hot tag, or a guy fighting through a beating, but here he was more of dominant overdog, and he doesn't do that well (it is why I thought all of the real great Kobashi GHC title defense in NOAH were great because of his opponents). Ogawa is fun in this match, and I like that he brings something different to the table then the other three, the match needed variety and he provided that. Misawa is another one of my favorites, although I thought he was a bit on autopilot. I thought the end run was pretty exciting, the Ogawa eyepoke into a chin breaker, into a Misawa elbow, Gibson leglock pin, was a hell of a near fall, and Kobashi and Akyama really know how to dump folks on their heads. I imagine I would have liked this match more if I had gotten it on clipped All Japan TV from the video store in Hayward, as it really built to something.


El Hijo Del Santo/Negro Casas vs. Bestia Salvaje/Scorpio Jr. Review


Verdict: 

ER: I loved this tag, loved the big shifts in momentum, loved the big nearfalls, loved the last minute saves, loved the team work, loved the crowd's loud reaction to Ogawa, and love the simply laid out story. It's hard to beat a big implications title match in front of a sold out Budokan, with that crowd getting louder and louder every direction you take things, and there were a ton of great directions. This match takes it for me.

PAS: Not a bad match, but I doubt it would even make a top 50 All Japan matches of the 90s, and that isn't even a style I love. I didn't even think this was close. Lucha tag in a blow out.

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New Footage Friday: Santo, Casas, Panther, Eddy, Fuchi, La Ola Blanca Jrs.

Buddy Rose vs. Tenryu Shimata Big Time Wrestling 1978

PAS: Two all time greats in a well executed television studio match. Most of the match has Tenryu working a really tight side headlock, Rose is a guy with lots of great, in a tight headlock, shtick. He gets on his tiptoes to relieve pressure, holds his breath to make his face red, flops around a bunch. Meanwhile Tenryu was relatively new in the sport, but he knew how to grab a headlock until the ears flower up. Rose finally breaks the headlock and bangs away at Tenryu's back with a suplex and a couple of nasty backbreakers. Simple match but really well executed and a cool early look at Rose and Tenryu.

ER: I had no idea these two crossed paths at any point, and if I was told they had then I would have assumed it happened during the period of the 80s that Baba was working a bit with AWA, not 6-8 years before that! This is a lean lump-free Tenryu against a lean Buddy Rose. Naturally we get some talk about how Tenryu is a martial arts expert, a martial arts expert who apparently practices the deadly art of the side headlock takeover. This match feels like it could be older than it is, as it's worked strike free and most of the spots are worked out of a side headlock. And it rules. Early on Tenryu gets a cool ankle pick while Rose goes in for a go behind, and Rose was engaging in the headlocks as Phil said. Tenryu wasn't going to hold a loose headlock, and I'm always going to love when someone holds onto a headlock after the guy in the headlock tries to shoot them into the ropes. I dug all the headlock stuff, and the payoff builds nicely: Tenryu gets dropped with a back suplex out of the headlock, and later misses a dropkick which aggravates the damage done to his back with that suplex. In the 90s and 2000s I always thought Tenryu sold spine/neck damage better than maybe anyone, especially piledrivers. Here he is just a couple years out of sumo and already selling his back in interesting ways. Buddy smells blood and drops him with a couple of brutal backbreakers for the win. Totally simple stuff where the key is the execution and knowing how much of one spot you could keep engaging. They knew.

MD:  The advantage we have in Buddy Rose, relative to some of his contemporaries, is that we have a few years of week-in and week-out TV footage. We don't have that for everyone. What makes it all the better is that it's also arena footage where you have a middle ground between legitimately great, big matches, and Buddy letting lesser guys hang with him. what I've learned from that, as much as anything else, is that Buddy Rose is never, ever boring. This is the guy who supposedly got flack in New York for giving the TV jobbers too much and trying to have exciting matches with them. Anyway, this isn't the Saturday Portland TV show, but the idea is sort of the same. Here he led a pretty green Tenryu through a straightforward headlock-driven match from underneath, moving in and out of the hold and making his opponent look good. Buddy, maybe more than anyone in the history of wrestling, could shift gears on a dime, clowning for two-thirds of a match and then presenting himself as dangerous, vicious, and legitimate. There's such a great example of that here as he just brutalizes the back. This was just a really fun laser-pointed crossroads TV match. Boy would I have loved to see it five years later though.


El Hijo Del Santo/Eddie Guerrero vs. Blue Panther/Negro Casas Juarez 1987

PAS: What we have here is an unearthed tag with four of top 20 greatest wrestlers of all time as kids going out there for 20+ minutes and having a banger. This was super grappling heavy, with several long mat sections with Panther and Eddie and Casas and Santo matching up. It is normal for the first fall in lucha matches to be on the mat, but we get a long Segunda mat section too. So many cool little moments, Santo does a front flip off of Casas back into a rana on Panther to win the first fall. I love the Casas fights out of holds in this match, he really struggles to avoid Santo's Cabello and he is amazing the way he tries to avoid getting thrown by Eddie. Casas is the all time greatest at small moments, watching him struggle and adjust, it is like he is on a whole different level of performance then nearly anyone else ever. 20 year old Eddie was a monster, he was throwing multiple great looking suplexes, and had this great mat section with Panther where he applied a bridging Indian Deathlock, Eddie became such a great performer during his prime, here he was a full speed ahead wrestling machine, almost like Dynamite Kid or Benoit. We get a couple of nifty dives in the very end (although the camera man misses Santo's mostly) and a vicious Cabello on Panther for the win. This didn't have any brawling which made it feel a little more like an exhibition then most all time great lucha matches, but man was it an epic all timer exhibition.

ER: This was not the match I expected to show up, but who at all would be disappointed that it did? It's four of all of our favorites breaking out some tricks that you may have forgotten about. I believe this is definitely the earliest Eddy match I've seen, so it's neat to see a 20 yr. old throwing fast kicks trying to ape Negro Casas, take it to the mat with a mid-20s Blue Panther, delivering a no hands dive over the top to the floor that looked so different than the dive style we got used to from him (and he took quite a landing on his knees, so that might be why). Santo brings both the most gorgeous moments in the match, and also the most violent. His front flip rana on Panther would look spectacular if done by anybody today, and while I've seen Santo do plenty of graceful flying I don't think I've seen him do this, and it looked amazing. Later in the match he pulls off three consecutive headscissor/head and leg drags to Panther, all different, all looking like they were making it up as they went. Santo hits a flawless torpedo headbutt off the top to set up la Caballo, and earlier he flies out right past the ringpost and cameraman to hit a huge dive (that we don't see, because he went right past the cameraman). But the violence is always there.

Phil mentioned that this never devolved into a brawl, but there were several moments of struggle that felt as violent as any brawl. My favorite segment of the match was Santo going for a sub - any sub - on Casas, while Casas tried his damndest to turtle and oppose Santo's force. Santo goes for a surfboard, Casas strains his body to bring his momentum forward, so Santo goes for a bow and arrow and again you can see Casas straining to not go back, so Santo goes for Caballo and Casas suctions those arms close to his body and to the mat. Later Eddie blew me away by repeatedly grapevining Casas' legs while Casas was going for throws. We often see a guy block a throw, but it's typically so that he can get an immediate reversal. Here Eddie just snaked around Casas and kept purposely tangling him up, later hitting a Saito suplex of his own. The great struggling and flexed tension of the grappling exchanges looked far more like something you'd see in UWFI, not what I was expecting here. I don't think you're going to find two better Santo opponents than Casas and Panther, and he looked like an absolute legend in this match. There was so much to love here, really an incredible find.

MD:  I'm completely convinced that there's a treasure trove of 80s Juarez TV out there. A few years back, there seemed to be some local TV showing classic matches and we had a couple of uploads on a youtube channel, one being Hijo del Santo y Octagon vs. Fuerza Guerrera y Negro Casas. I don't think this was the other but I could be wrong.

What this is, however, is an absolute gem. Maybe it never QUITE picks up like I'd hope. I wanted a rudo beatdown in there somewhere and we never quite get it. They never quite stop trading holds to pick up the pace completely. This is us though, and in general, we're more than okay with that, because most of the hold trading is awesome in a number of different ways.

It's got to be a little bit who he's in there with, but Eddy looks so good for someone so young here. He has a ton of stuff, suplexes especially, and adds plenty to the exchanges with Blue Panther, though I do think some of that has to be Panther moving him around. He's pretty much always where he needs to be doing what he should be doing (like his perfect positioning at the end of the primera to let Santo bound over him).

Panther, in general, looks like the all-timer that he is but simply hasn't been for a long time. One of the first things I ever did on SC was looking at whatever Santo vs Panther matches I could find. There aren't a ton out there and here, they don't match up all that much, but when they do it's gold. They have such mastery over their bodies and their craft that they can seemingly pluck one another out of midair and into the next spot. Casas was just off his hair match loss and it's really cool to see him playing up respect with Santo, even if we never do get that beat down.

Plenty to see here. This is why we do this.


Masa Fuchi/Yoshinari Ogawa vs. Dr. Wagner Jr./Angel Blanco Jr. AJPW 10/24/87

PAS: Wagner and Blanco's fathers formed La Ola Blanco, one of the great tag teams in lucha history. This Jr. version of La Ola Blanco seemed like a bit of weak sister, although this has to be some of the earliest Wagner Jr. footage we have. There was some really awkward flying attempts from Ogawa, who definitely was better off as a sleazy cheapshotting dirtbag then a workrate junior. The were a couple of great moments when Fuchi and Wagner started going after each other, they are both pretty great charismatic brawlers and Wagner Jr. lived up to the "White Wave" moniker when he got rolling. Still more of a snapshot, then a great match.

MD: I was expecting an emptier sort of exhibition match here, even with Fuchi involved, and along those lines, I was happily surprised. They flew all over the place, but there was definitely some oomph and heat to everything. Blanco and Wagner played to the crowd as boisterous bad guys. Ogawa was a plucky flying underdog and Fuchi seemed like he wanted to tear off his opponents' heads, not just their masks. It never quite came together, but there was a lot of motion, some meanness, and ultimately it was just cool to see two of the most charismatic wrestlers ever go at it before they were two of the most charismatic wrestlers ever.


COMPLETE AND ACCURATE SANTO AND CASAS RIVALS

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NOAH 1/24, 1/26/03

1. Tsuyoshi Kikuchi/Kenta Kobashi vs. Yoshinari Ogawa/Mitsuharu Misawa:

This was during Ogawa's slimy greasy shitball punk phase, which was one of my favorite wrestler characters ever. Kikuchi looks roughed up before the match even starts, with a back brace, scratches, bandages on his wrist and arm, and grisly bruising on his neck. He looks like a rape victim extra on CSI. The match itself was a formula NOAH tag, which I took for granted at the time, but 10 years on seems so much better than most things we get now. Everybody here matches up nicely, and the Misawa/Kobashi sequences are really eye-opening. We've spent so many years watching shrimps in kickpads do these same sequences and falling badly on their faces, that when you see them done by the real deal, pre-crippled, powerful stars, it's pretty awesome. Just watching simple exchanges between the two is like two great guitarists taking turns every 8 bars, or like Jordan and Pippen running circles around people, or like how Mother Teresa must have been in her 30s. Ogawa was full on snivelly punk, trying to take Kobashi down with ineffective punches (which got no sold) and then always falling back on eye pokes, but then busting out a bunch of cool knee work (including a ring post figure 4 that bent Kobashi's knees at all sorts of horrible angles). This whole thing was just a real fun way to waste 20 minutes of your day, even if every single minute went exactly as you expected it would.

2. KENTA/Kenta Kobashi vs. Naomichi Marufuji/Mitsuharu Misawa:

This was not as good as that. Marufuji threw all sorts of thigh slap offense that didn't hit (including a couple kicks to the back of KENTA's head, but since they made zero contact KENTA didn't realize he was supposed to be selling) and KENTA took forever and a day to set up all sorts of convoluted offense that occasionally looked good. Misawa looked great in the match, and was doing all sorts of subtle heel things to try and lift up the match, and Kobashi chopping Marufuji over a rail was awesome, but overall Marufuji was just too lousy for this match to recover.

3. Jushin Liger/Koji Kanemoto vs. Tsuyoshi Kikuchi/Yoshinobu Kanemaru:

Liger is wearing his all red outfit and it looks totally badass. Kikuchi looks like he just got jumped into (or out of) a gang, then had to jog to the arena for his title match. This match is pretty darn terrific, and has the rep of being maybe the best NOAH juniors tag ever. I'll have to watch the others before I go that high, but this was a damn good time, and one of the greatest Kikuchi performances ever (them Liger and Kanemoto fellas ain't bad either). Kikuchi starts this thing off as fiery asskicker, but this match pretty quickly went right where you and I and everybody else knew it would go, and wanted it to go: Kanemoto and Liger taking all of the frustrations and anger out on Kikuchi's poor, poor scarred and battered body. Kikuchi makes the greatest "Fuck my life" facials in the biz, and Kanemoto just throws all sorts of brutal kicks at him. Kikuchi's little comebacks were all awesome, really coming off like a pro-style Yuki Ishikawa a lot of the time. He'd take a bunch of kicks, occasionally catch a leg, and then attempt to cave in Liger or Kanemoto's skull with a headbutt. Fans were way behind his fighting spirit and it really was impossible not to get behind him in this. Just a classic performance from a great wrestler. Liger looked insanely great throughout as well, busting out a nasty piledriver and an endless supply of great palm strikes. Kanemoto looked hungry and vicious, too. All three guys looked like top 20 in the world guys. This had the build, it had big moves, it had great nearfalls, just a super fun match. Yoshinobu Kanemaru also participated.

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You Can't Hurt Daisuke Ikeda, Cause He's Banned in DC

Daisuke Ikeda/Tamon Honda v. Shiro Koshinaka/Yoshinari Ogawa NOAH 1/22/06-FUN

This isn't the hidden Ikeda NOAH gem I will be searching for. Pretty much a comedy match with some amusing spots, but very little of that Ikeda violence, probably the loosest worked Ikeda match I can remember seeing. They do some nifty stuff built around the hardness of Honda's giant waterbaby head, and Ogawa's eyepoke and roll up stuff is usually entertaining. Ikeda didn't do much, his big spot was tying up Shiro in a ball and punching him in the taint. Fine use of 12 minutes, but I am going to keep looking. 


Daisuke Ikeda/Katsumi Usuda/Super Tiger II v. Yuki Ishikawa/Alexander Otsuka/Munenori Sawa  BattlArts 7/26/08-EPIC

This isn’t just the best match of 2008, it is right up there with the best things ever done in this style. This is an elimination match which goes 40+ minutes and was even more brutal and awesome then it looked on paper. Everyone in this was on their games, Ikeda’s team was working heel, and they spent the early part of the match abusing and cheap shotting the faces, especially Sawa who was really great in the role of spunky young guy eating an asswhooping and showing stones. Because this was a tag, you had a lot of submissions being put on and saves being made, and man the saves were just horrific, stomps directly to the head, kicks square in the face, I mean you start cringing as soon as anyone comes into the ring. I hadn’t seen much Super Tiger II before, but he ruled here, really capturing the kind of awkward recklessness of Sayama’s UWF kicks. Your BattlArts big four were as great as they have ever been, Otsuka just brutalizing people with suplexes, and ripping out awesome mat counters, Usuda both taking and dishing out ungodly stiff shots, and Ishikawa and Ikeda being Ishikawa and Ikeda. Their interactions with each other are all you could possibly hope for, and there are parts near the end that almost feel like the last rounds of the Rumble in the Jungle with two guys punishing each other past the point of human tolerance. I don’t want to talk about any of the eliminations specifically, this is a match I don’t want to spoil, but when you have such brutality dished out during a match, you can fall into the trap of everything looking like a finish, and when everything looks like a finish, nothing looks like a finish. Here every elimination felt like exactly the point at which the guy should have been eliminated. This is a match I can’t imagine anyone who likes wrestling not loving, get your hands on it ASAP.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE DAISUKE IKEDA

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Embrace of the Backstroke: NOAH “Great Voyage in Tokyo ‘09″, 9/27/09

Consistency, uncertainty remain in Misawa's wake

I find NOAH to be one of the easiest promotions to watch: there’s a predictability to their format and booking that’s approachable (if frustrating to some), and their roster is deep. This may prove less the case in the months to come: it’s been speculated that without their flagship television, talent will be cut. Conspicuously absent from the card were Takuma Sano, Masao Inoue, and Ippei Ota. Solid hands Tamon Honda, Junji Izumida, Kentaro Shiga, and Kishin Kawabata were reduced to an untaped tag opener. In what some are calling the last time NOAH will ever sell out Budokan Hall, this first in a pair of Misawa memorial cards proved a mixed bag that signaled neither certain doom nor a turning point for the company. It was largely the same familiar NOAH that always goes down smooth. What can I tell you: sometimes grits are all you’re hungry for.

Akihiko Ito vs. Genba Hirayanagi

Genba is a sometimes fun version of Dick Togo still in search of motivation, not likely to ever find Togo’s breakneck pace or precision. Ito works so light that dropkicks which connect perfectly well still look like they’re rolling over Genba’s form like waves in Bermuda. They try the rudo spot of Genba grabbing the ref to avoid being taken to the mat before being bridged for a pin. It ended up looking like Ito playing hopscotch, which for those of you under 25 is kinda like Dance Dance Revolution on pavement. This is the first boring Hirayanagi match I can recall, one where his heel act of not giving a damn felt like legit apathy or laziness.

Atsushi Aoki vs. NOSAWA Rongai

Nosawa’s a hooligan character. When reading his name here I thought of him being dragged into an interrogation room.

“Who are you?”
“Rongai.”
“Yeah, that’s what they all say.”

Aoki’s entrance music is a Japanese pop-punk cover of “Hotel California”. The point of this match is to make Aoki look great by jobbing out a known, overconfident outsider. Preferably by tapping him with an armbar, which Aoki has successfully made NOAH’s first over submission. Instead this was worked as competitive, with a stilted momentum stemming from Nosawa’s comedy and lack of fluidity. Aoki gives Rongai most of the match, coughing up a lung when kicked and writhing in pain when “caught” in limp crossfaces. The inevitable deadweight section of modern Japanese juniors wrestling, in which two men play Triple H and hit a series of Irish whips that go nowhere, was here followed by something far better: believable nearfalls which did hype Aoki’s armbar as instant death. In a match against a guy who takes himself too seriously but is engaging to watch vs. a cad getting polite applause out of crowds, I’ll take Gary Sinise over Drew Carey. And I will stand by that half-baked analogy considering how much Rongai’s mugging resembles Carey’s.

Tsuyoshi Kikuchi/Yoshinobu Kanemaru vs. Ricky Marvin/Taiji Ishimori

Kikuchi has always had stubby crooked arms, but his entire physique has now become a knotted slab. His trot around the ring and perpetual shaking of cobwebs are reminiscent of Rick Steiner, his face equally canine. Ishimori hit several flashy psych-out non-moves that clearly weren't really going to be executed and thus psyched out no one but his opponent. Marvin in contrast is far better at telegraphing one move, and surprising a crowd by delaying, biding time, then hitting something different and more impactful, as he does with a tope to Kanemaru. What I said about juniors sharing Hunter’s Irish whip overkill does not apply to Marvin, who should be throwing them all the time after killing Kanemaru with one into the guardrail. The Kikuchi-as-dog phenomenon continues when he bites Marvin’s hand and is reprimanded by being swatted on the snout. This being a Sunday, any section of the paper would have fared better rapping against Kikuchi’s skull. Marvin’s rope running and flips were great as ever: he is too agile and precise in movement to have a bad match right now. I’m a sometime defender of Kanemaru, but he was the weak link throughout, hitting cross-bodies that looked like curtsies and no-selling so as to sneak in bad lariats. This was the first match on the card to feel like an actual Misawa tribute, or proxy tribute to King’s Road, as the story told was that of Kikuchi’s resilience, and willingness to take offense as stiff as Ishimori’s brainbuster. The vaudeville finish of dudes beating on each other while they literally ran offstage and crashed into the company logo worked.

Bison Smith vs. Shuhei Tanaguchi

Smith is a fine photocopy of a boardwalk caricature of Vader. He’ll likely never have a match as good as Misawa’s GHC defense against him. Tanaguchi is a petrified goober, Mike Graham with a bleached mushroom cut. Bison quickly press slams him from the ring to the ramp, powerbombing him back into it, on and on in a series of moderately impressive displays. Watching Smith, this seems a new world order, in which the monster gaijin is no longer the menacing foreign invader: this audience’s grandparents are dead, and this Coloradan Caucasian wears both the American and Japanese flag on his trunks. In fact, Smith gets the biggest round of applause thus far off his running shoulder tackle tope from ramp to ring. They go through the motions of a comeback, but all we learn is that Tanaguchi is presently a third-rate Sugiura who can lift heavyweights up for timid backdrops. Smith tires of this and hits an impressive lariat from his knees. That he then wins with a Styles Clash feels meager and out of place, like Sherlock Holmes ruminating over a bubble gum cigarette.

Jun Akiyama/Minoru Suzuki/Takashi Sugiura vs. KENTA/Takeshi Rikio/Mohammed Yone

If you’ve seen Sugiura and/or Yone wrestle tags in the last few years, you know how this starts: rope running from both, leg drops from Yone, and frenzied swing-and-miss Yakuza kicks from Sugiura. This doesn’t get going until several minutes in when Suzuki and KENTA square off. Both fake hatred well: Suzuki in particular has built this autumn of his career on getting into a Sheriff of Nottingham-level quantity of slap fights. The story told throughout the match of Suzuki taking the piss out of Akiyama fizzles, even if Akiyama gets that someone has to play the rube for the bit to succeed. Rikio has gotten an unfairly bad rap in the past, but his face is too soft to play ringleader of the motocross gang, or whatever gimmick they’ve got him penciled in for. Your heel Cena can’t look like Lou Albano. His ring work is equally uninspired and brings the match to a halt. KENTA on the other hand shines no brighter than in tags, this one no exception. Even Suzuki and Akiyama failed to match his viciousness. Were Marufuji a better face-in-peril, the two would today make a premier team. This slogged to the finish line, with everyone killing time and looking out of position, none moreso than the ref who glaringly ignored Rikio’s rope break, presumably thinking they were going to the Sugiura tap out victory earlier than they were.

Kensuke Sasaki/Takeshi Morishima/Katsuhiko Nakajima vs. Genichiro Tenryu/Yoshinari Ogawa/Kotaro Suzuki

From the outset Sasaki surprises: he asserts his size advantage over Suzuki on the mat and throws a series of quality chops. Tenryu takes some bumps from Morishima, drawing less crowd sympathy and humor from his begging off than expected. But the interplay of Tenryu as Nakajima’s drunk, berating uncle pays off: when they finally tussle, Tenryu’s chops and lariats blister. Nakajima sells Tenryu’s double chicken wing for lack of anything else to do: he is stuck. Later, Ogawa’s eccentricity is apparent in a shot of Tenryu on the apron that pans shortly to Ogawa chewing tape off his fist. Sasaki and Tenryu have a chop battle here that can stand toe-to-toe or higher (ankle-to-ankle) with every other time that bit’s been done in NOAH. The difference is Tenryu’s expressive bracing of himself with each chop, the tense willing of himself to press on. He hulks up at least three times here, each better than the last. The finish is disengaged routine, but the Tenryu vs. KO clashes are too deep to not name this fight of the night.

Kenta Kobashi/Yoshihiro Takayama vs. Keiji Mutoh/Akira Taue

Kobashi sporting a shiner was weird, as if one’s senile grandfather took a spill. This isn’t much until Kobashi and Mutoh lock up, and even then the awe isn’t there. Mutoh’s offense is too loose and sloppy for this setting, especially considering he dwarfs Kobashi in height and mass, a surprise even when considering Kobashi’s cancer. Kobashi’s selling of these moves is admirable, but can’t hide Mutoh hitting shining wizards and bulldogs with the wobbly tentativeness of a modern Mick Foley. The timing of tags throughout feels arbitrary. Takayama and Mutoh have had two exciting, violent singles this year. Yet when they lock up here, Mutoh settles for sitting in a weak STF. The crowd is up for this match but is given little to applaud: these are broken men performing an act too hobbled to be drama, and too humorless to be comedy. The highlight is Kobashi’s selling while stuck in Mutoh’s figure four: a testament to his expressiveness that’s been at times lost or taken for granted in recent years, but which now seems his greatest asset entering this pseudo-Baba phase of his career. The hold is broken in an illogical moment of Kobashi reversing the figure-four, and Mutoh reversing a second time, yet for some reason going for a rope break, even though it should be he who then has the leverage over Kobashi. Taue improves as the match progresses, getting a huge pop for his Shining Wizard and taking an insane Kobashi rana from the top rope perfectly. Like Kobashi, his selling made this all that it was. The ending is weak and too sudden, ironic given how overwrought NOAH finishes can be. While it may seem naïve to expect more from four wrecked workers, an excess of workrate or brutal head drops is not what’s missing, but a lack of storytelling, as if it was thought that simply putting these cogs together several years too late would suffice.

Go Shiozaki vs. Akitoshi Saito (GHC Title)

It’d be easy to give this one high marks for sentiment, but initially it really does click on several unexpected cylinders. Saito’s kicks are very stiff, and the backdrop driver is teased appropriately as a big deal. Even the test of strength works well. Shiozaki’s execution is still lacking, and for a presumed ace his size, his strikes still lack fire. The story early on is of Saito working over Shiozaki’s arm for several minutes. When Saito is on offense, Go sells. When Go is on offense, he does not.

One misunderstanding in the ongoing debate regarding selling in Japanese wrestling is the idea that if someone sells, they’re doing all that can be asked of them. Yet like any aspect of any emotive performance, selling can be convincing or unconvincing, effective or ineffective. Shiozaki recognizes that he is supposed to be selling, and makes a sporadic effort to do so, but like a goon actor whose crocodile tears we don’t buy in a romantic comedy, continues to chop with the right arm at full blast. If anything the strikes are stronger after the arm has taken a thorough mauling. The logistical flaws to such un-selling are often dismissed with the false ideas that a) Japanese audiences don’t care about selling, b) because they don’t, neither should anyone else watching and/or critiquing the match, and c) that wrestling is like a sport, and in sports, athletes play through pain thanks to grand intangibles such as “heart” and “adrenaline”. Option C is not a terrible story to tell in professional wrestling. Yet it seems obvious that the telling of that story would be more engaging were the worker persevering through pain visibly express that anguish, as Kobashi, Tenryu, and Kikuchi all did earlier on this card. It would ring false for me to criticize any of them for making will-powered comebacks given that all expressed how brutal the ass kicking they had taken was. For Shiozaki to use the arm as if nothing has happened negates the work Saito has put into clobbering it: from a kayfabe perspective, Shiozaki’s weapon is his right arm, and Saito aims to neutralize it. Good selling achieves two apparent, crucial goals: it gets over the offense of one’s opponent, and in turn gets over one’s self for being able to endure what is being dramatized as devastating. The issue isn’t that Shiozaki uses his arm to win with a proverbial Hail Mary: it’s that he uses the arm crucially in nearly every single move he hits through the remainder of the match, and after a minute or so of selling gives no indication that the arm has been damaged.

That said, Shiozaki does take a true beating, and the middle section of this isn’t bad. Modern Japanese wrestling is often dragged down by the compulsion to have a long-as-fuck epic, and in doing so fill the middle of the match with a bunch of wind sucking and lollygagging. Saito is capable enough to know that if you’re gonna catch your breath, it helps to break up the monotony with a vicious lariat or two. In what can be taken as a tribute to Misawa in itself, Shiozaki’s elbow smashes are the best strike he throws, something he should add to his arsenal. Using your destroyed arm to hit a handful of quick, nicely executed elbows also seems less glaring than using it to hit a half dozen lariats in succession. And while the victor of the match is never in doubt, Saito’s last stand is well executed, hitting a great suplex and as stiff a scissor kick as I’ve ever seen. His performance was not merely one those sympathetic to woe he’s expressed over hitting Misawa’s deathblow could pat him on the back for. This was an inspired performance by one who NOAH would do well to depend on as a maestro guiding the next generation for whatever time the promotion has left.

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