2019 Ongoing MOTY List: Team Suzuki vs. Team Okabayashi Trios
1. Hideki Suzuki/Takuya Nomura/Yoshihisa Uto vs. Kazumi Kikuta/Ryuichi Kawakami/Yuji Okabayashi BJW 1/2
PAS: Really fun trios match which felt like the kind of chaotic brawl which was the kind of thing that Japanese wrestling really used to excel at, this wasn't elite WAR level, but it felt like a fun Zero One brawl. We get some wild brawling around the outside which included Okabayshi smacking the crap out of a random trainee at ringside. I enjoyed Kikuta who was working kind of like one of the old Z1 Karate dudes, I am excited for anyone trying to be 21st century Ogasawara. Finish was a blast with Okabayashi Gotch lifting Nomura out of an armbar and slapping on a Camel Clutch which looked like it snapped his back like a Kit Kat.
ER: This was fantastic and just about the best advertisement for modern Big Japan. After those 12 minutes I wanted to devour every damn thing the fed had to offer. This felt like a real throwback and had the violence of an old interpromotional multiman. Yuji Okabayashi came off like a real megastar, and like more of a badass than I've ever seen Ishii come off. Once they all brawled to the floor I was hooked in, with Okabayashi thundering chops right past the heads of fans, Nomura kicking him in the head while Yuji echoes bombs off his chest. How kickass would it be to be sitting like 3 feet away from that!? This might be my first time seeing Kikuta, and I want more! He felt like a mid 90s sleaze fed kicker, and that's always going to be a good thing. He rocks Suzuki with a few palm strikes to the chest that will change the minds of 100% of the people who don't view a heart punch as a viable finisher. Both times Suzuki gets punched in the chest he responds by kicking Kikuta right in the balls. It's cheap, but damn those shots probably just reflexively cause that. I like everyone here, and we had no shortage of guys taking hard shots or getting clonked by a chair, but Okabayashi was the star here and man did he shine. He beat men around the arena, he did the most impossibly quick snatch and grab vertical suplexes on every opponent, he chopped some trainee in the throat, and somehow came off like a huge babyface hero even though he was constantly caving in bodies. 2019 Big Japan, here we come!
2019 MOTY MASTER LIST
ER: This was fantastic and just about the best advertisement for modern Big Japan. After those 12 minutes I wanted to devour every damn thing the fed had to offer. This felt like a real throwback and had the violence of an old interpromotional multiman. Yuji Okabayashi came off like a real megastar, and like more of a badass than I've ever seen Ishii come off. Once they all brawled to the floor I was hooked in, with Okabayashi thundering chops right past the heads of fans, Nomura kicking him in the head while Yuji echoes bombs off his chest. How kickass would it be to be sitting like 3 feet away from that!? This might be my first time seeing Kikuta, and I want more! He felt like a mid 90s sleaze fed kicker, and that's always going to be a good thing. He rocks Suzuki with a few palm strikes to the chest that will change the minds of 100% of the people who don't view a heart punch as a viable finisher. Both times Suzuki gets punched in the chest he responds by kicking Kikuta right in the balls. It's cheap, but damn those shots probably just reflexively cause that. I like everyone here, and we had no shortage of guys taking hard shots or getting clonked by a chair, but Okabayashi was the star here and man did he shine. He beat men around the arena, he did the most impossibly quick snatch and grab vertical suplexes on every opponent, he chopped some trainee in the throat, and somehow came off like a huge babyface hero even though he was constantly caving in bodies. 2019 Big Japan, here we come!
2019 MOTY MASTER LIST
Labels: 2019 MOTY, BJW, Hideki Suzuki, Kazumi Kikuta, Ryuichi Kawakami, Takuya Nomura, Yoshihisa Uto, Yuji Okabayashi
posted by Phil @ 10:00 PM
1 Comments:
Okabayashi is coming off a year+ layoff after shoulder surgery and as soon as he was back I realized how much I missed the motherfucker. I actually think that Sekimoto had one of his best years ever in 2018 but Oka is Sekimoto minus almost all the overstrained bullshit that you get with having to do long matches in this setting (that Hideki has cut through his entire career, he's so good).
Kikuta is interesting because he just debuted the new karate gimmick a few months back. He's only going to be entering his fourth year as a pro in April but he seemed dead in the water as just a lanky junior who is still too big to be a junior in Big Japan or DDT or any other indie who also debuted relatively old at 28. I saw the first match during their tag league with him looking all Ishingun and was so hyped. He has to make this work because it's death matches or get cut (Uto debuted at the same time and has actually been very good to great his whole run but started in DMs as Abdullah Kobayashi's protege last year. Protege or male wife, I'm not sure-- he wears a burqa out to the ring when teaming with him; it's a hell of a look.). We can never have too many karatekas and we're already way too low on them so I hope that he pulls it off.
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