Hello! Now we're on to 2003 & Zero One Wrestling. I was able to selectively watch a couple shows. Also I will include the WEW matches featuring Zero One wrestlers. This is a doozy of a post. There's lots of quality wrestling here! Read on!

Tatsuhito Takaiwa & Vansack Acid vs. Low Ki & Paul London (ZERO-ONE 03/02/03) - Oh yeah! This rocked! This is what the ROH guys were trying to do in tag matches in '03. This had great spots and never over stayed it's welcome. Paul London was excellent and I wonder if there's more of him in Zero One available. Anyhow, Vansack Acid is a Muy Thai fighter turned wrestler and is a good opponent for Low Ki. Takaiwa is the power house and base for a lot of cool moves. It's this sorta randomness is appealing to me. It's unusual but it all works. I thought this was a great junior fireworks tag match. LOVED IT!

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The next batch are from the Zero One Wrestling event (05/02/03):

Naohiro Hoshikawa & Yoshihito Sasaki vs. MIKAMI & Wataru Sakata - I skipped ahead on this one to watch the last couple minutes. They get a ladder. It looks fun. I wanted to see this for Hoshikawa & Sasaki but the beginning didn't grab me. The flow or direction felt off. IT'S OK

Katsumi Usuda, Kazuhiko Ogasawara & Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs. Hideki Hosaka, Kuroge Wagyuta & Masato Tanaka - At around 12 minutes, this is a god damn blast!! It's like someone did random wrestler select on Fire Pro Returns. Usuda is shoot style, Ogasawara is in his own fucking karate world...not knowing how to bump but still in a wrestling match, and Fujiwara thinks it's '86 popping his own eyebrow open with headbutts. Tanaka and Hosaka are team FMW but Wagyuta is like a budget Kensuke or Tenzan acolyte. It's great he and karate man just want to beat the crap outta each other. Yes, this is what I wanted and more. LIKED IT A LOT

Low Ki vs. Tatsuhito Takaiwa - Holy cow! That ended up being a great junior match! I think the middle section where Takaiwa started focusing on grounding Ki and then working over his knee gave this a good foundation. They actually worked this bit of psychology for a good portion of the match. Although they did stray away from it as things got further along, it was touched upon just enough to make us remember. My favorite parts were the surprises where they would counter or reverse a move. I thought this was really creative and went a long way in making this a great match. LOVED IT

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Keiji Muto & Satoshi Kojima vs. Naoya Ogawa & Shinya Hashimoto - This isn't necessarily a "good" match but it IS a lot of fun. Kojima vs Hashimoto are the best parts. Ogawa & Muto play their parts very well. And the ending is a blast too! Watch it for Kojima and Hash laying strikes in hard and then assorted fun stuff 🙂 Stick around for the post match! 

These are from WEW 05/03/03. This was the penultimate WEW show. 

Jun Kasai & Yoshihito Sasaki vs Bad Boy Hido & G. Goshogawara- A garbage wrestling romp! Nothing was earth shattering in the pacing or storytelling department but we get some very enjoyable Korakuen brawling, chair swings, and ladder spots. Jun & Sasaki were more impressive than the WEW team. The WEW team actually did a good job isolating Kasai so there was some drama for him to make the tag to Sasaki. This was a street fight so that's code for them just doing a lot of different things without much purpose other than "this will be cool." BUT that's all it was supposed to be and they nailed it.

TAKA Michinoku vs Steve Corino - Two perennial heels face off. This was a fun match...as in it was a good match that had a lot of enjoyable moments. There's comedy, good wrestling moves, a little bit of everything. Both are characters and is what made it special. In fact, I would be interested to see if they worked together more because they could have taken this little program around for a few months in Japan. I LIKED IT

Kintaro Kanemura & Tetsu Kuroda vs Shinjiro Otani & Masato Tanaka - This is a match that I hoped existed. I had no knowledge that it did before today. I'm so glad that I went searching. This is a dream match fulfilled. They very, very easily could have done their routine and some comedy and a nice finish. Everyone would have been happy, myself included. These crazy bastards went for IT! This was for the wrestling fans of Korakuen Hall. They put their wrestling boots on this night and blew my expectations to smithereens. This was high energy excitement from bell to bell. A classic tag match that any FMW fan should see. I absolutely LOVED IT ~ MUST SEE!

Is that a real sword?

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Back to Zero One:

CM Punk, Josh Daniels & CW Anderson vs Ikuto Hidaka, Vansack Acid & Naohiro Hoshikawa (07/31/03) - This has been on YouTube for 15 years and actually (maybe) was posted by Vansack Acid or a fan of his? Anyhow, this is an awesome fireworks match. It's an absolute sprint to the finish. There's too many moves to keep track of it all.  It's 12 minutes of no story, no depth just fun! LOVED IT!

From the show: ZERO-ONE Summer Festival 2003 - (08/31/03)

Naohiro Hoshikawa vs. Yoshihito Sasaki - Under 10 minutes but a lot of fun. They are just running through moves. That's what I want in an opening match. Good strikes, good suplexes, good intensity/energy. I like both guys so no complaints from me. Wish both could have had longer careers but I'm thankful that we got what we did from both. 

Kintaro Kanemura & Tetsuhiro Kuroda vs. Kazuhiko Ogasawara & Tatsuhito Takaiwa - This was SO much fun!! 😀 Comedy, Ogasawara doing karate moves then getting hit in the nuts multiple times, Takaiwa bringing the serious wrestling moves, team FMW/WEW doing hardcore spots...this puts a grin on my face. I LIKED IT

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Hirotaka Yokoi & Kohei Sato vs. King Adamo & King Joe - "Shoot style lite" team vs Team Pacific Islanders. King Joe is Samoa Joe btw. So you know it's going to be good while he's in there. King Adamo is a bigger crazier looking dude and does a couple Too Cool/Rikishi comedy spots but also has some big man moves too. It's a lot of fun. King team brought the actual entertainment to this match and actually Joe vs Kohei Sato was pretty good stuff. I LIKED IT

Low Ki vs. Wataru Sakata - Wow, Low Ki does nearly every move that he knows. So that's fun but is also what limits this. That said, you're rooting for Sakata to whoop Ki. And does he! Hahaha, yeah Low Ki might do more moves but Sakata does more damage. The final third really brings it together and makes this worthwhile. Very good match. I LIKED the match as a whole and LOVED the final section.

CW Anderson & Steve Corino vs. Emblem (Masato Tanaka & Shinjiro Otani) - E-C-W! E-C-W! 😄 Seriously, this would have been a great match for an ECW ppv...maybe with one or two more chair spots 😋. But this was a blast! CW & Corino are such smarmy heels plus they have their own heel ref. I usually hate that kind of thing but it was done right. They didn't over do the gimmick. Besides, the actual wrestling was on point & fast paced. At around 13 minutes, this was just right. Very good to great match...definitely a recommendation for late stage ECW or early ROH fans. LOVED IT

Yes! This was a pretty sick show (from what I watched). This is why I'm interested in watching more & more Zero One Wrestling. They had a little bit of everything. Nothing was too long or drawn out. The show moved at a nice pace and was actually really fun to watch. 

I've got one more match for the "main event!"

Masato Tanaka vs. Shinya Hashimoto 11/7/03 - Great match!! It seems this match (along with the others vs Hashimoto) helped cement Tanaka's future for decades to come. My feeling is that these matches and this match helped elevate Tanaka. He's one tough SOB. Does he take Hashimoto to his limit? No. But Hashimoto definitely takes Tanaka to his and makes him a better & stronger wrestler for it. That said, don't expect this to be Dangan getting beat up for 15 minutes. The dude definitely fights back and gives the former IWGP champion a lot to worry about. I particularly liked how Tanaka went over Shinya's bad shoulder (one that I believe was giving him problems here towards the end of his life). He was fighting to win not just prove his toughness. I've been a big fan of Masato Tanaka for over 25 years and I'm really glad that I saw this. As I have been watching more 90's New Japan (and early Zero One), I'm becoming a bigger fan of Hashimoto. With those things in mind, I definitely recommend this match. It's got a boat load of views online so I'm pretty late to the party BUT there's new folks getting into puroresu, 2000's wrestling, etc. every day ...or old ECW/FMW or 90's wrestling folks who want to get back into it...maybe their kids are into WWE or AEW and they are bopping around the interweb to see what they missed. So to them I say, check this out! I think it's a great intro to two icons of Japanese wrestling. LOVED IT

I mentioned it a few times but fans of  last days ECW & early 2000's Indie wrestling like ROH would be wise to check out this stuff. Low Ki, Corino, London, CW Anderson all were staples but the fresh attitude and slightly experimental feeling is what I'm getting at. Nothing quite feels established and therefore anything is fair game. So you get really unique feeling match ups. I have covered Zero One Wrestling sporadically in my original Puro + More blog and this is always the feeling I got from the promotion. You never know who you're going to see there. Go watch some of this stuff 😁

Also please check out my new blog, Wrestling Dream Battles. 

wrestlingdreambattles.blogspot.com

It will be covering classic Japanese wrestling along with retro ROH wrestling. This blog will be handling the longer viewing projects like year in reviews, wrestler & feud profiles and editorializing. I want to have more organization and space to do this in than solely on PWO. I also want this to be a good resource for people looking to get into classic Japanese wrestling & folks wanting to look back on golden era Ring of Honor. 

I'm going to continue with The Further Adventures of Puro + More here on PWO. This will be for the shorter projects and one-off spotlights and quickie show reviews. I'm going to finish this little run of early 2000's Zero One but will be doing my planned Zero One 2007 & 2008 year book over on Wrestling Dream Battles for instance. If I wanted to do a Low-Ki in Japan project, I would do it here on Further Adventures of Puro + More.

Thanks for reading! Hope you check out the new blog 🙂