Jetlag

This was a kind of weird match where they start it really hot with Naniwa landing the huge rana to the floor and Ultimo retaliating with a thudding powerbomb of his own, but then settle on a regular ass junior match completely disconnected from the opening. Ultimo even seemed to know as he gave an awkward look while getting the win as the match was completely deflated. Ultimo is kind of hilarious in how he overcomplicates things, for example to send Naniwa outside he first produces a suplex to lift him to the apron, then jumps to the rope in order to hit a springboard dropkick.

I'm not sure why the name change from Miss A to Dynamite Kansai. She looks and wrestles the exact same. This was a first round match in a tournament for the UWA International title(?) and a better match than a lot of tournament finals I've seen. Why have I never heard anyone talk about how awesome Itsuki Yamazaki was in JWP? It's far more interesting than anything I've seen her do in AJW. Right at the go Kansai whacks Yamazaki with a big lariat, but in the following tussle on the outside Yamazaki catches her leg and rams it into the steel post. Yamazaki proceeds to work over Kansai's leg and use this advantage to stay in control. When Kansai comes back, she immediately reestablishes how dangerous she is by crushing the veteran with ultra stiff blows. I thought Kansai's selling was good enough, as she made it clear the leg was bothering her and there were times where she couldn't follow through due to the damage done, on the other hand Yamazaki was super focussed and always aiming for the weak spot to get out of her situation. Yamazaki would add these cool maestra-like touches, such as locking in an octopus hold from her back, or elevating herself extra high when reversing a figure 4 (something I've never seen before). Yamazaki had excellent game, but in the end fell to a crushing shot from Kansai when she thought she had her in the bag. Really good skill vs. Pure brutality match.

This' a good match. Watching this again after so many years and having watched quite a bit of joshi from this time period, I understand what's going here isn't exactly mindblowing. The three things special things going on here are as follows: - the length - the interpromotional flair - Yamada and Kansai upping the stiffness x10000 and kicking the life out of everything that got in their way And even the last thing isn't that unusual, as Kansai always worked like that. Other than that, they constantly go by the same go hard->rest pattern and occasionally throw in a sequence to mix it up. Lots of shit that is sloppy or blown and not a ton of selling, but they keep it going which is what counts. People have praised Ozaki's heel work, and it is good, but knowing her a little better now, she probably wasn't thinking too much about it herself. It was pretty much just another night for her.

JPWA 4/14/2000 - I know this thread called "obscure 90s..." but here's a real oddity from early 2000: it's a shootstyle event ran by Yoshiaki Fujiwara and Nickbockwinkel centered Japan vs. USA matchups. Reminded me a bit of PWFG, and the 2000s could have used a PWFG style fed, but it seems they only did this one event. Card: 1. Billy Scott vs. Mamoru Okamoto 2. Tomohiko Hashimoto vs. Tom Burton 3. Retsu Maekawa vs. James Woodin 4. Kohei Sato vs. Kasey Geyer (KC Thunder) 5. Koichiro Kimura vs. Shawn Hernandez (Hotstuff Hernandez) The card looks interesting, but unfortunately, they clipped all the matches. Quite unecessesarily, because most of these were around the 7 minute mark except the main event and opener. Billy Scott looked quite good in the first match, doing some nifty wrestling, and his opponent, former BattlARTS undercarder Okamoto bringing the punishment. The 2nd match was wrestler vs. judoka that looked fun from the glimpses. Tom Burton looked old as dirt, but still like a credible asskicker, so it's obvious that I love him. Maekawa/Woodin was barely shown. Woodin had funny bleach blond hair and was not in great shape, so kinda looked like a garbage worker. Sato/KC looked like a fun power vs. skill matchup, with Sato looking especially good, and KC (a huge musclehead) looking nervous. Then the main event - this was 28 minutes clipped down to 17 minutes. And Shawn Hernandez is Hotstuff Hernandez in a singlet, looking like an absolute tank. This match was a match of two sides - 1. Hernandez was absolutely killing Kimura for the entire duration, launching him around with some of the most beastly throws I've ever seen and exploding his nose with a stiff palm strike. 2. the absolute stupidity of putting Kimura, a guy who's not all that good, and Hernandez, a guy with very little experience especially not at shootstyle wrestling in a match this long. Hernandez didn't seem to know any submissions, Kimura added very little, and for some reason they did not allow rope breaks at this show, so even with the clipping, a lot of this was two guys lying on the mat, one of them being very unsure. Thankfully, Tom Burton was at ringside to tell Hernandez what to do step by step: "Take the ankle! Good, now slap him once!" Now that's a veteran, carrying a green guy when he's not even in the match! God bless you, Tom Burton. Fujiwara also was at ringside, and at one point was convinced Hernandez was throwing fists, so he took offense and took his jacket off, ready to go at him. So, Fujiwara and Tom Burton did more to add to this match than Kimura. Kimura eventually got to pick up the win after he KO'd Shawn with a lucky kick after absolutely getting his shit pushed in for 28 minutes, and admittedly this got a pretty excited reaction from the crowd. So I guess the match did work after all! Kinda funny to watch, and makes you wonder if with a little more help from Tom Burton Hernandez could turn into the next Shamrock or a great tag partner for Lesnar.

This is the DVDVR 100 match that Dean labelled as "Samurai TV debut card", which is why it took me so long to track this down. Not very helpful labelling, dude. I have little grudge though, because this was as good as advertised. They downtuned the matwork elements and just went right to straight up murdering eachother. This is really as good of an introduction to BattlARTS as I can think of, as they establish their "shootstyle with pro style psychology and 200% more death" dynamic as well the tactics of the Team Taco "we'll isolate you and then stomp you to a pulp" heel team, Otsuka's ability to kill folks by dumping them on their necks till the lights go out and Yone's underdogness. Ikeda and Ono were constantly cutting off the ring and whenever in trouble would buckle the opponent to their corner and reign shots on him 2 on 1. Ono looked damn great here, as he was obviusly a target being the smaller guy, but got the better of his opponents using his superior speed, getting chokes and felling them huge kicks in the standup. Ikeda and Otsuka were as good as you've ever seen them here and Yoneyama didn't get in the way, hitting some brutal moves of his own and mostly being punching bag for Team Taco otherwise. 13 minute match, but probably the 2nd or 3rd best BattlARTS tag that year.

Hey look... it's indy wrestling of the good type! 2 fat guys with awesome fat guy offense, 1 sleazy junior heel who doesn't get in the way much, 1 guy who is mean and uncaring and 1 guy playing the promising rookie that won't quit. That lineup alone speaks for itself and the match delivered good. Nozaki is apparently a 1 year rookie and seems like a guy to keep an eye on, as he has amazing fatboy look with tree trunk legs and is game to bring the power moves and sell his ass off. His fire was good enough and I loved his big judo slam that got a really nice nearfall for such a basic moves. Genkai is the former Hideyoshi from Osaka Pro, a fact that ultimately means nothing, but he is veteran enough to work plenty stiff and look like he has lost all joy in life. He was pretty thigh-slappy (it's the current year), but he did have a pretty great punch and a brainbuster that looked like a fucking brainbuster, so... eh I liked him. GAINA had an awesome powerslam and elbow drop, but left most of the work to Nozaki... which was probably a good decision. HUB was amusing too, hitting his stuff well (besides one somewhat flubbed coordinated multiman thigh slap near the end) and whipping the fuck out of his opponent with his goofy mask extension. Most importantly the match had really nice atmosphere with the local fans being really into the whole thing. Good to know atleast the Kyushu Pro guys are doing well for themselves.

This is a 30 minute draw between two young workers. And it's actually good!!! Holy shit!! Mind you, at this point Mariko was a feisty quasi-luchadora who did beautiful rope climbing dives rather than ankle snapping submissions. And this was the type of match that could only happen between two particular workers, as they build almost Monterrey-like exchanges into a bonafide joshi epic. They start with lots of intricate fast arm drags mixed up with comedic spots that WORK because they fit into their exchanges. Yoshida accidentally monkey flipping the referee while in the middle of a battle of one up manship is way better than some hick comedian stopping the match to tell a joke. Kyoko Inoue was working a lot like Super Astro here and looking really spectacular doing fast walking on the ropes and chunky girl flips. Kyoko gains the advantage through her power and some literal cat and mouse ensues, before they tease ending the match early in a pretty hot section. They settle down again as Kyoko wrenches in a mean headlock and both try to gain the advantage on the mat before Mariko's taped shoulder gives out and she has to start battling her injury. I guess some could call the hold exchanging the weak point of the match, as it kind of gave away that they were gonna go long. On the other hand you gotta have some holds in a 30 minute bout PLUS I thought the whole thing was really well done and integrated. It also set up the Yoshida injured shoulder story, which ended up not being a huge deal but still added some character to the bout (and young Yoshida). Finally they get up and into a HOT finishing stretch that doesn't feature a lot of bomb throwing and instead is more technically focussed. Both girls go for pin combos and flying off the ropes, and they had some really cool stuff in their sleeves. Like said before Yoshida has the really great body press where she runs up the turnbuckle, and Inoue is the queen of the springboard moves. She uses them as game changers and just crushes Yoshida repeatedly with back sentons and dropkicks. My favourite spot was her just dropping down on Mariko when she tried to avoid the back senton. Yoshida has awesome dives in the middle of this epic section and holds her own really well too. The ending was picture perfect as seconds before the time runs out Kyoko goes for the big damn SWING before hitting her fat deadlift powerbomb for the sure win except she was 1 second too late. Pretty excellent match and easily the best pre-Spider Lady Yoshida I've seen.

I considered joining Alex Wright's school, which is just around the corner from me. I've decided against it simply because it was too expensive and joined a local amateur wrestling club. I've done amateur wrestling and some grappling for the last 5 years. To put things into perspective, I can go wrestle and lift weights at the club 3 times a week and it costs me a few bucks per month, while Alex charges 200 for a weekend of training. That's just gross. I think the perspective change is comparable to how your perspective on music changes once you start playing an instrument and then how it changes again when you start writing your own songs, and then when you try arranging a band and practising. You become more aware of the intricacies and then your respect for the artform grows. I've grown a lot of respect for workers who can do matwork and make it look good. I enjoyed matwork before I started grappling myself, but since training I've realized how much repetition and practise it takes to get even simple movements to look perfect. On the other hand, I've also learned that anyone can learn some rudimentary grappling techniques, thus wrestlers that can't even think to do a half nelson on the mat earn my scorn. If you're a pro wrestler who can do a nice single leg takedown or headlock takeover, you gain my interest on the spot.

This was a really good studio match between two talented young workers. Hell knows why, but for some reason they got a lot things right that many other joshi matches get wrong. It may be just my imagination. The thing I liked most about this bout was that it was basically a primitive approximation of a lucha title match. They start it very mat based and build nicely from simple holds into submission nearfalls. Then Bolshoi Kid was working like one of the stranger luchadores - think Matematico, or maybe Super Astro, doing all these funny clown moves that work really well for an eccentric technical wrestler. Mariko shows her colors when it's time to drop bombs and she dishes out some big suplexes with a lot of snap. Really good sequences where Mariko gains the upperhand and lands a series of big dives, but gets caught with a piledriver on the floor. Mariko actually sells the floor piledriver a good deal allowing Bolshoi to get some nearfalls over her at this point much more established opponent. Quality match, proof Bolshoi could really go and Mariko too.

Too bad. Just watched a Carlos Colon/Mil Mascaras the other day there that was pretty good.

Aw lil puppy Ayako tries to get on Aja's grill. No Aja don't do that she's just a kid! Structurally this was barely different from their 1998 match as it's Ayako going at Aja and Aja just CRUSHING her. Seriously Aja puts a deeply brutal beating on Ayako here even for her standards, just bruising her with kicks and slaps and just impaling her when she tried a moonsault. However, NOW Hamada was little more well-rounded offensively, and more importantly she had all the fire in the world to keep her going. Hamada tried her darndest, even taking the fight to the mat in some neat moments, and most importantly really, really laying it into Aja, throwing hands and kicks that were almost reckless. Seriously, I don't recall many „flyer vs. Powerhouse“ matches where the „flyer“ throws flurries as savage as this. Still not quite there, but she was getting there! This was compact, highly violent, and pretty great.

Hm... two things about this match: 1. It's Regal literally on the brink of death 2. It's Regal and Severn in a long, intense mat based contest, which is itself pretty cool. I'm not gonna pretend this was GREAT or something and there is probably something macabre about enjoying a match where one guy is close to self-destruction, but all things considered, this was pretty fun. Severn busts out some cool shit like a pretty sweet cobra twist into a pin, and Regal, while struggling to keep it together, keeps it together, and they have a sort of quasi UWF meets NWA style match. Even inebriated, out of tune Regal with his boot on the wrong foot can still make basic holds look good and hit stiff uppercuts, and the applause from the crowd they got was astonishing. I mean, slot this match 20 years back in the time and there would be nothing out of the ordinary here except Severn's armbars.

Yeah, this was a really good claustrophobic little match. Maybe even better than the Mochizuki/Yasuraoka match I called the best 3 minute match ever like last week. I'm a huge fan of early career Tajiri, and I had no idea he could handle himself this well against such a beast. Severn was a lot like current Brock except - far more interesting...? The primitive mat- and submission work was really cool and the psychology was right aswell with Severn looking in danger despite literally being twice as big and launching his opponent around like a sack of potatoes.

Yeah, this was a badass little scrap. I liked that while Hashimoto was several leagues above Kurius, he still put Kurisu over as a tough little tank who can deal out serious damage. Hash sells big time for Kurisu before outclassing him with an equally violent beating (especially loved his flurry of headbutts followed by beautiful judo trip), so Kurisu is forced to use illegal tactics before he can start his chair ambush. Not seeing half of Kurisu's chairshots kind of made the whole thing even better. Hash comes back as a pissed off angry bear just mauling Kurisu cuz he's Hash.

This was a pretty fun match between two young and eager workers. The Scorpion works a fun junior/shootstylist hybrid style and Ozaki always adds a ton of personality to her matches. In fact Ozaki looked as good and charismatic as she did in her most famous matches. Her outfit was pure pulp awesomeness and she reminded me a little bit of Negro Casas here in how fast she was thinking and how she would exploit weaknesses relentlessly. Scorpion's execution was a little sloppy at times, so I have no problem calling this an Ozaki carryjob. Whenever Ozaki was able to grab an arm or leg, she would stomp the shit out of that body part to create an opening, then go for the finish. Because this was 1990, moves like a superplex or sunset flip were HOT nearfalls and they timed everything extremely well, resulting in a bunch of 2,9999s that the crowd went bananas for. Weak finish, but I still liked the match a lot.

I figure this topic may produce some interesting discussion on this board. It's also a nice change from the usual "Who/what is the greatest xy" topic. What is a boy, you ask? Here's the definition from OSW: My boys: - Masayoshi Motegi - I am unsure if he was actually untalented, but given that he more often than not is trying very hard rather than being good, I'd say he qualifies. Guy who has a reputation for dropping out of the J-Cup 1st round in weird matches where he usually fucks something up, pudgy indy wrestler who blades in every match and takes stupid bumps while never achieving any success or recognition at all... Motegi was a boy for life. He still does enough right to keep his matches resembling pro wrestling while always busting his ass, so I love the miserable little bastard. - 90s Ryuma Go - early in his career he was the real deal, so I am restricting this to his 90s crazy man phase. I don't think I've seen him in a good let alone great match yet, but him fighting space aliens, working as a tribute US babyface or shootstylist is more than endearing. A hilarious and tragic character. - James Magnum - has won me over with his matches in Kitao Dojo.

Hey, I kinda forgot about this project. Looking forward to read more of your thoughts, KB8. Lioness Asuka/noki-A vs. Ayako Hamada/Fabi Apache (Tag League, 11/3/01 Tokyo) Aw lil Akino teams with Asuka now! This was a match that kind of suffered from too much hard work. Ayako and Akino were just bumping all over the place here, transitions out the ass, the whole enchilada... there just wasn't really a match going on to sink your teeth into. I like Asuka, she is a fun powerhouse who will kick you like a dog... I liked the noki-A vs. Fabi finishing section. Still for a 12 minute bout this had too much stuff crammed into it. Mima Shimoda/Etsuko Mita vs. Mikiko Futagami/Rie Tamada (UWA Tag Title, 11/25/01 Tokyo) Basic LCO match that stayed in the ring and didn't drag. GAMI bled, and also brought her paper fans wrapped in barbed wire (wow that gimmick got dark quickly). Some nice twists and turns, altough I've seen their spots too many times to care at this point. Manami Toyota vs. Mariko Yoshida (11/25/01 Tokyo) Big ol' dream match. The style contrast of Yoshida's shoot submissions vs. Toyota's car wreck style was pretty fun. Yoshida catching her higher ranked opponent repeatedly made for a solid layout. Toyota was bringing it too, laying in mean stomps and clobbering Yoshida, and her dropkicks and suplexes were on point. She may have had a more expressive performance than Yoshida, who was pretty much doing her thing. This had some of the ills of japanese big match wrestling, but the story was fun enough and the finish-off was a fine moment. Ayako Hamada vs. Lioness Asuka (Queen of Arsion Title, 11/25/01 Tokyo) The young ace takes on the big bad legend! This match is a rare Asuka singles match with no bullshit. For that alone it was interesting to watch. And they went for a full-blown EPIC too, putting on a fight that had wrestling exchanges, submission work, stiff moves, table spots, fire balls, the whole deal. If you are nostalgic for joshi stuff you may enjoy this, but others may call this match a poorly thought out mess full of blown spots and poor transitions. I'll say there were a few cool moments and they both threw some mean bombs, but overall the fight never came together for me.

Back to: W*ING 11/21/93 Moondog Spot vs. Ryo Miyake Moondog Splat vs. Badboy Hido Masayoshi Motegi vs. Winger Crash the Terminator & Miguel Perez Jr vs. Leatherface & Boogie Man Nightmare Freddy & Crypt Keeper vs. Nobutaka Araya & Shoji Nakamaki Jado & Gedo vs. Headhunters A & B (Barbedwire Match) W*ING seemed to be lacking in japanese stars at this time. All your sleaze heros (Araya, Hido, Nakamaki) were still in their infancy stage, Nakamaki even wearing the black trunks attire. Maybe that's why they introduced the horror characters. Anyways this show was kind of the downside to watching old indy houseshows. Almost every match here was a sloth like brawl. I actually kinda liked the brief Moondog squash to open the show. Motegi/Winger was the best match on the show as Motegi continues to look better than he has any right to be as he carries the almost completely useless Winger to a perfectly passable junior undercard match, busting out cool holds and all that. The first Horror monsters match had some cool power moves especially from Crash (Bill Demott?!) but ended on a very dry note. The other match was basically a squash. The main event was solid enough - Jado and Gedo wore their amazing Zubaz pants. These two teams have wrestled eachother a bunch and the barbedwire stip made them stay in the ring, all 4 guys have nice punches, and Headhunters always bust their ass breaking out their highspots and big bumps. Still the match was a little long and sluggish but the finish was cool with how the Headhunters set up their big Bulldog. Another Motegi match that delivers beyond logical expectations. At this rate Motegi is pretty much my boy.

That "fans as lumberjacks with WEAPONS" match is not a TNA invention. Terry Funk and Jerry Lawler had one in 1991.

Back to: Kitao Pro 2/21/95 Masaaki Mochizuki vs. Masanobu Kurisu Koji Kitao vs. Richard Byrne Akio Kobayashi vs. Hiroshi Itakura Al Snow vs. Takashi Okamura Akio Kobayashi vs. Koki Kitahara Koji Kitao vs. Osamu Tachihikari Al Snow vs. Koki Kitahara Koji Kitao vs. Masaaki Mochizuki Ryuma Go vs. Kazuhiko Matsuzaki Koji Kitao vs. Koki Kitahara Ohh boy this card. In case you are confused – this is a tournament, with Tachihikari and Kitahara getting a BYE for some reason to skip the 1st round. They removed the ring ropes for this show – smart move. Let's do it quick: Mochizuki/Kurisu was Mochi throwing really hard kicks and Kurisu throwing really hard headbutts and stomps for 3 minutes – so about what you expect. Then Mochi downs Kurisu, causing him to slip over the edge of the ring and almost land on his head outside, dear good. Kitao/Byrne – Byrne has an amazing Jerry Flynn/Bart Vale like american bullshido master look, but is squashed in 40 seconds when Kitao catches him with an admittedly pretty cool Volk Han like wrist lock. Itakura/Kobayashi – Itakura looks like the lost great talent of the 90s, as he wrestles like a tubby Kota Ibushi, fast, stiff, capable on the mat, cool spots – but gets kicked in the face by the lousy Kobayashi and fails to get up. Poor Itakura always gets the short end. Snow/Okamura – it will never cease to amaze me how Snow got roped into doing this shit. Snow earns my respect by working a pretty solid 5 minute match against the not very good Okamura, hitting stiff palm rushes and actually getting the crowd behind him. Snow also eats one of the most brutal koppu kicks I've ever seen. Kobayashi/Kitahara – Kobayashi is a slimy hateable dipshit, and Kitahara kills him some in this match, but not nearly enough. Kitao/Tachihikari – for a few seconds this was two fat sumos clobbering each other, and all was right in the world, then Kitao wins another 1 minute squash. Don't exhaust yourself, Kitao. Snow/Kitahara – this is the most promising matchup cause both these guys can actually work. Snow gets dropped on his shoulder with a german suplex and Kitahara painfully picks his shoulder apart. Snow tries hard, but at 3 minutes the match fell short just as it got good, 1 or 2 minutes longer and it would've been a pretty good bout. Kitao/Mochizuki – Mochizuki is next on Kitao's short pointless squash list. Ryuma Go/Matsuzaki – Go saves this show by beating the snot out of Matsuzaki with ultra stiff punches and headbutts and then tortures him on the mat and then some. Go is INSANE and I love him.God bless you, Champion of the Galaxy. Kitao/Kitahara – Kitahara is the first guy who gets to do actual harm to Kitao. They beat the shit out of eachother and Kitao throws these brutal Vader Hammers, and brings out the Kitao Driller again. Eh I guess this was solid, brutal enough to be worthwhile, altough with a match as short as 4 minutes you have to go a little more all out than this for it to be something special. I dunno. The feel of these Kitao booked shows is kind of fun with the „anything can happen/match can end at anytime“ vibe, and every match is brutal as fuck, which is always a plus. But I feel they could've delivered a little more on some matches. You know there's something fishy when Ryuma Go and Al Snow are bringing the workrate. It was interesting and a breeze to watch, kind of like fast food shootstyle. The best match was Snow/Okamura, so now you know it – once upon a time, Al Snow carried a mediocre japanese karateka to a pretty decent 5 minute match.

Next in the gauntlet is one of the original sleaze classics - SPWF. Social Progress Wrestling sounds like a north korean propaganda fed, perhaps booked by Antonio Inoki, but the product was pretty interesting. SPWF 9/5/1994 Shinichi Nakano vs. Kamikaze Yoshiaki Yatsu & Masayoshi Motegi vs. Isao Takagi/Hirofumi Miura This is from an episode of TV, which gives me some hope that there's more pro filmed SPWF out there. Nakano vs. Kamikaze was a classic journeyman performance of Nakano to drag the shitty Kamikaze into a solid match. From what I've gathered about SPWF google translating their japanese Wikipedia page is that they made backyarders into pro wrestlers, and I assume Kamikaze was one of those backyarders because he exhibits all the traits of one: hesitancy, sloppiness, polished looking highspots but shitty looking everything else, and general lack of conviction. Also, at this point he was still wearing a mask, and the jacket he wore was without a doubt one of the ugliest pro wrestling attires I've ever seen. Nakano beats him up and stretches him good and is able to build a solid by the numbers match around him with some nearfalls. Nakano even did the Fuerza punt. Seems SPWF had a lot of kids in the audience because Kamikaze got a lot of kiddie sounding pops. The main event was a match I'm sure is good, but not exactly sure how good it was. Do you like formula wrestling? Because this was tag formula executed to a tee. If you find that boring, it was probably less exciting. It was worked a lot like an SWS match with 1992 WCW layout. Sharp basic wrestling, with a fast pace and few stiff shots. Motegi looked really sharp, playing his role of Yatsu's young partner well, hitting nice armdrags etc. and playing a good Ricky Morton when he got isolated and bloodied. Dare I say, is Motegi actually one of the underrated juniors of the 90s? Miura, for a guy who has been stinky in everything I've seen so far, was acceptable here and the old guys were really fun. Yatsu still had something in the tank, and the future Arashi was really spry. Not exactly mind-blowing stuff here, but I'd love to see more SPWF.

Texas Deathmatch in a Cage~! The main event was a serious match and worked US style. Harris Bros came in with long flowing manes – and bah gawd they both look like Chris Hero!! Go and Barr were your babyfaces, and the Bros worked them over good. Harris Brothers had really nice punches and stomps, eventually hitting some huge double teams including a big powerslam off the top rope. Everyone bled, and eventually Go got the hot tag and ran wild on the nazi vikings as if they were space jews, hitting a bunch of flying clotheslines and eventually getting the win with an octopus hold. Barr didn't look like much, only hitting some stomps and kneedrops, but the crowd got into him when he refused to quit, and Ron & Don did a pro job here, knowing to fly headfirst into the cage when it counted. Won't make you forget Final Conflict and probably went a little long, but I thought it was a good little formula match.

The co-main event was another match where you have no idea what to expect going and then you end up being positively surprised. I'd never seen pre-deathmatch Kanemura or Matsuzaki before, only snippets of Itakura and Motegi is a guy who is a notorious fuckup. All 4 guys won me over, though. Matsuzaki was a black trunks rookie, but he had really nice sharp kicks and headbutts, and Itakura was a fairly athletic tubby guy. Motegi looked pretty sharp, and everyone worked stiff and got the crowd into the match. They did flaring tempers nicely, leading to 3 guys hitting awesome dives and then a double countout which they turned into a restart and then did a really nice finish with Motegi hittig his awesome triple german into Kanemura getting the win.

The opener was pretty great because PWFG Wilkins showed up to school his opponent with awesome takedowns, suplexes and stiff headbutts and shotais. It was a postively Negro Navarro performance from old Wellington. His opponent didn't look like much, but he didn't look lost in a match with a lot of grappling and he had a nifty leg trip. At one point, Wilkins went for a kick and fell over, to which Hirano rushed for an Achilles Hold. It was a minor detail, but about the only way Hirano could see any land in this match. Badass stuff from Wilkins.