William Bologna

WWF Junior Heavyweight Championship bout Tatsumi Fujinami vs Ashura Hara 4/3/1980 Hara's another guy I've heard of without seeing his work or really knowing who he was. My guesses on Hara were "Tenryu crony" and "gambler?" and I was right! I also guessed this match was interpromotional, since Hara's corner guys are pointedly wearing yellow rather than the red NJPW windbreakers, and that was also correct. Hara was an IWE guy who jumped to All Japan with Rusher Kimura, was fired over his gambling debts, and wound up following Tenryu around during that man's peripatetic career. Also that's not his real name (Hara is, Ashura's not), and I'm wondering about this. Typically a Japanese wrestler is announced family name first - Fujinami Tatsumi. This is also the case when it's not the man's real name but functions as a Japanese name rather than a nickname (cf. Tenryu). Here the ring announcer says "Ashura Hara," putting Ashura in the nickname category along with Jumbo, Giant, Jaguar, Tarzan, W*ING, Dump, Survival, Animal, Bull, Plum, Antonio, and Abdullah Jr. I can't think of another example (which is not to say that there isn't one) of a non-foreign word being announced in this way. ANYWAY, Hara looks like a sleazy Hiroshi Hase and responds to Fujinami's offer of a handshake with a slap in the face. Those IWE guys are a bunch of no-goodniks if you ask me. Even Gypsy Joe. Fujinami wants to keep it on the mat (specifically a headscissors) because he's a sportsman, while Hara wants to brawl because he's a bastard. They're not always looking real cooperative, which who knows might even be a shoot, brother. Eventually Hara goads Fujinami into stomping him (Hara) while he's in the ropes, which just goes to show you how spicy things are getting. It gets even spicier as Fujinami goes outside and once again returns to ring with his face all red and drippy. Make sure everyone gets a look! Hara goes hits of one of those looping, full-body Estrada punches, but when he tries another, Fujinami ducks it, hits a German suplex, and sinks in a not great-looking submission for the win. The yellow boys are outraged, hitting the ring and shoving the ref out of the way because IWE guys got no respect. Post-match shenanigans are teased, but cooler heads prevail and they haul out the trophies. Fujinami gets two trophies and a Lord Blears-style announcement every time he wins one of these, and lately he also gets a tourniquet to stop the bleeding. This was pretty good. The pace was decent, the non-cooperativeness worked, and while Hara wasn't as vicious as Dynamite Kid, but he was ornery enough to keep things interesting.

WWF Junior Heavyweight Championship bout Tatsumi Fujinami vs Dynamite Kid 2/5/1980 I was about to say that Dynamite was the first opponent I was really familiar with, but that's not true. I remember the British Bulldogs from when I was a kid, but it's not like I remember anything about their work. If I'm being honest, I mostly remember Matilda. I'm happy to report that Dynamite Kid is amazing. The bulk of this match consists of Dynamite just beating the hell out of Fujinami. He's dealing out what appear to extremely hard strikes, and if anything I've ever heard about Dyanmite is true, they actually are extremely hard strikes - European uppercuts, kicks right to the face, and quick, short, vicious punches. DK has this sudden, terse body language. Little wasted motion, lots of pain. Fujinami has a bandaged cut over his eye, and I probably don't need to tell you that Dynamite goes right for it. The important thing when you're bleeding is to take a moment to stand up and slowly present your face to all four sides of the ring, and Fujinami takes a momentary trip by DK to the outside to do just that. Always gets a pop. Dynamite continues to attack the wound with his teeth and these brutal diving fistdrops. Fujinami comes back with some dropkicks. To the extent a shoot dropkick is a real thing, these are it. Fujinami finally gets a chance to dish out some receipts, and DK gets a boot right in the jaw on each one. The end comes on a fluke, as Fujinami pulls off some kind of fancy-ass rollup and gets the three count. (Five matches, five different winning moves.) Dynamite responds with the sportsmanship we expect from him, stomping the winner in the head a few times. This is just about perfect. I realized while watching this that my issue with the Go and Kimura matches was that in both cases Fujinami was wrestling a guy who was pretty much just like him but not as good. The Estrada match pitted a man of skill and virtue vs a dirty cheater, and that was great. DK is a different kind of heel - he's not really cheating, he's just mean. It's a perfect persona for Fujinami's natural babyfacedness to play off of. I even loved the fluke finish. Dynamite Kid had done absolutely everything to Fujinami. Him overpowering DK after that and hitting a real finish would have strained suspension of disbelief (this was my problem with Okada vs Shibata) (well, that and one of the participants almost killing himself). So this was great. I knew Dynamite was good, but he blew me away in this, and Fujinami is a perfect opponent for him. Five stars. Ten, maybe. More.

Thanks! It's been a lot easier to watch than I figured it would be. And we got a humdinger with Dynamite Kid coming up.

WWF Junior Heavyweight Championship bout Tatsumi Fujinami vs Kengo Kimura 12/13/1979 The part I copy/pasted above says this is for the WWF junior title; elsewhere on the page it says "Martial arts world finals." Dammit, Gedo! Kimura comes in hot with two dropkicks and a backdrop suplex. He then presses his advantage by taking it to the mat. And keeping it there. For a while. The crowd starts entertaining itself with chants while they wait for this bit to end. In the Canek match, they broke up the matwork with some running around. No such luck here. That said, these guys are really over or this is just a good crowd, because they're clearly waiting for an occasion to start yelling. This comes when our combatants finally get up off the mat and commence to running the ropes, in which scenario Fujinami again looks amazing. Business continues to pick up as Kimura hits a backdrop outside the ring, and once back inside sloppily drops Fujinami on his neck a couple times. The opponents are not doing a great job taking care of the man, but he's still out here wrestling in his 60s so I guess the damage wasn't too bad. Finally Fujinami hits a German suplex hold, but too close to the ropes for the pin. He scoops Kimura back up and piledrives him for the win. Four matches, four different finishing moves. My verdict on Fujinami so far is that he's completely awesome. His stuff looks great, and he's got great babyface charisma. All of these matches have been good, although the Estrada one is the only one I loved.

WWF Junior Heavyweight Championship bout Tatsumi Fujinami vs El Canek 6/7/1979 I don't watch much lucha, and I'd always just known El Canek as the other guy who bodyslammed Andre. So it's cool to get a look at him here. Fujinami's rocking an amazing burgundy robe with the biggest lapels you ever saw. I bet that's still sitting in the back of his closet. We have about two-thirds of a really great match here. They start off with action matwork broken up by rope-running hijinks, ending with Fujinami pulling off a flying headscissors. He looks just fantastic here, and none of this feels dated. Eventually our antagonists each take a turn going outside the ring and taking a dive. It is at this point, I'm sorry to say, that the match falls apart. Fujinami starts trying to rip off El Canek's mask, which seems to come out of nowhere. They didn't seem any more pissed at each other than any other two opponents, but I don't know the conventions of mask-ripping in the late 70s. Canek gets blown up, and his exhaustion causes him to drop Fujinami in a couple dangerous-looking ways. Back in control, he seems to run out of ideas and things drag. Well, he had one idea. He takes off Fujinami's boot and then his sock. That'll show him! While this would seem to be a devastating setback, boot-and-sock-removal didn't help Tarzan Goto (or was it Mr. Pogo?) against Tenryu, and it can't save Canek this time. He hops onto the top rope to do a flying crossbody, but Fujinami hits a quick, one-boot dropkick and gets an abrupt pin. This is hot stuff until Canek gets tired. I like that in the three matches so far, Fujinami has won with three different moves. I find the modern rigidity regarding finishers limiting.

WWWF Junior Heavyweight Championship bout Tatsumi Fujinami vs Ryoma Tsuyoshi 7/27/1978 I had no idea who Ryoma is, and I feared that transliteration issues would keep his identity a secret forever. But then I smartened up, turned off Google translate, and searched for his name in Japanese. It's goddamn Ryuma Go! Alien-fighin', baka-yellin', absurdist indy rasslin'-inventin' Ryuma Go! I'll be damned. Just as his later career would prefigure Survival Tobita, the late 70s Ryuma Go prefigured Genichiro Tenryu, with his puffy perm, yellow towel, and high-waisted trunks that look like a diaper. What I learned here is that when it comes to wasting time in pre-modern wrestling, I much MUCH prefer Puerto Rican heel work to good honest Japanese mat wrestling. These two roll around and procure headlocks and whatnot with no effect and no pretense of any effect until it's time to hit the highspots. The finish is nifty. Go misses a dive - truly the Achilles' heel of Fujinami's first two opponents here - and Fujinami goes for the dragon suplex. Go blocks, goes behind, and is then gone behind himself, allowing Fujinami to hit the German suplex and - making an argument that wrestling in 1978 is better than it is in 2017 - pin Go with it. Then they shake hands and show respect and what have you. Neither of these guys is the other's best opponent. Thus far, Fujinami has done his best work against Jose Estrada, while Ryuma has his best work ahead of him against aliens.

Fujinami is a wrestler I've long thought I'd like without ever seeing much of his work. As a longtime All Japan mark and all-around wrestling philistine, I've never had much occasion to dive into the work of a man who is, according to the inarguable dictates of science, the 20th greatest wrestler of all time. Of all time! But I have an NJPW World account and some time to kill between their last letdown of an event and upcoming, dog-ass awful tag team tournament, so why not watch every Fujinami match on the service? They didn't make it easy (I hesitate to blame Gedo personally, but who else is there?). Normally a wrestler has two entries in the tag list; one in Japanese, and one in our Roman script. For some reason, there are four Fujinamis in the archive, and each one has a different number of matches. Dammit, Gedo! I choose the first of these, with the largest number of matches (44). It seems to be mostly in chronological order. WWF Junior Heavyweight Championship bout Carlos Estrada vs Tatsumi Fujinami I guess this is the title that wound up in the J-Crown before the WWF demanded it back. Here's what I like about Carlos/Jose Estrada (and kudos to the MSG ring announcer for that rolled R on his last name): The dude starts heeling immediately. He lofts the belt like a dick and then proceeds to bitch and moan the whole time the ref is checking him. Here is a man who will take a shortcut, you say to yourself. Meanwhile, Fujinami's in the other corner wearing the traditional young lion gear and looking all wholesome and full of fighting spirit. Estrada brings a lot of hip tosses and some pretty sweet full-body-windup punches, and Fujinami gets his fighting spirit comebacks here and there. In response to a couple totally rad dropkicks, Estrada puts on the full heel handshake act. The beg-off, the hands behind the back, the offered handshake, the full drop to the knees one hand behind the back offered handshake. Will this virtuous young man fall for the wiles of the crafty veteran? What if I told you there were no wiles, and Estrada just wanted to shake hands? And the fans boo him for just shaking hands and not cheating? Seriously, this guy's an amazing heel. Eventually Estrada goes for and misses some kind off flip of the top rope. Fujinami hits him with what must be one of the first recorded dragon suplexes, and - making an argument that wrestling in 1978 is better than it is in 2017 - pins him with it. Fujinami reacts with wild, hair-out-of-place enthusiasm - he can't believe he did it! His joy is infectious, as the American crowd seems to be just as excited as he is (at least the collection of sideburns and turtlenecks picked up by the camera is). Estrada sells like he's dead, because he's a pro and he just got nailed with a damn dragon suplex in 1978. An in-ring in-Japanese interview follows, in which they seem to talk a lot about the suplex and about Fujinami doing his best. This must have been fascinating for the audience. This was great. Early Fujinami was like Hirai Kawato, and that's pretty much the best thing you can be.

Scurll's too short to be using the chickenwing. "OK, lean back a little bit so I can get on my tippy toes and TAP YOU OUT!" I wasn't familiar with him before BOSJ, but watching him work a singles match every day exposed him pretty quick. It was fun at first, especially since the Korakuen crowd knew all about it and played along. But before long he was doing the exact same crap to total indifference.

Interesting observation about Naito's more theatrical character work. I guess that'd be true up and down the roster (although I'm not sure what Okada's supposed to be). It's not like Kikiuchi was bringing a stuffed cat to the ring. And this was a good one to watch, particularly if you find yourself let down by the body of Okada matches. I'll take Natio/Tanahashi over Okada/Omega every time.

We've had some shitty gimmick posters and people who were too weird to tell whether they were working or not but this one takes the cake. Neat. What did you think of the match?

Takayama is paralyzed, and this match might be party of the reason why. Was it a good enough match to justify Takayama's current condition? No. Was it a good match? Not really. Takayama was pretty awful at professional wrestling. I don't know, man. Wrestling is awful.

It wasn't 'all of a sudden'. In an interview leading up to G1, Okada said that the third generation wrestlers don't deserve a spot in the G1 and that they're boring to wrestle because no one believes that they will win, so naturally he is positioned as a heel when faced against Kojima. Oh, interesting. Didn't know that. I withdraw my objection.

Why was Okada acting like a bad guy all of a sudden here? If this is the beginning of an actual tendency on his part, I welcome it - it's not clear to me what his character is supposed to be, and some cheating would help his matches make some sense. If not, it came off like a contrived way to pop the crowd for one night.

I blame the crowd for this never really getting going. They should have been on fire for Nagata putting that punk in his place! But they were lukewarm and mostly Naito fans, so we didn't get the heat.

Makabe's been generally unmemorable so far, but this was pretty good. If nothing else, the finishing sequence was brutal enough that I'm going to remember it - that knee to the face off the top rope was really something. Nice to see Honma hanging out, all looking like he skinned a hot dog and wore it on his face.

Eesh. Fale's really good at what he does, but he had to get out of his comfort zone here, and it didn't work. Worst match of the tournament so far.

Hot stuff. Yoshi-Hashi doesn't bring much to the table other than a midlife crisis haircut and general air of trying too hard, but he did enough here. Ishii is an absolute master of professional wrestling.

Ibushi is just killing it. I can see why everyone wants to sign him.

I was disappointed in this. Both guys are doing great character work, and I figured they'd mesh. Against Sanada, Suzuki was setting Sanada up for the babyface comebacks that are usually so effective since he's such an evil bastard. Problem was Sanada isn't a face and doesn't show a lot of fire. Juice is and does, but Suzuki just didn't seem interested in setting him up for anything. Too bad.

Five powerbombs in this match. Elgin is such a hack.

Is Elgin always this bad? He has the overloaded moveset of a CAW, and when he tries to do a sequence he looks he's going through a memorized dance routine. It was not clear to me why the finish hurt Elgin more than Tonga.

He also liked Herb Abrams. His standards for people who pay him aren't all that high.

This is the first time I've watched a tournament like this all the way through, and that did expose some of the flaws. All those hardcam house shows where it was ten minutes of shtick and then go to the finish. Seeing everyone's spots every other day instead of a couple times a month. You really noticed the difference in effort when they got to Korakuen. For all the hype about the super flippy A block, I think I liked B better. Taguchi, Kanemaru, ACH, Bushi, and Tiger Mask all exceeded my expectations. Meanwhile, Ricochet was a huge disappointment - he's got no presence and little to keep you involved between flips. Dragon Lee and Scurll suffered from seeing them every other day. Takahashi has enough charisma and big spots that I don't mind him as champ, but he's not top tier. I hated the final. Why did Kushida decide to work Ospreay's leg? He's going to ignore it, and you're going to the arm later anyway. Also, Kushida debuted a new finisher in this tournament. Three matches later, he's doing it off the top rope. At least it led to the finish. I think Kushida is the best guy around, and he had a good tournament, but that match was silly.

Volador looks like Bret Hart. He also a completely flat tournament. I've already forgotten all his matches.

I was really impressed with this, simply because it told a story. ACH is the rich man's Ricochet.