Edwin

This is as ECW as it gets outside of ECW. I'm not particularly fond of Dreamer, but I dig Corino. The match was rather forgettable imo, but I did dig Corino's stalling early on. Plus him faking chair shots on Dreamer twice and then sitting in the chair and grabbing a chinlock.

I have never heard of CWF before, so this is a first for me. This wasn't a bad match, however it wasn't a particularly great match either. Seeing Guido work as a face in front of a different audience than the usual ECW crowd was neat.

This was long and bad. They recreated a bad ECW match in Stampede and apparently they transported the Philly fans to Canada for this.

I haven't watched him in forever and I don't even know if he's retired yet or not, but based on his work from mid 2000's, Yutaka Yoshie was underrated. He was a fat man that new how to literally throw his weight around. He had some fantastic matches back then with guys like Nakanishi, Nakamura, Ishii, Sekimoto, etc.

I still can't believe BJW were conned by these goofs that they were a big deal in North American... I won't say this was a carry job as the CZW guys held their own, but Yamakawa and Honma's bumping was on point to get these guys over. I dug the powder into the spot as it was refreshing in BJW and I also like how it led to Zandig press slamming his partner due to being blinded. I dug how BJW limited these guys on their weapon usage and they didn't go using the ridiculous weapons they would usually used in their CZW death matches stateside. Easily the best match I've ever seen Zandig or Wifebeater in. ***

Honma and Shadow usually work well when paired up together and this looked like it was a good match, but the clipping really doesn't let us grasp it rightfully.

I dug their first match we saw from February, this is hard to say how this was due to the clipping, but all of the table spots were awesome, specially that front face powerbomb onto the perched table in the corner from Kanemura to Yamakawa.

This was a match during the World Extreme Cup. Honma has been on fire so far this year. Samples apparently worked for USWA for some years and he did some tours with BJW, but I'm not familiar with his USWA work. His BJW work isn't particularly great either from what I recall. Yeah, I didn't like this as much as you guys as this was a one man show. Honma does a great job at taking the ball and running with it as Samples really looks like a lazy big dude waiting for Honma to actually walk him through. I'm convinced that at this point Honma can have a decent match with anyone who's willing to try and work with him, Samples isn't that guy.

All of these ECW guys in FMW are members of the invading heel ECW JAPAN faction. They booked a ton of ECW guys and paired them up with some former FMW heels such Kodo Fuyuki, Kyoko Inoue, Crazy Boy, etc. That’s why you get guys like Balls and Tracy working together as heels. The Hayabusa to H transformation was because he was getting beat up constantly by Team No Respect and his childhood best friend Mr. Gannosuke. He decided it was time to stop getting pushed around and he needed to reinvent himself and he eventually did reinvent himself as H. Hayabusa and Gannosuke had already patched up their friendship here. IIRC they patched it up when the entire ECW JAPAN storyline began. Also keep in mind, this was in an era where Fuyuki had taken power and he wanted to reinvent FMW and remold the organization more as a Japanese ripoff of WWE than of what it was originally founded to be by Onita in the late 80’s — early 90’s. IIRC Fuyuki got a ton of heat from the hardcore local fan base as he was always booking himself into main event spots such as he did here. H getting stretchered out due to him taking a Nutcracker Suite from the top rope was a nice way of getting H out of match early on. Fuyuki coming out to step in for H was a nice touch, but the heat segment on him was far too extensive however. Hayabusa’s return was awesome as the crowd popped huge for it. The match got a better from that moment on, but the booked finish was awful as they should have put Hayabusa who was their biggest star over in his return. ***

This such an odd dynamic... The BJW guys are usually faces, but are being treated as heel invaders, yet they work as faces. Team No Respect are usually heels and they are treated as the faces defending the org., yet they work as heels. The match itself felt flat. Even the crowd brawling felt flat. It also went on forever.

This is 2 elimination matches clipped together instead of being a 7 vs. 7 elimination match. Not really much to see here and its just mostly put together to highlight ECW JAPAN turning on Kodo Fuyuki. I wish we could have seen the Tracy Smothers vs. Hisakatsu Oya sections however.

Masao Orihara is one of the true underrated heels of Japanese pro-wrestling. He never made it big, but he was around all of the major Japanese indys for years. He also worked in Mexico for some years. He's a natural heel. Sanshiro Takagi was the founder of DDT. He was their first ace and is an obvious Stone Cold parody. He has the shattering glass at the beginning of his theme song, wears the black trunks with black boots, flips people off and has a large variety of stunners. DDT is similar to 2000's WEW FMW as they tried to follow the WWE mold and guiding itself away from the more traditional Japanese style. This match was pretty forgettable. A lot of DDT from this time period is really forgettable, unless we dive into the Jakai Tensho stuff with Poison Sawada JULIE turning people into snakes and such which is more so on the entertainment side. Nothing really stood out here for me.

Rewatching some Masao Orihara and I remember the brutal beating he put on gosaku in FMW: One of the nastiest beatdowns I've ever seen in.

I watched a lot of Occupation of the Indies episodes from Samurai! TV about 10 or so years ago when it used to air and it covered a lot of the smaller indy events, yet Saitama Pro was in that student pro-wrestling category, so it never even made air there... Its crazy to think Tobita actually isn't a pro-wrestler and Saitama Pro is actually not even a thing and just a bunch of friends playing wrestlers in a small gymnasium. Tobita is now working against an aluminum covered monster... The monster is attracted to aluminum so Tobita takes a bear break and tosses the can to distract the monster before the monster proceeds to destroy Tobita with aluminum bins... Again Tobita begins tossing mats to drop his opponent before pilling up on top of him with them. This is as sleazy as it gets for Japanese wrestling.

I have watched a ton of Toryumon and Dragon Gate and have never seen Stalker Ichikawa in a serious match. I have seen him fight MMA in DEEP however... I dug the comedy bits that came with having Stalker in the match as its a new element we haven't seen implemented to this level yet in Toryumon. His exchanges with Fuji were the best. The match its self was kinda underwhelming.

This is a 20 minute draw, but we get about 4 minutes of it and Mochi cutting a promo which eventually leads to the formation of a new faction M2K.

Its Susumu Mochizuki and Yasushi Kanda, not Chocoball KOBE. Chocoball KOBE was featured in one of the tag matches from one of the previous months. I thought this was good, but not as good as you guys thought it was. I can think of about 3-4 other tag matches I've seen from Japan alone that I'd rank above this. Its a standard smaller show tag match, but that's not a bad thing as they usually deliver and hey did deliver here. No one particularly stood out here as everyone looked good. ***

This was a bit of an upgraded small show match and better than the previous two small show matches. They don't go all out here, but its still relatively good for what it is. This is out first look at SAITO who would eventually go on to become Super Shisa. SAITO does some of the cool handstand pinning combinations that he would later use regularly as Super Shisa. SUWA showed some of his vicious heel personality at the start of the matching by attacking his opponents with a wooden stick. Tiger Mask was less botchy here and despite not being a Toryumon guy, he's meshed in well with them for the most part. Dragon Kid's best exchanges are usually with MAKOTO. MAKOTO will eventually go on to become Darkness Dragon and these two would have some very good singles matches iirc. There was some chaos all over the place here as they focus mostly on what's going on in the ring, but when the zoom out you can see the chaos thats occurring with them brawling all over the crowd. Very good match. ***1/4

Toryumon hasn't lost its step, these matches are just a bunch of matches from smaller shows and thus aren't worked as hard as a match for a bigger venue and bigger event would be. So don't expect the hot finishes and the great Crazy MAX interferences, etc. that make all the other Toryumon matches fun. TARU is by far the worse of the Toryumon guys we've seen and he's heavily involved here and it drags whenever he's in. This is rather forgettable.

Tiger Mask swaps places with Magnum TOKYO and he grabs some retro gear from Sayama’s days as TM. CIMA and SUWA were coming in hot from the Super J Cup where CIMA turned into a star making it to the finals and SUWA was the best heel in the multi man match. Unfortunately CIMA didn’t come across as a star here and SUWA didn’t work anywhere to the level of that Super J Cup in this match. As for the match itself, I’m torn on it... It felt more as a standard house show match than anything. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t that great either, I wouldn’t say it was as good as some of their other multi man matches imo. We don’t get the great Crazy MAX interferences we got in the other multi man matches, so it lacks that. Instead we get a run in from Susumu and Kanda which isn’t as good as they attack SUWA. The finishing stretch wasn’t as hot and good as theother multi man matches either. Not a bad match by any chance, but not as good as any of their other matches either.

I didn't like this as much as you guys did, but I thought it was good still. This is worked much simpler than it was to be expected and is basically the vet looking to maintain his spot against the up and coming star trying to make his mark. CIMA throwing his own palm strikes at Liger was great. Making the finals pretty much cements CIMA's rise even in defeat. The finish was fantastic as it was kept pretty simple and to the point. The biggest knock on this was the abrupt finish as the match was somewhat short for a final. Good stuff. ***1/4

This was a ton of fun. The go balls to the wall in the second half with Ricky Marvin and SUWA looking great for both sides. SUWA finally gets a chance to show more personality and on a bigger stage than the normal Toryumon show. He attacks the luchadores in the crowd and bullies the ref. slapping him around and even tearing his shirt. He's a great base for Marvin's highspots. Marvin goes busts out a ton of great looking stuff and as he's paired up with SUWA, everything flows greatly. Everyone else looked pretty good here, except for Chabinger who's Masayoshi Motegi. Whenever he was in, this dragged, but luckily he didn't get much time. ***1/2

This was pretty neat as it was bit different since its feat. two gritty vets going against each other. They build to the finish well as they develop the story of giving Hamada one more run hoorah and a lot of the fans buy into it as they going bananas for the false finishes. Neat little match.

This was another good match in this tournament. CIMA was on his way to become a star and this match just placed him a step closer to it. I love Crazy MAX as interfering seconds in Toryumon, but here they played a different role as they were seconds behind CIMA and they were excellent at ringside coaching CIMA. Loved how CIMA had to exchange his Venus as it wasn't as effective against a veteran and he had to do a headbutt with it and also he had to exchange the Iconoclasm for the Goriconoclasm. Even despite that, I loved how one Mad Splash was more than enough. Good stuff. ***3/4