[1992-10-23-WAR] Masa Saito vs Masao Orihara

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Previously at PWO:

 

Saito vs Orihara from NJ 10/23 has insane heat for D-level stars. What a feud.

 

 

The entrances there REALLY set the table for how insane the crowd is. For instance there's a shot of a random guy giving the double-bird towards the ring and just losing it. Unreal. WTF caused all that heat in that feud?! Who cared enough to hate SWS and its offspring, especially from the NJ point of view? I can see if it was All Japan. Oh man... WAR vs AJ would have caused riots.

 

 

Tenryu in New Japan caused the heat. It was a new thing, and New Japan fans always ate up interpromotional stuff if there was at least a Star anchoring it. I'm not sure how much AJPW fans would have eaten up AJPW vs WAR at this point. Tenryu had been in AJPW forever prior to leaving, which wasn't all the long ago. My recollection is that they looked down their nose at SWS and WAR, and felt they were proven right when it bombed out and the guys who stayed stepped up to become big stars. The guys who jumped from All Japan to SWS saw their careers hit a brick wall, other then Tenryu in the long term. There's also the booking question. Tenryu over Kosh Tenryu over Choshu Choshu over Tenryu Tenryu over Hashimoto Tenryu over Hashimoto Fujinami over Tenryu Tenryu over Hase Tenryu over Chono Tenryu over Fujinami Tenryu over Inoki Hashimoto over Tenryu There probably aren't perfect analogies here, but perhaps something like this: Kosh = Kobashi Choshu = Hansen (since Jumbo went out) Hashimoto = Misawa Fujinami = Williams (since Gordy OD'd) Hase = Taue Chono = Kawada Inoki = Baba Which creates: Tenryu over Kobashi Tenryu over Hansen Hansen over Tenryu Tenryu over Misawa Tenryu over Misawa Williams over Tenryu Tenryu over Taue Tenryu over Kawada Tenryu over Williams Tenryu over Baba Misawa over Tenryu Uh... yeah... that never would happen. John

[KB8]

WAR v New Japan delivering the goods again, is it? Never would've guessed. It wasn't that this had no business being awesome, it's that you look at those names and wonder why the fuck every single person in the building was going mental. This was absurd heat for guys so far down the pecking order. You could tell Orihara was feeding off it big time, though. He's pretty underrated anyway because he communicates hatred well and will get the shit kicked clean out of him on the regular, but I thought he was absolutely great in this. All Saito's really good for at this point in his career is crowbarring folk, but it was enough for Orihara to work with. And man did Saito crowbar him. He was trying to murder Orihara with kicks; huge punts to the chest, sloppy roundhouses, even a few punches to the ear just to spice it up some. Orihara trying to catch these shots and go for kneebars or chokes ruled, especially when he wasn't quick enough off the mark and wound up getting clobbered. A couple of his delayed crumples were awesome bits of selling and at least once I bought him going down with a collapsed lung. On a few other occasions he maybe popped up a little quick, but the crowd clearly lit a fire under him and you couldn't have asked for him to be any more aggressive. I about lost it when he just leapt on Saito and tried to punch his skull open. The way he sold those last couple knockout blows was incredible as well and I was totally behind him pulling off the upset.