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[2000-01-02-BJW-New Year's Great Series] Ryuji Yamakawa vs Tomoaki Honma (Nail & Barbed Wire Double Board Death)


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  • 2 months later...

I like FMW, I like ECW, I like violence and weapons and blood. I've never been able to get into Big Japan. All of the 2000s BJW I watched was disappointing and this is no different. It had some really exciting moments but it also had lots of the worst aspects of ECW. I'm talking about crowd brawling that is built on walking around holding the back of your opponent's neck and convoluted setups.

 

I did like these matches from the early 2000s more than the later BJW matches that were nominated and I wonder if I might like 90s BJW more.

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  • 1 year later...

The long walks through the crowd were a bit much but I liked this match a lot. Like the couple of Honma death matches that are a cut above the rest of the death matches I've seen this one has the benefit of being worked like a good bomb throwing brawl with the weapons added in for extra emphasis rather than dominating the match as props -- plus the big spots look great but are rather big moves that would hurt like hell rather than insane spots that no mortal man should be continuing after. Good stuff here over all, very fun match that went by fast. I especially liked how they set up the powerbomb onto the nails spot -- Honma and Yamakawa are battling on the apron and Honma falls off the apron into position to lift Yamakawa into a powerbomb. Honam's running forearms also looked great throughout.

 

At one point Honma places one of the barbed wire boards wire-down on Yamakawa and then goes up to the top rope as if to hit a move onto the board and Yamakawa just says "uh, fuck this" and moves the board off him.

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  • 6 months later...

Ryuji Yamakawa vs Tomoaki Honma (Five Inch Spike Nail and Barbed Wire Double Board Death Match)

 

Korakuen had a busy day between this show and the All Japan one. I will say that the crowd here looks younger and hipper than the real mundane crowd we encountered in the All Japan action i watched earlier. A feeling out process starts with some teasing of the boards that inevitably will come into play later. We then get a long crowd brawling segment which normally isn’t my thing but if you are going to do a sprawling crowd brawl, make it have some intensity. This certainly did have that with Honma having the early advantage only for Yamakawa to turn the tide and really bring the fight to Honma. Honma gets opened up and Yamakawa does a powerbomb and suplex onto the stage seating. Honma hits a great tope con hilo on the outside to regain the advantage. Yamakawa gets introduced to the bed of nails on the outside and now both are cut open. Some more teasing and the first big spot of the match results in Honma taking a rana through the barbed wire board. Honma made his comeback here a little too easily for my liking. I did like the way Yamakawa just shrugged the board off of him when Honma went to the top. Great reaction with Honma doing a rana from the top rope through the outside of the floor that puts Yamakawa through a barbed wire board as a hefty receipt from earlier. The climatic final spot to the outside felt very organic with Yamakawa going for another rana but Honma dropping down and being able to powerbomb Yamakawa onto the board and the bed of nails. This leads to a quick final section with Honma winning with a running forearm smash. Afterwards, Abdullah Kobayashi challenges Honma and Don’t Stop Believing plays as we see highlights of the match. I appreciated the restraint shown here as the 4-5 insane moves are really ingrained in my mind the way they were built to. I don’t think this is quite the MOTYC best death match ever level that some project it into but it is a great match and one that could get better the more I reflect on it. ****

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The opening few minutes had me all prepared to comment on how these two were working this with the same basic structure as an old school cage match, where shots to the cage were teased and avoided and paid off later. That would have been a cool way to continue, but then they went into the crowd and this went down a notch for me. It felt like a case of being able to deliver great intensity in the ring, and I think this would have been better if they'd stayed in the whole time. That said, that's not the match they worked, so I'll talk about what really happened.

 

There are things that seem like bad layout choices that are still executed well in spite of it -- doing a suplex in the crowd is a lot more tolerable when it's a delayed vertical and Honma sells it like mad. And I love Honma's quick bursts of offense, even when it doesn't culminate in something spectacular, just because he looks so good cutting a fast pace and executing wrestling moves. I'm totally with soup in that I appreciated how they built to a few crazy spots and got the most out of them they could. But there was also lots of setup time for some of the spots, which hurt the rhythm. All in all, I'd call this a very aspirational match that was very good, but not at the level it tried to reach. It feels really weird rating that All Japan six-man from the same day higher than this considering their relative scope, but I do think that was just the better-worked wrestling match despite being so much smaller and less inspired. Honma's matches with Shadow WX in 1998-1999 just trump these completely in my mind.

 

***1/2

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  • 5 months later...
  • 4 weeks later...

Very well structured death match here with good build up to all the big weapon spots. Ryuji Tamakawa takes most of the punishment here, but just won't quit. Not much use of the spikes, but it's perfectly fine here. This was first and foremost a wrestling match that just happened to be in a death match environment. Just the way I like my death match wrestling.

 

***3/4

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GUYS, CAN WE TALK ABOUT TAMAKAWA'S FASTEST DRAW IN THE WEST GIMMICK PLZ?

Complete with "shooting" someone to death during his entrance? Wild.

So, anyone who has listened to the Puro Pourri Podcast will know that out of the three of us that host it, David is the one with the biggest love for the death match scene and BJW in general. Most of the BJW stuff I dig has been from much later on, the big meathead battles between Sekimoto, Okabayashi etc etc. I generally steer away from their death oriented stuff because guys like Jun Kasai and gaijin like Masada etc really don't do much for me.

But stuff like this does make me think that David was correct in his assertion that during the late 90's - early 2000's Japanese scene, in it's varied incarnations from FMW and further down the pecking order in terms of drawing and hype in the west, the Japanese death match may as well be on another planet to the type of stuff that the US scene eventually begun to pump out later. At the very least, there is often a kernel of a good meat and potatoes narrative to get (no pun intended) wired into. This was no different and I liked how the table spots didn't feel excessive despite the patently gonzo nature of the entire setup. This was a match that slotted perfectly into the universe it had created for itself and despite some reservations - there are certain moves I just feel it's counterproductive to keep working after given their kayfabe impact* - I really enjoyed brawling sections that worked up to the more brutal bumps.

I'm not someone who gives out star ratings but I enjoyed this a great deal more than I thought I might. I thought Honma worked super hard and was probably the stand out.

*On this note: one thing I've always wondered r.e the significance of certain moves in the west vs the east: who was the first Japanese worker to perform a tombstone and do fans in the west get more het up about it being used as a transition spot due to the fact it's 'Takers finisher and was so protected for so long over here? I'm not saying I don't find it jarring when someone kicks out of one, but I'm trying to think who the first Japanese wrestler was I've seen perform it going back historically and I can't think off the top of my head.

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*On this note: one thing I've always wondered r.e the significance of certain moves in the west vs the east: who was the first Japanese worker to perform a tombstone and do fans in the west get more het up about it being used as a transition spot due to the fact it's 'Takers finisher and was so protected for so long over here? I'm not saying I don't find it jarring when someone kicks out of one, but I'm trying to think who the first Japanese wrestler was I've seen perform it going back historically and I can't think off the top of my head.

 

I don't know if he was the first, but George "The Cobra" Takano used a Tombstone variation as his finisher in the 80s.

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Ahhh great shout! I've seen Cobra matches but on a big long stretch of 80's stuff I watched back to back and some of it medled into one. I'm enjoying this project so far because I work from home so I can fit in the odd match here and there and then watch more when I've finished for the day, so there is space to breathe between watching matches.

I'm hoping this will mean the stuff I dig remains fresher in my mind for longer.

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Honma has a good charisma that draws you into his matches and again was the case here. I felt he was the workhorse of the match supplementing the heat segment with believable selling. Yamakawa was just another guy to me with the exception of the entrance which was amazing. It was great seeing Honma in his younger days doing the deathmatches. I liked that they built to the weapons spots and they're well timed within the match structure. ***1/4

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This didn't do a whole lot for me and I think that it just might be dated for me. It didn't really have creativity in my mind although i liked the top-rope rana through the barbed wire table on the floor by Honma. Probably my favorite thing is the finish with the big forearm smash into a tight pin by Honma.

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I really, really, liked this. Really cool hesitation factor at the beginning, and even if the payoff wasn't exactly Kudo/Toyoda, I felt like enough shit had hit the fan when the barbed wire first came into it, and the selling was good. The match eventually had a bunch of big spots like powerbombs and ranas into the barbed wire board, and absolutely none of it felt like it was going over board to me. I actually thought the time spent to set stuff up was more positive than negative, because of the exhaustion, and if something was going to be countered then it was because they had time to rest. You could argue they shouldn't have given each other time to rest, but I like the idea that they thought risking it with a big spot - that might end the match - was worth it. I felt like more time was wasted past the.....where there would normally be barricades. Crowd brawling I'm fine with but one guy holding another guy by his head and walking around for ten minutes to find something to throw the head into - when he walked past twenty other things he could have used - I am not fine with. Some really really good stuff on the outside did happen, though; I loved Yamakawa being on top and Honma putting himself in danger to fight back and take the match, like on his dives. The non-deathmatch work in this was super good, I thought. Practically every elbow, kick, suplex submission had a ton of impact. Obviously as a result of the fact they had been through hell, but it would have been super easy just to treat the standard stuff as time filler and they really didn't. All Japan and Big Japan have an event on the same day on 1/2/00, and I would not have guessed that I would prefer the selling and match structure of BJ's Nail and Barbed Wire Board Death Match, over two of AJ's six man tags. Wrestling, you funny.

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I watched this the first go-around at my failed attempt to file a Best of 2000s Japan ballot, and was underwhelmed because of what i thought was an over-long segment of lead-the-other-guy-by-the-head brawling in the crowd.

 

On second viewing, I still think that drags down this match, but not as much as I originally thought. Honma really does turn in a fine performance here (it's hard to believe it's the same guy currently in NJPW... that tope!), and both guys did an admirable job building to the big spots.

 

Yamakawa definitely was the lesser guy here, but he took some nasty bumps and got fantastic color.

 

Honma basically no-selling Kobayashi during his post-match beatdown attack in the locker room just so he could talk shit and answer the challenge was weird.

 

This still doesn't fall out of the "good" category for me, but it's definitely worth a watch.

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  • 1 month later...

This is how you work a deathmatch! I loved their 1999 match, but IMO this one is even better. It had a great entrance and it showd that you don't need 100.000 lightubes to have e great match. This era in BJW was amazing because of these matches. Still in my top ten of favourite deathmatches. Highly recommended.

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I think I've mentioned this before but Yamakawa is one of my favorite deathmatch guys. He takes crazy bumps but they make sense and I love that he comes out to Journey. As for the match, I liked it but it was kinda long. Some parts dragged but other parts were real good. Like when Homna did a backflip off the Barbed wire board. I liked how they spent some time before using the weapons. Finish came out of nowhere which was nice. Good match.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I've seen this but it's been at least ten years, and I don't remember the old file including entrances. Video starts with Yamakawa coming out to "Separate Ways," which as you know, is the most hardcore fucking Journey song ever, and Steve Perry's finest vocal performance. Then Yamakawa pulls a gun on Honma, then grabs a woman in the crowd and throws her over his shoulders without her consent. Good start, LOL.

 

What's the deal with Yamakawa again? He got injured taking a botched powerbomb from the Wifebeater or something? Man, what could have been. I like to think that in an alternate reality, he also goes to New Japan and ends up working four and a quarter star underdog matches against guys like Ishii and Shibata. This has a slow but interesting start, and then gets nuts when Honma does a fucking wall run backflip off the barbed wire board before sending Yamakawa into it. That is WILD.

 

Say what you will about crowd brawling, but it's been a staple of Korakuen garbage brawls for decades. At least this isn't a trios match with broke-ass Numazawa and Ito, these dudes are young, fairly athletic and the crowd is very much into it. You also get shots of the corridors that are rarely seen, which I think adds some unique flavor. Also, it's capped off with a freaking powerbomb and brainbuster on the stage. Honma hits a dive over a scary bed of nails, which to me always seemed like the absolute shittiest deathmatch prop to take a bump into, and you can understand why they barely use it. Some really good prop spots here, Samoan drop into the wire, frankensteiner into the wire, sloppy-ass powerbomb into the wire. The usual stuff I guess, but it's excellent watching these two sell the pain. Yamakawa especially looks awesome with his blood-soaked bleach blonde hair.

 

Weird spot where Honma clearly wants to diving headbutt the wire into Yamakawa, but Yamakawa throws the board to the side. I wonder if it was sticking him in a bad spot, like his eye, or his balls. I always wonder if anyone has ever cut their balls in a match like this. My mind though, it has a tendency to wander. Anyways, frankensteiner to the floor is fucking insane, you'd have to be out of your mind to take that. Good thing Yamakawa had a bunch of barbed wire and plywood to break his fall I guess. Honma hits a nasty elbow, followed by a really scary looking Fire Thunder Driver, but can't put Yamakawa away. This drags a little bit towards the end, but I'd still put it easily in the four-star range. The finish itself I really enjoyed, felt like the exhaustion was earned, and that by that point, the match could easily end on a basic strike that landed hard enough. Very good stuff overall.

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I thought this was ok, but I didn't really connect with the match like some others. I think Honma looked great but felt that Yamakawa dragged the match down a bit. I really liked the powerbomb tansistioned into a samoan drop into the board, and agree that Honma's flipping plancha over the boards was boss. I felt the finish was a little anticlimactic, but the way Honma had the tight cradle on the pin sold me on it. Overall, not bad, but looking forward to seeing more Honma in this era. ***

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  • 5 months later...

I wasn't crazy about this and thought it dragged a lot. Yamakawa's entrance was magnificent. High flyer Honma is kinda surreal. The ups and downs of Honma's career are kinda surreal though. The flip off the board and the tope were great though. The crowd brawling really hurt the match. It's generally not good but Korakuen provides a lot of good crowd brawling, this wasn't one though. The diving headbutt spot was pretty weird with Yamakawa he wasn't having any off the board. It did look over his head rather than his shoulder though so maybe he pushed it off too far and couldn't exactly pull it back on himself. The board spots were fine but there's only so many you can do in one match before they reach diminishing returns and they went past that point here. Building to the biggest spot for the ending was good though. Just dragged too long and didn't have enough to get me invested.

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  • GSR changed the title to [2000-01-02-BJW-New Year's Great Series] Ryuji Yamakawa vs Tomoaki Honma (Nail & Barbed Wire Double Board Death)

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