Dynamite Kansai

[ohtani's jacket]

There's a fun 5/94 handheld that pits Devil & Kansai against Okutsu & Fukuoka. I'm not usually a fan of the two strongest girls being on the same side but it works well here.

The 1997 Kansai vs. Candy match was mediocre. Both girls were ailing in '97, but Candy was also a girl who never really found her identity and comes across as a poor woman's Cuty Suzuki.

She's all right in tags, though, and the '97 Jaguar & Devil vs. Kansai & Okutsu tag remains a fun bout. It's a bit exhibition-y but in an entertaining way. Worth watching to see Kansai and Jaguar lock-up and Devil looked really sharp twenty years on from her debut.

Speaking of Devil, there's an early JWP Project where she celebrates her 15th anniversary with a match against Kansai. The interesting thing about it to me is that Devil was still working the style she used in the original JWP. It's clear to me now that she changed her style during the inter-promotional boom to keep up with the times. She was a lot more rough and tumble prior to upping her workrate game. There's also a huge contrast between young, healthy Dynamite Kansai and the ailing version from '97.

The 10/95 WWWA title defence against Takako Inoue is a solid bout, perhaps better suited to a JGP style tournament than a world title bout, but a solid singles bout. Kansai did her best impersonation of a female Hashimoto and there was enough history between them to make the bout mean something. Takako was a good worker who had a fun rise through the All Japan ranks, but it was clear she was never going to be one of the main stars. She lacked the offence necessary to be a top star. Too much of her offence was based around counters and clever but nondescript strikes. I liked the stretch run here and there was some good selling from both women. I'm getting a bit sick of Splash Mountain, though.

Man I hate Kansai's industrial piping outfit. She looks like some kind of kindergarten space rocket project or a modern sculpture made from pipe cleaners. Her Sgt. Pepper's jacket was so much cooler. I also hate it when she dyes her hair. It looks so much better black with a slight crew cut.

[ohtani's jacket]

I watched quite a neat Devil & Debbie Malenko vs. Kansai & Plum Mariko tag from 11/93. It was longish and had the same rhythm throughout, and there some gaffes that, to the layman, made it seem like Malenko wasn't familiar working with the JWP girls, or vice versa, but it was cool seeing Dynamite work someone outside the usual suspects.

[ohtani's jacket]

Watched an Azumi Hyuga match from 1999 that was better than I thought it would be but fairly uninspiring. Kansai was heavier and slower than in her prime but did a pretty good job working a knee injury. Then, for some reason, she dropped the injury storyline and resumed being heavy and slow and unable to bump for an all-action, go-go type in Hyuga.

 

After that I watched a '91 tag between Kansai & Medusa vs. Rumi Kazama and Harley Saito which was pretty bad. Medusa and Kazama were fairly awful, but Kansai didn't bring much to the table and Saito did the most unnecessary bladejob I've seen in a long time. Just a pointless crimson mask.

 

Just to make it a trifecta of bleh, I watched the Toyota title change again. I was really harsh on it in the Yearbook thread but it's a match that just doesn't work. It's one of those matches where they do a bunch of stuff then take it to the bridge, and you're suppose to miraculously care about the finishing stretch even though you haven't been entertained by a single thing so far. I prefer matches that suck you in and keep getting better and better. I honestly liked the Takako title defence more.

[ohtani's jacket]

The 4/95 Street fight from the first GAEA show is better than it had a right to be. It's a sprawling mess that I think you can only really appreciate if you're a Joshi fan, but they clearly wanted to make the first show special and had the battle scars to prove it. The collar and chain work may offend some. The blood may upset others. I cringed at some of the "with our powers combined" teamwork from Chigusa and Kansai, but by and large I thought it was a fine hodgepodge of Chigusa and Kansai's shoot stuff, Ozaki's street fight style, and a throwback to the days when Devil would terrorize girls with her kendo stick. Chigusa jobbed so often in her comeback years that she must have been working a gimmick about whether she fit in with the modern world any more. Ozaki is a legendary seller in my eyes, but her timing was off post-match. She tried to sell that she was out of it during the stretch run and fighting on instinct alone. That was fine, but when she recovered after the bout, she pretended to not know that she'd gotten the three count and jumped up and down like an ecstatic schoolgirl. Nice idea, but the execution was poor and the heat was really on Chigusa for losing in the main event of her first show. Ah well, can't nail 'em all Oz.

[ohtani's jacket]

I never much cared for the Kansai vs. Ozaki street fights, but after watching the GAEA main event I thought I'd check them out again. The 3/95 one has some good moments, but it's incredibly violent and I wasn't cool with the horrific blade job Kansai did. I know there's no relation but all I could think about was how she got sick a few years later. Don't think I needed to see that shit. Haven't watched the second fight yet.

[ohtani's jacket]

The second Kansai/Ozaki street fight is the less violent, less grotesque of the two. Crowd brawling is never gonna be my thing, and some of the transitions weren't the flashest, but there was a lot of cool shit in the bout like Kansai's chained fist shots and an awesome submission counter from Ozaki. The finish was fairly inventive even if Ozaki's offense wasn't that great and I liked a lot of the nearfalls despite an aversion to table spots. It's funny the things you tolerate. I didn't mind the chain, or Ozaki using the broken top rope to strangle Kansai, but other props just annoy me. I wonder what started the push toward street fights in '95. If it was something as simple as the success of Onita in FMW or a push away from the increasing over-exposed women's style. Whatever the case may be, they positioned Ozaki strongly as Queen of the Street Fights and could have done a lot more, a lot sooner with FMW and Kudo.

[elliott]

I ranked Dynamite Kansai 91st in 2016 and I feel pretty good about that .One of the things I learned from the 2016 project is that there are a ton of great wrestlers and ranking someone 63rd or 85th is actually a great compliment. There are 100s of wrestlers I don't have a problem calling great. So Kansai landing 91st is something I'm happy with and could see doing again. She's a fantastic performer in tag matches and has some terrific singles matches to her name, especially against Aja, Ozaki, & Toyota. I haven't loved her post peak as much, but I haven't dug in as deeply as I would like to. At her peak though she was one of the standout performers during one of the most loaded eras for high end wrestling in history. She's hurt by the fact that her direct peers are people like Akira Hokuto, Bull Nakano and Aja Kong and so she was never going to be able to breakthrough as the best Joshi performer of her generation. BUt she was awesome and worthy of being in the top 100. 

[Boss Rock]

I like Kansai a lot and her peaks are pretty dang high. I agree she's not on the tier of like Hokuto or Kong (who is, really?), but she's really right there on the next tier. It also helps she's a heavy hitter which is what I really like to see in Joshi matches.

[elliott]

11 minutes ago, Boss Rock said:

I like Kansai a lot and her peaks are pretty dang high. I agree she's not on the tier of like Hokuto or Kong (who is, really?), but she's really right there on the next tier. It also helps she's a heavy hitter which is what I really like to see in Joshi matches.

Bull, Jaguar, Devil, Dump & Chigusa. I'd put Kandori & Ozaki below them and above Kansai. But it is hardly a criticism to not be as great as those wrestlers. And the fact is when she worked with Aja or Ozaki, Kansai doesn't look outclassed. Because she was awesome. 

[Boss Rock]

Haha, as soon as I posted this I figured you'd have a rebuttal

[elliott]

The important takeaway isn't that Kansai isn't as good as Jaguar Yokota or Akira Hokuto. The important takeaway is that Dynamite Kansai was a fucking awesome wrestler.

[ohtani's jacket]

I’m not entirely convinced that any of the women mentioned are significantly better than Kansai. I guess Jaguar and Hokuto are their very best.