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[2000-01-05-FMW] Masato Tanaka vs Tetsuhiro Kuroda


soup23

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I am really conflicted on this one. We do get a cut at the beginning so I am unsure how much we miss but all we do get is essentially a bomb spot fest. I have no other way of describing it. The moves were brutalizing and impressive but I didn't have any conjecture to what I was watching. This would be a very interesting match for the people that praise Strong BJ in 2016 to watch and see where they align because as a brutalizing spectacle, I enjoyed it more than the Seikmoto and Okabayashi affairs in the current year. Kuroda was presented as the underdog here that was not willing to give up. His eventual victory was treated as a breakthrough moment with the crowd going crazy and pounding the mat. Some of the near falls were insanely close and harrowing having me on the edge of my seat as the outcome was in doubt. Overall, this is one I may have to reflect and rewatch at the month's end as it certainly accomplished as a match what it set out to, but it wasn't the most aesthetically pleasing match to me in what I desire out of pro wrestling. There in lies the rub. ***1/2

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  • 5 months later...

I have been the single defender of a lot of 1998-1999 FMW matches that pretty much everyone else has criticized, but this is one where I can't say anything nice. I like my FMW to either be Onita death matches or All Japan cosplay, not this other junk. A vertical suplex down steps in the audience? Ridiculous. I'm pretty sure Masato Tanaka did three tornado DDTs in what we saw of this match. This was excessive and dumb wrestling in a lot of ways, and I like both of these guys. Lots of popping up from moves instead of selling them and all sorts of other things in wrestling that I absolutely hate. I'm sure I'll see a lot of this in the coming decade, and I'll probably call it out every single time. The only nice thing I can say about it is that it succeeded on its own terms, I guess, but FMW can do better than this and usually does.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I wasn't into this one at all. There was an edit at the beginning and I'm not sure exactly what got cut out. What we see is essentially a bunch of moves and kickouts. This isn't the kind of wrestling style I enjoy. It was all excessive and didn't seem to have any meaning.

 

**

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  • 2 weeks later...

I didn't really have much backstory on this other than loving 2000-era Tanaka. Kuroda showed some talent for getting the life beat out of him and throwing some clotheslines. The ending surprised me and does paint the match in a different context of the underdog going over. This didn't do a whole lot for me though, other than enjoying Tanaka's dropkicks. The brawling through the crowd wasn't much.

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  • 9 months later...

I'm a big Tanaka fan, but this just didn't click for me. As multiple of you've said, it's mostly just a collection of moves and near falls. I'm usually one for a spotfest, but this one did nothing for me. Tanaka spamming tornado ddt's was meh. The one he hit from the top rope was pretty crazy though, I'll add a gif later.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I like FMW a lot. They actually got me into Japanese pro-wrestling in 1997 due to those horrendous Tokyo Pop commercial releases.

 

However, I thought this was pretty bad. Just a reckless bomb fest leading to endless 2.99999 kick outs to pop the Korakuen Hall crowd. Not trying to be negative about ths, but there really wasn't any stand out moments in this.

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  • 1 month later...

Listen, if its an FMW match or it features Tanaka, you better believe Im going to watch it.

 

As much as I like and love shoot style and slower matches, FMW is the kind of excess I generally love and have loved since I was a kid. It allows me to turn off my brain and just fucking have a blast and thats what I did here. Ive seen on Bahus site that he ranks this as the 28th best FMW match of all time or whatever, which is absolutely not true, but it is super fun with What we get.

 

Yes there is no selling and moves and all that, but idk, I just change my mindset when I go into FMW or late era ECW and have a really hard time ranking things with any logic.

 

This is not the best performance Ive seen either man here, but especially after watching the entire NJPW Wrestling World 2000 Card today, this was such a nice change of pace. Tanaka might be my favorite wrestler of all time and I love when he loses. Awesome, fired up promo at the end and excited to revisit and see for the first time more FMW this year. Hell yeah, fun match.

3.75/5

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  • GSR changed the title to [2000-01-05-FMW] Masato Tanaka vs Tetsuhiro Kuroda
  • 10 months later...

As mentioned, an absolutely ridiculous display of bomb throwing and no-selling. While entertaining enough in a vacuum, it's not something I'd actively seek out. Though, the suplex down the stairs was a nutcase spot and could easily be a hot angle if it ended a beatdown on Raw.

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