[1998-06-24-IWA Japan] Masao Orihara vs Great Takeru

[Jetlag]

This was an utterly insane, blood drenched spectacle. Orihara looked really great here, taking one of the craziest bumps I've ever seen, and ripping Takeru's mask and kicking him in the face, and generally doing a massive feat holding this together. His selling was fucking crazy too as he was selling the blood in a way that you fought someone was really about to die here. Match also had a bunch of awkward painful high end junior offense, stiff powerbombs and neck compressing suplexes and all that.

[G. Badger]

The thumbnail on YouTube looked sick. I had started watching this over the summer but, lost interest but figured I'd circle back around. Thanks for the review here! Sounds good!

[Bierschwale]

Orihara as the king of scuzzy indie boys is the best.

[Edwin]

I hadn't seen this in about 7-8 years and I just re-watched it and its still pretty great. I’ve been a big Masao Orihara fan since I first saw him tear up Gosaku Goshogawara in FMW as Gekkou in the 90’s. Here he puts on an amazing show.

 


He usually works as a bully Jr. heel in Japanese indies, but here he works entirely different as he mostly takes a pretty nasty beating from Takeru. Takeru drops him with some pretty nasty powerbombs and suplexes and gets busted up pretty badly in the first couple of minutes. This is honestly the Orihara show with Takeru just coming along for the ride even though he more than holds his own. Really good match.