[2012-02-19-DDT] Danshoku Dino vs Antonio Honda

[aaeo_]

There's a 2-seconds-long clip from this match on the DDT Judgement 2017 opening VTR (which is really lovely and worth seeing). The clip is just a very bloodied Antonio Honda trading punches with Dino. It was enough to make me curious about this match, but it sadly just wasn't online. UNTIL, last week when it was uploaded to Universe.

Dino does his whole thing but past both's goofy offense (which at this point was just established as offense to the audience), nothing is really played for laughs. It must be noted that Dino is the KO-D champ at this time and all his matches ended up going super long during this reign. And they're wrestled at a very deliberate, technical pace. But of course, instead of doing headscissors sequences or whatever, he's trying to grope his opponents.

I don't know if I've said this in another match thread in this forum, but I don't like Dino most of the time. But with the right foil I can find his matches very emotional, especially when he stops being an audience surrogate for sexual misconduct. Honda is definitely the right type of foil. The pace and length worked really well for me, it feels weirdly brutal for these two. Honda focuses on Dino's arm throughout and some great punches are thrown.  Dino starts bleeding after being thrown on to the ringost outside. Honda then exposes a turnbuckle, but he's thrown onto it! He bleeds buckets after that. At one point, Dino does his pervert piledriver and he gets a big spot of blood on his tights.

The ending is very strange, after trading and surviving a bunch of big moves, they resort to punching each other and eventually, they just kind of fall on each other like two exhausted boxers. And that goes on for what feels like ages, and then Dino almost softly pins Honda with a Gotch-style pervert piledriver. I liked it. Some of the work is super light, but the match builds really well, and the emotion and selling all feel right. And those are all good things to have. This is worth seeing, I figure a lot of people would hate it but it's unlike anything else.

Keita Yano is ringside for the whole thing, too.

[Makai Club #1]

Going into this expecting a big comedy match that goes 30 minutes. Both guys are prolific comedy guys, perhaps two of the most proflic comedy wrestlers of this century. And I certainly got some of that. Got some light comedy from both guys in the beginning, exchanging foot stomps. Honda trash talking with a mouth full of water. Stuff like that. It was very amusing but Honda also begun working on the arm of Dino with Dino selling it pretty well, now switching his punching arm to his left (with the right arm being worked on). Then the match flipped a switch when Honda got busted open off the turnbuckle. The match turned from very good to epic. Honda's face got covered pretty quick and the match turned into a slug fest with the two going ham on each other with wild punches, drawing more blood. It also lead to the great visual of Dino being sprayed with Honda's blood. Looked grim and like something you'd see Midsouth or Memphis. Dino still continued to sell the arm which is even better. Honda continues on with his arm work without dropping it like most brawls can do, and locks on the tightest lock looking Anaconda Vice I've seen in wrestling. The finish stretch is a good one with Dino hitting all his big offence, moonsault, shining hump (basically a double knee strike with his crotch) and Danshoku Driver. A great finale to an awesome match. Not exactly what I expected from this match but I came out of it enjoying it a whole lot more than I expected. Seeing a comedy match transition into a bloody slugfest so seamlessly is something to behold. It just shows that just because they are mainly comedy guys, it doesn't mean they can't work a lick because they had a great match with two amazing performances that would fit anywhere. ****1/2