Another holy grail finally turns up (mostly): 1992 WON MOTY

[Bix]

G+ aired a Kobashi special to break in the New Year, and it included a nearly-complete (19:00 of 22:11) version of Danny Kroffat & Doug Furnas vs Kenta Kobashi & Tsuyoshi Kikuchi. There's a low quality WMV of the show uploaded to Sendspace and I presume that the usual suspects will have it on DVD within the next week or two.

 

W00t!

[Loss]

This is huge! I'm thrilled!

[Resident Evil]

Does anybody have a hard time watching Kikuchi matches because of the dangers of concussions?

[Tim Evans]

I usually take two shots of Morphine to numb the pain of my soul when I watch wrestling. Hell of a good time.

 

I think i'll have to download this.

[Loss]

Stop trolling.

[tomk]

SWEET

[floyd]

Wow this is awesome!! I kinda just assumed the rest of the match was simply lost forever in time and space. Thank you very much for the heads up Mr. Bix!

 

Does anybody have a hard time watching Kikuchi matches because of the dangers of concussions?

I'll be honest, a little bit. Damn this post-Benoit world.

[jdw]

Fun to watch this in near complete form after all these years.

 

I wonder why they bothered to edit three minutes out of it. If they needed to cut three to fit the air time, I almost would have been tempted as a producer to cut out the intros instead, JIP it roughly three in, and include the title presentations. It was Kikuchi's first title win if I recall correctly.

 

To things jump to mind watching it:

 

It's far more My Turn, Your Turn down the stretch than I recall, rather than "runs" on offense down the stretch. To a degree that makes it feel more "modern", as in Nitro-style and what we see all over the place since.

 

It also is probably a good exhibit for what was being talked about in relation to Alverez. I tend to think if a match *exactly* like that happened today on Raw with wrestlers who were over with the fans _and_ who were held in respect of hardcores as workers similar to how the Can-Ams, Kobashi and Kikuchi were held in those days, and that had the sort of emotional payoff this did (fan favorite faces winning the title) that it would be rated as a *****. Easy.

 

Someone might say it would need to be updated to "modern moves", but I don't think that's the case at all. The flying was perfectly modern enough - diving headbut (Benoit), moonsault (Kobashi's always smoked the fuck out of Shawn's pancy ass versions), splash (Eddy's frogsplash is a variation), and a pair of sky high lariats with wicked bumps. I don't think you need to update any of that to a shooting star press, or dives out of the ring.

 

The non-flying was modern enough, and didn't have the some of the overworked set up you'll see with the Kanyonesque moves that form flashy non-flying moves these days.

 

The mat work wasn't off the charts, but if someone got Kikuchi'd like Kikuchi did in the crabs, the ground back stretchy thing (my memory of the Big Book Of Moves is fading) and the later corba clutches, with the moves being as over as these were here, then it would have gotten some big bonus points (especially for stuff like Kobashi's cool legdrop to break on, and his efforts to break Furnas' crab).

 

I don't think this is the best All Japan tag of the era seeing it in near-full. But it's pretty darn watchable.

 

John

[Robert S]

Is there any backstory why Kikuchi was so over in the early parts of this match? I mean the crowd was hot for Kobashi in the early parts too, but every time Kikuchi did something the hall was exploding.

[tomk]

Hometown

[jdw]

Yep. Baba special (or more likely Mrs. Baba special) of booking Kikuchi's first title win into his hometown.

 

 

John

[Bix]

High quality rip: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=KOPB8XFX

 

Dan Ginnetty has the DVD now, which I just got in the mail from him (thanks!) and plan to watch imminently.