Random Puro Garbage (HUSTLE Shiro Koshinaka 30 Anniversary)

[魔界5号]

So, I watch a lot of puro in my spare time, I have done for years but more recently I’ve started to get back into it on the level i was a few years ago and as such, I've been watching and thus thinking about more shows. I figure maybe a couple of people might be interested in reading some of my thoughts here, or just might be intrigued by what I talk about; I tend to like the weird and wacky stuff most often, so there should be a good deal of that in most of these posts (if i keep this up consistently hur hur). Anyway, today on my day off I've been watching IWA Japan's 10th Anniversary event, a show I haven’t watched in years but was always fond of due to the weirdness of it, giving us the likes of Kensuke Sasaki vs Leatherface and Satoshi Kojima vs Chocoball Mukai. Here is part 1 of my thoughts of it, i tried my best to keep things pretty compact and easy to read because I doubt anyone is interested in a novel. Thanks for reading, hopefully you enjoy!

IWA Japan 10th Anniversary Show
August 31, 2004 @ Yoyogi National Gymnasium #2

IWA Japan is a weird promotion; they were very briefly a semi big name for about a year in the 90s but their hype didn’t last and by 2004, it was essentially just a fun little project for their millionaire restaurateur owner to waste his money on when he was bored. They kept promoting shows for another decade after this but never to any major success, with bookings becoming much more sporadic at some point in 2008 and only a handful of shows before they dissolved in 2014. The landscape of the promotion in 2004 is quite diverse, with a wide array of indie talent at their disposal and a seemingly never ending list of famous American wrestlers to bring in. They ran a bigger venue than usual for this in Yoyogi and drew a respectable 2800 fans, in what would probably be the last really memorable show the company ever put on. I haven’t watched this in several years, my memory of it was mostly a shitshow with a few brighter spots towards the end of the card but nothing too mind blowing. Hopefully my memory serves me incorrectly!

IWA World Heavyweight Title Tournament First Round
George Hines vs Konga The Barbarian

Konga is the same Barbarian from the WWF, though I am much more familiar with Hines, who was a regular in All Japan during the post-exodus and even a regular Keiji Muto ally in the early LOVE era. IWA must have been offering these ex-All Japan gaijin real good money to jump ship to them instead, because Hines, Dr Death and Mike Rotundo all jumped ship to IWA despite them doing way worse business and drawing far smaller crowds than All Japan did at the time. Hines is a guy I always thought he was pretty underrated; never a main eventer by any means, but a solid and dependable hand who’d always at least try and put his best effort into every match he had. This was only about 4 minutes long and actually pleasantly okay, Hines kept things moving pretty quickly and even in spite of a couple of moments of awkwardness, Barbarian looked pretty decent too and his powerbomb for the finish was well executed. This exceeded my expectation and was actually pleasantly okay and normal rather than just flat out bad which was what I kind of expected. With this win, Barbarian advances to the next round. *3/4

IWA World Heavyweight Title Tournament First Round
Jim Duggan vs Bruiser Kong

Really? Bruiser Kong? In the next match after Konga the Barbarian? Having two guys with such similar sounding names seems like a stupid idea, but whatever. I know very little about this Bruiser Kong fellow, who cagematch lists as "Jeff Bradley"; apparently he did some jobber work for the WWF as "Charlie Hunter" back in the day but I don’t know much else about him. He came out in some green chinos swinging a big rope, kind of looking like a weird hybrid of Bruiser Brody and Skinner.

Duggan actually looked great for his age here and moved well too, I guess this is why the WWE bought him back for a brief run in 2008. Oh and he bought his wife with him too for some reason. This was a lot more sluggish and less pleasantly surprising than the first match as they mostly just did some awkward big man brawling and Duggan eventually won with a lariat. This Kong guy wasn’t outright terrible but didn’t really do anything to blow my mind either. This was not as good as the first match but was thankfully, like the first match in the sense it was over quickly and mercifully. Duggan advances to the next round where he will face Konga the Barbarian. Not Bruiser Kong. *

IWA World Heavyweight Title Tournament First Round
Big Bossman vs Freddy Krueger

Here we go, that REAL carny bullshit. IWA and W*NG really liked using these horror movie characters in their shows and here is Freddy Krueger, or rather, a guy in a cheap mask and costume who is literally just called and is being Freddy Krueger holy shit how did you guys never get sued for this.

Cagematch does not have a profile or name for the guy under the mask and i’m assuming this was essentially a never ending rotation of guys portraying it so it could be literally anyone. Bossman comes out next and he looks a lot thinner than usual, which in turn made me look it up and find out this was less than a month before his death, and I, wow. That certainly changed the whole tone of me watching this match. There’s no policeman or even swat team garb from Bossman here who instead just hits the ring in a Reebok t-shirt and some cargo trousers, looking a bit like a random man who wandered into the ring after getting lost on his way from the bar to the toilets. This was much more sluggish and lumbering than the other two matches even though it was pretty much half the length. I never really got the appeal of the horror characters in wrestling because, like, they’re serial killers, why are they doing traditional pro wrestling moves, and that’s kind of my problem here as Freddy at first glance just comes off more like some weird wrestling goblin than Freddy Krueger. Bossman won with a Black Hole Slam in a little over 2 minutes. Probably the worst of the matches so far, Bossman was pretty slow and looked gassed but most of his offence was at least still fairly decent looking. The less said about Freddy Krueger the better. Bossman advances to the next round. *

Etsuko Mita, Great Takeru, Katsuya Kishi, Omawari-san & Ultra Seven vs Crusher Takahashi, Doraemon, Hidehiro Nishiyama, Kaori Yoneyama & YUJI KITO

The only names in this match I’m really properly familiar with are Mita and Yoneyama for being joshi legends; I’ve heard of and briefly seen Great Takeru through NOAH's Differ Cup and YUJI KITO is a mainstay of these low tier indie shows. Ultra Seven is what it sounds like, an Ultraman gimmick portrayed by Masahiko Takasugi, who’s been wrestling since the 70s and worked for All Japan at the height of his career. Omawari-san literally translates to police officer and I’m guessing that’s his gimmick based on his attire, if so why didn’t they have him interact with Bossman smh. The rest seem to be random IWA rookies who retired after they stopped regularly promoting events in 2008. By far the best part of this match was the stuff between YUJI KITO and Great Takeru, all done nice and smoothly and with a bit of gusto. That kind of nicely set the tone for everyone else and they kept a pretty good pace from that point on, the rookies bought it well, they did a fun spot where everyone does a suplex on each other and a funny side angle where the Policeman chases Doraemon all around the arena while the match is still going on. Ultra Seven wins it for his team with a really weird and kind of shit looking Cobra Twist. Other than that this was actually quite fun! Good mix of personality and smooth, well done wrestling, why they waited to put this on the show now instead of first when it was actually the opener for everyone in attendance is beyond me. **3/4

Jaguar Yokota & Nozomi Takesako vs Command Bolshoi & Kyoko Kimura

Bolshoi and Yokota are well established vets by now, Yokota especially a bonafide legend of joshi for her 80s work. They’re both partnered with a youngin for this, Jaguar gets IWA's Nozomi Takesako and Bolshoi gets Kyoko Kimura, mother of Hana, barely a year into her career. They showed this clipped and it ended up being the Takesako show which was a pleasant surprise, given how average she seemed in the first half. She eventually gets some fire going against Bolshoi and pulls off some slick looking moves, a really nice head scissors and DDT probably the most notable. She keeps teasing her double underhook suplex which she finally gets to pull off on Bolshoi but the meek crowd really doesn’t help this one much at all. Jaguar comes in soon after and brings it home as the big sister figure, getting the win with a sick looking brainbuster on poor Kyoko. This was decent but kind of dragged at first as I previously mentioned, Takesako found her groove later on and it started to get better but never really kicked into another gear. **

Kensuke Sasaki vs Leatherface

Former New Japan ace Kensuke on the dirt tier indie circuit is a sight to behold but I guess we have Choshu swindling him out of a ton of money with WJ to thank for that. He’s here in IWA with a shovel (there’s a burial joke somewhere I just know there is) to take on Leatherface, with a chainsaw.


Hopelessly outmatched, terrible choice in weapon Kensuke. Leatherface is actually by all accounts a really cool dude, another one who portrayed one of the horror characters back in the 90s. This was a swift and no nonsense squash by Kensuke, it went by quickly and served its purpose of being a crazy and unique spectacle. Because when you’ve worked for WJ, nothing is scary anymore. Also Kensuke afterwards playing with the chainsaw is just A+ #manly content. **1/2


IWA World Heavyweight Title Tournament Semi Final
Jim Duggan vs Konga The Barbarian

Jim and Konga are back again, they both look gassed before the match has even started god bless. This was surprisingly quite compelling?! Jim's comeback against Barbarian's oafish big man offence was honestly really endearing and the crowd clearly loved him. Once again Barbarian moved pretty slowly and with an older opponent like Jim as opposed to a younger one like George it was a lot more clear to see. Jim stole this one in 3:41 with a lariat after largely getting his ass kicked for the best part of this, bringing the total time of all matches in this tournament so far to barely over 14 minutes. Nice. Duggan hugs his wife as he’s made it through to the final. *3/4

Satoshi Kojima vs Chocoball Mukai

I’ll be honest, this was the reason I watched this show years ago, the oddness of Satoshi Kojima taking on actual adult film star turned wrestler Chocoball Mukai is incredible, it’s like Randy Orton getting booked against Johnny Sins or something. Mukai at this point in his career had been wrestling in FMW for a while and maintained a degree of popularity on the indies, mainly thanks to his large female fanbase. It looks like this match came about after Mukai wouldn’t leave Kojima alone while eating his dinner and Kojima agreed to the match to get him to leave him alone, and that is how wrestling should be done! Mukai for being such a novelty was actually a pretty ok wrestler, serviceable at least, and he does a decent job against Kojima here. His main move is the Ekiben (which is a japanese slang term for “have sex standing up”, also printed on his gear) Guillotine Drop which he does here but Kojima kicks out of, as it was clear from the start there’s leagues between these two.

Mukai gets his little flashes (heh) towards the end but Kojima is too much and gets the comfortable win with the lariat. It wasn’t a blow away (heh) match or anything and Kojima was pretty much in house show mode but they did fine here. Mukai bought some good fire and the crowd was behind him, this was an enjoyable weird spectacle. **3/4

IWA World Heavyweight Title Tournament Final
Jim Duggan vs Big Bossman

Ok finally the last of these, please put me out of my misery and make it quick and painless, oh god this is the worst match of the whole tournament. Duggan wrestling 3 matches in a night, brief as they were, was probably a big factor in why this wasn’t very good and they were doing restholds barely a minute into it. Bossman got a bye to the final I guess but he looks awfully gassed here, all that really happens is he chokes Duggan, does some tomfoolery spots with his wife and the 2x4/referee before Duggan steals it with a lariat (again) in barely over 3 minutes (again). This was such an odd tournament that I’m guessing the promoter just ran to pop himself. Duggan wins the belt and I’m finally free. 1/2*

Toshiaki Kawada vs Keizo Matsuda

Main event time, and finally something that actually has potential to be solid! Matsuda is not a big name in puro at all but kind of found a niche for himself as the de facto ace of IWA Japan, he’s not the most amazing or technical in ring but he’s a fine enough brawler and usually brings energy. He’s in the ring with Toshiaki Kawada which very much follows the absurdity theme the rest of this show did, a veritable icon of the scene and one of the biggest heavyweight stars of a generation in there with the lord of the indie filth. This is what it’s all about. We get a nice handshake to start off with and immediately there’s a sense of Matsuda being in over his head against a superstar like Kawada from a kayfabe standpoint. They did a really good job of building up Matsuda's offence here, establishing the gulf in class between a big fish in a small pond like Matsuda and a heavyweight god like Kawada. The crowd is thus very invested and behind Matsuda and respond accordingly when he finally pulls off a brainbuster, Shiono's commentary was awesome too. He throws everything at Kawada but it does little, as he clearly can’t believe all his best offence is basically useless and Kawada fights his way back into it, wrapping this up in 8 minutes with a powerbomb. This was well put together and built up, Matsuda's little teases of offence were great and built to his eventual attempted beatdown of Kawada really well. Kawada didn’t have to do much here and it would have worked; just be grumpy, take a couple of bumps and wrap it up in under 10. Fine effort, Kawada gave Matsuda enough and the crowd really helped this along. By far the best thing on this show. ***

Final thoughts
It seems as though I was pretty much spot on, this largely sucked! The tournament, endearing though it may have been was a goddamn mess of past it guys who had no business competing for a world title in 2004, and the other stuff, while fun if only for the novelty aspect, wasn’t really entertaining enough to justify calling this worth watching. If you only watch this for Sasaki/Leatherface and the main event, it’s probably worth your time, then again, those two matches are like, 9 minutes combined.

Final rating: *1/2

[Mozenrath]

Interesting curio. Heh, never knew Duggan won a world title, wonder if that's why he brought his wife along.

[El Pollo Guerrera]

WrestlingData.com says the Freddie Krueger wrestler was Doug Gilbert... makes sense, he was before in W*ING and still active and probably had a good connection with the other wrestlers mentioned.

It also says the Leatherface is Rick Patterson, he was the 'other Leatherface' when Kirschner almost killed Hiroshi Ono in the "spike nail death match".

[XIII]

So many Bruiser Brody clones in Japan. lol

This card seems to be quite the trainwreck.

[67 more]

Feb 14, 2023 22:15:50 GMT -5 Mozenrath said:

Interesting curio. Heh, never knew Duggan won a world title, wonder if that's why he brought his wife along.

Calling it a world title is generous.

[Mozenrath]

Feb 15, 2023 1:32:22 GMT -5 67 more said:

Feb 14, 2023 22:15:50 GMT -5 Mozenrath said:

Interesting curio. Heh, never knew Duggan won a world title, wonder if that's why he brought his wife along.

Calling it a world title is generous.

Absolutely it is, but obviously, not all world titles are created equal, to say the least.

[Mozenrath]

Actually, about this title belt: The final champion for it... was Emi Sakura, where it was combined with two other title belts in a unification match. It then spent a few years as an intergender title, won by Riho a few times as another notable champion, until Emi was the final champion of that belt, too.

[魔界5号]

Feb 15, 2023 6:55:22 GMT -5 Mozenrath said:

Actually, about this title belt: The final champion for it... was Emi Sakura, where it was combined with two other title belts in a unification match. It then spent a few years as an intergender title, won by Riho a few times as another notable champion, until Emi was the final champion of that belt, too.

Yeah I'm pretty sure Jim only did one defence of this belt and then never showed up again so it was retired again for a few years after his reign. Cagematch says they revived it in 2009 and Keizo Matsuda was the last champ of that era but I don’t think any of those defences were taped sadly.

[Mozenrath]

Feb 15, 2023 8:13:55 GMT -5 魔界5号 said:

Feb 15, 2023 6:55:22 GMT -5 Mozenrath said:

Actually, about this title belt: The final champion for it... was Emi Sakura, where it was combined with two other title belts in a unification match. It then spent a few years as an intergender title, won by Riho a few times as another notable champion, until Emi was the final champion of that belt, too.

Yeah I'm pretty sure Jim only did one defence of this belt and then never showed up again so it was retired again for a few years after his reign. Cagematch says they revived it in 2009 and Keizo Matsuda was the last champ of that era but I don’t think any of those defences were taped sadly.

Yep, and the "Triple Crown" belt it turned into only became deactivated when IWA-Japan I guess was finally fully dead and Emi returned their title belts to them, she was mostly using them elsewhere by then, I think for Gatoh Move, not sure.

[魔界5号]

IWA Japan Steve Williams Retirement Road
October 15, 2004 @ Korakuen Hall

This is a much smaller scale IWA show than the one I last posted (even though the crowd looked sparse even there), a couple of months down the road from that event and held in Korakuen Hall. Since then, Big Bossman has died and the show opened with a tribute to him in the ring led by Duggan and who I assume is the promoter of the company and then a video package of his moments in IWA. Cagematch says they claimed an attendance of 1400 for this which I am immediately gonna call bullshit on. They kept the cameras zoomed in on the ring way too much and the higher sections of the crowd way too dark for this to have been any more than about 3 or 4 hundred people in here.


Oh also, despite the name, Steve Williams does not feature on this card, nor is there really any reference to him throughout the show aside from a brief appearance in Bossman's video package. I’m assuming IWA just called it that to trick people into buying tickets on the assumption Doc would be appearing, which, considering I’m pretty sure he’d already been diagnosed with cancer at this time, is a pretty low down scummy thing to do. I don’t know if that’s the case though. Either way, weird to name the show after him if he’s not even here.

Kaoru Ito, KAZUKI & Sumie Sakai vs Etsuko Mita, Jaguar Yokota & Nozomi Takesako

They aired this clipped (it went 13:40 and we saw about the last 3:40 of it). From what we got to see, there was an angle here where I guess Mita and co were upset about the speed of the referee's counting and tried to bully him into counting faster which he .. does? but only once? Eventually he counts a 2 after Jags does a brainbuster which causes her and the others to all gang up and beat him down, after which he throws the match out and disqualifies them. Not really a lot I can say about this, they didn’t even really show enough action to give it a star rating but most of what was shown (Yokota & Ito aside) was quite sloppy. N/A

AJPW vs IWA Japan ~ Chocoball Mukai vs Akira Raijin

This is technically an AJPW vs IWA inter-promotional match, just a couple of months after Raijin debuted in All Japan. According to cagematch he actually wrestled as far back as 1998 on Masanobu Kurisu's "Kurisu Gym" shows, took a hiatus in 2001, did a solitary date for Hayabusa's WMF in February 2003 and then surfaced as a young boy in All Japan in August 2004. Quite the trajectory for a rookie, though it’s nothing on what IWA went through with Takashi Uwano a few years before. Across from him is Mukai, everyone’s favourite adult film star-cum-wrestler (lol), Val Venis is a coward who only pretended to do the job, Mukai has got over 6000 JAV movie credits to his name. Aaaaand this is clipped too. I guess I should have expected that when this was aired in a 1 hour time slot. It seems to have been the graveyard slot too because this is Samurai TV but instead of commercials they just show a loop of an advertisement for CDs, the type of stuff you see advertising 85 disc Engelbert Humperdinck sets at 3 in the morning. The majority of this was pretty slow and plodding, Akira went on to be Kiyoshi in TNA and was never really the greatest but there’s the added factor of him being green and/or rusty here, meaning Mukai, who’s hardly revered for being a wrestling genius, has to lead him through the match. Mukai’s not bad by any means but these two really lacked any sort of chemistry and it only got a little bit interesting when Mukai windbagged the shit out of Akira on a senton and then kicked him in the head really hard, I forgot this was at the weird time in Mukai's career when he started wearing kickpads and working for Battlarts.

Other than that this was very forgettable and I wish I'd never seen the majority of it, even if it was only 4 minutes long. Painful silence for the most of this. 1/4*

AJPW vs IWA Japan ~ Kaz Hayashi vs The Great Takeru

Hopefully they didn’t clip this up too bad, because it actually has potential to be good! Hayashi is well known for his junior heavyweight exploits in WCW and All Japan, while Takeru is someone who I’ve only really seen in the last IWA show i watched and briefly in NOAH, but what i have seen has been pretty solid so this should be decent. I cursed myself by saying that, because we got even less of this than the shitty quality last match. We only got to see about 2 minutes but those two minutes were good, Takeru got a good offensive display in and Kaz was able to bring out all of his signature moves for the finish as the crowd was finally starting to actually enjoy it a bit. I didn’t see enough of this to give it a star rating but the brief offering was good. N/A

They showed a video highlight of the ceremonial 10th anniversary thing they did here, where George Hines said he “can’t wait to be here for the 20th anniversary” and Jim Duggan said he was “looking forward to a long and good relationship” with the IWA. Fantastic predictions.

IWA World Title ~ Jim Duggan vs Bruiser Kong

Jim's first defence of the belt he won on the last show, and it’s against a guy he already beat in about 3 minutes in the tournament. Why? Who f***ing cares. Bruiser Kong is hamming up his Bruiser Brody tribute act more than ever, even doing the "huss" call and wearing tape around his fist like Brody, yet he carries a bullrope like Stan Hansen? Identity crisis much? Jim wore his actual tights for this as opposed to the Umbro gym shorts he wore on the last show. Oh baby this wasn’t good. Bruiser Kong is far from an elite worker and Jim Duggan at this age, no matter how mobile he was, did not make for a good mix again in an extended match and this was veritable misery to sit through. Bruiser is slow, his offence is basic and limited, the crowd is almost completely indifferent and to top it all off, they clipped up Kaz vs Takeru to barely over 2 minutes but made me sit and watch this monstrosity in full. Now i’m glad they shut down. Duggan retains after an okay looking lariat to finally put an end to this at just under 8 minutes to almost no reaction. This was bad. Not saying I expected Inoki vs Fujinami or anything but given the fact they kept the tournament matches on the last show so brief and clipped all the matches before this one I expected it to at least be relatively quick to sit through, but i was subjected to 7:52 of this. They strap the belt on Jim but do it all awkward and it’s turned to the side when he does his ceremonial pose with the promoter and it just looks a bit shit. This was 80s WWF playing out in a mid-2000s dead Korakuen Hall and I did not enjoy it.1/4*


Toshiaki Kawada vs Keizo Matsuda

This match is the last chance to save this show, please be motivated Kawada.

And he looks like he hasn’t slept in a month. Off to a great start. The first match between these two was far and away the best thing on that show, Matsuda had some good babyface stuff in it and Kawada let him get plenty of chances to shine. That was in front of a pretty decent crowd in Yoyogi, this in front of a depleted looking Korakuen Hall does not give me the highest expectations but hopefully it’s at least ok. This largely followed the formula of the first match which was a good idea since it worked there, but risky in front of what had been an average crowd. Thankfully IWA fans really liked Matsuda as their ace and his comeback gets a great reaction here, much like it did in Yoyogi. While Kawada pretty comfortably dispatched of him there without much trouble, this match expanded on that really well as Matsuda is actually able to sustain runs of offence, get some near falls and kick out of big Kawada moves to a great reaction; there’s one moment here towards the end where Matsuda kicks out of Kawada's powerbomb and we get the DAI KEIZO KORU! which was awesome. Kawada won this with the enzuigiri in just under 11 minutes, by which point the crowd was absolutely rocking. What a pleasant and grateful surprise this was. They went out there and managed to get what had been a pretty dead crowd on their feet with an awesome and simple story that perfectly followed on from their first match together. I actually really enjoyed this, once again by far the best thing on the show. Kawada as we all know is awesome but Matsuda is pretty decent in his own right too.***1/2

Well for the most part this sucked, and was, again, saved by the main event. The fact what could have been decent undercard matches were clipped so short while the piss poor ones were shown in full was annoying but at least the main event was a pleasant surprise. I don’t know if I can fairly compare this to the last IWA show I watched since this was like i said, much smaller and only an hour long, but I was not really enjoying this prior to Kawada vs Matsuda. Pretty bad!

Final Rating - *3/4

[魔界5号]

FIGHTING TV ~ Samurai! TV 5th Anniversary Show
December 28, 2001 @ Korakuen Hall


This is a special card promoted by Samurai! TV, a Japanese pro wrestling/martial arts channel, to celebrate its 5th anniversary. It launched in 1996 and over the years has broadcast literally every promotion you can think of at one point or another; NJPW, AJPW, NOAH, ZERO1, DDT, WWE, basically if you can name it, they’ve aired it at one point or another. The idea of this card was a showcase of all the promotions they had on offer at the time, and we get NJPW, DDT, Michinoku Pro, ARSION, BJW and ZERO-ONE, which is quite a nice variety of selection. That’s the order of their appearances on the card too, the main event spot went to Z1. Every match has a 20 minute time limit too for some reason, time constraints I guess? You own the network though??!

New Japan Offer ~ Katsuyori Shibata & Wataru Inoue vs Minoru Tanaka & Dolgorsuren Serjbudee

New Japan, the biggest promotion among Samurai's catalogue at the time, is on first, and they do what would have been a forgotten opener on any house show around this time. Weird, but whatever. Shibata and Inoue are still young lions at this point, and while Inoue never really changed a whole lot up until he retired, Shibata looked and wrestled marginally different from what he would eventually become during his rookie days.

They are facing Minoru Tanaka, one of the top stars of the junior division, and Dolgorsuren Serjbudee, who you might not have heard of, was a fellow from Mongolia who worked for New Japan from 2001-2004. His name was a real mouthful for Japanese announcers and this was actually his last match under it, which was already shortened from his actual name, and became just "Blue Wolf" in January 2002, thankfully a lot less of a mouthful than Dolgorsuren Serjbudee. We're gonna call him Blue Wolf here for the sake of my sanity having to type out Dolgorsuren Serjbudee over and over. That’s the last time. I’m pretty sure one of his brothers is a sumo yokozuna and the other is a successful traditional Mongolian wrestler so little brother Serjbudee got quite a bit of media attention when he joined New Japan. I just did it again. This was an okay opener, pretty much like I said, a bog standard New Japan rookies vs midcarders tag match. The best stuff in this came courtesy of Minoru, who just does everything so crisp and clean. Shibata and Inoue had some nice double teams towards the end and everything Blue Wolf did was fine, though he did end up taking the submission loss off of a convoluted but in the end pretty weak looking armbar from Inoue in around 12 minutes. **

After this they did a Pancrase rules fight between two guys I have never heard of called Hideki Tadao and Tony Nelson, Nelson apparently representing P's Lab Tokyo (a Pancrase Gym) and Tadao representing RJW Central. I can’t really say anything about it because I know nothing about the guys, I don’t know much about MMA and it was over in a couple of minutes thankfully.

DDT Offer ~ MIKAMI/Tanomusaku Toba vs Takashi Sasaki/Poison Sawada JULIE

DDT is up next, and their offering has potential! MIKAMI and Toba's "Suicideboyz" tag team was quite popular on DDT and the other indies in the early 2000s, MIKAMI especially beloved by DDT fans for his high risk style and ladder-inclusive offence. Sasaki went on to be a deathmatcher but was just a traditional indie guy in DDT at this time, and Poison Sawada JULIE was a villainous character in DDT for years, he has a snake gimmick and led the Serpent Council stable. They gave this match a video package and a match graphic but didn’t for New Japan, I guess because everyone watching knew who the New Japan guys would be but Samurai should have been more considerate of the fact that over 21 years after this show took place it would ruin my continuity of having match graphics before posts. Anyway, Julie, Sasaki and Naomi Susan, who accompanied Julie, give us a choreographed dance before the match. It happened. Toba comes out running all around ringside with his trademark boxing gloves on like an idiot and falls over, then MIKAMI comes out, looking naked without a ladder, and immediately starts the match by springboarding into the ring, dropkicking Sasaki as the match is immediately underway. MIKAMI is just so awesome, he’s a bit like a Japanese Jeff Hardy and he immediately followed that up with a wild dive into the crowd from the top rope on Julie.

Things eventually got more organised and back into the ring and the crowd almost immediately seems a lot more enthralled with this than anything before it, they all play the crowd a lot more and just know how to do stuff that makes them react in a good way. They did some comedy eventually where Julie hypnotises his opponents and makes Toba start uncontrollably doing spinning boxing glove backfists to everyone which was pretty funny. MIKAMI and Sasaki picked the pace back up after that and we get to see of MIKAMI's best high flying moves as he busts out the firebird splash and a really well executed Swanton Bomb. MIKAMI tags out to Toba after this and he eats one of the meanest sounding clotheslines I've ever heard, but annoyingly can’t tell if it was that loud because it was hard or just because the ring mics are turned up to absolute hell. Toba eventually eats the pin off of Julie and they wrapped this up in 11 minutes. Shorter and more entertaining than the first bout, this had pretty much all the best things about DDT at the time included and was a very fun watch. ***

Michinoku Pro Offer ~ Kazuya Yuasa vs Hi69

Hi69 is probably well known to NOAH fans now, but this was barely a year into his career when he was still working for Michinoku Pro. He’s listed as a K-Dojo representative here, but I don’t think the promotion actually existed yet and was more just, yknow, an actual dojo at this time. Yuasa was kind of a prospect around this time and New Japan even had him reach the final of their 2004 Young Lions Cup, but he never really came to much after that and now works under a mask as GAINA on the regional indies. Great Sasuke joined Kanazawa and Murata on commentary for this, I guess because it’s the Michinoku Pro match. This felt like much more of a slog compared to the last match, mainly thanks to the botches they suffered and a general lack of excitement from the crowd. The botches really hurt it towards the end, as Hi69 misses his spinning heel kick and has to just try it again, which makes contact but like, the moments gone, and then he goes for a moonsault which Yuasa was supposed to get out of the way of but he was too slow and basically still takes the move just on his front instead but doesn’t sell it. Yuasa won with a clothesline that Hi69 obviously did a backflip for, just didn’t look very impressive. This was a pretty big letdown for Michipro. *1/4

ARSION Offer ~ Michiko Omukai & Baby♡A vs Mariko Yoshida & noki-A

Hopefully this is a lot better, I'm familiar with all four of these and they’re all good, Yoshida especially is one of the greatest female wrestlers Japan has ever seen. These all represent ARSION, an AJW breakaway that promoted "HYPER VISUAL FIGHTING", and more of a focus on matwork and submissions than the high impact head drop mania of All Japan Women. It was very good while it lasted but shut down just a few years after it opened. Yoshida was the ace, noki-A is Mika Akino, one of her students, Omukai was a certified bad bitch and Baby-A wasn’t around long but she was very good. GAMI is our guest commentator for this. Man this ruled! Everything they did was so smooth and snappy, they wasted very little time and everyone got a chance to impress. ARSION was such an awesome promotion for its short lifespan, it was so refreshing to see joshi centred around technical wrestling and striking rather than horrific bumps and head drops. Baby A (i’m not typing the heart symbol every time, sorry) really shone in this towards the end, she had an awesome lucha inspired moveset and was so agile and graceful with everything, she was great here. noki-A is the centrepiece for the finish as she does a huge dive to the outside and eventually gets the win on noki-A. I would say this was comfortably the best match of the show so far, very good and very entertaining. ***1/2

BJW Offer ~ Jun Kasai vs Abdullah Kobayashi

And now for something completely different. Big Japan is the biggest deathmatch promotion in the country to this day, and these are two of their most iconic wrestlers. Kobayashi is a Japanese guy with an Abdullah the Butcher inspired gimmick, given to him by the original who had a hand in his training. Kasai is a deathmatch legend, known the world for over for basically being the top DM guy in Japan for the past 20 years. At this time he was still doing his "Monkey Magic" gimmick, complete with tail and bananas that he handed out during his entrance. Over with me. He looks so young and fresh too, kind of a bit of a shock to remember he didn’t always look like walking scar tissue.

This was a lot different to the other matches and mostly in a good way. It was weapons-based brawling as opposed to the gorefest bloodbaths BJW is better known for, but Kasai and Abby get pretty creative with the limited weapons they have. My main problem with this was it started to drag, especially as the match continually comes to a total stop while these guys try to meticulously make structures out of weapons during the match. That aspect of it definitely let the match down and held it back from being better, even though the crowd was pretty into it throughout. Kasai won with a standard Pearl Harbour Splash, which felt a bit anticlimactic for a weapons based match. Not bad, just kind of a slog at times. **3/4

Zero-One Fire Festival Offer ~ Kohei Sato/Masato Tanaka vs Daisuke Sekimoto/Shinjiro Otani

Finally the main event, and it could definitely wind up being the best match on this show. This was a "Fire Festival" offer match, getting its own fancy graphic and hence Sekimoto's participation despite being a BJW guy. Tanaka and Otani hadn’t yet formed their successful Emblem unit and were instead still finding themselves in Z1 ~ Otani had recently graduated to heavyweight and Tanaka only just showed up after leaving FMW. Sato is a rookie, Sekimoto is only a couple of years in and is almost veritably tiny compared to the balloon animal he became.

This was really good back and forth action. Sekimoto and Otani kind of took the big league role as established guys against a rookie (Sato) and someone desperately trying to prove himself (Tanaka). This was the longest match on the show and the only one to go the full 20 minutes but it flew by and was a very easy watch, and was getting really good towards the end as they kicked into another gear and just went all out. Tanaka is so awesome as a high speed brawler, his energy kind of brings out of everyone too and it’s awesome. Sekimoto has always been a favourite and even back here he was great, he had his power fighter style down perfectly and more than holds his own here, like he did against Otani on the big BJW show around this time. The time limit expires as Otani and Sekimoto are holding submissions and it ends in a draw. This was really good. High energy, lots of action and hardly any downtime. Perfect way to close this show. ***3/4

This was actually quite an enjoyable show! The only really dry-ish matches was the MichiPro and NJ offerings, even they was at least passable. Great bouts on offer from ARSION, DDT, BJW & Zero1, nice and easy viewing all around. Really enjoyed the joshi bout and main event in particular.

Final Rating: ***1/2

[魔界5号]

AJPW My Own Royal Road
July 22, 2004 @ Korakuen Hall

This was a weird All Japan show, it’s called "My Own Royal Road" right in the middle of the LOVE era, uses a yellow early '10s ZERO1-style mat and has cross promotion all over it. It was apparently made possible through one of All Japan's sponsors at the time, Arting Co., and their president. Kawada bought out "President Sakai" before the show to do a giveaway, and according to a blog post I read reporting on this show, there was a section of the crowd completely filled with young looking salarymen in suits. The blog post initially speculated that they might have been there for a company reward or something, but when Sakai sat back down next to them they put 2 and 2 together and realised the suited gentlemen were Arting employees. They also said the prizes had the crowd really excited, because they gave away stuff like a PS2, a plasma TV, tickets to HUSTLE, a mountain bike and signed Kawada goodies as opposed to the usual wrestling show giveaway stuff like t-shirts and plushies. According to wikipedia, Arting was a pretty successful Japanese software company founded in 1997 that later went bust in 2008. I'm guessing Arting funded this and either handed the book to Kawada or had a say in the card themselves? idk. It’s a weird card though, lots of outside involvement and a weird revisiting of a 3 year old story for the main event. It's also notable for being one of the only LOVE era shows with no sense of Keiji Muto whatsoever; I do remember it being a decent show though. Let’s find out.

Taichi Ishikari vs Katsushi Takemura

That is the same Taichi you’re thinking of, back during his rookie young boy days with All Japan. He was super skinny, wore Akiyama light blue gear and pretty regularly got the shit kicked out of him. Takemura was a decent if pretty forgettable undercard guy from New Japan who was best known as a member of the Gurentai stable. This was shockingly a really spirited and good display from Taichi of all people, who came out of the gate with bags of rookie fire and energy. They never really let this drag from that point on and it was a pretty entertaining back and forth opener. Takemura gave Taichi plenty of chance to shine here, while also chipping in with his own offensive displays and a little bit of aggression to boot. He won with a gnarly looking powerbomb that was previously teased and countered by Taichi; basic pro wrestling storytelling, but it’s the little things that help! What a pleasantly feisty surprise. Taichi had spirit, Takemura did what he had to, this was a really easy watch. **1/2

Masanobu Fuchi vs Ebestan Hansen

Ebestan Hansen is exactly what it sounds like and it’s amazing. Fuchi complains pre-match about his opponent's hat needing to be removed, to which we find out, it’s attached to the mask. Of course it is. Ebessan genuinely does a great impression of Hansen, he’s got his mannerisms and movement down perfectly, even down to his weak attempts at replicating Hansen's big man offence which just pisses off Fuchi and brings out the best Fuchi, grumpy uncle Fuchi. He eventually snaps completely after getting hit by the bullrope and chases Ebestan all around Korakuen Hall, then eventually they get back into the ring and it winds down as Fuchi does old man tech and they build into the comedy spots, they did one turnbuckle spot over and over which was endearing because it’s Fuchi even if it did start to drag a bit. Fuchi eventually won with what I think is a Banana Split. This went longer than it should have but wasn’t outright bad or anything. *3/4

The Destroyer, famous rival of Giant Baba, came out after this match with his son Kurt (who was trained by Kobashi and briefly wrestled in All Japan in the 90s) to greet Fuchi and briefly spoke to the crowd. He was massively popular in Japan, to the point where he was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun in 2017. I guess that harkens back to the classic All Japan theme of this show.

Ryuji Hijikata vs Yuki Ishikawa

Oh boy, I remember this. Hijikata was trained and mentored by Ishikawa in Battlarts, though he was largely irrelevant during his time there and jumped to All Japan in 2001, where he’s seen middling success as a junior heavyweight and occasional partner for Kawada. He challenged Ishikawa by fax machine, of all things, who accepted and here we are. Immediately we get some fire again which was refreshing after the largely lighthearted previous match. Hijikata comes out guns blazing and they start fighting on the outside, where Yuki appears to get the better of the exchange and hits a LOUD enzuigiri; it’s soon apparent that Hijikata is busted wide open.

The match was actually stopped for a minute or so while Wada and what I assume was a medic checked on a nasty gash above Hijikata's left eye. He seems okay to continue and simply wipes himself clean with a towel, immediately going back at Ishikawa with shoot punches, though, he’s soon turned over and is getting punches absolutely rained down on him by Ishikawa. Yuki hits another enzui and a high-angled backdrop, but Hijikata gets right back up with a slap for him before they both go down again. By this point, half of Hijikata's face is completely red and he’s basically in there looking like Carrie; the blood is still coming out and it looks pretty thick. They exchange strikes a little more until Yuki mounts him again and is soon after given the TKO win in 3:18, which I assume was done due to the excessive blood loss of Hijikata. Ishikawa is just walking around afterwards like some kind of savage jungle predator with Hijikata's blood all over his arms and chest and a wry smile on his face, as they continue to check on Hijikata and he continues to piss blood in the corner. It doesn’t really feel fair to rate such a short match but i feel compelled to give it one because this was only three minutes long, but it was a stiff bloodbath that never let up from start to finish. If only Hiji didn’t bleed so much, we could have been looking at a 2004 MOTYC. ***1/4

Shiro Koshinaka & Koichiro Kimura vs Nobutaka Araya & Gran Hamada

Pretty random selection for this one, as All Japan continues their 2004 on-again off-again relationship with Koichiro Kimura, who teamed with Kensuke Sasaki in a win over Satoshi Kojima and Tomoaki Honma in his last appearance. He’s partnered with the legend Koshinaka against Araya and Hamada. Hamada is notable for being a lucharesu pioneer and for being the father of both Ayako and Xochitl Hamada, who both went on to be successful joshi. Araya is wearing some weird weight belt gear here, it at least looks better than the bright red Kane tights he was trying out before this but, god, stick to a singlet Nobu. This was good midcard fun! The speedy style of Hamada mixes well with the classic junior antics of Koshinaka, and as always, the All Japan fans love Araya, so his bits of offence get a lot of love from the fans. This wasn’t blow away great or anything, it was just a fine match that did its job where it was on the card. Koshinaka won with a powerbomb in just over 11 minutes. **1/4

Tomoaki Honma vs Hiroshi Tanahashi


Tanahashi comes back to All Japan for the first time since 2002 to take on Tomoaki Honma, who had a weird career up to this point. He started as another indie guy, did Battlarts kickpads stuff for a while, got into BJW and became one of the top deathmatch guys in the country, but abandoned it and started over with All Japan as a traditional wrestler in around 2002. He since formed a moderately popular tag team with Kazushi Miyamoto, known as Turmeric Storm, and he was gaining respect and appreciation from All Japan fans as a sympathetic and hardworking babyface loyalist, regularly teaming with Muto and the other top guys in multi man tags. Despite his popularity, he also hasn’t achieved much, but that’s just Honma. A big opportunity, then, for him to face rising NJ superstar Tanahashi, who’s career has pretty much been the direct opposite. Tana heels it up a little bit here, not too much, though, which was just fine i thought. Anything extra would have probably undermined and overshadowed Honma's energetic fight back from peril, as the crowd is firmly behind him to pull off the shock and beat Tanahashi. Some greatly worked nearfalls and an all around gutsy display from Honma, the last few minutes especially here are awesome as Honma gets fired up and the crowd is absolutely loving it. He comes close, but eventually, as he was always going to be, is defeated. Tanahashi then does some Muto brownnosing post match, asking for Hold Out to be played instead of his own theme. Compact and compelling, Honma had some early signs of his future Honmania peak here. Tana in All Japan rarely disappoints and this was no exception. Great stuff. ****

Nobukazu Hirai & Arashi vs Steve Williams & Genichiro Tenryu

This was Doc's last match in All Japan, and his first appearance since January of 2003, having spent the subsequent year and a bit in WJ and IWA Japan, but I guess Arting was able to pay him what he would have wanted to appear on this show. He’s partnered up with Tenryu to take on Nobukazu Hirai, best known for getting shoot jumped by the VOODOO MURDERS in 2011, which got most of them fired, and Arashi, best known for getting arrested for drug possession in 2006 and spending 2 years in prison as a result. Before that, Arashi was actually a pretty solid and dependable hand for All Japan in the 2000s, despite what his fat man physique might lead you to believe. Doc doesn’t look great here, I believe he'd already been diagnosed with cancer by this point so it was to be expected. He is much skinnier but also still moved pretty well, which was nice to see. This was a slog for the first half but picked up for the last few minutes, as Tenryu got angrier and started going off on Hirai for some reason. Poor Hirai. There was a tease of Williams doing a backdrop on Arashi which he was unable to do, though he does later pull one off on Hirai with the aid of the turnbuckles, which got a great reaction from the crowd. Tenryu eventually won this in just under 10 minutes with a rollup after some guh punches. Probably would have been better if they just kept this level of aggression and energy from the start, but half of the guys in this are pretty old I guess. It is at least nice to see Williams doing his thing, even as he was coming toward the end of his life. *1/2

Toshiaki Kawada vs Mitsuya Nagai


And this is the main event. Nagai showed up in All Japan post-exodus and had a brief run as a protege of Kawada, teaming with him in the RWTL and being a longtime ally until he jumped to New Japan in 2002. 2 years later, Nagai is still in New Japan but gets a big singles match against Kawada here for some reason. Nagai gets a pretty bad rap from most fans for being boring and for injuring Takashi Iizuka but, that aside, I’ve always liked him in-ring and thought he was a fine worker. He’s against reigning TC Champ Kawada, who hopefully is motivated. They didn’t waste much time here as they get into the strikes pretty quickly and they’re meaty and delivered with plenty of fire. Man, are they ever throwing shots. Just forearm after kick after chop after knee, they beat the shit out of each other for a good while. A quick breather, and then they’re at each others throats again! Nagai gets his shit rocked with a spin kick from Kawada and thus loses control again, but he’s got great fire as Kawada throws the book at him. He immediately gets back up with a ton of spirit after 2 backdrops and gets right back to throwing shots at Kawada. He eats an enzui and a brainbuster for a 2 COUNT which got a nice pop from the fans. They exchange some more, as it’s becoming clearer that Nagai is probably fading; he kicks out of another pin after a backdrop and 2 enzuis to another great reaction. Man Kawada is giving him a lot here. He eventually stays down for 3 after 1 more penalty kick, bringing an end to things in just over 12 minutes. Yeah this ruled. Nagai had bags of fighting spirit and fire which in turn bought the motivated side out of Kawada and made this a feisty little contest. Wouldn’t have gone in any year end lists, but I really enjoyed it. ****

This was actually a fine show, the only part that really dragged was Fuchi vs Ebestan but even as i said, that was at the very least endearing. Good job All Japan!

Final Rating: ***1/2

[魔界5号]

XWF Give Me Hardcore or Give Me Chair
August 6, 2008 @ Korakuen Hall

Okay, before I get into the show, there’s a whole story to lay out here. I researched this company in Japanese to find out more about them, because I’ve known about this show and just assumed it was another random j-indie that died off but didn’t bother researching more into it till after I did the write up for it here. I looked it up, and this promotion was formed by Tetsuhiro Kuroda, Masato Tanaka and Kintaro Kanemura, who had formed a coalition known as the "Independent Hardcore Brothers" and XWF to go along with it. Fair enough. Why was it formed, though? Well after researching, I found out Kintaro Kanemura was dismissed from Apache Pro in early 2008 after an incident at a BJW/DDT/K-DOJO show where Kanemura indecently assaulted a female member of BJW's staff. Initially, after other female BJW employees came together and complained to BJW chief Eiji Tosaka, he told them that if they go public, "everyone loses" and basically threatened to fire all of them if they bothered him about it again. Nice guy. Thankfully, one of the BJW ring announcers at the time, Ken Murakami, detailed the incident on his blog in an attempt to raise awareness, but was fired and banned from all future BJW events for "going against the company", basically for refusing to go along with the coverup. A long and dramatic saga then played out where eventually, Kanemura was fired from BJW, Apache Pro shut down altogether, the woman quit working for BJW, and eventually Kanemura's lawyer settled with her and Nakamura that neither Kanemura nor anyone from Apache Pro would ever make contact with her again. No money was awarded. I had no idea about any of this and good god, I despise Kintaro Kanemura now and it definitely makes BJW look like a really shitty environment. This was a messy story that honestly made me debate even posting my review of the show; I didn’t find out till after I'd written it and was just gonna scrap it all but instead I just cut any mention of Kanemura out aside from match listings because I just cannot bring myself to praise such a gross piece of shit. Anyway, with that part of it out of the way, I guess this was Kanemura's attempt at saving his career, but it didn’t really work as XWF shut down after this show. As i mentioned before, Masato Tanaka and Tetsuhiro Kuroda were both on board, in addition to Yusaku Obata and Shinjuku Shark. It’s weird, it looks mostly terrible on paper, it probably is. Let’s begin.

Hiro Tonai vs Kuniyoshi Wada

I don’t know a whole lot about either of these guys. Tonai was a K-Dojo product whose name rings a bell, but I'm not all too familiar with in-ring. I mainly remember Wada for a match he had against Shinjiro Otani in about January of 2010 which I'm pretty sure was his retirement match? He’s since shown up again in random regional indies though so idk. This was pretty boring. They didn’t do much outside of basic rookie offence like forearms, bodyslams and crabs which isn’t a problem if there’s fire behind it, but there was none, and the sparse crowd was virtually indifferent throughout. A time limit draw was declared after we’d seen about 3 minutes of action, so I'm assuming this was clipped and yeah, cagematch says this was a 15 minute time limit draw but we only saw 3 minutes of it, thankfully in this case because those 3 minutes weren’t great! 1/2*

Tomohiro Ishii vs Yuzuru Saito

Hopefully this is better. Ishii is Ishii, we all know and love Mr. Ishii, Saito was one of pretty much all the late-2000s Z1 trainees who retired early, hanging up the boots in 2011 having only debuted in 2007. Off the top of my head, there was him, Kenta Kakinuma, Osamu Namiguchi, Shota Takanishi and probably a couple of others i’m forgetting who debuted for Z1 between 2002-2007 and had already retired by 2011. Esoteric, sad knowledge from a sad little man, let’s get back to the match before I have an existential crisis. Unfortunately this was a lot like the first match. We saw a little bit more of this one, but it was only ever so slightly better than the one before it. Ishii was very clearly chilling in fourth gear against a rookie, not having to do much at all and you can’t really blame him. Saito did okay for a rookie, I looked it up and he’d only debuted in March of this year, so extra props to him for doing as well as he did with such little experience. It’s clear at times, like when he seems to get a bit lost and defaults back to doing dropkicks or forearms, but hey, that at least shows some good awareness to do something even if you’re lost. This wasn’t great though. Ishii finally won with a crab after Saito had previously crawled to the ropes in an Ishii crab what felt like about 6 times. 1/2*

Thanomsak Toba vs Shinjuku Shark


Both these guys are interesting as pioneers of the "pro wrestlers in boxing gloves" genre of wrestlers. Shark was a boxer before wrestling I believe, and Toba was a kickboxer, his ring-name, which often gets transliterated as "Tanomusaku" in Japanese, was an homage to a former Thai boxer. Shark's name is also a weird one; technically, his name is "Shinjuku Same" (sah-may), which translates in English to Shinjuku Shark, and since were speaking in English, I’m going to refer to him as Shinjuku Shark. Same goes for Toba, who I will just call Toba for the sake of my sanity. Despite both these guys wearing boxing gloves, it is a pro wrestling match. This is both their schtick, and has been for years, they’ve even faced off 3 times before, and Shark is currently 2-1 over Toba. They mostly worked this like a boxing match and as such, I mostly watched it like a boxing match. Shark seems to have the better of the goings until Toba remembers he’s a kickboxer and starts using his legs, that’s where the pro wrestling rules come into play I guess. They do a spot where Shark is about to cheat and grab a chair until he’s convinced not to by the appearance of Chocoball Mukai, who tells him no and Shark goes back to fighting fair. They do more fake boxing mixed in with wrestling moves after this, it was mostly entertaining if at times a little bit silly. It was at its best when they leant into the pro wrestling side and just started willingly exchanging blows. At times my suspension of disbelief was really tested when they threw obviously weak and fake looking punches that would never be thrown in an actual boxing ring. Toba won by "TKO" in 11:01, which we saw in full. No way would I ever choose this over actual boxing, but I guess I can see the appeal to some? It’s not all that great to me though. *

KAZMA, MIYAWAKI & Yuji Hino vs TAKA Michinoku, Dick Togo & Masao Orihara


Okay, finally something that has potential to not totally suck. I’m familiar with and like almost everyone in this match (Kazma is meh but like, i can tolerate him I guess) and the other 5 are all pretty good or great. Togo was the first one to get a chance to shine here and he was impressive as ever. It’s a shame his matches tend to stink so much in New Japan these days. OMEGA (which was the stable the first three names were in at the time) spend the majority of the first half of this beating up their boss, cutting off the ring and keeping TAKA away from his partners. TAKA is finally saved by Togo who finally tangles with Hino, which is good, but then he gets cut off and we get a bit of KAZMA, which is, well, yeah. Orihara comes back in and picks things up again, his exchange with Miyawaki was one of the better things about this so far. Togo and Orihara combine really well with a spider german/senton/moonsault combination, the pin broken up by Miyawaki's partners. It looks like things are breaking down for TAKA to put Miyawaki down for the finish until Hino comes back in and eventually gets the win with the f***ing Bomb. Not the finish i was expecting and comfortably the best thing on this show so far. Decent. **3/4

Riki Choshu, Shiro Koshinaka & Atsushi Onita vs MAZADA, NOSAWA & TAKEMURA

Onita is here, so you know the f***ery is about to begin. Can’t help but get Randy The Ram vibes at this point. He’d retired like 3 times by this point but was back doing the bum indies again. Choshu's indie involvement was weird, I guess it started with WJ and kind of expanded from there with Riki Pro and LOCK UP but it was just weird to see him doing it. Onita comes out and everyone loves him, like always. Pretty much, if you’ve seen any Onita multi-man on an indie show post-2000, you’ve seen this. It’s sloppy, they brawl around Korakuen, and it lacks any real flow to it whatsoever. This didn’t really capture me that much until the last minute or so, as Onita's team all kill Nosawa and throw the book at him for the win. Like i said, nothing at all to seperate this from the millions of other Onita multi mans that happened on the indies around this era. I’ve never been a huge fan of Nosawa/Mazada either, so this wasn’t really up my alley at all.1/2*

Yusaku Obata vs Kohei Sato

While the last match was not up my alley, this could be. Sato is one of my absolute favourites of the JP indie scene, a grumpy, stiff, shoot headbutt throwing animal who probably has yakuza ties and talks like Genichiro Tenryu if he still also smoked 40 a day. Obata had a weird run so far, training under TAKA and debuting in K-Dojo, though he left in 2006 and started to bounce around the various indies, signing on with XWF early on in what obviously turned out to be a fantastic career decision. He’s pretty good though, and I enjoyed his main event run in Z1 a few years back. Obata looks absolutely TINY here. I guess he will have probably been a junior when he debuted for KDOJO, but my god, considering I’m used to seeing him look like this, the Obata I saw here was kind of a shock.

Kohei is a big guy in his own right but he looks like a giant here next to lil Obata, who comes out of the gate with some firey offence that does little to actually damage Kohei at all, who no sells it. They meet in the middle of the ring and start throwing strikes, Kohei absolutely leathering him with every single one as the gulf in class and strength is obvious. You get the impression Obata is gonna get killed pretty early on, but his fire and spirit are both really good, so it in turn makes you want to root for him and makes the match a lot more compelling. They’ve also actually got this largely so far mediocre crowd pretty hyped, so kudos. Obata gets his little chance to get some offence in and it’s pretty basic at this point in his career, mostly slaps, dropkicks and enzuigiri's. Kohei soon after takes control again and tries to put it to bed, as Obata kicks out twice, of both a Falcon Arrow and piledriver, to my surprise, but is finally put down for 3 after a running PK. This was pretty hype, Obata bought spirit and Kohei clobbered him, which was all it really needed. I didn’t really like the finish that much since it felt a bit anticlimactic to have Obata kick out of two huge moves and then just stay down for a simple kick to the chest, but whatevs. *3/4

Tetsuhiro Kuroda, Kintaro Kanemura & Masato Tanaka vs Super Leatherface, Raven & Tracy Smothers

Well this is something. The Leatherface in this match is Corporal Kirchner, who worked under the gimmick most notably for W*ING and IWA back in the 90s. The fans absolutely love him and his entrance gets a great reaction, even if it did show just how empty Korakuen was. He’s partnered with Raven and Tracy Smothers against the Independent Hardcore Brothers stable, who founded the promotion. I was gonna say something to the tune of "Raven looks like shit here", but then again, when doesn’t he. I feel like I know exactly what this match is going to be before I even see it and I feel like I’m going to hate it. A few minutes in, and I’m right. They’re already cycling through the fight around the arena schtick, and a slow as f*** chair swing exchange is well underway in-ring. I really don’t enjoy these type of matches. Maybe it’s just too much for my brain at once but I can’t follow 3 seperate brawls going on at a different location in the building at once, and when the vast majority of this match is that, I’m not in for a good time. Eventually, it finally got back into the ring and Kuroda continues to take a pasting from his opponents. He’s bleeding all over the place and they all take turns beating him up. When his partners finally get back in, they get back on the offensive and beg the fans to re-enact the ECW chair throwing incident which just felt really.. forced? They then get BACK into the ring and start fighting on top of all the chairs, which is just pretty awkward as Raven just kind of gently sits down for a Raven Effect.

The IHB eventually combine for the win to finally end this. 1/4*

Final Thoughts
This sucked. Do not waste your time and watch this show like I did!

Final Rating: 1/4*

[James Fabiano]

Wasn't Jeff Bradley also Dudley Dudley?

[67 more]

Thank you for these recaps.

[魔界5号]

Mar 16, 2023 13:02:40 GMT -5 James Fabiano said:

Wasn't Jeff Bradley also Dudley Dudley?

Cagematch says yeah. I also weirdly found out he had a run in BJW with Homicide of all people as his tag partner, which is.. something.

[Jacy Jayne Atomic Dog AMV]

I get so excited every time there's a photo of someone looking absolutely insane in boxing gloves or kick pads

[魔界5号]

WJ MAGMA01 Series
March 15, 2003 @ Korakuen Hall

I’ve been wanting to talk about a WJ show for a while, this company was an absolute walking disaster basically from start to finish and I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to discuss them. Founded by Riki Choshu and Katsuji Nagashima after they left New Japan in 2002, they immediately had big names on board; Kensuke Sasaki, Kenzo Suzuki, Shiro Koshinaka, Takao Omori, Tomohiro Ishii, Hiroshi Hase, Genichiro Tenryu and Choshu himself obviously all signed on early, and they also had a deal with Yoshiaki Yatsu, who would work for the company and send guys from his regional SPWF indie over for matches, and various other indies to use their talent. Pretty much immediately after the modestly successful first show, the company fell apart. There was controversy almost immediately as over ¥200 million JPY ($1.5 million USD) in capital had been invested, and Choshu had also spent massively on building a new dojo, buying a tour bus, buying a new car, and throwing an expensive year end party with many celebrities invited. They also ran their debut show on March 1, 2003 in Yokohama Arena, the same day NOAH was running Nippon Budokan, K1 was running Ariake Coliseum, and a total of 11 other pro wrestling or MMA events were taking place in the Tokyo metropolitan area. It was supposed to have taken place as far back as November of 2002, but due to them having to wait for the New Japan contracts of Kensuke, Kenzo Suzuki and Tiger Hattori to expire in December, it was postponed a whole bunch of times, and in the end, March 1 in Yokohama Arena was the very best date and arena they could manage. Not long after that they established a World Title, won by Kensuke Sasaki, however the title was not finished in time for his win meaning he won.. nothing. Later that month, one of their trainees also died in their dojo, and soon after they were basically pissing money and embarassing themselves on a monthly basis, announcing and cancelling shows, with a “booking” in Korakuen Hall famously being announced to confusion, as another event was already booked in Korakuen for that exact same day and time slot. They eventually shut down in 2004 after just over a year of nonstop disaster. This is their second show, held in Korakuen Hall 2 weeks after their debut event. They claimed 1850 fans for this, which I will give them the benefit of the doubt on.

Nobutaka Araya vs Takashi Uwano


Araya is a representative of All Japan who stuck around for years, was an average heavyweight for a while but finally found his niche as a beloved opening card act during his later career alongside the likes of Fuchi. Uwano wanted to join New Japan but failed his dojo tryout and instead started out with IWA Japan in 1998, winning tag titles in the promotion and graduating from rookie status until
he was poached by WJ in late 2002, which caused a bit of controversy around Uwano at the time. Uwano said he joined because he was not paid well at IWA, had to supplement his income with a second part time job, and considered retirement until he found out about WJ's recruitment opening. He signed on early and was able to continue his career, paid enough to do it full time. On the first show, he got the absolute SHIT beaten out of him by Tomohiro Ishii. Genuinely, the finish was Ishii mounting Uwano and just punching the shit out of his bloody face until the ref called for a TKO. He looks pretty undamaged here, and hopefully will have a better time against Araya. They lock up and Uwano immediately slaps Araya, egging him on to come back at him and get this bout truly underway. Araya responds with two lariats and slaps on a crab, as it’s clear he’s getting the better of the early exchange. They eventually start throwing strikes again as it gets a bit more heated, Araya really put some mustard on one slap which Uwano was either genuinely knocked loopy by or sold really well. The loudness of it tells me it was probably the former. They throw some more as Uwano actually starts getting somewhere, and tries and fails a German on Araya; he eventually gives it another go and is successful, which got a nice reaction and felt well built up to. Uwano manages to sustain this run for a while and tries to put Nobu away with his STO and some lariats, but is unsuccessful on all tries. It becomes clearer that these failed attempts are lighting a fire under Araya as he continually eats the offence and gets more and more fired up. He hits back with a big lariat, and Uwano is busted open again. Poor guy just can’t stop bleeding in WJ. Araya gets back up and starts trying to wrap this up; he hits a lariat and two brainbusters, the last of which was Kawada-esque, just a sheer drop and it was beautiful, but Uwano KICKS OUT to a great reaction. Araya then locks in a Boston Crab which he leans back with for the finish, a small but nicely brutal touch on a basic move to make it look that bit more deadly. This was pretty solid. Uwano had another good showing and Araya was fine. Decent opener! **

Tomohiro Ishii vs Yoji Anjo

Ishii, as previously mentioned, was an early signer-on in WJ and was in the first match in company history, where he beat the shit out of Uwano in his re-debut at the last show. Anjo is a veteran of shoot style, who started in the various UWF/UWFi/UWF newborn incarnations and later bounced around various indies and All Japan before settling in HUSTLE in the late 2000s. Ishii was being pushed by WJ as a legit guy for the first time in his career; prior to this, he had started in WAR, but basically became the indie journeyman of his generation, having extended stints in DDT, Michinoku Pro, Toryumon, and WEW so far before he finally found a home, but his training pedigree (Choshu/Tenryu) and his relationship with Choshu was always gonna see him get a chance at some point. After he beat the shit out of Uwano, he’s given the much tougher Anjo here, who is bald, which is very jarring. Ishii has his always awesome fade, which he should bring back because it looks like he can still grow hair, the madman just chooses to be bald. Ishii gets the better of the initial battle and they get into some matwork, eventually getting back to their feet where Anjo ROCKS Ishii with a straight punch that drops him. Anjo then has an extended period in control as he puts Ishii through the wringer, hitting a nice backdrop among other things. Ishii then throws a hail mary right hand which connects, allowing him to hit a nice looking German, that he bridged for but messed up, meaning Anjo's shoulders were visibly off the mat, even though the referee still counted three. Botched finish aside, this was another fine little bout. Ishii was really using those straight punches as a big part of his offence at this time, and hey, it worked. **

Masahiko Kochi & Yoshiaki Yatsu vs Tomoaki Honma & Kazushi Miyamoto

Honma, repping All Japan, defeated Kochi on the first show and had an in-ring confrontation with Tomohiro Ishii afterwards, I guess further pushing a WJ vs All Japan feud. Kochi is one of the guys who Yoshiaki Yatsu lent from his SPWF promotion, I don’t think he ever worked much outside of SPWF, WJ and briefly IWA. Yatsu is best known for being an Olympic wrestler and previously working for the WWF and AJPW at the height of his career. Honma and Miyamoto are a tag team collectively known as "Turmeric Storm", quite popular with AJPW fans at the time. Yatsu seems the more levelheaded here as Kochi just wants to get straight in and swing at both his opponents, while Yatsu just sort of stands and watches. Kochi initially does well, but is cut off and isolated for a while by Honma and Miyamoto as they take control, until Yatsu comes in to a great reaction, fired up and moving real smooth, his matwork is as good as it ever was, but I guess a former Olympian is never really likely to lose it. Kochi eventually comes back in and is once again kept isolated by his opponents. Turmeric Storm have some cool tag moves, a shoulder assisted superplex they did here probably being my favourite. They're both trying to put away Kochi until Yatsu comes back in and starts throwing them both around like sacks of shit, it’s awesome. The crowd loves it too. Yatsu eventually got the win and redemption for SPWF with what looked like a modified guillotine choke/indian deathlock. This was another fun match. I’m very pleasantly surprised at just how good this show has been so far. Everything’s had a bit of heat to it, the crowd has been lively and nothing has really dragged. **1/4

Mike Shane & Todd Shane vs The Road Warriors


I probably spoke too soon at the end of the last match. This is the Road Warriors, one of the biggest names WJ boasted at the time, against Mike Shane & Todd Shane, who went on to be in the WWE extremely briefly and forgettably as Gymini, and even briefer and far worse as The Johnson’s in TNA. WJ booked them because I guess big gaijin = big bucks? Not in this case though. The first Shane's exchange with Animal was awful, he was really awkward and slow and i don’t know which is which so I can’t distinguish them. The second was better, his bit with Hawk was a lot more smooth and easier on the eye. From there this was such a slog for me and a real reality check after the enjoyable first few matches. It was slow, the crowd wasn’t into it, and I really wasn’t having a good time. To top it off, The Shanes won after a shitty looking swinging chokeslam/rock bottom thing. This was not good. Back to the real world. Thanks WJ. 1/2*

Kenzo Suzuki vs Steve Madison


I don’t know a whole lot about Madison. He was in WJ and briefly toured with New Japan in 2006, outside of that I'm pretty much clueless on him. Kenzo was another early WJ committee and he did not have a good time in the promotion; it’s not confirmed but widely agreed that Kenzo's departure from the promotion was due to the fact he was overseeing the training session where Giant Ochiai fell unconscious and later died. This was before that thought, and Kenzo was on the first show, where he lost to Takao Omori, another wandering gangly misfit of the scene. This wasn’t bad by any means but again felt like a step down from the first few, largely due to the mostly uninterested crowd and pretty standard level of action on offer. Madison keeps going back to a crippler crossface which he was teasing from literally the very start, I guess it’s his finisher but it did feel a bit spam-ish at times. Kenzo's best part of his offence is probably his suplexes, which he pulls a bunch of towards the end before winning with his shining wizard style knee strike which i forget the name of. Not as good as the first two, but not as bad as the last match. 3/4*

Kensuke Sasaki vs Big Vito


Poor Kensuke. Joining WJ really did go on to be pretty much the worst business mistake he ever made. He basically spent a year out of the mainstream spotlight, was one of several wrestlers who went months with unpaid wages thanks to Choshu's mismanagement, and actually ended up being swindled out of several hundred thousand yen by Choshu which Kensuke put up out of he and Hokuto's own money, taking out a second mortgage to afford it, which led to Kensuke having to work several indie dates a day just to make ends meet at one point. So yeah, things didn’t turn out great for him and pretty much soured his relationship with Choshu virtually forever. I know nothing of Vito outside from his dress gimmick and FBI stuff in the WWE, but he had done some gaijin work before this, briefly appearing for AJPW in the late 90s as Skull Von Crush. They start out trading shoulder tackles and chops and it’s actually pretty good at first, but the chops gradually degrade in quality and eventually it looks like Vito is trying to block them from making contact with his chest. Vito is eventually in control for a good portion and his offence is okay, he looks pretty awkward doing an elbow drop but his powerslam, backdrops and diving headbutt were all fine. Kensuke fights back into it and the crowd picks up a bit, he eventually hits two lariats and an NLB for the win. This was alright, it was only 6 minutes long which is probably about as much Big Vito match as anyone can handle but he did okay here. It didn’t outstay its welcome at least. *3/4

Shiro Koshinaka vs Takao Omori


I do have high hopes for this one. Koshinaka's heavyweight exploits are usually good, like his IWGP Title matches with Takada and Nagata. It immediately looks like I’m gonna be proven right as they don’t f*** around and get right into it, as Koshinaka skips the ring intros and just starts swinging, Omori and korakuen responding accordingly. They’re throwing slaps, headbutts and all not even a minute into this. Omori hits a nice looking DDT to no reaction which was weird, but the crowd picks up again for Koshinaka's hip attacks to no surprise. I’m unsure what the beef is here but they’re throwing down. Omori hits a beautiful dropkick right into Shiro's mush, who fails in his attempted retaliation enzi but is eventually able to hit an apron hip attack for another good reaction. He then rips up the ringside mat and hits a piledriver on the wood floor, which we barely saw because of the shitty camera angle. Omori is clearly rocked by this as he struggles to contend with Koshinaka until it spills to ringside again and he starts clubbing him with a chair. It slowed right down after this when Koshinaka got back in the ring and called Omori to do the same, they got into tech for a while as Omori's bloody nose became visible.

Omori gets the best of the mat sequence and hits a piledriver, then no sells a brain buster and hits an axe bomber for 2, which was kind of annoying as he never sold it after the pin so it just kind of killed my suspension of disbelief for a minute. He immediately goes for another but is caught in a Cobra Twist pin for 2. Koshinaka works quickly and hits some hip attacks and Samurai Powerbombs for 2, going for a running corner move countered by Omori with a sick looking superkick. He maintained his grip on two back to back dragon suplexes for two, and eventually won this with two of his awesome Wild Heart finisher, as he was almost accidentally having his ass pulled out. This was the best match on the show so far, really fun and entertaining back and forth between two guys who rarely disappoint. ***

Genichiro Tenryu vs Riki Choshu


Main event time, the second of a planned 6 (6?!) match series between the two that ground to a half after Choshu got injured. Choshu is 1-0 up after winning on the debut show, a good match that also main evented that card. That was a spirited battle between these two legends, adding Korakuen and even more backstory/hate the mix could only be good. They got flags out for both of these guys entrances and the crowd is really hot as they begin this with a fine sequence of matwork to open, everything done with a bit of gusto and energy. After a while they just say f*** it and start slapping each other and it rules. Tenryu starts throwing guh punches and beating the shit out Choshu who just responds with a classic “f*** off” Riki lariat to a great reaction from the fans. They start brawling on the outside and Tenryu is PISSED, throwing chairs and a table and generally trying to kill Choshu at ringside. They get back in the ring and start smacking the shit out of each other again, Tenryu hitting the 53 sai for 2 but still selling the pain of the strike exchange after, as he should!! He takes a tumble from the top rope but isn’t really effected and rocks Choshu with a lariat of his own, it’s clear he’s mad and he’s gonna kill the granny haircut man. Another chair is bought in and we get more 53 sai, with one of them putting Choshu down for the count to make the series 1-1. While that match was fine, I like this a lot better because there’s more background, it’s in Korakuen, and there’s just a lot more character to it than their first meeting. Great main event. Tenryu straight dropping people on their head is never not awesome.****1/4


Final thoughts

Shockingly, not a terrible effort from WJ. There were at least more good matches than bad, and some of them, the main event in particular, were very enjoyable. The first few WJ events were generally not too terrible, but by May or so they’d pretty much fallen apart and things were going down the toilet. This was good though!

Final rating: ***

[魔界5号]

HUSTLE Shiro Koshinaka 30th Anniversary ~ HUSTLE Gaiden
August 27, 2009 @ Korakuen Hall

At this point i might as well rename this to “random shows in Korakuen”, but it’s not my fault almost every company runs here regularly and it’s also the best wrestling venue in the world and probably ever, I love it, something is just so cathartic and warming about watching a good old fashioned wrestling show in Korakuen Hall. This is a HUSTLE card, known for their comedic take on wrestling and for playing host to Toshiaki Kawada doing the weirdest stuff of his career. They are probably the most outlandish company to ever exist. In their short lifespan, they did a bunch of ridiculous stuff, like having Great Muta spit green mist into the crotch of model/on-screen character Yinling, which resulted in her becoming pregnant and giving birth to Akebono, known as "Bono-chan", Naoya Ogawa became a paparazzi-dodging tabloid favourite known as "Celeb Ogawa", and they turned Nobuhiko Takada into the evil "generalissimo" of the "Monster Army", later killing him off in storyline in 2009 as then president Nobuo Yamaguchi announced in the same month as this show that HUSTLE would be moving away from the grandiose and dramatic storylines that had largely dominated the promotion since its inception and instead would from then on be presenting a traditional puroresu product, in a bid to make HUSTLE a serious name. They had folded by October. Yeah, once Takada left, attendance and viewership massively died down, and interest in the regular HUSTLE roster was not particularly high at all. They also ran out of money and fell behind on paying a bunch of wrestlers by at least a couple of months. Most of the roster and internal guys at the company expected it to close down soon even back here. I was never really big on HUSTLE like I was DDT, mainly because for the most part their in-ring product took more of a back seat to the ridiculously over the top storylines which usually made the shows pretty mediocre if you weren’t following the plot chronologically. There were one or two decent matches and shows scattered around, but most of what I’ve seen from them has been pretty average. The main event of this should at least be okay. There’s actually only 4 matches on the card and one of them involves RG, which should really be an indicator of what this show is going to mostly be like. They claimed an attendance of 1,927 here. Shiro is a beloved veteran and they got some pretty huge names for his big anniversary match, but they were also massively lying about their attendances almost every show at this time so I don’t know.

Hajime Ohara & The C vs KG & Hustle Kamen Yellow

I ended up having to do some research here because I completely forgot who was under the masks for Kamen Yellow and The C. I know Monster C was Steve Corino, but cagematch doesn’t have a profile for this one so I don’t know. I don’t believe it’s Kentaro Shiga either because I’m pretty sure he was "Punch The C". He basically does the same shtick as Monster C though. Hustle Kamen Yellow is probably better known as Bear Fukuda and his outfit is, yeah.

KG (short for Karate Girl) actually went on to be better known under her real name in Stardom as Syuri, where she’s become one of the top stars in recent years. This was really early into her career and she is barely recognisable. I’m pretty sure her and the other Tajiri trainees of this time (KUSHIDA, Ohara, Chie) just ended up in HUSTLE because Tajiri was working there. Ohara went on to have middling junior success in NOAH but never really broke through to the next level. Kenoh greatly and completely outshone him in their brief tag team. C and Kamen spend a lifetime playing to the crowd. The fans in attendance are at least enjoying it, but I am not. We’re 2 minutes into this match and they legit haven’t even made contact with each other yet. HUSTLE! They do some more crowd play, a repeated shoulder barge spot and then Kamen finally hits a dropkick and they both tag out. You guys did NOT do enough to tag out that soon, but thank god they’re gone so we might see some actual pro wrestling in this pro wrestling match on this pro wrestling show. Ohara and KG trade strikes for a bit until Ohara gets the better of it and bullies her to loud boos from the crowd. KG fights back into it finally and hits an awesome high kick and swinging DDT to buy herself a chance to tag out. Kamen comes back in and actually seems interested in wrestling this time, his lariats are good and him and KG worked well together to beat up Ohara. KG then gives us a dive to the outside on Ohara as Kamen hits a splash on C for the win. This wasn’t as terrible as the first two minutes made it seem like they were gonna be. Syuri was still pretty good even back here, her flippy dippy lucha-inspired stuff was probably the best thing about this.*3/4

Akira Shoji & Wataru Sakata vs Takao Omori & Yoji Anjo

Omori and Anjo both have history with Koshinaka from WJ, where they were all in Koshinaka's "Labour Union" stable, a parody of the real life ongoing financial problems in WJ that saw many of their wrestlers late/under/not paid at all for months on end, as they feuded with Choshu in storyline while he was genuinely failing to pay his wrestlers in real life. Richard Choshu, some man. Ironic that the same thing was basically going on here in HUSTLE at this time too. Shoji is better known for his MMA work but debuted for HUSTLE in 2008, was later kicked out of the Monster Army and instead allied himself with Wataru Sakata until HUSTLE died off. Sakata is probably best known for that video of Akira Maeda kicking his shit in backstage after a poor showing from Sakata in RINGS (i’m pretty sure). He was in HUSTLE for a while though, and the last few HUSTLE shows were actually promoted by him, as Sakata "Hustle" Wataru shows. I guess he was kind of the de facto ace at this time? Idk. Omori and Anjo I’ve both talked about before in this thread I’m fairly certain. Omori and Shoji start out and trade shoulder tackles, until Omori gets fired up and finally knocks Shoji on his ass with one to a great reaction. Omori is such an oddly built fellow. The guy is just all chest, yet lanky af at the same time. He’s great though, I always felt he was underrated by a lot of puro fans. Anjo comes in and does some matwork with Sakata, eventually we get the Omori/Shoji pairing again as Omori hits a suplex and a short piledriver. He and Anjo cut off Shoji here, typecast to the babyface partner in peril role as he gets beaten up by both his opponents. He later eats some European Uppercuts and then counters Omori's run into some kind of judo throw, i don’t know jack shit about judo so please don’t grill me for not knowing what the proper name of the throw is or I’ll cry and it will be your fault. Sakata is fired up and cleaning house, he hits a f***ing outstanding dropkick that he basically did a backflip out of, it was incredible, and immediately after that he’s got a big wheel kick for Anjo. Sakata was actually pretty good in-ring from what I remember. There’s eventually a cool spot where Sakata tunes up the band for what I’m guessing is a superkick but Anjo plays possum and stays laying down, only to hit a Michinoku Driver on Sakata when he approaches. He then locks in an armbar which is broken up by Shoji, who then lariats Omori and rips his singlet straps down a la Kurt Angle, this is pretty fun I can’t lie. He hits an awesome pop-up judo throw on Anjo, after which Sakata visibly makes zero contact with Anjo for a superkick but still slaps his thigh for the win, that miss for the finish was genuinely almost as unfortunate as the one with Aleister Black from a few years ago. Other than that, this was a good match. Fun and energetic, and I will never not be down for Takao Omori #content. **1/4

RG vs Heisei Ishingun X

And this is decidedly much more HUSTLE than the last match. RG is short for "Real Gay", originally Razor Ramon Real Gay, a less popular sidekick version of the Razor Ramon Hard Gay character from HUSTLE's peak years, played by comedian Masaki Sumitani. HG was basically a less crass version of the Danshoku Dino character from DDT, but still a pretty offensive and ridiculously over the top portrayal of basically every American gay stereotype you could imagine done by a straight Japanese man. HG was actually nationally very well known at one point and had a weekly segment on a popular Japanese variety show in 2005, where he would run around "helping" unsuspecting strangers while dressed in his full S&M attire, thrusting his hips and spouting his stereotypical gay mannerisms while Livin La Vida Loca played in the background. Yeah. RG I guess is basically the same thing? I don’t know. RG was also played by a comedian, the stage partner and longtime friend of Sumitani, Makoto Izubuchi. Backyard wrestling is pretty popular in Japan, especially among the college ages; there are, or at least were, quite a number of backyard feds operating all over Japan, mainly made up of university or college students. Sumitani and Izubuchi both did backyard wrestling when they were younger and actually did it alongside Hiroshi Tanahashi of all people, while he was still in college. They eventually found success in comedy with these characters, which definitely seem like a product of their time, but then again, Danshoku Dino remains popular to this day, so clearly Japan just doesn’t care as much about this type of thing. I don’t think a straight guy playing a gay character like this would ever fly in the west today. From the video package that played before, X will be a member of Heisei Ishingun, a popular New Japan stable from the 90s that included none other than Shiro Koshinaka himself, hence their participation here. RG comes out first, and he’s followed by Masashi Aoyagi, Tatsutoshi Goto, Kuniaki Kobayashi and Kengo Kimura. They all draw a string to decide who RG will face, and it’s Goto. RG is launched out of the ring after they shake hands with an atomic drop and everyone beats him up. RG eventually gets back into the ring and takes 500 years to do his rope walk, predictability slipped and landed crotch-first, allowing Goto to clothesline him and then pin him standing up. I can’t rate this. The pre-match write up I did on the RG/HG characters completely eclipsed what I could write about the match. I never really found HG or RG funny, but Tatsutoshi Goto is awesome and I will give this one star off of his presence alone.

They gave us a post match interview with all the Ishingun members backstage and Goto looks absolutely ruined even though his match was like 3 minutes and pretty much the only thing he did was clothesline RG and hold his hand for a rope walk. God bless. *

Jushin Thunder Liger, Shiro Koshinaka & Yuji Nagata vs Toshiaki Kawada, Tajiri & Genichiro Tenryu

Now this is some lineup. Koshinaka's 30th anniversary show and a bunch of big names are bought in for the occasion, not surprising though because it’s harder to think of a more universally beloved guy in puro than Koshinaka. They gave us a nice VTR detailing his entire career and then everyone makes their entrances through the crowd, which was pretty sick as it actually looks quite full. Koshinaka came out last and we got the full entrance for him with the camera following him backstage. Tenryu starts this off fired up and points to Koshinaka signalling he wants to get this underway. Koshinaka is all “alright then, cool!” and he runs straight at the old man with a hip attack and the crowd is on fire. He signals to Liger he wants him to do the Shotei and tags him in, Tenryu getting rocked twice with two of them, selling both really well as he always does. Kawada has seen enough and steps in himself. Liger backs down, but Yuji Nagata does not, and storms the ring himself, him and Kawada start trading leg kicks until Kawada drops him with a spin kick and it ruled. Then in comes Tajiri, who comes straight for Nagata with green mist which he ducks, but he’s unable to avoid Tajiri's kicks as he then tries to snap Nagata's arm with his trademark over the shoulder armbreaker thing. Nagata counters into a sleeper and he’s like “no Tajiri that is NOT how you do it” and shows us how the over the shoulder armbreaker thing is actually done, and then teases the Nagata Lock on Tajiri, until Kawada walks in and he releases and they have a staredown. This has been fantastic so far. Nagata tags out to Koshinaka and they all do hip attacks on Tajiri, the crowd is still absolute loving this. Tajiri eventually buys himself a second with a spin kick on Liger and tags in Kawada, allowing his much bigger partners to isolate and batter the smaller Liger. Tenryu hits some shotei's of his own and then we get a Buzzsaw kick and a nice lionsault and standing moonsault from Tajiri for 2. Poor Liger is getting absolutely pasted here. He tries to fight back in the corner with some chops which briefly works on Kawada and Tajiri but just pisses off Tenryu, who just grabs him by the hair and makes the most amazing “boy what in the f*** did you just try and do to me?” face.

This allows Kawada to just boot him in the face and cut his comeback off. Liger finally gets his way back into the match with a backbreaker which allowed him the chance to tag in Nagata. He’s killing shit and has Tajiri in the Nagata Lock until Kawada and Tenryu stop him. He then faces off with Tenryu and they start throwing stiff kicks and chops like this is an 04 G1 Climax match or something, it’s so good. An exploder from Nagata gives him his chance to try the Nagata Lock on Tenryu again, which is again cut off by Kawada, who drags him brawling to the outside. As they swing for each other, Tenryu is on the apron and launches himself at them with a flying shoulder tackle, but he’s then dropped himself with a plancha from Liger, then it’s Tajiri’s turn to take out Liger, and finally Koshinaka does what we all wanted to see and hits a running hip attack off the apron onto Tajiri to Korakuen's delight. Liger, Nagata and Koshinaka all gang up on Tenryu, giving him a shotei, a big boot and a hip attack for two. Koshinaka then does a tour of the corners with repeated top rope hip attacks, as Tenryu just continues to stand up, scream and beat on his chest and it’s SO RAW. He’s prevented from hitting the Samurai Powerbomb by Tajiri as Kawada and Tenryu both hit the ring and beat him up, taking turns to throw chops and hitting stereo enzuigiris, I am absolutely loving this match like you wouldn’t even believe. Koshinaka takes it, stays on his feet and screams, but is then dropped by a Kawada lariat for two. He no-sells a back handspring from Tajiri but is caught with a superkick as the match breaks down again and everyone starts brawling. Over in the corner, Nagata has Tenryu trapped in the White Eyes Nagata Lock, as Tajiri seemingly spots a perfect chance to blind his opponent, spraying him with green mist. Nagata then NO-SELLS it, stays with his eyes rolled back like a zombie, stands up and clubs Tajiri with a knee before falling down doing his salute and finally selling it. That was clever, original and fun. Love Nagata.
Koshinaka then does a hip attack and Samurai Powerbomb for the finish. This was so awesome, I might be biased because I absolutely love everyone involved in this but you should love them all too so yeah, I have every right to be biased. They all bought it, the crowd was on fire and they did some really fun and creative spots. Awesome main event. ****1/4

Final Thoughts

Actually a pretty decent show. I don’t think this model would have been sustainable for HUSTLE long term but for this show at least, it was enjoyable. Absolutely loved the main event, and the undercard was largely inoffensive, not to mention only 4 matches so an easy watch. Maybe my favourite HUSTLE show outside of the first maybe 10 or so they did before it got a bit too into itself with the sports entertainment stuff.

Final Rating ~ ***1/2

[Fundertaker]

This is also at the tail end of the original run of HUSTLE (if you even want to consider Wataru Sakata's "MAN'S WORLD" shows as its 2nd coming) as they only held 2 more shows before closing down and were already far away from the big arena, huge spectacle variety showcase that they were known for. Actually having New Japan wrestlers in there (NJPW and Dragon Gate were pretty much the only companies that wouldn't collaborate with HUSTLE from the start, meaning that New Japan knew they were on the way out sooner than later) and this being an anniversary show for a wrestler as a ploy for people to come and watch were also not good optics for its future.

So, no, this model was absolutely not sustainable for HUSTLE. But neither was the original TV Tokyo production money led model that preyed on nostalgia and fad for ratings rather than an actualy wrestling (sports entertainment or otherwise) company, as as soon as the ratings got low, TV Tokyo withdrew the founding, most of the big names they were using left and it became a playground for Sakata, freelancers and a few guests until there was no more money.