A Mish Mash of random thougts - Zero-1, Battlarts & WWE

Zero-1 10/11/2010

- (International Jr. Title) Ikuto Hidaka (c) vs Masamune


Really dug the opening matwork section but the rest of this felt flat like it was missing that extra spark of energy to take it to the next level. Darkly lit, small building with a half asleep crowd didn't help, whole thing just felt more like a slightly above average house show match then a televised championship title bout.

- Masato Tanaka & Shinjiro Ohtani vs Tetsuhiro Kuroda & Kintaro Kanemura

Kanemura & Tanaka are among my 10 most favorite wrestlers ever, Kuroda's pretty up thear too and i've alwasys loved Ohtani but everyone in this is well past their prime except Tanaka so I didn't have high hopes. At best I fig this would be a fun trip down memory lane, get in, hit a few sig spots and call it a wrap but they worked pretty hard with Kuroda especially steping things up. Final few mins with him vs Ohtani were pretty nice as they've always worked well together. Fun match that exceded my exspectations.

Battlarts

10/05/1998

Bob Backlund vs Daisuke Ikeda

Bob Backlund, Japan, Battlarts, Insane over the top theatrics, 85% whackiness, Backlund screaming, yelling, dancing, doing Terry Funk style animated crazy man bumping & goofball selling, wild swinging into thin air, falling over on fans, Backlund slaps the hell out of Ikeda, Ikeda gives Backlund the stiffest headbutt he's likely ever taken in his life, sold out K-hall crowd going apeshit, jumping up & down and loving every second, EXACTLY how you figure this would be on paper. Yup....

(B-CUP '98 Tournament R1) Hisakatsu Oya vs Greg Valentine

Was curious to see how much Valentine would try and adapt his style to Battlarts and the answer is that, well, he didn't. He pretty much just wrestled the same here as he would anywhear else in the world. No knock however as Valentine is still pretty dang awesome even this late in his career and this match is all about him showing off. Big batches of stiff chops, forearms & elbows, toss in a figure 4 and you're good to go. The mainstream US sceen had passed him by at this stage but he looked like he'd have fit right in working any number of Japan promotions at the time. Also gotta say, as a long time FMW super fan it was weird as hell watching Oya play underdog whiping boy as every other match of his I can think of that i've seen he either wrestles on the same level as his opponent or is a dominating heel/craft vetran. Here he just gets the crap kicked out of him and then wins with a surprise roll up. He didn't stink at the role but not exactly his forte etither. Anyways still a really fun sub 10 min match.

(B-CUP '98 Tournament R1) Yuki Ishikawa vs Mitsuhiro Matsunaga

Good vs Evil, Them vs Us, 2 mother fuckers that don't like each other about to fight. Ishikawa, Battlarts Ace, representitive of clean pure skill based sportsman like grappling & striking contest. Matsunaga, Mr. Danger, dastardly invader, representitive of anything goes, weapon wielding hardcore matches. Matsunaga waste no time getting things started as he whips out a fuckin sword he smugled into the ring and goes after Ishikawa. He then uses every other dirty trick he can think of, he stabs him with a fork, he uses chairs, he chokes, he stomps, he bites him with his vampire fangs, just for the hell of it he goes back to his martial arts roots and tosses in a few karate kicks and a suplex too. Ishikawa fights back here and thear but keeps getting cut off and gets bloodied up. He does kind of wussy blade job on his head actually but all is forgiven when a few mins later he goes to the complete other end of the spectrum of balls out manliness and gets his arm legit carved up by Matsunaga's fork and starts driping blood all over. Finally he's able to catch Matsunaga with something and make his comeback to the delight of the crowd, and since this match is about pride as much as anything he never results to using Matsunaga's own weaposn against him. Instead he proves his style is better and finishes him with holds & suplexes, a quick sleeper puts Matsunaga out and Ishikawa mounts him and rains down punches as the ref calls for the bell and gives him the KO victory. Pro Wrestling can't get any more Pro Wrestling then this match here. Great stuff.

10/23/1998

Yuki Ishikawa & Bob Backlund vs Alexander Otsuka & Hisakatsu Oya

You can really tell the Bat Bat guys are just totally marking out to be in thear with Backlund, loving it just as much as the fans. Anyways, this was much better then the Ikeda singles match wth a more impressive Backlund performance as you still get all the crazy old man fun but also get more "hey don't forget i'm still a really great wrestler who'll rip your freakin arm off" stuff to go along with it. Lot of diffrent things going on in this match, some comedy, some shoot style, some old school Muga goodness, someone busting out a suicide dive. Really impressed by how well they blended it all together. They aren't doing 1 long stretch of a certain style and then moving on, they pretty rapidly switch from one mode to another but it all feels totally natural and seamless with everyone on the same page. Good stuff

Also, i've decided Bob Backlund vs Johnny Saint is my new dream match :)
 
 
WWE Survivor Series 11/18/2007


2007 doesn't feel THAT long ago but it's coming up on 4 years now. Weirded me out to see how much turn over in talent there's been since this show, of the 40-50 people including anouncers and stuff that appeared on this show only maybe 1/4 are still around today and that's including guys like HHH & Taker who aren't around that much. Random fact, in the time since this show's happened HHH has only held the title 2 times, hard to believe. Only matches on this entire show that really lived up to my exspectations was the 10 woman tag & Hornswaggle vs Khali. Diva tag wasn't great, only went 5 mins, just enough for everyone to get in, do a tiny bit and then get out quickly, but it was enjoyable enough popcorn action + Mickie James kissed Melina for the pin, can't complain about that. The midget vs the giant only went 3 mins and had Khali smackig the hell out of him with a stiff as slap to the head which made me laugh. Hell in a Cell with Undertaker vs Batista I liked a lot too, best match on the show easily but judged against other Cell matches it felt really middle of the pack. Punk/Miz/Morrison was OK, but nothing memorable at all. Tag title match with Murdoch/Cade vs Rhodes/Holly was just plain fucking awful and felt like it draged forever. 9 man Survivor Series match I enjoyed but felt like it should have been better, just a nice solid match with a few really good moments mixed in. No one really looked bad in the match but the best guys in the by far were Finlay, Rey, Big Daddy V & HHH. The exstended HHH/Jeff vs Umaga/Finlay portion was the best part but a little too little too late to save the whole thing. Orton vs HBK stunk, i've been watching a lot of World of Sport the past few days so going from seeing Jim Breaks & Johnny Saint & Zoltan Bostchick rip things up on the mat to Shawn Michaels & Orton busting out a 20 pound bag of nothin hapening chinlocks is quite painful and I was suprememly bored by about 75% of this match. The match being built around the lame ass Orton can lose the title by DQ (hmmmmm, sounds familiar but I don't know why) vs HBK can't use the Superkick (yawn) stip didn't help. Also, post match there's quite the moment whear Shawn is selling the horrible beating he's taken during the match, crawling on his hands and knees desperatly reaching towards the fans to help pull him up, instead the fans just grab his hand and happily mug to the camera making the stupidest faces you could possibly imagine, HBK and his pain and suffering 3 inches from his face be damned. Whole show really felt like a glorified Smackdown.

WWE Superstars 8/26/2010

-Goldust vs William Regal

Didn't get nearly as much out of this as some others did. A fairly good 5 minute tv match but that's all it is, nothing to really memorable or standout.

- Curt Hawkins & Vance Archer vs The Dudebusters

Fairly bland match, first time seeing the Dudebusters that I can remember, wasn't that impressed outside of one of them hitting a pretty sweet dropkick from the top. First time seeing Vance Archer since his TNA days, he's a guy I always liked and thought got unfairly labled as a really shitty wrestler by a lot of people. He's not the greatest ever or anything but he has his moments and he looked fine here. I'm surprised the WWE never did much with him as there's far worse guys they keep around.

- Chris Masters vs Drew McIntyre

Having not seen any of his work since his crappy first run a few years back this got recomended to me as a match I should check out to see how much Chris Masters had improved. As an overall match I didn't think it was that great, just a good solid bout. Drew, who i've only seen a few times previously didn't look that great here, so that's what took it down for me. He was in controll for most of the match but I really couldn't get into much of his offense. Masters himself did look really awesome however and did a great job selling the leg, it's just that it came across like a 1 man show to me. I've heard they've had other good matches so this was enough to make me want to check out those and some other Masters matches too. Also, never noticed it before but McIntrye looks exactly like Brian Kendrick only taller and sounds exactly like him too except with an accent, weird.

SMASH 4 6/25/2010

- Yusuke Kodama vs Akira

Typical vet vs rookie match. Kodama got to show off a little bit and looked the best he has in any outing so far, still a long long ways to go but he showed a tiny bit of potential atleast.

- Mentallo & Akira Shoji vs Kim Numpum & Yun Gang Chul

Good god, between pre match hype video, entrances, a LONG ass Numpum pre match promo, the match itself, and more talking from Numpum post match this got almost 30 mins of tv time. Was dreading this going in but the match itself was actually kind of decent, Yun Gang was working a 14th rate Kinya Oyanagei time travling saluting soldier gimmick. While not what I would call good, he was passable enough and could do a few simple basic things well and a few not so simple things sloppily. Crushed poor Mentallo's face trying to do a twisting senton. Numpum larely stayed out of the action and when he was in he didn't look like the absolute worst wrestler in existence this time. Mentallo was really the glue that held this together even though Shoji/Kim was the focus and he got the big win over Yun Gang with a moonsault.

- Isami vs Kushida

Modern hardcore match with Isami Claus brining Kushida some presents in the form of ladders and barbed wire boards. Gotta say I like Kushida a lot more in this environment. Not necesarily as a hardcore wrestler, but just as a guy with a bit of an edge. As I said in my SMASH 3 review, he's 10 kinds of generic when he's trying to work your usual spotty jr match but he's far more interesting as a dude in a fight for his life against a mad man or even as in the role of Robert Gibson waiting for hot tag like he was playing on Smash 2. A few minor anoyances in this, Kushida didn't put over the few hardcore bumps he took that well near the end and he tried to turn it a litte too much into your typical jr style match but still, Isami brought out the best in him here and overall I liked this match a lot.


Side tanget #1. Gotta say Isami doing the "i'm gonna injure myself to injure my opponent and show you how tough and crazy I am" stuff really doesn't work well for him. Jun Kasai for example can do that kind of stuff and pull it off because you buy that he's that nuts and gets off on the punishment, with Isami it just sorta seems stupid.

Side tanget #2, weird as hell seeing Esui working ring crew duty on these shows since she retired from wrestling before SMASH even started. I totally forgot they had an MMA division that she ended up hooking up with.

Side tanget #3, I never want to see a close up of Tajiri talking in random outdoor settings again in my life.

Side tanget #4, Starbuck is the spitting image of Balls Mahoney if he were a little skinier and had all his teeth, upon first glance before I knew who it was I totally thought he was Balls.

Side tanget #5. I really dig when promotions have ending theme songs for their tv shows, FMW using "Blind Faith" circa 97 was my fave. SMASH using "Auld Lang Syne" is a really weird choice but somehow is fitting.

- Lin Bairon, Tajiri & Hajime Ohara vs Jessica Love, Stark Adder & Haijy Heimo Ukonselka

By the standards of Tajiri, Lin & even Ohara this was an off night sorta. No one looked bad or even close to it but they didn't bring their A game either. Lin especially toned down her act and didn't try anything too fancy which was probably for the best given her oppoents. She even had a rare botch as she messed up a 619 atempt. Still, this match was more about showing off the new comers anyways and on that end it actually did deliver. I made it 10 seconds into Jessica Love, heard his stupid moaning and decided i'd FF through all of his parts, the other 2 I was pretty impressed with. Finnish Viking Warrior Haijy immediatly won me over by playing air guitar with his giant Axe during the entrance, Finnish cave man Stark Adder had me fantasy booking in my mind how awesome it would be if Tajiri dug up Yone & Tsubo Genjin to take these guys on or called in another WWE favor and brought over the Highlanders. Ah, good times to be had thear. Wrestling wise they were about as good as to be exspected, I mean, you don't really want intricate technical holds from your wrestling cave men & vikings, you want clubering brutish madness and that's what we got so I was happy. Fun match. FCF is 2 for 2 in the love/hate column with me now, Starbuck's coming next month to be the tie breaker. Toshie Uematsu's also coming next month, yay.

- Shuri vs Kana

It's funny, when it comes to the subject of Kana and her working stiff, it was never so much that she worked stiff that bothered me, it was always more that she worked stiff in an era whear it's not done that often against people who clearly aren't into/used to working that style so a lot of the time it just felt uncomfortable to watch. Here she's up against the former Karate girl, a chick with a legit MMA background and what does Kana do? She 100% pulls her punches and works lighter then i've seen her do in ages. Not complaining either, just something I got a kick out of. She was great here and I much prefer this to seeing her play nise Hotta. Match was awesome, they did a great job of making this seem like a big deal with all the pre match hype vids and they kept that vibe up for the entire match. There was a hint of hatred in the air but it was more about "i'm going to prove i'm better then you" then "i'm going to punch your face in". Bulk of the match was built around really agressive mat work mixed in with some very impressive kick exchanges. Loved the selling in this too as both did a good job of putting over the fatigue from how hard they were fighting as the match went on. In the end it comes down to a strike battle and KG Shuri gets the huge win with a kick to the head knocking Kana out long enough to score her the pin. I remember last year when I read the result of this match my reaction was "WTF, really?" but seeing it now, Shuri def deserved the win as she steped her game up big time for this match and looked every bit like someone on Kana's level. Post match is great with Shuri sheding tears of joy and celbrating while Kana slowly walks off with an "I can't believe that happened" look on her face, mid way through leaving she stops, glances back and flashes a brief tiny evil looking smile as if to say "i'm going to kill you for this". Awesome stuff, i'm surprised Kana had a moment like that in her. Easily one of my favorite matches from 2010.

A nice bit of redemption for SMASH after the horribleness of their last show. The good was really good and the suck didn't suck as much as I thought it would.

Quick SMASH thoughts - Shows 1-3

So been kind of avoiding SMASH for the past 2 years but they've had a lot of joshi involvement i've wanted to see so I decided to give it a shot, let's see how this goes


SMASH 1 3/6/2010

- Tajiri vs Mentallo

Thought this was a pretty decent match. Mentallo didn't wow me but he seemed fine for a basic jr guy and Tajiri carried his end.

- Lin Bairon open workout with Tajiri

Awesome stuff. Ray working unmasked is just as awesome as she is with it and she has a cool look to boot. Here she gets to show off all her whacky kung fu flipping action making me really excited to see her on future shows.

- (Women) Shuri vs Meiko Satomura

Dug this quite a lot. Meiko is Meiko so is always great, Shuri hung in thear and outside of a few weak strikes looked good, def seems like someone who could develop into a very good wrestler if she sticks around long enough.

- Akira Shoji vs Leatherface

Really awful stuff, Latherface is no Super Leather. That's all i'll say

- (Hardcore Match) Tommy Dreamer vs Tajiri

Straight out of the late 90's/early 00's with lame hardcore wrestling. Cookie sheets and trash cans and kendo sticks galore. There were some fun moments mixed in, the table stuff was amusing and Tajiri did some cool shit so not a complete joke of a match, just nothing special.

- Kushida vs Hajime Ohara

Liked this a fair bit but it felt like it was missing something, felt a little robotic and emotionless I guess so I had a hard time getting into it seriously. Still, the action was good and I could see myself enjoying this more on another day if I was in a diffrent mood.

- Eugene promo

Pretty funny as he promises to come to Japan and punish Tajiri for being a bad bad boy for promising to bring him to Japan and never doing so.

Thought's afer the first show, SMASH is an interesting group. All complaints aside, I pretty much enjoyed everything I saw except the Leatherface match and they had enough interesting things to make me look forward to the next show.

SMASH 2 4/23/2010

- Tajiri vs Kyle Sebastion

Kyle's a big gangly kid, taller then your average jr (unless Tajiri is just way shorter then I thought) but too skinny to pass as a heavy. They did a lot of cool chain wrestling stuff so I really dug this a lot, Tajiri is great at that type of stuff and Kyle kept up nicely. Thought he was super impressive, the best looking guy of all the random non WWE foreigners SMASH has brought in that i've seen .

- Yusuke Kodama vs Hajime Ohara

Kodama's debut, your typical 1st outing for a Japanese rookie, gets to show a little bit of fire and get in some basic stuff but gets beat easily by the vetran w/o too much trouble. Couldn't tell much about Kodama from this, he didn't look horrible but wasn't impressive either.

- (Scramble Bunkhouse Barbedwire Bat Deathmatch) Mentallo vs Masato Tanaka vs Akira Shoji

They do a video package pre match to get over that Mentallo is a big FMW mark so this is a huge dream match for him and hey, masked FMW super fan is a gimmick I can throw my full support behind. This is full on old school early 90's garbage style and I loved this match. The work isn't crisp or smooth or full of high end offense, it's an ugly sloppy match but they had a lot of spirit and passion and that's more important to me. Shoji bleeds a gusher soaking himself and everyone else in the match with his blood and he generally played whiping boy for the other 2. Former MMA guy turned death match worker is also something I can support cause fuck, the world needs a new Mr. Danger. Him going nuts and riping off his shirt Hogan style while covered in blood and telling Tanaka to bring it on was a cool visual. Mentallo gets the win with a moonsault onto the bat onto Shoji. Again, LOVED this.

- Tajiri vs Eugene

So my memories of Eugene from the WWE were of him as a guy who did amusing goofy shit but largely dumbed down his actual wrestling work after a while to punch/kick/stolen sig spots off bigger names thusly I didn't go into this with high hopes. After a little bit of gaga to start with they get serious and take it to the mat and remind people that oh yeah, Eugene actually does have a lot of wrestling skill afterall which I really enjoyed. Nothing against the comedy stuff either as I like that too and in this match they do a great job of mixing both styles together and getting over the story of Eugene being pissed off at Tajiri but Tajiri not wanting to hurt his friend. Easily the best Eugene match i've ever seen.

- Kushida & Lin Bairon vs Hajime Ohara & Shuri

Really good, long match that told a cool story. Bairon is a wild woman who doesn't understand the finer points of tag team wrestling...like the whole tagging part (a cute Chinese Kamala if you will) and she's making her "debut" so she wants to show off and go at it alone. She demands to start and doesn't even want to bother with Shuri, calling out Ohara who obliges. She has some nice exchanges with both Ohara & Shuri, lots of hate between her and Shuri. Kush tags himself in with a tap to the head and goes at it for a while with both. Bairon tags back in and we get a really fun section of her getting double teamed, fighting back but refusing to tag out, getting beat up some more, finally wanting out but having no one to tag because Shuri & Ohara took out Kushida. Ohara's someone who just has the scumbag look written all over him but Shuri is quite the unlikely heel here, both are quite good in the role. Kush finally gets the super mega big hot tag and runs wild allowing Bairon to recover and get the big win with a spinny flippy twisting moonsault thing. Awesome stuff. Wish everyone involved would work more like this all the time.

Thoughts after the 2nd show, 3 really good matches and 2 decent ones, lots of variety, some cool wrestlers that have a lot of personality, some whacky fun characters but mostly doing serious wrestling without the stupidity you find in other "sports entertainment" style feds. This is a fed I could see myself becoming a big fan of.

Smash 3 5/29/2010

- Golem Knight vs Akira

Holy shit, I don't know who Golem Knight is or whear he came from but he stunk the joint out here in an awful match that old man Akira wasn't game to try and carry him through. One of the worst guys i've ever seen get a spot in Japan, so bad that even if he flew himself over and paid to be on the show Tajiri should refund his cash and a bonus to never come back. Mind blowingly I do know that he gets brought back for 2 more matches after this before disapearing.

- Jessica Love vs Hajime Ohara

Love's a Finish dude doing a tranny gimmick. I've seen quite a lot of flamboyant gay molesters in wrestling over the years, enough to know I don't ever need to see anymore so I had no patience for this. It's not a gimmick I particularly mind if they can also bring good wrestling to the table too, I love Pimpi in AAA for example, so I waited a bit to see if Jessica could do the same....which he didn't. Add in him doing the most over the top annoying, 1 million times worse then anything you'll ever see in Joshi, screams and moans and...noises and I couldn't take any more. Made it maybe half way into this before I gave up and skiped to the next match.

- Kim Numpum, Mentallo & Lin Bairon vs Akira Shoji, Yusuke Kodama & Shuri

Numpum is some awful barely trained guy from Korea who I assume is either a really famous celeb, money mark for SMASH or both to have gotten put on the show, there's no other excuse. Kodama again was just kind of thear, the other 4 looked nice, Lin especially and they brought just enough to the table to keep this out of the rubish bin but it was seriously draged down by Numpum. Most interesting thing about this was Kana's run in and brawl with Kana post match.

- (FCF Title) Valentine (c) vs Tajiri

Parade of shitty foreigners continues, streak of fun/good Tajiri matches ends. Valentine was just embarassing with his over the top "look at me i'm playing pro wrestling bad guy" schtick. Just phony and fake in every way, took me out of the match at the start and the wrestling iteself was so bland and average that the whole thing was a lost cause.

- Prince Devit vs Kushida

The first half was really good, as i've said before I dig matches build around basic mat work and chain wrestling and this had some really good sections of that. They kind of lost me for the 2nd half though as it became your standard jr wrestling 101. Here's some head drops, here's some flips, here's some near falls. Impressive looking but nothing to really make any of it stand out. Don't want to sound too harsh on this however as I did still like it a lot and compared to the rest of the card it was a 5 star affair but in the grand scheme of things it wasn't anything special. After watching this, i've come to the conclusion that Kushida is the Flying Kid Ichihara of the new generation. A guy who's in everyway a pedestrian, typical stereo type of a jr wrestler. Like some AI created template you'd get from a video game. He does just enough well that it would be wrong to call him bad because he's not but there's nothing unique about him at all and when I think of all the guys out thear working in New Japan, NOAH, DDT, BJW, MPro, Kdojo, Osaka Pro, Dragon Gate and on and on I could easily name a million dudes who are better.

Thoughts after the 3rd show, who ever is in charge of booking the foreign talent needs a bullet in the head. It's great that SMASH is using guys outside of the usual super indy bubble that typically get chances in other companies as there's a lot of really good undiscovered talent out thear but the new ones used on this show aren't it. I know the FCW guys play a big part on future shows and well, this Starbuck guy better bring the goods cause the rest of his Finish crew stinks and this whole show left a bad taste in my mouth. Looking forward to Kana/Shuri on the next show but that's about it at this point.

Random Quickie - Michinoku Pro 12/16/2010 Dick Togo vs Rui Hyugaji

Wrestling's awesome in how simple it can be. I'd never seen or even heard of Hyugaji before this match but they show a short 2 minute video package before this match and it does a great job of setting up the story. A month ago young goody goody Hyugai turned heel to join up with the evil gang Kowloon by attacking Togo and helping them win a match so now they're gonna fight. I'm sure things are more detailed then that but that's the basic jist of things and all you really need to know. Guess i'm a little late to the party on this one as I see it did quite well in the Purotopia best of list. But yeah, this match ruled. Reading over a few people's thoughts on this something that I don't think has been brought up nearly as much as it should is just how much this works as Togo fighting a younger version of himself. They're not similar in move set or skill wise of course but personality wise yeah. Togo's been in Kaientai, Far East Connection, Legion of Violence, the Itallian Horsemen and every other kinda bad ass heel group you can imagine all over the wrestling world. Now here he is in this match, almost 20 years into the business, a few months shy of retirement, bloodied up, in the fight of his life against a young upstart wanna be kid. A kid who's only 3 years into his career, a kid who was fuckin 3 years old when Dick Togo started wrestling, a kid trying to prove he's a man now, a man who's a bigger Dick then Dick. Stuff like this is why wrestling's great.