DICK TOGO! TAKA MICHINOKU! Extreme Mayumi! GREAT SASUKE! Dos Caras! KAORU! and other stuff I saw and heard this week!
Howdy!
Welcome to DEATH VALLEY DRIVER VIDEO REVIEW # 16! I'm knee deep in tapes
as we await the big day! This will be sort of a supplemental issue,
because the big dog issue of Yamada/Liger and All-Japan 93 will be out
before this weekend so I figured I'd better gush about this match before
I forget something important about it.
-I have win, place, and show for the DVDVR match of the year! The
Michinoku Pro Ten Man match WHIPPED ASS SO EXTRA HARD! Top to bottom,
the most enjoyable 32 minutes of wrestling I've seen this year (Thanks
Ollie, you f*ckin Rule!). It starts off great with Handsome Dick Togo,
Shiryu, Men's Teiho (with Barry Windhamesque hair), Funaki, and TAKA
Michinoku doing the SOMETHING DX salute and I'm instantly psyched. Dick
Togo comes to the ring in the coolest get-up in Japan- Temporary mask of
a skull with an eyepatch, with the sky blue skull coat- has 2B seen 2 B
B-lieved! The DX boys come out as a group, while the other five come out
individually. Naniwa and Super Delphin battle it out for coolest
entrance, with Delphin winning with the hip Sci-Fi theme music putting
him over the giant claws. Naniwa was also wearing a rather lacklustre
mask- not shiny at all, so he dropped the ball in the outfit department.
I was pissed that the camera went to wide to get the full effect of the
prerequisite group pose. TigerMask, El Gran Hamada and Masato
Yakashiji come out to much less fanfare.
The match itself was relentless and absolutely fabulous without become
totally suicidal (except for TAKA's springboard moonsault into the second
row, which I await our boy Rey's attempt to top.) TAKA was spectacular
when he had to be but didn't overshadow anybody until the aforementioed
Big One. The New Fun Submission Style that Michinoku has been flirting
with (talk about mutant wrestling style) popped up between breathtaking
Lucha Libre sequences. The new adherent to the Newest Wave of Lucha
Libre was Yakashiji. Yakashiji was always the Other Guy in all the
Michinoku undercards, but in this match he did a very credible Misterio
impersonation when his time for springboard intensive hurricanranas
highspots came up. He also hit the best La Pantera Spinning-Slide-Into
-An-Armdrag I've ever seen and he added a few twists to make the move his
very own. Dick Togo stole the show with his psychotically weird presence.
No fat man has ever done so much with so much, or something. He has
really made gargantuan strides towards being the coolest wrestler on the
face of the earth this year. Gran Naniwa made me laugh out loud a few
times and did a great sequence where he tried to mirror a sequence by El
Gran Hamada- where Hamada hit a swinging DDT and then hit a toprope
hurricanrana. Naniwa hits his swinging DDT (the second best (behind
Hamada's) of the six in the match!), and proceeds to stick the old fella
on the turnbuckle. Wise old Hamada doesn't fall for it and does the
"Ultimo Dragon foils Ohtani" spot and Naniwa is miffed. Naniwa ends up
eventually hitting the rana but Hamada makes him earn it (20th best out
of the 57 ranas in the match.:) All that speed and psychology too. I'd
give away the ending if I mentioned the psychology of the final spot.
Super Delphin joined everybody else in the hyper workrate ode-to-lucha
extravaganza by hitting his best moves perfectly. He and Shiryu
rekindled the ongoing feud they have, as they went at it a thousand miles
a minute. They have such a different slant on the lucha spots, adding a
whole lot of stiffness and brutality to the grace and beauty that other
slicker luchadores would use. Shiryu was the only one in the match who
pretty much just put everybody else over- to the point that he didn't
even attempt his signature backflip tope thing. El Gran Hamada was solid
and still spectacular and was the stabilizing force that injected the
psycholgy that his years can accomodate. He was especially effective in
keeping Naniwa and Togo focused while they were in with him. Tiger Mask
and TAKA's main addition to the match was the submission moves section,
with each doing deuling climbing cross-arm breakers and the reprised the
TigerMask-Kicks-The-Hell-Out-TAKA and Taka tries to no-sell him, but more
in the Kawada way and not the RW-Hawk way. I guess that means "try to
hide the pain" no-sell, as opposed to the suckass Hawk version of "I
forgot its fake" no-sell. I could talk forever about this match but it
will pale in comparison to seeing this charming, beautiful crowning
achievement of Michinoku Pro. Get the tape.
-The Great Sasuke/Mil Mascaras/Kobayashi vs Dynamite Kid/Dos
Caras/Original TigerMask would have been okay if the pall of the
condition of the Dynamite Kid wasn't haunting ever person who sees this
match. I was expecting him to look bad after reading the reports, but I
was truly shocked at how unhealthy he looked. I really can't believe he
is turning 38. JDW is right,he looked 65- and emaciated. I guess he is a
double living testimony of the dangers of highspots and the danger of
steroids. If one can look past the Kid, Mascaras and Caras were trying
to make the best of it or so it seemed from the highly truncated version
I have. The Great Sasuke shows that he has learned from the career
threatening injury by doing a fatass Sasuke Special onto Caras onto the
floor. Its too depressing to think of the irony of Sasuke doing that
right after fracturing his skull in a match that had the Dynamite Kid in
it. How much of a clue do you need?
-The Hayabusa/Shinzaki match was the dirt worst. It had a Ricky Fuji
quality to it that I never want to see again. I blame everybody. Lazy,
horrible, ill-conceived, badly executed, anti-climatic- you name it, it's
all that.
-I saw the tip of the GAEA iceberg I just got in (YES! Ollie Rules!) and
evil Mayumi Ozaki makes me feel all funny inside! Yee-HA! She's such a
little ball of evil and it's great! She tends to not work, though, while
filled with evil, which is a downside to an otherwise deliriously
beautiful turn of events. I wish I knew what she said to Chigusa and
KAORU after KAORU was whupped by two little youngsters, (who convert to
Mayumi's army- Nagashimi covertly). Chigusa's expression is priceless
and KAORU looks p.o.ed. This sets up Mayumi beating the hell out of my
gal KAORU in the next match, which was very not JWP but very ECW/FMW in
tone. I await a KAORU vs Mayumi Actual Wrestling Match with baited
breath.
-AWF had a really good Fidel Sierra/Chris Adams match. I'm not kidding.
For some reason, they worked really hard and made it really entertaining.
I was shocked and amazed. Sierra does a side suplex and Adams does La
Majistral. Go figure. The rest of the show really sucked. Ronnie Twist
did an airplane spin as a finisher, which I thought was neat, but he
still was coated in suck.
5 Most Stylish VESTS/COATS currently in wrestling:
5. Jimmy Harts' Misfits Jacket.
4. Kevin Nash's NWO circle the world vest.
3. Dick Togo's Sky Blue Skull Jacket.
2. Dos Caras sparkly red wind-breaker.
1. The truly Rad EMLL Barber's "sparkly scissors" coat.
NEXT: Before Friday, I will have the whole Liger/Yamada and All-Japan 93
stuff totally digested and yammered about! Plus more GAEA, FMW, and G-1
Climax! WOO-HOO!
NANIWA~!
Dean Rasmussen, BlackJack MulliganHEAD!
