COBRA! Tigermask! KOSHINAKA! Fujinami! TAKADA! Yamada! HASE! and other stuff I saw and heard this week!
Howdy!
Welcome to DEATH VALLEY DRIVER VIDEO REVIEW #21! I started watching the
History of the IWGP Jr Heavyweight Title (Rob RULES THE DING DANG
EARTH!) and got hooked into watching all five hours of it, once I
started. This is the ultimate single tape to watch all at once, because
you can get a good idea of how each legend of the ring compares to each
other because their matches are so close together or they wrestle against
common opponents, thus making comparisons easier to set up. The weirdest
thing overall I found, from watching all of this, is that there is a
period, between where this tape left off (3/16/89) and now, where the
modern day New Japan Jr style developed and it is strange because, from
where it left off, an even bigger emphasis on shootstyle seemed to be the
direction that the Juniors were going.
The tape starts with Tatsumi Fujinami as a Junior and he is the prototype
for the modern style much more than Tigermask I would say. He was such a
solid strongstyle wrestler who could work the Luchadores' style
(including a match with a younger Perro Aguayo who sucked back then too!)
into his matches very fluidly and go back to being unbelievably stiff.
The hyped up work rate that his matches display defined the gruelling
style that the division would latch onto, which is the key to making him
the prototype. The difference between him and a 90's jr heavyweight is
that it wasn't a meshing of styles into one style. He was wrestling
strong style but could work the Lucha style, but never incorporated it
into his own style like they do today (except for his tope, I guess).
His incorporation of strongstyle moves and psychology into a very fast
paced match and a premium of highspots got the ball rolling for the
Junior Heavyweight style we see today.
The second cog in the wheel is the TigerMask section, which is very
erratic and wild as one would expect. The thing that struck me about
Tigermask is that ALL the young Luchadores of today steal from TigerMask-
especially in the springboard and rana department, ALL the young Japanese
Juniors steal from Koshinaka and Hase- especially in selling department.
Ohtani stole his "Crawl-Out_of_the_ring-After Getting "Ohtani-Killer"ed"
directly from the Takada/Hase megamatch. The thing that irritated me
about Tigermask is that he wrestled the same match a WHOLE lot of times
and wasn't interested in selling a whole lot of anything to anybody
especially anybody Mexican (See the TM/Villano III match). Whereas
Fujinami would sell Mando Guerrero's odd Mexican leglocks, TM was far to
busy being insecure about wrestling pro-style while fancying himself a
world class shooter to make the match with Black Tiger as good as the
deeply pro style Cobra would do later. I also noticed that when it came
to awesome highflyers, El Gran Hamada was about as great (thus the name
HAHAHA!) as you could have gotten when he was young and gave a TM a run
for his money in the matches that appear on this tape, though he is more
cool and graceful in the context of the match, fitting in sweet lucha
sequences in at opportune moments, as opposed to the human highlight film
experience of the TigerMask matches. The thing I'm left with overall
after watching the TigerMask section, is that he was a great highflyer
and a great wrestler, but his influence wasn't nearly as great on how
good Jr Hvywght matches are worked today as Fujinami's, Koshinaka's and
Takada's Junior days were.
Cobra's reign followed and it was also revolutionary because he was the
first to really attempt to combine the Lucha elements into his mat style.
The psychology of his matches were as solid as the Fujinami reign and
blows TigerMask's spot-a-thons out of the water. Cobra was so stiff and
fluid, but blows a WHOLE lot of spots because he was pushing the envelope
of what he was capable of doing, it seemed to me. He also sold like a
motherfuc*er- making the Black Tiger matches seem pretty hardhitting-
though they were steeped in Lucha looseness. The Cobra/Dynamite Kid and
the Saito/Cobra matches establish his stiffer work, which are all as
credible as anything in the heavyweight division. Cobra is such a great
lost wrestler- combining the stiffness and intensity of New Japan Strong
Style and the graceful movement of a luchadore, cool mask, great matches
that were rock solid in structure and execution- a true model for Eddy
Guerrero and hopefully Psicosis and Juventud. I don't know why he isn't
enshrined like the others in this tape.
The drastic change that hit the division is apparent in the first
Cobra/Takada match where Takada BEATS the holy CRAP out of him and makes
his style look so weak. It reminded me of the Maeda/Fujinami match from
the HoIWGPHT tape except there is less of a defense of the pro style of
wrestling by Cobra in this one. Takada just kicks the holy fuck out of
him and Cobra kinda writhes on the mat taking super stiff kicks to the
head as he tries to figure out how to work with this truly foreign style.
The Takada stuff is the best stuff on the tape- just because everybody in
wrestling looks like such a collosal wussy compared to the level of
stiffness in any Takada match. The fact that Koshinaka comes into
prominence feuding with Takada at this time helps these matches hit
mindblowing proportions. After watching all of these matches- which were
PERFECT combinations of Pro Style selling and psychology with
bonebreaking shootstyle stiffness with the intensity of the Sam
Wattersonesque Koshinaka- and mix in the ultimate coolness of the two
Yamazaki/Takada matches on the tape- it seemed that shootstyle was
totally replacing lucha as the supporting style to compliment the main
strong style that was always the basis of the Junior division. The
pinnacle of this is the strange anomaly (and coolest match) on the tape-
Keichi Yamada (future Liger Boy) vs Masakatsu Funaki (future Pancrase
Boy). Yamada goes at it with Funaki so well in a shootstyle setting that
it would seem that if the shoot style bug had gotten to young Yamada
would have joined his friend Sano in that other league and would have
been just as great as what he became in New Japan- just differently
great. Luckily something hit Japan (Hamada's influence) that brought all
three styles together into one pretty fabulous style- with lucha
highflying now balancing shootstyle mat work and stiff kicks and Japanese
pro style setting up the psychological starting point for both of these
styles to cohabitate in harmony- with tweaking here and there for effect
to lean more lucha (Michinoku Pro and, maybe one day, WCW Cruiserweight
style) or more shootstyle (TAKA and Ohtani's assorted shootstyle young
punk cronies.) Get this tape. It will make you glad you watch
wrestling.
- Nitro REALLY sucked this week, though two matches were really good.
The Rey/Psicosis match was good, though Psicosis is back to destroying
his body at a frightening rate again. I hope this was just a lapse and
not a trend, as I was digging the progress Psicosis was making in
varying the styles in his matches. The Guerrero/Wright match was really
good I thought, though devoid of any heat. Maybe if Nagata, LaParka,
Jericho, Psicosis and Wright all wrestle Regal in the TV title division
Alex can start rebuilding his career and Nagata's stay won't be a total
wash. This week I start taping Raw. I've been putting it off for too
long and they are getting too many guys I need to see but miss while
taping Nitro (which I watch when I get home from rocking out! WOO-HOO!
You're never too old!:)))
-In reaction to the Nasty Boy shoot, maybe the Nasty Boys will get fired
-which will piss off Hogan and Dusty and they will both quit and they'll
fire Duggan and Wallstreet and....
NANIWA~!
Dean Rasmussen, Super CalHEAD!
