Takada! Kudo! Jericho! Allbright! KAORU! Tanaka! Ooya! Waltman! and other stuff I saw this week!
Howdy!
Welcome to Death Valley Driver Video Review #6!
The lovely wife is visiting her parents in Carolina so I got the whole
house to myself! No Lifetime Movies! No quilting shows! Just wall to
wall wrestling! I HAVE NO LIFE! HEY! Lifes are for squares, and I'm
waxing and milking all you squares...
- To hell with Takada vs Misawa, I wanna see a rematch of the Gary
Allbright/Takada match from 1994 I saw on tape this morning (Tim went to
ECW in Philly last night so I ain't thanking him! You suck!:) A jealous
Dean gets a grip... :)). Allbright looked awkward during obligatory
exchanging mutual knee-bar section of that is a staple of all shootstyle
matches but his suplexes were near perfect and he sold Takada's knees to
the stomach like a freakin champ. The best part was that I got to mark
out to a full nelson for the first time in a while. In shootstyle, a
Full Nelson is as cool as a Skyytwister Press is in pro style, because
you know in a pseudo-real wrestling match that a Full Nelson by Gary
Allbright would choke you out immediately, and the second time he slapped
it on Takada, it was like being a kid again and seeing Ric Flair put the
figure four on BlackJack Mulligan. I want to see a rematch where Takada
takes him to the mat and doesn't get by on kicking him all to hell.
Allbright, by the time it was over, looked like he could wrestle circles
around Takada (which I guess he could) and Takada looked like he didn't
have the sophistication to mat wrestle with him credibly (which I know he
could). UWFi can be the best worked wrestling in the world when the right
guys are in and I wonder why Vader and Allbright would ever leave a style
so suited for them so well. The Vader match against Tamara was great as
Vader tears the punk a new one and kisses him afterwards. I like Vader as
a real person in UWFi than as the version we get in the states. A
humanized Vader is a truly spooky thing.
- I watched a mountain of FMW and GAEA stuff from earlier this year
(thanks Rob and St. Phil! Unless you too went to see ECW last night!:)).
Attention all future bookmakers: to see how to set up a feud see how
Chigusa Nagayo beats the crap out of Migumi Kudo and drags Kudo's mortal
enemy, Shark Tsuchiya, into the fray of the FMW against GAEA feud, and
thus set up the streetfight at the 5/5/96 FMW supershow. Chigusa is so
good at getting angles over that I don't even speak Japanese and I still
wanted her to kick Tsuchiya's Pogo-aping ass (speaking of phrases that
didn't translate well.. :)). Shark powerbombs Kudo and then challenge
Chigusa and this leads to a massive GAEA/FMW women's riot through the
audience, as Chigusa's tiny followers try to restrain Nagayo and, at the
same time, take fabulous potshots at the FMW youngsters that are trying
to restrain Tsuchiya. GAEA vs FMW is the most fun-filled feud in
wrestling and Chigusa is great at pissing off the tough gals in FMW. The
riot is MUST SEE TV! The exquisite KAORU wrestled Combat Toyota on the
Phil tape and it is as choice as one would expect from the
"now-that-I've-become-an-interesting-wrestler-I'll-retire" Combat Toyata
and KAORU. KAORU is the double whammy because she is a world class
wrestler and never lets up the I-hate-FMW mentality even after this great
match when a handshake would be the order of the day. KAORU does her
zillion suplex and moonsault variations and hung with the butt-kicking
aspects of Combat's arsenal and threw in some garbage spots of her own
for good measure. Combat showed off her expanded mat attack and hit one
af the more graceful dropkicks one would see from a person of her size.
Combat should move to the US and work US pansy style women's wrestling if
her body isn't holding up to back-drop-driver intensive Japanese style.
It's a shame to show so much promise at the end one's career and not get
the props you deserve. The Megumi Kudo/Shark Tsuchiya Barb Wire Death
Match surpasses the 5/5 Toyota/Kudo match in terms of violence per square
foot, but Tsuchiya sucks as much as Pogo, her prototype, in the ring so
this wasn't nearly as cool as the CT/MK match. The only really good part
was when Kudo gives Shark the HORRIBLE back-drop driver from heck! I'm
still feeling that! I can't believe Kudo's retiring next year, too. She
rules.
-Also on the FMW tape that I got was the usual mixed bag one get's from
the FMW men's department. The absolute dirt worst Ricky Fuji match I've
ever seen (versus Nanjo) is on it and it would make crops fail. On a
MUCH better note Hisakatsu Ooya wrestles Daisuke Ikeda from BattleArts.
Ooya is the co-chairman of "Coolest Wrestlers in a Garbage Wrestling
Organization" (Masato Tanaka co-chairs) because he pulled a good match
out a BattleArts wrestler. Ikeda is pretty intense, as most of those
shootstyle types are, and does the usual shootstyle drill: kick, knee,
go for an cross armbreaker, opponent gets to the ropes, stand up, kick,
knee, go for a knee bar, etc. Ooya stops the madness by suplexing the
F#CK out of him twice. Ooya is becoming a pro style mat fave of mine and
he works the half-assed shootstyle that IS BattleArts better than any of
them do and sells better any of those Pancrase never-weres ever could,
and does some of the most vicious, Benoitesque suplexes on earth. The
six man street fight between FMW and W*ING was pretty good, mostly
because Masato Tanaka was a part of the proceedings to kick the intensity
level up a bit, and it worked best when he and Kanemura were going at it
in the audience as Tanaka can do any suplex and Kanemura can take any
bump, the more painful the better I guess. Hayabusa and Tanaka get extra
points for successful manipulation of a ladder in a barb wire match, and
I freaked out for Tanaka's tope over barbed wire, which would have really
sucked if he slipped in Matsunaga's pool of blood or something. Hayabusa
went flying into the spidernet about four times which made his "agony of
defeat" tantrum at the end seem that much more plausible. An added
highlight that made me happy was the unfurling of the W*ING flag at the
end that said: "Wrestling International New Generation; (And wrapped in
barbed wire) KING OF DANGER." I immediately called the KING OF DANGER
(Cliff) and told him that I had a skirt idea for him.:)
- I watched the <<>> WAR international Junior Tournament from
last year and that was the f*cking miracle tape. There was the obvious
cool stuff (Jericho/Ultimo Dragon) but there were things I could not
imagine on it: two Gedo matches that were great, SEAN WALTMAN doing stuff
I've never seen him do (lucha moves, northern light suplexes, kicks nine
times stiffer than his best day in the Whiff). The Gedo/Waltman was a
mutual miracle match because it was twice as good as anything I've seen
either of them in. Gedo in WAR is such a surly punk that when it works
and he is in with a good worker, he can take it to another level. WCW
should look at Waltman in this tournament, which included a good match
against Negro "Out-in-the-First-Round-in-Japan" Casas, and bring him in
as this version. Forget that he is a little guy- I mean HELL! he will
tower over Misterio and Juventud- and just let him kick people's asses
like he does here. They can remove his WWF candyass image by letting him
go wild like this in his first match in. The Ultimo Dragon vs Chris
Jericho RULED THE WORLD! When Jericho gets to the point in WCW where he
is using his whole arsenal he had better be the most over face in WCW or
I will start doubting the intelligence of wrestling fans (that was a
joke, I guess). This tournament is best that I currently own on tape.
Every match is at the peak of every participants ability and I was
shocked by how good the performances of some wrestlers that I didn't
think much of before were.
Next week: All the stuff I said I would watch last week! Lucha! Lucha!
Lucha! I swear! and I'll watch the AJW that has been hanging over my head
for three weeks! (I need to get over the feeling that I would be cheating
on Chigusa and the gals.:))
NANIWA~!
Dean Rasmussen,
"There's no place called heaven if we haven't already been there."
- The Verlaines
