Kohei Sato vs. Towa Iwasaki
With Tomoaki Honma now a shell of his former self, Kohei Sato stands tall atop the pantheon of Japanese wrestlers with vocal chords paralysis. A stone cold killer with the voice of a rusty refrigerator. The ideal man. Early portions of this match were slightly clipped out but what was shown was right up my alley. Iwasaki is ZERO1’s latest beefy heavyweight upstart and he was doing a lot of things right out there. Seems a bit reserved personality-wise, but the kid already throws a mean lariat and seems to have some vaguely Kento Miyahara-esque knee strikes up his sleeve, which is a good tool to have in modern Japanese wrestling. This boy was also game to eat all of Kohei’s full force forearms and shoot headbutts, so more power to him. And I mean, come on: I will always be down for a Piledriver finish. ***1/4
Yasu Kubota & Hide Kubota vs. TARU & Chris Vice
TARU seems to have aged about 100 years since the last time I’ve seen him wrestle professionally (which would be Toryumon or early-Voodoo Murders in Muto-era AJPW). Not familiar with the Kubota Brothers, but they seem to be in the same centennial age range as him so I feel like I’m in good hands. As I type these words, the match is already getting clipped to shreds and the glimpses of powder spots and slow motion wrestling I’m seeing make me believe this was an act of mercy on the part of Samurai TV.
Tatsuhito Takaiwa vs. Yoshikazu Yokayama
I can’t decide if this was a Tatsuhito Takaiwa parody match or the Greatest Tatsuhito Takaiwa match. They started trading and no-selling Death Valley Bombs as soon as the bell rang and managed to pack 1 count fighting spirit spots off Brainbusters, Takaiwa Drivers and top-rope Death Valley Bombs in the 7 minutes the match lasted yet it all felt kinda heatless and hollow? I don’t know? **
Masato Tanaka, Ikuto Hidaka & Takuya Sugawara vs. Shigehiro Irie, T-Hawk & El Lindaman
You literally cannot go wrong with the Strong Hearts lads in 6-man action. Fast and furious wrasslin’ fun with a boatload of creative double-team spots and multiple salivating pairings that just might make me come back to ZERO1 to see where this whole Strong Hearts/Revengers thing is heading. Sure, a Tanaka/T-Hawk singles match sounds pretty glorious, but old Masato grumpily no-selling Lindaman’s repeated forearm onslaughts on the apron might’ve been the best interaction of the match. It truly blows my mind how 47 year old Ikuto Hidaka hasn’t lost a step and somehow managed to pull some of the coolest spots of the match with that tricked out corner dragon screw on Lindaman and the sweet two-man Tornado DDT later on. All good! ***1/4
SUGI © vs. HUB – NWA World Jr. Heavyweight Title & International Jr. Heavyweight Title
True story: back in highschool I ran an Osaka Pro fansite for a few months and was extremely invested in the blossoming career of a masked youngster called Super Demekin. 18 years later, I have become an adult asshole without an Osaka Pro fansite while Demekin went through roughly 36 different identities before settling on an evil snakeman gimmick named after a questionable chain of British pub knockoffs in Tokyo. Life comes at you fast. Despite my HUB fandom, I really struggled to get into this. All spots all the time without much heat or anything of interest to string the aforementioned spots together. I did mark out for HUB busting out that Low Ki Rewind Shining Wizard from 2003 and there is undeniable grace to SUGI’s high flying but large parts of this just felt completely flat. **3/4
Yuko Miyamoto & Masashi Takeda © vs. Shinjiro Otani & Shoki Kitamura – NWA Intercontinental Tag Team Title
Beside a profoundly confusing spot where young Kitamura speared his own partner for no reason (except maybe hyper post-modern comedy?), this was much more to my liking. The Big Japan guys make for great tag champions and worked really well with both of their opponents – making Kitamura fight from underneath and indulging Otani’s old man fantasies of doing facewash spots for 5 minutes straight. Non-death match Takeda is always a treat – dude can go in any environment, really. It also needs to be said that I could watch Otani do the Hashimoto tribute legsweep on loop for days – truly the greatest offensive manoeuvre to ever exist. They managed to get some shine on little Shoki for the finish and the kid got over nicely by absorbing a lot of punishment and kicking out of some pretty big bombs. Nothing overly complicated, but still a hard fought tag match with everyone playing his role well. ***1/4
Yuji Hino © vs. Yuji Okabayashi – World Heavyweight Title
What an absolutely colossal serving of beef this was. Nothing less than a vegetarian’s nightmare. Two gargantuan Kaiju monsters so intent on recapturing the hoss violence of Hansen/Vader that Yuji Hino nearly lost a fucking eye. I’m a complete mark for this type of match because chunky behemoths like Hino and Okabayashi are so adept at milking the shit out of every little detail and making fairly simple spots feel like nuclear warfare. Beyond all the captivating chop wars and shoulderblock challenges, these guys were able to turn basic-ass irish-whips into FULL ON TUGS OF WAR. You can keep your Canadian Destroyers, this is what I’m here for.
Like in Okabayashi’s great Champ Carnival match with Dylan James last year, Hino getting inadvertently fucked up added a serious sense of danger to everything and turned the penultimate lariat contest into an actual LIFE OR DEATH EXPERIENCE. The Fucking Bomb finish really took me by surprise – felt simultaneously too sudden of a finale and incredibly refreshing to have a big title match end without 12 false finishes. And to top it all off, the post-match scene was as good as anything in the actual match: a bloody Hino, all smiles, wanting nothing but to hug Okabayashi after the absurd battle they just went through. The most beautiful pro-wrestling non-sense. ****1/4
