Yasushi Kanda & Susumu Mochizuki vs. TARU & MAKOTO
A weirdly-booked tag match that worked as a coming out party for the Kanda/Susumu tag team, but never fully clicked as a wrestling match due to a convoluted angle with New Random 5th Crazy MAX Member MAKOTO refusing to cooperate with TARU midway through. No one can trust a vampire. It’s a shame because this started out pretty well, TARU and his new fanged-friend heeling it up and beating the shit out of young Susumu. Gotta say Toryumon’s relaxed Lucha rules aren’t ideal for this type of match though, as the optional tagging robs you of all Hot Tag Satisfaction and hurts any Southern tag type structure. Kanda and Susumu were already starting to get creative with the double teams here, but they’d have much better matches down the line. **1/2
Magnum TOKYO, Masaaki Mochizuki & SAITO vs. CIMA, Sumo Dandy Fuji & TARU
The MAKOTO storyline kept going throughout this match and it was just as bad. The guy hasn’t been established enough for this whole ‘’Where does MAKOTO stand!?!?’’ double turn insanity to actually work. Outside of the booking misstep, I dug the match. Mochizuki’s a great new addition to these 6-man tags. He already fits in like a glove and his tricked out kick-based offense is a breath of fresh air. Gotta respect the creative commitment of the other guys too, always adding new stuff to their repertoire: Magnum with the Great Muta handspring elbow in the corner and CIMA with his first ever turnbuckle headscissors. Also love CIMA’s ability to throw in a tope suicida at the least expected moment. A great skill to have for in these fast-paced Lucharesu sprints. ***
Stalker Ichikawa vs. TARU
Never enough TARU, baby. This man unexplainably gets more TV time than any of the actual Ultimo Dragon students. Match was about as good as their last showdown, the two eternal rivals striking the right balance between fun comedy and pleasant wrestling bits. Stalker added a brilliant new spot to his move-set: something that can only be described as a Failed Iconoclasm. Having CIMA on commentary to witness the move was pretty great and him seriously referring to it as a ‘’Stalker Original’’ cracked me up. **1/4
Magnum TOKYO, Kenichiro Arai & Masaaki Mochizuki vs. CIMA, Sumo Dandy Fuji & SUWA
SUWA finally has some proper gear and all is well in the year of our lord 1999. That being said, the quiet crowd and grey lighting of the venue gave the match an extremely House Show Vibe and it made some of the usual Crazy MAX tropes a serious chore to get through. I dug the intensity between Araken and SUWA to build up their upcoming title match, but the heel beatdowns are starting to drag big time. As it tends to be with these matches, all the good stuff came during the ending stretch, with everyone diving all over the place while Araken made himself look like a proper contender against Fuji. **3/4
SUWA © vs. Kenichiro Arai – NWA World Welterweight Title
Oh boy. I had high hopes but this was kind of a disaster. Not sure if Araken got knocked loopy at some point or if they just didn’t click at all, but the match was completely drowned in miscommunication and weird botched transitions. It got off to a really good start too, which makes this all the more disappointing. Araken’s fired up babyface attack at the bell and SUWA’s heelish cutoffs hooked me right off the bat, but it quickly fell apart soon after that. Clearly they had a hell of a match in mind for SUWA to bust out the AVALANCHE TRIPLE F finish (aka. the Pepsi Plunge, pretty much), but even that came off as unwarranted due to the bizarre clusterfuck that came before. **1/2
