Mizuki Watase & Hideki Okatani vs. Yusuke Okada & Toi Kojima
Duuuuude, the Okada/Watase beef is the greatest shit. Both guys have inherited Akiyama’s short temper and are only able to communicate through pure hatred and angsty hair pulling. It’s a beautiful thing. The sheer amount of bloodlust seemed to be a bit much for Good Boy Kojima at times. The kid’s still figuring out how to throw chops, so all of this BACHIBACHI intensity might be too advanced for him. However, Okatani fit right in there and was game enough to join the schoolyard scrap. I got serious Shinjiro Otani vibes from his missile dropkick outta’ nowhere. ***
Shinya Aoki, Super Sasadango Machine, Antonio Honda & Kazuki Hirata vs. Sanshiro Takagi, Danshoku Dino, Toru Owashi & Makoto Oishi – No DQ – KO-D 8-Man Tag Titles Decision Match
Do we really need 8-man tag belts? Just throwing that out there. Anyway, it seems the pandemic managed to destroy my last few remaining brain cells because I thought this was hilarious. The comedy crew forming a human chain of pure Anal Energy to restore power in the building and allow Hirata to do the Tokyo Go Dance? Next level performance art. Also, Oishi might be underrated as a comedy guy. His ‘’WE WANT ASSHOLE’’ chant and Russian legsweep counter of the first Tokyo Go dance attempt cracked me up.
Saori Anou & Miyako Matsumoto vs. Saki Akai & Maya Yukihi
Not familiar with most of the girls here, but I’m already sold on Anou thanks to her Babymetal entrance theme. The match started well but kind of overstayed its welcome by the time it got to the extended ref bump/miscommunication shenanigans finish. Everything before that was pretty solid though. I liked Saki using her size to boss Matsumoto around, while Anou and Yukihi both showed some cool offense. **1/2
Super Delfin, Chris Brookes & Maki Ito vs. MAO, Keigo Nakamura & Mirai Maiumi
Nostalgia’s a powerful thing. This was a full-on tribute to early Michinoku Pro with Maki playing Gran Naniwa (complete with crab claws for her entrance and crab walk elbow finish) and Team MAO doing Kaientai triple team spots. Basically, I fuckin’ loved it. Not only did they do all the old school comedy spots of my VHS teenage years, but they also supplied the high-flying to go along with it: MAO and Keigo breaking out dives that would make ’94 TAKA Michinoku proud. Nakamura’s high spots are getting more elaborate by the minute and that bonkers springboard twisting Moonsault hinted at early Kota Ibushi-type greatness. ***1/4
HARASHIMA & Yuji Okabayashi vs. Kazusada Higuchi & Yukio Naya
Loving the variety on this show, as we go from the retro Lucharesu homage to the hard-hitting slug-fest. Everyone seemed intent on getting Naya over as a monster here, but I’m still not convinced. When you have a match with Okabayashi and Higuchi ramming into each other like a pair of nuclear-charged bulldozers, Naya’s lack of personality/confidence just becomes glaring. Even when HARASHIMA gave him a perfect opening during the ending stretch, he was stumbling all over himself and couldn’t hit his Backdrop properly. That being said, this still had enough quality content from the three veterans to satisfy my beef-based needs, so here’s some stars for you. ***1/4
Konosuke Takeshita, Akito, Shunma Katsumata & Yuki Iino vs. Daisuke Sasaki, Soma Takao, Yuji Hino & Mad Paulie
Yuki Iino has RETURNED to the Dramatic Dream Team. I’ve never been the biggest fan of this dude’s haka shtick, but he was used perfectly here. Really satisfying story arc from his early babyface in peril ass kicking to the big win over Paulie. His beef collision with Hino in the middle of it all was more believable than anything from Naya in the last match. As it’s usually the case with All Out multiman sprints, the rest of the match was packed with a lot of cool shit. Shoutout to the ridiculous PILE-UP SPLASH sequence, the simultaneous Strong BJ stacked Germans and Katsumata’s completely unnecessary but very appreciated ladder death bump. Solid progression for Iino and fun creativity all over the place. ***1/2
Yuki Ueno © vs. Yukio Sakaguchi – DDT Universal Title
I haven’t been this conflicted about a wrestling match in a long time. Especially about the ending. For most of this, Sakaguchi was portrayed as a deadly shooter, as he should be. Every time Ueno tried to go after his arm or work a submission, he got smoked and Sakaguchi took control. This made sense to me, so the whole idea of Ueno being able to choke out THE SON OF SEIJI for the finish seemed…wrong? Or a least contradictory to the story they were telling initially.
To their credit, they did their best to make it look semi-legit and the commentary team smartly referred to Ueno doing some MMA training with Shinya Aoki in preparation for the match. The rest of the match had a lot to offer too! They re-worked some of the state-of-the-art counter wrasslin’ from last year’s Eruption/Nautilus banger to great effect and Ueno looked badass kicking out at 1 after getting the absolute shit kicked out of him. I do think they have a more cohesive match in them but this’ll do for now. ***1/2
Tetsuya Endo © vs. Jun Akiyama – KO-D Openweight Title
One could draw a whole lot of parallels between this and the Muto/Shiozaki match from two days ago. Bald 50+ years old legend wins the big one for one last time against a younger Ace-level guy in big main event that exceeds most people’s expectations. Also, limb work subplots. Seems familiar? The main difference here is that this felt like an actual war and less like a magic trick (no offense to the NOAH match, which I did enjoy).
The pre-match package and Kobashi belt presentation gave this a big-time blockbuster feel. A feel that stuck from bell to bell thanks to stellar performances from both wrasslers. They had a fun match in last year’s D-Oh tournament, but this was on another level. The structure played to Akiyama’s strengths and Endo hung right in there with him, providing a modern high-flying counterpoint to Uncle Jun’s AJPW classicism.
I dug how they used the various limb work threads, but what really brought this to another level was the emotion and urgency going into the ending stretch. Both guys unleashed the big bombs, screamed and bashed each other’s brains in. There was a real sense of fighting spirit that’s often missing from Endo matches. Absolutely lost my mind for Akiyama stealing the mouth headbutt to set-up his wrist-clutch Exploder. King shit. ****1/4
