HAPPY WRESTLING VIDEO REVIEW #1
October 15th 2002
NJPW Review ~ The Yakuza
Lucha Review ~ Optimus Schwab
WWF Review ~ Strong Style JB
ZERO-ONE Battle Station on Samurai TV 3/12/02 (Taped 3/9) ~ Shuriken
Kuroge Wagyuta & Fugofugo Yumeji VS Steve Corino & Sean McCully
Wagyuta and Fugofugo were formerly known as Yusaku and Tadahiro Fujisaki. TOTAL SLEAZE and proud to be so. They won't change their way of life because of Zero-One or something. No Way. Corino is already way over in Japan, and rightfully so. The guy has some amazing charisma. This match is pretty fun, but not because there's good wrestling or anything, but more because Fugofugo and Wagyuta display the die-hard Sleaze spirit with goofy as hell double-team spots and other comedy acts. The funniest spot of the match was when Fugofugo busted the shoot fighter : Sean McCully, with a HARDWAY headbutt! I could not believe my eyes. Other goofiness happens as McCully tries to be RVD and Corino takes Yumeji's crawling headbutts like a man. The match was slightly clipped so I just hope I didn't miss too much of Wagyuta and Yumeji's brilliant sleaze techniques.
Wataru Sakata & Kohei Sato VS Yoshiaki Fujiwara & Tatsuhito Takaiwa
Sakata is from RINGS and attacked Takaiwa a while ago, nearly killing him with an absolutely insane Jumping knee to the face. Therefore you'd think Hash would try to put him over as a dangerous shoot fighting invader who kicks everybody's ass and what not. But the exact opposite happened in this match, and Sakata didn't look like a treat or a dangerous invader at all, beside maybe during a few sequences. For the whole match Takaiwa and Fujiwara played heels (Like I said, should've been the opposite), isolating Sato and beating the living hell out of him for the whole match, setting up a couple of hot tags to Sakata who actually looked like Sato's savior and a hero of sorts. In the context of the angle that didn't work at all and is an example of real bad booking. The main reason one might like this match is that it was truly stiff as ALL hell. Everybody was pounding each other in the face really hard and mauling each other with vicious kicks, chops and slaps. The whole thing was brutal. I mean, in the end, Sato's forehead was busted hardway and his chest was all messed up due to chops. Fujiwara and Takaiwa were relentless on the poor kid, keeping him from tagging out and just destroying him strike after strike. Sato clearly didn't stand a chance against them, as his strikes are pretty bad, looking all slow and weak, while on the other side Takaiwa was beating his ass with fast and stiff chops and lariats. Sato was even forced to take around 20 of Fujiwara's infamous headbutts, beside Takaiwa's strikes. The shoot fighter, Sakata, easily had the best shots of the match, with crisp and precise kicks. The problem with him is that he's a shoot fighter, not a wrestler. He doesn't know the meaning of ''selling''. I mean, he took Takaiwa's Deathvalley Bomb then got caught in Fujiwara's haragatame for a while, but then started fighting back right away throwing kicks at everybody. Bullshit. The ending came when the ref stopped the match due to an overload of headbutts from Fujiwara to Sato. *¾
Paul LeDuc VS Ryouji Sai
LeDuc is a big, fat and bald lumberjack kind of guy and I'm not sure how he ended up on this show, while Sai is my favorite ZERO-ONE rookie and has tremendous potential . Gaaah.. That was pretty horrible. LeDuc got all sort of incredibly shitty offense and was acting like the big, fat and bald lumberjack heel, pushing the ref around and what not. Funny spot happens in the match when Paul takes off his shirt and the crowd goes ''Ooooooh!''. Sai gets the flash tap out win with a rolling jujigatame out of nowhere. STINKY.
Naohiro Hoshikawa VS Kazuhiko Ogasawara
Ogasawara is the angry karate fighter that invaded ZERO-ONE to annihilate Hashimoto...and ZERO-ONE too. I guess. Hoshikawa is wearing his old Osaka Pro entrance gear again and I LOVE it. This lasted 4 minutes but was kind of fun because of the entire Korakuen Hall cheering for Hoshikawa who was the obvious underdog here against the karate fighter. Hoshikawa's takedowns were all pretty sloppy because of Ogasawara who refused to bump in any way, but he managed to make up for that by breaking out the stiff as all hell running short dropkick of DEATH that had the crowd going apeshit. Ogasawara won this easily after a few brutal kicks. Post-match, rookie-boy Ryouji Sai tries to get a piece of Ogasawara for NO REASON! Awesome. *
Josh Dempsey VS Tom Howard
Dempsey is some kind of freaky boxer. He looks and acts like an absolute retard. Tom Howard is now pretty over in Japan as the badass army commando guy who beats the living piss out of various people. The opening minutes of the match were really great as Howard was insanely pissed off at Dempsey for attacking him from behind and the two guys started smashing each other up in the face real hard with 100% legit punches and elbows that got me marking out big time. Then the match got pretty uneventful with Dempsey going on offense throwing lame punches for a while until Howard snapped and busted out a freaking tope con hilo off the top-rope that had the crowd chanting ''Tomu! Tomu! Tomu!''. Good stuff. Another cool spot saw Howard leap off the ref with a leg lariat and then roll Dempsey up with a la magistral for the pin. ½*
Native Blood VS Shinjiro Ohtani & Masato Tanaka (NWA Intercontinental Tag-Team Titles)
The tag-team known as Native Blood comes from UPW. They have the freaky indian men gimmicks going on and yell a whole lot. Navajo Warrior is the fat one, and Ghostwalker is the non-fat one. Ohtani and Tanaka (Who recently got signed by ZERO-ONE) won the vacant NWA tag titles in January by beating the UPW team of Tom Howard and Samoa Joe. With the back story being told, I gotta say that the match wasn't too great, but turned out alright thanks to Ohtani and Tanaka who really busted their asses and did the best they could to carry the worthless Native Blood team. At first, the crowd was all behind Native Blood, taking part in their indian shouting rituals and all of that. But as the match went on, the two native americans started getting all sloppy, blowing spots here and there, and the crowd quickly rallied behind the awesome team of Ohtani and Tanaka. Native Blood never were worthy challengers for the NWA tag titles and should've never got to Japan in the first place. Their move execution is sloppy, their in-ring psychology is a mess, as they have no clue what to do most of the time, and when to do it exactly. Luckily, Ohtani and Tanaka were feeling motivated and made the match watchable due to alot of things. First, both of these guys have amazing charisma and generated great crowd heat that helped me forget some of Native Blood's crappy sloppiness. Secondly, both of them are some of the two best wrestlers in Japan and aren't affraid to show it with flawless execution and great ring presence. At some points they were acting like total punks mocking Native Blood's indian antics and just making fun of them. Really hilarious stuff. Ohtani is always a great heel, as he was able to save a bunch of blown spots and turn them to his advantage by making fun of his opponent and quickly transitioning into another spot with the crowd now behind him. A real professional. One of the best there is. Spots of the match were a great Russian legsweep / DDT combo by Tanaka on both of his opponents, and the always rocking KDX camel clutch / dropkick double-team by the champions. The ending was a total mess with Ghostwalker killing all of the quasi-drama by not knowing what to do exactly and constantly killing Ohtani's momentum at the exact wrong times. Ohtani eventually put an end to this with a Spiral Bomb. **
Post match, DDT's own SANSHIRO TAKAGI (!) comes out to a chorus of boos as he challenges Ohtani to a singles match that won't ever happen. Well at least, not in a while.
Dan Severn VS Shinya Hashimoto (NWA World Heavyweight Title)
Hash won the title in the U.S. against then champion Steve Corino. After the match, he was attacked by former shoot fighter and former WWF MEGASTAR Dan Severn, to set-up today's match. Damn, this sucked. Before the match they played both the US and the Japan national anthem to give the match some kind of important international battle feeling. It was definitely anything but that. Severn looked terrible and quite pathetic charging at Hashimoto with all sorts of bad strikes and repetitive offense. Hash was able to do some of his trademark stuff, brutal kicks and the like. But the whole thing never worked out. Both guys no- sold each other's submissions and the match never got nowhere. At some point NWA President Jim Miller got on the apron and started intimidating referee Mr. Fred. So, in the best part of the match, the crowd started ''Refuree! Refuree!'' chant. HAHA! Great stuff. After this, Mr. Fred started refereeing in Severn's favor, doing fast counts for him and slow ones for Hashimoto. Severn eventually won the title with a German suplex and an evil ref fast 3 count. Post-match the crowd is outraged and Severn acts like he never knew of the plan. *¼
This was a bad show. The whole card was dull and filled with uneventfull matches, horrible gaijins and what not. The best match only reached ** and that was strictly because of Ohtani and Tanaka's involvement. I had enjoyed the 3/2 PPV but this is really a step in the wrong direction, with the main event WWF-ish angle and all of that. Best thing about the show was the crowd. Avoid this at all costs.
XPW Review ~ The Yakuza
APW Online Matches From 2002 - Part 1 ~ Shuriken
I haven't seen too much APW in the past, beside some good Modest VS Daniels matches, so these new downloadable matches on APW's web site were really useful to say the least. To those interested they can all be found on Click Wrestle. They also have wrestling music videos and EPIC TV episodes. Its all good. So, for the first part of my APW Online Matches review, I shall take a look at Jardi Frantz's APW Worldwide Internet title reign, which consists of 3 matches.
American Dragon VS Jardi Frantz (3/16/02
- APW Worldwide Internet Title)
This was really good until the shitty ending. American Dragon truly rules on the
mat and can show that when wrestling almost anybody, so against Frantz who can
hold his own with the ground-work and have solid exchanges, the mat-work in the
opening portion of the match turned out to be pretty beautiful. Both guys sold
like champs to make the submissions look painful, but also pulled off some
really cool and creative counters to each other's holds to make the whole
mat-work sequences look interesting. The latest APW matches I've seen from 2002
have all being filled with great mat-work and awesome basics from every
competitors, and I really dig that. Beside the mat-work, their chain wrestling
sequences were pretty elaborate and complex too, and Jardi must've felt inspired
because of wrestling Dragon because he didn't show any signs of sloppiness at
all, like he has done in the past. Actually, Jardi tried to give the match a
little All Japan feel, by blocking every ''big move'' attempt by Dragon and
forcing him to really work hard to pull off the move, shades of AJPW's Oudou
style of wrestling. It was a nice little touch that made alot of sequences look
better and more realistic. All of Dragon's offense was crisp as hell and
perfectly done. They also did a good job aknowledging the rolling elbow as a
dangerous finisher by setting-up alot of counter sequences around it. While
Dragon's offense was all about solid Japanese-ish moves, Jardi was all about
flying all over the place with some really and non-sloppy high spots. I think my
favorite spot of the match was when Dragon completely out-smarted Frantz by
countering a 2nd-rope moonsault with a dropkick to the stomach in mid-air.
Beautiful! So, as the match was advancing and getting really good, something
EVIL and HORRIBLE happened to ruin everything. Everything started with a ref
bump, that obviously set-up a run-in. APW fat-man Larry Blackwell came out and
dropped AD with his Black Out finisher (Eye of the hurricane) to set-up Jardi's
Firebird splash for the win. Major disapointment, as these two could've really
worked out a nice and clean finish to the match. Afterwards, everybody gets in
the ring and starts fighting, which sets-up a Battle Royal that I don't feel
like reviewing because reviewing Battle royals usually sucks. ***
Bobby Quance VS Jardi Frantz (3/29/02 - APW Worldwide
Internet Title)
Good match, although it wasn't quite on the same level as Jardi's previous title
match against American Dragon. Well, actually the match had some common points
with Jardi VS AD. Most importantly, it also had the same kind of fun mat-work,
with the rookie Bobby Quance (he debuted at the King Of Indies 2001) having no
problem following Jardi on the mat and just showing some tremendous potential
all over. Watching more and more of these APW matches, I noticed that the APW
crowds are really good over-all. They follow and pay attention to all of the
mat-work in the ring, cheering for reversals and escapes. This way the wrestlers
don't have to worry about ''Boring'' chants and can go to the mat as long as
they want, which is a GOOD thing in my book. Beside the solid mat-work skills,
Quance also showed some very cool flip-flop aerial skills that made the match's
chain wrestling look all kinds of fun because of Quance's tricked out flashy
escapes. The only really bad thing that happened in the match was during a dive
sequence, where Jardi slipped on the ropes 2 CONSECUTIVE times before finally
hitting his damned Quebrada. This is the kind of sloppiness I have been talking
about from Jardi in my AD/Jardi review. Bothers me quite a bit. Luckily, it was
the only blown spot by Jardi in the match, and most of the other things he did
looked sharp and nicely executed. He pulled off some cool moves including a
fruity British Fall / Spinning DDT combo and a wicked Super headscissors off the
top-rope, ala MAKOTO. On the other side, Bobby also got his share of solid
offense, as he pulled off an amazingly tricked out somersault Blizzard suplex,
and a potential filled Shooting Star Press where he almost lands on his feet as
Jardi moves out of the way. Jardi ended the match in a pretty spectacular way,
with a both-men-standing-on-top Frankensteiner, shades of Rey Mysterio Jr and
Chris Jericho. I'm looking forward to seeing more Bobby Quance, because he
truly looks like an Indy star in the making. **½
Super Dragon VS Jardi Frantz (APW Worldwide Internet Title)
AJPW Champion Carnival '95 : Selected Matches ~ Platypus Fool
ZERO-ONE Battle Station on Samurai TV 5/2/02 (Taped 4/27) ~ Shuriken
JCW Jersey J-Cup 2002 ~ Optimus Schwab
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