Puroresu Show Reviews
Reviews of puroresu shows in my collectionSunday, July 25, 2004
Kaientai Dojo 10/13/2002 - TAKA Michinoku 10th Anniversary
Taped on 9/30/2002 during the "Club-K Super Down Town" tour, the first thing that catches your attention is how they actually managed to fit a small WWE RAW type set into Korakuen Hall, complete with a Titantron, rampway and TWO entrance ways! They also have some very neat production videos as well as Titantron intros for the wrestlers.
Kunio Toshima VS Teppei Ishizaka
Pretty good opener. Mostly standard basic stuff, but still watchable as both were over with the crowd. Their intro videos made them look better than they actually were though.
Match Rating: *1/2
Ofune VS Ayako Hamada
One of the big reasons I bought this show, TenzanTeam2K’s favorite joshi wrestler VS My favorite joshi wrestler! For a person of her status in the business, Ayako put Ofune over big time! Usually in these types of matches, the senior (Hamada) would be putting the junior (Ofune) to schoold and dominate most of the match, but that wasn’t the case here! Hamada really let the cutesy Ofune get in a ton of offense as well as letting on that Ofune could have beaten Hamada. This match was clipped a bit but still looked good. Great stuff!
Match Rating: ***1/4
Kengo Mashimo VS Izumi Kidaka
This match was under shoot rules, so what you get is a lot of heavy striking and ground submission grappling. The big strikes kept this match alive.
Match Rating: **
Surround Force Match:
DJ Nira VS Sambo Oishi VS Yu Yamagata VS Yasu Urano VS Psycho VS Mike Lee Jr. VS Apple Miyuki VS Shiori Asahi VS Joe Aoyama
The rules of a Surround Force match are that you can tag anyone at anytime, but the first pinfall or submission wins the match. This was a non-stop, quick paced match where everyone got to show a bit of what they got. This is a good way to get the rest of the card on the show without resulting in big multi-person tag matches. DJ Nira isn’t really a pro-wrestler, but an actual DJ, and he did some of the themes for the K-Dojo wrestlers. He’s also credited with being one of the best mic-men in the promotion. Nira also did some really fun comedy spots though and is MEGA over with the fans! Yu Yamagata was here mainly to help out her man Sambo Oishi, even though it’s every man and woman for themselves. Psycho is just that, PSYCHO! He didn’t do much, but what he did was very impressive. Yasu Urano worked mostly standard stuff, as well as Mike Lee Jr. Apple Miyuki seemed to take the brunt of the punishment of the match. Shiori Asahi didn’t do much noticeable, and Joe Aoyama was booked as a monster heavyweight since he basically is almost twice the size of everyone else in the match. I just wished this match was longer, but I definitely have an interest to check out more of these mega-fun matches!
Match Rating: **1/2
UWA/UWF Intercontinental Tag Team Titles
Mr. X & X No. 2 VS X No. 3 & X No. 5 with Ms. X
Double X VS Double X. If you bet Double X win, go collect your prize! Seriously, they may have scrapped the bottom of the barrel for their gimmicks, but these guys put on a really good match! They even pulled off some innovative moves involving their X hand signals, including a killer cross-armed, cross-legged, double argentine back-breaker! One of the best matches of the show!
Match Rating: ***1/4
Hi69, Pablo, Yoshiya, Ryota Chikuzen & TAKA Michinoku with Ryoko VS Miyawaki, Daigoro Kashiwa, Silver Wolf, Minoru Fujita & Shinya Makabe - 2/3 Falls Match
This was VERY good! You’d usually expect somekind of clustered spot-fest when you got ten men in a fast paced match, but everything here was well placed to together! Everyone got their spots in and Makabe being the big name heavyweight from New Japan was just a monster here! A really solid, great match to end the show!
Match Rating: ****
The show ends with a cool highlight video of TAKA’s career, from his debut up to his feud with Minoru Fujita. Some fun stuff from his Kaientai years in Michinoku Pro included ramming his car into Great Sasuke’s before running off like a thief in the night as a MAJOR pissed off Sasuke tried chasing them down on foot! Too bad they couldn’t add any footage of his WWF/WWE run.
Overall: This was BIG TIME FUN! I haven’t enjoyed a puroresu show this much since my first Osaka Pro show! Definitely a great introduction for me to TAKA’s little promotion. There is A LOT of talent here, and I only hope their other shows I plan on getting are every bit as good as this one!
Kunio Toshima VS Teppei Ishizaka
Pretty good opener. Mostly standard basic stuff, but still watchable as both were over with the crowd. Their intro videos made them look better than they actually were though.
Match Rating: *1/2
Ofune VS Ayako Hamada
One of the big reasons I bought this show, TenzanTeam2K’s favorite joshi wrestler VS My favorite joshi wrestler! For a person of her status in the business, Ayako put Ofune over big time! Usually in these types of matches, the senior (Hamada) would be putting the junior (Ofune) to schoold and dominate most of the match, but that wasn’t the case here! Hamada really let the cutesy Ofune get in a ton of offense as well as letting on that Ofune could have beaten Hamada. This match was clipped a bit but still looked good. Great stuff!
Match Rating: ***1/4
Kengo Mashimo VS Izumi Kidaka
This match was under shoot rules, so what you get is a lot of heavy striking and ground submission grappling. The big strikes kept this match alive.
Match Rating: **
Surround Force Match:
DJ Nira VS Sambo Oishi VS Yu Yamagata VS Yasu Urano VS Psycho VS Mike Lee Jr. VS Apple Miyuki VS Shiori Asahi VS Joe Aoyama
The rules of a Surround Force match are that you can tag anyone at anytime, but the first pinfall or submission wins the match. This was a non-stop, quick paced match where everyone got to show a bit of what they got. This is a good way to get the rest of the card on the show without resulting in big multi-person tag matches. DJ Nira isn’t really a pro-wrestler, but an actual DJ, and he did some of the themes for the K-Dojo wrestlers. He’s also credited with being one of the best mic-men in the promotion. Nira also did some really fun comedy spots though and is MEGA over with the fans! Yu Yamagata was here mainly to help out her man Sambo Oishi, even though it’s every man and woman for themselves. Psycho is just that, PSYCHO! He didn’t do much, but what he did was very impressive. Yasu Urano worked mostly standard stuff, as well as Mike Lee Jr. Apple Miyuki seemed to take the brunt of the punishment of the match. Shiori Asahi didn’t do much noticeable, and Joe Aoyama was booked as a monster heavyweight since he basically is almost twice the size of everyone else in the match. I just wished this match was longer, but I definitely have an interest to check out more of these mega-fun matches!
Match Rating: **1/2
UWA/UWF Intercontinental Tag Team Titles
Mr. X & X No. 2 VS X No. 3 & X No. 5 with Ms. X
Double X VS Double X. If you bet Double X win, go collect your prize! Seriously, they may have scrapped the bottom of the barrel for their gimmicks, but these guys put on a really good match! They even pulled off some innovative moves involving their X hand signals, including a killer cross-armed, cross-legged, double argentine back-breaker! One of the best matches of the show!
Match Rating: ***1/4
Hi69, Pablo, Yoshiya, Ryota Chikuzen & TAKA Michinoku with Ryoko VS Miyawaki, Daigoro Kashiwa, Silver Wolf, Minoru Fujita & Shinya Makabe - 2/3 Falls Match
This was VERY good! You’d usually expect somekind of clustered spot-fest when you got ten men in a fast paced match, but everything here was well placed to together! Everyone got their spots in and Makabe being the big name heavyweight from New Japan was just a monster here! A really solid, great match to end the show!
Match Rating: ****
The show ends with a cool highlight video of TAKA’s career, from his debut up to his feud with Minoru Fujita. Some fun stuff from his Kaientai years in Michinoku Pro included ramming his car into Great Sasuke’s before running off like a thief in the night as a MAJOR pissed off Sasuke tried chasing them down on foot! Too bad they couldn’t add any footage of his WWF/WWE run.
Overall: This was BIG TIME FUN! I haven’t enjoyed a puroresu show this much since my first Osaka Pro show! Definitely a great introduction for me to TAKA’s little promotion. There is A LOT of talent here, and I only hope their other shows I plan on getting are every bit as good as this one!
Labels: Misc Indies
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