Puroresu Show Reviews

Show starts out with a referee finding Poison Sawada JULIE laid out by an unknown assailant in the back. Someone who I'm guessing is the DDT GM comes in and does something along the lines of wondering how the show will go on, then appologizing to the fans at home of any changes to the show that might have to be made.

After the show intro (which RULES by the way), we see a promo video highlighting Sanshiro Takagi's feud with Koji Ishinriki's Sumo faction. Which leads to the opening match.

Sanshiro Takagi & Shoji-Ko VS Koji Ishinriki & Super Sumo Machine
Takagi looked dissapointed as his partner's intro theme played, but was pleasantly surprised when it turned out to be Shoji-Ko instead of Showa-Ko! Shoji-Ko is Shoichi Ichimaya dressed up as joshi wrestler Showa-Ko, and Showa accompanied him to ringside! This was clipped a bit and was hard to watch since it was mostly a big brawl out into the audience and then back into the ring, where the match comes to an end after yet more brawling.
Match Rating: *1/2

Iron Man Title: Danshoku Dino VS Glen Q. Spectre
This one was interesting. The match was billed as “American Boy Meets Japanese Gay Boy”, which probably tells you all you need to know about the match. Spectre is the guy with the iron ass, and Dino is the guy with the iron …err… wiener! The two really couldn’t play their homophobic mind games on each other since they had the same gimmick, so what you see is a lot of interesting (or disturbing) maneuvers being pulled off by the two, including Dino’s testicular claw and a submission hold by Spectre I can’t even begin to describe!
Match Rating: ***
Entertainment Value: YES, there is some!

Public Bath Boxing Match: Naomi Susan VS Rikio Shindo
This was really quick and both participants aren’t even actual wrestlers. I’m not even sure why they are doing this since I don’t follow DDT all that often. Anyways, the match involved a heel referee that helped Shindo get Susan’s towel off to reveal her bikini, and this sets off Susan as she decks and KOs both of them in a under a minute to win!
Match Rating: DUD

Preliminary Highlights of some of the earlier matches are shown in a cool video montage, including a very good bloody hardcore match between Mammoth Sasaki VS Takashi Sasaki, and clips of US indy worker Shirley Doe in action. Really wish they would give DDT a 2hr timeslot so they could air more stuff like this.

Elimination Match: MIKAMI, Tonomusaku Toba, KUDO, HERO! VS Takashi Sasaki, GENTARO, Yusuke Inokuma & Sensei
I’m really not sure what the backstory of this match is since I don’t understand Japanese, but I’m guessing it had something to do with Inokuma and Sensei (aka Poison Sawada JULIE in a very cheap disguise) trying to get encourage KUDO to join them or something, thing is, NO ONE could guess that the guy in the cheap surgeons mask, sunglasses and hairnet was JULIE! Even Sasaki & GENTARO! Bizarre indeed, but anyways, KUDO found out about Sensei true identity with help from the Suicide Boyz and HERO!, which lead to the following match, with Sasaki & GENTARO still not having a clue who their new mentor was!
The match was of course clipped, especially since it went over 30-minutes! It was a really fun match, with the face team determined to unmask Sensei, who himself did a hell of a job hiding his true identity by acting all cowardly and having to be protected by his teammates all the time. That is, until the very end where he had no choice but to fight back and use his “magic”! This was a really great match, and I wish it was complete, but that won’t happen unless DDT start airing live shows on PPV or something. Still, definitely worth checking out this one!
Match Rating: ***

Overall: It’s hard to understand what’s going on if you don’t follow DDT regularly, but it’s still pretty watchable cause of all the weird stuff that goes on. Sure, some of the in ring promos tend to drag a bit like a Triple H promo, but the bizarre video packages and fun matches more than make up for it. This show is definitely worth checking out!

Labels: DDT

AJPW GAORA TV #15 07/10/2004
6/12/04
All Asia Tag Team Title: Genichiro Tenryu & Masanobu Fuchi (c) VS Kensuke Sasaki & Katsuhiko Nakajima
This match might as well have been booked as Nakajima VS Fuchi, as at least 80% of the match was Fuchi stretching, and I mean STRETCHING the young Nakajima almost into a pretzel with all his submission holds he had on him. And despite his obvious flexibility, the poor kid was screaming his head off in pain!
Tenryu & Sasaki didn’t really do much in this one, but the crowd loved the chop exchange between the two and basically any interaction they had. I didn’t like the ending of the match though, as Fuchi repeated the same move twice in a row and Sasaki made the save on the first one, but just stood there and watched the second time around which was right after the first!
Match Rating: **1/2

AJPW Triple Crown: Toshiaki Kawada (c) VS Jamal
I’ll be damned if Kawada can’t get a good match out of anyone! This was a great match with Jamal being the big bad foreigner against Kawada as the local hero. Jamal’s size didn’t even effect Kawada’s performance as one of the highlights was Kawada hitting a PICTURE PERFECT brainbuster on Jamal! You can really see the difference here between Jamal and his ex-partner Rosey in WWE as he was just a monster and looked like a star compared to that joke of a gimmick Rosey has.
A good match that might not be as good as Misawa/Kobashi VS Vader, but still fun and worth checking out.
Match Rating: ***1/2

AJPW GAORA TV #16 07/17/2004
6/6/04
D-Lo Brown & Buchanan VS Kaz NOSAWA & Kaz MAZADA
This started out as a fun brawl as NOSAWA & MAZADA took the RO&D members to the outside and brought the fun in the form of a garbage can full of weapons! The crowd was into the smaller local guys hitting the bigger gaijins with weapons, and it was even fun watching D-Lo sell getting hit by a harmless tennis racket! The gaijins would soon regain control though, and D-Lo did a cool garbage-can spot off the apron with Buchanan’s assistance.
Overall, this was an entertaining little match and a fun opener to the show.
Match Rating: **

Kensuke Sasaki & Koichiro Kimura VS Satoshi Kojima & Tomoaki Honma
This was an OK match, but I thought it just went a bit too long for my liking. Kimura is a DDT worker, but he’s HUGE compared to everyone else I’ve seen from there and fits in well with the other heavyweights here.
Sasaki & Kojima were aces as usual as they crowd easily got into their exchanges.
But Honma was the underdog star here. It’s a real shame the guy isn’t doing better than he should be. He reminds me of RVD in WWE that is super-over with the crowds, but the bookers (Mutoh) don’t capitalize on his popularity. It doesn’t help either that the former Big Japan Death Match Champion was having such a hard time with a hardly known DDT worker.
Good match overall marred by the fact that it went a bit too long.
Match Rating: **

Toshiaki Kawada VS Kaz Hayashi
Billed as the first ever singles match between the Triple Crown champion and the Junior Heavyweight champion. Kawada made Hayashi look really good here, but the problem with Hayashi was that he went overkill on his finishers. He hit a WA4 practically every 5 minutes! That includes one out on the floor in the audience and a couple in the ring. He overdid his finishers so much that the crowd didn’t care when he finally made the pin cause they knew Kawada would kick out. I think it would have worked better if he was more of an underdog and didn’t get to hit his finishers so easily. Still, a fun match worth checking out.
Match Rating: **1/2

Overall: This is a fun DVD definitely worth checking out. You get a good Triple Crown title match, a fun hardcore tag, and an underdog VS veteran match. More good than bad, and I highly recommend it.

Labels: AJPW