Puroresu Show Reviews

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