Puroresu Show Reviews

I think it’s kind of fitting that the last Puroresu show I review this year is the very last GAEA show ever before closing it’s doors due to various financial problems within the company, mostly due to the decline of interest in joshi puro.

Show starts with some quick highlights of the company’s history, followed by the opening ceremony of wrestler introductions. And then we’re off to the opening match.

Ayane Mizumura VS Dynamite Kansai
Kansai changed her look so much that I didn’t even recognize her here! Gone is the beach blonde hair and super hero type outfit, as she now sports her natural black hair color and donned military gear. She roughed up rookie Mizumura in the typical rookie squash match, but she wasn’t the stiff heavy hitter she used to be, opting more for a more brawler-like style. Mizumura couldn’t put much together, but she did manage to slam big Kansai which drew a big pop from the crowd.
Match Rating: ½*

Carlos Amano VS Aja Kong
This match was a fun mix of stiff striking and comedy. The stiff striking of course coming from Aja, and the comedy coming from Aja hurting herself everytime she tried to strike Carlos in her hard head! Aja hurt her head from getting headbutted, Aja hurt her hand hitting Carlos in the head with the uraken, and she even hurt her leg kicking Carlos in the head! This lead to quite a funny scene at the end of the match where the referee had to cold spray Aja from head to toe cause her whole body was hurting!
There was also an awkward moment in the match where the referee got heeled by the crowd for making a really LONG 2 count, not really sure if that was intentional, but they ended up playing up to that with the referee continually checking with the crowd and the GAEA boss sitting at ringside if her counts were ok. Funny stuff, and the match was fun and enjoyable overall, even if it was a bit of a fast paced sprint.
Match Rating: **

Sugar Sato & Chikayo Nakashima VS Toshie Uematsu & Ran Yu-Yu
I guess since it was the last show they were going to do, they were going to have fun doing it as despite putting on a great fast paced match here, they also managed to incorporate a few fun comedy spots here and there. A lot of great fast paced action in this one, and just plain fun overall.
Match Rating: *1/2

Mayumi Ozaki VS Sakura Hirota
If there is one thing I definitely missed out on by not watching more GAEA, it’s the comedy antics of cosplay queen Sakura Hirota! If Ebessan is the God of Comedy, than Sakura instantly gets the nod as Goddess of Comedy!
After reading the results of how Sakura finally scored a victory over her long time mentor/nemesis, joshi legend Mayumi Ozaki, I was really wondering how she pulled it off. Did she for one instant finally turn serious since it was the last GAEA show? Unfortunately the answer is a big NO. Sakura was still her old comedic self, coming out dressed as the original Tiger Mask! If you thought Ebessan was good at impersonating wrestler’s personas, you ain’t seen nothing till you’ve seen Sakura in action!
What follows is one of the most hilarious comedy matches I’ve ever seen! It got so ridiculous that even Ozaki had problems keeping a straight face and was laughing for most of the match. So as you could guess, this was anything but serious, all the way down to the closing minutes when Ozaki’s cornerman, Policeman (not sure if it’s the same guy from Osaka Pro) got involved in the match and Sakura stripped off her Tiger Mask uniform and revealed a police girl uniform underneath, leading to an impromptu match within a match!
Seriously, after watching this one, I feel the need to dig up more classic GAEA shows just to see Sakura’s hijinks.
Match Rating: **
Entertainment Rating:

Chigusa Nagayo Retirement Match: Chigusa Nagayo VS Meiko Satomura
The old passing of the torch match. After the all the fun from everything else on the card, things finally get serious here as we are treated to a contest loaded with stiff kicks and a load of Death Valley Bombs from both competitors here. A great, heavily heated contest to close out the show and Nagayo putting over the next generation to close out her career.
Match Rating: ***

Chigusa Nagayo’s retirement ceremony follows, and I’m surprised the audience still had enough streamers to literally cover the ring in red after already doing it once at the beginning of the match! Fun little trivia bit during the highlight video of her career, did you guys know that she was Zero, who invaded WCW before?

After Nagayo’s retirement, we get some closing speeches from the owners of GAEA, followed by the final closing ceremony of the show and the “last gong”, closing the doors on one of the longest running all-woman promotions in pro-wrestling history.

Overall: You’ll definitely want to pick up this show not just for the significance of it being the last GAEA show, but it was a truly entertaining show despite a bit of clipping in the matches. Now I gotta go look for more Sakura Hirota matches…

Labels: Joshi

Warning! This Review may contain SPOILERS!
The annual anniversary show, and the first time under the Dragon Gate banner. Last year’s event was my pick for Puroresu Show of the Year. Can they impress me enough to do it again? First thing you’ll notice is how much the arena is set up to look like the WWE Monday Night RAW set, only the audience seats aren’t so compressed together, and much like last year, there are a lot of female fans in the audience.

Post Hearts (BxB Hulk, Super Shisa & Anthony W. Mori) VS Final M2K (Kenichiro Arai, K-ness & Susumu Yokosuka)
Is it just me, or is there something really wrong about seeing someone like Super Shisa doing a dancing intro like Post Hearts uses? Pretty obvious Hulk has a big future planned for him in Dragon Gate since he’s the focal point of the group eventhough Athony is the leader. Hulk got the statutory youngster treatment of getting beat down throughout the match with the small bursts of offense to pop the crowd. But when things got down to it, the kid showed that he definitely had some eye-popping skillz! Unfortunately he’s also still at the stage where he has signature moves, but they don’t do jack against his senior opponents no matter how impressive they look.
I like Anthony, I’ve always thought the guy had a good look to him and has some decent skills. But he still doesn’t look like a main event guy or even someone who should be leading a group. Super Shisa is a great speed worker, but like I said earlier, he looks out of place with a group like Post Hearts.
You gotta feel bad for a guy like Susumu Yokosuka, a guy who has all the talent in the world, yet stuck in a pointless match like this. Either way, he brought a lot of intensity to his team, and like Hulk did for the Post Hearts team, Susumu stood out here as the star of the team.
It’s been said before that one makes a great team truly great is tandem offense. And we got a lot of that in the FM2K team! Since they’ve been teaming together for about a year now, they all know how to work smoothly with each other, and they did some awesome double and triple-team moves here. I particularly enjoyed the sequence where Susumu and K-ness did a series of tandem moves leading to a double Darkness Buster and chained again into a double Blue Light submission hold!
Overall, this was a really strong match to kick off the show.
Match Rating: ***

Highlight video of the next match shows how the Florida Brothers abused referee Yagi, who is also the masked Johnson Florida. Johnson finally stands up for himself only to get beat down by the original Floridas. Than the mysterious masked man came to Johnson’s rescue and laid out Michael and Daniel, before departing with Johnson. Still down on the mat, Michael asked Daniel “Who was that masked man?” to which Daniel answered “Johnson!” And were off to our next match!

Florida Express (Johnson & Jackson) VS Florida Brothers (Michael & Daniel)
Funny start to this as Michael & Daniel refer to Johnson & Jackson as not the usual “bishonen” (pretty boy) team they are used to dealing with. They then proceed to sneak attack the Express team, but that doesn’t work out, so they call for back up before running back up the ramp way and disappearing behind the entrance curtain. We than hear a very badly done karaoke version of Mil Mascaras’ theme and out come the Floridas in masks! If you think hearing them speak with an English slang is weird, you ain’t heard nothing till they do it with a Spanish slang! After a few words with the ring announcer, we get a LAST MINUTE CARD CHANGE! Leading to….

Florida Express (Johnson & Jackson) VS Los Tagos De Calbatos (?) (El Hijo De Iwasanto & Michi Mascaras)
Everyone has been saying that the Florida’s act is getting stale, myself included, so I was really glad that they switched things up here BIG TIME. Either that, or I haven’t watched enough recent Dragon Gate to tell the difference. Either way, this match was loads of fun and just pure comedy, so don’t look for it to have innovative high-flying or technical moves, but instead innovative comedy spots from both teams!
Daniel actually did an impressive power display as he held Michael on his shoulders for a good period of time while they did hilarious “giant” spot with Jackson. Another fun bit was Michael and Johnson switching masks and Johnson bringing in loads of French bread to pile up on Los Tagos and set up the Clubhouse Sandwich Splash!
Overall, this was really hilarious stuff.
Match Rating: *
Entertainment Value:

Stalker Ishikawa charges his way to the ring only to get ignored by the Floridas, who leave tossing the leftover bread out to the crowd!

Super-X & Yuji Hino (K-Dojo) VS Shingo Takagi & Masato Yoshino
I’m not really sure what Yuji Hino’s credentials in K-Dojo are, but he looked a little green here and actually messed up two spots. Might be because he wasn’t used to working with the DG guys here? Either way, it’s no excuse for him to be missing his moves leading to them having to redo the spot again. Even worse when he sells a shot that was a clear miss cause he forgot he was supposed to duck and counter. He did do a really impressive delayed German suplex though. Super-X was just sorta there for me and really didn’t do much to stand out.
Of all the new guys Dragon Gate have debuted in the past year, Shingo Takagi is the one that impresses me the most and still continues to. Since he was the biggest guy in the match, he got to show off his power a bit, and worked well with Yoshino. Speaking of Yoshino, he did a really bizarre looking new finisher that I guess is best described as an inverted Olympic Slam where flips inward into a neck-breaker type move that looked really cool, but low on impact and I wouldn’t buy it as a finisher.
The overall match was ok, but nothing really special.
Match Rating: *1/2

Naoki Tanisaki VS Magnitude Kishiwada
Tanisaki got out of some really close near falls, and had some quick bursts of offense towards the end, but a squash is a squash no matter how you look at it. I really hope Tanisaki doesn’t end up getting lost in the DG shuffle (despite being built up scoring some wins over Shingo Takagi) cause the kid has a lot of potential and the fans (especially the females) love him. This is a kid they should be pushing along side Naruki Doi and BxB Hulk.
Match Rating: *

Magnum TOKYO & Genichiro Tenryu VS Kensuke Sasaki & Katsuhiko Nakajima
This match was a lot of fun, and it was interesting to see Magnum in the underdog role here, even against Nakajima! Magnum also had a fun kick exchange with Nakajima, which reminded me of Magnum in his younger days. Magnum and Tenryu (who spun a pink umbrella for a short while with a smile on his face during Magnum’s dance intro!) also showed some good team work. I like seeing Tenryu in the mentor role like this, showing tough love by not tagging in and telling Magnum to continue.
Sasaki and Nakajima continue to impress as a tag team, and really liked the Sasaki/Magnum exchanges as well as the chop battle between Tenryu & Sasaki. Nakajima also showed a lot of fire as at one point he even brawled with Tenryu, tossing a chair at each other! Good fun match overall, and having Tenryu, Sasaki and Nakajima on more shows in the future can only do good for Dragon Gate’s business.
Funny thing about this match though, despite the commentary going on, you could clearly hear another commentary team in the background of the match as this guy was shouting and calling the moves in the match so loud that it was picked up by the ring mics, and I’m pretty sure the a lot of fans could hear him clearly too.
Match Rating: **1/2

Intermission time and were treated to a look back at the history between TAKA & Mochi. We see a classic six man tag between TAKA, Sho Funaki & Mochi VS Nobunaga Shima (CIMA!), Sumo (Don) Fuji & TARU which took place in Michonoku Pro I think from 6/12/99. Mochi drops the fall to Shima, and TAKA argues with him about it.
Fast forward to 6/13/99 and they rivalry heats up in a tag match between TAKA & Funaki VS Mochi & Gran Naniwa, with Mochi getting the pin on TAKA.

We now go back to earlier in the evening with highlights of the dark match between Kenichiro Arai and Tozawa, in match 10 of Tozawa’s single match trial series. The kid shaved his head from when last I saw him. Skinny kid, but showed some potential by not tapping out to the single leg crab of rookie doom and had to take Arai’s tiger suplex finisher to put him out.

President Okamura comes out tossing t-shirts to the crowd than gives the annual “thank the fans for their support” speech, especially since it’s the official first anniversary under the Dragon Gate banner. He introduces the president of AAA, Antonio Pena to announce the working relationship of the two companies and Pena says a few words before the two shake hands to make things official. I wonder why no one from Dragon Gate took part in any of the AAA Invading Japan shows earlier in the year?

Open the Triangle Gate Titles: Do Fixer (Ryo Saito, Genki Horiguchi & Dragon Kid) VS Blood Generation (CIMA, Don Fujii & Naruki Doi)
I really liked the highlight video that built up this match as it showed Do Fixer as the underdog team defying the odds despite the fact they are the champions in their titles defenses. It also looks so good seeing Genki with a title belt around his waist.
Good Gawd this was a fantastic match, and what I really expect to see from a six-man Dragon Gate match! From bell to bell, nothing but high impact, fast paced action from both teams! Everybody in this match was given time to shine (even if Fuji & Doi still suck to a degree) even though I wasn’t big on the final outcome of the match. Good thing about watching some of these shows a few months late is you tend to forget the results, which is a good thing cause it adds emotion and excitement to the match which this one easily had a lot of. Match of the Night!
Match Rating: ****1/4

Great highlight video building up the main event. From Mochi’s title wins and defenses to TAKA coming out and challenging Mochi for the Dream Gate to add to his collection. Mochi tosses him the key, but Susumu grabs it out of mid air and challenges TAKA to go through him first, which leads to TAKA beating Susumu some time later with the Dick Killer, then TAKA giving Mochi a Michinoku Driver II to get the point across that he’s a threat.

Open the Dream Gate: Masaaki Mochizuki VS TAKA Michinoku
He might be the champion, but how corny is Mochi’s ‘70s style hero entrance theme? They bring up the fact TAKA is the first WWF/E light-heavyweight champion and has performed at Wrestle Mania before.
Focus of the match was TAKA attacking Mochi’s leg so he couldn’t use the Shin Saikyo High Kick and Mochi attacking TAKA’s arm so he couldn’t use the Just Facelock or Dick Killer. Pity both of them forgot about selling them later in the match, and again, the Shin Saikyo High Kick is a lame-ass finisher to begin with. Interesting seeing TAKA use a grapevine ankle-lock and Bret Hart’s corner post figure four, where as Mochi borrowed Susumu’s Yokosuka Cutter and Jumbo No Kachi lariat.
Both men worked hard and had a solid match, but I saw a lot of repetition (dozens of superkicks by TAKA and corner flip kicks by Mochi), and I felt they could have done better.
Match Rating: ***

Show ends with Mochi giving a brief thank you speech before leaving. It wasn’t as emotional as last year when the whole DG roster was in the ring together as it was the last show under the Toryumon banner.

Overall: A very strong show overall, but going into it, I knew from the card alone there was no way it was going to match up to last year’s show which really had that “special” feel to the card from top to bottom. Still, it’s the Wrestle Mania of Dragon Gate, and they more than delivered with some great performances.

Labels: Dragon Gate

Dory Funk Jr. & Katsuhiko Nakajima VS Abdullah the Butcher & Giant Kimala
It’s about 25 minutes into the show before the first match even starts! This was mostly a big out of ring brawl, cause that’s all Butcher knows how to do anymore and all Dory can do is throw forearm shots. Lumbering Kimala at least showed he can still wow the crowd when he did a great flying lariat/elbow type attack on Nakajima. There wasn’t much they youngster could do here either other than throw kicks, and get beat down by his bigger opponents. This is easily a match you can fast forward past, cause you won’t miss much.
Match Rating: ½*

Jan “the Giant” Nortje & Sam Greco VS The Predator & Giant Bernard
Nortje & Greco did a really fun promo before the match. Aside from being hyped as a super-heavyweight tag match, the main focus was Bernard VS Nortje to see who the true giant is. Former WCW prospect Sam Greco actually looked really good here. He showed some good offense, and was really good as selling a beating. I only got annoyed at all the times he yelled “Hey” when throwing strikes. Nortje wasn’t spectacular and looked out of place at times, but he did get some good offense in himself. Nortje moves really well when he wants to. Predator had some good exchanges with Greco, but I noticed for someone who’s making waves in Japan, Giant Bernard really didn’t look all that impressive here. Not sure if it was because of who he was working with, but I thought he could have done a lot better. But overall, this was an enjoyable super-heavyweight match.
Match Rating: *

Chuck Palumbo & Johnny Stamboli VS Bubba Ray & D-Von
I found it funny that despite representing the Voodoo Murders, Palumbo & Stamboli are still referred to as the FBI. I also liked how the commentator referred to Team 3D’s style not as “hardcore”, but “table-core”! These two teams put on a good American style tag match. They did a good job actually building up the match to the sprint climax where they got all their spots in. I also found it really funny hearing Bubba shout “lariato!” everytime he did one! You also gotta give YASSHI credit for taking the table-bomb despite his injured foot and still selling being put through a table just days before.
Match Rating: *1/2

WRESTLE-1 Grand Prix Round 2 Match: Kohei Suwama VS Minoru Suzuki
Well, if you heard this match went too long for it’s own good, than you heard right! There just seemed to be too much mat work from Suzuki (like he usually does) in this one, and it was up to Suwama to make things interesting with his barrage of suplexes, like the very good half-nelson he delivered, and a triple German, with each suplex being a different variation! Also note that Suwama is beginning to look like Hirotaka Yokoi for some reason. Something that took away from the match was Suzuki confronting referee Kyohei Wada, and give Wada credit cause he didn’t back down from Suzuki’s intimidation! That right there is why he’s the best referee in Japan, and he even earned Suzuki’s respect it seemed as Suzuki raised his hand after the match! Overall, this match would have benefited from being only 10 minutes instead of 17, with more of a fast paced sprint than what they did here, but still ok.
Match Rating: *1/2

WRESTLE-1 Grand Prix Round 2 Match: Don Frye VS Jamal
Good to say Frye wasn’t totally out of shape as the pictures of the match would depict. His muscles are just starting to go flabby, but he can still work a match at least. I noticed Jamal is also wearing padded boots since he added that kick combo to his arsenal. We’ll probably never see it now that he’s back with WWE though. The match itself was mostly Frye keeping Jamal grounded with submission attempts, but Jamal would snatch Frye up out of nowhere and drop him on his head with a Samoan Driver! This spot looked really SICK since Frye didn’t look like he tucked his head in.
Match Rating: *

Akebono & Scorpio VS Mitsuharu Misawa & Yoshinari Ogawa
This was the first match of the night that the crowd really got into. My first time seeing Akebono in action and he was impressive to say the least, though you could hear Scorpio giving him instructions at times. The crowd loved seeing Akebono and Misawa go at it, and Misawa did his best sell job in awhile as he actually looked like he was in trouble when ‘Bono was in charge. Of course there was the awkward ending bit where Misawa hit the big elbow shots again which led to the finish and Akebono kicked out after the three, making it look like a bit of a fluke. It protects ‘Bono I guess.
Scorpio carried most of the work for his team, which isn’t really bad since he was entertaining and hit some good offense, and Ogawa did good too getting as good as he was giving. Probably the best match on the show so far.
Match Rating: **

WRESTLE-1 Grand Prix Round 2 Match: Kensuke Sasaki VS Great Muta
Hate to say it, but there is nothing more redundant than watching a Great Muta match as everything is just so routine. Other than the look and spraying the mist, there really isn’t any difference from Keiji Mutoh himself. Even against the likes of Kensuke Sasaki it doesn’t look much different from any other recent Muta match, even if Sasaki did bleed for him. You gotta hate it when guys like Muta take a big move like getting slammed on a steel chair and just pop up like nothing happened.
Match Rating: ½*

WRESTLE-1 Grand Prix Round 2 Match: Bob Sapp VS Jun Akiyama
Trust Akiyama to be the man to carry Bob Sapp to the best match of his career, but even that isn’t saying much about this. I don’t think it was as bad as most people made it out to be, since Akiyama gave Sapp a heck of a beating. Akiyama even managed to toss Sapp in an Exploder! Akiyama of course bumped for Sapp, including taking a big chokeslam through an announce table and the big Beast-bomb at the end. Not the best main event in the world, but still watchable.
Match Rating: **

Overall: Ok, this might actually be the worst overall puroresu show I’ve watched this year. Sure the matches had potential, but there was nothing here you’ll remember, unlike the first show that had a MOTY candidate in Akiyama/Shibata and the excellent Kaz Hayashi VS AJ Styles match. I say only watch this show if you can get it for free somewhere.

Labels: Misc Indies

Death Match Wars #41
8/14/2005 Part 1
Bad Boy Hidoh, GENTARO & Hyoma VS MEN’S Teioh, Asian Cougar & Zach Gowen
Our favorite one-legged teen wrestler in Big Japan. Yeah, I’m being sarcastic. Zach added a new swinging neck-breaker to his arsenal, but it’s still the same punching bag, two move wrestler from TNA and WWE. Of course, he was the target of the Hidoh led heel team, and he more or less proved that he’s not the best person to give the hot tag too as he was easily taken out. Teioh was still nice enough to give him the pin though.
This is my first time seeing Asian Cougar in action, and he looked good. He did this awesome apron to floor senton onto two chairs placed on GENTARO. Personally, I think he would make a good team with Hyoma as they look almost similar. Hidoh and Teioh didn’t really do much in this one, but for some reason Hidoh took it upon himself to attack the commentary team. Of course it didn’t help that the guy was laughing while Hidoh was strangling him.
Match Rating: *

Light Tube Death Match: Daisuke Sekimoto VS “Kokutenshi” Jaki Numazawa
Numazawa is out to avenge a loss to Sekimoto from a previous encounter, and if your expecting blood, they got it by the pint here! But what more could you expect when light tubes are involved? How about Numazawa going all Mr. Pogo on Sekimoto with a sickle? Numazawa did an innovative camel clutch, but instead of the chin lock, he pulled back on a sickle across Sekimoto’s forehead! He even brought out an old New Jack favorite and carved Sekimoto’s head with a cheese grater! And when broken glass and weapons aren’t enough, how about throwing in a couple a thousand thumbtacks?!!
Of course Sekimoto wasn’t all fodder here for our favorite death match psychopath. He got some good offense in, being the fan favorite and all, but it just seemed to me like he didn’t fit into the death match environment. Sure he bled and bumped like a trooper, but the guy still needs some work. He dominated with his power early on, and tossed Numazawa like a ragdoll. But I thought he wasted a prop when he placed a HUGE light tube crucifix across Numazawa and broke it in half with a simple lariat.
Numazawa has had better death matches, but this was still entertaining and a good setup for Numazawa/Kasai VS Kobayashi/Sekimoto later down the line. You gotta love the way Numazawa starts his after match promo by breathing heavily and slowly turning into his maniacal laugh.
Match Rating: ***

Death Match Wars #42
8/14/2005 Part 2
We start off this episode at the Big Japan dojo (complete with a stack of light tubes at the door!) where a press conference with our favorite blood letting freaks Jaki Numazawa (in a smart suit) and Jun Kasai (dressed only in his Fila underwear!?!), and it’s announced that Kasai will go one-on-one with gaijin ace Mad Man Pondo. Have no idea what they were saying, but they actually bleeped out some of the things Kasai said!

Daikokubo Benkei & Yuki Ishikawa VS Yuichi Taniguchi & Katsumasa Inoue
Inoue reminds me of Tomoaki Honma and is really growing on me. He has some good exchanges with Ishikawa and definitely took it as a learning experience from the UWFi / Pancrase veteran. It will definitely be interesting to see how Inoue develops in the years to come. He already has that Ryuji Ito look of determination to him, and just needs to work on his mat skills and he’ll definitely be a contender in the future.
Taniguchi did his usual routine of unique comedy. Interesting to see him up against Benkei since the two usually team together, but they played off each other really well. Benkei isn’t that bad in the ring either, he’s just slow moving with signs of knee troubles from a long career in the business.
Fun match, and I like the funny promo after the match where Taniguchi bad mouthed Ishikawa only to get chased off in the parking lot!
Match Rating: *

Abdullah Kobayashi & Shadow WX VS “Mr. Insanity” JC Bailey & 2 Tuff Tony
This was cut down a lot, and mostly focused on Kobayashi beating down Tony. They went all the way out to the concession stand where Kobayashi stuffed a kebab in Tony’s mouth before giving him a diving elbow drop off the concession table! Other than that was all brawling, and Kobayashi kicking out of the Tony Driver (Axe Guillotine Driver), and the gaijins screwed the home team out of the win when Tony pinned Kobayashi with a powerbomb out of the corner and putting his feet high on the ropes for leverage. WX instantly attacked the ref for making the 3-count when he could obviously see what Tony was doing.
Match Rating: ½*

Ryuji Ito & Takashi Sasaki VS Mammoth Sasaki & MASADA
Damn! I was about to write this up as just another tag match, but then things got really INSANE! First it was the usual brawl out into the crowd where Ito locked Mammoth in a tarantula on an erected scaffolding! Back to the ring for more brawling, and then MASADA does something crazy I’ve never seen before: he set his bare hand on FIRE to deliver a big punch to Sasaki! From there MASADA wheeled over the huge scaffolding structure and looked to dive out on Sasaki from the top, but Ito made the save and launched MASADA off the scaffold through a stack of chairs in the ring! Ito than followed up with a HUGE Dragon Splash off the scaffold for the win! Definitely a surprise considering everything else on the show so far!
Match Rating: **1/2

Mad Man Pondo VS Jun Kasai
Man, Kasai still has a lot of sick welts on his back from the razor board match with Numazawa from awhile back. I was also wondering where Numazawa was since Pondo has 2 Tuff Tony in his corner and he constantly helped Pondo to cheat.
Starts off with the usual brawling out into the crowd and such, and Pondo dominated most of the match thanks to Tony’s help. Kasai bled big time thanks to Pondo carving his head with a pocket knife, but things got really interesting when he finally was able to bounce back. Probably the sickest spot of the match was Pondo giving Kasai a piledriver off the second rope through a burning table! Kasai retaliated giving Pondo a diving chair to the head with a chair that was set on fire!
This match was ok, it’s just too bad we had to wait till the end for the good stuff to come out.
Match Rating: **

Overall: What? No Necro Butcher? What the heck. Good shows overall, with the must see stuff being Numazawa/Sekimoto and the Ito/Sasaki VS Mammoth/MASADA tag match. Don’t expect too much though.

Labels: BJW