Puroresu Show Reviews

Korakuen Hall 3/28/2006
American Wrestling School: Steve Corino VS Colt Cabana
OK, I’ll admit it, despite all the Ring of Honor shows I have in my collection, I’ve never actually watched a lot of Colt Cabana’s matches. The only one that does come to mind was the Chris Candido Memorial Match he had against Larry Sweeney & Delirious in IWA Mid South before he headed off to Japan for this very tour. And it was a rather hilarious comedy match too.
So I was a bit surprised to see him and Corino have a fun little match where they mixed in an odd bunch of comedy and chain wrestling. Rather surprising that the crowd was heavily into Cabana too. Like I already mentioned, it was fun watching them do all these chain moves and counters, as they did some things I don’t think I’ve seen before, and kudos to the referee for playing along to some of the comedy. All the grappling and counters going on, and Corino wins it with the Kido-Clutch out of nowhere for a flash 3-count.
I might have to check out more of Cabana after this one.
Match Rating: **

A quick look at the rise of Takuya Sugawara since joining Zero-One, scoring a shocking win over Minoru Fujita with some help from ex-Aagan Iisou team mate “brother” YASSHI, and then beating Ikuto Hidaka clean for the International Jr. title. Sugawara puts the bad mouth on Z1M’s junior division, so who should answer the call? Apache Pro’s GENTARO!

AWA/Z1M/UPW/WORLD-1 International Jr. Title: Takuya Sugawara [C] VS GENTARO
This was a lot of fun, save for the WWE style heel tactics used by Sugawara and his cohort, Crazy Boy. The more experienced GENTARO focused his attack on Sugawara’s knee for most of the match, and Sugawara did a good job of selling the bad wheel throughout the match. GENTARO controlled most of the match, and actually would have won with his shooting star press if Crazy Boy didn’t pull the referee out of the ring during the count. That lead to GENTARO having to fight off both Sugawara and Crazy Boy while the ref was out, as well as avoid Sugawara’s black box attacks and use it against them. I was rather surprised at GENTARO using a few of Shawn Michaels moves, like the flying forearm/kip-up bit, and the Sweet Chin Music. GENTARO even did this sweet looking sunset-flip into a Sharpshooter chain move. Give Sugawara credit though, despite the bad leg, he was still able to come out on top hitting the Shisanputa for the win. The result of the match probably would have been different if Crazy Boy wasn’t involved though.
Match Rating: **1/2

Shinjiro Ohtani, Masato Tanaka & Tatsuhito Takaiwa VS Kohei Sato, Yoshihito Sasaki & Daisuke Sekimoto
This was a great back and forth six man tag, with great showings from Sasaki & Sekimoto. Sasaki just continues to impress, and why they haven’t given him a title yet instead of hot shotting one on Sugawara is beyond me. And Sekimoto looked a whole lot stronger here compared to the tag match he’d have in Big Japan just 2 days later with Sasaki, Tanaka & Tetsuhiro Kuroda. There was also this really cool spot where the next generation team did a triple dead-lift German suplex-pin for 3 near falls at the same time! Sekimoto may have dropped the fall to Ohtani’s King Cobra-hold, but the big man definitely went down fighting as Ohtani himself was rather exhausted as he had to dropped Sekimoto on his head with several big moves before he was able to clamp on the finisher. Great match overall.
Match Rating: **1/2

Overall: I really need to catch up with my Zero-One MAX! They picked all the right matches to put on this episode as everything was enjoyable, with a good mix and variety too.

Labels: Zero-1 MAX