Puroresu Show Reviews

Starts off with Nanae Takahashi and her mom taking a stroll and talking about Nanae’s career. We then jump to Korakuen Hall for the opening ceremony of the show, first with a few dancing girls in the ring (I think they danced for Magnum TOKYO?) before the introduction of the wrestlers. Wow. SUN has all of FOUR wrestlers on the permanent roster? Nanae thanks the fans and the show kicks off.

~Sun*Shine~: Natsuki Taiyo VS Ayumi Kurihara
This was heavily clipped down from the ten minutes it ran. Doesn’t look like they did a lot cause they started off trading cradles and near falls, and it cut to the end with them still trading cradles and near falls before Natsuki hit the Yoshi Tonic for the win.
Natsuki Taiyo used to be called Natsuki Head because of her rather large cranium that she wasn’t afraid to use as a weapon, and I’ve heard some good things about Kurihara, too bad they clipped out so much and left us nothing here.
Match Rating: 1/4*

Japan VS America ~Mixed Wars~: Saki Maemura & Yoshihito Sasaki VS Panther Claw & Steve Corino
Cut down a lot also, but more watchable than the previous match. Corino did his usual comedy antics with the women, but still put Saki over by letting the way smaller girl give him a German suplex-hold for a near fall as well as a cool double-team frankensteiner off the top rope with an assist from Sasaki. Corino got his heat back by almost taking Saki’s head off with a Corino-kick before Panther finished her off with a double-arm chokeslam. Panther is a rather tall black woman, though I’m not too sure about her ring skills since she didn’t get to do much other than her finisher and a rather nice looking split leg pin attempt on Maemura.
Match Rating: *

EWA Women’s Title – TLC Match: Wesna Busic [C] VS Ayako Hamada
Clipped down by about half, but what they showed was all action! Wesna Busic is from the EWA, which is a hardcore promotion if I’m not mistaken, and she also holds the NSG women’s title she won off Hikaru. I liked that they had a promo video to both show a bit of background on Wesna as well as what a TLC match actually is.
I was rather surprised at some of the crazy stunts Ayako was willing to put herself through in this one, like an insane moonsault off the top to the outside to put Busic through a table, as well as a suicide dive through the rope into a waiting chair shot from Busic! She even took a powerbomb off the ladder through a table before Busic finished her off with the Wesna Killer (modified reverse piledriver) on a chair and placing the ladder over her to pin her down so she could grab her belt off the cable to retain.
I would really love to see this one in full to give it a higher rating!
Match Rating: **1/2

WORLD-1 Women’s Title: Amazing Kong [C] VS Hikaru
This match was built around Kong’s anger at Hikaru for supposedly laughing at her during her match at the WRESTLE EXPO show, and it continued when she infiltrated the SUN press conference as a member of the press for “Weekly Kong” magazine to confront Hikaru.
I guess you could say this one was clipped in all the right places to keep the action going. It was rather surprising some of the things Kong was willing to do despite her size, like a missile dropkick off the apron to the floor! Hikaru battled back giving the bigger Kong a back cracker on the apron and was able to muscle her up for a Samoan drop, but the bigger Kong rallied back hitting a big diving guillotine leg drop off the second rope and an Amazing Press off the top rope to retain her title.
The match looked good and had good heat from the crowd.
Match Rating: **

AWA Women’s Title: Nanae Takahashi VS Africa 55
Africa 55 is Amazing Kong’s assassin to take out Nanae Takahashi. She calls herself Africa 55 cause she supposedly put 55 people in the hospital and has a 200-0 win loss record. She also claims she’ll beat Nanae in just 2 minutes cause nobody else has ever gone past 2 minutes in a match with her. I just hope the woman has some skill to go with her buff physique.
So what does Nanae do to prepare for her foreign challenge? She seeks out the legendary Animal Hamaguchi to train her!
The best part about this match was probably the heel antics of Steve Corino as the referee (It’s an AWA Women’s Title match and he represents AWA?). As I thought, Africa 55 is really green in the ring, her strikes lack any impact and she doesn’t know how to bump properly. Nanae was still able to weather the storm and capitalized on a mistake from the gaijin heel camp when Amazing Kong accidentally clotheslined Corino, taking him out of the match, and Africa accidentally took out Kong with a lariat, giving Nanae the opening to hit the Falcon Arrow and the regular referee to make the three count for the win.
Match Rating: **1/2

Overall: A one hour time slot and all those match clippings did nothing to help the show unless the matches were really that bad? They could have showed more match footage by cutting out some of the intros and cutting down the build up videos a bit. Definitely would have been better with a one and a half hour Puroresu King timeslot.

Labels: Joshi