Puroresu Show Reviews

S-ARENA 4/27/2006
This is a special show featuring a series of mixed tag matches at the Shin Kiba 1^st Ring, with teams representing the districts they came from.

Saitama VS Wakayama: Yoshihito Sasaki & Hikaru VS Masato Tanaka & Ariya
I think someone played a rib on Tanaka & Ariya since their graphic on the big screen features a very young looking picture of the two when they were schoolmates in secondary school!
The one thing I love about mixed tag matches in Japan is that the guys don’t hold back (much) when mixing it up with the girls and the girls give it everything they got when mixing it up with the guys. Good example being Hikaru turning Tanaka inside out with a big spear, and Tanaka hitting Hikaru full force with the Superfly Splash. Tanaka even found it in him to pull a few comedy spots, like grabbing Sasaki by the hair and tossing him joshi style! Fun match overall, with Hikaru getting the win pinning Ariya with a modified Ki Krusher, hooking the inner leg for the move.
Match Rating: **1/2

USA VS Tokyo: Steve Corino & Amazing Kong VS Kohei Sato & Ayumi Kurihara
Haven’t much of Kong’s work in a while, but she’s wearing a great new gladiator type gear which really matches her. This match was entertaining just to see mannerisms of the guys involved when they got in there with the girls. Corino heeled it up like only he can, and Sato wasn’t rather hesitant to get it on with Kong, but that all changed by the end of it when Sato pinned Kong with a great dead-lift German suplex-hold.
Match Rating: *1/2

Shimada VS Yamaguchi: Ikuto Hidaka & Toyota Manami VS Minoru Fujita & Saki Maemura
This was a lot of fun as everyone worked well together here. There was a bit of hesitation for the then GHC Jr. tag champions to mix it up, but once they got past that it was all good. The girls even did a great job, with Maemura’s flip-floppy offense being believable as a good way to take down the guys, and the legendary Toyota Manami even managed to power up Fujita for the Queen’s Ocean Cyclone Suplex! Toyota won it for her team hitting Maemura with the Japanese Cyclone Bomb, a wrist-clutch Northern Lights Bomb variation, to end a great match.
Match Rating: ***

Overall: A really fun (but short) show, which I think served a dual purpose of also advertising the districts the wrestlers are from since they also did a quick background check on the towns and such in each district before the wrestlers came out for their match.

Labels: Joshi, Zero-1 MAX