DICK MURDOCK! FUKINAMI! Black Wozma! MAEDA! Adrian Adonis! ABDULLAH THE BUTCHER! and other stuff I saw and heard this week!
Howdy!
Welcome to DEATH VALLEY DRIVER VIDEO REVIEW #20! I watched a batch of
stuff and I'm here to yammer on about it. It's the holidays, so I'll
keep it short and not too overwrought.:)
-I watched the first couple of volumes of the History of the IWGP
Heavyweight Title history (Rob- the man! The legend! the guy!) and it's
pretty freaking choice in places. Akira Maeda against Tatsumi Fujinami in
the 1986 IWGP tournament is about as good as it gets folks (except for
the ending- but they weren't afraid of bad endings back then.:))
Fujinami gets the holy F*CK kicked out of himself by the
soon-to-be-crappy leader of RINGS. Maeda was a powder keg back then and
this was a good demonstration of it. By the end Fujinami is a hard-way
bloody wreck, but Maeda is also a lot worse for wear as they kick and
suplex each other into oblivion- with Akira doing the high kicks to the
head and superdick kicks to the knee and Tatsumi doing hip suplexes,
though Maeda does a weird prototype Fisherman Buster suplex accidentally
while recovering after blowing a spot. There is one point where Maeda is
outside of the ring kicking Fujinami in the face and it is just WAY TOO
INTENSE. I was freaked out ten years after the fact, I can't imagine
what it must have been like then. Fujinami is so much cooler in this
match than in the two against Chosyu. Here he is Strong Style defender
and goes at the Shoot style punk like a champ and takes the beating like
a champ. You just want him to beat the crap out of the vicious upstart
jerk, so the incredible spinning kicks by Maeda build my super-hatred as
each land on Tatsumi's face and by the final Garganta-kick you want
Fujinami to go get a chair or something and go at him. Nobody should
have to sell all of that. Not in 1986 anyway.:) The two matches against
Chosyu are the Fujinami we all love to hate, with the gimpy knee and all.
Chosyu looks like a long haired freak and doesn't bring it out of
Fujinami like Maeda did. The earlier matches from 83,84 and 85 had WAY
too much Andre the Giant, because Andre REALLY sucked by 82 and was
really pathetic by 84, with all the gigantism side effects setting in. My
main complaint is that I have seen so little of Sakaguchi, that to have
his match on this tape be an Andre squash is irritating. The awesome
match from 84 is Adrian Adonis vs Dick Murdock. Adonis was a freak.
What a great wrestler and you can't really pin down why. He could fly-
throwing some GREAT dropkicks for a guy his size-, he could go to the
mat, and he takes a hellish bump- he pumps a great match out of Murdock.
Vince mcMahon can burn in hell for what he did to this guy. The weird
thing about the tape so far is that there is very little of Antonio Inoki
actually wrestling and way to much of a young Hulk Hogan wrestling- which
wasn't truly truly horrible back then.
-I watched the 6/24 Tokyo Pro Champ forum with the infamous Sabu vs
Abdullah the Butcher match and it... wasn't... very... good. The first
match is okay- pitting Black Wozma (Too Cold Scorpio) vs Daikokubou
Benkai. I'm assuming that Benkai is a former Sumo wrestler, but he's too
old, fat, and slow to get on with WAR.:) Wozma sells all of his lame
chops (which is pretty funny) and then works in his highspots against his
much older opponent. Wozma dances with the young seedy Tokyo Pro crowd
when its over and it goes far to explain where all those seedy young
punks that hung out at IWA shows have migrated to. The Sabu/Abdullah
match was basically an ode to the Sheik vs Abdullah, with Sabu basically
walking around with Abdullah, stabbing him in the head with a pencil and
trying to open all of Abdullah's scar tissue- just like his uncle used to
do. I guess Abdullah is actually finally feeling the years or Sabu
didn't feel like doing any wrestling because this was about as low impact
as it gets. It was more of a Red Cross Blood Drive than a wrestling
match. The final match on it was two guys from Tokyo pro against Tarzan
Goto (or Tarzan Scroto,as I call him. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHHAAH)
and Mr. Gannosuke- you're basic FMW bleeding freak. I fast forwarded
after a few minutes, so, yes, I've let you- the RSPW reader- down.:)
NEXT WEEK: Back to the Lucha and the Liger and the rest of the IWGP
stuff! Unless Phil mails me more stuff, then its All Japan Women until
we're green around the gills! YES!
NANIWA~!
Dean Rasmussen, Super CaloHEAD!
SHIMODA! Minami Toyota! LIGER! Takada! Hase! and other stuff I saw this week!
Howdy!
Welcome to DEATH VALLEY DRIVER VIDEO REVIEW #20! It's the holidays and
I've not had a lot of time to gander at a batch of wrestling and, to top
it off, I've been making a lot of tapes to send fellow Grapplephiles
(WTF? You know who you are!) so this will be pretty dang short.
- I FINALLY started watching AJW Gran Prix Red and Blue 95 and SO FAR- It
ROCKS! Fuck it, Mima Shimoda is the coolest wrestler to ever wrestle in
AJW.:) She was so freaking awesome in her match against Minami Toyota
(Malibu Dreamhouse Not included) that I was all busted up after the
match- Torn between her, Hotta,Aja,Chigusa or KAORU as the coolest woman
wrestler on earth. The PINNACLE of wrestling itself AS WE KNOW IT is the
absolutely HORRIFYING four suplexes outside the ring- one on each side of
the ring- as if Mima was seeing which side wanted to see Barbie busted up
the most, like one of those "we got spirit yes we do, we got spirit how
bout you" contests. Shimoda gets extra special points for fishhooking
Malibu Stacy's mouth and making faces behind her back as she does it. I
KNEW she was the coolest when she was in that mixed tag tag match in
Michinoku Pro, but this seals it. Minami whipped ass too by doing her
best "Talented Sabu" impersonation, trying very hard to kill herself with
two springboard planchas and one springboard senton that was lost in the
camera work. She did two table spots- both of which hurt Minami more
than it hurt Mima or the table (hint to Japanese wrestlers: "Those half
tables never break in half. Don't dive into them from the top
turnbuckle.) Shimoda really kicks this matches ass into gear during the
last eight minutes by just suplexing the living HELL out of Toyota
repeatedly and taunting her as only a Female Vixen Icon can. Toyota fired
back with a succession of suplex variations that only she can make look
that beautiful. Maybe it's the GREAT hair flailing to the violent
motion or the fact she gets such height and extension, all I know is that
Moonami does the best, most specatular suplexes on earth when she is
healthy (which I guess is "Never Again.") There were so many near falls
in this match it was crazy- twice so close that the ref actually hit the
mat the third time- I was in a frenzy by the end (I THINK it was because
of the pinfalls! Of course Shimoda should wear more extensive clothing
because the hotpants distract from her acute wrestling prowess.:)) This
was one of the better matches I've ever seen just because I never figured
such an AJW pro style wrestler could be so convincing beating the hell
out of someone. Usually you have to wait for the real women (Aja,
Kansai((in JWP)), Hotta) to supply the ass stomping, but no more- Welcome
Shimoda, God's Cutest Ass-Stomper!
-I re-watched the Yamada/Takada and Yamada/Hase matches from the Best of
Liger tape and they were quite awesome in a little way. These were
matches where Yamada basically gets his ass handed to him. Takada
basically goes through the motions and takes him to the mat, not
bothering to kick the hell out of him a lot. It's great seeing Liger
with bad hair and a REALLY bad warmup suit. His boots were awesome
pre-gimmick though. This was basically a Takada glorified squash that
isn't apparent until Yamada submits to a halfcrab after nine or ten
minutes. The Hase match was strange because the whole time I was
fascinated how technically perfect Hase was back then. Hase had the
great quality to all of his moves in that they all looked like nobody
else couls possibly be graceful enough to those moves. Sort of the Rey
Misterio Jr mystique but on the mat and much more subtle. Malenko
achieves this state every now and then. I await Hase's All-Japan debut.
Yamada once again plays the young punk who has no WAY of winning (a
trend that continues until they cover up his ugly mug.:)) and it
translates later to his booking style in that he has had Ohtani,
Ishizawa, Kanemoto and Takaiwa assume that role, and he himself and
Benoit have translated the elder wrestler roles that Takada and Hase
portrayed to him. In all the matches before the gimmick, he slowly but
surely is getting moves over that aren't getting him wins but are getting
him pops so that by the time he is feuding with Owen Hart (back when Owen
was one of the greatest workers on earth) the Future Liger had gotten
himself positioned to make the matches seem in doubt. More Next Week
(Hart feud to the WHIP ASS NAOKI SANO FEUD).
-I heard REAL weird rumors on the various august internet sources:) and
the weirdest was that Nagata (NJ Young Lion)was coming in to WCW for
THREE years! If this is true, is he going to college here or something?
I also read that Toshie Uematsu had won the Road To The WCW Tournament
and would be over for a few months. That would be really great, though
she is still pretty green and wrestling Medusa ain't gonna help her. I
hope they send Sonoko Kato and Satomura over with her so they can wrestle
each other and I can watch it for free on TV.:) If she wrestles Akira
Hokuta for three months while she is here, her skills will skyrocket.
NEXT WEEK: Back to hours and hours of veiwing! More Liger! More Lucha!
All the stuff Hesh and St. Phil (future Shimodiac!) sent me! WOO-HOO!
NANIWA~!
Dean Rasmussen, SonokoHEAD!
