MICHINOKU PRO-1/14/97- on Samurai TV, Sapporo Nakajima Sports Center
(MIKE!!!!!)
This was quite the mixed bag. The good stuff is FRICKIN GREAT and the
bad stuff is relatively bad. It starts with a match tagging Yakushiji
with a fellow-scrawny guy, Sugamoto- who I had never seen before I don't
believe- up against the crappy Wellington Wilkins III (Phil's former
fave.:)) and the underrated Hoshikawa. Hoshikawa is the very
BattlARTSesque guy in MP who is also pretty fair at the MP style. He
kicks harder than he highflies and I'm starting to dig him. Sugamoto
was spunky and Yakushiji was in the weird role as elder partner so he
slaps Sugamoto in the head when Sugamoto wants to be a pansy and tag out
too soon. This match is kinda jerky, not really hitting its stride at
full speed- though it had a lot of nice spots. Sugamoto was impressive
for a rookie and Yakushiji did his mid-grade Rey Misterio Jr spots.
Wilkins did a cool (I'm not kidding) snap mare where he twists
Sugamoto's head. Hoshikawa hit lots of cool suplexes and kicked really
hard. Not bad, didn't change my life or anything.
A BattARTS match follows and its a good one- so it was really good-
since with BattlARTS its really good or mindnumbingly bad. And Ikeda is
SO cool now. Daisuke Ikeda and Takeshi Ono take on Yuki Ishikawa and
Alexander Otsuka. Ono is right behind Ikeda and Minoru as the really
good wrestlers to watch in BattlARTS. He's very slender and VERY
graceful. He works as stiff as someone twice his size so he is kinda
compelling to watch. This match was the usual mishmash of styles with
this being heavy on the matwork and it also ventured into whacky
brawling into the stands, complete with stiff kicks into the first
couple of rows. Ikeda sets the tone as he and Ishikawa take turns
working for leg submissions. Otsuka and Ishikawa kinda halfway work on
the leg of Ikeda but tend to wander to other strategies whenever the
match calls for a cool suplex to break up the matwork. Otsuka is the
least of these guys from a stiffness and suplex standpoint, but he sells
the best of anyone in BattlARTS and has a weird extra-pro-style approach
that is great at counterpointing the more overwhelming matwork sequences
and he is the one who makes Ono's and Ikeda's kicks look spectacular.
This was good because it was just enough stiffness added to just enough
pro style psychology which all built to a cool ending with Otsuka's
credible selling of some CHOICE stiff kicks. AN ESOTERIC TREAT!:)
Next up was the Funaki/Naniwa match that was shown (in edited form I'm
sure) on Champ Forum. This match was great! I can't believe that
Naniwa is just twenty years old and can do matches as solid as this.
Both of these guys are just good wrestlers who don't do a lot of
spectacular moves. Lorefice mentioned in Quebrada about Funaki selling
the knee inconsistently at differnet points in the match and that's
true- especially after Naniwa spends the first five minutes of the match
bustin his knee up. I can't remember if this match preceded or came
after the match where Funaki gets bum-rushed by all of the Sasuke Wusses
outside the ring and they REALLY work on his knee (the one where the
rudos carry him to the back and race back into the ring). I'm thinking
that that was the first 10-man rematch (the best of the series I'd say)
so this attack by Naniwa would make sense since it built upon that point
of psychology from a previous match in the feud and it is a valid
criticism that Funaki should have been more aware how he was selling the
worked-on knee. Other than that, this match kicked ass. I wish they
would pursue this feud more, though I guess its water under the bridge
four months later. These two are made for each other like Super Delfin
and Shiryu are.
I wasn't prepared for MOTEGI vs SHINZAKI. Who would be? This didn't suck as much as you would think. Well. It sucked about as much as any Shinzaki match sucks, but it wasn't Shinzaki sucking against somebody who is really good, so it doesn't piss off the discerning wrestling viewer like Shinzaki going over Shiryu does. It was like Ice Train going over JL as opposed to Ice Train going over LaParka. Plus it was mercifully short.
TigerKing vs TAKA I'd seen before also, but I didn't want to see it again. So I FF.
The Main Event was Hamada/ Sasuke/ Super Delfin vs Dick Togo/ Men's
Teioh/ Shiryu and
Sasuke gets Doomsday Deviced, then Teioh DDT'd, Then Shiryu hits a
flying cross body block, then Teioh hits a splash and then TOGO hits a
SENTON HALFWAY ACROSS THE RING. I freaked out and partied. AWESOME!
GO GIT IT!
UWA TV from Galavision (2/90; 4/90)
(MIKE!!!)
NEXT WEEK: KAORU! KAORU! KAORU! A really weird Michinoku Pro Champ
Forum! LUCHA! LUCHA LUCHA LIBRE!!! WOO-HOO!
This was all from 1990 and it had the guys I had heard were good, but
had only seen while they had already reached Lucha Codgerdom. The guy
who I figured would rule and who really did rule was Atlantis. Atlantis
is one of my faves of the old guys now, but he was REALLY
state-of-the-art in 1990. He was Misterioesque in his flashiness- agile,
acrobatic, spectacular yet still able to take it to the mat like he
relies on now that his knees are gone. El Dandy was another guy who is
real sketchy now who was spectacular then. I watched a singles match on
this tape between him and Angel Azteca that was really solid, mixing
great highspots with tricked-out lucha mat wrestling. I can see a lot
of stuff that is lost now in Lucha Libre, in that these guys worked ten
times looser than their present-day lucha descendents but they also had
a better grasp of mat wrestling that the young punks of Lucha have and
who aree having to regain it by watching their Japanese counterparts. I
don't understand why these old guys don't do more of that now as opposed
to slapping each other a lot like they do now. I dunno. The big
surprise for me was the coolness of Pirata Morgan- GOLLY! what a bump
machine. I've only seen a few of his latter day matches and he can
barely move now. Back in 1990 he was about as intense as you can get,
doing bumps like Psicosis would do now (without all the twisting:)) He
was also a great imposing rudo who could pull off looking like a legit
badass- PLUS! of the four hours I watched, he took the two fattest Jerry
Estrada bumps and was posted the hardest twice. Another neat thing on
this tape is a match which was four stiffs (well, Octagon wasn't a stiff
back then) teaming with Asai and Canelo Casas. It was ginchy seeing
Ultimo Dragon without a mask and really flying around mixing it up with
the thirteen year-old (okay maybe 18) Heavy Metal. And the Jerry
Estrada vs Satanico hair vs hair match had the best Satanico tope I've
ever seen. Okay it's the only Satanico tope I've ever seen, but it
still ROCKED!:)
CHEETAH~!
DVDVRs #36 - 40
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