SEPTEMBER 2000 PPV

September 26, 2000

Once in a blue moon I’ll take requests and/or challenges to review something (such as Kevin Wilson daring me to review Kronik’s WRESTLE-1 match). In this case, someone made the comment that the main event of this show showed how amazing a worker Fuyuki could be. Challenge Accepted!

Kyoko Inoue . . . is one of the few bright spots of an otherwise useless eight-person tag match.

Naohiro Yamazaki . . . takes a few sick prop shots and does very little else of note.

Kodo Fuyuki . . . actually impresses at times, but is mostly what you expect.

YOSHITO SASAKI/MASARU MAKITA vs. CHOCOBALL MUKAI/TOMOKAZU MORITA

So, the PPV starts with three rookies and the porn star. I suppose it could be worse. Morita and Sasaki worked a decidedly not bad wrestling sequence, aside from Sasaki overshooting the sunset flip. There’s a fun moment when Mukai locks Sasaki in a crab hold and lets go just to clock Makita with a kick to the head. Mukai gets Makita in a camel clutch and Morita is good enough to prevent Sasaki from the distraction this time, leading to the submission.

RICKY FUJI/AZUSA KUDO/EMI MOTOKAWA/JUN KASANAGI vs. FLYING KID ICHIHARA/SHINJUKU SAME/KYOKO INOUE/KAORUKO ARAI

The Inoue/Motokawa exchanges are nice, but they’re the only saving grace to this match. There’s precious little of Fuji or Ichihara, the Kudo/Same exchanges have far too much Shark and his boxer gimmick to be any good, and Arai/Kasanagi look, and work, like a pair of future WWE divas from developmental. Ichihara teases living up to his ‘Flying Kid’ name with a dive, but opts for a baseball slide. You can tell how motivated everyone is when Kyoko breaks up a crab hold by shoving Kasanagi with less force than my one year old daughter uses to shove away a spoon when she decides she doesn’t want to be fed. Kudo wins with an Iconoclasm/Emerald Frozian, but that’s really all there is to see other than the Kyoko/Motokawa parts.

GEDO/JADO vs. ALEX PORTEAU/BRIAN MADNESS

Porteau and Madness are the anti Funks. Terry and Dory earned the respect of Japanese people and held their own against Giant Baba and Jumbo Tsuruta, the best that All Japan had to offer. These two get squashed like bugs in two minutes by Jado and Gedo, not exactly the best that FMW could offer. Jado had a cool takedown to get Madness in the crossface, if nothing else.

MASATO TANAKA/HISAKATSU OYA/NAOHIRO YAMAZAKI vs. KINTARO KANEMURA/HIDEKI HOSAKA/MAMMOTH SASAKI

Aside from a couple of sick shots to Yamazaki, namely the board shot and Sasaki putting the chair around his neck and then hitting it with another, and the final exchange between Tanaka and Kanemura, this is a waste of eight minutes, and a waste of Tanaka and Oya. There’s far too little of Tanaka and Oya in the match, and tons of Sasaki and Hosaka working over Yamazaki. Yamazaki takes a decent beating, but he’s not stellar in any other aspect. Sasaki and Hosaka aren’t exactly great at working him over either. There’s some sort of friction between the heels. Hosaka and Sasaki won’t tag in Kanemura. Kanemura finally has enough of that and interjects himself into the match. He has a nice little exchange with Tanaka before he gets clocked with the rolling elbow and Sasaki and Hosaka just let him drop the fall.

TETSUHIRO KURODA/ONRYO vs. Mr. GANNOSUKE/GOEMON

Based on his work here, I’d like to see Gannosuke take on Hayabusa for an hour. He’s not great or anything, but he smokes everyone else in this match. Kuroda comes into the match with a bad arm and doesn’t feel like selling a thing until Gannosuke takes a bat to the arm. He blows off shoulder tackles and even pops up after a German suplex. The bat shot doesn’t even take that much out of him. Kuroda quickly comes back with a lariat, which Gannosuke smoothly counters into a Fujiwara armbar for the submission. I guess it’d have made too much sense to let the heels ruthlessly work over Kuroda’s arm leading to the submission. Onryo isn’t bad but he doesn’t stand out at all, he doesn’t do much more than a few flying spots anyway. GOEMON appears to be Koji Nakagawa’s version of Muta, face paint, red mist, and doing as little as possible.

I suppose the fact that this as watchable as it is, especially the first half, is a rather amazing feat. But, if this qualifies Kodo as an ‘amazing’ worker, then what does that make contemporaries of his like Misawa and Kawada? And what does that make legitimate legends like Giant Baba, The Destroyer, or Jumbo Tsuruta?

The first half of this is very busy, Kodo and ‘Busa stay relatively on task, with Kodo working the back and ‘Busa working the arm. Hayabusa’s work is clearly better especially his Tarzan Goto-like armbar takedown and his Wakigatame. But Fuyuki busts out his own good submission in the bow and arrow. But, not once in the latter half of the match does either of them think to work back to those body parts, even for a good near fall or a nice submission tease. Fuyuki does bring a few smart ideas with him, he draws first blood on Hayabusa with a muscle buster and then quickly hits his charging lariat to go up 2-0. There’s also a near fall late in the match from a cradle, which ‘Busa had used earlier to get a fall on Fuyuki. But, moments like that are the exception and not the rule. The bulk of the latter half of the match is dominated by Fuyuki and his usual shtick (lariats, yelling, running in place, ungodly slow pace).

Hayabusa is better overall, he’s smart to try to let Fuyuki get counted out of the ring and he only does the big dive when it’s clear that Fuyuki is fully recovered and will be able to beat the count. He also gets a near fall from the 450 and quickly drops another one that keeps Fuyuki down. That’s normally an annoying occurrence, but it’s smart for these matches. There’s also a short sequence where he pounces Fuyuki with a barrage quick flying moves. Hayabusa’s not without issues either. The most glaring is the fact that Fuyuki rips off his mask and he more or less just lets it happen and spends the remainder of the match maskless, rather than getting fired up and fighting back even harder. There’s also their crowd brawl complete with the goofy spot where ‘Busa stands at the edge of the balcony and lets Fuyuki clock him with a chair so he can take the big bump.

The booking of a draw doesn’t exactly help matters either. This is the type of match that’s supposed to show who the better man really is, and the notion that these two are equals is laughable. As a whole, it’s watchable, and surprisingly smart at times, but the latter half of Fuyuki dominance and the slow pace, doesn’t make this any better than that.

Conclusion: I’m at a loss for any reason at all to go after this show as a whole. Hayabusa, Gannosuke, and Kyoko have all done much better than their matches here. The main reason I got this was Fuyuki, and while I was pleasantly surprised by him, this is far from an impressive showing overall.