G PRO-WRESTLING V.49

April 12, 2023

Soma Watanabe . . . seems to have found his groove by working pro-style matches as the spunky junior underdog.

Shinya Aoki . . . moves on to the finals of the UWF Title tournament by thoroughly dominating one of the more accomplished members of the Lidet UWF roster.

Sayaka Unagi . . . doles out (and blows off) suplexes at a rate that would make Kenta Kobashi say, ‘Damn kid, you need to slow down!’

TETSUYA IZUCHI/JUN TONSHO/KEIICHI SATO/OJI SHIIBA vs. YUTANI/EMPERADOR AZTECA/ACTION JACKSON/ELEMENTAL

This could be an ROH Scramble Match or an X-Division eight-man tag for all anyone knows. There’s very little here that makes this stand out from either of those sorts of matches. There’s no sense of story, structure, or selling; and it’s all go-go-go as far as throwing out every bit of offense they can, regardless of whether or not anything matters. YUTANI does the KENTA spot where he vaults into the ring and then errantly kicks his downed opponent, but Sato doesn’t put it over in the slightest. It gets really absurd when a Jon Woo-style dropkick aimed at the knees winds up being a near fall, if it involved a jackknife cradle then it’d be somewhat plausible, but it doesn’t so it isn’t, it’s just goofy looking. They’ve got the mandatory corner charge sequence where the heels all go after one babyface, and then the babyfaces get revenge and do the same thing to one of the heels. It ends with Azteca spiking Sato with what’s essentially a Burning Hammer, which is completely unnecessary, both in the context of this match and in a match like this in general.

KOTARO SUZUKI/HARTLEY JACKSON vs. SOMA WATANABE/ISSEI ONITSUKA

If anyone ever wondered how Lance Archer would look if he decided to replicate the events of “Super Size Me,” Hartley Jackson is the answer. He only takes about three bumps, and his offense mostly consists of chops and big man clubbering. Soma and Onitsuka are spunky enough to keep this interesting and they (mostly Onitsuka) sell big when Jackson is working them over. Suzuki and Onitsuka work the best parts of the entire match, but there’s not enough of those bits to make this anything more than watchable. If nothing else, Soma looks a lot more natural working this sort of match than he has in every UWF-style match I’ve seen from him.

LIDET UWF Title Tournament - Semifinal: YU IIZUKA vs. TAKANORI ITO

Although this moves a bit slow and the finish doesn’t look very good, this is a fun continuation of the Ito/Tamura match from March. Like Tamura, Iizuka’s goal is to keep the match on the mat, but Ito really makes him work to get there. And when Iizuka does surprise Ito with something, such as the takedown into the juji-gatame and then the Triangle choke, Ito is quick to escape it on his own rather than bail for the ropes and lost points. He saves the ropes for when it’s absolutely necessary, such as the grounded Octopus that Iizuka used to beat Minoru Tanaka. While Iizuka is jockeying to take Ito down, Ito is trying to wrangle him stationary and fire off with his knees and kicks, and the few times he gets a clear shot he makes it count. The first big one is when he fends off a leg bar and counters Iizuka into a backdrop suplex and when Iizuka gets up, Ito hits a palm strike and then a high kick which knocks Iizuka out of the ring. The finish does a fine job of playing off the story, but it doesn’t come off very well. Iizuka counters a German suplex by rolling into an ankle lock and making Ito use a rope break. It seems like Iizuka has Ito right where he wants him, and then Ito hits a high kick that stuns Iizuka, and he follows up with a couple of palm strikes and a second high kick gives Ito the KO win. Once again, Ito wins by patiently working through what his opponent gives him and waiting for the right opening. But the actual finishing strikes don’t look very good at all, they look more like glancing blows than KO shots. It would have been infinitely better had Iizuka beaten the count so that Ito could land a perfectly clean shot to put him down. It’s nice to see them play off one of the better quarterfinal matches, it’s just too bad that the finish wound up leaving a poor final impression to an otherwise fun match.

LIDET UWF Title Tournament - Semifinal: SHINYA AOKI vs. HIKARU SATO

After his match with Izuchi it was pretty much a lock that Aoki was going to be in the finals of the title tournament. And this is a fine way to get there, even if it’s a bit short. Aoki gets to show off his craftiness by preventing Sato from taking him down, and he looks assertive when he throws his kicks while Sato seems tentative. The one mat sequence they work comes off well, with Sato wanting the legbar and Aoki seamlessly countering and reversing him, and Aoki working his way to the kata-gatame and choking Sato out with it. This isn’t very long to begin with, and a good bit of that time is spent circling with Aoki waiting for Sato to do something, but it does its job of advancing Aoki to the finals and pretty much gets out of the way.

KAZ HAYASHI/MINORU TANAKA/EL LINDAMAN/VIOLENTO JACK vs. RYUICHI KAWAKAMI/KAZMA SAKAMOTO/QUIET STORM/GALENO del MAL

There isn’t a whole lot here that separates this from the opener. The only bit of story to be found is the Bulk Orchestra control segment working over Tanaka’s midsection, and not one of the four heels does a single thing to give the impression that he’s trying to genuinely win the match. It’s a lot of splashes, stomps, and shoulder tackles in the corner. That might fly for a squash match on WWF TV circa 1987, but these guys should be capable of better. Tanaka doesn’t even really put it over that much, he makes his own save and tags out, and it doesn’t seem to hinder him at all for the rest of the match. Galeno’s rana to Jack is probably the highlight of the match, it’s certainly the most memorable spot, but it winds up meaning nothing in the grand scheme of things. His dive to the floor isn’t quite as impressive, but it’s a good reason to explain why nobody is able to save Kawakami at the end. There’s a little bit of build to the finish, with Lindaman being unable to give Galeno (the biggest member of the team) his German suplex and then being able to do it to the smallest, but there’s nothing in the actual work that suggests that Lindaman is looking to end the match. He just escapes a DVD and hits the German for a near fall and then does a second one to win the match. This didn’t need more time, they just needed to be smarter about using the time they had, which shouldn’t have been an issue with so many experienced workers.

MICHIKO MIYAGI vs. SAYAKA UNAGI

What a mess. These two utterly kill each other with near-insane spots, without any degree of logic or story to anything they do. The one nice touch that this has comes from Miyagi’s attempts at her sleeper, when she can’t keep Unagi down for a pin. Other than that, this is just a lot of clobbering with elbow and forearm shots and throwing out whatever big move comes to mind. It looks more like a video game than something real. You know what you’re in for in the first minute when Miyagi hits a Tombstone on the floor. Unagi puts it over pretty nicely at first, and then she dodges Miyagi’s baseball slide and plants her with a twisting facebuster off the apron to the floor. The match doesn’t get any better from there. Miyagi hits a regular Tombstone for a near fall and it seems like Unagi uses the last of her strength to kick out; she can’t even go along with Miyagi picking her up. Then Unagi deadweights Miyagi to prevent another Tombstone and counters into her fisherman driver to win the match, mere seconds after looking all but dead. Aside from the short length and ridiculous ‘fighting spirit’ facials and body language, there’s very little that separates this from a Misawa or Kobashi main event from late ‘90’s All Japan or early ‘00’s NOAH.

They don’t go overboard with the big moves like the women’s match does, but this is still little more than a spotfest with very little in the way of any sort of story. The little bit of arm work from the challengers is fun to watch, and Shimitani’s selling is great (although it’s very brief), but it doesn’t go anywhere. The initial arm segment on Tamura ends when Flamita runs himself into a press slam and then gets hit with a spear before Tamura knocks Bendido off the apron and tags out. Then when Tamura gets back in later, he’s more concerned with selling his knee before a corner charge and his back before he attempts a suplex. The arm segment on Shimitani is better, and it features the only real submission hold that seems like a credible finisher, but it’s also too short, although it does have the smartest moment of the match. Again, Shimitani was great selling his arm while it was being worked over, but then he tries to make his comeback with a lariat, which Flamita avoids and then hits Shimitani with a superkick and a Tiger driver for a near fall.

The Shimitani/Flamita exchanges are rather smooth, and Bendido initially flubs a few spots and then makes up for it later with some nice dives. But there’s just no real sense that they’re trying to build to anything. It also doesn’t help that there are a few exposing moments like Tamura throwing Bendido into the corner and then climbing the opposite turnbuckle, so that Flamita can try to cut him off. It’s just one of them rattling off one or two spots and then either having the pin broken up or getting countered so that the other team can get something in, and their spots aren’t always very clean (Bendido’s rolling cradle and the chokeslam/lariat combo from Tamura and Shimitani are both examples of this). Shimitani’s dive off the apron onto Flamita (and a few of the other Black Generation members at ringside) is a fine enough way to stop him from saving Bendido at the end. If you’re only interested in seeing fancy dives and elaborate double-team moves then this is right up your alley, but a twenty-minute title match should have more to it than that.

This isn’t fundamentally different than the G-Infinity match, replace the dives and double teams for absurdly stiff strikes and tack on a few extra minutes and it’s basically the same match. They take turns battering each other and get the match nowhere in the process. At first it seems like T-Hawk wants to use the strikes to get to other offense, but the stuff he rolls out doesn’t really matter too much either. They go to a stalemate trying to whip each other into the corner and neither man can do it, but Hawk hits a chop and is able to do the corner whip. Hawk takes Ishida over with a hip toss, grabs his leg and rolls into an STF. It’s a nice little sequence, but it’s ultimately meaningless. Hawk doesn’t continue to work the leg and the time spent in the hold doesn’t prevent Ishida from doing anything. You might think that a match being mostly built on strikes would mean that they’re sold well and made to look meaningful, but that’s far from the case here. One of Ishida’s first big shots is a snap mare that leads to a Shibata-style running kick, and Hawk’s reaction is to sit there and glare at Ishida as though he’s annoyed. Later on, Ishida whips Hawk into the corner and does a big running boot, and Hawk looks unfazed. And Ishida is no better when it’s Hawk throwing his chops or kicks.

Along with the strikes, they also do their own ode to the “classic” main events with Misawa, Kobashi, and Akiyama. They roll out a suplex and pop-up sequence that sees a half nelson suplex, brainbuster, deadlift superplex, and rebound German suplex all get tossed out and no sold in short order. One wonders why they even bothered to start working near falls, when everything else they’d thrown at each other seemed to have no effect. Hawk had just taken a bump directly on his head and then one on his neck, why is Ishida’s Tiger suplex nearly beating Hawk? Hawk countering the Tiger suplex into his Night Ride finisher isn’t the worst idea they have (to say the least), they pull it off relatively cleanly and it’s not like there’s a huge size disparity that makes it look obviously cooperative. But doing so after Hawk more or less gets his brains scrambled with three roundhouse kicks is more than a little questionable. Ishida kicks out of the Night Ride and then eats a knee strike that seems to KO him, and a second Night Ride gives T-Hawk the title. After everything they’d thrown at each other with minimal effect; suddenly everything comes back and cumulatively wears them out in the last few minutes? Sure, the finishing sequence looks good. But there are at least a few thousand other matches that have good looking finishes and aren’t preceded by U.S. Indy level garbage of mimicking great workers, without seemingly understanding why they’re considered great. This is right there with the February ’22 GHC match as one of the worst title changes in recent memory, and Lord (thou art in heaven, Fujiwara be thy name) help us all if GLEAT ever decides to bring in Fujita.

Conclusion: The two UWF matches are fun and there’s some passable stuff on the pro-style side of the card, but the main event is one of the worst matches I’ve seen in a good long while. Literally the only reason to subject yourself to this is if you’re a completest or some kind of pain fetishist.