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HYPER BATTLE 2002

March 21, 2002

Eddie Guerrero . . . proves to be the lone highlight in a junior eight-man tag.

Osamu Nishimura . . . shows that the magic of MUGA knows no bounds, by having a good match with Manabu Nakanishi!

Hiroyoshi Tenzan . . . becomes the ‘one’ in Tadao Yasuda’s “V1" defense of the IWGP Title.

MASAYUKI NARUSE vs. KATSUSHI TAKEMURA

Aside from the opening exchange on the mat, which is surprisingly smooth, this is pretty much the Takemura show. He doesn’t have much more than typical young lion offense, but, it’s impressive to see him try to take the fight to the former junior champion. Naruse just lets Takemura get in his stuff, and then ends it when he decides that it’s been long enough. Naruse catches Takemura with a kimura after escaping the German suplex, and then hits a kick to the arm, and pins him after the Crazy Cyclone, which winds up looking more like a spinning chop than a backhand KO shot.

EDDIE GUERRERO/BLACK TIGER/GEDO/JADO vs. MINORU TANAKA/EL SAMURAI/KATSUYORI SHIBATA/WATARU INOUE

Eddie looked good here, but, overall this isn’t anything all that special. The idea seemed to be that Shibata and Inoue want to prove that they’re more than just the young boys, but, aside from one nice run where they plant Gedo with a few double teams, they don’t do anything too impressive. The heels seem to be holding back too, they’re noticeably lacking that vicious edge that you’d expect from any good junior heel team, especially having two young lions to abuse. The finish is fine, with Tanaka getting pinned after taking several of the heel teams’ finishers, culminating with Eddie’s frog splash, but, it seems odd that he would be the one to drop the fall, when he’s feuding with the leader of the junior heel faction. But then again, the whole match felt more like a practice session, where everyone showed up to do their stuff, rather than anything with a life of its own.

KENSUKE SASAKI/HIROSHI TANAHASHI vs. DAN DEVINE/BLUE WOLF

Take the last match, and remove Eddie’s inspired work, and this is pretty much the result. Tanahashi and Wolf are far too inexperienced to be in any position to help, Devine can’t decide if he wants to be a shooter or a regular pro wrestler, and Sasaki just shows up to smack Wolf around, run through his usual spots, and get the win. There was one nice moment where Wolf stood up to Sasaki and fired back with some chops of his own, but, it was gone as soon as it was there.

TATSUMI FUJINAMI/JYUSHIN LYGER vs. MASAHIRO CHONO/KOJI KANEMOTO

There wasn’t a whole lot to this, other than the heels busting up Lyger’s leg, but, they did a solid job in working him over, and Lyger was great at selling. So, this still winds up being good. Chono and Koji don’t bring much as far as flashy offense goes, although Koji’s sliding takedown for his ankle lock was nice, but, they make up for it by bringing the hate and intensity that Eddie and co. were lacking. The only altogether odd thing is the finish: Fujinami finally gets in and lets Koji get in a few spots, and then, reverses him into the grounded cobra twist for the pin. It seems like it was designed to look like a fluke. If anything, it would make more sense for Lyger to get a pin on Koji in that manner. A fresh, and fired up, heavyweight shouldn’t need to beat a junior like that.

MANABU NAKANISHI vs. OSAMU NISHIMURA

And the streak of good matches ends after one! Actually, this is surprisingly solid. Nakanishi basically stays out of the way and just lets Nishimura work a Nishimura match, but, it’s somewhat remarkable that Nakanishi is able to follow Nishimura’s lead, and not muck things up. It certainly helps that the work itself is rather simple, nothing on the level of what you’d see on a UWF card. It’s also nice to see them treat Nakanishi’s German suplex like a big deal, with Nishimura doing every counter and escape that he can pull off, in order to prevent it, and then having it pay off when Nakanishi finally hits the suplex and scores the pin. I’m not in any great hurry to see Nakanishi work any one-hour draws, but, it’s nice to see matches like this, that show that Nakanishi can perform well.

GIANT SINGH/TATSUTOSHI GOTO vs. GIANT SILVA/HIRO SAITO

The only thing worse than this match, is the notion that someone had the idea that this match should happen, and, when they pitched it, someone else actually agreed that this was a good idea! Watching the Silva/Singh exchanges is actually somewhat amusing, it's like watching Ebessan and Kamen working their slo-mo sequences, except that the Giants aren't trying to be funny. Goto manages to pin Saito to end everyone's suffering, but, that means that nothing gets settled, and the feud must continue.

YUJI NAGATA vs. SCOTT NORTON (#1 Contender’s match for the IWGP Heavyweight Title)

From a booking standpoint, this was a fine way to begin Nagata’s road to redemption. He beats a recent former champion to earn another crack at the title. But, the match itself is really bad overall. Norton uses his shoulderbreaker to put Nagata behind the eightball early on, and even whips out a couple of submissions, including a Fujiwara armbar, to tease whether or not Nagata can overcome even this challenge. There’s another smart moment a bit later when Norton hits his powerbomb and Nagata rolls to the floor, and they tease him getting counted out. But, once Nagata makes his comeback, the match just falls apart. There’s one nice moment when Nagata takes down Norton with a suplex and hits a couple of grounded knees before going to the Nagata Lock II. There’s zero selling of the arm, not even a tease as to whether or not it will prevent him from pulling off a suplex or give him trouble keeping Norton in the Nagata Lock II. Nagata just throws Norton with suplexes and pelts him with kicks, and eventually Norton stays down. It looked like they couldn’t decide whether Nagata should go over strongly or they should play the sympathy card, with his recent string of bad luck, so, they decided to do both.

All things considered, this really isn't as bad as it seemed at the time. As horrid as Yasuda was as IWGP Champion, the Sapp and Fujita reigns in 2004-05 were much worse. Tenzan was mainly known as a tag team wrestler, and was three days away from winning the IWGP Tag Titles by going over Nagata. So, Yasuda getting a token defense over a tag team wrestler really doesn't seem like a big deal. The match is actually somewhat fun to watch, if only for the crowd’s almost total apathy toward Yasuda. When something big happens for Tenzan, like his countering the front sleeper with the Northern lights suplex, they roar to life. It’s not even always after something big. There is some good heat just for Tenzan dodging the punch and doing the Mongolian chops. It’s easy to see why. He’s added a couple of submissions in order to get over the idea that he’s a ‘shooter’ now, but Yasuda is largely the same wrestler that he’s always been. He moves like a bumbling oaf, when he does a move, or takes a bump, it looks ugly and awkward, and the submissions, especially the kata-gatame, don’t even look that good.

The crowd may make the match amusing, but, this is in no way a good match. Yasuda is Yasuda, and Tenzan isn’t in any position to be able to overcome that. It doesn’t help that Tenzan does some silly things, like wasting both of his big finishers, and playing along with Yasuda’s no-selling. The one nice touch from Tenzan is his bleeding from the mouth, to get over the effects of Yasuda’s first choke, which make it plausible that Tenzan taps so quickly when Yasuda secures his front sleeper. While this isn’t exactly a career highlight, one can take solace knowing that there were better times ahead of Tenzan (also much worse things than this).

Conclusion: A couple of surprisingly good performances mean that this show isn’t a total loss. But, it’s definitely nothing that anyone needs to run out and get immediately.