Great Kabuki-cito vs Yoshiaki Fujiwara: Fujiwara wrestles a kinda tall midget for 8 minutes. He does sell for the little guy a whole lot for whatever reason. Fujiwara cheats and chokes the 4' 11"ish guy and it's all confusing. Cito with the nerve pinch and await a four foot ten Gary Hartcito to come to ringside and sweat a whole lot. Kabuki is at ringside cheating to keep the match going and this is far longer and far more disturbing than I figured it would be. They take it to the mat and just as I'm trying to figure out why this is the only competitive match between a little person and Japanese Wrestling Legend, they make it all worth while by having the little person do a tope where he completely misses Fujiwara and instead flies over the rail and clears the press table. The guys he lands between make the look like they are trying to figure out who threw the full beer at them. Fujiwara armbar at 7:28. Oh yeah.

Yoshitsune vs AKIRA: (I did a search for Yoshitsune on the Googles and appears that he is like Cher in that he goes by one name) AKIRA! I am stoked! Yoshitsune is all dropkicky. AKIRA is betterly dropkicky even at his age. Yoshitsune does the tope con hilo that clears the rail. AKIRA is all dramatical as he gets to his feet because AKIRA is an enigma. Yoshitsune will punch you right in the face. I'm liking this kid. He's all graceful and shit but he works stiff with AKIRA. AKIRA punches him in the back of the neck and posts him because AKIRA works really stiff and is also very graceful. AKIRA ducks a MORTAL~! and mauls Yo against the ringpost on the floor and starts working the leg- dragon screwing into a Figure Four. Yo isn't Ricky Steamboat so you don't really feel the urgency of the Figure Four- though he does sell it more when AKIRA drags it to the floor. AKIRA spindles Yo's knee for a while longer and until he Brainbusts to a two count. Yo and AKIRA fuck up a Spinning DDT and AKIRA responds with an elbow drop and toprope splash onto Yo's bad knee. STF, and kicking and stomping of the knee. Yo forearms all nasty to TRANSITION~! and it's a million dollar leg scissors and a HIlariously botched Orihara Moonsaults that crushes Yo's knee against the apron. So yeah, no real 5 star selling of the knee by the lad. AKIRA decides that SOMEONE has to remember the basic point of the match and does a beautiful roll-up into an SFT until Yo hits the ropes. AKIRA stomps the knee and Yo is back to selling it until he goes back to his Jackie Chan highspots. They trade forearms and Yo actually remembers that his knee hurts. Yo with the superflashy roll-up before AKIRA fuckin SLAUGHTERS him with a Released German. AKIRA hits a fullweight crushing Yo Sidewalk Slam to set up the AKIRA With the Love Machine Splash for the win. Yoshitsune is quite the quality indie highspot cretin. AKIRA is fuckin AKIRA.

Enson Inoue/Yuki Ishikawa vs Mad Dog Goto/Mad Dog Ohara: Oh my God. I got a bad feeling about 3/4s of this. Ah, it's under ten minutes so fuck it. CRAZY DOGS! They stomp the ref and throw him wrongly over the toprope and start yelling for something in Japanese. They brawl at ringside with my boy Yuki and your boy Enson. Goto and Yuki do a hilariously long batch of walking while holding each others hair, only to end up kinda punching each other. Yuki does start laying it in after a minute so they cut over the Ohara and Inoue who are doing... nothing at ringside. Jesus, Goto and Yuki are going to walk all the way to the Tokyo Wawa around the corner with each others hand on the other's hair. Ohara does beat everyone in the crowd to death with a chair and then goes after Yuki- who has to be winded from all that walking around. Yuki punching Goto in the face is kinda fun and they call it a DRAW! Postmatch, Goto suplexes a lot of young guys and boy this sucked. It's freaking Yuki fuckin Ishikawa. If you can't have a good brawl with Yuki Ishikawa, well, hoss... you SUCK.

Katsuhiko Nakajima vs Muneki Sawa: I haven't seen this Sawa guy before or maybe I did over at Tim's and don't remember. Well, there you go. You truly are hipper and cooler than me. Maybe you and your ilk can go and fuck yourselves. I enjoy Nakajima. This is all swirly matwork early. Sawa is a little bastard in the break and it makes me love him. They do more spinny grabby matwork and they settle into a kneebar until Nakajima hits the ropes and Sawa fucking FEREAKS OOT and starts kicking and elbowing the prone Nakajima and it's psycho fabulous! They kick each other realy hard until Sawa bounces off the ropes and gets kicked really really hard. Nakajima with the Choking Suplex to set up his Missile Dropkick for two. The kicks are all spectacular and graceful and hateful as they settle back to the kneebar. Nakajima crushes Sawa's skull with two kicks for two. Sawa reverses a suplex into a Non-running SHANE CAPTURE~! and they go all reversy and kicky until Nakajima hits the German With A Bridge and gets the flash pin. I love both these guys. This was very brief. Postmatch, they hug and smile. I don't speak Japanese so I don't know if they are buying a house together. Or fucking each other in the buttocks. I hate a indie hug. I am SO bad ass.

Kazunari Murakami/Katsumi Usuda/Manabu Hara vs TARU/Shuji Kondo/Brother YASSHI: Murakami is still the ugliest motherfucker on earth- the Wicked Witch Of The West who will kick you in the face. Usuda lost all his hair since the halcyon days of BattlARTS. This is a SCRAMBLE MATCH early and TARU and Murakami walk around a whole lot. They stomp on Murakami when they finally coral the low-grade brawling into the ring and I'm having trouble focusing. Usuda starts kicking YASSHI really hard. Usuda is BattlARTS alumni so he will kick you in the face. This Hara kid will kick you in the head too. YASSHI is victim of quite a bit of kicking and it gets pretty ugly when Murakami opts to start mauling him. But it isn't as tight and spirited as what I would expect from those involved so it's nothing cathartic or anything. They kinda listlessly beat on Hara for a while and I try not to watch the CORNER GAS episode that's on the TV to my periferal right. And I'm losing. This kinda keeps going and Hank and Oscar are investing imaginary money and Oh Cool, Murakami is Face A-fire and he bring's a little energy to the proceedings. Then he tags out and I luckily I can go back to fauntasizing about making sweet love to Karen the lady cop. TARU and YASSHI and Kondo get disqualified or some shit. When you get this match, play a quirky Canadian sitcom in the background so you blow through the 17 Marakami-less minutes. Pointless. Yes. Pointless. Yes. Very Very Pointless. Pointless.

Katsuyori Shibata vs Kensuke Sasaki: I'm guessing that this is gonna hurt. Shibata has very stylish hair. Shibata busts Sasaki up with kicks and knees to the face until Sasaki Backdrop drives him to set up his lucha stylings- busting out a Piscado Of Thickness, splattering the slight, narrow-hipped Shibata on the concrete. Sasaki chops while Shibata kicks and Shibata gets the best of it and then starts stomping as Sasaki sells by slumping and splaying. You hear Sasaki's teeth clack together after a kick and it RULES. Sasaki methodically lariats Shibata to the ground and decides to chop for a minute before trading headbutts. 7 minutes in and Sasaki is lariat-crazy and Shibata is all fiery in his smacky, kicky comebacks. I dig the lack of a normal story. It's basically super simple New Japan wrestling- I Shall Hit You With The Four Nasty Strikes I Know Until You Figure Out An Opening To Hit Me With The Four Nasty Strikes You Know And Perhaps I Will Duck A Lariat Or Backdrop You To Cut Off Your Comeback. So yeah, it basically boils down to how good Sasaki is hitting his chops, headbutts and short lariats compared to Shibata's kicks, knees and forearms. At eleven minutes, Sasaki whips out the power offense topped off with the beautifully out-of-control Oklahoma Stampede that throws Shibata flailing over the top rope. Shibata fights out and into his own superplex and Kensuke stands there and no-sells a batch of kicks to the chest until he can no longer no sell it and finally collapses to the mat- which is a nice piece of Kawadacana. It's funny how this is Memphis style wrestling except you replace punches to the face with kicks to the chest. Shibata kicks Sasaki enough to set up his finisher and the Ankle lock is procured. Sasaki fights for the ropes and is dragged back and Sasaki isn't Ricky Steamboat but he isn't Rob Van Dam either so this is perfectly fine way to seal a sequence of wrestling before they go into Sasaki Lariat and Northern Lights Bomb Mania for the win. This wasn't great but it wasn't bad at all.

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