Hiya.

Welcome to the third Secondary Vacation Special DRIVERette! The doctor says the little youngster is definately ready to arrive, and I hope it's soon because I just might freeze to death if it goes much longer(or the city of Richmond will have a major power outage- as my wife kicks the AC's into overdrive.)  Schneider has left the building and the steamcleaning has begun.  Before the young punk went back to the capital of this here nation, we all went to Vietnam Garden(1) and ate a buncha porkarific and springrollalicious Vietnamese food.  It was SWANK!  Then we tried to break my computer by trying to install the stupid Flash Plug-in to work so I could see the Rolie Polie Olie(2) website.  We also watched wads of wrestling.

- Misawa and Kobashi DID have a five star match as of late and III got to watch!  It rocked righteously.  Kobashi has lost weight (he's down to like... I dunno...340.)  and Misawa opts to be the Greatest Version Of Shawn Micheals God Has Ever Created- as he takes all the bumps neccessary to make the match rule and THEN goes the extra mile.  We also get to see Misawa's big fat wart-encrusted ass at one point in the match to complete the Micheals comparison.(3)  The really. really WEIRD thing is that the psychology of the match was so un-All Japan that it made a great match already become transcendent and shit.  Usually All Japan is two guys working towards their big finishers and then the math kicks in- 3 Kobashi lariats = one Tiger Driver 91 > 2 Orange Crushes, etc.etc.  Here it gets all !!!!!!!!!!!!!! BATTLARTS!!!!!!!!!! as Kobashi goes for the arm submission early and often as he works to the Cross-Armbreaker and softens up the arm by crunching Misawa's limb in fun and swanky ways.  The dearth of neck-breaking suplexes is replaced by the fascination of Kobashi finding new and inventive ways to turn this into a basic Garbage Match as he finds new ways to smash Misawa's arm across the guardrail from the apron, or drive his arm into the ringpost. I was waiting for Kobashi to throw a fireball into the eyes of Misawa's arm but then I started breathing more deeply.  Either way, it keeps from falling prey to the hackneyed All Japan story of busting up Misawa's arm to keep him from hitting the elbow for the finisher, as Kobashi doesn't do all this work on the arm to expediate his own finishers, he actually works on the arm to go for the arm submission- which is a new twist to the work on the Misawa Arm story and made it more..you know... realistic.  Misawa sells the arm continuously in amusing ways as he positions himself for the win by finally dragging Kobashi into a battle of the finishers.  The reason this match hits the five star mark is because Kobashi is actually a Triple Crown player and if he went over, it wouldn't have been an upset- THUS the nearpins are hotter and the crowd is in a frenzy from the middle to the end.  The other reason is that Vader has given All Japan the big fat kick in the butt that it's needed to get out of the Parade of Dangerous Moves that it's been mired in the last three years- as he has worked a style that combines his powermoves but with the UWFi feigned shootstyle section of his repertoire back into the forefront.  Kobashi has actually learned from this, quit being a big fucking crybaby and has expanded the vocabulary of what is used in the All Japan storytelling.  For once, Kobashi is what facilitated the classic.  Misawa was just being Misawa- which is quite enough if Kobashi wants to actually try to be great for once in his career.  This ruled.  Get all of this.

- I have a nightstandlike thing in my living room.(4) I keep all my not yet watched tapes in there(5) and some of them have been in there for a year and half (your name is RINGS).  Phil- being WILD- thought it would be fun to blindly reach into the Cabinet Of Unwatched Tapes, grab a tape and blindly put it in and watch all of it.  I'm also wild, so we did it. It turned out to be one of the twelve zillion SWANK JWP tapes that Lorefice sends me by the wheelbarrowload.  The pinnacle of this was a cool as hell match between Hikari Fukuoka(6) and Carlos (Carlos?) Amano(7).  The fun thing is that Fukuoka beats the living hell out of Amano while selling like only Fukuoka (or Aja) will sell for a youngster.  Fukuoka- who recently retired, thus leaving Joshi Puroresu a lot poorer and lot less hot as hell(8)- really was a amazingly hot version of Ric Flair in the ring.  Any match she was in was a little Formulaic, but a lot of Really Great- because she knew when to make her opponent look like she was wrestling over her head to beat Fukuoka the Champ and would build to superhot finishes and make her opponent look great and could definately elevate youngsters before crushing their ribs like oatmeal.  The main difference was that Flair never had an offense that was as ass-stomping as Hikari Fukuoka and Hikari wasn't as great for as long as Flair.  This match does the cool Japanese thing of playing off the psychology of previous matches- in that Hikari will usually go through an incredibly painful pre-pinning sequence that is usually topped off by truly hellish and NEVER to be seen in the USA Moonsault Stomp.  This match is skewed because Amano has a shooter gimmick and Fukuoka decides to take it to the mat with her- thus falling into Amano's trap and thus adding wads of suspense to what would otherwise be a Fukuoka-by-numbers Countdown To Victimization.  Fukuoka finally starts in with Nastiest Missile Dropkick into the Liger Bomb and it looks like it's only a Somersault dropkick away from Moonsault Stomp City- but Amano gets in an extended offensive flurry (9) and you get the usual neardeath selling by the babe-a-licious Fukuoka to make Amano look Goddess-like(10), selling Amano's last ditch efforts to get a submission like a REALLY REALLY HOT queen.  Fukuoka counters out of Amano's final flurry by hitting the coolest Cross-Armbreaker Combination I've ever seen.  It was like she got Amano's arm in a head-scissors and went right into the submission hold and Amano tapped immediately.  Amano is the happiest wrestler that ever lived, in that her defeat didn't involve coughing up blood for four days.  GET ALL THIS.  Fukuoka was the hottest wrestler alive.

- I watched the rest of that Michinoku Pro with the Ape Virgon HOAX! It wasn't so good.  Shinzaki went back to his shitty crappy ways in his match with Great Sasuke as Shinzaki was tentative and slow, his offense was half-assed and sloppy and his psychology hackneyed and boring.  Sasuke realized early that this was the shitty Shinzaki that he thought FMW and All Japan had beaten to death, but it reared its ugly and made a crappy match with the only person he ever had half-way decent matches with to begin with.  The six-man had Magnum Tokyo, but it also had Ricky Banderas and he ain't so good yet.  Naniwa continues to stiiinnnkkkk and Hamada decided that being really great in the Super J was enough this month and lets this match die on the vine.  Great Sasuke vs Sasuke the Great had too much crappy brawling to be any good though it wasn't as hideous as other Orihara as Sasuke The Great have been.  Avoid this and try to figure out some way to get just the Crazy Wrestling Monkey Section.  The rest kinda sucks.

- We watched a truly crappy IRWG episode and I'll rewatch it tomorrow to give you the rundown of what's on it so you don't make a mistake and end up getting it.  P-U!

ENDNOTES:
1. I had spicy pork and onions.  It rocked.
2. Rolie Polie Olie is this charming computer animated show that my daughter got me addicted to.  He's a little robot boy that bounces around with his robot friend Billy and his sister Zowie.  It's on Saturday and Sunday at 8:30.  It's the DangerMouse of the new millenium in its whimsey and charm.  Meanwhile the FLASH plug-in is as retarded as SHOCKWAVE! Ooooooh, it's wiggly.
3.  Hangman Tim Noel told us at the Wrestling Power 99 taping about Meltzer giving this match five stars.  Me and Phil were trying to figure out what could possibly cause Dave Meltzer to give a Kobashi-soaked match a five star match rating- without either of us actually reading anything in the Observer, of course.  Kobashi gets his nose broken early and blood flies everywhere (DEAN:  Ah-HAH!  Meltzer is ACTUALLY a vampire fan!  Sweeeet BLOOD adds a star and a half...), and then Misawa moons the crowd (PHIL: Oh here we go, Meltzer must a vampire fan AND a fan of hot man-on-man action.) and then by the end of the match we came to the conclusion that Meltzer gave it five stars because it was one of the best wrestling matches you'll ever see.  And Kenta Kobashi was in it!  Go figure.
4.) It's really antique looking- what with aged wood and shit.
5.) I keep the stuff I'm actually gonna watch before New Year's in a Hecht's bag by the night stand thing.  Meanwhile, the nightstand is full of great stuff I should watch and would watch immediately if I wasn't such a tasteless wrestling sod who is far more interested in Honma being powerbombed through barbed-wire than Steve Williams wrestling Akira Taue BROADWAY! for sixty minutes in 1993.
6.)who is astoundingly hot.
7.) JWP- for whatever reason- changed everybody's name in JWP.  Kazumi is now Steve Kazumi, I think.
8.)Because JIMINY FUCK! Hikari Fukuoka was hot as Georgia Asphalt.
9.) Including a botched moonsault that landed on Fukuoka just ALLLL wrong and me 'n Phil were banking on Hikari destroying the little punk in return. We figured that Hikari said the following while setting up the Hottest Superplex In The Histroy Of Our Sport, "Y'know, missy prissy pants, I went to an all you can eat sparerib joint with Kyoko Inoue and I'm also retaining water.  It's gonna take all night for me to clean your ribs all the way off my boots when I stomp the crap out of you." AMANO: "Ah GEEZ!"
10.) This match was from April 1998 and Amano didn't reach true Goddess-like level of work until much later in the year.  See her matches against Uematsu and Satomura for details.

MORE TOMORROW.

DEAN RASMUSSEN.
 

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