HIYA! This the DRIVERETTE #a!  I'm taking this week off work in hopes
that the youngster will hop out  at some point this week so this is akin
to an auxillary vacation (the primary vacation will involve a certain
Canadian web-page king, scads of punk rock, Allouettes and Saskachewan
Roughriders on the gridiron in Montreal and probable unfriendly visits
by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police- in October. WOO-HOO!  MIKE
PRINGLE!) Anyway, since I'm gonna actually have too much time on my
hands before I go to having absolutely no time on my hands, I figured
I'd ramble on about what I watched grappling-wise while the big wait is
on.  This will kill time for me and help you, the gentle reader, make it
through until the GIANT Death Valley Driver Video Review #100 is out- a
DVDVR in which DRAMATIC DREAM TEAM has put our horrendous, hateful
differences aside and are making it all up as we speak and is poised to
hit the cyber-airwaves mid-Julyish.
- Anyway, Hangman Tim and PHATAss Dave came by after checking out the (I
couldn't make this up) Lucha Libre wrapping paper and other Lucha
odditites at World Of Mirth in Carytown.  [This was the place where King
Of Danger Cliff bought me the boss Rayo De Jalisco Mask that I can't
actually wear because it makes me look EVEN MORE like Assassin #2 than
Pogo Pete's Pierroth mask.]  Tim and Dave were happy to escape the
hellish heat coming off the meanstreets of Richmond and recline in my
House Of Amazingly Maxed-Out Air Conditioning so I forced them to enjoy
the BattlARTS-enriched, Euro-drenched fabulousness of the latest
SchneiderTape which I just busted open that morning after recovering
from the AMAZING ONSLAUGHT of True Ginchiness from the God-like GLENN!
(More on them there tapes later).  We watched the SWANK Minoru Tanaka vs
Great Sasuke match for the NWA weltermiddlelightcruiserweight belt that
Sasuke won in MOTY candidate #1 vs Magnum Tokyo, and I was noticing
first that the THIRD move of the match was a Tope Con Hilo by Minoru
Tanaka that kills the fudge out of Sasuke.  The mood is set at that
point that Tanaka is gonna beat Sasuke any was he wants to get beat as
they go straight from the fat ass highspot to Sasuke taking it straight
to the mat like a fucking KING.  The reason Sasuke is so actually GREAT
when he isn't mangling his knee, fracturing his skull or lapsing into
psychotic dementia is because he can work a style as weird and
specialized as BattlARTS Highgrade Junior Style- which is different than
NJ Junior style in a LOT of ways.  BattlARTS juniors and their auxillary
members differ from the current NJ Junior trend in that- in BattlARTS-
you are expected to actually SELL moves.  The current trend of NJ
Juniors is to spring through to your highspots, have a Heavyweight Test
Of Strength, hit some finishers, and get out of the way of the Brian
Johnston vs Kengo Kimura match.  Minoru Tanaka is becoming Lyger's
darling because he is more mat-psychologically sound than Kanemoto,
Ohtani, Ka Shin and Takaiwa and he smokes them like fucking cheap cigars
on the mat and flies better than all of them to boot.  Sasuke shows his
greatness by adjusting to the style as seamlessly as he did against
Magnum Tokyo and showed why he is having such a great, great comeback-
as he is taking another great Poised-for-greatness junior and
facilitates a showcase of what will make them great.  Here the coolest
parts is Sasuke and Tanaka each countering out of Tanaka's truly
fucked-up and freaked-out submission attempts and Sasuke's more
traditional Pro Style submission attempts.  Tanaka's hit the a fucking
breath-taking Lucha Roll-up-midroll-into-a-kneebar that totally freaked
us out.  Sasuke counters it later in the match by being all
psychological and shit by stopping him mid kneebar and turning it into
a  Gutwrench German Suplex.  The ending is all cool as Sasuke is getting
paisted by the comically-silver-pants-bedecked youngster all over the
mat with submissions attempts and assorted lowgrade suplexes and Sasuke
must try to stay out of Tanaka's Northernlights Floatover To a Cross
Arm-Breaker and Sasuke keeps forcing Minoru to downgrade each attempt
into a lesser suplex- so you have the cool psychological point of Sasuke
taking lesser hideous punishment to stay out of the finisher and still
having to find the wherewithall to get to his own finishers.  Sasuke
finally gets to his powerbombs after a few quick reversals and Sasuke
goes over but once again elevates Tanaka as much as he elevated Magnum
in that match.  This was good.  Not as good as the masterful
Tokyo/Sasuke match but freaking good.

- We watched the Ape Virgon Phenomena in Michinoku Pro and it was pretty
amazingly great.  Sasuke is on hand and all the wrestlers unloading the
ape from the cage are wearing protective gloves to keep them catching
any viruses that may have frozen with the prehistoric Chinese Ape and
thus, said virus could be unleashed when they thaw out the Amazing
Historical Find so's that the.. you know... monkey can wrestle.
Wellington Wilkins gets saddled with being in charge of overseeing the
thawing out process.  We switch to the match- which is against some
Sleazoid Japanese Indie Shmoe wearing fatigues.  The cage is in the
middle of the ring but when they take the tarp off- JIMINY FRICKIN'
CRICKETS! HE'S GONE!  Holy CRAP! A Prehistoric Ape is running rampant
through Northern Japan!  Luckily, the primitive brain of the Virgon Ape
has grasped the concept of delivering the match to the paying customer
like a trooper- so he storms the ring and acts all monkey-like.  I start
to question the authenticity of this so-called "Ape" when I noticed that
he didn't ever move his mouth (it was continuously agape!) and that the
Virgon Ape kept "adjusting" his face (AS IF IT WERE MERELY A MASK!)
They try to sell the ruse by having Virgon rub his butt on the
turnbuckle, the ring apron, hot chicks at ringside- but by this point,
WHY... WHY IT'S OBVIOUS! It's obvious that this isn't a thawed out
Prehistoric Ape wrestling tiny Japanese indie wrestlers, BUT a wrestler
wearing an APE COSTUME!  Who do you think you are fooling, Sasuke? To
paraphrase Tony S: You go to hell,Great Sasuke; you go straight to
hell!  Buyer beware, until the monkey takes crap in hand and flings it
forth, assume all frozen apes that wrestle are merely frauds and hoaxes
foisted upon feeble-minded wrestling fans to part the rubes from their
money.  Sorta like Sid Eudy but with a better workrate.  There was other
wrestling on this show- featuring CRAZY MAX! and Magnum Tokyo but I'll
watch that later this week.

- The TORYUMON that both Glenn~~!! and Phil sent is boss as livin' crap.
HMTim said that Meltzer hated the Stoker Ichikari match with random
Japanese Caveman Gimmick and I have to wonder about said WON-meister's
reviewing skills.  This match was AMAZING in it's horribleness.  It
achieved a deliberate, athletically perfect horribleness that actually
means that IT WORKS.  A match is TRULY worthless when it attempts to be
a real wrestling match but you know how it works: Mabel sucks and gets
blown up and then Lex Luger exposes the business by hitting Mabel with a
clothesline that got him laughed out Montreal Concorde training camp
back in 1984.  Then Mabel breaks Lugers Orbital Socket with a sloppy leg
lariat and then Luger hits the 5-second Torture Rack and we all want to
stop watching all wrestling forever.  Meanwhile, THIS match does exactly
what it sets out to do- to have the stupidest, most assinine and most
thoroughly retarded match that two mere rookies could ever muster and
this mama delivers in SPADES.  There are two times when "doing gassers
across the ring after starting as a mere rope-run" come into play and
the second time, Japanese Caveman Dos Mille fools STOKER~! into running
the ropes so many times that it actually becomes the finisher!  KICK
ASS! Now THAT'S retarded!  When JCM2K pins the ref after hitting one of
his stiff Tony Atlas-esque Trapezeus chops, I fell out.  STOKER~!'s
outfit is absolutely astounding.  STOKER~! is SO on the way to being the
most surreal force in Pro Wrestling because NOBODY brings the arty
creepiness like STOKER~!  A million, billion stars.

This beauty tape also had the tres swanky CRAZY MAX vs Magnum Tokyo,
Arai, Dragon Kid match that had further proof that when all is said and
done, Judo Suwai is gonna be the one that's gonna go the farthest- in
that he brings a new twist to the late 90's megadick sweepstakes: CRAZY
MAX is easy to figure out at first- it's 2/3rds Clockwork Orange with
charismatic Shima Nobunaga assuming the role of Alex and thick muscleman
Sumo Fuji assuming the role of Dim.  Judo Suwai is the curveball.  Judo
is the sweaty-browed ultraviolent sociopath that brings the true danger
to CRAZY MAX. You remember the character Judo plays: the seedy scrawny
redneck in your homeroom that ended up joining the klan or going to jail
selling blotter to an undercover cop.  Judo must have watched a lot of
COPS while in WCW because he is the Japanese in-ring approximation of
the guy in the sweatpants and no shirt drunkenly yelling at his battered
spouse as the cops try to get his wife to press charges.  Who said
sending wrestlers to the US is useless?  Shima is charming and funny.
Judo is scary and violent and this match really plays off that as Judo
is fabulously psychotic in his hatred of UD's favored son Dragon Kid.
Judo being the best rudo to come along in Japan since Kaz Hayashi
doesn't hurt his chances either.  The match itself is another in the
long line of really fucking great TORYUMON endless six-man matches - as
this one goes 33 minutes and you want it to go two hours 33 minutes.
Magnum Tokyo whips out the thoroughly whomp-ass STF Mutated Into A Rings
Of Saturn Hold that rocked like a hurricane. Magnum is so amazingly
white hot and over with his Male Sexuallity Right In Your Face Gimmick
and all but slaps Shima in the head with his lil winky before hitting a
toprope Frankensteiner late in the match.   Shima also made me laugh out
loud five or six times because he is SUCH an asshole in this match.  I
loved it when he was yelling in Dragon Kid's ear after the basically
beat the living fuck out of the little bemasked twit.  Sumo Fuji and
Arai (who does the cool-ass Blind Toprope Spinning Headbutt) are the
lesser workers of the match but UD covers his bases by having these two
fued with each other leading up to this match and so they garner a
different style of heat than the four superworkers.  Sumo is actually
getting downright good in his limited way and UD gives him the pin over
Magnum Tokyo for some reason.  Postmatch, CRAZY MAX goes buckwild on
everyone and Judo goes really insane and rips off Kid's mask and wears
it while acting like a total dick.  UD storms the ring and throws
everybody out to the floor except for Kid- whom he hugs.  I'd fill forty
pages if I listed all the highspots and cool shit.  You need to get this
motherfucker right now.  I haven't even watched Judo vs Dragon Kid.
More later this week.

- I watched the irritating Koji Kanemoto vs Masaaki Mochizuki match from
Top of the Super J 99.  These are two guys going in two different
directions since Kanemoto's peak at the TOSJ final in 1997.  Since then,
Koji and NJ Juniors in general has fallen victim to aping the worst
no-selling tendencies of the NJ Heavyweights and sucking cock with
confused and counterproductive psychology and this match is no
exception- as Koji randomly sells Mochizuki's striking and doesn't sell
anything convincingly.  Mochizuki, meanwhile, has had some of the best
junior heavyweight matches on earth the last two years: versus
Yasuraoka, versus Minoru Tanaka, versus all the big players in
BattlARTS, and the fucking LOST CLASSIC against Araya in WAR last year-
and it's Mochizuki's selling that's a stronger point to his game than
even his stiff kicks and flashy highflying and it has created the
superior quality of the body of work of the last two years.  Here, Koji
pretends that he is wrestling Takaiwa and decides to no-sell key
striking sequences. Mochizuki realizes he has nothing to work with,
wishes he was back in the superior, friendlier confines of BattlARTS and
this shitty match limps home.  This sucked dick.
The Lyger vs Hamada match fricking ruled it.  They take it to the mat
early and they get all mad at each other and then the fun kicks in.
Hamada hits his seminal Spinning DDT.  Lyger hits his toprope Fisherman
Buster.  Hamada hits the amazingly great all-around Toprope DDT that
Lyger takes like a GOD.
Orihara vs Ohtani was strangely great- as Orihara played the bitter
forgotten early 90's highflyer to Ohtani's Golden Boy to great effect.
Ohtani reeled in the veteran and Orihara was actually feeling it for
once- as this became like a shoot angle:  the crowd knows that Ohtani is
going over, Orihara plays to the crowds knowledge of this and rallies
the crowd behind the booking underdog.  Plus Orihara has great
preposterous hair that always wins points with the Japanese crowd it
seems.  Plus Ohtani rules it.  So there. Plus Orihara bleeds from the
bridge of his nose after being procured in Ohtani swanky Dragon Suplex.
Plus Ohtani hit a cool-ass non-rotating Rotation Powerbomb.  Cool match
because Orihara played the underdog and Ohtani actually played the
favorite well for once.

More tomorrow unless the youngster opts to arrive.

DEAN RASMUSSEN, DEATH VALLEY PLAYER.

Let the music take your mind.
            - KOOL AND THE GANG.
 

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