DEATH VALLEY DRIVERETTE- DEAN ALLMARK IN JAPAN! KOHEI SATO!

[DEAN]

DRIVERETTE 7252014

 

BEHOLD,  THE PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING!

 

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$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ KOHEI SATO vs DAEMON UEDA- ZERO-ONE- 7/13/2014:  I see that ZERO-ONE still has the Fire Festival.  When we last saw Daemon Ueda, he was frollicking about town and then doing some pro wrestling that was completely forgettable if I remember correctly.  Okay.  You know what I mean.  I'm guessing he is the first branch fed into the human wood-chipper called Kohei Sato during this- the 2014 Fire Festival.  Fire will be the idea behind the broken burning corpuscles of the Ueda chest,one would assume.  But let's view this match and hopefully revel in the violence.  Yesssssss.   The pre-match footage is Ueda riding around on a bike- like that creepy guy who used to take pictures of us when we played little league when I was a kid.  He took a great picture of me when I was six and got hit by a pitch from Terry Batten.  I dated Terry's sister in high school.  She moved to France.  Where was I? Oh, Ueda's pre-match segment: Then there is special effects and hitting a picture of Kohei Sato with a hammer and yeahyeahyeah let's get this assbeating under way already.   Ueda enters the ring with highly elaborate facepaint so it is fun that they are making the Fire Festival a special occassion.  Sato towers over him and I assume scoffs at the fact that Ueda's face and body paint form a target across his chest.  They have a clean break like this is some kind of Sunday school.  They go old school and Ueda sinks in the smudgy headlock and they have Strong Style Shoulder Blocks Of Penis Size Measurement WITH A TWIST!  Ueda makes with the Muta mist and follow-up lariat and gets the two count!  Sato bumps big into chairs and this is waaaaay more fun than I thought this would be.  Sato makes it back to the ring at the count of 18 after assorted outside comical chair shots.  Meanwhile, Ueda is actually fun in this with his American Pro Style offence- the power slam, the Fall away headbutt, the... oh fuck it, Sato stands up and and just fucking slaughtercates Ueda's skull with forearms and then OPTS to kick Ueda's chest through his back. Sato then just fucking smashes Ueda's skull with one of those Sato Howzerbootsomehardway 4/3rds legit headbutt.  Ueda gets full man points for not immediately curling up and weeping like a baby.  Sato appreciates this sign of toughness by REALLY fucking killing him with kicks to the back of the head.  Ueda stands up and gets a few forearms before Sato just decimates the fuck out of him  with an elbow basically THROUGH the head of Uead, which leads into Falcon Arrow number 29 of the New Era.  We and Ueda obviously await the Lawler Piledriver so Ueda will be able stumble to his car after getting his 40 bucks and still remember how to use his turn signal.  AND THERE IT IS.  And Ueda kicks out?  Sato goes for the EVEREST German but Ueda uses the ref to fight out and then.... MUTA MIST AGAIN!  After the lariat, it looks like an upset but Sato kicks out!  This match is soooo what I wanted and so much more.  Ueda with the K-Driller!  Ueda with another Lariat! UEDA WITH THE WIN!  BILLION STARS.   Man, is Ueda gonna take a motherfucking ass-beating of assbeatings when they do the re-match. 

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x21xx0z_kohei-sato-vs-daemon-ueda-zero1_sport

 

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! KAZUKI HASHIMOTO vs YOSHIKAZU YOKOYAMA- ZERO-ONE- 7/13/2014:  Allright!  It's like last Friday all over again!  Kazuki Hashimoto and Yokoyama were last seen by us beating the dogshit out of each other in some VFW armoury in Japan a few months ago.  This time around it is minus one Kohei Sato and minus one Diachi Hashimoto, so it should a different dynamic.  Let's watch, shall we?  Pre-match, Yokoyama and his lunatic mullet are joined by his 1985 tinted sunglasses and they all go out to lunch.  He and our Fire Festival segment host eat things that are too hot to eat and we all collectively say, "Let's get on with this thing already."  Man, are we testy today- no time for levity or whimsy!  MEANWHILE, Kazuki and Yokoyama are at the Fire Festival press conference and do a perfectly fine Wrestling Press Conference Pull Apart.  One would hope that K-Hash would channel Silver King:

 

Kazuki Hashimoto:  Maybe... maybe me and my brother Daichi will... KILL.... Yokoyama.  Maybe we... maybe me and my brother will KILL Kohei Sato.

  

But what were the chances of that?  Anyway, they go straight to the ring.   Yokoyama works the arm early and they do a lot of pre-excitement wrestling stuff.  Let me take this time to make an appeal to Yoshikazu Yokoyama:  

 

Hey Yoshikazu,

 

This is Dean Rasmussen, writer from the Death Valley Driver Video Review.  I have watched a couple of your matches and you seem like a good up and coming young lion, as they say.  You have the size, and you aren't afraid to lay it in.  I think you are missing one element that would vault you over the top:  you REALLY need to perm you hair.  The Lionel Ritchie Road Warrior Animal Safety Hawk Mullet would be YOURS.  Noone else could claim it in Pro Wrestling.   You gotta trust me on this.

 

Sincerely,

 

Dean Henry Rasmussen, 

Death Valley Driver Video Review

 

And back to the match where they have moved into the exciting part where they start teeing off on each other.  I just watched a Kohei Sato match and Kazuki Hashimoto's level stiffness in this match matches Sato's preposterous stiffness in Sato's match- so we party and freak out to the Strong Style.  Yokoyama is more controlled  but he used clubbing forearms THUS this match is pretty fucking great.   It is pretty much 10 minutes of straight up Strong Style with the annoying Kanemoto Face Scrape thrown into the middle.  God, the stiffness flies off the fucking charts from K-Hash at some points and Yokoyama leans into it all like a total champ.  Yokoyama goes on an extended offensive flurry and it's pretty straight up US Pro Style- Body slam into an avalanche, a highly dangerous Power Slam and an attempt and Vertical Suplex that Kazuki reverses into his own vertical suplex to allow a nasty flying kick to the face in the corner.  Yokoyama Death Valley Bombs to transition to offence though it pretty much leads to them just standing in the middle of the ring and killing each other.  They decide to try to knock each other out with legit headbutts and Yokoyama begins to spray blood all over the ring- causing a blood stoppage to the match.  Yokoyama is enraged by being forced to stop all the while coated in his own blood and BOY! do I want to see the rematch of this.  Bloodtastic. Jiminy Crickets.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x21xw8d_yoshikazu-yokoyama-vs-kazuki-hashimoto-zero1_sport

 

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$  DEAN ALLMARK vs SEIKI YOSHIOKA- WRESTLE-1- 7/6/2014:  Kick ass!  Our boy, Dean Allmark, is wrestling in Japan!  I will now figure out who Yoshioka is by going to cagematch.de.  He has been wrestling for 6 years, is 26 years old and was trained by Hanzo Nakajima.  I think I've reviewed one of his matches unless there is an army of anonymous junior heavyweights sent off by HANZO to conquer the opening matches of indie cards.  If so, I back his play one hundred percent.  Deano has all the belts and I'm hoping we finally get to see Allmark wrestle heel.  DEEEEEEEEN ALLLLMAAAAAAHKOOOO!  They start with a clean break like this is some kind of Sunday school.  Allmark pulls out the Johnny Saint card early by countering a headlock with a handstand and then pulls his Jim Breaks card by working the wrist joints.  He doesn't go full Jim Breaks by cracking all the joints for all to hear.  Yoshioka flies around the ring and gets in a Dragon Gate One foot dropkick and my hatred begins.   Deano goes toe-to-toe with the highflying and looks so much cooler at it because you know its like the 9th style down the list in his arsenal, yet his Silver King moonsault to the floor is fucking spectacular.   Allmark goes with the total fucked up matwork and you remember that Dean Allmark is fucking awesome.  He goes with the European uppercuts and World Of Sport twisty quarter Nelson suplex and we now realize that Deano in Japan is fucking awesome.  Yoshioka makes with the highflying but he is so one-dimensional compared to Deano.  He does lean into Deano kicking him directly in the face  like a total man and also continues after ruining his knee so he does get toughness points.  Deano slaughters him with a really beautiful Spanish Fly and Yoshioka kicks out for some reason.  Allmark clamps on total Snakepit crazy leg lock and goes into a pinning predicament for two.  Yoshioka fights out, goes on offence, and hits the Swanton.  And the British Light Heavyweight championship is finally back in Japan.    Postmatch, Allmark doesn't lariat and then break the leg of Yoshioka, so this wasn't a perfect match.  Man, do I dig Allmark in Japan.     

 

TOMORROW:  Is Saturday.  But I'll probably write something anyway.

[thee Reverend Axl Future]

Re Sato vs. Ueda: the storytelling aspect in the matches of many modern Japanese smaller feds like this example is so so solid*, but the psychology (the way that the story gets expressed) is odd to me. It definitely requires the audience to know some of the background and history of the workers involved (which is cool), but I feel like the wrestlers rely too much on that, as if "hey, you all are in on this so I am gonna play it broadly and light, and when the stiff parts of the match happen it will make it seem so much more significant". Kinda post-modern, by requiring the viewer to work with the participants and meet them halfway, so the audience thusly becomes involved not through emotion (the classic U.S. style of getting the marks into the show) but through identification and humanization of the wrestlers. Sometimes I see this in Chikara as well. Lucha has a similar learning curve for appreciation, but the psychology is less campy, less po-mo, more straightfaced (yeah, plenty of camp and going for the boffo yocks and broad strokes but only with the STORY not the method of storytelling) so the wrestlers seem bigger than life, the crowd gets emotionally (as opposed to intellectually?) involved. 

Sorry, long day at work and still trying to find a way express my thoughts on this. I did enjoy the match.

- RAF

 

*far ahead of what most of the WWE can do (or are given the chance to do).

[DEAN]

I think with that match, it was all kind of bafflling because it was the Fire Festival so you have the Japanese tournament idea of trying to elevate someone safely- because the crowd expects an upset every tourney.  ZERO-ONE is so hard to follow because the matches are so sporadically available that I assumed Ueda was a total under card guy- thus this flash win was an attempt to elevate him to guy who will put over the guy challenging the next guy going for the title (or something).  I think the storytelling was pretty good because Sato is the dominant alpha male in two feds- Zero-One and Big Japan's tag division, thus it was assumed that Ueda was just there to get the fuck kicked out of him.  And he was- but then the situation allowed for the latitude of finish and thus the elevation of Ueda to guy who will get sooo brutalized in the rematch.  I am excited.  But it's weird because it isn't actually Sato putting him over as much Sato doing what is expected in a tournament setting (the upset).  So yeah this is more like Hector Garza pinning Scott Hall.  

 

I don't think I actually addressed much of what you said, Rev.

[JRV]

Thanks for a fun little saturday morning!

 

So much hate for the no-impact indie dropkicks.. Dean Allmark had me until he made Yoshioka hold himself up on the ropes waiting for a double foot stomp (after a really nifty double knee dropkick I'd never seen, mind you). Aside from that he was really good medicine for the indieness.

 

Kazuki isn't innocent either with the extended face wash, but it was nice how Yokoyama came right back from those (since he had just had a nice rest in the corner). That match was ridiculous, though. So beefy. Loving these new dudes. Fierce exchanges. Headbutt hardway & seemingly impromptu finish, but so perfectly in line with the match it might as well have been worked.

[Goodear]

I will always make time for some Dean Allmark and boy was this both a showcase for him and an exposure of Yoshioko as a guy who ain't got a lot going on past having a bunch of kicks.  Dean probably did two or three things there I had never seen before and seemed willing to take things up a level that his opponent couldn't reach.  Yoshioko just brought very little to the table and could have been replaced by any nickle'n'dime cruiserweight and the match wouldn't have changed much.  From a construction standpoint, Dean didn't really do the kid any favors as it totally came off as 'he won because he was booked to win' to me.  I didn't get the sense that from a competitive standpoint that Yoskioko could actually beat Dean on any level from the body of the match.

 

Dean should go to Mexico next!  Dean Allmark versus luchadores would be rocking.