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WELCOME TO YOUR DEATH VALLEY DRIVERETTE~! for 03162016! There are times when a man- A MAN- has to review three FOUR possibly crappy wrestling cards all at one time. I AM THAT MAN! This will prolly take a while; probably less than 8 weeks, one would suppose- but who could be sure. I will now BRING IT. My tears may start falling.... HARD HIT- 2/28/2016- [RASMUSSEN]: Hard hit is quite a hodgepodge of retired guys, All Japan/Wrestle-1 guys and assorted weirdos. The fact that even cagematch.net doesn't track all of their cards (like this one) makes it all so super underground! KEISUKE OKUDA vs YUTAKA KOBAYASHI: Okuda is usually where Super Tiger is, so I'm guessing that he is Super Tiger's nephew and gives him a ride across town. (That joke made more sense before I found out that Super Tiger isn't Tiger Mask I Sayama anymore, but a 38 year old guy Sayama trained. You can always pretend. Go ahead! ((Actually, Okuta is 24. I thought he was 29 (why do you even ask why I thought that? I've lost my motherfucking mind.) 24 is plenty young to be driving your uncle around. Especially if he is your fun, drunk uncle. Enjoy that joke to fullest extent. THEY PROBABLY DON'T EVEN KNOW EACH OTHER! RIGHT?!))) Yutaka Kobayshi is a mysterious guy on the edge of shootstyle- as the only reference I can find is results page for this very show here and everybody there has some baffling name of a promotion next to their name in the list of results, if it isn't K-Dojo or All Japan Pro Wrestling. Kobayashi has [PANCRASE] next to his name and one would suppose that it should say [A PANCRASE, NOT THE PANCRASE]. Takafumi Ito is of the [PANCRASE-ISM], so it kinda keeps you alert- to figure out if secret MMA careers are to Hard Hit undercardsmen what secret NFL careers are to US wrestlers. At least when Shunpei Ota hails from [P'sLAB] and Shuichiro Katsumura hails from [K'z Factory], you at least know that they are basically an American wrestler saying, "Yeah, I played a few years in Arena 2. I wasn't getting very far and then I ruined my knee. Wrestling keeps me active and I've really grown to love it. Thanks for coming out." They start off all bouncing and kicking around and they have their hands up it's PANCRACE! HYBRID FIGHTING! It's a PANCRASE HYBRID FIGHTING, not the PANCRASE HYBRID FIGHTING. They do actually start laying it in pretty good and then Okuda gets all in the mount and the guard and the things they did back in the day when shootstyle roamed the earth in giant herds. Kobayashi will kick you really hard too but he goes down quick to Okuda in like 3 minutes with one of those submission things. That was perfecly fine for three minutes of that. PANCRASE! HYBRID FIGHTING! No striking to the ssstroat! KENTA HATTORI vs AYUMU HONDA: KEI YAMAMIYA vs DAN THEODORE: SUPER TIGER/ SHUICHIRO KATSUMURA vs TAKAFUMI ITO/ SHUNPEI OTA: JAKE LEE vs NOBUHIRO TSURUMAKI: YOSHIAKI FUJIWARA/ YUMA AOYAGI vs TAKUYA WADA/ TAKATOSHI MATSUMOTO: ATSUSHI AOKI vs MAKOTO OE: MINORU TANAKA vs HIKARU SATO: YOSHIHIRO TAKAYAMA vs RYO KAWAMURA: ~!~ PRO WRESTLING HEAT UP- 2/6/2016-[RASMUSSEN]: YES! Your second consecutive complete Heat Up review! This is some kind of tag tournament! The grand prize is probably.... giant. CHANGO/ PSYCHO vs AMIGO SUZUKI/ HIROSHI KONDO: Allright! This is the third Amigo Suzuki match I will have consciously reviewed. Earlier in life was a blur but now I'm old and have kids and charge at these new ideas the veal and vigor of a man with a new lease on life! How long before a fourth or fifth Amigo Suzuki match cuts me to the quick and I start a downward spiral of wrestling depression? Who knows, let's enjoy fellowship together for a while. One review is here and the other is here. This is like studio wrestling- or actually is studio wrestling; the room is tiny and it looks like the lighting is set up for TV. The room is full of people, but it might 80 people filling it. Amigo beats on Chango and I like to worry about Amigo matches ruining my love of wrestling until I actually place my eyeballs on the match and realize that he is actually a well-trained, seasoned veteran Japanese wrestler- so there is level competence that is comforting. Actually, that was Chango attacking Hiroshi Kondo. Same idea for Chango. And PSYCHO. Kondo is the only unknown force in the match, and he looks a lot like one of those guys you see on the news in Japan who marries his girl-shaped pillow and takes her on dates and stuff. But appearances can be deceiving. Maybe he a real ass stomper once you get him in the ring. Of course, if he was all that I would have mentioned him more in the other HEAT-UP review. He wasn't the bald guy I loved (who is Hiroshi Watanabe, using the deductive reasonings). Kondo does tend to fuck things up and then bump big to the floor, thus he us confusing, things to love, things to hate. He seems untrained but I figured out last time that he's been wrestling three years almost. He is good for stomping on, so he reaches his most useful level- being stomped on and then bumping to the floor again. PSYCHO and Chango do fun tag team techniques and do their end of beating some heat on the hapless Kondo. Amigo is good on the apron, so the ingredients are here for a good basic Southern Styled tag match. So yeah, despite the crappy offense of Kondo, or maybe his shittiness on offense adds to his adorableness to the ankle-bracelet-monitor-bedecked HEAT UP crowd, this is a pretty classic execution of a old style tag match. It is 8 minutes in and Amigo Suzuki has not left the apron- so this gets really old school; he is active on the apron trying to make the tag. Kondo gets off a thoroughly mediocre dropkick and they cut him off but he fights back and Amigo is a HOUSE A FIRE! He tries to brainbust and then succeeds in brainbusting both Chango and PSYCHO and then goes up for the Superplex but loses miserably as PSYCHO spin kicks him and does assorted high-flying onto him. Kondo tags in after Amigo is beaten upon and he is TRULY FUN being useless but FIRED UP! HE IS THE BAD NEWS BEARS of PRO WRESTLING HEAT UP! Chango decides he's had enough of his nonsense and starts stomping him to death, then Amigo makes a save, Kondo whips out the Sharpshooter that PSYCHO tries to break up with sub-Abyss-level-shitty punches and they finally beat Kondo with a fabulously elaborate double team folding, bending neck-slamming finisher. PSYCHO proves just how evil he truly is by post-match forcing Amigo to sell his astounding array of fucking horrible punches. Kondo will win you over by the end of this. REALLY! This is the thing that I forgat about with Japanese indie wrestling- you have all these guys who would NEVER make it through New Japan dojo but who will giant ass-stomping and you HAVE to love their spirit. He is a little Chihuahua of a wrestle and you cannot fight his infectious spunkiness. I like Amigo now. I like Chango for the same reason. PSYCHO I can now have a reason to watch- can he possibly throw a shittier punch that Ken Andersen? The world is PSYCHO's shitty-punch oyster. HIROSHI WATANABE/ TAKASHI SASAKI vs KENJI TAKESHIMA/ TARO YAMADA: MASA TAKANASHI vs YUKIHIRO ABE: KOTARO NASU/ RYO KAWAMURA vs KENICHIRO ARAI/ SHINYA ISHIDA: KAZUHIRO TAMURA/ MINEO FUJITA vs KOJI IWAMOTO/ MINORU TANAKA: MR.GANNOSUKE PRODUCE- 1/12/2016-[RASMUSSEN]: THE PRODUCE differs from the GUTS WORLD in some possible ways- I'm guessing MGP is more Ice Ribbon gals and old pals of Gannosuke and no actual appearances by GUTS Ishijima or Daisuke. Or whoever didn't have to work the Tokyo Gurentai card across town that night. ATSUSHI MARUYAMA vs SHOTA: No GUTS Ishijima or Daisuke, but we do get Shota! Which is kinda like getting Jimmy Garvin for your Fabulous Freebird. Maruyama will less that two months from this match begin his foray into being beaten to a pulp every couple of days in the Big Japan Strong Climb. One can only hope that he warms up for that by smashing giant chunks of Shota into mulch. He starts by kicking him on the face so this is bristling with possibilities. They settle into the standard GUTS World/Dradition beginning and you are impressed by Shota's beautiful armdrag because one never gets to appreciate a beautiful armdrag anymore. And yet here we are. Maruyama was once and still a masked wrestler when not wrestling as Atsushi Maruyama,thus he does nifty lucha libre rope running things when called upon and he is pretty slick. Let's hear it for having a bit of range. Shota tries a few things that lead to more very nice armdrags that leads to getting a ropebreak on a Scorpion Deathlock, but Maruyama hits a swanky brainbuster and they do a little story within the match of seeing who is slicker and craftier, building on Shota being better at the Lucha Libre aspects that lead to armdrags- which is old school first caida stuff, so the GUTS World makes its way and makes me love a match that I was figuring on maybe tolerating. Maruyama wins with a fewer stealthier moves and then rewards himself with less stealthier and more direct kicks to the face and chest. Shota counters with backslides for stealthiness and rewards himself by landing an unstealthy and very direct reverse Atomic Drop to the Maruyama baby butterbeans! Both sell the damage- Shota's face, Maruyama's achey man marbles. Shota punches him in the stomach and goes for a toprope cross bodyblock that Maruyama rolls through- as the story of the match is that Shota has to keep Maruyama busy with his jab because he go toe to toe with Maruyama and everyone is waiting for Maruyama to crush Shota. The great thing is that they really get over the idea that Maruyama has bought into the battle of wrestling strategies instead of ass stomping strategies, and is taken out of his game because of his pride and hubris! So yeah, we can all assume Maruyama will cut the bullshit and start pummelling Shota soon. Maruyama, en lieu, does option C and goes for the keylock and MORPHS into a JUJEE GAY TOM MAY~! For the win! Man, that was waaay better than it should have ever been and really surprisingly good for me because it didn't have what I usually look for in a match- though it actually did when you think about it: the key to the match was the DANGER that Maruyama and his kicking ability has sitting in the back of everybody's mind watching. Shota works a thousand ways to escape it by getting Maruyama to agree to a totally different match, which is brilliant. I assumed Maruyama would maul Shota and we would all go home, instead Maruyama shows his range and then goes all shootstyle at the finish to counter the expectation of the strongstyle elephant in the ring. Good job, you HEAT UP wrestling dudes! MAKOTO vs HARUKA KATO: KENICHIRO ARAI vs MINEO FUJITA: TAKA MICHINOKU vs TATSUHIKO YOSHINO: HIKARU SATO vs BUFFALO: YUKO MIYAMOTO vs MAGNITUDE KISHIWADA: YASU URANO vs MR. GANNOSUKE ~!~ GUTS WORLD PRO WRESTLING- 2/23/2016 [RASMUSSEN] JOJI OTANI vs RYOTA NAKATSU: Joji Otani is the guy in the pink who pretty much pussed out against wee strongster Sakuda in a match I previously reviewed. Ryota Nakatsu is a DDT fella that I watched in a match against Kengo Mashimo (It was a pretty cool match for a couple of reasons.) He is rounding the corner to his 100 match any day now. Let's see how he does against wuss boy Joji or we'll see if Joji has opted for the Ball-ed option. Being GUTS World, they trade armbars into head scissors into quarter nelsons. Joji does a really nice armdrag and then Ryota does a move I have never seen before- standing on the apron, Nakatsu takes Joji's wrist and pulls his arm over the toprope and armdrags down, driving Joji's armpit straight down on the toprope, and it looked like it would possibly really suck. Then he kicks him on the shoulder a few times and works the shoulder because GUTS WORLD! YOU HAVE A STORY IN THERE! Joji escapes and tries a head scissors but Nakatsu reverses and counters and sinks in the armbar! Nakatsu then just fucking goes berserk on Joji with kicks and running kicks and running dropkicks and it is pretty intense. Joji finally dropkicks a knee and gets in a bodyslam but his offense is pretty hilarious compared to Nakatsu's- since Nakatsu just beat the shit out of him. Joji half-crabs because it has almost been one whole match since the last one I saw. Nakatsu makes the ropes, hits the ropes and dropkicks back to offense- at which point it is Nakatsu slaughtering Joji until Joji can get a roll-up or hope spot until Nakatsu buries him in more horrendous violence. They fiddle around a little with the trading of forearms until Nakatsu does the very nice 14 step roll-up into a JUICY JOE GAY TOM MAY~! for the win. Nakatsu is fun for a guy who I don't think is going to get any bigger. Joji is developing into quite a future ref. GUTZ WORLD YOUR OPENING MATCH!! KAZUHIKO MATSUZAKI/ MASKED MYSTERY vs AMIGO SUZUKI/ RYAN UPIN: UPIN! DRAKE MORIMATSU vs PAPAKEMI BEPPIN: WE FEW, WE HAPPY FEW- THE WATCHERS OF A DRAKE MATCH. MR. GANNOSUKE/ GUTS ISHIJIMA/ MICHIO KAGEYAMA vs TATSUHIKO YOSHINO/ TARO YAMADA/ SHIN SUZUKI: HERE YOU GO. KEIZO MATSUDA/ YUJI KITO vs SHOTA/ KENICHIRO ARAI: WHY NOT? I ASK YOU, WHY NOT? DAISUKE vs MASAO ORIHARA: HERE. ~!~ I'm gonna buy me a graveyard of my own And kill everyone'sSINGLES GOING STEADYever done me wrong I'm gonna buy a gun just as long as my arm and kill everyone ever done me harm ~!~ SHUJI ISHIKAWA vs TETSUYA ENDO- DRAMATIC DREAM TEAM- 2/28/2016-[RASMUSSEN]: I've seen Endo a couple times- in tag matches against Irie, if I recall. He is their up-and-comer so I'm assuming Ishikawa will sell far too much for him, but one can't be sure. Endo looks like all of everybody else in DDT- not mealy but not big either. "In shape", I guess, is the adjective. I think he'll lay it in, which is good for Endo because Shuji Ishikawa will lay it in. He hedges his bets by attaching when Ishikawa is facing the corner, thus starting with excitement, and you the gentle reader and I enjoy excitement when watching the professional wrestling. Endo does a couple of indie moonsaults which just looks like a sign of desperation when you have to do it so early and then he changes course and he tries his hand at clubbing forearms as they hit the floor. Ishikawa throws Endo through a section of chairs, a spot that is REALLY in my top ten in the pantheon of spots- go ahead and count how many times it happens in a match that I have given a bizarrely large amount of praise to- it'll be there. This helps me like Endo- as opposed to being willfully negligent of him, because: I love when folks get thrown through a section of chairs. Endo is further beaten into my heart when Ishikawa body slams him to the floor in the stands. Ishikawa waits in the ring for the actual beginning of the match as Endo crawls in- allowing Ishikawa to stand on him a little and comically trade chops. (Ishikawa throws bigger chops.) Ishikawa pummels him more and motions for him to get up and take more of an ass-beating, to which Ishikawa busts his brain and halfs the crab! Endo fights to the rope and I'm guessing Endo isn't the golden child I assumed he was yet, because Ishikawa is not particularly "over"selling or "any" selling up to this point. Endo fights out of a piledriver and hits a dropkick and wants to do stuff but his offense looks so crappy setting up the Asai Moonsault that one wonders why Ishikawa agrees to sell it. Shuji has a heart of gold and a fist of iron! So Endo goes on a little foray of offense and it pales in comparison whenever Ishikawa does anything, however minute, in response. So yeah, any selling is overselling, but Ishikawa will do that and does so here. Endo hits a moonsault onto the bended knees of Ishiwawa THUS Ishikawa responds by slaughtering Endo with a running lariat to the corner, and also a Lateral Suplex and a toprope stomp and- jiminy, it has got to fucking suck to wrestle Shuji Ishikawa. Rutube goes to a commercial to allow me to figure out how Endo is going over because it really wouldn't make sense for Ishikawa to beat him to death like this for no reason, unless Endo can still get over more by taking this ass-beating and firing back and thus not looking like a dainty wee fella. Ishikawa crushes him with more lariats but Endo grabs the ropes to show his fighting spirit. Endo hits a dropkick, tries to go up top, but Ishikawa catches him. Endo squirmes and struggles and gets the toprope sunset flip and the DDT crowd ALLOWS ITSELF TO BELIEVE in the little fella. He gets all fired up and he trades elbows to the head! Ishikawa grabs him around the neck and flings him directly over his head, in a sort of Released Throwing A Guy Directly Over Your Head. From this it moves into Endo getting roll-ups and Ishikawa hitting some pretty inconsistent finishers that the crowd gets hotter for as Endo escapes. Ishikawa finally finishes crushing him with a Diehard Kansai for the win. I dug this, mostly because Endo looks pretty good by the end and it makes up for Ishikawa sucking it by having to try too many things that are in his "He does that but it looks shitty" category, which happens when he is in a singles match. I love Ishikawa, but he really gets exposed when he is not tagging with Sato. Probably somekind of beating. SHINJIRO OHTANI/ JAMES RAIDEEN vs MASATO TANAKA/ HIDEKI SUZUKI- ZERO-1- 2/28/2016- [RASMUSSEN]: Tomorrow, I start reviewing the Big Japan Strong Climb tournament in earnest and I am very excited. Guys I love... beating on the next wad of guys I might love.... a dream, really. Lemme get some other matches that PIQUED my interest in here before that. Suzuki is the guy loved by you! Masato Tanaka was that guy in 1999. Ohtani was that guy in 1995. James Raideen was never loved by anyone, wrestling-wise. Three out of four is pretty good, especially since Hideki Suzuki is in this, or I wouldn't have really given a shit about this match. I can remember Ohtani and Tanaka having good matches in recent memory, but it is fading and YOU GUYS NEED TO DO SOMETHING FOR ME LATELY, LIKE THIS MATCH. Zero-1 is becoming the promotion of guys who have vastly better matches when not wrestling in this promotion. Maybe this will fight against that a little. Suzuki and Ohtani go hard to the mat and they fight over knee bars because Zero-1 can also be called A Better Version Of GUTS World. Tanaka and Raideen go strong style and it gets really good really fast as they fucking lay it in- a lot. Okay, I will be the first to love Raideen and the year will be 2016. He has a nice Elbow Across The Neck- like Johnny Valentine. That has to suck to take. Raideen chinlocks Suzuki and we slow it back down to the mat. Suzuki does lots of fun things while in a headlock but you quickly forget because Raideen is about chopping up a fella's chest. Suzuki notes this. Suzuki CRAVATES~! Raideen. Suzuki tags in the other guy in the match who will pummel you to death. Tanaka and Raideen don't beat the life out of each other, opting to work a few armbars to allow Ohtani to dropkick Tanaka in the face a few times. Ohtani rips at his face while Camel Clutching him and tags in Raideen. Man, Raideen is only 24 years old. He is 6'5" and 253 pounds. He was trained by the Dudleys. It's all here on the cagematch.net. So he's going to be a giant star at some point. Anyway, Tanaka and Raideen decide to getting around to beating the fuck out of each other. The fact that Raideen is regularly in with Kohei Sato and Masato Tanaka makes me think and hope that he will become the bludgeoningest New Zealander in a while. Ohtani scrapes the face of Suzuki while running and the reason I watched this match (the sexiness of Hideki Suzuki) has been replaced by the violence of Tanaka and Raideen. Suzuki and Ohtani are just kinda killing time until they tag out and the fun starts again. Suzuki will lean into getting kicked in the face, so I'm not really whining. Tanaka tags in after Suzuki dropkicks-to-stop-being-kicked-in-the-face and Tanaka throws several lariats until he is German Suplexed. Suzuki and Raideen tag in and Raideen throws some very Luger-like lariats. He hits a nice Sidewalk Slam and a standing lariat and chokeslam. Suzuki fires back with forearms and suplexes and locks in an OCTAPUS HOLD~! for the win. Suzuki should have taken a bigger ass-beating and Raideen needs to procure a better looking lariat if he is going to use it this much against guys who throw fucking great lariats. Hell, Tanaka's crushes his lariat. I dunno. Once again, you gotta find these guys in other promotions (Big Japan) to see them in better matches. There. I said it. the new hotness of Hideki Suzuki SHIORI ASAHI vs YUSUKE KUBO- BASARA- 2/26/2016-[RASMUSSEN]: broken sadness ATSUSHI MARUYAMA vs HIKARU SATO- ALL JAPAN- 2/12/2016-[RASMUSSEN]: http://rutube.ru/video/de224531c64c3205e6eec0fadc0f3d78/?pl_type=user&pl_id=1067514 Tomorrow: BIG JAPAN STRONG CLIMB! More of the four cards of burningness!

WELCOME TO YOUR DEATH VALLEY DRIVERETTE~! for 03082016! DDT DNA 13- 1/8/2016 [RASMUSSEN] KOTA UMEDA vs KONOSUKE TAKESHITA: Man, remind me never to stretch reviewing a DNA card over several weeks. Maybe remind me to never review an entire DNA card. Whatever we do, me the writer and you the reader, please bear in mind that now that I have reached the final match of a card of a promotion I really don't care all that much about- and they ran a card fucking YESTERDAY so I will be tempted to make mistake number three, I will try to not make this is the reviewing equivalent of the last few seasons of That 70's Show. Man, this match is like 20 minutes long. Oh what to do. I'll just keep writing, and that will get me rolling, and by the end we will have pro wrestling reviewing magic! Takeshita has a profile here (K. Takeshita)and it appears that he was in Big Japan last year (sorta) in a tag match I must have seen and possibly reviewed- tagging with Sekimoto against Kamitani and frickin Shigehiro Irie, so he is acquainted with laying it in at some point in his three years of wrestling. I'm assuming he was trained by Yes t-shirt boy. Umeda was trained by Kenichi Yamamoto who trained Iwasaki from up yonder (No need to read this: I've reviewed Iwasaki twice and though being trained by Yamamoto is an odd and interesting fact to those of us who actually watched UWFi and the New Japan invasion and RINGS Network and all of that, I COMPLETELY forgot that Iwasaki was trained by Yamamoto by the time I got to this card's review, which is both hilarious but also far more sad to everyone involved from every possible angle.) So yeah, cagematch.com lets us know that these two have taken an ass beating at some point in their burgeoning career, but can they translate this into YOU giving enough of a fuck for YOU to take the extra step and watch this match? Whatevs, I gotta review this motherfucker so I'm already watching it, so you do what you alwasy do- whatever you want. Wish me luck that this doesn't suck. Your main event! It seems like it's been three weeks. I was a little scared because these young guys in DNA tend to look alike, like WWE midcard guys, or teenage boys talking to my daughters. Takeshita noses ahead into my heart by writing his name on his pants. Umeda has the boss purple velvet pants. I'm at a loss. Coolness or convenience? I declare a tie and we will go with Who Throws Better Punches. They begin with matwork that they did while I wrote about pondering which had more useful pants to ME. They start kicking each other so let me start paying more attention. Actually, going back a bit, the pre-Kicking Each Other section is pretty good for a couple of young guys working a wristlock. Umeda works the knee too and elbow drives into it, so he wins with that. Ueda kicks are flourishing and dick-like, so I like that and leads him back to working the knee and he stomps the knee and then kicks the knee when Takeshita fires back with closed fist punches to the chest, which is another nice touch. Ueda kicks are getting nastier as we go along and I love his focus, he must break the knee, he must destroy the knee, with kicks and then back to the kneebar, THUS we have some bit of the wrestling psychology that makes the wrestling watchable. Takeshita sells the knee in the corner while fighting off Umeda with kicks to the face, only to collapse when Umeda sweeps the leg yet again. Umeda goes for a pin and Takeshita starts bringing the chops to respond to the knee spindling and it isn't Kawada vs Hashimoto or anything, but it is perfectly fine, as the transition to offense works within the wee framework they have established. Takeshita does the Walls Of Takeshita after Umeda fights off Takeshita's grasp by slugging him in the knee a few times. Umeda sells the back as Takeshita takes a moment to sell the knee and we get back to both of them chopping each other for a while, so this is good. I got no beef. NO BEEF! They sell some portions of this small in comparison match like Misawa versus Jumbo Tsuruta in 1992- laying around like they just traded Tiger Driver 91s and running boots to the face- but here it is a missile dropkick after five minutes of working the knee. A fool would complain. Umeda hits a nice dropkick and they sell it and then Umeda hits a missile dropkick and running kick to the chest and this is all exciting and stuff. Takeshita brainbusters to offense and goes up top and hits a missile dropkick, selling the leg as he goes up. So yeah, I got no qualms with this match. Takeshita goes for a pin but Umeda counters into a ankle lock that he turns into a kneebar and THEN. WE REALIZE. he was trained by Yamamoto obviously. Takeshita hits the ropes and sells the knee waaaaay past the point anyone else experience level would sell it. I love this because it is the polar opposite of two guys going as fast as they can to get all of their stuff in. Umeda hits a RINGS Network/Kingdom/UWFi-level Beautiful Tope Con Hilo! He earns those fauncy paunts with his fauncy high-flying! He returns to his nasty shootstyle roots by kicking Takeshita a whole lot and it is a whole lot of fun. He does the Shibata running dropkick to the face in the corner and I guess all Shibata moves are now considered quasi-shootstyle- as I now add that rule to the Yamazaki Shootstyle Trumps Pro Style rule. Takeshita kicks Umeda in the face before taking more kicks to the chest and Umeda goes back to the kneebar. I dig Takeshita when he goes total strong style. He'll run and kick you right in the face. They trade finishers and roll-ups until Takeshita crushes him with a very nice short lariat after Umeda fights off the EVEREST~! German. Takeshita hits a long lariat and fucking beautiful brainbuster to set up the EVEREST~! SUPLEX~! HOLD~! for the win! That was good. I dug the set up of Umeda using shootstyle to break down Takeshita and Takeshita using traditional pro style chops and forearms to buy enough time to recover from the well-sold knee damage and then hit a series of pro style finishers to bury the shootstyle guy. They both didn't lay it in consistently, or ever to the point that you would forget about Ishii versus Shibata or anything, but it was at level I will accept- and I have seen unacceptable levels at these little DNA soirees, and even in the main events. So that wasn't nearly as unbearable as I thought it was going to be. Which is what I say every time I watch a whole DDT card, usually. Good for me. BIG JAPAN PRO WRESTLING- 2/18/2016 [RASMUSSEN] HIDEKI SUZUKI/ YOSHIHISA UTO vs DAISUKE SEKIMOTO/ SEIYA SANADA: I would feel weird doing a review of a match without mentioning cagematch.net (Dolph Ziggler wrestler 180 times last year!). This would be Uto's 97th match. Starting out your career with Big Japan will get you to match 100 very quickly. I would like a list of American wrestlers who haven't wrestled 100 matches who have started wrestling schools. I tend to think that it would be depressingly long list. Sanada keeps showing up in any match Hideki Suzuki is in- actually the other Uto match I reviewed had Suzuki, Uto and Sanada as a three man tagteam. (Here: You love re-reading DEAN!) I assume they are a package deal- as I guess to get some-how-possibly-legit-draw (????) Suzuki, you have to take the perfectly fine but Bland As The Idea Of NOAH Seiya Sanada. One can only assume at some point Sanada will wear zebra make-up and start focusing on how great his booty is. Uto The Rookie and BrotherBrutiZodiacDisciple start off with nothing much, so Sanada tags in someone exciting- and Uto front facelocks Sekimoto so folks can watch Sekimoto and Suzuki wrestle, and THUS drive the idea of Uto and Sanada trading headlocks from their minds. I'm guessing this is just to show Suzuki vs Sekimoto in the ring together before they have a couple of legit singles matches in the upcoming Strong Climb Tournament, as I will create any premise to think more about the Strong Climb. Please note the Strong Climb Tournament from 2012 is what renewed my interest in pro wrestling. I was really about ready to move on with my life because the guys that got me completely hooked on wrestling in 1995 were all dead or had become suicidal family murderers. So I was wearing down and just about ready to start playing video games or rotisserie baseball or something. Then Alan Irish-guy hipped me to the Big Japan Strong Style division and it was like the first time I ever saw GAEA- it was something I could get into from the ground floor because of the youth and potential and the style of wrestling is what I look for in my professional wrestling. It then developed into a full-fledged style that I could follow. So if you think I like non-death match Big Japan too much, remember that to me the Strong Style division is the only thing that kept me from hanging out at One Eyed Jacques, playing Magic The Gathering two nights a week (to supplement my shameful other five nights of crying- alone and divorced in my mother's basement. ((CONFESSION: My mother's house doesn't have a basement. It does have a shed. ALSO: One Eyed Jacques is a gaming store in Carytown in Richmond, VA. My mother lives in Chesapeake, thus I would have to driver four hours twice a week to play Magic the Gathering, but I don't really have the energy to research a gaming store in the greater Hampton Roads area. ALSO, I'm not sure guys still play Magic the Gathering. There. I lied to you a lot in one sentence. HA! SUCK IT!))) But I think that's probably good to nearly swear off something you love, because now it's like being a new fan. Hideki Suzuki and Kohei Sato are a lot alike, other than just both being Zero-1. Both bring a bunch of shoot style to the strong style, sort of like how Hisakatsu Ooya brought really polished pro style to FMW garbage league pro style. Both Suzuki and Sato work well in Big Japan strong style but you can tell both are IN the style but not OF the style. Every promotion needs that. Why was ECW so great?- because you had alllll of the ECW Cactus Jack-based style- but then you had Terry Funk who could also wrestle that style but brought a bunch of other things to the style. It keeps you from having everything look like a Pitbulls vs Eliminators match. Anyhoos, Sekimoto and Suzuki are wrestling- Suzuki towering over Sekimoto. Sekimoto notes that a headlock is a very counter-tallness move, as Suzuki then does a 70's headscissors to allow Sekimoto to channel his inner Dory Funk to try to escape it as 70's a way as possible. Suzuki fights it off and does cool little things to make the head scissors more painful- the twisting, the squeezing. Sekimoto finally bridges and squirms to escape to procure a leg lock that Suzuki counters into a Quarter Nelson. LOOK AT THAT! THAT'S Fuckin MUGA, BITCH! Suzuki is going to be fun in the Strong Climb. Osamu Nishimura will sell his manhood short for not having been there that day! Sekimoto is shorter but stronger so he uses power to counter the Quarter Nelson into his own Quarter Nelson, but Suzuki is a cagier wrestler and reverses it back. Sekimoto must expend a lot of energy to escape or reverse the hold and this is quality old school psychology- though one would expect it for a match going three times longer than the 12:41 this goes. They go through it again and Sekimoto says "Hey! Forget that noise!" and seizes up Suzuki's arm with his armpit and takes him over for a Released Armpit Suplex 2016. And they go back to a Vertical Base and one wonders if Gordon Solie is in heaven right now saying, "That's how you do it." Suzuki tags in Uto and Sekimoto remembers that he is all about beating the shit out of people so they decide to begin beating the shit out of each other. This is a tiny sliver of a match that delivers very quickly on a lot of things I love in the modern wrestling. Man, Uno is going to be fun in the Climb- though he only will win two matches. He will fucking laying it in. Suzuki tags back in and then HE starts laying it in. Sekimoto tags in Sanada and we get a bunch of dropkicks! Wee Hoo! Then a Senada Octapus Hold. Senada tags out and I like the fact that he has stayed out of the way for the bulk of this tiny match. Okay, maybe Sekimoto has found his Buzz Sawyer to his Tommy Rich with his time in the ring with Suzuki because Sekimoto sinks in the Argentian Backbreaker and Suzuki uses his skill to counteract the power of Sekimoto by slithering into a sleeper hold and the counter wrestling versus the power wrestling could be the coolest twist on the Strong Style in a while. The fact that Sekimoto counters with an Atomic Drop is sooooo fucking old school and awesome. Suzuki counters a lariat and Sekimoto counters the counter and then Suzuki counters AGAIN with a STANDING SWITCH~! to hit the German suplex! Sekimoto hits his German and a lariat and they both tag out, as if to say, "You rubes have to watch the Strong Climb for the rest!" Suzuki and Uno double team Sanada until wily Sanada uses his comical arsenal of junior moves to get to offense and starts trading forearms with Uno- "I am more than just... dropkicks," Sanada snarled with venom. "I do a wide variety of wrestling moves because I'm a PROFESSIONAL. Not everyone wants two bruisers in their little pants, wailing on each other. Some people like the grace and refinement of high-flying- as it is truly the ART in the art of professional wrestling. But know also, young man- I can throwdown with anyone- especially a rookie punk like YOU!" Uno stomps him in the face and hits a nice Diamond Cutter for two and they both hit some finishers and lariats and whatnot until Sanada finishes off the rookie with a Dragon Sleeper. "SEE! You weren't counting on THAT! A Dragon Sleeper- created by motherfucking. Tatsumi. Fujinami. Bitch. Now tap out and do not soil my lovely pants with your sweating." I dub this a Top 20 Under 15 Minute match of the Year! http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3vi1h6_sekimoto-sanada-vs-suzuki-uno-bjw-2-18-2016_sport Tomorrow: Sumthin.

WELCOME TO YOUR DEATH VALLEY DRIVERETTE~! for 02092016! And yet still more! !@!@!@!@!@!@!@!@!@!@!@!@!@ GUTS WORLD WRESTLING- 1/28/2016- [RASMUSSEN] I am developing an affinity for GUTS World Pro Wrestling. The main reason is that I have been a Mr Gannesukke fan for 20 years now- but also because the top of the cards tend to be anachronistically un-indie in their style and form. I mean, it is a Japanese indie so there is plenty of suck to go around- but it doesn't infuriate me like Dragon Gate or DDT is wont to do. Whole fuckin card! --------------------- JOJI OTANI vs TOSHIYUKI SAKUDA: Joji Otani is mysterious to Cagematch.net so I will assume that he is a GUTS World trainee. Searching the Guts World results page, I can guess that he has been wrestling since last March and he is totally defeated- like many of us, but only in the ring for Joji. Sukuda is a Big Japan rookie of whom I have watched the wrestling stylings just this last week in a Big Japan young lions card that popped up. He was vaguely memorable in a tag match. LET US NOW WATCH HIM SHINE! SHINE ON, YOU CRAZY TOSHIJUKI SAKUDA! Joji wears tiny pink pants and is about the size of the largest omelette I've ever ate at Golden Corral. Sakuda works the arm and Joji reverses it. Sakuda works the knee. Pat O'Connor would approve of the scientific basis of the beginning of this match. Then he would join us in falling asleep because it is the opening match between two rookies and they aren't going to do much more. Sakuda is promising for a tiny fella who will be beaten to death by the Strong Stylists in Big Japan for a while. He is actually effective in conveying intensity when wrenching Joji's knee, in a perfectly fine collection of knee-based spindling. Joji is all excited and fun- firing back with chops to set up his Missile dropkick nearfall. Joji laterally suplexes Sakuda to take you right back to 1976, and procures a wee Boston Crab for a minute. They run the ropes to set up Sakuda hitting a Spear! Sakuda runs from corner to corner and drives his shoulder into Joji's stomach. Sakuda is chunky but hits an athletic hurty-looking standing moonsault for two to lead into the youngsters beating each other in the respective chests. Sakuda has decided that his offence will be based on his shoulders- as he cuts of Joji's peppy foray into coming off ropes by driving his shoulder into Joji's stomach- like another wrestler would kick them in the stomach. Let's hear it for Sakuda- for trying to separate himself from the others, as he contemplates Yuji Okabayashi and Kohei Sato beating him to death for 10 more years. Here's to you and GOOD LUCK! I'll be watchin'! It's gonna hurt! A lot! Sakuda sinks in the half crab and drags Joji to the middle and Joji taps out immediately. Come on, Joji. Where is your fuckin' fighting spirit? They have the indie handshake, which is strange because Joji basically pussed out in this match and should scurry to the back and drive home crying like a big baby. One can assume, because Joji towers over him, that Sakuda is- wow! Cagematch says 5'1". Man, Hama is sooooo going to be landing on him on so many BJW undercard tag matches. Bulk up, little fella! MICHIO KAGEYAMA vs RYOUYA AKIBA: Ryouya Akiba is a 32 year old freelancer whose cagematch.net mugshot seems to insinuate that the only reason he is on this card is that he is obviously the GUTS World speed-dealer. Or maybe he lets Guts Ishijima borrow his tow truck on his nights off. Either way, you and I are excited to see his karate-based stylings. Michio Kageyama is unknown to the Cagematch but has been pocking the GUTS World undercard since 2013. Akiba is truly scrawny and Michio towers over him and outweighs him by 60ish pounds. Can Karate close the size gap? Well a dropkick can! Akiba does really elaborate kicks- like he is a lizard trying to make his enemy think that is larger than he actually is. Being MugaGUTS, he quickly procures a chinlock and Michio Kageyama powers out to begin kicking and bodyslamming him for a early nearfall. After a few cursory kicks to the back, Kageyama starts working the arm and then starts pounding on him in the corner. Wee Akiba does these shitty forearms and Kageyama just answers with kicks to the chest and stomping on his back, topping it off with a half crab. They do the half crab finish from the last match- but Akiba is scrawny but not a big giant pussy, so he makes the ropes. Akiba counters a suplex into his own suplex and the KARATE KICKS BEGIN! Awwww, they begin to look like shit. Akiba is all spunky like a face should be and Kageyama is all heelish and Second Match Dick-like as you would want, thus Akiba has the crowd behind him and he is totes lovable!- but man does his offense look hilariously non-hurtful. He does hit a missile dropkick for the nearfall! Kageyama fights off being shot into the ropes and drives Akiba's shoulder into the mat, floating over to clamp on the Rings of Saturn for the win. And I have watched the two opening matches on a GUTS World card. I will always have that and NOBODY else not in the Shin-Kiba 1st Ring in Tokyo on January 28th, 2016 can say that. I am 2 blessed 2 B stressed. MANAMI KANDA vs DRAKE MORIMATSU: Allright, I remember Drake Morimatsu from late 90's JPW or maybe J'd? I'll check. It won't seems as long because I'll stop typing right now and the gap in time will be filled by you reading this after I start typing again! Oh man, she was in FMW and J'd. She's been wrestling 26 years and is 45 years old. I'm sure there is a very disturbing independent movie to be made about the reasons why she has only wrestled 5 times between 1999 and 2014. Whatever the reasons, she has been pretty active the last two years. Kanda is 21, was trained by TAKA Michinoku and her first match was in the promotion SECRET BASE tagging with Space Galaxy Warrior Andros. Man, I gotta watch some Secret Base. This is her 60th match since debut in June 2014. Ohhh man, let's watch this. Kanda is a bigger though very much a not taller gal so maybe this will awesome. Drake has a baseball bat. They lock-up and all I can think about is that Drake was trained by Tarzan Goto. And I'm wondering how she didn't get roped into being on any of the new FMW cards. This your basic old bigger mean lady against younger less mean less bigger lady styled match. Neither are really laying it in or using their matronly pudge to any interesting advantage, so I can't pay too much attention to this. Drake does a standing stomach claw and that is the pinnacle of this match to this point. Kanda does look impressive charging into the corner. She also misses a splash off the second rope that her girth would have forced the viewer to contemplate the carnage of the impact- thus the advantage of your girthier wrestlers. Drake cheats by whacking her with a bat and they brawl through the crowd a bit- leading up to some chairshots of a very third match magnitude, which leads up to some perfectly fine lariats. Drake goes up for a Northern Lights Suplex and her skull gets crushed by her own unwieldiness- but I have to respect her desire to be a pro and try a few things a lady her age and size should probably avoid. This is really feeling like a match you would see at the county fair. Not the state fair. Drake hits clothelines for two and Michinoku Driver for the win and YES! I have now watched the first three matches of a GUTS World card. Kanda could evolve into something fun. GUTS ISHIJIMA/ MR. GANNOSUKE vs TARO YAMADA/ TATSUHIKO YOSHINO: Halfway there, bitch! Taro Yamada is (according to the delightful and thorough cagematch.net) from the 666 Promotion. He also wrestles in Pro Wrestling Secret Base, HEAT UP, and was actually pulverized by Daisuke Sekimoto on a Big Japan card last year (the show was hilariously or possibly cruelly nicknamed "You'll Never Find a Rainbow If You Are Looking Down"). Yoshino was in a match in Big Japan that I reviewed why! just last week here: http://deathvalleydriver.com/forum/index.php?/topic/4619-death-valley-driverette-02042016-neo-muga-kazuki-hashimoto-hideyoshi-kamitani/ This is the second time I've seen Guts Ishijima and he still as mysterious as the last time I saw him. He is still pretty much exclusive property of GUTS World so I still assume he owns the ring and the promotion (or is Mr. Gannesukke's hair stylist or something.) Anyway, Gannesukke is fucking awesome so let it roll. Taro Yamada is not attractive. One can only hope that ladies go for his plastic/leather goth apparel and spunky fighting spirit. Hey, Kageyama is part of the Gannesukke/Ishijima stable (thus explaining the nise-Gannesukke appearance- or the possibilty that he is the actual bastard son of Mr Gannesukke. Talk about great independent film ideas.) Anyway, Gannesukke and Yoshino start off the proceedings with headlocks, armdrags, armbars- what you would expect from the upper echelon of this greasier version of MUGA. Yamada and then Yoshino do a lot of really fast tagteam moves to take down the lurching fatman that is Guts Ishijima- as Guts resembles Japan's Premiere Tor Johnson Impersonator. Except not quite as agile as Tor Johnson. He will smack you really hard so I'm not really complaining- and when he and Gannesukke double shoulderblock Yamada, Yamada looks like has been hit by a truck. They throw him to the floor and Kageyama lays it in on Yamada in direct opposition to his stiffness level two matches prior. After he is thrown back into the ring, Gannessukke switches into the Dradition and sinks in a head scissors. Guts tags in and does nice headbutts while stumbling around the ring like a total galoot. Gannesukke tags in and applies a sleeper that Yamada jawbreakers out of only to have it reversed into a Gannesukke head scissors. Guts tags in and beats on him some more until Yamada does a really slick Ric Flair spin over the turnbuckle to hit a missile dropkick off the ropes to make the hot tag. Yoshino gets in a few kicks and a DDT to set-up a Half Crab (your GUTS World opening submission hold of the night.) Gannessuke hits the ropes and gets in a 1998 FMW-level Gannessuke Dangerous Backdrop and you and I weep the tears of remembrance. Guts tags in a really hurty corner lariat and then takes a rana like a fat who man who didn't just stumble all over the ring prior like a rhinoceras that was just feeling the effect of a tranquilizer dart. Yamada tags in and does a Sabu Inside moonsault for two. Luckily, Yamada tries a not-really-all-that-tricky Lucha roll-up and Guts is REALLY feeling the rhino tranquilizer as he fails to achieve the Forward Roll. Jillion stars. He does redeem himself by just fucking KILLING Yamada with a lariat. SO yeah, Taro Yamada- not good-lookin' but will lean into your lariat like a fucking CHAMP. He is beaten into my heart. JEEEZEUZ FRICKIN JIMINY. Gannesukke decides that no one gets to have a more hellish lariat than he and he proceeds to just fucking annihilate Yoshino. Yoshino was already beaten into my heart. Now he skyrocketing into my Skeezy Indie Top Ten. They Superbomb Yoshino for two and then Gannesukke Released Thunder Fire Powerbombs him until Yamada makes the save and they go on offense with a double dropkick and QUEBRADA~! by Yamada to set-up the Yoshino Falcon Arrow. As GUTS World really does lose all MUGA-ness as the match starts to wind up. But I can't complain because I could watch Gannessuke suplex people all day and they are doing all FMW finishers, to my delight. Yamada kinda barrel rolls into Guts on the floor, hitting him in the lower mid-section- which is odd because if there was ever a human mattress to land on, Guts' giant flabbiness would be the wrestling landing Quilt-a-pedic of choice. This allows Yoshino and Gannesukke to fly all over the ring until Gannesukke rolls up Yoshino in that roll-up thing that Miguel Perez Jr used to always use. This match was PROBABLY not a legit match of the year, but there is just so much to love in this- both good (Gannesukke, a lot of Yamada and Yoshino) and bad (as in hilarious, as in Guts Ishijima trying to do lucha libre moves.) I am glad I watched it. KENICHIRO ARAI/SHOTA vs KEIZO MATSUDA/ YUJI KITO: Coming up. AMIGO SUZUKI/ MASAO ORIHARA/ RYAN UPIN vs DAISUKE/ KAZUHIKO MATSUZAKI/ MASKED MYSTERY: Coming Up ~!~ It's a warning in every tongue Gotta stop them SINGLES GOING STEADY crazy horses on the run What a show, there they go smoking up the sky, yeah! ~!~ NAOMICHI MARUFUJI vs TAKASHI SUGIURA- PRO WRESTLING NOAH- 1/31/2016-[RASMUSSEN]: I sworn I will review this tomorrow. Thursday MAX! http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3qu0ja_naomichi-marufuji-c-vs-takashi-sugiura-noah_sport Tomorrow: What he said.

WELCOME TO YOUR DEATH VALLEY DRIVERETTE~! for 03022016! DDT DNA 13- 1/8/2016 [RASMUSSEN] SHUJI ISHIKAWA/ ZEUS vs KAZUSADA HIGUCHI/ SUGURU MIYATAKE: I think I've seen maybe four Zeus matches in my life. I am going to the cagematch.net to look at his profile and see what there is to this tattooed man who may be on steroids or maybe really really really works out a lot. 5'11" and 231, he is a big fella for the lesser Japanese feds. Last year, he lost a match as a member of a mob that lost to Aja Kong in DDT. I guarantee you that I don't want to see that. Maybe Higuchi and Miyatake have less generic of a profile. Higuchi is a 27 year old rookie who is a former sumo wrestler though he doesn't look very rotund or long-haired. He wrestled amatch in Big Japan last year, but not against anybody who would beat him to the point of running scared back to the basho or anything. Jesus Christ, Miyatake is a 24 year old rookie who was not afraid to wrestle against fucking MURAKAMI and MINORU SUZUKI in Tokyo Gurentai in one match. He also wrestled Takayama a few months before that. So Miyatake is someone I haven't seen yet but who is already beaten to my heart. That's odd that this will be his 111th match and fucking Shuji Ishikawa will the THIRD stiffest guy he has ever been in the ring with, fourth if you count Takayama back when he was healthy. So this is shaping up to be more fun than I was planning on. Higuchi is 6'1" and thus Ishikawa only slightly towers over him. Higuchi looks good trading shoulder blocks with Ishikawa and is good exerting his size. Big Japan should steal/borrow this guy for their Strong Style division. My hero Miyatake taunts Zeus before they even lock up by doing body building poses, so they have a pose down and a large contingent of DDT's core audience quickly masturbates furiously. Miyatake is less thick, tall and sturdy as his partner so Zeus gets off some power moves and tags in Ishikawa to stomp on him a bit. Miyatake fires back and looks fine- but he takes Ishikawa's offense like Curt Hennig in 1987 and thus show us his strength. He trades chops with Zeus and also sells them to make Zeus look like a true ass-beater. They beat on him a while, and he fires back enough for the crowd to get behind his babyfaceness as he struggles to escape the punishment of the veterans. He gets in a nice shoulderblock on Zeus and tags out, allowing Higuchi to be a really fun house of fire. DDT really needs to grab these guys, Guanchulo and Katsumata from the match prior to this one, Ryuichi Sekine and Saburo Inematsu plus Kazumi Kikuta abd Toshiyuki Sakuda from the Big Japan match I reviewed from 2/18 and create a NWA US tag title division- something they haven't tried in the Japanese indies since Ikuto Hidaka and Minoru Fujita were the finest Rock and Roll Express to be in Japan in the late 90s. It would be fun. It's already making undercard matches that one would usually glaze over while watching, but instead actually being really fun. Imagine my delight at a match like this, where it has a guy I really dig, like Ishikawa here, and the match becomes a Southern tag match; instead of just a sadistic thrill of Zeus and Ishikawa beating the life out of two rookies. So Higuchi on offense is really fun because he stays aflame as he chops Zeus into the corner and brings a corner lariat like a BIG BOY! Zeus is awesome putting him over by reversing a snap suplex but immediately tagging out and hitting the floor to sell the damage. Yea Zeus! I like you because of that! Shuji Ishikawa crushes Higuchi in the corner while Miyatake scoffs at him- "MIRAKAMI! Fuckin MIRAKAMI!" Ishikawa does a running knee to the stomach. Miyatake says to himself, "Okay, yeah that looked like it hurt." Higuchi sells the knee to the stomach like Shuji Ishikawa ran full speed into your stomach with his knee. Ishikawa goes for the powerbomb but Higuchi powers out. Miyatake seems to puss out on the tag- which is awesome and understandable. Ishikawa responds by kicking Higuchi really hard in stomach. Higuchi and Ishikawa trade chops and forearms in the center of the ring and Big Japan REALLY needs to steal this guy. He does not look or wrestle like a rookie and he can bring the stiffness. Plus he has a nice dropkick. Miyatake finally opts to tag in after Higuchi gets Ishikawa off his feet, but Ishikawa responds by hitting Miyatake in the face harder than I think even Mirakami or Minoru Suzuki hit him in the face. It is some nastiness. Miyatake hits a really nice elbow flying off the second rope and they DOUBLE TEAM! Flying Elbows and Lariats in the corner to set up Haguchi's Overhand Powerbomb into a Miyatake frog splash! Miyatake hits the ropes to do another roaring elbow but Ishikawa knees him in the stomach to tag in Zeus who crushes him with a lariat in the corner and released belly-to-belly to set up the stereo, complete-wedgie chokeslam for the... Higuchi with the save! Ishikawa crushes Higuchi with a lariat sending him over the toprope. Miyatake gets some nearfalls but Zeus hits a manly lariat that would have finished it if Higuchi didn't make another save. As Zeus hits the chokeslam for the win, I note that this was really fucking good. Postmatch, Zeus offers his hand IN FRIENDSHIP! Miyatake seals his fate as a Wrestler That Dean Loves by smacking Zeus in the face. Zeus smiles. You smile. I smile. Wrestling has made us happy for a moment. KOTA UMEDA vs KONOSUKE TAKESHITA: Coming up BIG JAPAN PRO WRESTLING- 2/18/2016 [RASMUSSEN] KOHEI SATO/ SHUJI ISHIKAWA vs HIDEYOSHI KAMITANI/ RYOTA HAMA: Jiminy, the Big Japan tag title scene is fun. Mostly because Hama is really fat and splatty and Hideyoshi Kamitani is really fun to watch in this, his first push. The Twin Towers put the belts on the map, one massive ass beating at a time. Here they can frolic in the division they created. Kohei Sato tries to move the fatness of Hama and fails and it angers him. Hama knocks Sato to the ground with his fatness, forcing despondent Ishikawa to tag in and try to do something with the giant pile of tag champion that they cannot move. One of my favorite things about Hama is that when charges at the opponent to shoulder block them with immovable density, he makes the face that the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man makes when he catches on fire at the end of Ghostbusters. Go watch, you will be enchanted. After knocking Ishikawa to the mat, he tags out to Kamitani and Hama has the expression that says, "I've done about all I can with these two. Destroy them, boy." Kamitani starts in with the shoulder to the stomach in the corner and goes for the bodyslam. Ishikawa remembers that he TOWERS over opponents and kicks Kamitani in the stomach and tags in Kohei Sato to deal with this far more reasonable amount of humanity. Kamitani looks panicked as he lays in chops to Sato's chest. Kohei Sato has the look on his face, "This guy: pulverizable" and proceeds to pulverize Kamitani with kicks all over the back and adds forearms to the head. Ishikawa stomps on him some more, cutting off Kamtani when he tries to escape with chops, tagging out to have Kohei visit his special brand of horror to the non-obese tag champion. Kamitani finally shoulderblocks and Hawk shoulderblocks to offense and makes the tag, allowing a giant smokehouse of peanut-fed hams to catch afire and bash Kohei Sato in the face with giant nearly nude buttocks! Sato's face hits the mat and he wants to cry. Hama suplexes him but misses the flabalanche! Sato does the full Ricky Morton forward roll tag and YOU and I both pop like monkeys at the GLORY of PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING! Hama and Ishikawa just smash each other's faces with forearms and you remember why you love both of these tag teams. Ishikawa sees a weakness and delivers the headbutt! He hits the ropes to finish Hama with a lariat but Hama recovers and hits the hurtiest highest-caloric flying crossbody in the history of Mexico! Ishikawa lays on the mat grief-stricken, Sato thinks to himself as he stands on the apron, "Whatever! HIS NAKED ASS TOUCHED MY FACE!" The Twin Towers try to recover some semblence of their prior reality before the onslaught of so much fat. Hama rolls over like a giant keg of Golden Coral Chocolate Fountain Sauce and tags Kamitani in. Kamitani tries to add to the horror with a very nice Vertical Suplex on Shuji Ishikawa but falls for the trap of trading chops with a Twin Tower and loses and pays the price of having Sato tag in and also kick the fuck out of him. Kamitani, being a fiery babyface, gets fired up and gets Sato off his feet and tags in Hama who does an elaborate dance to allow Hama to roll on top of Sato to allow Kamitani to get the pin, all but for the save by Ishikawa. Sato says to himself, "I'm getting to old for this shit!" Hama hits the floor to give Ishikawa what for, leaving Kamitani alone with the monstrous Kohei Sato! Ishikawa gets to the ring and does the AWESOME Rainmaker Substituting A Headbutt For A Short Lariat to Allow Sato to annihilate Kamitani with a released German but opts to keep beating the hell out of the junior member thus allowing Hama to get back to the ring and make a save. They drive Hama out of the ring and Kohei Sato hits a running forearm to the face into a Sato I HATE YOU Piledriver FOR THE WIN! I guess that was non-title. It really sets up a rematch because everybody in the match would want some measure of revenge- Hama for not being able to save Kamitani at the end, Sato and Ishikawa for being the victims of Hama's offense without really getting anything in on him and Kamitani to show that he isn't just glad to be there, but can pull his own weight. So yeah, they get a lot in 13 minutes. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3vd3gw_hama-kamitani-vs-sato-ishikawa-bjw-2-18-2016_sport HIDEKI SUZUKI/ YOSHIHISA UTO vs DAISUKE SEKIMOTO/ SEIYA SANADA: Tomorrow: The Ladies.

WELCOME TO YOUR DEATH VALLEY DRIVERETTE~! for 02252016! DDT DNA 13- 1/8/2016 [RASMUSSEN] GUANCHULO/ SHUNMA KATSUMATA vs YASO URANO/ SHIORI ASAHI: Guanchulo is Chilean so I see that just about everybody we were digging in those stiff as fudge matches from Chile a few years ago have all developed actual careers in Japan. I might start crying as my chest fills with pride. We also used drive to Carolina to see all the OMEGA guys before they all became big stars. But yeah, Guanchulo has already wrestled 12 times this year according to the cagematch.net so lets hear it for scanning the globe for wrestlers to develop. Yasu Urano I've already blathered on about in a recent review. He wears a Yes t-shirt in solidarity with the Prog Rock nerds who get beaten up by the popular kids in high school; he should go the extra mile and wear a Tarkus t-shirt. Shiori Asahi is the guy who had the Memphis styled match with Yuji Hino that I reviewed, if you follow these things, and why wouldn't you? I'm fucking fascinating. So once again, he is 38 years old. Shunma Katsumata I've seen before but I didn't really pay enough attention to remember if I hated him or was just wasn't paying enough attention to figure out if I liked him. He was trained by HIS OPPONENT! Urano is the Jaguar Yokota of DDT! Urano picks his nose when his former student and Chilean offer their hands in sportsmanship. Guanchula pulls his hand back makes a SHOOT~! facial expression of "What the fuck is your problem?". He spends a little time looking confused, like he ordered something off a menu he didn't speak the language of. SO the Chilean and the rookie are all spunky and the veterans are all sullen and broken, the way it should be. Asahi and Guanchulo do some perfectly fine chain wrestling early and tag out to let STUDENT wrestle MASTER! They do a lot of stuff really fast and Urano doesn't do the usual "I taught you everything you know but not everything I know" schtickt and just kinda wrestles like he is just another wrestler- as if the general public doesn't know their SECRET RELATIONSHIP! Guanchulo and Shunma do lots of spunky dropkick based tagteam moves and they are a fun NWA US Tag title contender. Asahi tags in and a double team move goes wrong and Urano lariats him accidentally and Asahi does the great thing he did in the Yuji Hino match- wrestle like he REALLY hates wrestling but can't stop taking bookings for some secret horrifying reason. I really dig it. He did it with ass-stomper Hino but is now doing it with mere rookies. "Okay, your gimmick is that you are stuck in a dead-end job and that job is Indie undercard wrestler." They should do a match countdown where he has to win enough matches to pay his tuition for his on-line Phoenix University air conditioner repair certification. And thus he escapes this horrible business that has trapped him for 13 years. One must love when the art of pro wrestling sloshes into its viewers horrendous reality. Guanchulo chinlocks Asahi so Asahi can truly project his hatred for the pain inserted into his neck and inserted into his soul. Shunma tags in and dropkicks Asahi and he sells it like, "FUCK! This again!" And then another soul-devouring chinlock right before the two youngsters, brimming with life and energy- runs at him whimsically on piggy back and bash into him in the corner. Asahi makes the greatest face, as if he is saying "WHAT FUCKING LEVEL OF HELL AM I IN?" Asahi is a truly our existential role model and you pray for him and his hatred of his life and all the people in it. They suplex him while on piggy back and Asahi kicks out because FUCK IT! WHAT ELSE IS HE GOING TO FUCKING DO? THIS IS ALL HE HAS. NO JOY. NO HAPPINESS. JUST THIS FUCKING WRESTLING MATCH. Guanchulo runs around him like he is one of those soccer playing airplane guys, all the while the despair on Asahi's face is like a fucking Bergman trilogy about God's hatred of man. It's like Asahi could just get up and get in his car and drive away but where would he go? He is wrestler. He hates wrestling. A manchild runs around him pretending to be an airplane while he is spiraling into the ground. Asahi throws forearms to the stomach but also forearms to the hope, forearms to the joy, forearms to the youth. Fuck these assholes, if he can't have it, nobody will- WELCOME TO THE FUCKING WALL THAT IS LIFE! He does his Cobra strike and almost makes the tag- a tag to allow Urano to destroy this hell that his owner partner has created to torment Asahi here at his lowest moment. But the Chilean punk grabs Asahi's leg and denies him whatever dignity he has left. Asahi remembers a move from when he was younger, where he would push his opponent into the air with his legs and kick him in the face on the way down. So he makes the tag. Finally, relief from the horror of this hell he has created from his life of one wrong decision after another. But of course, the referee didn't see the tag so God, youth and the state are out to crush him. And they are succeeding. Shunma runs in as Urano squabbles with the ref and they double team the husk of a man that is Asahi. Asahi does a standing switch and escapes a lariat and tags Urano as he watches the ref watch the tag. Urano slaughterizes the youth and Atomic Drops Guanchulo and is about to go for the pin- but instead decides that Asahi got off too easy by just getting the shit kicked out himself by boys half his age. So he tags Asahi's shoulder as he is looking away sitting on the apron in absolute existential terror. Asahi makes the awesome face, a face that says, "What the FUCK? Even YOU are against me?" He goes in and is completely confused. Guanchulo takes advantage and dropkicks him and they Toprope Diamond Cut Asahi and Urano blows the finish and then it completely falls apart. Like this match was destined to. Urano crushes Asahi's balls pretending to hold the ropes for him. Asahi charges at his erstwhile partner and flails unsuccessfully and we leave him at his absolute lowest ebb. BILLION JILLION STARS. SHUJI ISHIKAWA/ ZEUS vs KAZUSADA HIGUCHI/ SUGURU MIYATAKE: Coming up KOTA UMEDA vs KONOSUKE TAKESHITA: Coming up BIG JAPAN PRO WRESTLING- 2/18/2016 [RASMUSSEN] YUJI OKABAYASHI/ ATSUSHI MARUYAMA vs DAICHI HASHIMOTO/ SHINOBU: Man, say what you will about Atsushi Maruyama (You say,"Who?") but if one looks at his cagematch.net profile, one will note that he averages about 150 matches a year. One must also take into account that he seems to frequent the periphery of Japanese indies so there are probably ten or twenty matches that are at county fairs or used car dealership parking lots- as I notice that sometimes HASEGAWA will wrestle in some just horrendously horrible FMW match that doesn't show up on the cagematch FMW results page. He also doesn't wear a mask anymore and they just have pictures of him be-masked. I didn't realize has been full-time Big Japan for the last two years but I'm not psychotic completist as I was in my youth, also he does 50 Michinoku Pro shows a year. He's already wrestled 25 this year. He is the James Brown of Japanese wrestling, if James Brown wasn't the godfather of soul but was an obscure kinda bland Japanese pro wrestler. Shinobu I dig. He is feisty and will take a beating and is a perfectly fine high flyer when need be. He averages 50 matches a year so he is a pussy- match-per-year-wise compared to the road warrior that is Maruyama. Okabayashi and Hashimoto will kick your teeth out for MY pleasure. And I find it pleasing. Maruyama and Shinobu start off with your headlocks and head scissors so we see the lighting and we wait on the thunder. Shinobu tags out and Daichi and Maruyama do the same thing but a little more shoot stylish since now we have ZERO-1 in the mix. Maruyama tags out and Okabayashi tries to bring the thunder but Daichi jumps out of the way, like I would. Daichi Hashimoto is getting more towards his dads's level of girthiness every time I see him, but as for now, he shouldn't be trying to get into a Greco-Roman knucklelock with Yuji Okabayashi, but it a lot less preposterous now than it would have a year ago at this time. They trade chops for kicks and Hash catches him right on the chin and it looks legit as Okabayashi goes down and doesn't get back up for a minute. Maruyama tags in while they apply the smelling salts to Okabayashi. Shinobu tags in and decides to fill the stiffness void by bringing the ass beat to Maruyama- who will take an assbeating like a champ. He spin-kicks Shinobu and chinlocks Shinobu until Yuji can remember his middle name. "It's.....BILLY!" and he charges in and fucking destroys Shinobu and settles it all down with a Boston Crab. Shinobu hits the ropes and hits a brainbuster and tags out to Hash who opts to keep kicking Okabayashi in the face, including a truly dickish spin kick to the face- to the point that Maruyama just comes into the ring to kick Hash to keep him off the befuddled Okabayashi. Shinobu clears the ring and hits an Asai moonsault on both. Yuji gets back in the ring and Hash fucking crushes his skull with a running knee to the face and a missile dropkick. At this point I'm assuming that Okabayashi is out of it but since he is a Japanese pro wrestler so he acts like nothing is wrong. Maruyama tags in and takes a lot of kicks to the chest and the crowd is excited for his struggle to make the tag. Yuji is still out of it so he hits more dangerous that usual power moves- including a totally unprotected power slam/brainbuster/something. Concussions bring out his inner moondog. Shinobu hits his own missile dropkick but Yuji powerslams to transition and Argentinianly breaks Shinobu's back until Hash makes the save. Okabayashi just fucking slaughters Shinobu with a lariat but unfortunately for Shinobu, Shinobu's gimmick is that you slaughter him ten times over and he doesn't give up, so we have another minute for him to fight out of a powerbomb via cross-armbreaker (using the aforementioned Yamazaki Shootstyle Counters Pro Style rule)that Okabayashi powers into another powerbomb THAT HE TURNS INTO ANOTHER CROSS-ARMBREAKER! FOR THE WIN! Weird. Okay, so Okabayashi was selling the knockout to make putting over Shinobu make sense? Possibly? Or was he legit knocked out? Or both? Mysterious. http://rutube.ru/video/0949b715ec1d4e6fe99603cbaceec914 KOHEI SATO/ SHUJI ISHIKAWA vs HIDEYOSHI KAMITANI/ RYOTA HAMA: HIDEKI SUZUKI/ YOSHIHISA UTO vs DAISUKE SEKIMOTO/ SEIYA SANADA: Tomorrow: Stuff!

WELCOME TO YOUR DEATH VALLEY DRIVERETTE~! for 02232016! DDT DNA 13- 1/8/2016 [RASMUSSEN] DNA is to DDT what NXT is to WWE. Except my son doesn't watch fifteen hours of DDT and NXT a week. Sometimes, these are really good. Other times not so much. This one does not have the actually perfectly fine Tigger Bed Scene, so this is totally for the furthering of the art of reviewing of pro wrestling. As "DNA" is to wrestling reviews what "drummer's solo record" is to music reviews. DAI SUZUKI vs DAICHI KAZATO: It doesn't seem fair to expect much from a DNA opening match, but DDT itself posted this to the internet and decided this was a fair representation of the DNA roster. Plus I have reviewed the opening matches from GUTS World and Pro Wrestling Heat Up recently, and I don't remember either of those matches making me want to drive my mini-van off a bridge- so bring it, you punks. I'm taking the time to watch you; you put in the effort to make me give a shit about you and your stupid burgeoning wrestling career. Checking the cagematch.net, Kazato has been wrestling for five years and wrestled for Pro Wrestling Heat Up five times last year. Shooter boy Kotaru Nasu beat on him for 15 minutes in September of last year, the last time Kazato made the PWHU scene. He was trained by Omori. This was his 98th match, which is kinda low for a fifth year guy. My guess is that he is now running a warehouse, after being forklift boy for three years- thus eating into to wrestling time. Dai Suzuki is a DDT rookie and this was his 27 match. This will be his year to get stomped to death by Kamitani and Hama in a Big Japan opening match, one would think. Pre-match they hug so I am already losing my love for this, the opening DNA match. They do some headlocks and wrist locks and they scream a lot. They trade lowgrade forearms and Kazato hits a mid-grade European uppercut. Kazato does a lot of pin attempts and hits a couple of Better Than Brian Lee elbow drops. Suzuki tries to chop back to offence but becomes victim of a very nice half crab. Suzuki simpers a lot before hitting the ropes. Suzuki climbs Kazato erotically from the floor into body slam position but Kazato sandbags him and uses a forearm to drive him to the mat. Kazato taunts his lack of fighting spirit. Suzuki lays the forearms in a bit, though they still suck- all to procure the AIRPLANE SPIN! I wasn't expecting that. Kazato hits a dropkick to TRANSITION~! back to offense, allowing him to enziguiri and then hit a missile dropkick off the top. Suzuki catches a kick to the face but fires back with an oh so very rookie lariat and sinks in an Octapus Hold for a few seconds. Kazato hits a really average enzuguiri and then hits a lariat and a move that I didn't know the name of. THEN my son informs me that it was a Bray Wyatt's Sister Abigail. So there you go. Let us count the reasons I am glad to have seen this match: 1.) Airplane Spin 2.) Got to use a Brian Lee Had The Shittiest Elbow Drops joke. 3.) Me n my son bond over him knowing something about wrestling that I didn't. So there you go. I can't imagine any reason for you, the gentle reader, to watch this match. KOUKI IWASAKI vs MIZUKI WATASE: Coming up GUANCHULO/ SHUNMA KATSUMATA: Coming up SHUJI ISHIKAWA/ ZEUS vs KAZUSADA HIGUCHI/ SUGURU MIYATAKE: Coming up KOTA UMEDA vs KONOSUKE TAKESHITA: Coming up ~!~ Just for you, here's a love song And it makes meSINGLES GOING STEADYglad to say It's been a lovely day and it's okay ~!~ HIROSHI YAMATO vs DAIKI INABA- WRESTLE-1- 2/10/16- [RASMUSSEN]: I have decided to follow Hiroshi Yamato, the Wrestle-1 cruiserweight champion. The main reason is because he is 32 and looks like he is 57. You gotta respect a guy who will embrace his premature grayness. I think I reviewed one of his matches a while back. Looking at his match list on cagematch.net, first I note that I really have not seen any of the guys in the Wrestle-1 cruiserweight division other than Andy Wu, and that the match I watched was Yamato getting crushed by Hama a few weeks ago. Fun facts: he had over 500 matches in All Japan in his first 6 years and has wrestled 80ish matches a year since jumping to Wrestle-1 3 years ago. He was stomped on by Yuji Okabayashi in a Big Japan midcard match last May. Daiki Inaba has been wrestling since May 2013, has never wrestled on a Big Japan undercard or done anything strange or interesting. Perhaps he is a good wrestler. (Aftermatch note: Yeah, he's good.) Let us find out. Inaba is two inches shorter but thicker than the 5'10" Yamato and they start off with spinny, twirly RINGS NETWORK-styled takedowns before getting straight to punching each other in the face. Inaba lays in the chops and then Yamato lays in the chops! YEAAA! I LIKE WRESTLING! Yamato CRAVATES~1 to facilitate knees to the face and YOU rejoice! Then they do this very odd double rope run standing trust fall spot into an Inaba sleeper. I swear to God, I think they just did that spot because they knew that no one would actually watch this match. I can't quite get my head around it. Inaba stomps on Yamato after he makes the ropes and stomps on him outside of the ring all the way into the ring and then crushes him with a few SWEET running elbows to the corner. Inaba has a really nice looking offense and emphasizes this by hitting a quality brainbuster. They make with the standing switches and do a really odd rope running sequence before Inaba hits a shoulderblock and a really nice Fisherman Suplex with a bridge. These guys are really strange. IT's like JAZZ! They do really good components of a pretty high end junior heavyweight match and then they throw in something that I have never seen in my 46 years of wrestling watching. It's not gigantically ludicrous or retarded, just odd- the trustfall thing; the crazy running of the ropes- like they wanted to re-invent little teeny parts of wrestling. Inaba procures the Octapus Hold and tries to morph it into a Tombstone but Yamato fights out, runs the ropes and does a backwards in-ring tope like Stuka Jr does off the toprope to the floor. It's very odd. I have to give this match a million stars after five minutes because it has baffled me 3 times. Yamato hits a nice forearm to the teeth and they run the ropes again to allow Yamato to hit a fucking 3/4s legit Spear that moves right into a Northern Lights Suplex and a fucking REALLY nasty running shoulderblock into the corner. For two guys I've vaguely heard of, they both have really world class offenses. They battle for top of the tunrbuckle supremacy a bit longer than most would until Inaba hits the toprope Brainbuster and applies the Russian Legsweep after a series of elbows to the back of the head. Inaba comes off the top with a splash but Yamato gets his feet up and Inaba leans into it to the point that his head jerks back in an impossible way. Inaba is becoming god-like. Yamato has REALLY sweet forearms to the face. He should just cut out all of the rest of his MOVESET~! and just crush people's skulls because it looks really great. Inaba does a strange foray into double axe-handles as an offensive and defensive weapon. This match is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more challenging that I figured it would be. Fuck it. Yamato is an existential figure that we all need to follow his career. He represents regret and failure and also hope and redemption. You want him to win because you want to win. You have taken his journey and you are inspired by his fighting spirit- as he is burning with fighting spirit while a lesser man goes home and weeds the garden! He murders Inaba with released Capture Suplexes. Inaba tries to use driving elbows to the face to get back on offense but Yamato cuts him off with a Capture Suplex that he morphs into a lower angle chokeslam and then he does it again! For two! Inaba is broken beaten man as he tries to fight off the finish by grabbing the ropes. Yamato gets him in the Chicken Fight position, stands on the second rope and dives backwards in the trustfall/Stuka Jr manner and SUDDENLY IT ALL MAKES SENSE. For two. So he hits the Stuka Jr no look plancha off the toprope to the middle of the ring and then follows up with an some kind of OVERHAND Michinoku Driver for the win. FUCKING AWESOME. That was fuckin weird. And great. And weird. And great. http://rutube.ru/video/dcbee01bd758c9e3143ecd4fe5dc7d01 YUJI HINO vs MINORU TANAKA- WRESTLE-1- 2/10/16- [RASMUSSEN]: I love Hino. I haven't liked a Minory Tanaka match since the days of BattlARTS when Shoichi Funaki would carry him to a good match. I'm sure there were other matches I liked but I would probably not want to go back and revisit them. Here, can Hino beat a good match out of the listless and lethargic Tanaka? One way to find out. I do love Hino but it seems odd to put your belt on him- not that I care one way or the other. I'm not your mom, Wrestle-1 championship commitee. Do whatever you want. Tanaka starts by kicking him really hard a few times so this is already better than the last ten Tanaka matches I've seen. Hino crushes Minoru's chest with a chop and this is starting well. Hino is one of the better wrestlers because he demands a really deliberate pacing. Instead of mauling Tanaka with chops, he builds up to the chop and allows Tanaka to sell it- conveying the pain with his face instead of making the viewer add it all up in his mind if it is all chops and no selling. The methodical sold chops are just as hurty looking so this the best of both worlds. Tanaka is leaning into Hino's offense like a champ, taking the RELEASED SOMOAN DROP~! with a thud. It's really effective, four chops, one chinlock and the Samoan Drop is enough to look like Hino has murdered him because of the psychological set-up of the move. Psychology is what keeps you from getting ten concussions sometimes. Tanaka goes on offense by hitting a TRULY nasty dropkick to the knee when Hino comes off the ropes. He runs and totally smashes Hino's knee in the corner and then drop kicks him out of the ring- and this is odd because when reviewing the Marufuji/Nakajima vs Sugiura/Suzuki match, the weakest moves in the match are the dropkicks by Marufuji and Nakajima compared to the truly hellish chops and forearms of Suzuki and Sugiura. Here, two really vicious dropkicks by Tanaka are more hurty looking than chops by frickin HINO- who can hang without about anyone in the stiffness arena. Tanaka embraces his juniorness and lands a perfectly fine plancha off the corner to the floor. Tanaka stomps Hino's knee as he tries to get in the ring and THUS, we have the story of the match! Tanaka will try to break Hino's knee while Hino just tries to generally kill Tanaka. Hino fires back with a Released Belly to Belly Suplex and run directly into two dropkicks and several stomps to the knee, several kneepunts and a halfspin into a kneebar! Hino, being beloved, fights out be just fucking crushing Tanaka's chest A LOT. Man, it is some nastiness. (Hino is also disregarding all the effort that Tanaka has done to establish the fact that he has been just totally fucking up Hino's knee the whole match. Who knows? Maybe it will dawn on him at some point. Maybe a bone will stick out of his thigh or something.) Hino takes a(n) hilarious eternity to make it to the tope rope. Tanaka kikcks him the head and Supersplexes and stomps him from the top and goes back into the knee bar- not realizing that Hino has some kind of steel knee joints er sumthin. Tanaka kicks the knee and then succumbs to another Hino Released Capture suplex. Hino hits a thoroughly grody corner lariat before hitting a legit Samoan Drop before rushing up to the top to hit a COMPLETE fat boy Frog Splash that just fucking crushes Tanaka who somehow kicks out. Tanaka fights out of the finisher by hitting three really nice kicks to Hino's head and then stomping him from the top rope- which never looks that impressive to we older folk who remember Hikari Fukuoka and her truly fucked up moonsault stomp. Nothing ever could compare to the sheer terror of that move. Tanaka gets a two count and they lay around and sell stuff. Tanaka kicks to the head and Hino lariats and they lay around a little more. Hino charges the corner to get kicked in the face but then kinda punches Tanaka in the throat and then Tanaka fights out of powerbomb to sink in his third kneebar. Hino sells the knee like he remembered all the stuff from before and they drag out the knee bar for a while and it is suitably dramatic when Hino hits the ropes. Tanaka kicks the fudge out of Hino's knee in the corner and Hino actually sells it while flipping off Tanaka and taking a few more kicks to the knee. Tanaka goes for the fourth knee bar but Hino powers out into an EVEREST German! Tanaka goes back to kicking the knee and Hino fights back with savage chops to the chest and they both start flipping each other off and this suddenly went from problematically entertaining to actively good. Yeah, this gets all mega-stiff and harrowing by the end. Hino finally gets in a Powerbomb and then nastier powerbomb and HINO RETAINS! This was really fun by the end. Minoru Tanaka should definitely quit half-assing it being the fourth best guy in six man tags and do more matches like this. Hino is not a perfect wrestler, but he is a very stiff working wrestler who will remember the sell the knee before you can get too annoyed by it. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3tl768_yuji-hino-vs-minoru-tanaka-in-w-1-on-2-10-16_sport Tomorrow: KATSUYORI SHIBATA vs TOMOHIRO ISHII- NEW JAPAN PRO WRESTLING- 2/11/2016- [RASMUSSEN]: hxttp://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3s2257_katsuyori-shibata-c-vs-tomohiro-ishii-2-11-2016-niigata_sport DDT DNA 13- 1/8/2016 [RASMUSSEN] KOUKI IWASAKI vs MIZUKI WATASE: httxps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHAyHgPkhZU&list=WL&index=16 GUANCHULO/ SHUNMA KATSUMATA: SHUJI ISHIKAWA/ ZEUS vs KAZUSADA HIGUCHI/ SUGURU MIYATAKE httpxs://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNRPA8QDqlM&list=WL&index=13 KOTA UMEDA vs KONOSUKE TAKESHITA: htxtps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXJDXOBdymY&list=WL&index=14 LUDARK SHAITAN/ CASANDRA vs FELINA METALIKA/ HAHASTARY- PROMOCIONES HUMO ESTRELLAS FEMENILES- 7/26/2015- [RASMUSSEN]: hxttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zD_DDOdNdwc LUDARK SHAITAN/ DIVA SALVAJE/ ROSY MORENO vs GUERRERA GONZALEZ/ CHICA YEYE/ LADY APACHE- FED- 2/14/2016- [RASMUSSEN]: hxttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjuh8epYx98 Quimera y Ludark vs Reina Dorada e India Sioux:htxtps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-awxQJOERHI 2015/11/11DNA11 Tigger Bedscene vs Dai Suzukihxttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjiPzw5XZgs 10/12/2015 hxttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v933xMP_pEQ&list=WL&index=3 X-Fly, El Pantera y Pagano vs Hijo de La Park, Mascara Sagrada y L.A. Parkhxttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMK6KRslB5o

WELCOME TO YOUR DEATH VALLEY DRIVERETTE~! for 02222016! PRO WRESTLING HEAT UP- 1/7/2016 [RASMUSSEN] Easing into the Heat-Up today. KOTARO NASU/ SHINYA ISHIDA vs DAISUKE KANEHIRA/ KOJI IWAMOTO: Man, Kotaro Nasu is the indy-est guy in Japan. See here: http://www.cagematch.net/?id=2&nr=10323&page=20 This year he has already wrestled in K-Dojo, this the beloved Heat-up and the super-skuzzy new FMW. Last year, it was K-Dojo, the super-skuzzy new FMW, DDT, Tenryu Project, frickin TOKYO GURENTAI!, the Asuka Project, STYLE-E, Kyushu Pro, fucking PRO WRESTLING SECRET BASE, Real Japan, Fu-Ten, REINA (which I thought was for girls!), INOKI GENOME!, Michinoku Pro and ZERO-1. Strangely, he hasn't wrestled in GUTS World in two years. He did get kicked in the face by Kazuki Hashimoto in Big Japan in 2013. He was a half of the Apache Pro Tag Champions in 2012. He's so indie, Steve Albini should record his promos. Meanwhile, SHINYA ISHIDA is so indie that he is bereft of a profile at Cagematch.net. He has been on almost every Heat-Up card since their second show on 2/16/2013, but just started capitalizing his names since February of 2014- because you will go crazy if you ask questions by this point. Koji Iwamoto has wrestled only 74 matches in 4 years- which is always odd for a Japanese guy. Ah, I was assuming he was a DNA guy but he was part of the even more confusing DDT subgroup, Basara. Kanehira has been wrestling in Heat-Up since February of 2014, possibly causing ISHIDA to break his caplocks. Enough of these chumps' back story. Let's see if they know how to make YOU give a crud about them in the ring. ISHIDA looks like ANOTHER bass-player for Church of Misery. Maybe Japanese goth guys just look like Japanese death metal bass players. Kanehira looks the best standing there- my favorite eternal saying from good egg Tim Noel. Kanehira and ISHIDA do some low-grade brawling round ringside and Nasu punches people hardest of the four but none of these guys are making me glad they didn't switch this with the first match. Nasu will lay it in and does look like he has just 300 matches under his belt- a couple matches in frickin' Fu-Ten. ISHIDA and Iwamoto mill about, hitting each as if they needed to save it up for the big TOKYO GURENTAI at the fishmonger warehouse later that week, or something, so you do all this weak looking stuff inches from the eyes of your paying customers. Hopefully, this heats up as we keep going. ISHIDA lays in a pretty good kick to the corner that Iwomoto leans into. They fiddle around a bit and THEN Nasu and Iwamoto start actually beating the life out of each other, so I hope this is one of those bad first impression dealies. ISHIDA ups his game with a really nice POWERDRIVER~! and is all agressive and nasty with a rear naked choke into and out of a headlock and tries to make his punches look good. Iwamoto hits a dragonscrew and Nasu is into this now and makes it look fabulous spinning to the ground in agony. Kanehira tags in and it go twice fast and it is all dynamic and fun- one of the few matches that excite me when they move away from brawling. Kanehira hits a swanky Brainbuster and maybe he is the one to watch out of these three. ISHIDA is perfectly fine in a third tier Dragon Gate kind of way. Kanehira has really good offense even with the little stuff- like a knee to the stomach, which looks far more painful than ISHIDA's far more elaborate offense. Kanehira makes an indie Falcon Arrow look good. He should wrestle more. Iwamoto does a Cattle Mutilation and this a cavalcade of 90s finishers. ISHIDA makes a tag out of DDT and Nasu brings a shoot style thing to the match and they double team Iwamoto with Nasu kicking him impressively in the throat. Kanehira tags in and hits fucking awesome judo flip. Fuck it, watch this for Kanehira. He is a tiny clinic on making yourself look good by making little things look good. Iwamoto hits some nice stuff but is cut off by ISHIDA and allows Nasu to hit a gigantic Backdrop Driver. Iwamoto and Nasu really beat the shit out of each other for some nearfalls and it is all a very good finish to an inconsistent match. Nasu finally kicks Iwamoto in the head enough to win. You could live without seeing this, though there is a lot of potential for future wrestling watachability. Postmatch, Masked Mystery attacks everyone and ties up Kanehira and carries him off. The reason for this? I could not possibly tell you. Then other people kick other people. Yeah, I know! It is so Heat Up-esque. ~!~ I got a feeling deep inside of me It's kinda strangeSINGLES GOING STEADYlike a stormy sea I don't know why, I don't know why ~!~ YOHEI NAKAJIMA/ YUMA AOYAGI vs TOSHIYUKI SAKUDA/ YUJI OKABAYASHI- ALL JAPAN PRO WRESTLING- 2/15/2016- [RASMUSSEN]: This is a fun idea of a match. Yuji Okabayashi and Nakajima (not the Kensuke Sasaki protege) are your veterans from Big Japan and All Japan, respectively. Aoyagi and Sakuda are rookies from All Japan and Big Japan, respectively. The wildcard? Go to cagematch.net. Aoyagi is 6'1". Sakuda is 5'1". There shall be rookie assbeatings. The rookies start off by spinning around each other and the Super Astro-esque Sakuda does the knee scissors to Aoyagi's headlock until Sakuda tags out to Okabayashi- and I assume that they aren't going to have Okabayashi beat the dogpiss out of Aoyagi to piss off Nakajima and we have interpromotional bloodbath. Though that would rule. En Lieu, Nakajima tags in and HA! decides to go ahead and trade chops with Yuji Okabayashi. Are they going to have the greatest mentor-rookie tag ever where Okabayashi beats the living hell out of the All Japan veteran, ENRAGING THE ALL JAPAN ROOKIE who takes it out on the pocket-sized partner of Okabayashi. The dream. If it would only LIVE.... Nakajima seems to get some traction with some karate kicks but Yuji just fucking nails right in the Adam's apple with a chop and you remember why you watch every Okabayashi match, no matter how minor or weird. Teeny Tiny rookie boy runs the ropes with Nakajima and tags Okabayashi back in and Nakajima tags tall boy in and Yuji opts to let the punk get in some his fighting spirit before a crushing chop cuts him off before he fires back again. And Okabayashi cuts him down with a chop and they do it again. Yuji hits four chops and gets himself and the rookie's offense over without having to slaughter the youngun. Yet. Okabayashi does look annoyed as he tag out and grabs Aoyagi's hair to keep him in the corner as Sakuda uses his shoulder based offense to its highest effect. Sakuda cranks in a frontface lock and Yuji tags back in and it is back to flurry of the rookie with the chop of experience. This time Yuji breaks it up with a really high back drop for two- with Nakajima saving his rookie, to Okabayashi's chagrin. Yuji bodyslams the rookie and shoves the veteran off the apron to the floor to tag in wee Sakuda who procures the CRAVATE~! into assorted chain wrestling to set up the wee man and the tall man to beat the hell out of each- in a desperate rookie manner. Aoyagi goes off the ropes but catches a dropkick and teeny tags in Okabayashi who is ready to end this so he starts legit strongstylin' on tall rookie with slams and chops and the preposterously stretchy Boston Crab until Aoyagi hits the ropes, infuriating Okabayashi who mauls him in the corner and opts to go ahead and rip his skull off with a lariat and THUS beat traffic home. But Aoyagi ducks it and hits a comical Flying Burrito to allow Yohei Nakajima to tag in and hit some hysterical offence that Yuji Okabayashi feels obliged to sell. After a while, Okabayashi hits a nasty powerslam and tags in the wee Sakuda to polish him off with assorted shoulder ATTACKS! He misses on a SabuSault to allow Nakajima to tag in his rookie- who missile dropkicks and then just dropkicks to set up another dropkick after a flying crossbody. Sakuda hits a spear after ducking whatever Aoyagi was trying, which allows Okabayashi to whip Sakuda into the corner like a bowling ball with shoulders, which is followed up with Okabayashi totally crushing him in the corner with a lariat. Yuji bodyslams the corpse and Sakuda hits a quebrada but Nakajima makes the save and hits endless superkicks to leave the rookies in the ring. After Sakuda has a foray into spunkiness and headbutts, Aoyagi hits a flying cross body block to set up a Fisherman Suplex with a bridge for the win! TALLNESS! Okabayashi smacks his runty partner in the head- as if to say, "Let's go home, ya knucklehead." This match is probably more suited for we Okabayashi completists, though this is perfectly fine for a rookie-mentor tag match. So we will always have that. Ah, doowatchalike. http://rutube.ru/video/b5895c3c289933a14d001467d2aa71ea TOMORROW: Prolly that Shibata/Ishii match.

WELCOME TO YOUR DEATH VALLEY DRIVERETTE~! for 02232016! I was going to conveniently forget to review the main event of the Pro Wrestling Heat Up card I have been writing about for four days, but I manned up and stopped being a fucking pussy. FUCK IT! EVERYTHING REVIEWED IN ORDER! GRRR! PRO WRESTLING HEAT UP- 1/7/2016 [RASMUSSEN] KAZUHIRO TAMURA vs KENICHIRO ARAI: The main event! Looking at his cagematch.net carrer page, one notes that Kenichiro Arai averages 70ish matches a year the last couple of years, but he's already wrestled 13 times this year- THUS this match is a part of the Kenichiro Arai career resurgence. I always liked him, as he was the no nonsense counter to a lot of the annoying nonsense that is Dragon Gate, back when I used to watch a lot of Dragon Gate. Meanwhile, Kazuhiro Tamura is the (SPOILER!) OWNER of Pro Wrestling Heat-Up. Looking at his career, I see that he started in STYLE-E and that he started in STYLE-E in 2004. How fucking long has STYLE-E been around, and if so, why did I not know about it until like 5 months ago? Ah, STYLE-E became inactive 2012. Pro Wrestling Heat-Up started in 2013. I am just guessing that Tamura owned STYLE-E- especially when one notices that the final main event for STYLE-E in 2012 was this very pairing. Anyway, Tamura was trained by Minoru Tanaka and Tanaka's lovely wife Yumi Fukawa- with an assist from Takao Omori. He is also teeny- 5'3" and 154 pounds. Can he wrestle? Let's see. Arai comes to ringside with the Murderer's Row of Japanese Indie shmoes whose matches I just reviewed but I no longer recognize. I think that one is ISHIDA. Probably. Arai is 5'9" so he towers over Tamura by a full head. Tamura is also stumpy and is even more stumpier after Arai hits a fucking BEAUTIFUL SURPRISE JUMPING PILEDRIVER before the bell rings. Arai posts him and Tamura leans into it like a champ. At ringside, that sleazy looking guy from the first or second match punches Tamura in the head while the guy that I first thought looked like the replacement bass-player for Church of Misery threatens to hit him in the head with a briefcase. (See prior reviews of this card. I DARE YOU!) Anyhoos, they throw wee Tamura into the ring and Arai does some low-grade stomping and also a clunky swinging neckbreaker so this isn't really rocketing up my match of the year list. Or even Match Of This Card list. Tamura catches Arai as Arai comes off the ropes and kicks him in the chest, so he does have nice kicks when he isn't being stomped on or CRAVATED~! by Arai. The CRAVATE~! here is pretty fucking magnificent and makes up for the pretty shitty offense by Arai past the piledriver. Then Arai procures the abdominal stretch and you THEN REALIZE that THIS is gonna go LONG. Indie long. They trade chops and kicks and Tamura has a perfectly fine offense and will lean into an assbeating so I'm guessing he started his own federation to never have to wrestling on a Big Japan undercard or end up in Wrestle-1 in a Hama squash. Because he would be perfect for both of those things. Meanwhile, this really heats up as they start kicking each other in the face; Tamura hits a nice lariat. They do this thing were Tamura teases a tope but Arai grabs Wee Moondog Girl and hold her in front of himself. Tamura is a GENTLEMAN and doesn't tope through her to get to our Heat Up champion. The second time Arai uses her as a hostage, Wee Moondog Girl remembers that she is psychotically violent and starts beating on Arai, thus allowing Arai to be as crushed as much as a teeny tiny Tamura can crush someone with a tope suicida. They take it back to the ring and Tamura missile dropkicks in and then does a really nice series of arm submissions until Arai hits the ropes. Tamura kicks Arai really hard to the arm and now we have a story! The story: working on the arm to set-up an arm submission! The EVIL random punks from the undercard that are in Arai's Most Price Effective Stable climb the three turnbuckles where Arai isn't and Tamura is looking at all three with trepidation. Arai does the awesome thing of pushing the ref into Tamura's back, thus a surprised Tamura spin kicks the ref and allows the undercard to rush Tamura and beat a shit out of him. One would assume that Tamura told them that they were being paid in leftover chili dogs AFTER the match. They quadruple team Tamura and I remember that the guy with the mohawk is PSYCHO! Nasu and Iwamoto run in to make a save and I reviewed their match last night so I haven't forgotten them yet. Unless I have. The ref is back and they get back to a wrestling match, as they fight at the top turnbuckle which is actually pretty great- in that Tamura lays in his stumpy forearms until Arai RETURNS TO THE CRAVATE~! to control Tamura and land the fabulous Toprope Brainbuster With A Roll-up For Two. Tamura fights out of Arai finishing piledriver and finagles it into a Gorey Driver and they are all stumbly and broken. Tamura kicks Arai in the head as Arai tries to sit up and maybe I love this match. Arai crawls over and escapes to the floor where Tamura comes out to get him, THUS Arai gets to the ring first and gets in a bunch of roll-ups and thus does feel like a main event even if it is Pro Wrestling Heat Up. Tamura then does flamboyantly spinning DDT-like Fujiwara Armbar and then hits fucking NASTY toprope kneedrop to Arai's shoulder. Tamura spins like an alligator into a cross arm breaker and we have NEW TINY OWNER/CHAMPION! I can tell you that you should watch this and tell how pretty good this was but I really can't imagine anyone else watching it. But you should. Tamura is a not afraid to get beaten into your heart. Plus you could fit like 15 of him into a mini-van! You can't do that with Vince McMahon or Dixie Carter! HEAT UP! YES! HEAT UP! ~!~ Every time I see you Oh, I wish I couldSINGLES GOING STEADYbelieve you Do you ever mean a thing you say? ~!~ TAKASHI SUGIURA/ MINORU SUZUKI vs NAOMICHI MARUFUJI/ KATSUHIKO NAKAJIMA- PRO WRESTLING NOAH- 2/11/2016-[RASMUSSEN]: I recognize all four of these guys. This should be preposterously violent. Pre-match, Minoru Suzuki says something that launches into the Suzuki and Nakajima just kicking the fuck out of each other before Nakajima can even get his shirt off. Marufuji tags in and lays it in as best he can until Suzuki crushes his head with his own head. Sugiura tags in and he really beats the shit out of Marufuji with chops and stomps and THEN the chinlock, as I assume they didn't want to collapse in a heap after two minutes. MAN, Marufuji is the most beaten Ricky Morton in the history of the concept of the babyface taking a beating to get heat for the babyface comeback. If Marufuji gets any more heat beaten onto him, he will just burst into flames. He fires back with all the spunk and fire you would want, but MAN, they really cut him off when they cut him off. He finally lands a dropkick and Nakajima tags in and he and Suzuki just fucking maul each other until Suzuki procures the Tarantula and then it spills to the floor. Sugiura fucking kills Marufuji by the ring while Suzuki pummels Nakajima in the stands. They take it back to the ring and Nakajima starts taking a pretty hellish ass-beating. I dunno. I love this kind of match, but considering the circumstances and violence of the title change that precedes this match, an American watching this would assume that there would be the equivalent to a Tupelo concession stand brawl the first time that Marufuji would get a chance to get his hands on Suzuki and Sugiura. Here, they are just continuing the receiving of the assbeating they received the week before. Sugiura does the odd bleeding from his chest thing and he and Suzuki just fuckin MAUL Nakajima. This is like Vader and Vader against Brady Boone and Brady Boone. Suzuki stands on the back of Nakajima's neck and then picks him up and crushes his face with his knee. FOR TWO! Jesus. Sugiura tags in does a completely uncontested toprope brainbuster and goes straight into a Boston Crab that takes Marufuji ten forearms to break when he makes the save. Sugiura smashes Nakajima's skull with a kick and it is really making me wonder if they are doing a wrestling adaption of the Chicago Bears story and the part of the 1985 New England Patriots is being played by Nakajima and Maarufuji. Luckily, Nakajima fires back and there is hope that they are doing a wrestling adaption of the Comeback with Suzuki and Sugiura assuming the role of the 1993 Houston Oilers. Nakajima channels Frank Reich and fucking lays it in on Sugiura, first with chops and then kicks to the lungs. Nakajima goes for the lariat but Sugiura catches him with a kick when he comes off the ropes. Nakajima fights back and brainbusts Sugiura to nearly make the tag. Sugiura tries to cut him off but Nakajima Dragonscrews to make the tag! And Marufuji! Is the shittiest house-a-fire. Katie need not bar the door. Marufuji does a Stinger splash and Sugiura responds by just fucking knocking Marufuji's head clean off his neck. MArufuji then does better trading chops for forearms with Sugiura but then succumbs to Sugiura's spear and then takes assorted kicks and running knees to the face. Marufuji hits a couple of superkicks and it really looks like Marufuji and Nakajima brought a strongly worded letter to a knife fight. Nakajima tags in and tries to catch up somehow with the mountain of assbeat that has applied to him and his partner. With a missile dropkick. Yeesh. Sugiura counters by punching him in the face. Nakajima backdrop drives and but Suzuki makes the save. Suzuki comes in the starts kicking the FUDGE out of Nakajima. Nakajima tries fire back but Suzuki catches him for the Piledriver but Marufuji makes the save and planchas out of the proceedings as Nakajima tries to kick Suzuki into submission. Suzuki bumps the ref by dragging him into the way of a charging Nakajima! Shelton Benjamin runs in and hits... that move he does on Marufuji who is trying to make the save from Sugiura crushing Nakajima with a chair. So Nakajima take a chairshot that looks 95% less hellish than Suzuki's forearms to the face. Either way, Suzuki piledrives Nakajima for the win and BILL WATTS IS BOOKING NOAH NOW, it appears. I await a Russian invasion and an NOAH Intercontinental Medallion. This match is as fucking violent as I thought it would be, but MAN, you REALLY don't want to start a blood feud with Marufuji as your babyface. I cannot imagine a shittier idea. This is point where if he was EVER going to conjure any sort of bad-assed-ness- which is ESSENTIAL for this, this would have been the place. Instead, they are punching bags with dropkicks. But you definitely want to see this if you enjoy stiffness and violence in your Pro Wrestling. Because yeah, they fucking lay it in. http://rutube.ru/video/8344baabb1601740da8be10c85a55907 Tomorrow: In this order, what I get in. LUDARK SHAITAN/ CASANDRA vs FELINA METALIKA/ HAHASTARY- PROMOCIONES HUMO ESTRELLAS FEMENILES- 7/26/2015- [RASMUSSEN]: KATSUYORI SHIBATA vs TOMOHIRO ISHII- NEW JAPAN PRO WRESTLING- 2/11/2016- [RASMUSSEN]: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3s2257_katsuyori-shibata-c-vs-tomohiro-ishii-2-11-2016-niigata_sport LUDARK SHAITAN/ DIVA SALVAJE/ ROSY MORENO vs GUERRERA GONZALEZ/ CHICA YEYE/ LADY APACHE- FED- 2/14/2016- [RASMUSSEN]: Quimera y Ludark vs Reina Dorada e India Sioux: 2015/11/11DNA11 Tigger Bedscene vs Dai Suzuki 10/12/2015 X-Fly, El Pantera y Pagano vs Hijo de La Park, Mascara Sagrada y L.A. Park

WELCOME TO YOUR DEATH VALLEY DRIVERETTE~! for 02192016! PRO WRESTLING HEAT UP- 1/7/2016 [RASMUSSEN] We move forward with the Pro Wrestling HEAT UP! YES! GENERAL TY YAMADA/ SUPER TAKESHIMA MACHINE 1/ SUPER TAKESHIMA MACHINE 2 vs MUSHUKO NO SEKIKO/ MUSHUKU NO SEIKO/PSYCHO: This is odd in the most Dean Reviews Wrestling In Cycles kind of way. General Ty Yamada is Taro Yamada who will two weeks from this match be in a Indie-Fantastic match in GUTS World tagging with Yoshino against Mr Gannesukke and hilarious lummox GUTS Ishijima. I reviewed it here: http://deathvalleydriver.com/forum/index.php?/topic/4642-your-death-valley-driverette-for-02092016-mr-gannesukke-tatsuhiko-yoshino/ Relive the magic. Super Takeshima Machine 1 is Kenji Takeshima (cagematch.net) and the cagematch.net career feature shows that he is your usual indie shmoe until you notice the BattlARTS symbol and the fricking FU-TEN symbol. He was beaten to death by Masahi Takeda and Masato Shibata while tagging with Mohammed motherfucking Yone last May. So two components of this goofball indie match seem to have the makings of a good GUTS World tag title run. PSYCHO is also Gabaiji-Chan- the old man gimmick, which is amusing to you. The Seikos are doing a disfunctional married couple gimmick, it appears. PSYCHO is trying to keep the female Sekiko from going on a murder rampage through the crowd by tying a rope to her waist. The possibilty that she is a tiny Japanese Lady Moondog is too intriguing to really entertain. She is unleashed and she attacks Takeshima and a tornado street fight breaks out. Yamada and PSYCHO have a perfectly fine 1997 IWA-Restart indie juniors match for a few moments while everything gets sorted out at ringside. Machine 2 picks up on the theme doing well-executed junior hvywt-isms as they settle into a regular 6 person match. The wee Moondog Girl tags in and really fucking lays it in on Machine 2- who has to force himself to not sell this because she is a tiny girl, but I assume little tears are being absorbed by his mask as he weeps like a baby. She does adorable and violent things while trying to get some offense in. The Heat Up crowd of drug dealers, Yakuza hangers-on and the generally unemployable back her spunky energetic offense all the way and so will you. Machine 2 is freaked out from receiving the babyface armdrags and hiptosses so much that he bails from the ring. His partners come over to him and huddle up and spin around in a circle to confuse the ref! Though none of the three are dressed alike. That's some idiocy I can get behind. Then it degenerates to comedy without violence, and I can't stomach that in my Pro Wrestling. They were so close... CHANGO vs AMIGO SUZUKI: Amigo Suzuki again! The GUTS World cross-over continues. Here he is up against fellow Ultimo Dragon trainee, CHANGO. Looking at CHANGO's cagematch.net career profile, I realize that I truly never watched a single Diamond Ring undercard. And I'm assuming he is definitely buying the house brand when goes grocery shopping if he is basing his career on the Style-E, GUTS World, and Secret Base checks that he is cashing. This is ladder match because indie wrestling is nothing if not retarded. There is no belt hanging down and the ladder is a 6 foot painters ladder. I guess in the Mathematics Of Wrestling, one ladder shot = 3 chair shots. Now that I think I grasp the ground rules, let's see if I will hate this or totally despise this, as I fucking hate ladder matches just out of general principle. They ignore the ladder early and have a perfectly acceptable mid-grade junior heavyweight match, with Lucha approximations that echo their TORYUMON background, but with the closed ladder now propped up in the corner to enhance the moves off the second rope- so that is good variation on the theme. Then they put ladder in the middle of the ring and do the unique thing of treating it like exploding barbed-wire, as Amigo fights out of hip toss onto the ladder and then fights out of a rana onto the ladder. Okay, I'm not hating this yet. And I commend them on another interesting variation on a trite and cliched concept. How long can it go on? Let's watch! Nobody establishes the dangerousness of the metal thing in the ring anymore so I dig that they try that here. CHANGO punches Amigo in the stomach a few times and finally snapmares him into the ladder which has laid on the ground and opened up like an "L". CHANGO tries slam the top (vertical section) of the ladder onto Amigo who is laying on horizontal section, but Amigo pushes back with his legs. Amigo is pushing back against CHANGO who is standing on the vertical part of the ladder, so Amigo is also driving his own back into the steps of the ladder that he laying on (which is another deathmatch idea- I falcon arrow you onto a barbed wire board because it will hurt me but it will hurt you more. Here in reverse, this will hurt my back but not as much as it would if I were not pushing back against you trying slam the section onto me), until he kicks high and fast enough to drive CHANGO off the top of the ladder and through the ropes. Okay, I'm still in this- as this is the third variation. Amigo lays the ladder out across the ring so that is now an extension ladder and no longer a step ladder. This is the first time that I have seen a ladder match where the really take into account the adjustable properties of the ladder. I have one at home that can go from Extension ladder (for cleaning gutters) to step ladder (for other people in my house to paint walls) to a step ladder (for when my tiny grandchildren will be needed to change a light bulb for me when I am too old and gigantic to leave my recliner). Let us together DREAM of the third variation. Yes, the dream.... Okay, they really threw every possible idea they had at this match as CHANGO twists the ladder around as Amigo is standing on it, catching Amigo's leg between the steps and causes the longest distance single leg takedown in the history of ladder matches. CHANGO then folds it back up to guillotine Amigo in the middle of it. CHANGO gets an assist by PSYCHO at ringside and they throw Amigo back in and CHANGO tries to procure the Camel Clutch and they do some wrestling away from the ladder (which is now in the Step Ladder position). Amigo drop toeholds across the ladder (step ladder position, folded up on the mat next to the ropes) to TRANSITION to offense to lead into a Three Amigos with the last suplex into the ladder (step ladder position, closed, standing against turnbuckle). Amigo wears the ladder like he has GIANT ARMS! but CHANGO catches him and slams the base of the ladder to drive Amigo's chin into the step. They then stand in the middle of the ring it becomes a Strong Style Contest Of Manly Forearms. Chango holds up the ladder to his own chest to charge Amigo, but Amigo lariats over the ladder as they keep running at each other, finally winning- as FLESH beats STEEL! Amigo set up the ladder (step ladder position. Closed) across the corner top turnbuckle and hoists CHANGO to the top, with CHANGO's legs stuck between the steps, like he is wearing ladder pants. Amigo then hits a brainbuster where CHANGO's legs hit the mat while they are in the ladder, and that looked pretty great. Amigo puts the ladder across the second turnbuckle in the corner (step ladder position. Flat like a platform.) and hits a quebradora to set powerbombing CHANGO into the ladder, but CHANGO fights out and starts slamming the ladder into Amigo. CHANGO sets up the ladder (Standing Open Step Ladder position) and hits a Frog Splash FOR THE WIN! Ladder matches are like three way dances and handicap matches- inherently shitty. This is also shitty, but they try so hard to make it not shitty. There is an old saying down here in the South, "You can't polish a turd." But if you could, it would look like this ladder match. But it's really just too much of an uphill battle. We have to appreciate the effort, and I do. It sucks at a very high level. Coming up: KOTARO NASU/ SHINYA ISHIDA vs DAISUKE KANEHIRA/ KOJI IWAMOTO: KAZUHIRO TAMURA vs KENICHIRO ARAI: ~!~ Imagine something of your very own Something you can SINGLES GOING STEADY have and hold I'd build a road in gold just to have some dreaming ~!~ YUJI HINO vs SHIORI ASAHI- K-DOJO- 8/9/2015-[RASMUSSEN]: You can feel free to skip this:I am CLEANING HOUSE! I am on fire! Actually, I did get my youtube To Watch Later list to 20ish from 400ish, so I feel good about that. So then I went to my Daily Motion Watch Later list, got it down to 7 and then found 30 Joshi matches that I have a passing interest (other than Io Shirai making me feel like filthy disgusting old bastard) so I BULKED it up to past 40 again, so I will chip away at it once a week, like today! This is from K-Dojo and has been buried on my list for a while. Hell, it's only 13 minutes and I love Yuji Hino mauling rookies like a grizzly bear! BUT THEN, I look up Shiori Asahi on cagematch.net to see if he has a background in badminton or JUDO~! and read that he has been wrestling 13 years and is 38 years old! I could be his father! If I mounted beautiful ladies in Japan when I was 11! The career section of a cagematch profile is great; I note that he was beaten to death on two consecutive days in Big Japan in March of 2015. Actually, I'm guessing that I actually watched 6-man where he gets stomped on by Sekimoto, Kazuki Hashimoto and Kawakami. So yeah, I have felt pity for this man before in life and I get the feeling that I will again in this match also, because Yuji Hino will lay it in. Asahi's favorite slimy indie to frequent is Kyushu Pro. Kyushu Pro's champion is Mentai Kid- who was trained by Ultimo Dragon because of course he was. Asahi is a veteran because he spends the first few minutes of the match avoiding to make any contact with Hino and his completely assholish chops. It really goes on for a while. Since I wasn't losing my mind to review this too deeply, I back their Lawler stall one hundred percent. I mean, it's 13 minutes long and they don't lock-up until 2:30. And then they do some clean breaks- but they are breaks that are to humiliate Asahi so dig the amount of old school psychology that they shove into a ten minute match. THEN Asahi does clean breaks to show that he has the WILL not to take advantage of the break. This is actually pretty great since I wasn't expecting anything like this. Who does this kind of match anymore? I remember Johnny Valentive would do thesein Mid-Atlantic for no particular reason- because no matter how Valentine tried to portray himself in the match as being afraid of Bill White or Two Ton Harris, you still remembered that he would go toe-to-toe with fucking Wahoo McDaniels. I think it's just a match they would do when they were bored with a regular match. Here, they kill time doing a one hand versus two hand Greco Roman Knucklelock that two-handed Asahi loses and makes a rope break and goes to the floor. Okay, this match is magnificent. If Asahi starts ducking under the ropes to avoid locking up, I would have to make this my 2015 Match Of The Year. Almost as good, Asahi escapes a body slam attempt and heads back to the floor. The build up to the first actually offense for Hino is total fucking textbook old school psychology. And Hino starts chopping and Asahi is completely panicking in a Chris Hamrick-level of Southern scrawny guy greatness, his heels hooked under the toprope to keep him from plunging to the floor as he scrambles to escape. The facial expressions of Asahi as he is a chinlock is pretty classic too. If he bumps like Lee Scott, I may have a lot of old K-Dojo matches to scour. Hino misses a Senton and it allows Asahi to.... flee to the floor again. Yeah, this is great. Hino follows him and smacks him around a little before chopping him back into the ring. At 8:57, Asahi gets his first offense in, very unstiff forearms to the stomach. They have a hilarious armbar exchange and Hino finally starts beating him to death and dragging Asahi back to the center of the ring when he tries to escape. So yeah this is GENIUS because this is pretty much how a match between ME and Hino would go- except I would have sprinted to my mini-van by this point, trying to see clearly through my tears as I drove away. Asahi gets in three roll-ups as we suddenly have a flurry of Asahi - which leads to few more roll-ups and they jam all this wrestling into 45 seconds before Hino latches on ridiculously stretchy Dragon Sleeper for the win. MILLION BILLION STARS. Hino is a freak. This match is fucking odd and completely anachronistic, but completely psychologically sound. It's like they said "Let's see how much of an actual wrestling match we can produce where hardly anything physically violent happens- all before the crowd can turn on it." And they did it. Here's to you, freaks. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x32fo8t_yuji-hino-vs-shiori-asahi-k-dojo_sport CHELSEA vs KAORU- STARDOM- 9/13/2015-[RASMUSSEN]: Hm. I figured I would have heard about this match- on the news at least, as a spree of intergenerational Joshi fans accidentally yank their penises off of their bodies while jacking it to this match. Such a collision of wrestlers who launched several thousand boners- currently and in the 90s. But we are here for more than just the easy masturbation jokes. We also want to see (or maybe just I want to see) how hot KAORU still is. VERDICT: Oh MAN! Allright. KAORU is legit two years younger than me- and yet she looks like this and I look like I just slid off my Amigo at Wal-Mart. Now that the creepiness is sealed back into it's 55 galloon drum, the Actual Wrestling. Chelsea is wearing tiny pants. Really tiny. And the drum is sealed back again. Chelsea is 21, THUS I could legit be her grandfather in some western counties of this sacred soil of Virginia. I make myself sick. Chelsea extends her hand in sportsmanship. KAORU says, to herself, "JESUS, I am old enough to be this girly's MOTHER! And she wants to shake hands? Yeah, right." Chelsea starts with forearms and the stiffness will easily allow you to remember the GAEA between KAORU and Akira Hokuto. Yeesh. KAORU counters with a dropkick to the knee and then a dropkick to a seated Chelsea. I start to turn on this match until they take it to the floor and it starts to MORPH into a brawl and beautiful luxurious hair flies around in the crowd. The action is obscured by a swarm of photographers from wrestling mags and other more specialized media entities (I'm assuming.) Cheslea leans into being posted and I now totally forgive the opening forearms. KAORU stands on Chelsea's head and then throws her into the ring and does a lot of moves where she pulls her soft, managable, youthful hair- seething with rage over the coarsening of her own beautiful hair, as she sprints to next stage of her womanly life. Then it comes full circle as KAORU does the hair-based armdrag variation. KAORU scoffs at Cheslea's forearms to the stomach, mentally screaming, "YOU DO KNOW THAT I WAS GAEA WHEN AKIRA HOKUTO, TOSHIO YAMADA and FUCKING AJA KONG JUMPED, RIGHT?!?! You might want to lay it in a little, child-girl!" KAORU goes back the hair-yanking based offense. She adds the hand-biting section. Chelsea hits a dropkick and does a arm-thing submission and then does more forearms. Her offense is suspect but she will lean headfirst into KAORU's highly diminished offense, thus pretty much saving this match. This Chelsea gal is good. And she wears tiny pants. She sells the KAORU brainbuster like a champ which makes her hilarious chops and kicks easier to take. She goes back to her Double arm leg scissor thing and KAORU makes the ropes again. Chelsea hits a positively WOW-esque Crossbody and maybe I love this youngster. KAORU hits her in the head with a board while the ref isn't looking. Chelsea fucking leans into it like Masato Tanaka in 1998. Yeah, Chelsea is my favorite wrestler to have kinda crappy looking offense- and I base 90% of how much I like a wrestler on how good their offense looks. So yeah, her leaning into stuff to make the match work goes a long way for this little lady. Chelsea does a nice Fisherman Suplex Bridge after her second FFG (without the Flying part) of the match. I formulate the influence of Christy Hemme on the new generation of lady wrestlers but before I can spew any more nonsense, KAORU reminds one that the EXCALIBER~! is still fucking awesome looking. KAORU than hits a beautiful Single Rotation Skytwister Press for the win! Kinda problematic, but I dug it- mostly for Chelsea going the extra mile to make it look good. This will not change your life, wrestling-wise. Annnnd I will stop there. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x37gvqk_stardom-red-stars-block-chelsea-vs-kaoru-9-13-15_sport Tomorrow: Monday, maybe the strangely good Tigger Bedscene matches. Or all this Ludark Shatain that I am stockpiling.

WELCOME TO YOUR DEATH VALLEY DRIVERETTE~! for 02182016! PRO WRESTLING HEAT UP- 1/7/2016 [RASMUSSEN] My new motivation: I typed out the matches so I might as well review them. Plus, I need some less great wrestling to even me out. I assume this will even the crap out of me. I am fascinated by Pro Wrestling Heat Up- mostly because I haven't watched enough of it to go, "P'ffffffff! Not that shit again!" But YOU know that I have been wrong before. Let us explore the slimy underbelly of the slimy world of Japanese Indie Wrestling. HIROSHI KONDO/ HIROSHI WATANABE vs FUMINORI ABE/ MASA TAKANASHI: Maaaaaaan, you want indie? YOU! I'm talking to YOU! You want indie? Well, this here is indie. Of these four guys, only Masa Takanashi has a cagematch.net profile. Do you know how nigh impossible that is? That's like finding an unbroken electronic device in my house. This is like finding three unbroken devices with original cords attach to them. Hell, it would be easier to find a virgin at Radford University! (HA! We kid the slatternly ladies of Radford! FUN!) Takanashi is an Ultimo Dragon trainee because a UD trainee is as much a part of Japanese Indie Wrestling as the ropes and the ring and the 15 dollar pictures with Goro Tsurumi. I use Cagematch AGAINST ITSELF! and search for Kondo's name in the results and he has been wrestling for Heat Up since May 2014- so if you add up the opening matches in Union Pro, GUTS World, Freedoms, Asuka Project and Style-E matches, he's probably got a hundred matches under his belt. C'mon, ya German psychos! Get this man a profile! Mostly, so I can see which of these guys he is. I hope he is the shleppy bald guy who looks like he started working out at a gym where Kenichiro Arai worked out and eventually he ended up here, hopefully because of a fixed horse race wager gone awry. "You wrestle for 6 months for me for free or we take your pinky!" Takanashi looks like the second replacement rhythm guitar player for Church of Misery, except scrawnier. This match itself is really fun, actually. They don't do anything amazing or awesome but they hit everything well and you don't think that these were put on the card because their uncle owns the ring. Though I'm sure there is an indie story here somewhere. Takanashi is actually got some pretty nasty looking offense, in that he will lay it in, in a first match level that makes one wonder if he would be fun getting the hell beaten out of himself on a Big Japan strong style undercard tag match. He is really great at getting you to hate his smug little face five minutes after you see him for the first time ever, and that is rare and good in wrestling. I could see Kazuki Hashimoto getting fed up with him and slaughtering him with kicks to everyone in Japan's delight. Scrawny bald man is also fun as he gets in the Offence Of The Damned, posing in babyface glory before Abe and Takanashi beat him to death. Baldness does a sweet backbreaker hope spot and THEN HITS A FUCKING EVEREST GERMAN SUPLEX FOR THE WIN! So far, Pro Wrestling Heat Up is HEATING UP up my interest in watch more HEAT UP matches! Finest WCW Main Event opening match in the history of Japanese Indie Wrestling! Coming up over the next couple of days: GENERAL TY YAMADA/ SUPER TAKESHIMA MACHINE 1/ SUPER TAKESHIMA MACHINE 2 vs MUSHUKO NO SEKIKO/ MUSHUKU NO SEIKO/PSYCHO: CHANGO vs AMIGO SUZUKI: KOTARO NASU/ SHINYA ISHIDA vs DAISUKE KANEHIRA/ KOJI IWAMOTO: KAZUHIRO TAMURA vs KENICHIRO ARAI: ~!~ Heartbreaker soul shaker I've been told about you SINGLES GOING STEADY steamroller midnight shoulder What they been saying must be true ~!~ EDDY GUERRERO /APOLO DANTES/ CESAR DANTES vs FUERZA GUERRERA/ EL SUPREMO/JACQUE MATE- EMLL- 11/10/1991- [RASMUSSEN]: Eddy, Eddy Eddy. My aunts from my dad's side were visiting us in Arkansas the day that Elvis died. My aunts are Hawaiian so there was different bond with Elvis. They were not from the South so it wasn't like blue haired ladies weeping about the man who was the soundtrack to their youth. With my aunts, it was sullen, silent weeping- like a friend had died. It was the Elvis/Bruce Lee type thing that I still don't really understand, there are things that bind my dad's side to things Asian by proximity. I have trouble getting their perspective on things because it is so different than the mid-atlantic perspective of my mom's side. My guess is that Elvis was an outsider that won the hearts of my aunts right before they left Honolulu in 1959 and they carried it with them to California, then Virginia in 1960, and all that culminated in the triumph and merging of "Blue Hawaii" or something. Its mystical and vague like the entire poverty-stricken lives of my dad's side of the family. SO there are a lot things outside of my experience that I notice since I am first generation on the mainland. Elvis dying was one of those things. Eddy Guerrero was Elvis in this comparison and my aunts are we first generation internet wrestling fans. Eddy was outside of most of the ideas of wrestling that I was raised on but he was awesome from the first time I saw him, I accepted him on his own terms and was a die-hard fan to the end. Everytime he pops up like this on my YouTube feed, or like last week when they showed a match against Rey Misterio on WWC to promote Rey Misterio coming to Puerto Rico, it's like my aunts when "Are You Lonesome Tonight" comes on the Music Of Your Life station they listened to when they played Canasta for 9 hours at a stretch. It's easy to get sentimental about Eddy Guerrero, even at this point after so many wrestlers have died and made many of us fans hardened and immune to the process. The thing about this match is that it also has Apolo Dantes in it. I've seen maybe ten Apolo Dantes matches. For me, the most important match of these was the first one I saw- which was from 1995, if I remember correctly, and was a singles match against Silver King. It was important for me as a wrestling fan because it was a breakthrough- as I had pretty much summed Lucha Libre in my mind at the time as fun outfits and crazy highspots and I was ready to settle my opinions of it and veiwing habits accordingly. This was the first time I said, "WAAIIIITTT. Lucha Libre can have really great singles matches? I will start watching more of them." The thing is that the Dantes/Silver King match is, in hindsight, not even all that close to the strengths of a great Lucha Libre singles match. There is no blood, no hate, no primal violence. But it was the doorway to actually paying attention to the next El Hijo del Santo vs Negro Casas match- which then leads you to looking for the unique characteristics of a great Lucha Match- blood, hate, manliness, pride, revenge, honor- you know, the reasons that make pro wrestling actual art. So that is where I start with this match. ONE can only hope that it doesn't suck ass. The match starts with Cesar Dantes who is a better looking than his brother, I believe- though I am not a man who finds other men attractive I keep telling myself. Supremo is coated in gold! He and Cesar do the arm wringers and arm drags and one gets to ease into the match with little things to entertain you as you start to get the blood flowing for the EXCITEMENT to come. Apolo Dantes tags in and body slams Supremo and I remember why I like Apolo despite him being hideous compared to his gorgeous brother (probably. Not gay.) Jacque Mate and Apolo Dante do basically the same as Ceasar and Supremo but it is more intense because Apolo makes really great faces to make your mind attach to the submission hold. That is the difference in a lot of wrestling, it matters not from where it comes. But we are still easing in as Eddy Guerrero and Fuerza Guerrera start even more tricked out mat work. Eddy and Fuerza start pulling each other's hair and the fun actually starts as they trade suplexes and Fuerza gets pissed at Eddy being such an upstart punk. Fuerza just starts beating on Eddy and everything breaks lose as EVIL kicks everybody's ass. Cesar gets some offense in and this is where I notice that this is a good example of the father-like yammering that I subject my children to (and I know that they will one day have children and force them to listen to THEIR insane bullshit about stuff nobody else could possibly give a shit about, so it is all cool with me. I can see the big picture and that big picture will be about how 2-d video games were better than these hologram video games, or some bullshit that will annoy my ADOOOORRRRRABBBLLLE grand-children. I will give them candy and money and tell lie to them about their parents. It's gonna be awesome. "You know I caught your momma eating a stick of butter once. She was 15!"). My 11 year old is into the WWE (though he is being lured into the NBA- by having just started playing NBA 2k16. I love that about him. He gets really into something for a few months then puts it on the backburner once he gets really into something else. Then he re-visits them later. I miss him being really into Kiss and AC/DC. I do not miss him being really into Minecraft.) He watches Smackdown and RAW and NXT (he used his birthday money to get the WWE Network.) and he will record Impact. He likes the action but he hates all the talking. Everytime we watch RAW and he fast forwards over Stephanie McMahon talking for 15 minutes, I sometimes talk to him like my uncle used to talk to me about rock and roll in the 50s- "these GODDAM kids today don't know how to do it! I was playing with a combo at navy bars in Ocean View until FIVE in the morning!" I should show my boy this match to show him that your OLD SCHOOL guys didn't need a five week set up with 180 minutes of talking to tell a wrestling story. Your GREATS could do it all in the ring. LIKE THIS! Eddy is a technico in this. I didn't realize that when it started because Apolo Dantes was always a rudo. Supremo and Jacque Mate are on the periphery of my Lucha Libre experience so they could have gone either way and I wouldn't have been surprised. Fuerza is a rudo and that is the only constant I had going in. I don't know who hated who or who did what to who to set-up this match or if there was even anything to get these 6 particular wrestlers together in ring at this particular time. But I watch the match and I know the story because they pick it up cold off the floor and make it come alive as soon Apolo Dantes makes the first facial expression of intensity and annoyance at Jacque Mate,and kicks into gear when Fuerza gets fed up with the upstart technico Guerrerro and starts punching everyone. The story is told through wrestling- Eddy and Fuerza are both very technically proficient and both can totally go on the mat in a classic Lucha Libre style, SHOWING you this in the first 45 seconds they lock up. The difference is that Eddy is younger and thus a hair faster- thus all the tricky take-downs. Fuerza is a victim twice, escapes, grabs Eddy's hair, gets up, looks at his life passing him by as this smirking kid makes him look like chump- AND THESE FUCKING FANS CHEER FOR HIM- and he says, "Fuck them, fuck this guy and fuck those guys." They trade SWEET suplexes and Fuerza keeps getting more pissed off to the point of just up and attacking the technico corner. The rudos feel unity and also love a good fight, so a brawl breaks out. Nobody has to translate anything from Spanish or direct you towards a Youtube synopsis of the contract signing or whatever. It's all right there in the ring. And it's a pretty basic story here. Great lucha goes deeper then any other style, when it comes to being able to tell a story completely in the ring. I love the whole sub-context that Fuerza knows pretty much all the technical moves that the young technicos know but there is no way the young technico knows the depths of cheating that Fuerza will sink to get the edge. And THAT story is as old as wrestling that I can remember. That is every Ric Flair NWA traveling champion match. The Lucha Libre aspect that adds to the allure of this match is seeing what a great bumping rudo Supremo is and how fun the Dantes are with the tagteam moves. Eddy takes the first fall with a missile dropkick and pins Fuerza with one knee across the chest WHICH I'm assuming WILL NOT STAND. Fuerza is ELECTRIC on the apron, clapping for Cesar as he outwrestles Supremo all the way out of the ring, but clapping for Cesar just enough to give him a false sense of security as Fuerza tries to jump on him as he turns his back. Little details of rudoness are the key. Apolo tags in and Fuerza walks over to Eddy and says, "Tag this young punk. I want him." Apolo refuses and Fuerza tries to shake his hand but kicks him in the stomach instead, because Fuerza is awesome. Apolo responds with three hiptosses and double armdrag to the floor. Apolo tags Eddy and Jacque Mate gets a chance at the young fella. Eddy tries to match strength with Jacque and almost wins after bridging all the way to his back and powering back up, just to have Jacque kick him in the stomach for this effort. Eddy has learned a valuable lesson about the advantages of not giving a crap about the rules, or the fans, or the ANYTHING else that gets between you and WINNING! Eddy and Jacque have an awkward exchange that is completely smoked by Apolo Dantes and Fuerza Guerrera just fucking killing it a million miles an hour running the ropes. Fuerza gets monkey flipped by the end and bails out to the floor. Jacque comes over and calls him a pussy, and you get another layer. Jacque punchs Cesar in the face and mauls him with a headbutt and they maul him some more in the corner as Jacque beats on Eddy for trying to make the save. Fuerza sees an opening and goes to settle Eddy's hash as Jacque holds him and punches him in the stomach, throws him to the floor and beats on his punk ass right their in front of his stupid fans! Supremo meanwhile gets the last recorded pinfall from a lateral suplex in the history of wrestling (probably)and then all three grab an Eddy limb and twist and spindle to get the pinfall of EVIL! They kick Apolo as he drags Eddy out of the melee because they are evil and don't give a fuck. Fuerza is in the ring and is all up in Eddy's business, daring him to get back into the ring. So the third fall is Eddy and Fuerza to settle the score. Fuerza punches him dead in the face and they pummel him in the rudo corner until Hermanos Dantes makes the save. Eddy drags Fuerza to the middle of the ring and Eddy is fired up! He hits the Ricky Steamboat forearm and bounces Fuerza all over the ring while Cesar, Apolo, Jacque and Supremo stomp each other at ringside. Then Eddy holds Fuerza so Apolo can hit him with a dropkick after hitting the belly-to-belly but Fuerza ducks. Eddy wrangles him back and Apolo goes up top for a Missile Dropkick but Fuerza ducks again and Apolo nails Eddy, allowing Fuerza to get the pin and then stand on Eddy as people take pictures. Post-match, Eddy goes crazy and beats on the Dantes like a maniac! Eddy turns evil and one of the greatest heel runs in wrestling history kicks off! And you didn't even have to have to know anything about anybody this match to understand every aspect of the turn. This is great. Eddy is fucking awesome because he does a really great fired up babyface comeback in the third caida and THEN does a fucking AWESOME total psycho rudo ass-stomp on Cesar and Apolo Dantes postmatch. The man had range. He was a charismatic face which folks will likely forget in time, because he was just so much fun as a heel. Ah man, fuck the world, Eddy is dead. Tomorrow: Oh, there will be review!

WELCOME TO YOUR DEATH VALLEY DRIVERETTE~! for 02162016! Here ya go. ~!~ BIG JAPAN PRO WRESTLING- 1/24/2016-[RASMUSSEN] Your main event! YUJI OKABAYASHI vs RYOTA HAMA: (Trivial excuses you can skip over, if you wanna. I was going to review this Monday but we had a bit of snow so I was actually home annoying my wife and children! "Hey kids, let's listen to punk rock from 1980! You won't hate it all! I loved it when my grandma forced me to watch Lawrence Welk! You are the only people under the age of 45 who have now listened to the entire first Jim Carroll Band record! You don't have to thank me! I AM AWESOME DAD!" And then my home laptop crapped out and I didn't want to write it on a Nook or Kindle because it's hard enough to read this when I have full access to a keyboard. So here we are.) Hama in Big Japan has been a giant wad of fat fun. Having a big fat guy in your Strong Style Division makes your need for "Strong" to be more developed in your style. Hama is a real heavyweight- being that he weights 451 pounds (according to cagematch.net) That's a legit MANLY wad of fat and as we say in the Rasmussen Household, "You can't fake fat." And Hama is really good at thundering down upon lesser-density beings and crushing them unmercifully. All of his offense looks good because every time he lands on someone you notice that he is GIGANTICALLY fat. The king of Big Japan Strong Style Division is my fave wrestler, Yuji Okabayashi. The story of the match is so simple and thus so beautiful- is Okabayashi strong enough to have the offense to hurt this really fat monster? And is Okabayashi tough enough to get back up after being continually being splatter by be-nakeded ass cheeks of this giant ball of FAT? Luckily, they don't cute with it. This is just Hama fucking killing Okabayashi and Okabayashi showing his supreme fighting spirit and desire to keep the belt and firing back with his own hellish, ungodly offense and whatnot. So yeah, I love the fuck out of this match. Let's delve deeper by going to the tape. Hama has really thick black puka beads. I assume he did some surfing before clocking in over 300 pounds. I refuse to research this assumption. He also has giants boobs! Okabayashi has the look of a man who has come to grips with the fact that the fat guy in front of him is going smash his fat into him and onto him a lot. They lock up and Hama has the subtle facial expressions of "you gotta be kidding, little man". And breaks clean AS A WARNING! They do it again but Yuji Okabayashi chops across the chest AND. IT. IS. ON. Hama is pissed and is enraged as he overpowers the champ while in a Greco-Roman knucklelock. Yuji kicks him in the breadbasket to escape the knucklelock and goes back to Shoulder Blocks- that starts to look like a crazy man trying to lariat a giant block of Golden Corral customers. Hama is very fat; there is no give. I'm sure Hama was crying real big boy tears on the inside- because, sure, its easy to no-sell some chops, but Yuji Okabatashi is fucking laying them in, but Hama has to stand there and NOT go, "HOLY FUCK, MY CHEST! I'M DYING!!" until he can actually sell them later in the match when Okabayashi gets him off his feet. There is a logic to the Fatman match and that is rule #1. Yuji tries a lariat and loses. The price you pay is whole bunch of fatness behind an elbow drop crushing you. Man, Hama does not give a shit. You get the full measure of his girthiness when he hits an Elbow Drop. It can do nothing else but suck. Hama loses chicks to the likes of these pretty boys of the Strong Style Division. He probably loses the crazy, daddy-issues chicks to the death match guys. FEEL HIS PSYCHOSEXUAL REVENGE IN EVERY ELBOW DROP, FAUNTLEROY. Yuji sells it with one eye closed, like Hama transferred a stroke to him. He looks over to his second, Sekimoto, and says, "Do you smell toast?" Okabayashi is the best. Hama hits the fatboy headbutts and the unstoppable clubbing forearms and then stands with full be-fatness on the Okabayashi giblets. Yuji makes a face like he should have focused on crunchers more when training for this. Hama throws him into the corner and crushes him with his butt a few times, as Okabayashi tries to chop to escape! But his normal offense where he crushes the chests of assorted Hideyoshi Kamitanis and Yoshihisa Utos of the Big Japan universe falls on deaf gigantic boobs. Hama answers by running and rolling over on him- making one watch in morbid fascination as to if Okabayashi's liver will fly out from the side of his stomach. Okabayashi tries more ineffectual chops and Hama response with contempt- as he lands a Alabama Jaw Jacker on Yuji, butt cheeks akimbo as he works his way back to tottering vertical base. Yuji gets to his feet with a "heh, beats my pair of 3's" expression right before doing the thing that we used to laugh about when people tried to powerbomb Billy Kidman in every match! Hey! World! Don't try to sunset flip a man with the density of a quasar! Splatty flabby stinky collapsing on the face of Okabayashi later and we get to the point where Okabayashi figures out that he needs to really put the strong into the strong style and change tactics. Think of the failed Sunset Flip as a stinky stanky end of the first half and the adjustments are made at half time. Yuji makes a great face like he just inhaled a rendering plant through his nose. Hama has a face that says, "fuck this punk" and he goes for the win with a splash that Yuji starts the second half by rolling out of the way of! Hama is really gigantically fat- but the fat bites both ways! Yuji musters his fighting spirit, erases the horrible smell from his mind, and crushes Hama with a lariat in corner (as the first rule of the Fatman match was been satisfied. The fat man has hit the mat and thus must now sell.) Three lariats into the corner later and Yuji is bouncing Hama's blubber around like a soccer ball! He goes for the pin and gets two, but it starts to sink in that he HAS to get Hama off his feet. His first idea is probably not his best idea- as he tries to Argentinianly break the back of a guy bigger than a industrial refrigerator. He also cannot body slam him, but he does get him up enough to get him off his feet before landing underneath him. Thus allowing our fat man to pay homage to Rikishi and hike up his tiny pants, do a little butt cheek dance, and crush all that is godly out of the face of a fellow human being. Hama DDTs for the glamour pose win- but Yuji kicks out! Yuji chops in defiance but Hama crushes him with giant ham-like foreams and crushes his skull with headbutts before hitting the AWESOME World's Fattest Crossbody in the history wrestling! Flab smashes Okabayashi to the mat for like the SIXTH time in this match. Yuji kicks out again and you don't doubt the psychology because you saw a really fat man crush him with fatness. That's a fucking SHOOT. All you can do is buy it. Thus the superiority of fat guys wrestling. And he crushes him again and AGAIN just to seal it. But Yuji fights out and gets clubbingly forearmed to the floor. Hama goes up for the most hellish avalanche that Japan wrestling can muster at this moment, but Yuji charges into the side of beef that Hama calls his giant ass and lariats it and Powerbombs Hama off the second rope! Okabayashi seeing that he only has one chance left, hits two Frogsplashes for the win after getting Hama over for Brainbuster and finally getting effectiveness out of his lariats. This is how you do a fat man match. It also helps to have a really athletic fatman, and Hama is game athletic fat man. I hope he hangs around Big Japan as their Strong Style monster for a while. I could see a future of fun matches. http://rutube.ru/video/bf5df99fbea233234831d4ff0c2f78e1/?pl_type=user&pl_id=1067514 TOMORROW: Some of these- EDDY GUERRERO /APOLO DANTES/ CESAR DANTES vs FUERZA GUERRERA/ EL SUPREMO/JACQUE MATE- EMLL- 11/10/1991- [RASMUSSEN]: FRIDAY AT THE LATEST! VILLANO 5 vs El SIGNO- EMLL- 3/4/1992: TAKASHI SUGIURA/ MINORU SUZUKI vs NAOMICHI MARUFUJI/ KATSUHIKO NAKAJIMA- PRO WRESTLING NOAH- 2/11/2016: http://rutube.ru/video/8344baabb1601740da8be10c85a55907 JERRY ESTRADA/ KUNG FU/ HERODES vs MISTERIOSO/ VOLADOR/ ANGEL AZTECA- EMLL- 6/28/1991- [RASMUSSEN]: LUDARK SHAITAN/ CASANDRA vs FELINA METALIKA/ HAHASTARY- PROMOCIONES HUMO ESTRELLAS FEMENILES- 7/26/2015- [RASMUSSEN]: KATSUYORI SIHBATA vs TOMOHIRO ISHII- NEW JAPAN PRO WRESTLING- 2/11/2016- [RASMUSSEN]: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3s2257_katsuyori-shibata-c-vs-tomohiro-ishii-2-11-2016-niigata_sport LUDARK SHAITAN/ DIVA SALVAJE/ ROSY MORENO vs GUERRERA GONZALEZ/ CHICA YEYE/ LADY APACHE- FED- 2/14/2016- [RASMUSSEN]:

WELCOME TO YOUR DEATH VALLEY DRIVERETTE~! for 02112016! And now somehow yet still more! !@!@!@!@!@!@!@!@!@!@!@!@!@ GUTS WORLD WRESTLING- 1/28/2016- [RASMUSSEN] This last match. --------------------- AMIGO SUZUKI/ MASAO ORIHARA/ RYAN UPIN vs DAISUKE/ KAZUHIKO MATSUZAKI/ MASKED MYSTERY: Amigo, Orihara and Upin are the Tonpachi Machine Guns but the Tonpachi Machine Guns without Takeshi Ono is quite the Mongo Four Horsemen but we will soldier on. According to Cagematch.net, Ryan Upin was born in Peking and knows Kung Fu! He is also 37 years old. And this is the first time I will have seen him. Amigo Suzuki is one of those Ultimo Dragon trainees that has overrun Japanese indies these last 15 years. I've seen him a hundred times (or more than likely fast forwarded over him a hundred times) but cannot recall anything about him- which is probably good. I would LIKE to go into this as nonjudgmentally as possible, thank you. Kazuhiko Matsuzaki is possibly the owner of GUTS World, but he is definitely exclusively GUTS World Pro, though he was part of a six man team with KAMIKAZE and frickin' Masayoshi Motegi that won an undercard match in Big Japan in 2010. He will always have that. I'm guessing that Big Japan and the probably 80 buck pay-out is the Japanese indie equivalent of Wrestlemania to most of the folks on this card. Either way, I know I've seen him as Shunme Matsuzaki because I recall mixing up his name up with Shuji Ishikawa's name, right after I first saw Ishikawa beat the fucking life out of somebody- so I remember being disappointed that he wasn't who I thought he was. But that was my problem not his, and I will not hold my own bebafflement against him- A NEW START! FOR ME! AND KAZUHIKO MATSUZAKI! Daisuke is your three time GUTS World champion and he has had really good matches with Yoshino and Mr Gannesukke that I've seen, but I don't know him in this kind of setting. Daisuke beat rookie Kazuki Kikuta on a Big Japan opening match and was part of the winning team of the twenty man falls count any where match just last November! Two wins in Big Japan in one day! He is the king of the Big Japan undercards OUTSIDERS~! Six days prior to this, he was in one of those horrendous New FMW tornado streetfights. I assume it went something like this: Onita: Hey man. Bear Fukuda has to close Saturday night so he can't make the match. Can you fill in? Daisuke: I don't know, man. I'd have to catch like four buses to get there. Sheila has the car and she n Tiffany are going to the movies. Onita: You can't just drop her off. Daisuke: Fuck no, man. I don't go near that Tiffany bitch. You remember last time... Onita: Oh yeah. What the fuck is that girl's damage? Daisuke: No shit. Onita: Why does Sheila even talk to her? Daisuke: She's best friends with Sheila's cousin or some shit. But yeah, fuck that bitch. Onita: Hey, actually, let me call Takaya Shibayama. He's picking up HASEGAWA in his tow truck and is driving right past your street. I'll have him pick you up. Daisuke: Okay. But Soosh, I'm the fucking three time GUTS World heavyweight champion. I'm not riding bitch and I get to be on your team. Onita: You got it. Thanks Sook. Daisuke: It'll kick fuckin ass. Orihara isn't as methy and repulsive looking as he looked in his heyday. I'm guessing he started a auto detailing business or something. Oh who oh who is the Masked Mystery? They just start tornado match brawling all over the place. Kazuhiko Matsuzaki is very much not anything having to do with Shuji Ishikawa in any way. My disappointment returns but now it is after we had WIPED THE SLATE CLEAN! They keep double teaming Daisuke as this morphs into a regular tag match. These Tonpachi Macine Guns are a far more ring-worm-y and grimy version of the Tonpachi Machine Guns but they do have a certain charm- as they hit their fairly elaborate triple team spots pretty well. Masked Mystery CLEANS HOUSE~! with like 15 consecutive body slams. He doesn't tower over anyone and is of perfectly fine build, so I don't know why he is the VADER of the face tag team. GUTS World Pro Wrestling, by the third day of the review of this card, it is better to stop asking so many questions and plow forward to the end. AMIRIGHT? AMIRIGHT?!?! I think the break out 37 year old in this match is Ryan Upin. He's scrawny and seedy and makes really great creepy faces when he is feeling the surge of heelishness wash over him as he springboards off Amigo's back onto the face of Masked Mystery! Then they take it to the floor and they go up into the bleachers, and you finally get to see that GUTS World had a pretty turn out for this little foray into grappling. The brawling itself is pretty shitty. Nobody bleeds or goes through a table or flies through a section of empty chairs or takes the good-lookin technico and takes him right up to the pretty girls who are in love with him and punches him dead in the face like LA Park would do. But it doesn't last all that long and they return to a straight up 6 man. The TMGs do evil heel triple teams after the ref is distracted but they really don't do anything particularly violent or memorably evil. Masked Mystery TRANSFORMS from the Vader of the faces to the Ricky Morton of the faces, as he accepts the heel triple team lowgrade beatdown. Ryan Upin is the only one whose section fills him with evil delight. He is the keeper as he is a weasly little bastard that you really want to punch in the face. He also bumps like a KING for Matsuzaki's scotch-laden 70's offence. Upin is at his pinnacle when relishing the pain as he rakes Daisuke's eyes. Daisuke is the best face, rolling around the ring and being all righteously enraged and fired up! They drag Amigo to the corner and he will pay the price! Masked Mystery does a particularly nasty kneedrop but the rest of the face team offense is a series sleepers. This isn't really the Rock n Roll Xpress. Daisuke starts beating on Amigo and has some really nice offense and sells out for the missed Frog Splash to get the evil back in the driver's seat. Amigo is on my good side now because his first move on offense is the Ron Simmons' Catapult Of The Throat To The Bottom Rope. Daisuke sells it like his throat has been catapulted into the bottom rope. Orihara tags in and lariat's Daisuke into Strong Style mode- as each lariat fills him with rage and FIGHTING SPIRIT! Orihara, being Orihara, kicks him directly in the testicles and we all weep at the EVIL and the HILARITY. But mostly the EVIL! This sets up the Orihara Falcon Arrow and the Orihara Tombstone to allow Upin to fly off the toprope with a knee and then the Amigo lands the toprope headbutt. BUT Daisuke shows the world that you can stomp his balls, you can falcon arrow his neck, you can tombstone his neck, you can kick him with your shin from the toprope, you can drop your head onto his shoulder from and top rope and he will still find the fighting spirit to kick out at two! Orihara sets Daisuke up on the top turnbuckle and rakes his eyes because Orihara is awesome and a dick. Matsuzaki rescues Daisuke and Daisuke lands a toprope Missile Dropkick for the nearfall. Daisuke hits a Falcon Arrow- the second of the match! Two weeks ago in 2016! Masked Mystery drops his shin across Orihara's face from the top turnbuckle and Orihara sells it like he is Dracula and the shin is sunlight. Daisuke takes too much time getting his Fighting Spirit fired up enough to finally kill Orihara with his Roaring Elbow, THUS allowing Upin to grab his ankles from the floor when he hits the ropes and drag him to the floor. Amigo goes for the mystery mask! The ref looks perplexed! Daisuke comes back in the ring, now TASTING HIS OWN BLOOD! YES! WE HAVE BLOOD! Daisuke hits a running elbow and struggles to the top turnbuckle only to be swarmed by EVIL and allowing Orihara to hit a TRULY nasty Spider Suplex into a LEGIT IN-RING ORIHARA MOONSAULT! For the win. I love Daisuke because he is such a righteous, fired-up babyface who truly hates cheaters like these Tonpachi punks, but Orihara was the star of this. His ease of performing evil is unmatched here. Upin as his creepy little toady makes this a fun version of the Tonpachi Machine Guns. You probably don't want to actually spend any of your time watching this match but you will probably want to watch Orihara versus Daisuke if they get around to doing that. And Ryan Upin is awesome. ~!~ Heartbreaker soul shaker I've been told about you SINGLES GOING STEADY steamroller midnight shoulder What they been saying must be true ~!~ NAOMICHI MARUFUJI vs TAKASHI SUGIURA- PRO WRESTLING NOAH- 1/31/2016-[RASMUSSEN]: I, like most right thinking wrestling fans, wrote off Naomichi Marufuji as boring and useless fifteen years ago. His offense wasn't good, his matches were tedious e. t. c. But it has been like ten years since I watched a Marufuji match with any attentiveness, maybe he has changed. Maybe he gained weight and started laying it in. Maybe he is the under 200 pound King of the Ricki Choshyu Strong Style Revival movement. Maybe monkeys will fly out of Madonna's butt. But let's hold off on the pessimism. My 11 year is a brand new WWE fan and I just spent 75 clams on tickets to the March match at the Richmond coliseum so I must hone my optimism to a razor's edge to not come off as the shittiest smark father who ever lived. Yeah! They are doing stuff and this is awesome! Better than when my dad took me to see Dick Murdo... let us move on. I watched the first minute of this match and Sugiura brings the assbeat so hard the first minute that I immediately turned it off and waited until now to review it with NEW EYES! So now, for GHC WORLD TITLE! I shall watch this and hope that this is violent and awesome and not infuriating. Join me as I hope against hope. I was right there in my grandma's living room when Drew Pearson caught the Hail Mary. My dad jumped up and hit a light fixture. This could happen twice in a lifetime. Today could be the day. I love Marufuji's Ode To Jushin Thunder Liger pre-match getup. There are asses in the seats so I am thinking that maybe I am in the minority in not wanting to ever see Marufuji wrestle ever ever ever. Let's face facts, I'm a bit "focused" in what I like in pro wrestling. I am pretty specific and I like some things that are off the beaten path. But you know me, and you know what I like. They knucklelock to begin and opt for the collar and elbow but Sugiuri takes a swing and misses when they hit the ropes and they then just start beating the total living dogshit out of each other. Sugiura has these sores on chest, like he had a melanoma biopsy the day before the match, so they open up upon impact of Marufuji's chops and blood spews forth. This is 45 seconds in, so I'm guessing this is going to be a match that I treasure more than I should. Sugiura fuckin NAILS Marufuji in the teeth and Marufuji says, "That's all ya got?" and chops deeply into the blood splotch on Sugiura's chest. They kick each other in the face and then miss kicking each other in the face and returning to neutral base. Or whatever. They take it to the floor because it's NOAH. They rented those guard rails and you are going to dive into them. With that out of the way, Marufuji goes back smacking Sugiura's chest into a larger wad of plasma. He switches to kicking the blood area and then just fucking CRUSHING Sugiura's chest with chops. This is pretty fucking great. They do some wrestling things- trying to suplex each other in or out of the ring culminating with Sugiura doing an Angel Wings with Marufuji hanging off the apron, thus putting Sugiura in the driver seat;that begins with a rear chinlock that moves into light kicking. This builds up to very not light forearms to the face. Marufuji's comebacks are really fucking great- as he lays it in as good as he is getting, and he is getting it pretty good. Sugiura hits a spin kick to the stomach and thus protects the giant blood target on his chest for a minute. As does the Body Vice. Sugiura focuses on the stomach with forearms and it is fucking NASTY. Marufuji's stomach pain gets worse and worse when he tries a crossbody block lands on Sugiura's knee, leading to the rib-breakers. Marufuji lands a pescada to TRANSITION himself back to offense. They do other wrestling things that all point back to Marufuji slamming his hand into the blood bespeckled area on Sugiura's chest and Sugiura answering with truly hellish forearms to the head. It is a formula that I back one hundred percent. Your champ has a shitty low-grade junior hvywt offense? Let him try to use it until he realizes it doesn't work on the ass-stomper he is facing, THUS realizing that he must rise to the ass-stomper level himself. That's just good psychology to make me want to watch a Marufuji match. It's weird. Marufuji does ONE good-looking thing on offense, and that is chop. Someone must have sat him down and showed him a Wahoo McDaniels match because Wahoo would fiddle around with other things during the match but the audience attention wasn't galvanized until he and Flair or Valentine would start beating the shit out of each other. Wahoo's chops were so good that they were the psychology of the match: can he get enough in to win, or will Flair stomp his kneecap soon enough to sidetrack him. With the added element of blood in this match, you now have a decent Wahoo match. Can Marufuji bash enough blood out of Sugiura's chest to keep Sugiura from collapsing Marufuji's skull? That is a question I would like to see answered- THUS you have a successful wrestling match. And they go back to the formula- kick in the face kick in the face kick in the face kick in the face forearms crushes jaw forearms crushes jaw chop makes holes in chest bigger chops make holes in chest bigger. You don't have get to elaborate to make a great fucking match and they are on the way. Fuck your MOVESET~! Sugiura sells the horror of his chest and goes back to the stomach to lead to a ankle lock submission spot. Marufuji reverses it into a very tricked-out cobra clutch series of variations which leads to a nearfall which leads to a battle for the suplex into a Marufuji dropkick. Marufuji Sunset Flips Sugiura off the apron to the floor and does the NASTY brainbuster on the floor to the apron. The strange property of the kinetic energy of anything happening on the apron making it 7 times worse is in full effect. Then Marufuji chops Sugiura while they are on the apron and Sugiura responds by kicking him in the stomach while on the apron. I love this simple formula utilizing odd variations. Like the fucking PSYCHOTIC Snap Suplex off the apron to the floor by Sugiura. Afterwards, Sugiura sits in the corner, resting and pondering the blood coming out of his chest as the ref counts. As Marufuji gets in the ring, Sugiura hits a Toprope Brainbuster to set up an Everest German that Marufuji avoids at first and then succumbs to for a nearfall. So they get back to the basic premise of the match as they head for home. Sugiura hits 5 straight forearms to the head and Marufuji hits two spinning kicks to stop the onslaught. They go back to bashing each other with forearms. Marufuji sells the damage as they land and he sells it all the way to the ground- as the ref checks for a knockout. Marufuji makes it to his feet and gets in a superkick to try to turn the tide as he goes for his SHUIRANUI! But Sugiura stops him and slams his head into the top of ring post. Marufuji is in the Tree of Woe as he takes a knee to the stomach. Sugiura goes up top and Marufuji catches him and hits a really fabulous Spanish Fly. And then they have assorted Team Suzuki run ins which are countered at first, to the point where Marufuji can hit a perfectly fine Shiramui. BUT THEN Minoru Suzuki hits the ring and cradle piledrives Marufuji and mayhem is around the ring. Sugiura hits a Spear for two and Marufuji hits a superkick and THEN THEY BUMP THE REF AGAIN! I await powder and possibly Sugiura's girlfriend to come out with a black eye. So anyway. Sugiura beats on Marufuji with a chair for a while and then tries to wake up the ref. Sugiura hits a Argentinian Driver and gets the win! Then Suzuki's entire 80 man stable storms the ring and beats on everybody in the building. Suzuki spreads out a NOAH flag in the middle of the ring and Sugiura stands on it with the belt. Commissioner Tunney tries to award Sugiura the NOAH Trophy but Sugiura kicks it over. They kick Marufuji a while as you notice that Sugiura's chest looks like it has a buckshot pattern across it. I really dug this match for the most part. I probably didn't need Watts UWF-level booking, but that's what you got. Who does Watts UWF-level booking in Japan? Marufuji is pissed that no one in NOAH came out to help him when Suzuki and his boys were smashing his skull. That's fun booking. I await the Marufuji Crowe make-up. Problematic but you should watch it. It's very violent like you like your wrestling. HOLY FUDGE! I just realized that the booking of this match actually makes me give a shit about how Marufuji responds to this. It's a Valentine's day miracle! http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3qu0ja_naomichi-marufuji-c-vs-takashi-sugiura-noah_sport Tomorrow: BIG JAPAN PRO WRESTLING- 1/24/2016 and other stuff I said I would review.

WELCOME TO YOUR DEATH VALLEY DRIVERETTE~! for 02122016! Here ya go. ~!~ BIG JAPAN PRO WRESTLING- 1/24/2016-[RASMUSSEN] These three. ATSUSHI AOKI/ DAISUKE SEKIMOTO vs DAICHI HASHIMOTO/ KAZUKI HASHIMOTO: This is the new thing Big Japan is doing these days- taking three guys you know and inserting a third guy you vaguely know about but you aren't really sure. I know I've seen Aoki wrestle before in NOAH but I have no earthly idea who he is if you just put the name up there. Ah NOAH, how I have skipped over so much of you. As I gaze at Aoki's cagematch.net profile, I note that he has wrestled all over the world and in every major promotion in Japan- including 30ish matches in New Japan, 300 in All Japan and 700 in NOAH- but this his first year ever to wrestle in Big Japan. I assume this is from the eternal collapse of All Japan. Daichi Hashimoto moves one pound closer to Total Shinya every week, and I must say that it is very thrilling to watch. For those new to the world of Japanese wrestling, Kazuki Hashimoto and Daisuke Sekimoto are Big Japan Strong Style guys who will beat the living doghsit out of you. I am excited. Let's watch. Pre-match Aoki and Sekimoto talk about things and then I wonder if Cagematch.net could develop a way to cross-reference wrestlers, because Sekimoto wrestles 170 times a year, for any promotion on earth that will provide his guarantee, transportation and a raw deli platter- so the odds are good that if this tag team has 4,000ish matches between them, they had to have carpooled together to one of those Real Japan cards at some point and maybe, just maybe, became friends. But actually, if they were friends, it seems like Sekimoto would hook him up with more BJPW gigs, as Big Japan draws actual people while All Japan draws whoever is still working overtime at the particular warehouse they are running that day. But I really digress. Aoki and Kazuki Hashimoto start off the proceedings punching each other in the face. Man, don't tell me I have back and watch 3,000 Atsushi Aoki matches. Aoki does a fun stunned face when you elbow him in the face. After 15 seconds in with Daichi Hashimoto, he kind of stumbles into his corner with a "I'm too old for this stuff" face and Sekimoto tags in and Aoki rolls out the ring to the floor (possibly to get in his car and go home. Which would be hilarious. ((But he doesn't really- Dean after watching the whole match.))) Sekimoto and Daichi trade armbars and wristlocks and sleepers and shoulderblocks as they build up to the Strong Style aspects of the match- which would naturally lead to a Greco-Roman fingerlock into both of them beating the hell out of each other. Sekimoto succumbs to the beating and thus takes full brunt and fury of Team Yamato in all of its majestic kickiness. Aoki stands on the apron watching the leather fly, saying, "Better you than me. I got 13 matches in 13 garages next week." Aoki tags and slaps Kazuki a few times and hits a DDT and tags out. I'm digging the cameo aspect of Aoki's part in this. "Hey man, you work here I'm just visiting. I'm not gonna get all up your business." Sekimoto and Kazuki pulverize each other with chops and forearms and they get progressively more spectacular until Kazuki lands a lariat and tags in Daichi to give Sekimoto the full measure of his manly offense. Aoki is on the apron, "I'm right here for you, buddy" as Daichi kicks Sekimoto's Adam's Apple out of the back of his neck. After several more assorted kicks, Sekimoto tries to TRANSITION to offence with an Argentinian backbreak but Daichi counters into a sleeper that causes Daisuke Sekimoto to FEEL the VIBRATIONS of the Spirit of Nelson Royal as he hits the picture perfect Atomic Drop. Daichi Hashimoto feels the GLOW of POSSESSION as the spirit of Dick Murdock takes over and he does the "OW! MY HINEY!" fit on the mat. It's pretty great and a fabulously strange foray out of Strong Style. Aoki clocks in and gets in a really nice one footed dropkick and then does the same as Daichi is sitting up on the mat. Daichi counters a suplex attempt with a DDT and tags in Kazuki who kicks Aoki in the face and then brainbusts the visitor. Double Hashimotos then take turns kicking him until Sekimoto makes the save with a Spear and truly monstrous EXPLOIDER Suplex. Aoki tries to seal the deal by hitting as much as he can on Kazuki- Missile Dropkick, a QUALITY Dangerous Backdrop. Kazuki fires back with kicks and Aoki does the old man headbutt after a kick to Kazuki Hashimoto's face. Kazuki then fucking lays a kick directly and deeply into Aoki's teeth and then hits a TOTAL Daisuke Ikeda-level Death Valley Bomb to just fucking crush Aoki for the win. Jesus, Aoki takes a break from Akebono landing on him and SUWAMA lariating his skull into the forklift over there just to take the nastiest finisher in Big Japan Strong Style history. Aoki, you are my new boy. Yeah, you should watch this. http://rutube.ru/video/bc662ad860313a840db22c00291cfb22/?pl_type=user&pl_id=1067514 HIDEYOSHI KAMITANI/ KOHEI SATO/ SHUJI ISHIKAWA vs HIDEKI SUZUKI/ SEIYA SANADA/ YOSHIHISA UTO: When I first saw the line-up for this match I thought to myself, "Why are doing the Japanese equivalent of the SST and the Samoan Savage against the Ding-Dongs and Lee Scott? I'm against it. I'm just confused" Then I started watching the match and realized that Hideki Suzuki is that Wrestle-1 guy who is actually the ZERO-1 champ- thus the reason he and Kohei Sato are in the same match. But yeah, wee Sanada and Uto the Rookie are there to be beaten to a pulp. Which I can get behind. This ain't no Sunday school. Sanada has a fancy outfit, like he should one of those ROH tagteams that wrestle for the New Japan Junior Tag Titles and who bounce off the second rope for every move. Kamitani tries to SHOWBOAT the Big Japan Strong tag title to deflect from the fact that the Twin Towers really do tower over everybody else in the ring. He also seems delighted that he isn't receiving end of a Kohei Sato ass-beating. Uto, not so lucky. Sanada and Kamitani start the match- and one would assume that Sanada will try to WRESTLE wrestle Kamitani for as long as possible, staying away from Kohei Sat and Shuji Ishikawa and thus feeding his teammates to the alligators so he can live longer and wake the next day with far less wiggly teeth. Suzuki is the Z-1 champ from W-1 so he and Sato go all Shoot Style in this Strong Style-branded match, with Suzuki trying to procure as many Volk Han-isms as he can. Sato fights out them and they do the shoot style lounging kneebars routine. Sato stomps the ham string and they officially start beating on each other until Suzuki hilariously tags in Uto. Uto visually conveys "What... what WHAT?" as Kohei Sato welcomes him to the world by laughing at his headbutts and front chancellorys him to tag Shuji Ishikawa- Japan's Greatest Living Crowbar. Uto does a few seconds of attempted armwringing- as if to say, "YEAH! That'll work! We'll do an armwringer and that way he w..." Ishikawa crushes his face with a forearm. Uto tries to put on his big boy pant and FIRES BACK! Ishikawa crushes his face with a forearm. Kamitani tags in and Uto takes a far more reasonable Big Japan Strong Style ass-beating. Then Koehi Sato tags back in and Uto's desperate forays into FIGHTING SPIRIT are met with indifferent crushing kicks to the chest. And then Ishikawa tags in and mercifully merely rips Uto vertebra apart slightly with a half crab. Kamitani hits him with several dozen shoulders in the corner to set-up a JUDO FLIP for two! Uto has the hilarious look on his face of a man arguing with a lady at the DMV as Kohei Sato tags in and Uto tries to somehow kill the giant grizzly bear with his switches of chops to he chest. Kohei the grizzly doesn't die, but he does begin the just fucking endless assbeating that Uto contines to absorb. Kamitani comes off the toprope to accentuate the Inverted Falcon Arrow that Kohei lands; and Kamitani has the look on his face of absolute glee of being on the Twins Towers tagteam and getting to just throw in little things after they have fucking destroyed an opponent. It's like being the placekicker for 1985 Bears. Uto kicks out and Kohei is amazed at the rookie's toughness/stupidity. Suzuki tags in after Uto gets in a forearm and it's back to a regular wrestling match. Jesus. Ishikawa just fucking CRUSHES Suzuki's face with a forearm to set up a wad of Twin Towers power moves until Suzuki dropkicks to tag in Sanada who picks up on the dropkick theme by hitting a lot of dropkicks on Ishikawa. It's as if to say, "I'm 32 and a veteran. They can't just beat me to a pulp because I'm 150 pounds! MY OFFENSE! IT SUCKS! SO WHAT!?!" Sanada goes for a German and they spin around until Sanada procures the Octapus hold- then everybody gets Held By The Octapus! Sanada does the hilarious thing of remembering that this is a Strong Style so he just tries to trade forearms with Shuji Ishikawa. You laugh. I laugh. Everyone laughs. Except Sanada. Sanada gets crushed by a forearm. But he does trade a couple and gets in a dropkick to the knee that he probably should have opened with. Kamitani tags and decides that he should prove his worth by mauling the fresh guy like the Towers mauled Uto, starting with a RW Hawk Shoulder block off the top rope. Sanada fights off the Dangerous Backdrop and hits a rana to allow him to tag UTO~! So I think we all know where this is heading. Uto hits a high knee and leg drop and then a really good brainbuster for two. They triple team Kamitani with Suzuki hitting a sweet backbreaker to set up Uto's Guillotine Legdrop! Not the awesome onee with a forward flip but still a Guillotine for two. Then an ACTUAL Lariat for two! Kamitani hits a shoulderblock after ducking a second lariat. The Twin Towers come in a beat the fuck out of Uto for a minute to set-up Kamitani's Nodowa. KAmitani does the magnificent EVEREST Backdrop for the win! Your big winner... UTO! For the sweet batch of finishers at the end. And Sanada for not coming off as a wuss and for instigating a "trading of elbows to the face" section with a guy who will knock all your teeth out. Postmatch, Shuji Ishikawa and Hideki Suzuki call each other pussies and I'm a-hoping they settle it in a Z-1 ring that is captured and uploaded to the internet. Very fun. You should watch. http://rutube.ru/video/d894f4a34bfea127e264d3ad8215c8ab/?pl_type=user&pl_id=1067514 YUJI OKABAYASHI vs RYOTA HAMA: HOLY SHIT, IS THIS AWESOME. MORE MONDAY. http://rutube.ru/video/bf5df99fbea233234831d4ff0c2f78e1/?pl_type=user&pl_id=1067514 TOMORROW: Is Saturday! I prolly won;t write anything! Watch that Okabayashi/Hama match though. It is fucking MANLY.

WELCOME TO YOUR DEATH VALLEY DRIVERETTE~! for 02102016! And somehow yet still more! !@!@!@!@!@!@!@!@!@!@!@!@!@ GUTS WORLD WRESTLING- 1/28/2016- [RASMUSSEN] THE REST! --------------------- KENICHIRO ARAI/SHOTA vs KEIZO MATSUDA/ YUJI KITO: Having consulted Cagematch.net, I see that Keizo Matsuda was in IWA Restart, the promotion that brought us all the fabulous Asian Cougar bumpfests back in the day. He is currently full-time GUTS World but does have two undercard tagteam victories in Big Japan a few years ago. His American equivalent would be Ace Darling- if Ace Darling was an upper mid-carder in Pro Wrestling Ohio or something. Kito has had the oddest career of anyone on the card- having been wrestling 19 years, but only logging in 152 matches. Your average Japanese indie wrestler would have that many matches in 2 or 3 years. Looking for answers, I ran a translation off his geocities.jp page http://www.geocities.jp/yuji_kito/ and it says: YUJI IWA Introduction (June 4, 1996) Was also there that day-to-day with the aim debut of painful practice from this day Tsuitemawaru directly to tour received an introductory test was or return the curry I ate for lunch on the subsequent ring at Korakuen Hall YUJI debut (March 10, 1997)Chiba spectacular debut TV magazine newspaper such as the 23 companies in Sato TakashiItaru opponent in Tateyama civic center is more of a game to visit the interviewed would have been narrowly defeated stand to bear in the near future IWA everyone was content to think YUJI overseas expedition (July 14, 2000)Amepuro I wanted to do what Tennessee Kentucky Mississippi take off in the United States - in the go on a spree of violence take the BZW Heavy belt but English is reluctantly return home in the visa of relationship around Nampa became finally success rate was poor to speak English in not good enough (; _ ; YUJI now Return home after your expected to ask for the coming YUJI KITO every day to go to Hello Work while Akekure to practice today who feel the anxiety in the future while referred to as a rip in the future take the nickname of moped broken brakes go on a spree of violence become a heel! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! This card is filled with true indie mystery and intrigue. I mean, being indie wrestling, you are allowed to let your mind go anywhere. If this were New Japan, you would assume he had a ten year foray into Shooto and was a regular on Inoki Genome. Here, it's the indies- it could have been insurance fraud over an injury in a warehouse; he could have gotten a job in an office that paid pretty well and he didn't feel like hunting down bookings on the weekends or maybe his girlfriend wanted him to finally grow-up; Hell, he was wrestling in Tennessee, Kentucky and Mississippi in the 90's, he could have moved back to Tupelo because he wanted to be there for the daughter he fathered with the stripper Billy Joe Travis introduced him to. It's a thousand more independent movie ideas. Meanwhile Kenichiro Arai is your Japanese equivalent to Scrap-Iron Adam Pierce, a good worker who every kind of wrestling fan has vaguely heard of and you put the belt on him a lot because of that. Last I saw Arai, he was in Pro Wrestling HEAT UP trying unsuccessfully to procure the vaunted HEAT UP Universal title. So yeah, the GWC Tag Title he is defending here not even close to being the sketchiest title he has fought over. Shota has a legit 215 matches in Okinawa Pro in 2010 (http://www.cagematch.net/?id=2&nr=13517&page=4&year=2010&promotion=387.) What the fuck. Stuff happens in this world. It's like the first time you find out how many matches All Star Wrestling runs in a year in the UK. Just because you don't find out about it on the internet doesn't mean that it doesn't happen. So Shota had 63 more matches in 2010 than Yuji Kito had in 17 years. Let's get all these freaks to wrestle each other because GUTS World! Arai and Shota both wrestle in coveralls- a fashion idea that I truly adore. It works really well for those of us who grew up and still dwell in the lower middle class- because the guys in your life you avoid getting in fist fights with most are those who frequently wear coveralls. Pre-match all four scuffle over the belts before they are taken from the ring- until Matsuda and Kito lariat the champs before the bell rings. Shota and Kito work headlocks and armbars for a few minutes- with interesting variations and spirited reversals. Guts WORLD is so odd and wonderful. Shota adds an armdrag to the armbar section to up the Ricky Steamboat factor. Shota adds a fucking FISTDROP to up the Lawler factor. Arai adds a wristlock into a keylock and back to an armbar to add to the Bockwinkle factor. Kito makes the ropes to end the odd ode to every 70's wrestler ever and Shota punches him in the stomach twice to up the Greg Valentine factor. And they start to run the ropes but Matsuda grabs Shota at the ropes and catches a forearms to the face as Shota ducks, allowing a quick roll-up. This is really a celebration of basic tagteam wrestling. Matsuda drags Shota out of the ring from ringside and body slams him twice to set up the psychology of the match being the total destruction of Shota's back. Matsuda tags in and bodyslams and then Surfboards Shota's back. Kito sinks in the Walls of Jericho and this is very very GUTS World deeply psychological and old school so far. Shota tries to fireback but Kito distracts the ref and Matsuda crushes Shota's tender man marbles with a headbutt and this is now total Southern tag match. Matsuda does the DBS Endless Powerslam and goes for a instant La de a Caballo because SHOTA'S BACK MUST DIE!! Kito and Matsuda are a really fun heel tag team. They punch Arai on the apron and double team drag Shota back to the evil side of the ring and continue working of the back to sustain the Anderson Brothers factor. This is fucking great, in a "no indie ever does this right, but look at this" kind of way. Shota gets a hope spot and Matsuda shoulderblocks him to the ground. He gets a forearm in to hit a second rope missile dropkick (if that is allowed to be called that. I am a rebel.) Kito comes over and pounds on his back and drags him back to the center- but he enzuguiri's to HOT TAG! Arai is a strange house-afire- using wileyness to avoid the powerhouse offense of Matsuda. The house of fire smolders out as Arai misses a toprope fistdrop and Matsuda hits a double Luger-level clothesline. Kito does a Fisherman suplex and Arai spins and spins and spins into a Kito Octapus Hold. Then some perfectly fine Kito punches in corner and Arai is now crawling for the hot tag. They do the super Southern unnoticed tag to set up Shota's flying crossbady on an unsuspecting Kito, to allow the Big Bossman Second running sit spot to up the Ray Traylor factor. Shota hits the Russian Leg Sweep and to then do four consecutive ref bumps. Then it gets even it gets superdopier with the ref bump, a very long and goobery set-up of Kito hitting Shota with the belt, Matsuda throwing the belt to Arai, Kito knocking Shota's head into the belt as Shota is trying to figure out if Arai hit him with the belt to allow Kito to School Boy Shota with a handfull of tights for the win and THE BELTS! This was perfect in form for a Southern tag match but none of these guys really have any kind of offence worth mentioning- THUS all the goodwill they garner by upholding the standards of a quality tag match- even by a slenderest of threads- is all lost because the ending is kinda retarded and so very crappily executed. They did so much right in this match, but it just doesn't survive the end. AMIGO SUZUKI/ MASAO ORIHARA/ RYAN UPIN vs DAISUKE/ KAZUHIKO MATSUZAKI/ MASKED MYSTERY: Coming Up ~!~ It's the stupid details that my heart is breaking for It's the way your shoulders shake SINGLES GOING STEADY and what they're shaking for it's knowing that he knows you now after only guessing ~!~ NAOMICHI MARUFUJI vs TAKASHI SUGIURA- PRO WRESTLING NOAH- 1/31/2016-[RASMUSSEN]: YES. THURSDAY! http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3qu0ja_naomichi-marufuji-c-vs-takashi-sugiura-noah_sport EDDY GUERRERO /APOLO DANTES/ CESAR DANTES vs FUERZA GUERRERA/ EL SUPREMO/JACQUE MATE- EMLL- 11/10/1991- [RASMUSSEN]: FRIDAY AT THE LATEST! Tomorrow: You know the drill.

WELCOME TO YOUR DEATH VALLEY DRIVERETTE~! for 02082016! And more! ~!~ Baby you light up my world like nobody else The way that you flip your hair SINGLES GOING STEADY gets me overwhelmed But when you smile at the ground it ain't hard to tell ~!~ GO SHIOZAKI vs MINORU SUZUKI- PRO WRESTLING NOAH- 1/31/2016-[RASMUSSEN]: The only other time I can precisely trace the point to where I came around on a wrestler, other than Minoru Suzuki, was when Phil Schneider, Tom Karro-Garsner and I went to the Greensboro Fair and saw Pierroth live. Pierroth live was the walking epitone of violence and menace, something I never latched onto while watching him on tape. It was awesome it was like the moment where I realized that Tenryu wasn't a washed up old guy but a true hurricane of ass-beating. It was a real epiphany. Minoru Suzuki clicked in my mind two days ago when I watched this match http://rutube.ru/video/bb2dc089a9e81c02f62b997f00341335 - which is Go Shiozaki and Yoshinobu Kanemaru vs Minoru Sukuki and El Desparado from two days before this match. Maybe it's just that I didn't see Suzuki's strengths presented to me in such a raw manner and I ignored him altogether after the first couple of matches I saw with him in. But anyway, I finally figured out that he is doing what I dig most in wrestling currently- like Okabayashi, Kohei Sato, the ilk. The thing about the tag match that triggered it was the fact that he works stiff as fuck- which I hadn't seen before- but he also is of course really great on the mat, so yeah. It's like a Tenryu moment- when you first realize Tenryu is awesome- and hopefully this will be a string of matches like 1992-2005 Tenryu. The match at hand. They dick around for ten minutes with introductions and stalling and what have you and that is actually good because the running time is 30 minutes, and I'm going to be FIFTY YEARS OLD IN TWO MONTHS so I must conserve all my precious moments, focusing directly on people bashing the shit out of each other, staying away from stupid time-wasting garbage as I sprint to the grave. (Imagine my chagrine now that I have to watch the two and half hours of bullshit that I have to suffer through to watch the 24 minutes of wrestling that is on RAW, now that my suddenly eleven year old son is a fervent wrestling fan now.) Go Shiozaki I've always sorta liked but never really had a match to point where he was worth getting excited about. Here, he and Suzuki beat the dog-piss out of each other and Shiozaki is all fired up firing back from the ass-beating Suzuki starts laying on him. He makes a better "Fuck you old man" face than my 13 year old son makes when I force him to dump the garbage. And I assume my son will also crush my chest with chops before he is 17, as I hide behind my wife- hoping she will fight him. Suzuki bumps to the floor and Shiozaki's chest and palm of his hand are bright red- to the point where you can see the red from a mid-range shot, so that's pretty fucking great. Suzuki starts working on the arm after getting interference from his douchebag second, Taichi, and procuring and TARANTULA! over the ropes. Then the evil duo do the great thing of taking turns beating on Shiozaki on the floor while the other argues with the ref. So Memphis, so sublime. Suzuki carves into Shiozaki's skull with a screwdriver as the ref screams at the second. Shiozaki doesn't blade, which is disappointing. Suzuki goes back to working on the arm leans into a beautiful Wakigatame into a Crippler Crossface into a total Volk Han-ian variation of a Rings Of Saturn for the total RINGS score! Then he kicks Shoizaki in the head a whole lot and starts kicking him everywhere else and it is awesome. Then he focuses on the arm and Shiozaki sells it like a champ before trying a scoffed-at hopespot. Suzuki is sooooo fucking great with the psychology at this point. His face and punches and kicks all add up to him saying, "YOU HAVE GOT TO BE FUCKING KIDDING ME, YOU FUCKING PUSSY. I AM WHIPPING YOUR ASS AND ALL YOU CAN DO STARE AT ME." Fucking awesome. THAT is how you set up your underdog babyface comeback. The crowd watching feels empathy for your face and thus will back his comeback with actual emotional attachment. Can Shiozaki do it? They trade chops and Suzukl switches to punches before beginning to whither to the chops and tries to cut off Shiozaki with a boot to the face as Go comes of the roipes, but Shiozaki stays on offense and crushes Suzuki with a chop in the corner before hitting the swanky Fisherman's Buster for two. Shiozaki gets up and sells the arm for a second and Suzuki sells the Fisherman Buster like this is 1978 and he is Tatsumi Fujinami. Suzuki drags Go into the corner and starts mauling him with chops and kicks- slapping him in the face and laughing at him. Shiozaki fires back with chops and tries to seal it with a lariat; but Suzuki counters with an armbar that he rolls into a Jujigatame for a few seconds- but breaks the hold and just slams his arm to the mat and goes back to stomping on him before sinking in a sleeper hold, because Suzuki doesn't want to just beat Shiozaki, he wants to humiliate him. It's great stuff. Shiozaki judo throws to escape and hits the ropes to try another lariat but Suzuki ducks under and procures another sleeper that Go backdrop drivers out of. Suzuki blocks the first lariat but catches a second and Shiozaki hits a Jackhammer, crushing Suzuki like a bug. Shiozaki sells the arm before making the cover to make the kick out work in the context of the psychology of the match. They run the ropes and Suzuki hits him with a dropkick and just starts beating the shit out of him until the ref gets in between them to scold Suzuki for using his balled up fist to beat the living dogfuck out of Shiozaki. Then, in another Memphian twist, Kanemaru (who is Shiozaki's second but who didn't really help him much when Suzuki and Taichi were taking turns beating on Shiozaki outside the ring) jumps to Suzuki-gun by hitting a Spinning DDT on Shiozaki, THUS, this betrayal helps to set up Suzuki getting the pin by crushing Shiozaki's skull with a cradle piledriver. They evilly beat on him after the bell until Maybach Tanaguchi makes the save? And then Maybach unmasks. And I don't watch nearly enough NOAH to figure out when Maybach jumped from Suzuki-gun and became friends with Go Shiozaki but it's wrestling and I feel I've gotten aboard right when this all might start getting interesting. But yeah, you wanna watch this. Shiozaki is set up to be the victim here and it appears that he is going to be the Super Delfin in this variation of the Kaientia Deluxe vs Inshin gun-esque feud. I don't know if Shiozaki has enough fire to counter the sheer awesome evil of Suzuki but Suzuki brings enough hate to the match make any face a super star if he is up to the task. Very interesting wrestling from something as usually bland as NOAH. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3qvmkj_go-shiozaki-vs-minoru-suzuki-noah_sport Naomichi Marufuji © vs. Takashi Sugiura- PRO WRESTLING NOAH- 1/31/2016-[RASMUSSEN]: Coming up. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3qu0ja_naomichi-marufuji-c-vs-takashi-sugiura-noah_sport Tomorrow: Can Sugiura POSSIBLY beat on Marufuji enough for me to legit give a shit about Naomichi Marufuji? Tune in tomorrow for SECOND LOOK AT NOAH!

WELCOME TO YOUR DEATH VALLEY DRIVERETTE~! And it begins again. ~!~ Honey, I saw you yesterday on my way home Baby, I craved for you today SINGLES GOING STEADY so I decided to phone So why don't we get together soon and get on our own ~!~ DAICHI HASHIMOTO/ KAZUKI HASHIMOTO/ TAKUMI TSUKAMOTO vs ATSUSHI MARUYAMA/ MASAYA TAKAHASHI/ TOSHIYUKI SAKUDA- BIG JAPAN PRO WRESTLING- 2/2/2016- [RASMUSSEN]: Hey! YOU MIGHT WANT TO SKIP TO.... This is your old pal, Dean. I used to be somebody in the online wrestling community and now I just kinda write wrestling reviews when I finally defeat all the reasons I have for not writing- each of which are preposterous, thus making their grip on the writer that much more infuriating. I am in the middle of writing the next sentence and I am noticing that it just might be the biggest run-on sentence I've ever written- which is impressive because I suck at a crazy little thing called restraint and truly love a good ridiculously long sentence, and I believe THAT I MUST BE FREE! The Hashimoto boys are actually called collectively Team Yamato and I will now figure out if I've seen Tsukamoto before, much less if I have ever seen the three fellas they are wrestling; because the problem with driving 85 hours of wrestling directly into your head every couple of months- as I have kind of settled into a seasonal viewing/reviewing cycle, in that I quit watching wrestling for month and now I have actually been watching a lot of wrestling the last couple of weeks- especially after being hipped to the RuTube channel for whoever used to post everything I wanted to watch on Dailymotion, having actually found a DEEP NET-ESQUE place to put all the fabulous wrestling that has spoilt us for so long- and also there is the development where- for those who used to read these in the 1990s when I was a struggling, comical drunk, note that I haven't been drunk in 15ish years and I have four children, ranging from 10 to 19, SO note that the first three of my kids brushed off all attempts to ever really give a shit about wrestling until my 10 year old got WWE Y2K16 (or whatever its called) for his million dollar PS4 and is now just fucking PSYCHOTICALLY into wrestling. It's like the first time you watched the Super J Cup or the first time you ever got a Dave Scherer comp (or your first Schneider comp for you slightly younger folks.) THUS I have actually been forced into watching WWE after a like 10 year hiatus. Man, is WWE annoying. I hate the whole enterprise. But it is also really fun to see wrestling through the eyes of a child so it is also pretty great. Fatherhood is pretty awesome. So anyway, the POINT is that I have probably reviewed matches with the non-Team Yamato guys in the last two years, but memories of them did not survive the last giant three month Shoving Of Puroresu Guys Into My Head epoch and THUS YOU get to be ENRICHED by the knowledge that I am looking at these punks with fresh eyes and YOU the gentle reader can revel in the fact that I can't remember what the fuck I said before and I have not the WILL to go back and try to defend anything I said. Well, that was lot of build up but I didn't want to act like nothing happened between the last Driverette and today. ...........HERE. Tsukamoto is Largish-For-DDT DDT guy. Maruyama has mask of a tiger and was a Osaka Pro guy it appears- since he was trained by Super Delfin. Takahashi is from the Asuka Project (yes! The Asuka Project! Kenichiro Arai is their champion. He beat this same Takahashi for the title. After watching this match, I would watch that.) and has been a death match guy for 3 years with a major in JUDO! Sakuda is a Big Japan rookie. I assume his teeth will smashed into powder by Kazuki Hashimoto. What a weird card. This feels like a young lions tournament- if your young lions are actually guys working in a sun glasses kiosk at the mall during the day. Let us view the YamatoCARNAGEmatchBASHING~! Man, Tsukamoto looks even scummier in this match than his cagematch.net mugshot. He is taller than... WAIT! That's Daichi Hashimoto- MAN, he is getting fat and seedy looking. I BACK HIS PLAY ONE HUNDRED PER CENT! YOUR DADDY WAS SHINYA HASHIMOTO. If you want to be a second son wastrel, scouring the underbelly of the industry that your daddy helped create, looking for part-time construction workers to punch in the face, I am all over it. Talk about pathos. Sakuda gets in a lot hilariously botched offense early to set up his immediate death later, as one who has watched these matches for a few decades would assume. Takahashi tries to bring the STIFF to Daichi Hash and thus we rejoice, as this gets all skull-busty and fun. Tsukamoto is also really seedy looking and he will lay it in. I might have to follow him if I can remember him past May. I need to note also that Takahashi will take a beating and fire back, so I dig him. A third guy tags in and he doesn't have a mask so I'm guessing it isn't Maruyama. Unless he lost his mask. YOU, the beloved reader, will probably not lose sleep over this detail. Rookie boy and Takahashi beat up on DDT guy until Daichi Hashimoto tags in the fucking crushing and bashing and stomping and annihilating and smashing and stretching and gouging and mauling of the rookie kicks in. They don't totally murder him but they do hit the median amount of justified kicks to a rookie's teeth to warrant pinning him, so you have that. Nine minutes of WORTH IT just because you can catch up on Daichi Hashimoto transforming into 1995 Tommy Rich right before your eyes. http://rutube.ru/video/1a58fb4e6b9e38a4ecb0fc1fcf566dfb SEIYA SANADA vs TATSUHIKO YOSHINO- BIG JAPAN PRO WRESTLING- 2/2/2016- [RASMUSSEN]: I watched TNA for a while but I missed the Sanada X-Division title reign. You, the one reading, and You, the one who follows TNA very carefully, will inform your gentle writer if I should lose sleep over that fact. Yoshino is from fuckin GUTS WORLD!so I know who I am going for. I'm pretty sure I reviewed his title match against Diasuke and I think I liked it as much as I liked the Diasuke vs Gannesukke match. I'm sure there is a 4 star match against Mr Gannesukke sitting next to some really disturbing pornography on the hard drive of the GUTS World audio-visual specialist. This match has a chance to be cool because Sanada was trained by Osamu Nishimura and GUTS World is actually a really thread-bare version of MUGA, THUS they actually start the match with a lock up and arm bar sequence. HA! I am fucking into this now. MUGA! MUGA! MUGA! Dradition. Straight into a kneebar/headlock sequence! DRADITION! Front Chancery! DORY FUNK, BITCH! Then Sanada reverses into a tricked out takedown that Yoshino reverses into a standing kneebar! TATSUMI FUJINAMI, MOTHERFUCKERZ~! Headlocks and reverses into take-overs into a first nearnfall. This is fucking WAAAAAAY WAAAAAY more than I thought this would be. If there is no highspots, I will declare this an early Match Of The Year Candidate, 70's Throwback Match division. CRAVATE, fuckin CRAVATE out of a quarter Nelson. IT SAYS FUCKING "WRESTLING" ON THE MARQUEE, MOTHERFUCKERS! Sanada is back to the kneebar until Yoshino escapes and gets to a VERTICAL motherfucking BASE! GORDON SOLIE, DADDY! Sanada loses his cool in a MUGA way by- AND THIS IS THE MOST FUCKING MUGA/DRADITION/FUJINAMI/NISHIMURA way to lose your cool- he doesn't go for a headlock, he INSTEAD lands a European Uppercut. If you can't dig that, then go back to your thing you young people do. Euro-UpperCut and the hideous concession to the Modern World by dropkicking Yoshino while Yoshino is sitting down. Oh man, that shit needs to go away ten years ago. Sanada returns to the 70s by hitting a Murdoch elbow across the throat of Yoshino while Yoshino is hanging off the ring apron. I await Yoshino to punch Sanada in the face and Sanada to check if his tooth is still there. En Lieu, a dropkick to the head as he dangles and Sanada follows up with a piledriver to the mat. Yoshino becomes confused and sells the pile driver as he rolls in the ring- in that he is stuck in a netherworld. I saw Blackjack Mulligan piledrive Harley Race onto the cement floor of the Norfolk Scope in 1979. Race sold it and bled like Blackjack shot him in the face with a gun. The modern piledriver in Japan is a transition move in these junior heavyweight affairs to set up your 120 pound wee folk to do a 360' spinning thigh-slappin' Backstabber! for TWO! Yoshino feels the Dradition and holds his head as Sanada gets the second nearfall of the match. Yoshino sells it as Sanada LEANS INTO A CHINLOCK! This match is fucking awesome. EUROPEAN UPPERCUT! And then Sanada puts Yoshino on the toprope and we are about to lose our MOTY-70sTBD candidate, but first the ninth commercial for that Witch movie. Damn Russians stealing Daily Motion's most annoying business models. Yoshino elbows Sanada to the mat and hits a Missile Dropkick, thus skipping the 80s and heading directly to the mid-90s. Yoshino hits a DDT- which is 80's- but it isn't the finisher, so it is a 90's DDT. Yoshino goes for the nearfall and goes directly into a kneebar at two- which is a 90's Kazuo Yamazaki type of thing. Sanada hits the ropes and does a little selling before clamping on a headlock- 50's/60's/70's wrestling- and they start trading chops (all wrestling ever). Yoshino unviels his 90's FMW Gannesukke roots by hitting a Thunder Fire Powerbomb for a nearfall. Sanada hits a Missile Dropkick and they trade a really elaborate and fun roll-up sequence. Sanada hits a Diamond Cutter, a Tiger Suplex Hold and then wins a perfectly nasty Dragon Sleeper Variation. I THOUGHT THIS WOULD SUCK! It didn't! The dream: They have a 45 minute 70's match in GUTS World. http://rutube.ru/video/8d6246e5c7deab72aec68b9a024946b4 TOMORROW! I'll write about something if I find something I am interested in! WORD.

THIS IS YOUR DEATH VALLEY DRIVERETTE for 08072015! (These are all part of the upcoming DEATH VALLEY DRIVER VIDEO REVIEW #173 w/ RIPPA reviewing PPVs with lots and lots of dead guys. Stay off the steroids, kids.) Two matches! 80 minutes! ~!~ !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ANGEL de ORO vs POLVORA- CMLL- 7/28/2015- [RASMUSSEN]; ALSO MR GANNESUKE vs Daisuke: Ha! I spent yesterday dividing the wrestling wheat from the wrestling chaff just so I don't end up reviewing 12 matches in a row that SUCK IT~!- so, of course, I felt weird about the lack of spontaneity of that process THUS I decided to review two matches that I have been saving and not actually watching because for whatever reason they are both 40 minutes long. THUSLY, I get to experience them as I write about them and I can also get them off my fucking Watch Later lists- which is 90% of wrestling viewing, being able to say you saw it((the other 10% is the wrestling you actually are actively excited about.))) Since I don't actually ever want to spend 80 minutes watching wrestling ever- especially where there is only one wrestler that I have a definite idea of their value in the ring; and of these four, it's Mr Gannesuke and I haven't seen him have a good in 15 years and I've seen him have possibly two matches since then, I have my fears and reservations. But HEY! maybe if you give him 40 minutes to work, all the old magic will come back! I sure fucking hope so because I'm pushing 50 and I can't really be wasting solid blocks of time on crappy bullshit. One could say that wrestling itself is crappy bullshit and I say to you, Mr Straw Man That I Created To Hit With My Cyber LARIAT, FUCK YOU RIGHT IN YOUR STRAW HINDER HOLE! Only 95% of wrestling is unwatchable bullshit. So here is hoping that GUTS WORLD can actually bring in and land a match in the top 5%. Jesus, the more I write about it and think about it, the more impossible it sounds. Luckily! I have no idea who this Daisuke character is- so I checked his Cagematch.net profile and this gets to looking like an even crappier gamble of my time. He is a GUTS WORLD PRO WRESTLING guy and he is their mighty champion! His matches on the matchlist are in the same zany circle of the indies that the FREEDOMS~! guys populate- your STYLE-E, your HEAT UP, your Dotonbori Pro supercards. Also, it looks like he wrestles on average 3 times a month tops. This could mean a couple of things: He has a real full time job that pays actual money and it limits his wrestling because of time constraints and thus, he is secretly the owner of GUTS WORLD- with Guts Ishijima as a mere figurehead, A STINKIN' FIGUREHEAD!, of the GWPW empire- a Guts Tunney if you will; OR he is like Mr Gannesuke and is blackballed from wrestling a lot of places for reasons never explained to me (or he is part of the reason Gannesuke is blackballed? The speculation is probably limited to me and 217 people who have actually watched all or part of this match); OR he is like our boy from Apache Pro/FMW Restart, HASEGAWA, who wrestles like 40 times a month but they are such... questionable... promotions and skeezy cards that even the psychotic, overly-detail-obsessed freaks at Cagematch.net don't even track them. It happens. HASEGAWA has been wrestling for fifteen-ish years now prolly (if my memory of the Apache Pro timeline is correct)and has no English-language presence in the on-line wrestling community, and yet he has video evidence of being in the ring with some of the big boys of Japanese wrestling- including the match he last posted, where he and W*ING/SOCIAL motherfucking PROGRESS WRESTLING FEDERATION veteran Hiroshi Shimada took on two non-descript indie guys in parking lot. But there is no evidence of that show anywhere on the internet (and why should there be? I don't think Cagematch or PuroLove- or any of the other go-to sites for research, document the results of the equivalent of a county fair.) So yeah, we're banking on the Japanese equivalent of a ECWA undercard guy to go 40 minutes with Gannesuke- who is two years younger than me. And my toes hurt when I lay down. So what I'm getting to is that the gimmick of this review is that I'm just going to watch both of these at the same time and see if I can keep track. I will rewind if I miss a guy who is suddenly spewing blood and I miss the reason or they suddenly stretcher a guy out and I missed the part where lands on the floor on his shoulder wrong. The other match in this digest of wrestling that should scare me for investing so much time is the preposterously long title match between Angel de Oro and Polvora. I know that I used to confuse Angel de Oro as Valiente some how- they have similar masks and Valiente has a similar build if you combined Angel de Oro with his washer and dryer. Polvoro I've seen wrestle a thousand times but he is always the other guy wrestling when I was interested in three other guys in the match. AND THEY ARE GOING 40 FUCKING MINUTES! The upside of this is that I'm pretty sure that I will be the only person on this earth to have actually watched both of these matches by the time I finish, so I will always have that. Okay, enough writecrastinating. Gannesuke is 36:27 which I'm assuming has extra time for Japanese indie hugs. Angel de Oro is 39:53 and I assume there will be 5 minutes of ring girls taunting me about my age and impending impotence. I will not type the crying. Gannesuke is Dailymotion so I will get to really concentrate on the 20 minutes of matwork in the Oro match in-between the commercials every five minutes and the predicted two computer restarts when Dailymotion freezes up my spare laptop. AND GO! Polvora has a cool mask, Mr Gannesuke has an awesome floral robe. Daisuke looks like a generic NOAH junior heavyweight but we'll see. Oro and Polvora take it to the mat immediately and its actually pretty slick and quick like good lucha matwork has to be. Mr G locks up and they are definately setting up for going long as he drives him into the ropes and they break. The Oro match is doing the same thing but with slightly quicker matwork, but Oro works a keylock while Daisuke hits a dropkick to start an armbar sequence that Mr G counters into a pinning predicament that Daisuke counters into a front face lock. Meanwhile! The luchadores are doing the extended knucklelock sequence with Oro doing the Santo staked head scissors thing to drive Polvora out the ring. They tease a highspot but it is still way early. They instead take it the the mat and Oro does a really nice preposterous lucha roll-up to take the first fall. Over in Japan, Mr G is still working an armbar but they are doing a total 70's thing of actively working ever angle of the armbar as Daisuke counters into a kneebar. So yeah, they are killing time until they can start beating each other to death. But Daisuke is good at crushing Mr G's knee with elbow drops so he is familiar with old school psychology so that is surprising. Over in Mexico, Oro hits a perfectly fine tope to crush Polvora against the rail- as Polvora takes a shoulder like a champ. Mr G and Daisuke get back to a vertical base and they do a by-the-book headlock-head scissors sequence and you get a feeling that this would fit in at MUGA/Dradition show. Or hell, a 1965 AWA main event. Oop, missed a fall in Mexico, I shall rewind. Oro hits an awkward cross body and goes for the toprope something. Polvora counters at the top and hits a Released Top Rope Sidewalk Slam for the second fall. So now we get 27 minutes of a 3rd fall. Over in Japan, GLORIOUSLY, Daisuke is STILL WORKING THE KNEE! He is actually laying it in. I dig this guy. He deserves whatever IBM is paying him. They go to the Daisuke figure four and Mr G sells it like he has trained 300 guys how to wrestle. I dig this match. Meanwhile, in Mexico, Polvora is beating on Oro and taunting the crowd for backing such a fucking loser! "Did you shitty cross body block I had to sell!?!?" he screams! One would assume. Mr G hits the ropes and collapses out of the ring to the floor. Polvora baffles Oro by running the ropes slightly eccentrically and lands a SPEAR~! onto Oro for two. Cavernerio Barbario is ontraged over something I missed and Oro hits a fucking beautiful Orihara Moonsault to the floor. Mr G is on offense with a Ron Simmons catapult across the throat and THEN a Tully Blanchard RELEASED Hot Shot. I hope for a shoe lace rake but instead he detaches the padding on the ring buckle. Oro and Polvora do a bunch of really nice roll-ups as this is a perfectly fine, if underly violent lucha title match- with Oro helping his cause by doing lots of nice in-ring flying to add to his more spectacular high-flying. I would assume that Polvora will begin beating the hell out of him at some point, but so far he is in this as he is in every other match in which I've seen him- invisible but not hindering the match. (Here I take a moment to if I missed anything between Gannesuke going to the floor and going on offense. And I didn't. This match is fucking old school as hell. Mr G shoulder blocks him in the stomach getting in and that's his transition to offense. Daisuke is going to win this with an Airplane Spin if all of this is any indication. Both Mr G and Daisuke hit the exposed turnbuckle and it leads to Mr G driving him into the buckle again and thus the psychology of the match established at 18:32- Mr G will work the shoulder. Mr G then works the shoulder. In Mexico, at 18:52, Polvora hits a nasty backbreaker using the ropes to get a two count and both seconds are awesome being outraged at the ref. Polvora hits a nice Lyger Bomb for two and I fear that there will be twenty minutes of nearfalls. Dailymotion is just kinda stopping at 20 minutes for a moment en lieu of going to a commercial- THIS MATCH IS TOO IMPORTANT! It's like soccer! I assume a box will surround the outside screen with the Budweiser logo. Mr G fights out of Daisuke's desperation arm bar and body slams Daisuke and works the shoulder some more by going into a LEGIT NWA Armbar where you grab the wrist and try to rip the shoulder apart by pushing off your opponents neck and ribs with your feet. This is becoming Stecher-Lewis 2015! Meanwhile, I miss three nearfalls in Mexico so I back it up a bit as Mr G mauls Daisuke's shoulder. (I pause the Mr G match to get my bearings.) Oh man, nice lariat by Polvora for two. Yeah, the replay shows that he layed it in and Oro leaned it to it. For the title, DADDY! Oro jawbreakers to TRANSITION~! and goes up top but plunges to the floor as Polvora catches him and pushes and then fucking crushes him with a SPECTACULAR toprope plancha to the floor. Should your rudo smoke your technico's best highspot like acheap cigar? It doesn't matter what we think because here we are and that's whatit was. Oro tries to make up for it by fruitily embellishing a Flying Space Tiger Drop but all it does is LOSE to the plancha. Oro superkicks and mini-moonsaults Polvora and he is STILL being showed up by the plancha. Polvora kicks out and hits a reverse Juvie Driver for two as DailyMotion craps out on cue at 23 minutes. I find it again and Daisuke is hitting the ropes allowing Mr G to get up and stomp on his shoulder. Mr Gannesuke FUCKING BULLDOGS THE SHOULDER like the motherfucking ANDERSEN BROTHERS! I back this match 100%! And he does it again! This is some old school quality wrestling. In Mexico, they do a quick Guerrero-Malenko roll-up sequence into a Polvora Surf Board until Oro hits the ropes. Diasuke decides that the best way to beat 1960s Pro Style is with Strong Style and starts laying in the forearms. He sells the shoulder before hitting the snap suplex and gets caught going up top but escapes the shoulder breaker attempt and goes for a lariat that crushes the ref. Mr G gets the VISUAL PIN as this goes to an 80s WWF style match. In Mexico they are clotheslining each other and laying around the ring as if this is going..... Broadway? Oro and Polvora fight at the top of the turnbuckle when Oro hits a Frankensteiner for two. Polvora stomps on his head and they do the Guerrero Malenko roll-up into a surfboard again. Polvora escapes and the match has lapped itself. They do an elaborate set up of Polvora hitting the toprope released sidewalk slam again. Polvora gets up and goes to the toprope a third time, misses a splash and Oro wins with the surfboard. I guess the fact that I didn't know that that was Oro's finisher made the lead up to the finish a little baffling. It was a good match, I don't know if you need invest 32 minutes in it. It was psychologically sound except for a few parts, and the ending was a bit of a mess. Go watch the Kamaitachi/ Dragon Lee match instead- more spectacular and the rudo works stiffer. Meanwhile back to the finish of our Japanese match. Lemme jump back to Mr G. He gets the visual pin, notices the bumped ref is still out and throws Daisuke out of the ring- hitting a great dropkick through the ropes to keep him out of the ring. The ref slowly comes aroun as Mr G stands in the middle of the ring and tries to suplex Daisuke in, but he escapes and hits a very nice Backdrop Driver on a the 47 year old Gannesuke and they lay there selling the accumulated damage. Daisuke drops an elbow and hits a spinning senton to set up a Frogsplash for two- as this was like an Ode to Eddy Guerrero but nobody would kick out of Eddy's Frogsplash. Daisuke hits a Tiger Driver for two and he goes for a Roaring Elbow that Mr G counters into a Fujiwara Armbar and then he hits a THIRD BULLDOG TO THE SHOULDER! Daisuke tries to fight out a suplex attempt and Mr G turns into a full blown Fujiwara Armbar and this is soooo going Broadway. Daisuke hits the ropes and Mr G drives him through the fricking mat with a GIGANTIC powerbomb. Man, fuck the world, Mr Gannesuke still has the best looking offense. Daisuke kicks out and hits a lariat eventually so they both lay there for a while. Daisuke hits ten forearms and gets a two count. He hits a legit straight up Falcon Arrow for two and hits a roaring elbow for two (I am now trying to remember Hisakatsu Ooya's finisher now), and then hits a Toprope Elbow for two. Mr G crawls around as Daisuke sinks in the Full Nelson but Mr G hits the ropes. Mr G is helpless against the ropes as Daisuke is landing running forearms. Gannesukke tries a desperation suplex but Daisuke counters out and clamps in another Full Nelson and hits a BEAUTIFUL Dragon Suplex with a bridge for the win! There is a lot to love in this match. The first 25ish minutes is totally Tatsumi Fujinami versus Osamu Nishimura and the last ten was an Ode to FMW finishers. The biggest upside was how fucking great Gannesuke looked in this. The only downside is that there were way to many kick outs- especially after the psychology established in the first 25 minutes. I really like how they built up to the finish so I can forgive that. I can't imagine anybody but me, BAHU and JT digging this match, but hell, it's your 36 minutes, what else you gonna do? The Puro: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2zdnx9_daisuke-c-vs-mr-gannosuke-guts-world_sport The Lucha:

WELCOME TO DEATH VALLEY DRIVERETTE 08182015! You win some, you lose some. ~!~ I GOTTA WATCH THIS MATCH ANYWAY! 6.) TATSUHIKO YOSHINO vs DAISUKE- GUTS WORLD WRESLTING- 3/28/2015- [RASMUSSEN]: I got like four hours sleep because I'm doing lots of assorted things with my youngstrers, my assorted old guy bands, general ME time- and they all converge on Monday so I am a bit mind-stunned and dullened and be-sluggished. Thus, I don't feel like reviewing anything and just want to fuck around and do nothing- so, THIS would a perfect time to write something. When one has gotten out of one's comfort level and one has mixed it all up and one is writing when one doesn't feel like writing, it has got to afffect the end product. Plus when I'm tired I get rambling and I'll probably need that to SYNTHESIZE the goings on in this match with the stray analysis and insight that would make this review worth reading. Yoshino is a guy whose match I reviewed a few weeks ago or maybe a week ago. I vaguely remember NOTHING. I assume from sheer gut instinct (LIKE GUTS! LIKE GUTS WORLD! LIKE GUTS WORLD PRO WRESTLING! I'M FUCKING DELIRIOUS! SOMEONE DRIVE ME HOME!) that if he sucked I would have some sort of revulsion to his name appearing on my vieo feed and I would have GLOSSED over this match. But no and no. I watched Daisuke have a totes MUGA clinic with Mr Gannesukke a few days ago. Yoshino has the belt- THE GUTS BELT! - and Yoshino also has teeny teeny teeny paunts. They start off with assorted armdrags and a nearfall and then they stare at each other and plot the next move. Hmmmm. Maybe GUTS World is a MUGA off-shoot; I would find that to be awesome and also find it very much in keeping with feds that I could become addicted to- give me an excuse GUTS World. They go Strong Style with the shoulderblocks that Daisuke wins. I hope that they go to four minutes of a head scissors- head lock sequence to drive me back into the arms the old love of the Tasumi Fujinami-ism and Osamu Nishimura-esqueness. Yoshino goes to the floor after being kicked in the stomach, so folks are selling stuff. Daisuke does a few dropkicks and elbow drops and then procures the 7/8ths Sid Eudy chinlock but they don't go long before Yoshino hits the ropes, disrupting the attempt at an early total MUGA vibe. Daisuke hits a comically low impact backbreaker to set up a perfectly fine Eddy Senton over the ropes to a prone Yoshino on the mat and this match is lethargic as I am, but I'm digging the lethargy, as it is a sign of the Dradition mantra I keep repeating to myself when I try to get a handle on the style of the GUTS World. Old Style wrestling has a deliberate pace and the rewards of staying in the match as it unfolds can be very rewarding if the two wrestlers are good at telling the tale. Yoshino hits two dropkicks to TRANSITION to offense and BRINGS THE MUGA with a fucking Cravate! Then a Chinlock into a headlock into a 3/4 Nelson into a 3/4 Nelson Strangle Hold Gamma! Yoshino is showing his MUGA cred and I will follow him (even after they fuck this match up by doing a Ruckus/Nate Hatred 200 finishers finish the last five minutes- I AM FUTURE DEAN). After the rope break they decide to beat on each other in the middle of the ring and they both lay it in and I got no problem with it. Daisuke gets dropkicked off the toprope after going up for his Frog Splash of maybe his Elbow Drop allowing Yoshino to hit a pretty spectactular Tope Con Hilo afterwards. Daisuke takes a DDT into the ring between the second and third ropes LIKE A KING and that is nastiest DDT I've seen in a while. Yoshino is a fun junior heavyweight. He's all highflying but he is also a nasty little bastard in every other aspect of his offense- which is key. Yoshino goes waaaay old school by staking the head with his feet on both sides of a prone Daisuke and twisting the neck by twisting his body- like El Hijo del Santo's spot, but also the super 1970s stomping of the head while you hold it between your ankles. I don't think I've seen that move in like 30 years. I think Flair used to do it back when he was this methodical in the ring. It's so strange to see a match this ponderous. Nothing rushed, everything sold, every move meaning something. It's a psychology that is almost completely lost. I can see why it has died, as this match doesn't bring the craziness at a fast enough rate, but Yoshino on offence- as he cravates Daisuke through the ropes to run on the floor and dropkick him on the face as Daisuke leans on the apron, the set-up is true and the damage is sold. I love that every sequence is worked off of a chinlock- as I assume they are working this where they guy in the chinlock is calling the spot. They get up and trade chops until Yoshino cuts him off with a dropkick into the corner and hits a running forearm into the corner and they trade kicks to the stomach. Daisuke goes on offense by hitting a dragonscrew. Yoshino sells it in the corner as Daisuke runs over and hits a strasight up Fisherman Suplex and a Flying Cross-body block for two! Daisuke hits two two running forearms to the face to set-up a Half Crab and they finish begins (In a fauntasy world it turns out- MORE FUTURE DEAN!) when Daisuke does a couple of Indian Dethlok variations into a Romero Special to allow Daisuke to get in his version of the Flair Shinbreaker. He goes for another and Yoshino tries to leg lariat out but missed, giving Daisuke the opening to sink in the Figure-Four leglock. They roll through a few times like alligators but Yoshino gets rolled all the way over so it just puts him farther in the middle of the ring. He finally hits the ropes and does really nice desperation Dos Caras-level lucha roll-up spinning through into a Crippler Crossface. Yoshino is pretty fucking good. I love how he keeps rolling through the crossface to keep him in the center. Daisuke escapes by turning it into a pinning predicament. The upside of a ponderous MUGA-style match is that you really note the cool mat wrestling at the end. The match has slowly built up to this: Daisuke has found a way to hurt Yoshino by working the knee and getting the figure four. Yoshino has taken Daisuke to the mat and uses what he has left to torque the shit out of Daisuke's neck. Now they are both vulnerable and both are selling the damage. (THIS would turn out to be the end of the psychologically sound section of the match. It was an intersting 20 minutes- FUTURE DEAN) This is pretty deep match until the finish where hit a couple too many finishers and the selling gets a little sporadic. Having watched the Daisuke/Gannesukke match, I remember the finish was about Daisuke not being able to hit the Dragon Suplex and then winning he finally does. They do that here where Yoshino fights out of the Daisuke Dragon Suplex attempt and just CRUSHES Daisuke with a PREPOSTEROUSLY high angle Juvie Driver. And then an EVEREST German Suplex and maybe I read the results wrong. (It is about here that I started realizing that this match was going straight to hell. Around here is where they should gotten to the finish. Eight minutes later...- FUTURE DEAN! THE AMAZING FUTURE DEAN!) Oh, Daisuke catches him on the way up and beats on him at the top of the turnbuckle to hit a toprope suplex and then hits a Frog Splash and then there are a thousand suplexes: Germans, Dragons, Tequila Sunrises, screwdrivers, squaredrivers. So yeah, this match goes off the rails after a pretty good body of the match. After 15 finishers the crowd could give a shit. I join the crowd though I don't hate these guys. It just goes to show you what the guiding force of a Mr Gannesukke does for your MUGA match. Reel it in and keep focused or you get this. Man, the finish is a wreck- with Daisuke winning with his 700th forearm to the face- for three this time instead of two! I will still follow the GUTS World because there was enough MUGA in the beginning to counteract the 2005 CZW at the end- but yeah, I think this negates 1/2 of the coolness of the Gannesuke match so GUTS WORLD is still in the rotation, it is more precarious this week. DAISUKE! YOUR NEW CHAMPION! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a69awmbggBs

WELCOME TO THE DEATH VALLEY DRIVERETTE 08142015! Sometimes wrestling sneaks up on you and kisses you on the mouth. ~!~ I GOTTA WATCH THIS MATCH ANYWAY! 5.) DAISUKE HARADA vs ATSUSHI KOTOGE- PRO WRESTLING NOAH- 8/5/2015- [RASMUSSEN]: There are some things in this world that just exist and you can't really explain why: Lynyrd Skynard not breaking up forever after Ronnie Van Zandt died; The substituting of the word "gun" for "bitch" in the radio version of "The Devil Goes Down To Georgia" (Calling the devil a bitch is beyond the pale. What if it was Hitler? Do these shitheads want to hug Hitler? What the fuck? Fuck those assholes and fuck Charlie Daniels for even recording that version. Have some integrity.); .38 Special having three guitar players and two drummers but sound just like every other Southern rock band; and 28 minutes of wrestling between two NOAH junior heavyweights that doesn't include exploding barbed-wire or a 15 minute intermission where the CMLL ring girls dance to Cold Gin by Kiss. Nope. Just straight up Harada versus Kotoge for actually it looks more like 22 minutes. Somebody posted it on the internet THUS there was a demand somewhere for it. People at the Differ Ariake paid cold hard cash to watch it live. They didn't flee from their seats and pour into the streets as soon as the first arm-wringer clued them in that this going long. It's on my dailymotion feed and THUS- AS IS MY WONT- I would watch five minutes of it at least, and if it actually drew me in, I would feel obligated- TO MYSELF- to watch the rest. I watched five minutes of it after posting it the Internet Match Of The Year thread- not as a candidate but more of a concise version of everything I've written so far here- and Kotoge is making a case for me to like him because the first five minutes made me re-think the whole match and thus HERE WE ARE! HAND IN HAND LIKE LOVERS ARE SUPPOSED TO! You reading this and Me writing this and from this point on, writing about this match and then I will come back when it is all over and try to figure out how and why I liked this or hated this and hopefully you'll have a laugh or two and I will find some kind of insight into this. So here we go. The dullest, most unappealing aspect of Puroresu- skinny junior heavyweights- going at it for 22 minutes, as if you would give a fuck. I am here to give the fuck that no one else in their right mind would give. ENJOY THE FUCK. GIVEN. Hook-em up. I dig Kotoge. He has the strangest worked punches in wrestling- that actually work. They are like Barry Windham's punches. Barry Windham was a fucking great wrestler for all you kids who weren't around back in the day. He had these really cool punches that did the thing that nobody until now- with Kotoge (and a few examples that the beloved readers of this review will remind me of, one hopes) could do- he threw punches that were obviously worked, but they were also so cool looking that you actually bought them as an entity of WRESTLING and wrestling unto itself. Windham's punches were nothing like Dick Murdock's or Jerry Lawler's punches where you go, "Oh man, those look legit but other wrestlers talked about how feather light they were." Windham's were all about the shoulder dropping when he would punch up and it became like a very short dance, and it was TRUE art because it became a reality created by the artist and you the viewer saw the TRUENESS of the art. THUS when Windham "this is me punching someone in the face" you didn't say back "this is you PRETENDING to punch someone in the face", you said " why, you ARE punching someone in the face and this is now a part of my wrestling knowledge". He created an extention of the pre-conceived rules of wrestling and willed through innate talent and perfect execution a new way to convey a punch to the face. So yeah, Kotoge is like that. That makes him kinda fascinating. Harada is perfectly fine. He doesn't lean into a boot that he is running into like someone I would actively seek out to follow (so far. This is Dean in the future and this assessment CHANGES! SPOILERS! ARE FOR PUSSIES!). Kotoge headbutts a motherfucker like he isn't there to just slap his thigh a lot and dropkick people while they are sitting down. Harada starts making me love this early by Death Valley Driving Kotoge into the apron. I think it was Tenryu and Kobashi that created the accepted belief- a belief that all wrestling fans have bought into, that any move done on the apron or off the apron is as devastating as the same move done off the toprope to the mat. I try not to think about it too much because I like things that aren't much more dangerous looking a lot more dangerous- and this Apron Concept is the pinnacle currently. I remember how cool the Airplane Spin was when I was a kid, and then everybody thought about it too much and realized that it was kind of stupid. And the next thing you know, Paul doesn't have a respected finisher anymore and turns his anger on Jimmy Valient, Valient's street people... and eventually... Big Mama. Heartbreaking. I would also add the Claw and the Heartpunch to this list. Harada lays on the floor a while though it was Kotoge who took the impact, and if they want to fill the extra time allotted to them by selling stuff, I can get behind that. Harada stomps like a junior heavyweight but does start leaning into his forearms- one of which he REALLY lays into Kotoge's chest of which Kotoge sells it like he is in LOVE and his heart just skipped a beat and now he's dying from his heart beating wrong now. This is cautionary tale about the youth reading this falling in love! Don't do it kids! Smoke cigarettes instead! Why don't other wrestlers do this match structure? When you know you are going long, don't do ten minutes of head scissors and arm-wringers. Do big nasty things and actually sell them for a while. Maybe this match is genius. Harada body slams Kotoge and it is enough for Harada to actually hit a toprope elbow smash- as this becomes the opposite of a MENG match, in that wrestling didn't affect MENG at times, wrestling really really affects these two in this match. New ideas in wrestling psychology- I wasn't planning on that when I woke up this morning. Harada wrenches Kotoge's head and tries to break his neck like Pam in ARCHER did to her last remaining kidnapper, but slowly and not so lethally. Kotoge elbows out and hits a sunset flip for two, then hitting a leg lariat, of which, Harada sells the FUCK out of- which I don't think I have actually ever seen. They run at each other and Kotoge hits him in the face with a running knee and they crawl around on the mat like Misawa and Tsuruta after 35 minutes. This is the anti-junior heavyweight match. I back its play 100% Kotoge does the Ode To Tajiri thigh slappy kick because he goes straight into an INVERTED Tarantula With Handstand- so there are junior heavyweight shitty vestiges in here still. They then run the ropes and Kotoge hits a just BEAUTIFULLY timed Running Diamond Cutter that Harada Misawa sells by kicking out at 2 98/100ths. Kotoge procures the Sharpshooter for a moment but Harada hits the ropes so Kotoge body slams him and goes up top but he plods along so the level of selling he did for Harada's bodyslam is equal to his own body slam, thus making the fact that Harada catches him at the top of the turnbuckle psychologically sound. I like the tight shot of the two wrestlers struggling for dominance to hit the move off the top, because they do little things to convey the struggle: re-adjusting stances, punches to the stomach, and especially leverage as Kotoge tries to avoid the inevitable top rope suplex. Post inevitable toprope suplex, both crawl to a vertical base without even a pin attempt, as the time recovering justified it, I would say- and they start punching each other in the face. Kotoge's punches- I swear, works of art. Harada's forearms- good strong style forearms. This is a good batch of guys beating each other to death in the middle of the ring (possibly my next Airplane Spin Concept victim). Kotoge ends it by sneaking in a headbutt and hitting a Toprope Flying Cross-body Block! Just like Mil Mascaras! But Harada was prone on the mat so it would suck more. Harada desperately kicks out but it looks like the beginning of the end- unless they are channelling the structure of the Honma-Ishii match, which would actually be three days into their future. I SMELL A LAWSUIT! Harada sells it like a motherfucker. I will start watching his matches. Kotoge crushes the back of Harada's skull with a headbutt and just runs and punts Harada right in the face. This is a great fucking match because it a juniors match based on damage, the selling of the damage and the response to the damage- en lieu of killing time until the most spectacular finisher makes the crowd think they've seen a great wrestling match. (Dean from the future~! here. I realize that that is the most dickish I've ever said about wrestling, but we are super fans here at the DVDVR. This ain's a damn Sunday school!) Harada kicks out and this is the beginning of the end. Harada finally gets in a running forearm to go on offense after the endless drubbing by Konoge, hitting a SUDDENLY LETHAL Leg Lariat before hitting one of those new-fangled Shoulderbreakers that looks like they start off as a Falcon Arrow. Awesome! Harada goes for the fucking EVEREST German Suplex to finish Konoge off with one last spurt of offense, but Konoge hits the ropes and holds on, allowing Harada to bounce off the ropes and fly into the back of Konoge's head with a forearm. Suddenly. Konoge is desperate and hits a roll-up and tries to get his own Butterfly suplex in, but Harada counters out and goes for his German again in a really nice sequence where both of them are both doing roll-ups and also trying to get the opponent into position for the respective finishers! So complex! I find it de-light-ful. Kotoge fights out of that and comes off the ropes and Harada just fucking CRUSHES Kotoge's head with knee to the face and this match is FUCKING AWESOME. Harada gets in another big forearm and murderlizes Kotoge with his GTO variation for TWO! Ah crap, is there going to be eight minutes of finishers? I was there when they ruined a great match! One day these young punks will learn..Oh wait! Harada grabs the corpse of Kotoge and hits the German Suplex With A Bridge that he was fighting half the match to land and THAT IS THE FINISH! This match motherfucking GREAT. Ah, the last 6 minutes is Global Junior Heavyweight League Trophy presentation. So yeah, 19ish minute? You got no excuse not to watch this. Don't be a pussy. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x31b12r_daisuke-harada-vs-atsushi-kotoge-noah_sport

WELCOME TO DEATH VALLEY DRIVERETTE 08132015! More of the wrestling watching as the gimmick kinda morphs into Singles Going Steady, but with numbering! FUCK YEAH! NUMBERS, DADDY! ~!~ I GOTTA WATCH THIS MATCH ANYWAY. 3.) TOMOAKI HONMA vs TOMOHIRO ISHII- NEW JAPAN PRO WRESTLING- 8/12/2015- [RASMUSSEN]: Today I take a swing at clearing out some matches on my dailymotion Watch Later list. This is from yesterday's G-1 Climax and it is a sequel to a pretty boss match from earlier this year. These two guys operate at about the same level on the card and it's always fun when they try to show which guy is The Best Guy Who Is Good At Making The Guy We Are Actually Pushing Look Good. Here, in New Japan, YOU are in shock as they do a Strong Style opening! THE STRONG STYLE! RIGHT HERE I NEW JAPAN! IT'S FINALLY HERE! Shoulder blocks for as far as the eye can see! Lariat competitions of epic proportions! Wistful memories of a thousand Scott Norton/Hiroshi Hase matches! This has ridiculous headbutts by Ishiii early- as a taunt I assume because Honma makes with the headbutts quite often- and Ishii also really lays in a few chops before settling into a 1/4 Eudy chinlock that he TRANSFORMS into a Beyond Syd Eudy Chinlock by driving his forearm and crossfacing into Honma's eyes. It is little things like that makes Ishii so lovable and this is two days in a row that the crossface has amade a normal wrestling hold almost spectacular- yesterday's being Ludark Shaitan creating a heel version of the ten-count punches in the corner by replacing the ten punches with one really long crossface across the eyes and nose. When I see that, I am reminded of the whoever the GENIUS was that first thought to dropkick someone while in a Giant Swing- so basic yet made a dopey move really fucking great. Ishii returns the headbutt to the equation- and actually, Ishii does the Strong Style headbutt which is the BattlARTS headbutt which looks totally fucking nasty and real. Honma does the pro style headbutt which is more like a in-ring tope, thus Ishii isn't really taunting Honma, it's two different styles. Ishii is complaining to the ref that Honma is a big fuckin pussy because Honma is laying on the mat trying to remember who he is and why he is in a ring with a maniac. Then Ishii beats on him some more and then he kinda just lightly kicks him in the head (like Koji Kanemoto used to always do back when we were all in love with New Japan Juniors) as Honma once again lies on the ground, baffled, terrified, out-of-sorts. They do this for a littel while until they finally get back to a vertical base and the psychological section of Ishii proving that he just lords over this punk eases into the active section where Honma now must move on from his position as Ishii's bitch- onward into the future of what he be frrom this moment on! (I added this after watching the match because the psychology of this whole section makes so much more sense in hindsight) They fight for a suplex- Ishii loses the struggle but then he completely sandbags Honma- forcing Honma to legit power him up and thus hit the awesome totally legit EVEREST Brainbuster! Then Honma comes around to the GRAVITY of this match, realizing that he can eaither be a punk-ass also-ran and Ishii's eternal BITCH or he can slowly let it sink in that there is a real measure of urgency to his effort in this match! (More post-match hindsight insight.) Honma slowly starts working stiffer and stiffer until he is really driving the forearms into Ishii's head. And then Ishii- totally over having to once again keep this motherfucker in his place- responds by just fucking slaughterizing Honma with forearms. Ishii hits a non-Everest Brainbuster and Honma no-sells it to run into a Released German as Honma is filled with urgency but not with all the same skills and talent to match!. They very violently chop each other and lariat each other to set up the both of the fucking MOTHERFUCKING fucking MOTHERFUCKING KILLING each other with chops- and the people who like pro wrestling would like this match- this part anyway. The chopping goes on for a while to the point where they actually start selling it, which where I like the Big Japan version of this spot more. They don't have the Kobashi-Sasaki baggage to work through and can get straight to the Chops Actually Affect Me part as opposed to the We Mush Get In 125 Chops Because That Is The Baseline Of Our Version Of Strong Style. Finally, Ishiii gets him good one time into the throat and Honma hits the mat agony (And one assumes from the postmatch that Ishii really did get him one really good right on the trachea). Ishii drags him up and chops him across the throat again- to your delight. They go up top and Ishii hits the fucking BEAUTIFUL Toprope Brainbuster. They do some things to put some distance between Honma taking a toprope braingbuster and Honma going on offense, which I guess is long enough if you can get past the fact that a Toprope Brainbuster is basically replacing a Boston Crab spot in this match, but that shipped sailed a while ago. Honam goes on offense by hitting a DDT that Ishii does the Full Rob Van Dam Headstand Sell but with added Faces Of Horrible Pain added (and I can't remember anything else that Rob Van Dam that was ever better than how he sold DDTs). Then they go back to lariating each other- and they are really fucking slaughtering each other by this point, until Honma wins and does the running headbutt to Ishii's back which he uses to set up a thoroughly nasty K-DRILLAH~! to set-up a totally unsuccessful toprope headbutt. One wonders why still tries after missing 85% of the time. WHY! HE NEVERS WINS BECAUSE HE NEVER HITS THAT AND THAT IS THE BEGNNING OF HIS DOWNFALL EVERY TIME HE LOSES! Then he misses a headbutt to the corner and so Ishii pelts him with elbows and a Stiffest Lariat of 2015 and (from here on out anytime a wrestling sitting no the mat and someone does a move that he would usually do while his opponent is standing, I am going to refer to it as "Roaring" as if it were a variation of Masato Tanaka Roaring Elbow, Just so you don't think I am making shit up! Thanks, my beloved reader!) Roaring Lariat for two. Honma gets in a desperation counter Brainbuster to buy time before the inevitable- with the added bonus of Ishii trademark selling of the shoulder a little. Ishii and Honma trade assorted headbutts and you are excited- Ishii with the vicious It Must Suck To Wrestle Hi-styled, Hardway-Blood Headbutt, Honma with the more conventional running and bouncing style headbutts. Hey! Honma hits the Roaring Headbutt to Ishii's shoulder- and suddenly maybe Honma is winning this. (I actually wrote this before seeing the end.) Honma then channels the entire offense of Koshinaka but places his ass on his shoulders! The headbutt running off the ropes! The butt-butt but with his head there instead of his butt! The total Iceman King Parson's Cocoa Butt but with his head there instead his head! Wait...Total Iceman King Parsons Cocoa Butt! AND THEN..... Honma actually hits the fuckin toprope HEADBUTT! HOLY SHIT! HONMA WINS A MATCH OVER ISHII! Honma is now the finest Guy Who Will Put Over The Guy Who Is Being Pushed! The crowd goes totally apeshit for the Honma win. He goes total Onita postmatch and the crowd backs his play 100%. Children want his wrist tape! What a moment! http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x31fip9_tomoaki-honma-vs-tomohiro-ishii_sport 4.) MANABU SOYA vs SHOTARO ASHINO- WRESTLE-1- 8/8/2015- [RASMUSSEN}: I useta dig Manabu Soya when he was on the periphery of the Big Japan Strong Style contingent but then he went to Wrestle-1, the abyss of Dean's Wrestling Fandom until recently, because who the fuck knows what I'll be into from week to week. Ye see, I'm the primary breadwinner of the Rasmussen household and I gotta button that shit down most of the time- I can't lose my job, I can't endanger my marriage, I can't scar my children. The youth of the board may not understand yet, but it is a motherfucker. You think when you are young that you will be wild and free and party every fucking day and love all the ladies and be a general bad ass your whole life. I was like that. Drinking whiskey while listening to George Jones to go out and hang out at somebody's house and listen to records of the Go-Betwee... I mean NO! going to bar and tearing shit up and punching motherfuckers in the face and stealing kisses and shooting off guns on Grace Street while walking on top of cop cars! Fuck yeah, bitch! But yeah, sooner of later you get sick of eating macaroni and cheese with a can of peas mixed in and you get sick of going to bars and getting drunk all the time. So you start feeling the urge to settle down and then you meet somebody stable who doesn't annoy you and you don't annoy them and you decide to make a life together. One by one, the things that signified your freedon are replaced by an obligation and an actual PAY-OFF for the sacrifice. I don't know about anybody else, but I've got four kids and if I had my way, I'd have ten kids. Seriously. My children are the only REAL thing in my life- and its not that the rest of my life is shitty or anything, but children are the demarkation point for me milling around and staring at my shoes and my life actually starting. It's hard and boring to explain, but yeah, if my wrestling viewing gets scattershot and erratic, it's probably because there is very little things in my life that I can be random and scattershot about. ANNND thus I lost track of Manabu Soya. Plus he was always better in my mind than he was in the ring, so I was LOSING interest in him even before he disappeared from the internet places I would run across him. We all got on with our lives. Ashino is ROOKIE! I assume they have liked what they have seen because this is more of a straight up wrestling match than a match where Soya beats the fuck out a rookie. I mean, he DOES beat the fuck out of a rookie, but here the rookie beats the hell out of him too. It's exciting! I'm gonna watch! Ashino runs through the streamers and starts laying in on Soya- stomping him, dropkicking him, CLUBBING well beyond his meager weight! Soya chops him and makes him make crying faces that shows that these are really hurty because I assume they are- and body slams him and makes him look at his awesome three braid beard and makes Ashino sell his manhood short for not having facial hair comparable to Dark Ozz, the pinnacle of facial hair. So yeah, it's a rookie match early. Soya forearms the kidneys so it's CHERRY KOOL=AID IN THE TERLIT IN THE MORNING for the youngster! Ashino fires back out of the corner and chops Soya to the center of the ring and Soya crushes him with a chop and then makes with the unprotected backdrop to set up the fucking NASTY running forerarm to the face to get the first real nearpin. Then Soya does an Airplane Spin but its while Ashino is in a Modified Cobra Clutch, Very odd but I commend his variation on a common theme. He then goes into a traditional Boston Crab and this is actually a rookie match but it just doesn't feel like one- in my heart of hearts. Soya stands on his head as I write that to prove me wrong BUT Ashino then immediately hits a Released Belly To Belly Suplex when Soya charges at him, thus TRANSITIONING Ashino back to offense and THUS adding credence that this is the first match of Ashino's career to actually mean anything! WE WERE THERE WHEN IT ALL STARTED! YOU AND ME! Ashino charges and shoulder butts and forearms until Soya hits the mat, finishing it off with a really nice flying forearm into the corner. The part where Soya would cut him off and finish him off would be where he charges out of the corner and whips Ashino into the corner BUT Ashino charges out of the corner and hits another running forearm! We are there! This is really happening! His regular is starting as we watch! He doges a Soya Lariat and hits a Lateral fricking Suplex like this is 1976- and I weep at the Lateral Suplex Splendor! He does a low grade Gut-wrench Suplex like this is 1988 but it also has the felle of an EVEREST Gutwrnch Suplex which be redundant because the gutwrench part is power up without assistance into a suplex- so it would be a More EVEREST Than Usual Gutwrench Suplex- and I weep at the Gutwrench Suplex Vibrance yadda yadda yadda. Soya headbutts him in the back of the head and slams him a around a bit before sinking in another Boston Crab- this one longer and more draggy and elaborate, transitioning into a Single Crab before Ashino hits the ropes- further proving that he definately is more than dropkicks and European Uppercuts from here on out! Ashino gets in two quick near flashpins and the crowd is aroused! Soya says, "Enough of this shit" and hits an EVEREST, a true EVEREST Brainbuster and that is the end of the story of Ashino's first ma.... NO WAY! He kicks out at two. Ashino beats on Soya in the middle of the ring in a lsat ditch effort to pull the upset but Soya crushes his skull with a headbutt and fucking murders him with a short lariat and then Death Valley Drives him for the TWO COUNT!?! Sould it be? Could this be Ashino's first shining moment in the SUN!??! Could this be the TIME and PLACE and ST... oh, Soya makes him submit to a Sharpshooter and the dream finally ends. But can the REALLY die? Postmatch, people I don't recognize yell at Soya. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x315u6b_manabu-soya-vs-shotaro-ashino-wrestle-1_sport

DEATH VALLEY DRIVERETTE 08122015! I didn't see this one coming. ~!~ I GOTTA WATCH THIS MATCH ANYWAY. This is a new thing I'm starting where I try to review all the matches I am going to watch anyway, so I might as well review what I can. There used to be this thing when I was a kid called "magazines". One of these magazines was called Creem magazine and it was about rock music and was very key in introducing me and other dopes from the suburbs about punk rock and the New Wave. I remember first time I heard Joy Division in college in 1984, I remember that I had read about them four years earlier in Creem. It was one of those kind of magazines- a way to making you smarter and hipper than you actually were. People my age and older who read Creem were very influenced by it because it was actually fun to read- as opposed to sounding like it has a stick shoved up its ass- like Rolling Stone. My general ideas of reviewing things come from my memories of how Creem did things, in that fucking anything goes as long as you get across the general idea of what the value is of what you were writing- and I'm sure they also had an index where they do a wad of reviews together. Or maybe not, it was like 40 years ago. Anyway, I'm gonna write while watching stuff on my Watch Later list and hopefully 40% of it won't suck ass. Or at least will suck ass in a comical, easy-to-write-jokes about way! Holy Shit! Let's do it! 1.) ALAS DE ACERO/ ARAMIS/ ETERNO vs ESPADA DE PLATA/ KEISER DRAGO/ OFICIAL 911- IWRG- 8/5/2015: I may be a really good-looking man- you can't fight, why do try?- and I may be a fine guy to hang out with, but I am not a rich man. I got four kids and a mortgage and two perfectly fine cars to maintain- and one of my kids just started at VCU and the other ones think I'm made of fucking money and so on and so forth. Luckily, the internet allows me to keep my wrestling addiction pretty cost-free- but I do pay ten bucks a month for the FIOS Spanish band of stations so I can get the Puerto Rican wrestling (initially), but also the IWRG. IWRG is odd. When it is good it is GREAT! When it is not good, it is like listening to the collective soundtrack work of Phil Collins. After eating a turkey. A turkey soaked in Mackeson Triple Stout. After being hit in the head with a brick. Yet, somehow more punishing and life-defeating. But no matter which you get, the matwork is good and 46 minutes in they will hit some high spots. This match is actually looking like it is in the middle, which is counter to the point I just made- so yeah, there is mediocre IWRG, but this tilts slightly towards Good That Is Great rather than the Turkey Brick "Against All Odds" Is The To Live and Die In LA Title Track IWRG. 911 does a good powerbomb for a luchadore is all I come away for the first fall. Second fall they brawl to the floor and maybe this IS fucking great. Speaking of great, the leather/alligator-skin oficial's pants sported by 911 are fucking AWESOME. I love that he pulls the shirt off one of the scrawny technicos so the little guy gets the full brunt of his chops! And a nice dropkick. 911 rules this fucking match. I want blood! They de-shirt another technico and then the THIRD! They take turns chopping them and beating on them. This is fun. Then 911 missile dropkicks the fattest technico directly in the balls as the other two hold him at toprope dropkick level. This is good rudo-ing. For ME. I mean, it's probably not the best idea in the world to make the technicos look like total pussies who are just getting the fuck beaten out of them as they quiver in fear, but I grew up watching Blackjack Mulligan, Beat some heat onto these pantywaistes and make me respect them for surviving. Fuck yes. The technicos fire back with assorted assisted headscissors and hit a fucking AWESOME out of control triple tope suicida where half of everybody involved lands teeth first in the rail. This sets up the Technicos winning the second fall and they look that much stronger because 911 beat the dogshit out of them for 80% of the fall. Between falls, I look up the technico so I can have some idea of who they are. I sorta knew Eterno was the fat, unmasked one. Aramis is the scrawniest, wormiest one. Good luck separating the rudos who aren't wearing oficiales pants. Cagematch.net even throws up it's overly scrubbed Germanic hands. Third fall is more of Oficial 911 making me give a fuck about this match by setting the bar for the ass-beating the technicos are going to take, which is pretty high. Huh, Aramis, for a scrawny, wormy, emaciated guy will stand in the middle of the ring and lay it in. Eterno is pretty limber for a who is approaching the I Am A Load section of his life- we've all been there my brother, ain't nuthin wrong with it. He is also very mattress like when one the non-descript rudos topes the fuck out of him. Alero submits the other rudo and then 911 gets rid of Alas De Acero to allow Eterno and 911 to go at for our big finale. LET THE FAT BOYS GO AT IT! Man, 911 does a fucking BEAUTIFUL Jerry Estrada bump to the floor and I stare in amazement. This is like a 1997 CMLL Classic Undercard match if you took Arkangel, Karloff LaGarde, Zumbido and Ultraman Jr and locked them in a basement and starved them for a month. Alas, Alas De Acero hits a corkscrew plancha to allow Eterno to pin one of the Guys Who Also Wrestled With 911 somehow and 911 is pissed about somebody who was eliminated hitting a ragtag corkscrew plancha on him, thus allowing Eterno to do.... something.... to win. Postmatch, several rudos- including some guys from the back storm the ring and beat the shit out of the technicos few a little while until a couple more technicos show up and everybody stands around and I look at my keyboard as I type and look back and realize that I'm really sure which side is which. Either way, THE RING IS FILLED WITH 9 REALLY SKINNY GUYS WITH MASKS THAT ALL VARIATIONS OF GRAN GUERRERO! But this was pretty fucking choice for a totally random IWRG match. I give 7 stars and 3 clovers. 2.) CRAZY STAR/ FELINA METALIKA vs LUDARK SHAITAN/ KEIRA- CARALUCHA PROMOTIONS- 8/6/2015: We here at the Death Valley Driver Video Review and attached Message Board, in-house, follow a few things nobody else prolly gives a shit about. Like Pro Wrestling Shi-en (which HOLY FUCK! has a page at http://www.puroresucentral.com/ShienPro.html ), our boy HASEGAWA from Apache Pro- who is so UNDERGROUND~! that he doesn't even show up on Puroresu Central's Apache roster page- much less Cagematch.net. Another wrestler I follow is Ludark Shaitan who was trained by Silver King and who actually has a Cagematch profile (http://www.cagematch.net/?id=2&nr=9993). I fucking LOVE it when one of her matches show up on my YouTube feed because she is a lot like HASEGAWA in that she will wrestle fucking ANYWHERE. The upside is that sketchier places in Japan are kind of like Big Lots parking lots and county fairs. Sketchy places in Mexico are sketchy places in FUCKING MEXICO so it's truly awesome. Plus she is basically a garbage wrestler- and thus is the hottest garbage wrestler on earth, THUS you get the whole Megumi Kudo-like fan boys jacking it with one hand-stabbing themselves in the forehead with the other hand mentality. This is a more upscale building for a Ludark match , but Felina Metalika looks like they took a skinny waitress from the Speed & Brisco Truck Stop and put a mask on her. If she breaks out a Virginia Slim and starts smoking while waiting on the apron, I will not be surprised. Her thigh tattoo is soooooooooo astounding in its home-madeness. Crazy Star is peppy and a little thick as the young men say these days. Ludark is evil in this or maybe the crowd in San Juan just loves all the lady wrestlers. It's heart warming. Keira is a big mean lady. Ludark tells the ref to go fuck himself when he tries to touch her so they definately projecting: EVIL. Ludark is soooo awesome. Both teams pose for pictures. BUT Ludark and Keira attack them from behind while the technicos are doing their Run DMC poses. OH MAN, I THINK I LOVE KEIRA! She will beat the shit out of a gal. GOTTDAM, she is the nastiness. I'm not sure what the crowd is chanting, but I'm guessing it is unkind to Keira- as she is fuckikng buzzsaw beating the fuck out the beloved technicas. This is quality rudo ass-beating. Ludark goes after Felina's mask and the crowd is suitably stoked into hating YOUR eviiiiilllll BAD GIRLS! The Youth Of Mexico are out of luck because this isn't on television- this would go over big what with the DUEL TURA SANTANA's in the ring, stomping the hell out of people. I really can't express how fucking great Ludark and Keira are in this first fall. Soo fucking stiff. Ludark smacks Crazy Star on the buttocks region and Keira fucking crushes her with a SUWA dropkick to the head and then they crush Felina in the corner and it is motherfucking beautiful. Keira smacks Crazy Star around at ringside and calls the crowd a bunch of pussies and they take the first fall. Ludark tells the ref to go fuck himself again as he tries to raise her hand. The technicas hug each other outside on the floor and try to gather their wits to combat such total and utter EVIL. Second fall, Ludark wants this stupid bitch to shake her hand! C'mon, what are you afraid of? OH. You should be afraid of Keira dropkicking in the back! The bear mauling of the poor technicas continues and you don't dig this- really.- go fuck yourself. AT EXACTLY 12:00 IS THE PINNACLE OF LUCHA LIBRE IN 2015! Holy shit, do I love this. Ludark goes up top to do the face ten-punch spot but instead starts crossfacing her across the eyes and nose because this match proves IT CAN SOMEHOW GET BETTER. Crazy Star finally gets on offense by reversing this into a Lyger bomb and the technicas try to come close to match the stiffness of the first caida and THEY are waaay fun on offense too, but it is a major step down- but they get it a try and I give them credit for that. Felina gets the fall with a nice Swanton and then they throw Keira in the corner and Felina picks up Crazy Star's big ass and Valley Drives her into Kiera in the corner. I back this finish to the second fall 100%. Between falls, the rudos taunt Crazy Star at ringside and it truly is a Russ Meyer film come to life. The third fall starts with Ludark stomping on Felina and Felina countering with some good lowgrade armdrags and a nice flying head scissors. THEN the two big gals, Keira and Crazy Star, talk shit about each other and smack each other in the face in the middle of the ring. They roll around and do some stuff to get to Felina hitting a Reverse Cradle Piledriver on Kudark for a pinfall attempt that Keira breaks up with a kick that was straight out of a fucking BattlARTS tag match. God damn. Keira smashes Felina's face with a face smasher. The rudos cheat to set up Ludark hitting a PREPOSTEROUSLY nasty brainbuster for the pin and then Keira hits a German with a bridge for the other pin. This time they both tell the ref to fuck off. Postmatch, they rip off Felina Metalika's mask and Ludark shines Keira;s boots with it. SOOOOOOO MOTHERFUCKING GREAT. 8 ZILLION STARS

DEATH VALLEY DRIVERETTE 08052015! Writing in-between the working takes discipline, so yeah, this took longer than it should have. I WILL EDIT LATER! ~!~ SINGLES GOING STEADY! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! KAMUI vs DAISUKE MASAOKA- PRO WRESTLING FREEDOMS- 7/29/2015- [RASMUSSEN]: I love this match. I forced my two sons to watch it and they liked it- and they haven't been impressed by anything since I showed them the Onita exploding barbed wire matches a few months back. The big debate at that point after those matches was all about how painful or not painful the fireworks exploding on your back would be. I should get them to re-watch those matches now that the bottom line of pain was established by assorted NFL players blowing off their fingers over the summer. Something to look forward and also a parenting moment- "Note, son, that at no time does Terry Funk ever put his fingers near the exploding part. That is key to having fireworks blow up on your body but not actually disfigure you! Hand daddy that m-80 and I'll show you! Let me show you something about daddy's crazy ass Hawaiian side..." They will appreciate a valuable life lesson from their old man! And they could have a commemorative index and ring finger to remember me long after I am gone. Then I'll tell them how to not drink themselves to death in their 20's! I am fountain of experience and useful knowledge! I fixed the fence with three old belts! (True.))) So I forced them to watch the end of this and they were stoked as any boy would be when seeing people doing really stupid things in dangerous situations. SO I share this with you, fellow lover of Japanese people doing hilariously psychotic acts of violence in postmodern industrial approximations of the apocalypse. Daisuke Masaoka is a pretty fresh faced 31 year old and he doesn't seem dead inside for a guy of whom it says on Cagematch.net, "Promotion: Pro Wrestling FREEDOMS." Kamui's profile says the same thing but he wears a mask, so I can't gauge how dead inside he is. Cagematch.net does tell us that he was trained by Mr Gannosuke which may explain why this garbage match beats the living dogshit out of all your Big Japan main event Off-Broadway-Saw II-Revival/Traveling Geek Show. FMW was awesome because it had death matches but it was TRANSCENDENT because it was based in wrestling for the most part- and Mr Gannosuke was a LOT of that. Thus, it is established that FREEDOMS is a super sleazy Japanese indie, mostly in the vane of Onita Pro or SECRET BASE! They have a decent crowd and it has the feel of ECWA during the Super 8- when random Delawareans wander down from the hills to the armoury to watch the wrestling and finally get all the kids some of those cheese fries the city folk always talk about. Kamui attacks BEFORE THE BELL ON THE RAMP WITH A CHAIR and A CHAIN! He makes a man use the prepositions! The chaos of the brawling through the crowd is almost W*ING-esque in its energy and chaos- energy and chaos are key to me liking your garbage fed. Kamui chokes him with a chain right in front of the camera- FOR YOU!- and they brawl all over the room with Kamui pretty much controlling the action. They take it to the ring and Kamui hits a TOTAL 5/4ths Mike Awesome/Masato Tanaka chairshot on Masaoka after choking him some more with a chain. The little seat flew out and everything! Yeaaa! Kamui gets a two count and Masaoka sells the damage as Kamui throws some chairs on the mat from a stack under turnbuckle- thus keeping the annoying elaborate set-ups to a minimum. The body slam on the stack of chairs looks great because it looks painful, an idea that a lot of garbage wrestlers miss when instead going for maximum spewage of blood. Flourescent tubes don't look painful, landing on a five chairs directly on your back is an experience we can picture and EMPATHIZE with. You KNOW it sucked to take that bump and THAT IS THE POINT OF TAKING A BUMP. You are doing something that looks painful and you have learned the secrets of wrestling to minimize the pain- but being slammed onto an uneven surface is going to hurt. And this looks like it hurts. Your bump is successful from a viewer's standpoint. The question for the professional wrestler is how much of making it look successful actually causes damage to your body and was it worth it. I've seen guys do a whole lot more and not get the same effect- mostly because the bump was more painful but it doesn't convey anything to the viewer. I mean guys in Big Japan death matches go through a table from a 20 foot scaffold for a farging two count. Some shit just isn't thought through. Here, Masaoka sells it about as much I imagine it hurt. Kamui continues working the back and goes back to choking him to death with a chain until Masaoka escapes the chain as Kamui tries to hang him over the toprope- like Tom Pritchard being assaulted by Dirty White Boy in the greatest thing in wrestling ever. Masaoka hits a spinning wheel savate cresecent kick to the face of Kamui off the apron and also gets the chain. AND SOME MEASURE OF REVENGE! by slamming the chain across Kamui's back. He also lays in the forearms so I'm loving this, the psychology, the stiffness, the.... aaaaaaand they completely fuck up a Frankensteiner in the middle of the ring. So yeah, you get reminded of some things before you get to anoint these two as the second coming of Hayabusa and Mr Gannesuke. Masaoka recovers with a really nice Asai Moonsault. They go back in the ring hit a bunch of stuff to make you almost forget the Frankensteiner- and I dig that they have a whole nearfall section right in the middle of the ring before going into the lunacy of the ending. The best part is another nasty slam into chairs that Masaoka takes likes a KING before bumping to the floor off the toprope. Kamui is fixing TO GET THE VAN! but Masaoka hits him with a 3/4 Awesome/Tanaka chair shot and they post each other and actually sell chair shots in the 2015 and everything. They fight back to the van and kick each other in the face and the crowd is all standing because its a FUCKING VAN MATCH. Kamui gets behind the wheel of the van and whacks into Masaoka like he a DC hooker on 13th street. Kamui puts Masaoka on a board across four chairs and ASCENDS THE VAN! It is at this point that one wonders why he doesn't actually just slam him on the ground and run over him with the van- but then one ASSUMES that one of the stipulations of the van rental was 1) no drinking while driving, 2) secondary drivers MUST be insured, and 3) any manslaughter convictions could be cause for forfeiture of the security deposit. So EN LIEU of death and murder, Masaoka throws a chair at Kamui and also ascends the van and they are doing the GREAT thing of beating each other to death to set up the spot that you and AUDIENCE knows will be the finish. The key to me is that they really beat the shit out of other. Kamui finally gets him into a Fireman's carry and Death Valley Drives him through the board to the floor and crushes Masaoka for THE WIN! Keep it simple and sometimes you pull off an indie garbage masterpiece. Your GARBAGE MATCH OF THE YEAR. Postmatch, they hug and I ain't even mad. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtANyp9SlOo /////////////////////////////////////////// KENGO MASHIMO vs RYOTA NAKATSU- DNA- 7/1/2015- [RASMUSSEN]: Ryota Nakatsu is a DDT rookie. According to Cagematch.net, this is his 32nd time in the ring. Oh man, I didn't realize that Mashimo is 36 years old. He's also 5' 11". I always figured he was a wee man. My perception is blurry. The vision dims.... I guess they are pushing young Nakatsu because I accidentally read the finish. Huhn? I assume this has a Hector Garza- Scott Hall finish? Either way, let's how enraged we can become. They keep it on the mat early, with Nakatsu trying to work the shoulder but the veteran Mishimo swarms all over him and rolls him around and balls him up and works on his five or six sleeper variations until settling on a keylock. Nakatsu spins out and hits the ropes and Mashimo has to sell some really odd strikes by Nakatsu in the mount- like Nakatsu has never actually seen anybody throw punches before and it trying to remember how it was described to him. He switches to the guard and then Mashimo does a knee lock into a STF. The match is the story of Mashimo schooling Nakatsu on the mat and then sinking in a submission. After a while, Mashimo opts to take it to the middle of the ring and collapses young Nakatsu by crushing his hamstring with a kick. Nakutsu does a double leg takedown does more really odd strikes before Mashimo can counter into an ankle lock and so far this is quite the rookie match. They kick each other and Nakutsu kicks like he is scared to hurt Mashimo. Mashimo is a Futen guy so he fucking crushes him with kicks. Nakatsu sells the leg a lot - which is good, but his offense sucks ass at this point, so this isn't as compelling as the last Mishimo match you saw. They have a wild flurry back and forth and suddenly this gets really fun. Nakatsu flies into a crossarmbreaker and Mashimo is totally panicked as he freaks out as he hits the ropes. Then Nakatsu hits a fucking NASTY German with a Bridge and Mashimo is freaking out again as he kicks out at 2!! THEN Nakatsu flies directly into another cross arm breaker that Moshimo powers out of and we are feeling Mashimo's desperation, like Drew Bledsoe reaching for his helmet as Tom Brady leads the offense to the winning drive. Nakatsu does another flurry of punches but Mashimo takes him to the mat into a crossface and does a fabulously awesome variation on the Rings Of Saturn. FOR THE WIN! The typo at Cagematch made this way more exciting than I thought it would be- as I was seeing how Mashimo was setting up to succumbing to a cross arm breaker by underestimating his opponent, THUS it was actually a surprise when he won! Maybe, this is more insideous than we think. DDT is a fucking lunatic organization- I mean they got their own OVW without actually being 1/500th the size of the WWE. Maybe this is a Russo-like concept of working the SMARTS~! by reporting the results wrong so people like me (or probabaly ONLY me) will be enraged that Mashimo is 36 years old and veteran of the indies and yet he is putting over this 24 year punk who had his first match in November. The SWERVE that Mashimo actually wins after a super spirited match by Nankatsu makes the match internet famous and they have a rematch where both GO OFF SCRIPT!! I need a fucking drink to sandblast that kind of retarded thinking out of head and out of my memory. So yeah, it was actually good by the end and the misinformation DELIGHTED me. ALSO. THE BEST FUCKING BEST PART. The best part, the indie handshake ends with Mashimo kicking him in the leg. This ain't Sunday school. BILLION STARS.

DEATH VALLEY DRIVERETTE 07312015! Sleeker and thinner today! Why that's not a creepy thing to say at all! I'll try to edit the second review at some point. ~$~ SINGLES GOING STEADY! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! DRAGON LEE vs KAMATIACHI- CMLL- 3/20/2015- [RASMUSSEN]: This is the Mask versus Mask match. A little of how the sausage is currently being made: lately, I've been going through my Dailymotion and YouTube Watch Later lists at night- while watching whatever THESE DAMN KIDS WANT TO WATCH (lately, America's Got Talent a.k.a. Daddy's Gonna Shoot Himself In The Fucking Head If This Thing Doesn't End. Hahaha! I kid. That Howie Mandel is a delight....) on my pc on the side and start with stuff that I figure will suck, and that I would not put myself through to review. THEN, if something jumps out at me while casually checking in on said maligned match, I'll save it. Thus, the NOZAWA vs MAZADA match that I will review at some point still lives on my list because they did fun brawling things in the crowd at the beginning and it was enough to PIQUE~! my interest. Meanwhile.... these two Dragon Lee vs Kamaitachi matches are also sitting here though I always intended to review them- because I love the whole Dragon Lee family and I think they are the gears that drive my current Luchga fandom, but they are still sitting here because the time has to be right. Writing about Lucha is tough. The psychology is completely different from other styles. Things that one hates in other style, one will celebrate in Lucha. You gotta be on your game or it will EAT YOU ALIVE! LIKE I AM A LARGE MOUTH BASS AND THE LUCHA IS A BEAR! A BEAR IN A CAPE! But I am feeling strong. I just had the beef with vegetables from Lucky China and the hot and sour soup, so I am energized! I am ready to stare into the maw of the Lucha bear and smack the salmon of analysis out of it's frothing be-fanged mouth! FUCK YEAH! YEAH! Yeah! Yeah. Yep. So here we go. Dragon Lee is Rush and Mistico II's brother. He is very young and is a pretty spectacular highflier like his Mistico brother. Kamaitachi is a great young rudo and I don't remember ever seeing him in New Japan but I dig just about everything he's done in CMLL. Kamaitachi starts the match by beating the hell out of the slender Dragon and quickly gets the first fall with a really nasty High Angle German Suplex rolled through to another High Angle German with a Bridge for the pin. This is quality execution of a German Suplex Hold. Second fall, he takes Lee to the floor and drives him into the rail which leads to a Vertical Suplex on the ramp, another execution of a hold. The young and Slender Dragon is taking an assbeating and Kamaitachi is supplying it, as young Lee only gets in a single chop before taking a the full fury of his counterpart- the best being the mad phat air Dragon Lee gets up to after being thrown into the ring from the ramp. Dragon Lee goes the extra mile and you have to appreciate it. They stay on the top turnbuckle for the rest of the caida, doing two swanky tree-of-woe spots: Kamaitachi drop kicking while running from the other cornmer and Lee hitting the dropping double dropkick off the top turnbuckle to the prostate and helpless Kamitachi for the second fall. They wrap up the first two falls in 7 minutes- (unless they were edited. AND WHO COULD BE SURE! Those who were there live of course, but STILL!) I wonder if the truncating of the first two falls is a concession to AAA getting rid of three falls? Here they just might as well have two nearfalls and I assume that the last five minutes of this will a lot of nearfalls. Maybe the story of the match is laid out like a 15 singles match and these two falls were cursory salutes to keeping of Lucha tradition. Either way, at this juncture, it feels like the match officially starts now. The ring girl taunts me with the youth and beauty- as if I would have had a chance back when I was youthful and beautiful at her age. Ah, I wouldn't have gone for her anyway, I like an offbeat beauty. Someone with a face tattoo. Dragon Lee starts right in hitting the really fucking beautiful Tope Con Hilo after the in-ring rana- and man does our boy Dragon Lee get some height on his high-flying. Then he makes with the dropkicks into the corner for two,- AHEM. And I guess the first fall was important when I think about it, because now it doesn't seem odd here that the technico is mauling the rudo. So yeah, I added a LAYER OF SUBTEXT TO ANALYSIS OF THE WRESTLING MATCH~! But note that it says "AT THIS JUNCTURE" where I wrote that, so I was conjecturing about the future. And yes, my conjecture was not actually based in events that actually take place three sentences later. But I think this internal dialogue helps both of us appreciate the psychology of the match more. I am here for you. GOTTDANG! Kamaitachi transitions to offense by Super Kicking Lee to the floor and hitting the motherfucking ULTRACRAZY running SUWA Double Power Dropkick running off the apron. That looked fucking crazy all the way around. This is match already fucking spectacular. Kamaitachi hits a super kick and does the Arrogant Standing With One Foot On His Chest Pin Attempt Of A Guy Who Is Obviously A Dick! THEN! A powerbomb after stumbling around on the first Powerbomb! Lee fucking leans into being posted on the apron and I would expect blood- but these kids today... Lee fights out of a toprope suplex attempt and then hits a fucking aaaawwwwesome dive over the toprope to Kamitachi on the apron into a rana to the floor. Jeeez, that was fucking impressive. Then they completely blow a rana attempt off the apron to the floor- as it looks like Kamaitachi thought he was just doing a running senton and didn't catch him for the rana and they both kinda land on their heads. Lee then makes Kamaitachi to this whole cheerleading routine when he has to fly up and around Lee's body to finally get into position to be Falcon Arrowed. It looked as preposterous as a Canadian Destroyer- but this would be the point where you would champion the elaborate stupidity of a move in Lucha but then you would villify it if you saw the same thing in ROH. (Replace the word "you" with the word "me" in the last sentence.) Lee clobbers Kamitachi with one of the only dropkicks on a guy sitting down that has actually impressed me in the time that that spot has become the new headlock- as he catches him right under the chin. Kamaitachi counters out of the pinning predicament and sinks in the Step Over Toehold Front Facelock! Lee escapes and they trade German Suplexes. They then have an awkward dropkick spot. Dragon Lee is inconsistent- but his breathtaking highspots are way on the high end, and his crappy execution on other things isn't in the realm of horrendous- so in final analysis, he is winning this war of execution of wrestling spots. Kamitachi does the fucking INSANE top turnbuckle Senton to Lee on the floor. Last time I saw something like that, Great Sasuke cracked his skull. Baby Richard is fucking great in this match, making all the nearfalls like the equivalent of a 6 count. Kamaitachi does the really great dropkick running off the ramp over the toprope into Lee in the middle of the ring. I love Kamaitachi for his general great great rudoness but he can whip out the lunatic Lucha Libre offense with the best of them. Kamaitachi places Lee on the toprope and punches him in the face. Lee counters with all kinds insane dropkicks on the apron and really insane one over the toprope to Kamaitachi on the floor. Lee then gets Kamitachi in the ring and hits the perfect Phoenix-Plex, the fucking craziest finisher currently being used. Here's what it looks like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfPhWS-hYYk FOR THE WIN! Kamaitachi should count his blessings that a.) Dragon Lee wasn't having a lapse in execution when hitting the Phoenix-Plex and didn't paralyze him, and b.) that he doesn't have to wear that wool and carpeting mask anymore. That thing had to be sweltering. What a fucking highspot-drenched match. Yeah, I'm usually immune to that kind of stuff these days but I usually never actually sit down and get to be absorbed by the story of the match. This was a match that was deeply enhanced by the highspots, as opposed to what these usually are, highspots in place of a wrestling match. Could have used some blood. But yeah, in about four places you go, "What the fuck were they thinking?" I got to dig that. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ YOSHIHIRO HORAGUCHI vs KOUKI IWASAKI- DDT DNA- 7/1/2015- [RASMUSSEN]: Last time DDT posted a bunch of DNA matches on their YouTube site, Yuji Hino and Diasuke Sekimoto were beating some discipline and experience into their rookies. This go around, a much stranger batch of MEN-TORZ~! are on board which also includes the ever exciting Kengo Mishimo. I know I haven't gotten down to the end of the weird ass NOAH SEM matches and here I am going into the DDT version of the same idea. A man must follow his bliss. According to Cagematch.net (my lover, my friend), Iwasaki is a rookie and he was trained by UWFi superstar Kenichi Yamamoto? I find that startling and strange. Horaguchi is a K-Dojo guy and he has been wrestling 2 years. Let's see what they got. Okay fellas, you got ten minutes. Bring us the magic. Iwasaki starts out like he was trained by Yamamoto- all kicking and stuff. Then he reminds you that UWFi was as much a work as any other wrestling organization and does an armwringer- as they do a lot of things that rookies do in rookie matches to show you that they were taught how start a match and that they aren't backyarders and are trained and shit. Horaguchi goes for the Top Wristlock and they run the ropes and do some hip tosses. Horaguchi kicks him in the face and then they stand up in the middle of the ring and start beating the hell out of each other. FUCK YEAH! Yeah, keeping it simple does mean it has to be boring. Hell, some of the best wrestling matches on earth were based around the story that one guy is tougher than the other guy and what me punch him in the face a bunch. Horguchi procures a fucking CRAVATE! This match is fucking awesome! For a Rookie match! Goddamn, neither of these guys are afraid to lay it in. THEN, Horaguchi does hit a hilariously weak looking kneedrop, THUS this is a rookie match by the way. Horiguchi is good at controlling the match and knowing when to let loose the forays into stiffness. Iwasaki does the nice Snap Suplex after hitting three very not Shoot Style kicks to the corner. Actually, Horaguchi is deeply pro style in his kicks and punches but they look a lot better than Iwasaki's STRIKING~! Hell, Iwasaki's Bionic Elbow is perfectly fine. Iwasaki procures the Cross Armbreaker and Horaguchi hits the ropes to allow Iwasaki to go for his Butterfly Suplex finisher! But Horaguchi hits a COMPLETELY hilarious Savate Crescent Spin Moon Kick! that looked a lot like an ode to the Cat Ernest Miller than Maeda-Fujinami 89, I await the Iwasaki to.. do... whatever Glacier ever did. Horiguchi makes up for it with a Vertical Suplex. Horiguchi is really good at Pro Style stuff and should never ever stray from that. As he hits a fucking amazingly hilarious SCISSZZZAHHHHHH KICK! Iwasaki counters by punching him in the face and they go back to killing each other with forearms and my wrestling laughter turns to wrestling love. They trade kicks and it's actually pretty good. Oof, Iwasaki does the awesome Butterfly Lift to crush his stomach with a kick to set up the Butterfly Suplex for the win. MAN, that was great in a couple of ways. When it was stiff and they were laying it it was really awesome. When they would hit stuff that they will probably be told not try again until they can hit it without milk flying out of people's noses, it was awesome in a different way. But I recommend watching it. For the thrills. For the laughs. I got my eye on these two- which is all they could ever want. Possibly more tonight. Unless the CFL and the women don't let me write...

DRIVERETTE 07302015! God, they just get lumpier- plus blathering about our place in this man's world- wrestling-wise. (I'll finish editing when I get home. I sworn. You may want to hold off afew hours.) ~!~ SINGLES GOING STEADY! ))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))) YUKO MIYAMOTO vs TATSUHIKO YOSHINO- GUTS WORLD- 7/19/2015- [RASMUSSEN]: Let's review way too many GUTS WORLD matches! Actually, one review is probably way too many, but the Death Valley Driver Video Review has been around for almost 20 years and we didn't stay in abject obscurity and financial ruin by pandering to what a bunch of wrestling fan WANTS us to review. We review what you will ONE DAY want to watch! That's right, sparky! That means watching lots of crappy wrestling and trying to make the writing about said crappy wrestling amusing- amusing to ourselves at least. And really, you gotta bull through the crappy to get to the GOLD. And you got to have a feeling, deep inside where your soul-heart is, that there is gold in GUTS. Maybe not. Maybe I am typing this so I can delay having to watch a guy who I do not watch in Big Japan in death matches- his specialty- but now have to watch him as he has a straight match. BUT the key is Tatsuhiko Yoshino. Is he the great hidden wrestler of GUTS WORLD? He wrestles in Big Japan and K-Dojo (and whatever STYLE-E and Heat Up are- Goddam, there really is nothing better to do in Germany but list all the results for every Japanese indie no matter how preposterously obscure? I cannot fight my love for you, Cagematch.net. Your psychotic Germanness is an inspiration to the entire fucked internet wrestling fan community)- so it isn't like he is in this match because his uncle owns the promotion or something. As far as I know. So yes. Let's watch some GUTS WORLD! Yoshino is tiny- tiny as it in not taller than Miyamoto. He has GUTS on his tiny pants so he must be the VANGUARD of GUTS WORLD! They went out and printed pants with GUTS across the buttocks- knowing that that is where the ladies of the Island Of Japan will be sneakin' a peak when he is representin' in STYLE-E or Heat Up- not to mention Big Japan, which people like me actually adore- so had bring the goods, wrestling-wise, and I guess buttocks-wise also. They do a headlock/ head scissors thingy to start off and move into a knuckle lock section and they fuck around for a while more. It is interesting at this point to wonder what direction this match is headed. My guess- half assed Junior Heavyweight. They start running the ropes and Yoshino hits some nice arm drags. Hmmm, I think this the thrid GUTS match I've reviewed in the last couple days and they all seem to morph into WCW Worldwide matches. I truly dig that. Show us how your work a match in a vacuum without story line, stipulations or established heel/face structure at the beginning. Miyamoto does an even better thing- Worldwide Strong Style- with the chops to the chest to set up a dropkick to set up a 3/4 Eudy Chinlock into a head scissors. Miyamoto does the fishhooky Camel Clutch and starts going total pro style with the double head stomp, the fucking FISTDROP~! and the chops to the chest. Yoshino finally starts firing back and he hits a really nice missile dropkick and one wonders if Yoshino wants the NJ Junior match and Miyamoto wanted something stiffer. Miyamoto sinks in a headlock and it's a really good match structure for this episode of Worldwide- Miyamoto is the established veteran and he is controlling the match with submission attempts. Yoshino is the up and comer and gets in offense before getting cut off by the veteran. Miyamoto does a Missile Dropkick off the turnbucle and keeps dropkicking him into the corner before getting two knees to the stomach on his moonsault. Yoshino does a nice job of rolling through his Crippler Crossface to get Miyamoto away from the rope and he really leans back on it to make it suck for Miyamoto. Miyamoto throws the ref at Yoshino to break the hold, which is fun. The finishing sequence is very long and convoluted with lots of Miyamoto using the ref to create all these false finishes which would been really cool if it was executed better, I guess. Miyamoto hits a really nice Moonsault for two and perfectly fine K-Driller for the win. I mean, this match is fine. I was expecting it to suck because I don't like Miyamoto's death matches. Instead, this was mostly well executed- if not overly stiff. The story was simple and effective- though it would have been better if Yoshino's offence wasn't so pedestrian. So, I'm taking away from this that Miyamoto is a perfectly fine low-grade junior heavyweight and that Yoshino is not the GUTS WORLD SUPERWORKER~! that we were all hoping for when they rang the bell. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2zdom8_yuko-miyamoto-vs-tatsuhiko-yoshino-guts-world_sport !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ATSUSHI KOTOGE vs KATSUHIKO NAKAJIMA- NOAH SEM- 7/13/2015- [RASMUSSEN]: Hey, I'm finally getting around to watching Atsushi Kotoge. I know what I'm getting with Katsuhiko Nakajima. I've pretty much had a thousand chances to watch Kotege. His matches have ended up in my Watch Later lists- but they always make it the point where I will 300 videos and got to purge everything that know I will never watch. Of course, if I am blown away here, I can always go back and see what I missed. Hopefully, that will be the case. Hmmmmmm. Nakajima doesn't pound him immediately, instead he goes for the cissypants clean break. This ain't no Sunday school, creep. He procures the arm wringer and they do some armwringing for a while until Nakajima decides quit wasting my time and kicks Kotoge in the hamstring really hard, and then he does it again! And again and again and again!Yeeeaaa! Nakajima! I had totally forgotten you! Kotoge does a sliding senton to the floor to nobody, into a forward roll into a superkick. Neato. Still not sold yet though. They kinda wander around the NOAH SEMatorium and don't actually brawl. Kotoge gets posted and if he blades HE IS MY NEW BOY. They do go to the Strong Style I love so much and Kotoge hangs with actual ass-stomper Nakajima with shots to the head. Kotoge does a really fun Neck-Stretcher 2015 submission before going for the more conventional head scissors submission. After a rope break, Kotoge gets closer to being one I follow by hitting a beautiful Bionic Elbow and then a 4/4ths Ishikawa headbutt to the face. That was choice. He then leans into a kick to the chest. Kotoge has done many things to endear himself to me. Nakajima does a nice FRONT CHANCELLORY into a DDT. But this isn't really about Nakajima, this about if I can start caring about a NOAH junior heavyweight. Nakajima does hit a nice Lateral Suplex as the moveset of this match is becoming an unconscious Ode to Greg The Hammer Valentine. They charge at each other and Kotoge hits a really great looking jumping kick to the faceto set-up a Tarantula! Kotoge is really quick is really good at getting in position to make preposterous things look good- like he does this thing where he forward rolls through the ropes as Nakajima is hitting the ropes and gets up and lands a really nice DIAMOND CUTTER- CRAVATES~!. But the set-up and execution would be horrendous without the speed and timing. They do some two count things that were very indie and overly contrived to set up Nakajima to hit a ridiculoulsy nasty spinning kick to the head as Kotoge was climbing the turnbuckle. Nakajima follows with a running kick to the face in the corner and missile dropkick off the top turnbuckle for two and not hating anything, but I'm also not really getting to emoptionally drawn into the match until they start punching each other in the face in the center of the ring. I really dig Kotoge's Terry Funk-esque weird ass punches. Nakajima kicks Kotoge to the ground and Kotoge fires back with a lesser than before headbutt and a toprope plancha and perfectly fine Shining Wizard- man, I thought those would never go away, and I was right. They run the ropes and bounce around until Nakajima punts Kotoge right in the chin. They thing do an extended roll-up sequences all hinging on if Nakajima lands his kick or not, but it all leads up to a really nice brainbuster by Nakajim for the win. I dunno. I could see digging Kotoge but I didn't see enought of his affense to really get excited about too much. He should cut out all the kicks where he slaps his thigh and replace them all with headbutts and punches, because they were the best part of GROUND ARSENAL~! I'm not writing him off, but it will take a couple more matchesw before I'm sold. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2ylef0_atsushi-kotoge-vs-katsuhiko-nakajima-noah-sem_sport >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> SHELTON X BENJAMIN vs TAKASHI SUGIURA- PRO WRESTLING NOAH- 7/18/2015- [RASMUSSEN]: I cannot remember the last Shelton Benjamin match I saw. I guess his last tagteam run in ROH? Was that a thing? Is my memories of wretling mashing up into one giant wad of guys in little pants running the ropes, their faces interchanging each time the bounce off? Ah, who gives a fuck about the last time I saw anybody. YOU, the gentle reader want to know if the next Shelton Benjamin match is worth 17 minutes of your time. It's already worth 17 minutes of my time because it is a vehicle to let you know if it is worth 17 minutes of your time. My job is to waste time watching wrestling that nobody should watch to label the wrestling as such- or to tell you that you are wasting your time doing whatever you are doing when you are not watching THIS MATCH which to have got watch. I mean, not this match, which I haven't watched yet- but the idea of a good wrestling match that you need to watch. That is the TRANSITIN of reviews in the modern age. A lot of record reviewers have thrown in the towel because who needs reviews when you can listen to it for free? I almost fell into that trap with wrestling. Why worry about steering people to or from wrestling that I like and that folks would take my recommendations to heart, when it's all on the internet now/ But then I realized that Roger Ebert had a whole philosophy about movie review being like literary review- in that it was needed to put film in context and compare it with other great works and that writing about film is an actual part of film making like literary criticism is part of literature. Wrestling, also being art, though the most fucked up of all the art forms, needs the same thing. Wrestling unanalyzed is wrestling in a vacuum, and art in a vacuum DIES. Wrestling is awesome so it deserves to live. So I am the lungs! LUNGS!. So here we go. Takashi Sugiura is becoming one of my favorite wrestlers. He falls into the type of wrestler I get excited by these days- Kohei Sato, Yuji Ohabayashi, Tomohiro Iishi- the hateful, the unsexy, the guys who lay it in. Shelton Benjamin I never had a beef with so I'm going into this pretty positive. Sugiura has the face that looks like his momma used to wake him up with a shovel to the face. Okay, Shelton Benjamin does not fear trading forearms to the face with Takashi Sugiura- which surprises me, but here you go. They take it to the floor, and - this being NOAH, Sugiura throws him into the railing and Benjamin does a different take on the NOAH match staple by spinning over the top. Well-played! I am delighted so far. Sugiura beats on him some more until Benjamin lands a flying elbow over the railing to ringside! Benjamin is dynamic in this. God, they beat the hell out of each other some more as Sugiura tries to get in the ring and BEnjamin hits a swanky DIAMOND CUTTER~! to the apron. Sugiura sells it like death, which wrestling fans applaud. Benjamin starts working the knee, crushing it against the ringpost and hitting the awesome and nasty Flair Shin-Breaker across the railing- then he throws a second into the rail, thus both have thrown somebody into the rail, thus making this the most NOAH match to ever. Sugiura sells the kneebar really well before hitting the ropes and the story of the match really kicks in when Benjamin procures the REverse Figure Four. Benjamin sells the counter- Sugiura punching him dead in the face- hilariously by blinking his eyes really fast. Okay, this match is fucking awesome. They stand up and beat each other to death with forearms until Sugiura gets a knee up when Benjamin goes for a lariat off the ropes. Sugiura even re-sells the knee before hitting a full sprint lariat into the corner. Okay, no one will ever confuse Sugiura's selling with Ricky Morton's but I appreciate the idea of the effort. Hey, Sugiura with a spear! I thought that would never go away. Sugiara hits the EVEREST Side Suplex so the knee is totally fine now. Thoiugh he does acknowledge the knee before standing back up SO I DECLARE THIS TO BE BRILLIANT SUBTLE SELLING! As long as the last thing you remember seeing after Sugiura going on offense is him acknowledgin the effects of earlier in the match, it's all good. Benjamin with a roll up into a ANKLE PICK~! or whatever we call it these days. Benjamin kicks Sugiura in the chest to escape the ankle lock thingy and then does a fabulous jumping roundhouse kick in the general area of Sugiura head- where upon rewatching, he does land the biggest part of his calf against Sugiura's head, and he might have been flexing his calf muscle so it would be very very hard. The Olympic Slam FOR TWO! Sugiura counters with two German Suplexes and they lay around a bit- SELLING! Kind of as Benjamin sprints to the corner- BUT HE MISSES GETTING TO THE TOP! An unconscious form of selling! If he meant it, it would be brilliant, naturalism style selling. But you and I know he just slipped and popping up. So the stand in the middle of the ring crush each others faces with forearms until Benjamin hits a Superkick after Sugiura hits the ropes. Benjamin runs at him and Sugiura hoists him into a backjbreaker AND SELLS THE KNEE! Goddanm, Sugiura just fucking LATS IT IN and BEANJAMIN FUCKING LAYS IT IN! Sugiura hits another German and then hits his own Olympic Slam for the win? Duurrrn, beaten with your own quasi-finisher! They are lots of ways you can hem and haw at the little... problems... with this match. But I cannot begin to think that they would overcome the overall love and enjoyment this match gave me. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2z9edc_shelton-x-benjamin-vs-takashi-sugiura-noah_sport

DEATH VALLEY DRIVERETTE 07242015 Today, lumpy guys who wrestle. ~!~ SINGLES GOING STEADY !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! TAKASHI SUGIURA vs SHIRO TOMOYOSE- NOAH SEM- 7/13/2015- [RASMUSSEN]: The last time I saw Sugiura in the ring, he and Kohei Sato were fucking killing each other. I remember Sato bleeding from his ear. I hadn't realized how old Sugiura was (45) and I was amazed at the level of beating he could take and dish out- considering I am only 4 years older and I get winded just getting up at night to adjust my truss. The last time I saw Shiro Tomoyose was this match right here that I am fixing to watch. Tomoyose is so new that he doesn't even have a Cagematch.net profile. Luckily, the fine folks (or possibly waaay too obsessed folks) at Puroresu Spirit filled us in (https://puroresuspirit.wordpress.com/noah/shiro-tomoyose/ ). Cagematch.net did have results for every NOAH show since Tomoyose debuted in May of this year so I could track his listings. So yeah, this is his EIGHTH time in the ring. He is in the ring with a guy who made Kohei Sato- the baddest motherfucker in Japan- bleed from the ear. We gotta watch this. Sugiura goes for the single leg takedown and Sugiura really takes a few minutes to come up with a few things to keep himself from beating Tomoyose to death- to instead kinda feign ripping his tendons apart- as I guess he can't just go in and beat his skeleton directly out of his skin. It would be bad form. Sugiura goes down memory lane and works a headlock- except he really cranks it, making it look like Tomoyose little skull will pop like a bug. Tomoyose appears to want to go back to the 8 man tags he was doing when Sugiura starts laying in a beating. Tomoyose fires back with slappy forearms and a face of sheer panic. Sugiura scoffs at his attack and gives him the "You Gotta Be Shitting Me, Pyle!" look and the ass-beating commences. They go Strong Style with the Tomoyose hitting a lot of shoulder blocks, just over and over again like he knows that if he stops running, Sugiura will bust all his teeth out his mouth and pulverize his organs. Tomoyose quickly tries to develop a revolutionary new breathing technique to allow him to run for as long as the match is allotted to go. Eventually, it all gets Sugiura eventually to the ground. Sugiura responds to all of that with a brainbuster and Boston Crab. He then drags him to the middle and leans into the Crab until Tomoyose can hit the ropes. Then Sugiura just fucking lays in the forearms, pulling him up at two to beat on him and try to get him to show some fighting spirit before just fucking murdering him. So yeah, about as horrifying for a rookie as you would expect it to be. I've always wondered why they show these MASTOR-STUDENT matches on TV. I guess they assume most of us will watch in morbid curiosity and then come away with some sort of respect for the unknown quantity trying really hard against the established veteran. Actually, when you think about it, it's the opposite of a squash. It's the same set up as a squash. You know whose going to win and you know its going to be a fucking bear mauling, but it would be like watching Sid versus Lee Scott and the focus of the match wasn't to get Sid over, but to get Lee Scott's career started. Of course, I value Lee Scott over Sid a million times over when it comes to moments of wrestling that I have loved- so maybe this is a bad example. But I actually go into these Japanese Master-Student things the OPPOSITE of how I rearrange the meaning of a squash with Lee Scott. Here, I just want to see how much Sugiura beats the hell out of the youngster. I'll track his victim's career later. I hope all that made sense. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2yljaq_takashi-sugiura-vs-shiro-tomoyose-noah-sem_sport $$$$$$$$$$$$ HITOSHI KUMANO vs SHO TANAKA- PRO WRESTLING NOAH- 7/18/2015- [RASMUSSEN]: More exploration of wrestlers who I haven't seen yet. According to Cagematch.net, Kumano is a NOAH trainee and has been wrestling for two years. Sho Tanaka is a New Japan dojo guy and has been wrestling for two years. Sho Tanaka has really great hair- all garagey-goth and shaggy like he plays keyboards for the Horrors and scores the most pussy. Kumano wears his pants really high like he is dressing out for gym. I assume Tanaka wins. They work a headlock for a while. Then it's dropkick mania! Kumano, being a NOAH trainee, throws Tanaka into the rail. Tanaka does the first impressive thing- going face first into the post. You gotta respect that from a youngster. Kumano stands on Tanaka's stomach and then stands on his face- so each has done one impressive thing so far. Tanaka procures the 1/2 Eudy chinlock and then does a half ass Romero Special and then does a nice Camel Clutch. Thus so far, you have a junior heavyweight match without any high spots- which is totally fine by me/ I like the PSYCHOLOGYofguysbeatingthehelloutofotherguys. Kumano and Tanaka lay in some forearms and Tanaka has the forearm strongness that I might follow after this match- which is his and every other wrestler's dream. Kumano hits a really nice STO! STO! Haven't thought about that in a while.Tanaka fights out of a Fisherman Buster but Kumano uses the ref as a distraction to take out the klnee and then they do some really cool roll-ups, so I'm liking both of these guys more as the match goes along. Sho Tanaka does a FULL DON LEO JONATHAN Backbreaker! He does a TOTAL 1/68th As Cool As Arn Andersen's Spinebuster! And leans into a Boston Crab- which is awesome because all I can think of is Don Leo Jonathan. What a strange moveset for a junior heavyweight. I back your play 100 per cent. Tanaka goes for the fucking EVEREST German and Kumano fights out of it and hits a roll-up for two. Maybe I love Sho Tanaka. So they get back to a vertical base and start beating the hell out of each other. The ref tries to pull Kumano off of Tanaka so Kumano throws the ref across the ring. Okay, fuck it, this is the best WCW Worldwide match in the history of NOAH. Kumano pounds on him some more but Tanaka spins into a Half-Crab and they toy with Kumano hitting the ropes but Tanaka keeps pulling him back until he finally taps. I'm in LOVE! I will follow these two! If I can remember them after tomorrow! FULL WORLDWIDE POINT! http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2z9ji4_hitoshi-kumano-vs-sho-tanaka-noah_sport ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ KAZUNARI MURAKAMI vs SHOTARO ASHINO- TOKYO GURENTAI- 7/15/2015- [RASMUSSEN]: Hmmmmm. I sensing a trend in today's reviews- a trend I did not foresee. The last time I remember seeing Murakami, he was standing on Yuji Ishikawa's head waaaay back in the times of BattlARTS. I remember they really just the beat hell out of each other and had momumental pull-aparts. You could feel the hate. It was awesome. The last time I recall seeing Shotaro Ashino is this match right here. Ashino, according to the kind and loving database we call Cagematch.net, is a Wrestle-1 trainee and by the count on his matchlist, this is his 26th match. So yeah, number 26 is a guy who beat the living dogshit out of the toughest motherfucker to ever wrestle. This can only be glorious. Murakami is all ball-headed now. HE IS A BALL HEADED GEEK! Ashino does the smart thing and attacks Murakami before he take his coat off. I'm guessing that he should have run him over with a car before he got into the building. Because, yeah.... Murakami took his coat off and is just beating the living dogshit out of the young fella. Luckily for Ashino, Murakami throws him to the floor. THIS IS YOUR CHANCE SHOTARO! RUN! DON'T STOP TILL OSAKA! Unfortunately, he stays to fight, as he is already pre-beaten into my heart, maybe even moreso that the Young Bucks after that Kevin Owen/Super Dragon street fight. Ashino flies into the chairs. Murakami kicks Ashino's chest into the hallway. Ashino fires back with some forearms! FIGHTING SPIRIT! Murakami drives him face first into the ring post and knees him in the chest and runs and knees him the face. RUNNING QUICKLY! is what he shoulda done, amiright? Murakami stands on him like he stood on Ishikawa back in the day. Ahh precious memories. Oshino shows more fighting spirit as Murakami taunts him with his dick-like face. Being the MENTOR in the match, Murakami pulls him up after a two count and expects Ashino to show some fight. Murakami is the bioggest dick on earth and I think EVERY WRESTLER ON EARTH should have to wrestle him before he or she can wrestle anyone else. It has to be the most traumatizing event in your young career and would separate the wheat from the chaff. Here, Oshino finds his fighting spirit and gives Murakami all he's got. Murakami counters with pulverizing him in the corner. After another two count, Murakami taunts him in the middle of the ring again. Ashino has one last flurry of flailing before Murkami puts him away with a palm THRUST! Murakami is not nuturing in victory. It is not the nature of Murakami to exhibit any of the kind and gentle qualities we treasure in our young men. He is Murakami and he is an asshole. A magnificent asshole. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2zi28d_kazunari-murakami-vs-shotaro-ashino-tokyo-gurentai_sport ((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((( TARO YAMADA vs RYAN UPIN- GUTS WORLD- 7/19/2015- [RASMUSSEN]: Fuck the world. We are going all in on this search for young and lovable talent! We span the world! We span the GUTS WORLD! GUTS WORLD is named after its owner, Guts Ishijima- or Ishijimi changed his name to Guts after owning GUTS WORLD. I cannot possibly begin to care. Taro Yamada I have never seen before probably and he is- according to cagematch.net- an 8 year veteran from 666 which is ONRYO's indie. God, you should look at his matchlist. It is the indie-est sleaziest list on the internet..http://www.cagematch.net/? id=2&nr=15358&page=4 . I soooooo need to see Secret Base Yokohama Pro-Wrestling. Ryan Upin is 36 and a freelancer and he only wrestles in GUTS WORLD. THEY GOT HIM LOCKED UP TO AN EXDCLUSIVE CONTRACT! Or I'm guessing he has owned the ring for the 11 years GUTS WORLD has been around. Anyhoos, WHICH OF THESE WILL MAKE ME FALL IN WITH SLEAZY JAPANESE INDIE WRESTLING ALL OVER AGAIN?!?! Will it be you, young Taro Yamada- so young, so untanned, so possibly cleaning offices at night for a living! Maybe Ryan Upin- he knows KUNG FU! You got 8 minutes, motherfuckers. Dazzle me. Upin seems less like a wrestler and more like a guy who would be drinking beer with your uncle on a boat. They go with the knucklelock. Possibly a KUNG FU Knucklelock but it is too early to tell. They screw up a knuckle lock. I don't think GUTS WORLD will be my new Big Japan Strong Style Division. Eh, Yamada does a nice head scissors thingy. They trade knee bars and then actually have a fun little foray into arm drags. Upin does a head scissors thing of his own and then it is old guy KUNG FU posing! They do a bunch of perfectly fine roll-ups and Yamada hits a nice dropkick. WE. ARE. ENTERING. WORLDWIDE. TERRITORY. Upin scrapes his face across the ropes, does a double face stomp, does the really odd but neato thing where he runs the ropes and steps on Yamad's face everytime he crosses it. They opt for chops and forearms. The wormy, wee Upin wins and hits some lowgrade SPIN KICKZ! This is sooo Adrian Byrd versus Mark Starr on WCW Main Event. Yamada kicks Upin in his aging Jimmy and does a really nice Vertical Suplex With a Bridge! Upin kicks Yamada in his much younger probably less active Jimmy, and lands a hilariously unpainful looking crescent spinning savat spin kick into a Released Romero Special. He misses a toprope double stomp and spectacularly positions himself to be pinned. 1/4 WORLDWIDE POINT. I...I... I don't think I will watch the GUTS WORLD immediately, but I will try to get to it at some point. That is my statement going forward as a reaction to how exctied these two made me about their wrestling promotion. I did not hate this. They will always have that. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2zi7sl_taro-yamada-vs-ryan-upin-guts-world_sport More tonight porolly.