DEATH VALLEY DRIVERETTE 03082016! HIDEKI SUZUKI~! KONOSUKE TAKESHITA~!

[DEAN]

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.

[RIPPA]

Oh thank God - I thought I was going crazy when I couldn't find reviews for these matches

[DEAN]

Oh thank God - I thought I was going crazy when I couldn't find reviews for these matches

I was sooo close to blowing off the DNA main event.  I'm glad I didn't though.

 

Tomorrow I start reviewing that Hard Hit that showed up the other day.  Not only is the results not in Cagematch, but Hard Hit doesn't even have a profile.   And it has Minoru Tanaka and Fujiwara on it.

[RIPPA]

I am debating reviewing one more thing before finalizing but I did just finish the fucking 75 minute Square Go match and I hate the world

[goc]

My life will not be complete until you review that Bull Pain/Soul Taker match in the women's prison!

[DEAN]

My life will not be complete until you review that Bull Pain/Soul Taker match in the women's prison!

Oh, it;s coming.

[zev]

If someone says reviewing a full DNA card is like going through the last few seasons of that 70's show, then I think the right thing to do is give that asked for reminder to hey, don't review another one of their cards.

 

Could you do some GAEA shows instead?