I love writing and I want to talk about more stuff I've watched so here's another blog post already.
This one's a little different than the typical "random matches" post. I thought it'd more interesting to do a full show review! Now, the other posts are going to continue as normal, but it'd be nice to also have more concise/organized review posts like this as well.
W*ING (short for Wrestling International New Generations) was founded in 1991 and was one of the biggest deathmatch/hardcore promotions in Japan in the 90s, alongside FMW. Skip ahead some years, and the company stops regularly running shows in June of 1996. They run a show in September of that year and five in 1997, but the company is virtually dead after that.
By 2001, Mr. Pogo restarts the promotion with the show we're watching today. This show was took on the "Take Off Again" subtitle from the company's inaugural "Take Off" tours throughout their history. This particular show aired on Fighting TV Samurai! as "Battle Station" broadcast on 5/8/2001, about 2-3 weeks after the event took place.
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Broadcast starts off with some Press Conference footage containing higher-ups and guys like Matsunaga and Mr. Pogo (who's in his Ribera jacket of course) discussing the company reboot, before they cut to some of the roster members posing in front of the W*ING logo.
We also get to see the big names doing autograph signings/meet-and-greets with a pretty large crowd (I couldn't find the exact attendance number, but it's worth noting this show takes place at the Differ Ariake, which would become the home of Pro Wrestling NOAH around this time) of people as they show gets set up before the first match. And finally right before that, we get the whole roster in the ring to kick off the event. (Also holy shit, Leatherface and "Boogie Man" go crazy)
The first three matches are all VERY clipped so I'll be pretty brief with my thoughts on them.
Mongol Man vs Jet Jaguar
Can't say much about this one because we get like a minute (out of eight) of highlights of this match. Mongol Man does Mongolian Chops though so I like. I'm sure he's a lot of fun and while I've never heard of Jet Jaguar before, he has a sick look.
Hiroyoshi Kotsubo vs Hirofumi Miura
We get like three clips from this match; Miura seems like the kind of wrestler I like though: Karate guy that does a tornado DDT and moonsault.
Viking Taniguchi vs Hiroshi Shimada
Two beefy boys hit each other and then leave happily ever after.
Mitsunobu Kikuzawa vs Ryo Miyake - SKIPPABLE
This is the first full match that we get to see and I'm not sure where my expectations were at. I've seen maybe one Ryo Miyake match ever and Kikuzawa would later go on to become Kikutaro in his career.
This is also a Barbed Wire Bat match, meaning that both wrestlers must start outside the ring and then race to grab the barbed wire bat in the center of the ring after a countdown. The issue is, the bat BREAKS about 2 minutes into the match after Kikuzawa swings and misses on Miyake, instead hitting the mat.
To their credit though, the match somehow doesn't completely fall apart after this. Kikuzawa makes Miyake bleed by rubbing the cracked part of the bat (that doesn't have any barbed wire on it, mind you) into his forehead. Miyake gets some offense of his own by just bare-handing the barbed wire bat part and using it on Kikuzawa, before a backup referee throws in a completely new barbed wire bat eventually.
The brawling in the match isn't bad but isn't great, but they do a great job at pacing this around the bat break incident. Both guys do beat each other up to a lot of bleeding and the finish is nice, I can give them that.
Ichiro Yaguchi, Katsumi Hirano & Kazuhiko Matsuzaki vs Fukumen Taro, Masaru Toi & Masayoshi Motegi - FUN
This a Captain's Fall (what that seems to mean in this case that you can only win by pinning/submitting the opposing team's captain, but you cannot do so until you first eliminate their two non-captain members) match with the captains being Kazuhiko Matsuzaki and Masayoshi Motegi. Interesting on paper for a number of reasons: Ichiro Yaguchi's in this, and also it's pretty rare for me to come across a Captain's fall match outside of Mexico.
A lot of it is spent taking a beating early on, but Katsumi Hirano gets the most ring time by far in this match. To his credit, he takes some hard-hitting stuff pretty well, and then reciprocates that energy when it's his turn for offense. Maybe I'm dense, but he strikes me as a guy I'll probably seek out more from in the future, because I'm sure he probably has a match where he just beats up someone crazy-style.
I wish we got more Ichiro Yaguchi in this match but he does get some decent minutes in the final fall. He might be one of the best worst wrestlers ever and I love him for that. Sloppy, a bit too stiff, and his matches can be so scattered sometimes, yet he's still a beast. These don't end up being bugs in his game, they're features.
Yaguchi gets his team the win by pinning Motegi, who is another wrestler I've seen before this and really like.
Hideki Hosaka & Koichiro Kimura vs Boogie Man & Leatherface - FUN
Yeah, Leatherface and Boogie Man still crazy as shit. They start off just moving around the ring crazy before the bell even is rung (by Boogie Man himself), and then the match kind of splits into two. Kimura walk-and-brawls with Boogie Man in front of a crowd outside of the room while Leatherface tosses Hosaka around the chairs ringside. When the havoc cools down, everyone's back to the ring to have a "regular" match.
If there's a gripe I have with this, it's that they don't drag that opening portion out for longer. If things are getting chaotic, let the chaos ensue! If you're so easily able to reel things back in, I have a hard time believing that there was much danger in the first place. It's a bit of an unfortunate dissonance because they make Leatherface and Boogie Man seem like pretty credible threats throughout the rest of the match, of course.
Koichiro Kimura is the most technically sound wrestler in a match where no one else is, and I think I love that. He brings stoicism to an otherwise ridiculous matchup and is also just a good wrestler. He's featured the least, but that almost feels like it's for the best given everyone else that's in this.
Gedo & Jado vs Shoji Nakamaki & WING Kanemura - SKIPPABLE
This is an "Odawara Fire Revenge Bunkhouse Death Match" with no fire in it, nor does it feel like a death match. It is a fun-ish brawl for the most part, which I actually enjoyed much more than the typical Gedo & Jado match. Kanemura and Nakamaki take the crazier bumps (which there aren't many of), and then the match just feels like it goes on too long. Which is funny, considering how abrupt the ending feels.
I wouldn't call this bad, especially when I felt like the brawling stuff was good, but this is not a match I am ever going to revisit or think about again.
Hideki Hosaka, Mitsuhiro Matsunaga, Ryo Miyake & The Winger vs Freddie Krueger, Mitsunobu Kikuzawa, Mr. Pogo & WING Kanemura - FUN
Matsunaga comes out drenched in barbed wire as the king does. This would've been about 4 years before he goes on to the greatest run in wrestling history in ZERO-1, but he still feels like the biggest deal in the world even here. That's obvious because he's Matsunaga and all, but he still feels like a force that needs to be neutralized in order for Team W*ING to get stuff done.
To be honest, this is just what I imagine the embodiment of the "Car Crash" (literally) match aim in TEW to be. You get a crazy weapons-filled fighting throughout the arena that's at it's best when they lean into the "Light Out Moonlight Darkness" part of the "Incredible Tag Scramble Bunkhouse Light Out Moonlight Darkness Death Match" stipulation. Seriously, there are some sickass visuals that come from the lights out portion of the match, including Matsunaga getting the life choked out of him by Freddie Kruger.
In a way, this is the best way that they could've demonstrated what W*ING, or at least this show, was about. Ryo Miyake has the star performance easily because I popped at him bringing the broken bat gimmick back from earlier, and he also takes two cringe-inducing bumps onto a pile of weapons.
Once the match ends, with little interaction between Mr. Pogo and Matsunaga, there's some stuff teased between WING Kanemura and Matsunaga instead. As far as I could tell, this wouldn't come to fruition within W*ING as the two would never share the ring in the 3 other shows the company ran, but they did meet in a singles match later in 2001 (in the "Rainbow Promotion"?) in a "Carribean Barbed Wire Spider Net Board Barbed Wire Board Spike Nail Bat & Barbed Wire Bat Scramble Bunkhouse WING Extreme Falls Count Anywhere Lights Out Death Match" that I'm sure is awesome.
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Is this show worth watching for yourself? Outside of the main event, not necessarily. I think the fun matches are fun, but they're just that. The main isn't even particularly that great but it's a cool novelty watch.
Other than that though, thank you for reading my thoughts on this show today; I hope you enjoyed. If you didn't, that's alright too. Let me know if you have any thoughts, criticisms, ideas, or whatever in the comments or get in touch with me on my Twitter page.
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