That Shinya Hashimoto Fed

ZERO1 Fourteen

(2015/3/1)

LEONA vs. Shinjiro Otani

LEONA is Fujinami’s ugly kid and is about to get schooled by Otani. You know it. Man, LEONA is not in good shape, in fact his 61 year old father is more fit than he is. He’s also not very good in the ring either, he’s actually getting worse and worse each and every time. Also, that ugly ass gear, what the fuck is that? Anyway, this was a TOTAL Otani carryjob, the veteran maestro displayed his amazing teaching abilities once again and carried the worthless sack of shit to a good match. Whether it was strike exchanges, counters, ground game, ringside brawling, crowd pandering, it doesn’t matter, he owned everything. I feel like LEONA should give up on pro-graps, he’s that awful.

*** (credit: Otani all the fucking way)

ZERO1 Fourteen

(2015/3/1)

Masakatsu Funaki vs. Hideki Suzuki

This match only had one flaw – it wasn’t longer than 7 minutes 17 seconds. Everything they did here was flawless, and although the story felt complete, they still left me wanting more, much more. This was a climax of the heated feud between these two shooters but they never met in a singles competition before, all the beef came from various tag team match combinations, and naturally I was really looking forward to this one. Needless to say, they delivered. This was a slick, clean and stoic semi-shoot style encounter where everything mattered down to a T. The first half was spent on the mat, both dudes were careful and defensive, attentively examining every hold and every next step. I loved the cross armbreaker sequence with Hideki avoiding it like plague, and man, it was pure struggle for life. Felt like watching a RINGS or UWFi match. The matwork was your good old school puroresu catching, it was based on simplicity and roughness, totally opposite of lucha’s gracious style. Korakuen watched with close attention and you could cut tension with a knife, it was only a matter of time before someone got tired of rolling on the mat, Funaki was the first one to throw a kick and from that point the shit was on – fast strikes, suplexes, catlike counters, etc. They ate some very nasty smacks, and shit man, that was rough stuff. It only lasted for a few minutes, but once it was over you didn’t feel like you missed anything. Like I said earlier, the story felt complete despite going for only 7 minutes.

Amazing match, and I really hope they meet again, preferably in Korakuen again, preferably in a title match of some kind.

****3/4

ZERO1 Fourteen

(2015/3/1)

NWA Intercontinental Tag Team Championship: Kohei Sato & Daisuke Sekimoto vs. Masato Tanaka & Takashi Sugiura ©

We start things off with a generic Sugiura strike exchange, luckily on the other side is Sekimoto so the boring drone from NOAH doesn’t get chance to totally suck. Then we get Tanaka/Kohei and it is totally vicious, they’re exchanging holds, both gain brief advantages before hitting each other really fucking hard. Cringeworthy already, lol. Kohei wins this battle and Tanaka is now a face-in-peril. He gets his ass kicked silly for awhile before breaking away and tagging in Sugiura. The latter, however, totally sucks as a hot tag asskicker, but thankfully his faux badassery doesn’t last for too long as he is quickly taken down, now he is a FIP. Tanaka proves to be a much better and more energetic hot tag, he kicks some ass but once again he fails and becomes a FIP for the second time. The challengers are completely dominating now. Tanaka breaks away somehow and now we’re officially in the finishing stretch, everyone’s just going all in as their respective health points are rapidly going down. The spot of the match is Kohei taking Yuji Okabayashi’s role in Sekimoto’s double suplex spot, great shit right there. The very climax of the match is fucking amazing as we get a Wild Kingdom scene of the lion Kohei fighting for his life against the hyenas, shit man, this is glorious. Definitely the best double elbow strikes spot Tanaka and Sugiura have ever done, the subplot of Kohei surviving everything they threw at him was smashing and super exciting. Eventually he falls down after few ultra vicious Sliding Ds, the match is over, the champs retain their gold.

What a fantastic match, pure war with smart and coherent layout, the key for success was neutralizing Sugiura’s shitty wrestling and they did exactly that. Sato and Tanaka have a crazy good chemistry.

****1/2