Section 1- Important Results & Title Matches
All Japan- Taiyo Kea defeated Kensuke Sasaki, as expected, and will go on to face Kawada for the Triple Crown on 10/31. I expect Kawada to retain, because Kojima is currently having a ‘rebirth’. At the tour-ender Kojima defeated Jamal (formerly of Two Minute Warning), which is sadly Kojima’s biggest win in months. Kaz Hayashi defended his junior title against Mazada. Kaz has several challengers lined up, his next against AKIRA (aka Akira Nogami, formerly of New Japan) on 10/31.
Section 2- Other news
All Japan- They announced the card for their big 10/31 card at Sumo Hall, which will be the Keiji Mutoh 20th Anniversiary special show. In addition to the title matches referenced above, an enormous tag match will pit Mutoh & Misawa against Kensuke Sasaki & Hiro Hase. This will mark the first time Misawa and Sasaki have ever been in a match together, and the second match for Misawa in All Japan since the split in 2000 (the other being this past July against Kojima). Speaking of Kojima, he’ll have a singles match against an opponent to be determined, probably yet another primer for his challenge to Kawada.
New Japan- Jamie Noble will be on the October tour. Don Frye was announced as Chono’s partner for the 10/9 Sumo Hall show in the match against Nagata & Tenzan. Also on the 10/9 card is Keiji Mutoh, who teams with Nishimura against top young stars Nakamura & Tanahashi. New Japan also announced a card for a rare show at the 7,000 seat Fukuoka International Center, Fukuoka being a smaller prefecture in the far west of Japan. This card will see a juniors superbout of Liger vs Kanemoto, and big heavyweight rematches in Nagata vs Sasaki and Tenzan vs Chono. Look for Tenzan to get the win as he heads to his IWGP match in November.
NOAH- They announced their October schedule and it’s loaded. First off, “Gladiator” Mike Awesome will be on the tour, making his return to Japan. Notable matches, all from the taped shows, start off on 10/9 with junior phenom KENTA continuing his singles match series, this time against Kenta Kobashi. On 10/16, Jun Akiyama defends the recently renamed GHC Openweight title against Naomichi Marufuji. 10/22 has KENTA & Marufuji defending the GHC junior tag titles against SUWA & Ricky Marvin.
10/24 is the tour climax at Osaka Prefectural gym, capped off by the remaining GHC titles being defended. Taka Michinoku makes a one-time appearance in NOAH to challenge for Kanemaru’s junior belt. Misawa & Ogawa, unbeaten since December 2001, defend the tag titles against the tandem of Taue & Sano, who are 16-0-1 since first teaming last May. Finally, Kenta Kobashi looks to break the modern record for heavyweight title defenses by beating Akitoshi Saito for his 11th. Misawa has nominated himself for the rather certain 12th defense, a match that will most likely sell out the Nippon Budokan. Misawa is the only man to end a Kobashi title reign, and Misawa hasn’t lost a challenge of a singles title since April 1992, so he’ll be Kobashi’s stiffest challenge yet.
Zero-One- They announced cards for their first four shows of November, the last two of which will be ‘all steel cage’ shows. Notable on 10/2 is a tag between Ohtani and Omori against the ‘rising stars’ team of Sato and Yokoi, aka ROWDY. The next night in Korakuen Hall, Zero-One’s main tag titles currently held by Ohtani/Omori will be defended against Masato Tanaka & Wataru Sakata. 10/8 sees Sato defend his US Heavyweight title against Sakata, along with Tanaka defending his UN Heavyweight title against Omori. 10/17 caps things off with Takaiwa defending the juniors title, and a big 8 man tag with the Ohtani and Tanaka armies clashing again.
Section 3- Weak chairs, tiny tables and bath houses… the wide world of hardcore puro
IWA, FMW, Big Japan: these are the feds associated with hardcore wrestling in the eastern hemisphere. Of course there are weapons and gimmick matches in every federation, and there are matches that would never, ever, ever happen in North America, so let’s break down some of the hardcore elements.
Chairs: It’s not uncommon to see a chair used in a casual manner during a normal match in a normal fed, with no DQ. Why? Because the average Japanese chair is mostly lightweight plastic. They give a good ‘whack’ sound, but do no actual damage. Bad for fans of hardcore, good for long-term memory retention.
Tables: Trading visual appeal for actual pain, tables used in Japan are by default tiny. At half (or less) the size of the standard North American table, the Japanese ones look wimpy. However, they don’t allow for pre-cutting, which is a common practice in North America to make cleaner and easier breaks. Also, it’s harder to ‘aim’ properly, meaning that it’s not uncommon to see a wrestler get powerbombed too far, too short, or in such a way that the table tips rather than ‘catches’. Tables more often than not break falls, and when they don’t do that… ow.
Ladders: The horribly overused ladder match stipulation simply doesn’t see use in Japan. Ladders are used on occasion for spots, especially in kooky indie fed DDT where a ladder accompanies wrestler MIKAMI (said ladder is a two-time champion, but that’s another story).
Barbed Wire & Explosions: Standard fare for deathmatches around the world, including Japan. Barbed wire ropes aren’t used often, though. What Japan does more than anywhere else is ‘exploding’ barbed wire, where the wire is used to trigger explosions. In the same vein is the dreaded time bomb deathmatch, where a ring-coveringly huge (though non-lethal) explosion happens after a certain amount of time.
Cages: While not as trite as it is in North America (ie. “You’ll face ____… IN A CAGE!”), cages do see use in Japan, both in normal feds like New Japan and in hardcore feds.
Weird Hardcore: The hardcore promotions in Japan have had some fantastically bizarre matches. There’s the ‘Bath House Deathmatch’, in which two tag teams square off with one partner in an increasingly hot sauna. There’s the ‘House Deathmatch’, where wrestlers brawl through an acting set-style house and smash each other with random objects. My favorite was the ‘Small Town Streetfight’, in which several wrestlers went through a rural mall and tossed each other into and through pretty much every store and large object on hand. That one manages to be so bad it’s good.
Thumbtacks and other sharp objects: Hardcore promotions regularly use thumbtacks, light tubes, and the occasional pane of glass. One of the more famous implements of torture in Japan is the scythe, a curved sickle that’s the trademark of hardcore icon Mr. Pogo.
A final note on Japanese hardcore, it seems that everyone recommends the IWA King of the Deathmatch from 1995. I don’t, because the show is rather poor and only gets mention because Mick Foley won the tournament. A better introduction to the genre is FMW’s May 5th 1996 supershow, featuring a blend of weird gimmicks, standard wrestling and brutal deathmatches. Plenty of names you’ll know, from the Rock ‘n Roll Express to Taka Michinoku to Terry Funk to Foley, along with a women’s match that completely blows away anything you’ll see from WWE.
Section 4- Gaijins, Natives & The Foundations of Wrestling in Japan
Pro wrestling as we know it started in the US, with men like Lou Thesz building the foundations. After some small attempts to promote wrestling in Japan flopped, the legendary Rikidozan founded the Japan Pro Wrestling Alliance (JWA) in 1953. It boomed in 1954 when Rikidozan and his partner Masa Kimura challenged NWA tag champions the Sharpe brothers. Not only did it sell out the Tokyo Sumo Hall, but it drew gigantic TV ratings and caused people without televisions to crowd around available screens. Also in 1954, a show featuring the NWA women’s champion Mildred Burke nearly jump-started Joshi puroresu.
Why was it that foreign stars had such a tremendous effect? Well, first off these were the top pro wrestlers in the world at the time. But a much deeper cultural issue involved the lingering rivalry between Japan and the US. Japan was governed by the US for many years following World War II, and the occupation (not to mention heavy civilian casualties in 1945 and the war itself) created lots of resentment and a lack of national confidence. Seeing Japanese wrestlers compete with and often defeat Americans was an attraction that other sporting events lacked. Rikidozan’s matches with Thesz and several big title wins over other Americans established him as a top star in the world, in the process making him a national hero.
Rikidozan was stabbed and died in 1963, due to a dispute with the Japanese mafia. The aftermath of his death changed many things, but the reliance on American wrestlers wasn’t one of them. Practically every big American name before 1985 had important matches in Japan, and these were the matches that more often than not headlined the biggest shows. The hottest matches were consistently outsiders (or gaijin) against Japanese natives. The death of the regional wrestling environment (brought on by the WWF’s boom) harmed Japan, which was used as just another regional market for wrestlers to circulate to. Year-round contracts with WCW and WWF made it hard for wrestlers to do full Japanese tours, to the point where heavily used Americans of the last decade are those who became based primarily in Japan.
The lack of connection between WWF/WWE and Japan for years now has exacerbated this situation, because WWE sucks up so many talented/marketable/mainstream heavyweights that Japan is left with scraps. Since WWE does air in Japan, they know that the gaijin appearing in Japanese promotions are ‘lesser’, with the exception of those who cross over from shootfighting. Bottom line is that it wasn’t a lack of interest in seeing gaijin vs native matches that caused them to diminish, but rather what happened in the business. Though the best matches in Japan for some time now have been between Japanese wrestlers, it’s important to keep in mind that national pride works to get heat for a wrestling match no matter where you go. Vince McMahon doesn’t have a monopoly on jingonism.
One last note, I’d like to thank those of you who’ve written to me since the column’s debut. The feedback has been nothing but positive, not to mention coherent. If you have any questions, or have topics you’d like to see covered, please feel free to shoot me an email.
Next Week: The first update of October, a handful of my favorite sites for puro information, and a look at the primary ‘styles’ of puro along with good tapes to check out for beginners.
