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Mitsuharu Misawa & Masahito
Kakihara vs. Vader & Scorpio From All Japan Hour #91 '99 Summer Action Series II Taped 8/29/99 Osaka Chou Taiikukan (1,500 sellout) |
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A much better match on paper than it was in actuality. All Japan has used basically everyone I thought they could get to improve the league other than Takada and Masato Tanaka, but they don't get anything out of these guys and the league just keeps getting worse. They brought in Scorpio for this tour, and he showed up in the best shape I've ever seen him in. Ironically, that "made him a junior" again, which meant his worth in AJ would be next to nil. Aside from losing a junior title match to Ogawa, they didn't do anything with him. They had him paired off with Masao Inoue in the previous two matches I saw him in from this tour, and it was obvious just how awful Inoue is because Scorpio couldn't do anything with him or get anything out of him. This was finally a chance for him to show his stuff since he was in with Kakihara, but the story of the match was Vader running over the opposition so Scorpio wound up selling most of the time he was in. To his credit, he knew the difference between working in America and Japan (since he trained in the NJ dojo and wrestled there often back in the day), so that combined with working really hard to try to land a job resulted in some of his best selling. Vader did a typically good job of working the crowd before the match. Today he made them believe he was going to throw one of them his mask so he was getting big pops from every direction he pointed in. He finally threw his mask, right down by his feet to piss the fans off, resulting in a round of boos. Then he threw his mask out, right to one of the seconds for safe keeping. The sad thing is, the crowd reacted more to all of this than they did to any of the wrestling matches. Scorpio vs. Kakihara was actually a style clash, but these guys, particularly Kakihara, are too good to be held down by things like that. Still, I'm sure they could do way better if they were familiar with each other. In any case, Scorpio did a better job of putting over Kakihara's submissions than most anyone else in AJ has. The problem is everyone knows Kakihara will never actually get a submission unless he's in with a rookie. "I like Kakihara the most of anyone in All Japan right now because him against any junior is a style clash, but therein is the beauty of it, as the shooter takes on a junior pro. I mean, look at the Cobra vs. Takada, that match is similar except Takada killed Takano," wrote Sam. Therein lies the problem in how AJ uses Kakihara. Unless the shooter is kicking some serious ass at some point, the shooter has no credibility. I'm not saying Kakihara needs to dominate everyone, but his kicks need to be put over and he needs to get some submission wins. They took a guy that should be their future and made him the most impotent shooter this side of Tatsuo Nakano. After Scorpio did a wild lariat off the apron that showed off his leaping ability, Vader brought Kakihara into the crowd and went to hit him with a chair. Before he could do so, some middle aged woman got out of her chair, walked up from behind, and hit Vader in the back with a magazine. Everyone was laughing. The funny thing was that the swat was so pathetic that Vader may have been the only person that didn't know he was hit. It was pathetic just how easily Kakihara went down. Vader brought him back in the ring after this and did his Big Van crush off the second then Scorpio followed with a diving body press of his own. Scorpio took care of Misawa and Vader did Big Van crush (body press/splash) for the win. Vader looked like he deserved to be the #1 contender, but no one else was given enough time or offense to impress. Scorpio was solid, but the point of bringing him in should be to spice up the cards with his flying moves like Hayabusa did at one time, not to have him have poor matches with Inoue or showing that he can sell. Still, anyone that would continue booking Bart Gunn when a motivated Scorpio is available has more than a few screws loose. Then again, we are talking about a guy who isn't willing to free up salary used on outsiders that suck, mean nothing, or both to bring Gladiator in full time. This tour showed that like every other guy that could breathe new life into the company with top level matches against the big five, they wouldn't do anything with Gladiator anyway, so he may as well stay in ECW where he's appreciated and utilized (granted they haven't done that great of a job of getting him over, but he did win the title immediately). At least they decided to bring Scorpio back for the current tour after not booking him on the previous two. It doesn't seem like he's being given the opportunity to be worth much of anything again, but if he keeps working hard, which is a big if because he's a guy that will kill himself to have strong matches if he's pushed but will sleepwalk if he's supposed to lose in a Flash, he might get a few bones some year. Special Thanks to: Sam Panico 9:17
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