These two didn't work well together. There were a couple of really pathetic spots where Ichihara would avoid Mukai's move before Mukai even started doing it. One time he rolled under Mukai's wheel kick before Mukai even left his feet. Another time a senton atomico was avoided before the top ropes were left. Probably the most embarrassing point was when Ichihara sat up to avoid an elbow drop because it's not a fast spot and everyone could see Ichihara was up, but Mukai still insisted on elbowing the canvas. The finish was bad, but at least not in the same way. The ref counted two on Ichihara's la magistral before Ichihara had both of Mukai's shoulders down (the one close to the ref was down). Realizing this, the ref stopped the count, but since it was the finish Ichihara just adjusted Mukai so his shoulders were both down and then the ref counted three. It wouldn't be a big deal if Mukai was supposed to be knocked out, but on a move that does no damage it doesn't work because it's way too hard to keep any conscious opponent tied up for that long. These two are hardly great, but I've never seen this amount of incompetence from them.

7:27

Rating:

 

The Great Same & SASUKE.com & The Great Ken vs. Tomokazu Morita & Satoru Makita & Yoshihito Sasaki

Same was Shinjuku Same, .com was junji.com, & Ken was Arvan Ken. I assume these Team Kuroda members dressing up as Sasuke was some kind of dig on him because, other than the costumes, they were no different than they usually are. This was a bad match with poor execution. The only competent wrestler was .com. Makita has risen above the other two rookies, as he's advance to the point where he's beginning to have some semblance of a move set. He did a pescado and facecrusher in this match. He tried a German suplex, but .com turned it into the Stone Cold stunner. SASUKE.com pinned Makita with a nadare shiki no blockbuster. The sections where .com was in with Makita were okay After the match, the real Sasuke came out and beat up all the fakes.

9:00

Rating:

 

Ricky Fuji vs. Prodigy

You'd think they could come up with better former ECW guys than Prodigy, who was very sloppy. The best move he did was a moonsault attack, but it was off pretty far to the right (Fuji pretty much saved it). The action was good, it's just that it was short and not well executed. Maybe if they worked together more often they could do something decent because the biggest problem seemed to be that they often weren't on the same page. Fuji was okay, but not near the level where he could stop the streak of amateur hour looking matches at two.

3:54

Rating:

 

Kyoko Inoue & Emi Motokawa vs. Momoe Nakanishi & Nanae Takahashi

NanaMomo came out last even though they were the outsiders. They got a lot of streamers considering the crowd seemed to be a lot closer to 500 than the claimed figure. Takahashi looks kind of like a shorter Genki with this current haircut.

Momoe was the best wrestler on the show. She's a great athlete, but what separates her is that she knows how to use this ability. It's not so much the moves she uses, as her move set on paper actually isn't all that spectacular. She does everything fast though, and often not in the standard way. She'll use her quickness and athleticism to avoid or counter the opponents move. In these situations, even if she goes into a basic move, it's still quite an advanced sequence that's performed with a sharpness and precision that would earn her high marks in gymnastics. One spot I liked a lot was Momoe leaping over Emi's kneecap dropkick. It didn't necessarily lead to anything, but it certainly wasn't something I expected to see. In the age when we "see every cool move regularly," the surprises become the spots to appreciate the most.

Momoe vs. Emi totally made the match. The wrestled at full speed, performing excellent sequences where they constantly countered each other. Emi worked really hard, and it definitely helped that she was actually against someone her size (technically smaller). This was probably the best she's ever looked, which is more a testament to Momoe because she pushed her to rise to the occasion and was one of the few outsiders Emi has faced that didn't treat her like a jobber. The only bad thing Emi did in this match, which was one of the silliest ideas I've seen in a long time, was try to use her reverse Frankensteiner on Takahashi. Obviously, it would have helped if Takahashi left her feet and bent her back. Instead, she just fell backwards (at least a little faster than she did on the lariat) and rolled off Emi's back. Not many people can take a bump that makes this move look good, but this was the worst "attempt" I've ever seen.

Takahashi created a really silly spot. Momoe grabbed Kyoko when she was on the middle rope, which saved Takahashi from Kyoko's tope reversa. Takahashi walked over to Kyoko, but stopped about a step away from her than ran and elbowed Emi, who was all the way on the other side of the ring in her own corner (she may have been about to enter the ring, but even Takahashi isn't so slow that Emi could run across the ring before she took one step and did something to Kyoko). Takahashi then ran over and nudged Kyoko over the top to the floor, a "move" she could easily have done before going after Emi. Had she done it then, she could have saved Emi & Kyoko the embarrassment of staying in this ridiculous position for so long. It's hard enough to hold someone on the middle rope for a few seconds, much less close to half a minute. The "advantage" of Takahashi taking Emi out first, I suppose, was that Momoe was able to round both of them up so Takahashi could give them her suicida. Of course, Takahashi could just as easily have knocked Emi out second and had Momoe pulling Kyoko into position while she was doing this. Anyway, Momoe followed by giving them both a plancha.

The difference between Momo & Nana can be summed up by how they took Kyoko's double lariat. Momoe took a great flip bump on impact, but Takahashi fell so late that Kyoko couldn't do her usual follow up with that arm. Kyoko should have been past Takahashi by the time Takahashi decided maybe she should fall.

It was a high energy match except when Kyoko was on offense. Kyoko didn't help this match much because she played the size card and didn't want to sell for Momoe. There was a great spot where Momoe tried the version of the victory roll where her legs go around the opponents waist (as opposed to the neck), but Kyoko stopped the momentum just before Momoe hit the canvas and tossed Momoe over her head with a wheelbarrel suplex. Kyoko vs. Takahashi was nothing special. Overall she just slowed the pace down too much, and her weight was a big problem for the opposition. They could not even give her a decent double suplex.

The end of the match was strong because it was Momoe vs. Emi. Momoe's finisher was awesome. It's hard to describe, but it's like a corbata that ends with a double leg cradle like a victory roll.

13:07

Rating:

 

WEW Hardcore Tag Senshuken: Kintaro Kanemura & Ryuji Yamakawa vs. Mammoth Sasaki & Azusa Kudo

We saw this same basic matchup on the last PPV, and it was the best match on the show. The one difference, aside from which team was defending, is that Kudo was with Sasaki instead of Onryo. What it a difference it made though.

This match was very unstructured, and for the most part meandered along going nowhere. Aside from blood, the only thing it offered was spots. They didn't chain anything together though and it was pretty messy, so it wasn't close to a good spot match. Kanemura & Yamakawa are certainly capable of having a good match. This once again showed they need better opposition for that to happen though.

Kanemura bled less than two minutes into the match, with Kudo quickly following suit. The match had it's moments, just not nearly enough of them considering the many weaknesses and flaws. At one point, Kudo stood on the 2nd rope and DDT'd Kanemura off the apron through a table then Sasaki chokeslammed Yamakawa off the stage though a table. Later, Yamakawa did a tope con hilo then Kanemura did a quebrada. Sasaki gave Kanemura a chokeslam off a table draped over the top turnbuckle. The finish saw Kanemura take a chair shot from Sasaki, but then duck one from Kudo and pin him in the legendary backslide.

I wouldn't say the match was boring, but I don't feel that they did anything to bring me into the match. Part of me appreciates how they put their body on the line; it's not like the gimmick spots were "faked" to the point they are just laughable like we see in the WWF (like the "deadly" Undertaker chokeslam off the stage at Wrestlemania). The other part is just frustrated because if it's not going to be meaningful then what's the point of putting yourself through hell?

14:59

Rating:

 

Kodo Fuyuki & GOEMON & Onryo vs. Katsumi Usuda & Ryuji Hijikata & Takeshi Ono

The Battlarts team were mystery opponents. Apparently, they left their motivation in that promotion. This wasn't a bad match by any means, but it was the kind of match you expect on a small house show rather than a PPV semifinal. Onryo was once again the highlight, but (since none of these guys are great or terrible) no one logged enough ring time to make a big difference one way or the other. Surprisingly, the match was best when Onryo was against Ono, who is easily the worst of the Battlarts trio but can be effective when spotted. Usuda was solid but unspectacular, mainly throwing his kicks. Fuyuki pinned Hijikata after his lariat. There really wasn't anything technically wrong with the match, but it was just kind of their since they basically just went through the motions.

11:27

Rating:

 

Naked Man Match: The Great Sasuke vs. Tetsuhiro Kuroda

Sasuke has proved he can excel with a limited opponent before, 4/29/94 against Jinsei Shinzaki being a prime example, and he did it once again today. This match wasn't as good as the aforementioned, but as far as the actual wrestling goes it was as good a match as just about anyone can be expected to have with Kuroda. Considering a typical Kuroda match, the brilliance was simply masking how incredibly limited Kuroda really is. Kuroda's move set is actually less impressive than Sugar Sato's, but about the only move he repeated was his lariat (a plus since it's his finisher) and it wasn't the least bit boring. Sasuke's matches are usually a lot more spectacular with a much higher degree of difficulty, but it's more important that he knew what his opponent could and couldn't do. Instead of losing Kuroda, he constantly had him in positions where he could succeed. This was far more responsible for the quality we got here than any glorious highspot that Sasuke did.

Regardless of your feeling on a naked match, the stipulations really hurt the overall quality. The rules were all wrong. Such a match could work if you had to strip your opponent to win (especially since this isn't exactly Finkel and Whippleman trying to "wrestle"). It could also work if stripping your opponent was your reward for winning. It cannot work under the rules we had here, which were the same as a regular match in that you won the match by pin, submission, KO, etc. Stripping your opponent was just something you did because you promised the fans some D & A. The focus was on the stripping even though the stripping got you nowhere. Instead of trying to take that next step when the opponent was almost out of it, we saw them waste their time ripping each others stinky socks off. So often I wanted to get into this match because the wrestling was quite good, but every time the match was "getting ready to end," they reverted back to clothes ripping. Considering the quality of the match and it's position on the card, there should have been a lot of drama. Unfortunately, it didn't happen because instead of Kuroda doing something to finally lay his new enemy out, he kept reverting back to trying to rip his sweaty athletic supporter off.

Team Kuroda attacked Sasuke at the bell and ripped his warm up gear off. Sasuke was in Eskimo mode so Kuroda would have a lot to rip off. Kuroda wore a cut off top and sweats. That's the irony of this type of match; most everyone essentially wrestles in their underwear anyway. They did more brawling than they normally would, but that made sense because it was a grudge match.

Kuroda worked on Sasuke's knee with Bret Hart type moves. This set up one key spot, but they didn't seem to even consider doing anything with it beyond that. Kuroda DDT'd Sasuke in the crowd, but all the time he wasted time came back to haunt him because Sasuke turned his lariat into a Frankensteiner. Sasuke did a forearm (?) off the stairs in the back of the arena, which led to the revelation (at least for me) that this was a falls count anywhere match (the stip added nothing because they didn't try to make it have any importance). When Sasuke started climbing up the stairs again, Kuroda ripped Sasuke's pants off, exposing Sasuke's cup and bikini shorts. In spots like that, the match worked because the set up was really good and the unclothing was a surprise. Sasuke delivered an elbow off the doorway and Kuroda started rolling down the stairs, which looked really silly. Sasuke piledrove Kuroda on the floor, but failed to rip his pants off.

Sasuke was going to give Kuroda a plancha, but Shinjuku Same tried to punch him in the bad knee. Of course, being the poster boy for ineptitude, Same missed, but Sasuke sold it just the same. Team Kuroda then held Sasuke so Kuroda could pull his shirts off. Sasuke took out Team Kuroda with a tope con hilo then ripped Kuroda's sweats and socks off. Another good declothing spot saw Sasuke pull Kuroda's boxers down when Kuroda was resisting being taken down into Sasuke's flying sunset flip. Sasuke pulled Kuroda's kneepads off when Kuroda kicked out.

Kuroda ripped Sasuke's cup off after a near fall from his lariat then tried for the bikini shorts, but Sasuke protected his jewels. Kuroda hit another lariat when Sasuke got up then pulled him up and pinned him with an implant DDT. Team Kuroda went to remove Sasuke's bikini shorts, but Fuyuki, GOEMON, & Onryo saved him. Sasuke's crack was partially exposed, but that's it. It's not like I wanted to see more or give the digitizer some work, but I suppose it can't be worse than FMW maintaining their perfect record of not honoring stips. Fuyuki surprisingly lariated Sasuke, who is on his side against Kuroda, most likely for failing to beat their enemy. After Fuyuki made a speech "justifying" his right to censor and announcing that he was taking the role of commissioner again, Team Kuroda scored a small victory for right to nudity by coming back and dousing Fuyuki and the announcer with a bucket of water each.

21:08

Rating: