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Dai Nihon Nintei Death Match
Heavykyu Senshuken Jiai Anywhere 3 Way Board Death Match: Ryuji Yamakawa vs. Tomoaki Honma 6/20/99 Hokkaido Sapporo Teison Hall (2,000 sellout) From Battle Station Big Japan 7/25/99 Big Japan Excite Series |
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DEATH MATCH OF THE YEAR! Of course, there was virtually no selling considering the amount of punishment they were taking and the psychology was nonexistent. As usual, they killed themselves 50 times more than they needed to because all they did was spots, spots, and more spots. The difference is these guys, particularly Honma, can actually wrestle. People will go on and on about Mick Foley, but the fact is that he almost certainly never had a good straight technical wrestling match in his life. Foley was willing to take punishment like no one else from the US, but that's basically the be all and end all of his in ring ability. These guys are willing to take punishment like no one else, but they wouldn't have had much problem having a very good match together without any of the props. You could probably find a few matches with more absolutely insane gimmick spots, but what makes this match special is that I don't think any of them were actually well worked and executed wrestling matches. This was a total junior style spotfest. The main thing that separated it from all the other spotfests is that they used all these gimmicks to make the spots different. It was violence and bloodshed, violence and bloodshed, violence and bloodshed (TM Manowar), but almost all of it was caused by actual wrestling maneuvers. Instead of a regular springboard move, Honma did one where he shattered a florescent light bulb over Yamakawa's head. He also lit a florescent light bulb on fire and jumped off the balcony to hit Yamakawa with it (well, he tried to but he barely connected if he connected at all, so once he landed he broke the bulb over Yamakawa's head as quickly as he could to cover it). Honma did a tope con hilo, but it was insane because if he didn't clear the top rope, he would have landed on a bed of nails. Honma did a nadare shiki no Frankensteiner, but he did it so he put Yamakawa through a barbed wire board. Honma tombstoned Yamakawa off the apron, but he did it so Yamakawa would do through a board with a bunch of florescent light bulbs! They just had less than no regard for their bodies. In the long run, this will be a very bad thing because not only will they be all broken down and crippled up, but so will their predecessors. However, in the short run it was "good" because on this day they were able to give the fans the insane spotfest of all insane spotfests. They started out by teasing getting knocked into the boards in the corner. This was well done because they really struggled to avoid withstanding that pain. Normally it would be a problem that they took a detour from this road about a minute after they had turned into it. This meant there wasn't that intensity and fear the rest of the match, but that doesn't fit their characters. The feeling was more like a carefree invincibleness that spiraled way out of control to the point where they wanted to be the one that almost died because that would prove they were more of a man than any wrestler. They'd die for the title, they'd die just for the hell of it, but they'd die on their own terms, so they'd die like a man (a damn stupid one, but that's besides the point). The first one to go into the boards was Honma after a double reversal on the whip, and he took one of his classic bumps, splitting the table in two. They brawled to the souvenir stand where Honma did a major blade job after being rammed into a table that was leaning against the wall. Blood was squirting out of his forehead. Yamakawa piled up a few dozen chairs and Tigerdrivered Honma on them for a near fall. Honma was leaving a trail of blood behind, and that was before Yamakawa put his head into the bed of nails. Yamakawa's little yellow tights were even blood red, both from his own blood dripping and from rubbing against Yamakawa's bloody body on the spots. Yamakawa was the first to grab a florescent light bulb and Honma suckered him by begging for mercy. Yamakawa should have smashed the thing over his head then and there, but instead he figured he had Honma where he wanted him so he whipped Honma into the ropes so the bulb shot would do more damage. The problem was that Honma ducked it and used those kicking boots to do a few solid low kicks, which bought him enough time to grab a bulb of his own. They did a dueling light bulbs spot with both men ducking then Honma breaking it on Yamakawa's side. Honma thought he won the duel, forgetting that he was standing right next to a guy that had a bulb in his hand. Yamakawa was certainly in a great deal of pain, but not enough to prevent him from breaking the bulb on Honma's arm. Of course, when glass shatters there are pieces all over the place, so these nuts were bumping on broken glass for the rest of the match. They teased Honma getting knocked off the apron into the bed of nails. This set up Yamakawa getting sick of his own weak attempts to knock Honma off and bull charging at Honma, only to have Honma reenter with a swandive shiki no elbow. Honma was in perfect health for his comeback with regular wrestling spots, with the highlight being the aforementioned tope con hilo over the bed of nails. Honma reentered the ring with a swandive shiki no fluorescent bulb, adding more broken glass to the already plunder filled ring. Honma set up a barbed wire board across two chairs so he could do one of the great junior style garbage spots ever, a nadare shiki no Frankensteiner through the board. Honma then bent the broken barbed wire board over Yamakawa to cover him, and this may have been the most painful kick out of Yamakawa's career because he basically had to sacrifice his skin and push the barbed wire to get Honma off him. By this point, Yamakawa's back looked like a red road map. After Honma jumped off the balcony with the burning light bulb, the next crazy spot was one of the greatest garbage spots of all time. Forget about the piledriver through the table being a spot that will "surely break your neck," enter the tombstone piledriver off the ring apron. Of course, they wouldn't just do a regular tombstone off the apron in a match like this, Honma had to set up a geikoto (fluorescent light bulb) board to tombstone Yamakawa through. This looked fantastic because glass flew everywhere, but it must have hurt both men like hell to come flying down and shatter the glass. My friend Mike Barnes said this was the sickest spot he's ever seen. Back in the ring, Honma got a near fall with the Buff blockbuster. They teased Honma going through the nails again, and he finally did but it was a really safe bump. He did lay on the nails a while though. They ended the match in the glass filled ring with Yamakawa dropping Honma on his head and face with his patented reverse Tigerdriver. The first wasn't enough to put Honma away, but two in the row after the ungodly amount of punishment he had already taken was enough to keep the belt around Yamakawa's bloody waist. By the end of the match, these guys were literally bleeding from everywhere you could see. It was really disgusting, yet there was some perverse brilliance in it knowing that they didn't just get that way by hacking each other up with a fork or a scythe. The match robbed the moves and gimmicks of any and all value because they rolled out so many spots without ever slowing down. However, for what it was, no brawl in ECW over the past few years can touch it and it makes Cactus's US stuff (with the exception of the infamous cage bump, although Yamakawa has taken sicker bumps) look tame. This was easily the best Big Japan death match I had seen up to this point. Jerome's review: This match took the whole concept of garbage wrestling to another level. A few great death matches in the past foreshadowed this evolution, but none was as transcendent as this one. Honma and Yamakawa never gave you the feeling that they needed the gimmicks to have a very good match; instead it's like they just wrestled a traditional junior spotfest, only in a different environment. Of course, this was not a "highspot after highspot" match but more a "demented spot after sick spot" match. Ironically, the first gimmick bump was just Honma being thrown into a barbed wire board. What would have been the big spot of the match a few years ago was only the beginning here, kind of a warm-up before unleashing any serious offensive. Yamakawa dominated the first part of the match, brawling outside the ring and hitting Honma with chairs, in a calling to the blood to flow. So the blood flowed, as Honma's forehead became a fountain of red, warm, inner fluid. A scarlet trail followed him wherever he walked. Back in the ring, they did a cool exchange of light bulbs shots, complete with esquives and feints. The result of which was not only pain for both fighters, but also a ring now covered with broken glass. After Honma regained control, it was time for the first really sick spot, as he nadare shiki no Frankensteinered Yamakawa through a barbed wire board. As if it was not enough, he made the cover sandwiching him in the remains of the board. No further explanation of what happened when poor Yamakawa had to kick out is needed. After that brilliant action, Honma found amusing to get up to the balcony, lit a bulb on fire and jump from the top to break his weapon on the head of his opponent. Unfortunately, he first missed his target, but he covered his mistake by hitting it after the landing. Then he executed the most demented, sick, nihilistic spot ever. After placing a light bulb board between two chairs on the outside, he got up on the apron and tombstoned Yamakawa through it. The bulbs literally exploded under the impact, and both wrestlers were now completely in hell, but Ryuji Yamakawa would win this match even if he had to endure agony and he came back from that horrific spot to finally got the pinfall after two inverted Tigerdrivers What made this match so unreal, beyond the sick spots, beyond the incredible amount of blood, beyond the quality of the work, was the actual perversion of the whole thing. Every shot, every spot was perverted by the environment, as if they wrestled on the laps of the Devil. Broken glass was scattered all around the ring and they felt its keen bite each time they would fall on the mat. That would be a big deal in any other circumstances, but it was normality in their world. At the end of the match, it seemed like Yamakawa was sweating blood from every part of his body. No one has ever approached the level of sickness these two displayed during these 20 minutes of hell. What can be extremely disturbing is that no more can we say that garbage wrestling is reserved to unskilled stiffs who can't do anything but use props, bleed and jump face first in explosive barbed wire. So why these two, who could have very good matches on their own, would do such a thing? Sickness and dementia could be a part of the answer, but there's something else...Anyway, the major reason they worked such a great death match is because they have what is lacking in just about every garbage wrestler : talent. When praising this match, it would be unfair to ignore the fact that, like everything else, women were one step ahead, as Mayumi Ozaki and Megumi Kudo were the first ones, 3 years earlier, to display the mix of great work and pure sickness. Eric's comments: I thought this match was rather good. I really needed to view it from
a certain perspective to appreciate it though. I watched the match a
couple of During some point in the match, I was kinda thinking, "Neat, geikoto spot...but they'll be topping that spot in no time...oh well..." I think my expectations of the match were way too high: I was almost anticipating that this would be something like an AJW frantic paced match mixed with Cactus' bumps and tons more gore. It's rather unrealistic and kind of selfish to expect anyone to hit that level of wrestling. I think another reason why I was somewhat bored was that there were times when they would get into the "wander around and take a while to set up a spot" syndrome. Though, with the exception of the Tigerdriver on the chairs spot early on, I though they did a rather reasonable job of at least trying to set up some of the spots requiring more set up by at least piledriving their opponent on the floor, etc. To me, it seemed like this match was more about executing outrageous
spots and trying to push the envelope beyond old boundaries no matter
the risks. Overall, I'd probably agree with you guys that it was really good
for dangerously enhanced spots, sickness, and their willingness to kill
Special thanks to: Jerome Denis & Eric Thompson 19:35
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