Big Japan: 21st November 2008 (part one)

I have a secret pro-wrestling confession: I enjoy watching Masada. I don't know why. I never did when he was in the Carnage Crew in ROH, but I find I've enjoyed loads of his Big Japan matches in the past year. I didn't like his title match with Ito, but his singles with Hoshino and Sasaki were a lot of fun. Plus, him doing MEN's Teioh spots on the last show with the rest of Men's Club was hilarious. He wrestles at a good pace, especially when brawling around the arena, which can often have a lot of deadtime. I like how he sets up weapon or hardcore spots quickly too - it's "right, here's a weapon, that goes there, let's do a move now".

Anyway, I enjoyed his match with Isami Kodaka. Like the Hoshino match, he dominates and delivers a pretty violent beating, but allows Kodaka a decent amount in the comeback. I liked the weapon-based stuff with the ladder and the barbed wire for credibility more than the reverse hurricanrana (as impressive looking as that was). Other violent highlights include Masada (sort-of) catching Isami from a plancha to the outside, then german suplexing him into the chairs, and the now-obligatory powerbomb onto a ladder, with Isami's head landing on the metal. Fun stuff.

Thing I like most about Big Japan is the variety in styles you get on a single show. As well as the heavily-gimmick deathmatch stuff and the hardcore brawling stuff, there's the lucharesu-type Men's Club matches and the non-hardcore heavyweight division (generally, the Sekimoto matches). Increasingly, however, I've found the latter to be the blandest. I don't understand why, of all the new Big Japan rookies, people particularly care about Shinya Ishikawa, who does the fighting-spirit act like half the Japanese indie scene, and I don't feel he particularly distinguishes himself. I've enjoyed Yoshihiro Sasaki in the past, especially some of his matches Z1 in 2007, and he is best in short bursts, which his role in this tag allowed for. Only bit I really liked was the struggle at the end, with Kondo going for his submission finish, and having Ishikawa fight away from it or Sasaki break it up until it finally got the win. The rest was a little generic.

The main event was one of those deathmatches where Abby Jr decides he's going to take a bunch of crazy spots, bleed, bump and sell his way through twenty minutes. Miyamoto brings out a giant light-tube hand and breaks the whole thing over Abby's head. The lighttubes on the rope were too close together to break with the usual back bump, so Abby dives face first through ten of them. Twice. He headbutts lighttubes into Sasaki's chest and chops through five of them with his hand, in a fit of overexburance. Abby Jr is good times.

As to the rest of the match, they managed a good pace, and the three way tag format meant something was always going on with one of the pairings. It also led to some of the slightly goofy spots that multi-man matches do, but this was more of a crowd-pleaser than anything deeply serious. The main story of the match, aside that was all about establishing Miyamoto as the next challenger for the title, which would have been exciting for me if I hadn't already seen the resulting title match, and thought it was rubbish.

Part two to follow.