Michinoku Pro: February 4th 1994

Show opens with a decent Terry Boy vs. Ricky Fuji match. I've seen Fuji in Super J Cup matches, and never really thought he looked good. In a brawl, however, against a babyface as sympathetic to crowds as Terry Boy, he makes a lot more sense. He does a series of headlocks where he takes advantage of the position and punches Terry in the face. The match is particularly notable for Terry's bladejob, which was pretty impressive. I continue to be impressed with Terry's sense of timing and ability to connect with the crowd during his comebacks.

The main event is a six-man tag between Great Sasuke, SATO and Shiryu vs. Delfin, Shinzaki and Naniwa, and could serve as the best possible introduction to the promotion from this time period. It pretty much has everything from familiar spots and sequences, comedy, an impressive pace and an insight into each guys characters. Right from the start, SATO and Delfin match up which gives the former opportunity to show off his athleticism whilst Delfin bumps, shouts at the audience and mugs when SATO remains unexpectedly in the ring. Sasuke and Shinzaki pair up as their feud continues - I liked Shinzaki's 'where did that come from' face after Sasuke catches him with his spinning kick. There's a hugely impressive series of spots where SATO bests both Naniwa and Delfin (and later, Shinzaki) with a combination of takedowns and moves that uses one man against the others. I particularly liked how this wasn't just mindless technical wonkery - the kind of sequence that just exists to show off how imaginative the perfomers are. Instead, they use to tell a mini story of rudo frustration against a technically superior technico, calmed down by Shinzaki's Zen monk schtick.

They do they increasingly familiar spot where Delfin's accidentally does armbreakers to his team mate. There's also some regular spots I don't like (like the hurricanrana into the middle of sat-down guys), of course. They repeatedly tease dives in the early section, which I quite liked as they only went all out for their trademark dives right at the end, starting with a spectacular Shiryu tope where he goes the wrong side (the right side) of horizontal, followed by SATO's no hand two rope springboard, Delfin's plancha and Sasuke's quebrada. It's not, as is probably indicated by the number of individual spots discussed, the deepest of match stories - there's lots of enjoyable individual exchanges and a general crowd-friendly theme of the technico's one-upping their opponents. As a result, however, it is tremendous fun.