Michinoku Pro: 15th September 1994

A notable show, opening with SATO, Shiryu and and Terry Boy, marking the first appearance of the Kai En Tai stable. The latter is in the opening match. Jinsei Shinzaki vs. Terry Boy was one of my favourite M-Pro matches from 1993, and this is the rematch (or something, because it's 14 months later). There's a few knocks against this - the opening brawl feels like late 90s hardcore title material, with too much walking and not enough punching people. You get a sense of the changing dynamics of the promotion, with Terry Boy being in control for most of it and getting the better of Shinzaki with repeated attacks to the arm and counters of his trademark moves into armbars. Shinzaki eventually goes for a chair and opens Terry up leaving a large bloody gash over his left eye for the rest of the match. This is an interesting transition match. By the end of the show, Terry is pretty much working rudo, but here he is still slightly the underdog, and Shinzaki resorts to weapons to take control of the match in a typical heelish move. Yet it's a more aggressive Terry throughout - less sympathetic, more vicious on offence.

With all the focus on the new stable, Great Sasuke vs. Turako is heavily clipped. It starts from Turako's tope, then Sasuke does his no-hand somersault tope, then Turaki cheats to get ahead, then Sasuke comes back and wins (with a cross face chickenwing, somewhat unexpectedly). It's all solid, but this is a match missing a large chunk of it's body, and hard to judge.

Super Delfin and TAKA Michinoku v SATO and Shiryu was an excellent way to launch the Kai En Tai stable. It's part-angle really, a twenty minute rudo beatdown with a stretcher job for Delfin and a DQ finish when they throw the ref aside. It's also the first televised match featuring SATO the bruiser, rather than SATO the impossibly athletic heavy guy. There's no matwork or rope-running or dives here, just chops, kicks and punches designed to look as damaging as possible. Those chops were wild and great. The beating TAKA takes is really something, and his mini-comeback, featuring the no-hand plancha, completely had the crowd (and me). It was borderline cathartic as he made a two-on-one comeback - only for it to be snuffed out by a near-impossible mismatch (or, more accurately, a dropkick to the back of the head). The DQ was moments later, which was sensible, because the whole thing had acheived it's purpose and there was no way to improve upon it with another extended beatdown. Great stuff. I'm looking forward to seeing how TAKA ends up in the group after this.