wrestling / Video Reviews

Furious Flashbacks: Dradition Immortal Dragon

January 23, 2015 | Posted by Arnold Furious
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Furious Flashbacks: Dradition Immortal Dragon  

Dradition Immortal Dragon

 

19th November 2014.

 

We’re in Tokyo, Japan at the Korakuen Hall. Although it’s borderline unrecognisable on account of the appalling/old fashioned set-up they have.

 

Dradition is the company formed by Tatsumi “Dragon” Fujinami in 2008. It was formally called Muga and used to get a lot of love on the internet for featuring old-school mat wrestling. I like a bit of the old school mat wrestling but I never had time to check out the Japanese Indies before. Now I’m exclusive to the Japanese scene, I finally have time to check it out.

 

Bear Fukuda, Masato Shibata & Tsubakichi Sanchu vs. Nobuyuki Kurashima, Amigo Suzuki & Kotaro Nasu

 

Sanchu was lovingly dubbed “Sanchez Suckballs” the last time I saw him; for Sayama’s piece of shit promotion Real Japan, some four years ago. At least he’s memorable, I guess. Fukuda you might know from AJPW as he has a slight association with their terrible stable Dark Kingdom. First observation about Dradition is how stripped down it is. There’s no music (or at least it’s dubbed over with commentary) and the ring is lower down, like a sumo venue. Which explains their set up of the building. Suckballs comes out here dressed like Spider-Man while his tag partners are dressed like the Roadwarriors. Only in wrestling can this be considered ‘dressing down’. For a 6-man tag the pacing is almost glacial, which is to be expected in an ‘old school’ promotion. This might just be the surly old bastard in me speaking, but I kinda like it. The big emphasis is on Nasu attempting to get an upset and yet continually finding himself on the wrong end of abuse. Everyone seems happy to stick to their strengths and nobody cocks anything up. Suckballs pretty much just uses his kicks but hey, that’s the one thing he can do! Bear and Shibata throw a lot of heavy lumber and such and the other guys play underdogs. Amigo finds himself isolated though and Fukuda finishes with a Death Valley Driver. You know what I liked the most about this? It made sense. The odds were against Amigo Suzuki…so he lost. People over think wrestling. It’s a straight forward business. This match contained many simple pleasures for me. Nobody was that great in the ring but they played to their strengths and it worked.

 

Final Rating: **1/2

 

Hiro Saito vs. Yoshinari Ogawa

 

Saito used to be a decent midcard guy for New Japan in the early 90s. Now he looks a bit like Takayama crossed with Chono. If Tak got shrunk in the wash and joined the Yakuza, he’d look like Hiro Saito. Ogawa is, of course, the NOAH junior who once teacher’s petted his way into a GHC title run. Dradition actually seems up Ogawa’s alley as he doesn’t have to match up to the speed of people 20 years younger than him and only has to be quicker than a 53 year old, which he can just about manage. The style of the match reminds me of something from the 80s, which is the point. I know a few people who wax lyrical about how wrestling “isn’t like it used to be”. They’d enjoy this. Probably. The weird thing about modern wrestling is how varied it inevitably is to stop people’s attention from drifting and I can actually feel mine sliding during this match. Saito gets caught in a roll up and Ogawa scores the pin. What really irks me is Zack Sabre Jr. jumping in there to celebrate with Ogawa. Why couldn’t he work Saito? That’d be great. More old school goodness but Ogawa is still Ogawa no matter the style.

 

Final Rating: **

 

Daisuke Sekimoto vs. LEONA

 

There’s only one promotion in the world that would book this. Fujinami has hired one of the world’s top independent wrestlers and booked him to wrestle his own son. Keeping in mind this is Sekimoto, a virtual beast of a man who annihilates normal wrestlers. LEONA, on the other hand, is nepotism at its very worst and looks like an accountant who got lost on his way to a business lunch and ended up in the ring. Sekimoto tries so goddamn hard to make LEONA look credible, even when it makes no sense. Sekimoto ends up just standing there and letting LEONA elbow him for a while because he can’t think of any other way to maintain realism. Another embarrassing spot follows with LEONA managing to ‘drag’ Sekimoto into the ropes to survive a half crab. I’ll give Sekimoto a lot of credit, the spots aren’t a total joke because of how he sells it to the crowd but it’s all so unbelievable. What’s worse is the abandonment of Dradition’s style to make LEONA look more interesting. Why is he allowed to hit a tope? Sekimoto walks LEONA through the rest of the match, including a spot where he has to stand around waiting for LEONA to get in position for AGES. They clearly sucker the fans into it with LEONA desperately kicking out of spots at 2 ½ but that’s because it’s treated like a sport in Japan. Eventually Sekimoto gets bored and wins with a Torture Rack. LEONA is proof that the wrestling gene doesn’t get automatically transferred down from father to son because he fucking sucks. I get Fujinami’s attempts to improve his son’s skills though and clearly the attempt is to get better talent to work with him. So far it’s not working but he is better now than a year ago.

 

Final Rating: *1/2

 

Takashi Sugiura vs. Alexander Otsuka

 

This is a much better idea; pitting hard-hitting badass Sugiura against surly, downright miserable chain-wrestling midcarder Otsuka. They take a ‘methodical’ pace here, which is a polite way of saying ‘boring’. I understand Dradition’s old-timey gimmick but that doesn’t mean a lack of effort. It only starts to pick up after Otsuka instigates a strike duel and then HOLY SHIT IT GETS AWESOME! Otsuka feels he can’t win standing up and takes it to mat where he discovers Sugiura is an Olympic-level badass at mat wrestling but nobody has felt the need to challenge that for 10 years. Otsuka himself is no slouch and has a, quite dreadful, MMA record. That said he did beat Marco Ruas at Pride 4. Sugiura is definitely the bigger star in the pro-wrestling world and the match reflects that. Otsuka does get flashes of dominance in there though and a theme of this evening is that the losers look good in defeat. A theme several other promotions (coughWWEcough) could learn from. Otsuka at his best comes across like a less-good Sugiura though. Even his ring-gear looks weaker. Keeping in line with another strange Dradition booking habit (that no one has defined finishers) Sugiura goes ahead and wins with a rana into a pin. I like the idea that matches can finish out of nowhere and there are companies out there where only finishers or roll ups finish matches. What companies, you ask? Why, all of the rest of them. That, amongst other things makes Dradition a refreshing watch.

 

Final Rating: **3/4

 

Shodai Tiger Mask & Super Tiger vs. Mitsuya Nagai & Black Tiger

 

Shodai Tiger Mask is the original Tiger Mask; Satoru Sayama. He’s now 57 and fat. He spends most of his time promoting Real Japan and being a side attraction draw for them. Considering these guys have the ideals that Dradition is built around, they spend the most time doing Attitude Era nonsense. Like Nagai going on a chair rampage at ringside, outside interference and Black Tiger hitting, and I’m not kidding here, Shattered Dreams on Super Tiger. Incidentally Black Tiger is Tetsuhito Takaiwa, heavy-hitting junior badass from 90s New Japan. Considering he’s 57, and overweight, Sayama is in good shape and moves around well. I guess retiring young helped to preserve him. Now I feel really bad for Tommy Billington. Sayama does his kicks and the Tiger Feint Kick and everyone in the crowd has a good time as he gets blown up and has to tag out. The trouble with doing spin kicks, and other junior moves, at a quarter of the speed that fans are used to seeing them at, is the whole thing comes across as underwhelming. And both Super Tiger and Sayama insist on working a slowed down version of the popular junior style. Plus Nagai & Takaiwa decide to work full-blown heel. Yeah, it’s old school because no one wants to see this shit anymore. Sayama eventually overcomes the odds, like some sort of 80s superhero, and puts Black Tiger away with the Tiger Suplex. This was a tired exhibition style bout with old guys working an old style. It didn’t have the same logical sense of the earlier matches either. It just wasn’t very good.

 

Final Rating: *

 

Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Naomichi Marufuji

 

It’ll be interesting to see if Marufuji can stick to the Dradition style like Sugiura did. You’d think he would, working against “The Dragon” himself. Fujinami looks in great shape, especially considering he’s 61 now. Bigger promotions could do worse than to book him for undercard ‘legends’ bouts. Just make sure he doesn’t bring his son along. Marufuji gets to show off his mat wrestling skills, which are good and have improved over the years but are no real match for Fujinami. So Maru has to do flippy escapes instead, which draws some delightful “hey, how about that?” facial expressions from the Dragon. Then it’s DRAGON SCREW TIME! Try flipping out of that, junior! Sadly, mainly due to Fujinami’s age, the bout swiftly hits the mat after that with Marufuji getting caught in leg holds. Fujinami is smart enough to know what he can and can’t do, so the majority of Marufuji’s comeback is him sitting there while Maru unloads with kicks and such. Their chop duels are brief but they are badass. Fujinami still throws a chop that’s on a par with anything in the world. The match is smartly worked and Marufuji doesn’t look dumb for getting caught in Fujinami’s holds. He does a great job of selling the dragon screws and leglocks. It’s a genuinely good contest. Your enjoyment of it will depend heavily on how old you are and how into Fujinami you were like 25 years ago but it’s still good. It’s good enough to make me start to question just how good is Marufuji at the moment? He’s certainly reached that higher level or he wouldn’t be running around as GHC champion but this shows how great he is at selling different matches, opponents and styles to the audience. Eventually Marufuji goes over but Fujinami does survive the shiranui and a big knee to the face during a chop duel.

 

Final Rating: ***

5.0
The final score: review Not So Good
The 411
Dradition is a hard sell on my time. It does offer something different but the old-school style of wrestling is something that I already lived through, I already experienced. So while it’s a nice change of pace and I dig that the outcomes of matches make logical sense there’s just a shade too much nepotism in this promotion. In particular LEONA but Sayama really isn’t a draw nowadays. This show benefitted hugely from NOAH involvement and I would watch another Dradition show as long as there was outside assistance and they stuck to the traditional aspects of the venture.
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