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Furious Flashbacks: Big Japan Ikkitousen Death Match Survivor 2015 Day 3

May 3, 2015 | Posted by Arnold Furious
Big Japan Wrestling Image Credit: Big Japan Wrestling
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Furious Flashbacks: Big Japan Ikkitousen Death Match Survivor 2015 Day 3  

BJW Ikkitousen Death Match Survivor 2015 Day 3

 

21st March 2015.

 

The heavyweight division in Big Japan might be the best in the world. Or the best from my perspective anyway, as it’s a bunch of superheavyweights beating the fuck out of each other in the most manly way possible. Normally I avoid death match heavy BJW cards but this one does sport both a six man that’s absolutely loaded and a tag title main event where the challengers are Yuji Okabayashi and YUJI HINO! What wonderful human being do I have to thank for that slice of booking gold? Keeping in mind the champs are Kohei Sato and Shuji Ishikawa. So yeah, despite a frankly terrifying prospect of four deathmatches on this card, those two matches should compensate for it.

 

We’re in Fukuoka, Japan at the Hakata Star Lane. This aired live on niconico.

 

Jaki Numazawa, Tsutomu Osugi, Hercules Senga & Yuichi Taniguchi vs. Abdullah Kobayashi, Shu Brahman, Kei Brahman & Takayuki Ueki

 

This is possibly not the best way to open the show although I can’t think of any other slot on the show where I’d want a comedy 8-man tag with two hardcore deathmatch guys, someone who dresses like a panda and a guy who comes to the ring with a flashing police siren on his head. Ueki does the time-tested spot where he hip tosses everyone else in the match, including the female ref and then everyone salutes. After that it’s all the Brahman’s usual spots although I’m pleased they’ve added a bottle of ketchup to the repertoire. The glaring mistakes in the match are laughed at so presumably it’s all part of the joke. Kobayashi gets his jollies from mimicking New Japan guys, including the worst Shinsuke Nakamura impression you’ll ever see from the fat panda enthusiast. Technically the match is an abomination, especially Kobayashi’s roll up that wins but it’s fairly funny, sporadically.

 

Final Rating: *3/4

 

Masashi Takeda vs. Ryuichi Sekine

 

Because the focus of this show is the death match tournament this is an official Block A contest. I won’t bore you with the brackets or anything because I won’t be following the tournament. This is a barbed wire board and fluorescent tube board death match. Like every death match they start out by wrestling and nobody cares because they’re just waiting for someone to get fucked up. But they don’t have to wait long because this match is disgustingly brutal. Sekine finds himself trapped under the barbwire board and Takeda just wails on the back of his head, completely unprotected with a chair, busting him open hardway. It’s sickening. I didn’t think there were any promotions left stupid enough to do something like this but hey, hardcore promotions will always surprise you with how far they’re prepared to go to entertain. Want to see a guy get so concussed he can’t remember his name? Big Japan. That’s where you go. They seriously need to address safety concerns because someone is going to die. At least they work pretty clean, on the whole, and the match would work without the hardcore elements, which is always a bonus. If you can overlook the unprotected chair shot to the back of the head then it settles into a decent rhythm. They use the light tube board too and it looks as if they’ve run out of shit to use but Sekine grabs some thumbtacks, places them carefully in board, with edges, and allows Takeda, who is not being careful in this match AT ALL, to German suplex him into the board. His neck lands on the edge and if he’d stayed down with a snapped spinal cord I wouldn’t have been surprised. I feel bad for Sekine taking this level of abuse in front of 500 people. Anyway, Takeda takes the win and Sekine is off to hospital.

 

Final Rating: **1/2

 

Masato Inaba vs. Takumi Tsukamoto

 

This is a TLC match. A contest that lends itself toward multiple participants so they can sell the big bumps. It also helps if something is hanging over the ring. There’s no reason to climb a ladder otherwise. You just end up looking like an idiot. Tsukamoto decides there’s more mileage in chairs and uses one to choke Inaba after hitting a slam on a set up chair that looked more dangerous than cool. They get around to the ladder but without the climbing elements it’s not much fun and both guys get hurt badly. Tsukamoto from catching the ladder with his face and Inaba by accidentally landing shin-first on it. Like in the last match they blow their wad by smashing the table with a DVD off the apron about halfway through the match. And where do you go from there? They decide to go with wrestling instead and Tsukamoto wins with a roll up. A roll up! That shouldn’t be permitted in a TLC match! Somebody call the wrestling police.

 

Final Rating: **

 

Isami Kodaka vs. Saburo Inematsu

 

This is a salt and light tubes match. Of course it is. There’s a booker somewhere in an office in BJW who is one sick puppy. Inematsu gets cut in the opening exchange and Kodama rubs salt into the wound, leaving him rolling around on the mat screaming. Wrestlign!” Kodaka gets to show his funny side by selling the salt. He mostly runs around in circles, randomly throwing salt in defence of his broken body. By the mid point of the match I’m pretty much done with death matches for the entire year. It’s painful to watch because of the bleeding and the uncomfortable comedy. Inematsu rather steals the show by standing over a fallen Kodaka and pouring an entire buckle of salt over himself. This almost leads to the finish as the less-pained Kodaka gets a cheeky roll up. It’s over a few minutes later when Kodaka blasts Inematsu with a short superkick. I can’t say I enjoyed any of these three deathmatches and I felt my appreciation of their existence going down as the show progressed.

 

Final Rating: *1/4

 

Yuko Miyamoto, Shiori Asahi & Hideyoshi Kamitani vs. Daisuke Sekimoto, Ryuichi Kawakami & Kazuki Hashimoto

 

Interesting team to oppose Sekimoto & company. Miyamoto is a high-flying death match guy, Asahi a plucky underdog and Kamitani a blubbery youngster. Meanwhile Sekimoto’s backup are two hard-hitting products of the BJW Dojo with weird punk hairstyles. The feeling out process is very underwhelming as it’s a strange mix of styles. Miyamoto gets to boss a lot of the early going with flippity stuff that feels even more out of place here than in death matches. The real fun is in young Kamitani barrelling into Sekimoto and knocking him over. Kamitani reminds me of a young Morishima. Back when he was good. His interaction with Sekimoto is the only real highlight of a surprisingly drab contest. Given the talent involved you’d hope for better. Kamitani gets to kick out of a pair of lariats but gets felled with the German suplex. The execution here was a bit off and Miyamoto’s dominance of the match didn’t help. Kamitani looks like a real prospect based on this match but that’s all the good that came out of it. A disappointment.

 

Final Rating: **1/4

 

Ryuji Ito vs. Kankuro Hoshino

 

Back to the garbage and this is a concrete blocks and light tubes match. Both these guys are garbage wrestlers for a reason. The match is total shit, one of the worst all year I’d wager. Their opening gambit being a chair spot where Ito breaks a chair over Hoshino’s back and it’s so contrived and so lazily set up it’s embarrassing. There’s ‘feeding the back’ and there’s sitting there waiting to get hit with a chair. It makes no sense. For the rest of the match Hoshino stays down selling while Ito sets up the next ugly looking spot. The concrete block spots are even more tiresome as you can’t just hit someone with a concrete block because they’d die. So they just slam each other on them. It looks really painful and really pointless. Ito takes it with a light tube assisted frogsplash. The match was 13 minutes long and could have accomplished the same thing in a minute or so.

 

Final Rating: DUD

 

Tangent: Big Japan have my favourite commentator in Japan (yes, even better than Shinpei Nogami) Hirotsugu Suyama. His voice sounds like an elderly character in an animated film. I could listen to him talk all day long.

 

BJW Tag Team Championship:

Kohei Sato & Shuji Ishikawa (c) vs. Yuji Hino & Yuji Okabayashi

 

The line up for this match was enough for me to watch the entire show. I’m somewhat regretting that now, based on the sheer amount of crap on the undercard, but here we are. “He’s a gigantic ass-kicker who spends every match they wrestle beating people up for their own amusement”. That describes everyone in this match. Shuji Ishikawa is my least favourite wrestler in this match. That’s insane. Yuji Hino is a tremendous bully, maybe the best in wrestling, and that works for him because he wrestles in K-Dojo where everyone else is tiny. Here he’s much smaller than his opponents and that confuses him. Or makes him angry. I can’t tell. He looks the same regardless of mood. The strikes in this match are wonderful. The Yuji’s have this contest to see who can chop the hardest and Okabayashi’s are so loud you can hear the commentators wince. Sato’s response is to kick his legs away. There are very few actual holds with the burly gentlemen content to pound away with strikes until someone can no longer stand. Okabayashi is outstanding in this respect. Both in his selling and his offence.

 

This being a 20 minute match they can’t go full bore throughout but use the tag team structure to keep everyone fresh. Okabayashi looks blown up and turns beet red about halfway through so they work heat on him but he still insists on firing away at those chops. Hino seems a little subdued by comparison. The slabs of meat that are these four men are so massive that every collision looks like a car wreck. It helps that nobody holds back. Imagine Kane vs. Big Show if they were flying into each other full pelt and wailing on each other with stiff strikes. At one point Okabayashi gets picked off, again, and comes back with chops for both the champions. It’s the biggest concentration of phenomenal chops since Kobashi-Sasaki. Okabayashi’s effort levels are completely off the page. It’s a stunning performance. The Golem Splash almost wins the belts but Sato’s perfectly timed save denies the Yuji’s. Then it gets really good as Shuji and Okabayashi get into a slap duel, which is ended by Ishikawa’s legendary headbutt. Shuji follows it with a glorious Splash Mountain to retain. Tough on Okabayashi who was exceptional but a good enough finish for a fantastic match.

 

Final Rating: ****1/4

 

 

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5.5
The final score: review Not So Good
The 411
Big Japan shows, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, are a tough sell on me because I don’t much care for the garbage matches they put on. But it’s almost worth it for the outstanding main events. This year BJW is putting on some extraordinary main events. They need to be seen. The next major show after this, death match tournament aside, sees Ishikawa vs. Sekimoto for the title. That I have to see. Will I be able to digest the undercard as well? Time will tell.
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