Thus ends my paternity-leave/cyber-sabbatical.  Many thanks for all the kind e-mails and neato on-line postcards. Y'all rule!

One (ish) week until DVDVR #100.  BOY!  I got some motherfucking writing to do! WOO-HOO!

I went to my mom's house about a month and a half ago as a last trip before the little punkin arrived and I took my then latest Glenn tape because my little brother (who was into Hiroshi Hase long before I was- after my brother became fascinated by the Hase's Then-Mindblowing Northern Lights Suplex at the Japan Super show that was on Clash Of The Champions that time) was as sick as I am of shitty US wrestling and wanted me to bring something to watch that was actually GOOD- so I brought some puroresu.  So we watched Vader and Misawa from Carnival and were in awe of Misawa (as all REAL wrestling fans are when watching Misawa wrestle).  My brother was impressed at how "returned to form" Vader was and I like this match quite a bit too, though the Triple Crown match they had later on was better.  We started watching the GAEA 4/4/4/4/99 show because I wanted my brother to actually see what I had been rambling about to him every time we'd talk about wrestling and we started watching the first match- which was a tres SWANK six-woman elimation match where Sugar Sato and Toshie Uematsu started off by beating the holy crap out of each other... and then dinner was ready and then it got to be a reg'lar family get-together so we didn't watch anymore.  As six o-clock rolled around, we told my family that we'd see them when the baby arrived and we took the beautiful route 40 to route 32 to route 10 to route 5 home (see Smithfield, VA.  It's about as beautiful in sections as a weird small town in the Mid-Atlantic can get, with a bizarre mix of white trash trailer parks intertwined with gorgeous 19th century architecture.)  As we zipped past the Smithfield meat packing plant, it dawned on me that I had left the tape at my Mom's.  She was supposed to mail it to me but never got around to it (I put her on my bad traders list on my homepage), she was gonna bring it when she came up to see the beautiful little youngster but she forgot it.  She came back to visit this weekend and actually brought it so I FINALLY got to see the GAEA Fourth Anniversary Special that Pogo Pete raved about in the last normal Death Valley Driver Video Review and- GOTDAMN- he wasn't kidding when he said it fucking ruled the goddam world.  The Six-woman elimination was an amazing piece of booking- in that Sugar looks strongest of all because she and Toshie Uematsu beat the holy fudge out of each other to the point that it looks like neither of these will survive the next round.  Toshie is eliminated by Sugar, but the feud that they have been building the weeks heading up to this keeps this as a major part of feud, as the next meeting will be the rubber match- as Uematsu has the pin over Sugar from a few months back in a match that I slathered about at length in the DVDVR. Sugar- who is becoming SUCH the real deal- then has to bust up Bad Nurse Rie to get to the final GAEA representative. Sugar is looking like the budding superstar she is destined to be as she mauls Nakamura by the end.  The booking is precise- as she then can put over Hirota  with a semi-flash pin and stay looking strong.  The elevating of Hirota kicks in as she beats a weakened Sugar, takes out the  SUPERHOT-if-I-was-18-but-this-ain't-1984-now-is-it-grampa FMW Kaori  Nakayama, and then gets carried like a champ by Nagashima- as Nagashima finally polishes off Hirota to take it home for Our Gals in OZ.  The beauty of the booking is that four are elevated- Uematsu for beating the shit out of Sugar before going down, Sugar for beating Uematsu after a Queensize ass-kicking and then beating the hell out of Nakamura and then beating the fudge out of Hirota before succumbing to numbers, Hirota for two wins and the strong finishing leg with Nagashima, and Nagashima for getting the win for OZ.  I see feuds leading to good matches in all forms of this. The KAORU/Yamada vs Shimoda/Mita match was SSSOOOOOOOOOO close to being match of the year.  Hell, in terms of sheer fun (and that's what we here in Death Valley Land are all about) this WAS the match of the year.  My only technical beef is that the whole rail ride stuff just doesn't look real painful but is a large part of the match anyway, that and everyone tended to randomly sell at points.  KAORU is so fucking awesome as she goes the extra mile to make this fucker rule: the scaffold moonsault, the Excalibers, the 19 alarm bladejob- all this plus the fact that she carried the body of the match so that the now-physically limited Yamada looked more effective as she could exert in spurts and kick the super hot Mima and Mita right in the face without having to do beyond what she is physically capable of now.  KAORU and Yamada are the most underrated tagteam in wrestling.  They bring an tough heavyweight edge to GAEA that makes this feud five layers deeper and that translates to the ass-stomping they dish out to Mima and Mita after taking a deul-blade-worthy ass-kicking themselves.  There is wads to love in this match.  Plus Mima wore tiny enough pants to warrant an extra star.  ALLLRIGHT! I'm a pig! WOO-HOO!  Plus the ending was motherfucking awesome.  SEEE THIS!  GO AND GET THIS!

The Aja Kong/OZ vs Meiko Satomura/Sonoko Kato match was pretty great, as Aja is the best wrestler in Joshi Puroresu and knew how to make this a super-psychologically sound match with a great build to the wild surprise end.  OZ is fucking GREAT.  Anyone who wants to see how to brawl effectively in a wrestling match should go find Mayumi Ozaki's streetfights and notice how she adds those elements to this match as she gives Kato a KING-SIZED dose of what-for.  Meiko has the worst hair in the world now for some reason (and what happened to Sonoko's New Wave! as heck blue hair?) but she is quite the bitter surly driven punk who is primed to take out Aja.  Aja brilliantly makes the ending plausible and the MOTHERFUCKING GREAT postmatch antics by the bitter, insane and wounded Aja is fucking priceless.  Aja is the best.  I'm guessing Chigusa is putting SOMEBODY in ARSION over to make up for this.  The rematch should be hideously beautiful in it's Uricanitis and I fear for young Meiko when the hammer comes down. The Main Event for the ownership of the company (the widest other end of the spectrum that you could imagine when compared to how WCW trots out this stipulation) was good as Lioness is still great and Chigusa is in better physical condition now than she has been in a while. Some of the garbage spots were clunky in their set-up but other than that this was rock-solid, psychologically sound wrestling that responded to the heat and magnitude of the event as it felt like a bigtime match and an intense culmination of a lot of the coolest angles of the late nineties.  Chigusa is a much better booker than wrestler now but she was in with Lioness who is fucking great and the effort by Chigusa made this memorable.  Hell, we just reviewed this show TWICE. Go get it already.  I await the Akira Hokuto-drenched
$$$$$$$OZvsSUPER-STAR-UNITvsGAEA$$$$$$$$$$$ feud with a boggled mind and aching anticipation.  Maybe Mima Shimoda will wear the Sweater Of Amazing Hurtiness To All Male Funny Parts and... uh-oh.....

I am such a motherfarghing freak.  I have WADS of REALLY REALLY REALLY SWANK wrestling lying around my house- All Japan Women 1994 commercial tapes, EMLL from 1998 and 1999, Euro-stiffness with Benoit vs Finlay in AUSTRIA!!- BUT all things are put aside when the Big Japan arrives.  My twisted love for sleazy  Japanese indie wrestling is pretty well self-documented and it all really pays off when Big Japan gets in cahoots with BattlARTS (as BattlARTS is quite the Jimmy Carter to the Big Japan's Billy Carter) and they just throw together stuff that kicks the ass of most things on earth and kicks the ass of everything in the United States. BattlARTS and Big Japan had a haphazard Junior Tournament that fearlessly kicked righteous Japan Indie-world  ass.  Mysteriously called the JJC (the Jumpin' Jiminy Crickets Junior Heavyweight Tournament maybe?) , hHalf is on the undercard of a BattlARTS Battlestation (Battlestation is the Samurai TV version of GAORA's late, lamented Champ Forum.  Champ Forum was the fucking cool as hell indie wrestling showcase show that was the first to televise Michinoku Pro, JWP, FMW, UWA and  BattlARTS.  Think of a show in America that showed OMEGA one week, showed ECWA the next week and showed APW then WPW another week- but shot it professionally for public consumption. Sounds pretty cool, eh?)  Your contestants were Masaaki Mochizuki, the fabulously fabulous Bukoh dojo wonderboy; Minoru Tanaka, the fabulously funtastic BattlARTS wonderboy; Minoru Fujita, Big Japan's future junior saving grace and his BattlARTS tag-partner, Ikuto Hidaka who collectively make up the Japan Indie World Midnight Rockers but who singularly are quite good little workers- with Hidaka getting a major edge because he has progressed into quite a even pintier-sized Minoru Tanaka with his freaky highflying and inventive shootish stylings; Fantastic is a mysterious luchadore who just fricking rules it- but I've never seen him in anything from Mexico.  A sort of depudged, lankier Superboy phenomenon.  Ricky Banderas is some Latin guy who I've never seen and I'm hoping he's not just some oiled up towelboy for Victor Quinones because he goes over Mochizuki in the Japanese Tournament Shocking Upset Match of this tourney (which is mercifully clipped to hell).  He's not really horrible or anything, but he shouldn't be in the ring with ANY of these other guys.  He can't work any of the predominant styles really well, blow lots of shit , and is pretty boring on offense.  The highlight on the Big Japan Battlestation was the cool as heck Fantastic vs Minoru Tanaka match, which was a cool clash of the far purer lucha style of Fantastic clashing with the hard, stiff style of Tanaka- but the fact that Fantastic has a very puroresu-influenced arsenal of holds and the fact that Minoru has become VERY adept at the heavy lucha aspects of Japan Indie wrestling both made for a lot of common ground to keep the match together while the vast overall stylistic differences were allowed to be brought to total fruitition- as each used all styles mentioned in a mishmash of lucha submissions, shoot-style submissions, the cool-as-fuck Tanaka Lucha-cum-shootstyle freaked submission mutations, wild highspots, cool lucha matwork and stiff striking.  All in 12 minutes.  Uneven in execution, but the scope of what they were working gives it deep points in my book.  A cool, offbeat match.  Fantastic is vastly underrated.
The other cool match was the Fujita vs Hidaka match which was as uneven as the Fantastic vs Tanaka match but not as stylistically vast in breadth and reach.  What saved this ones bacon is that it goes 18 minutes- which is really fricking long for two guys as young as this, but throw kitchen sink after stylistic kitchen sink at this to make up the time- hitting and missing equally at each attempt.  The best parts are where they out-Minoru Tanaka Minoru Tanaka by doing some of the coolest lucha roll-ups into shootstyle submissions and cool shootstyle submission counters out of lucha roll-ups this side of the Fantastic vs Tanaka match earlier.  The major difference that makes this a lesser match was the strong contrasting style of high-flying matwork- as both of these two hit the mat Puroresu style predominantly and all their lucha matwork and highflying is filtered through New Japan/UWA/MP junior style slants on the sweet lucha- so it's less color on the palette so when they try to break up the submissions with highflying it isn't as strikingly weird as when Fantastic takes to the air or as offbeat as when Fantasic opts to Dos Caras Minoru Tanaka to the mat as a shootstyle alternative.  This was still a good little match as they saved their bacon a few times when the match is going nowhere by taking it back to the mat and taking it back to the BattlARTS psychology that now looks  like a staple puroresu psychological theory that works- as opposed to a wild conglomerate experimental style that was hard to get a handle on early on.  Either way, Big Japan once again delivers the undercard goodness again and you need to search it out.  More on the BattlARTS Battlestation end in DRIVERette #ECHO.

DEAN RASMUSSEN.