KAORU! Queen of Shoot-style! YAMADA! Empress of Lucha Libre! WILL o' THE WISP! rules it against SURGE! and MEIKO SATOMURA! is the future of Professional Wrestling!

HIYA~!

WELCOME TO DEATH VALLEY DRIVER VIDEO REVIEW #48!!! WOO-HOO!

It's been a long couple of weeks since the last time I spoke with you gentle readers and I've watched a metric ass-load of tapes but I'm gonna yammer about the new Glenn tape I got because a.) Glenn rules it too hard to imagine (GLENN! COME BACK TO THE STATES!), b.) it has some of the coolest wrestling on it, and c.) it has some of the crappiest things you can imagine from Japan (i.e.- Takayama and Tamon Honda take it to the mat and we ((well- hopefully for you, only I)) have to watch.)

1997 JUNIOR ALL-STAR CHAMP FORUM- 8/2/97
I don't know if this is the first or second CF with the Jr All-Star card on it, because it didn't have the Uematsue-Tamara WCW Cruiserweight belt switch on it. This is pretty damn choice- though I needed the scorecard to keep some of the young ladies from smaller organizations straight. The first match is Matsumodo and Numao from GAEA getting stomped by LLPW girl Okino and the Bloody Phoenix from J'd. Numao is getting good and Matsumodo is coming along a little slower but both of these gals shouldn't be putting these to ne'er-do-wells over. Phoenix is so very passable and Okino is so very passable. Matsumodo does what she does best- which is sell and take big bumps. Numao never gets to get all shoot-style so this wasn't all that (as percieved from a major GAEA-biased point of view. Plus, the more J'd you see, the less you forgive.) Of course, one should say something nice after handing J'd it's ass, HEY! HEY! HEY! Judo-girl Sakai works freakin CIRCLES around the basically useless Momoe Nakanishi of AJW fame. Sakia hits some monster Judo throws that land at impossible angles on Nakanishi's shoulders. Sakia also hits the BOSS La Majistral Cross Armbreaker- which says to me "HELL! maybe J'd CAN be saved." Nakanishi wins with the lamest combination of AJW prelim dropkicks and a big slam. Sakia is one to watch. JUDO GIRLS!! JUDO GIRLS!! They showed highlights of the Genki/Tanny Mouse vs tiny Aono (SPWF maybe?) and the even tinier Watanabe (who is Big Japan if I remember my Lorefice QUEBRADA pre-All Star Briefing. READ QUEBRADA! IT KICKS EVERYBODY ELSE'S ASS!) Tanny is so cute and cuddly and... BOY! She ain't good. Yet. Watanabe and Aono are minute, highflying and thoroughly adorable. The PINNACLE of the CF is the BOSS (and I mean BOSS) Meiko Satomura/Sonoko Kato vs Miyaguchi(the fabulous JWP babe! WHOMP ASS!!) and the Gal Called Endo (of AJW fame). This hits a major stride when Miyaguchi and Satomura are in against each other- as these two are pretty intense and INSANELY good for their age and experience. Miyaguchi does the CHOICE flying cross-body-KNEE-to-the-face a couple of times and hits some VERY choice Death Valley Bomb variations, including a great one off the top. Satomura is just faster than ever and tougher than ever. She hits her patented top rope spinning cross-armbreaker. Kato stays outta the way and basically makes Miyaguchi look great by selling her trickier moves like a king, thus evening out Endo and Miyaguchi making Meiko look great. The ending is superhot and I wanna see Miyaguchi and Satomura go at it one on one. GET ALL THIS.

GAEA CHAMP FORUM- 8/9/97
I see that Toshiyo Yamada is REALLY digging her new home- and not just because she doesn't have to wrestle 400 times a year- because in the span of one Champ Forum she has a good Shootstyle match with KAORU (who RULES IT 2 HARD 2 B B-LIEVED) and does fantabulous lucha moves against the newly fiesty again Sugar Sato and Nagashima. The Shoot-style match against the phenomenally versatile KAORU is really neat. KAORU is not afraid to kick real hard and sell like KAORU can sell. One can feel funny about the perfect Luchadore- KAORU- going into a shootstyle match with Yamada, who is not afraid to hang, kick for kick, with 24-7 badass Yomiko Hotta- so how could KAORU, who is VASTLY talented but in a traditional/Luch Libre kinda way, look credible? Easy! Have her kick Yamada real hard for a while and let her show off her speed as she gets Yamada in neato submission holds. Then have Yamada kick the crud out of her and counter her moves. This gets pretty cool by the end- in that KAORU looks like she could make a living at this style if push came to shove. The second match is Toshie Uematsue/Chigusa vs Satomura/Kato and its pretty neat, though I wish Chigusa would have let a youngster fill in the role that she took. I guess since Chigusa sold Satomura and Kato's moves the whole time, she is giving them "Big Gal" credibility, but Chigusa has done such a masterful job of getting the youngsters over that any more of these kinda matches are sort of unneccessary. Toshie is progressing as the new greater spunkiness is kicking in double time and it's magic when she is in with these two. The third match is the Sugar/Nagashima match where Infernal KAORU puts on the world's least best mask and goes into Lucha overdrive. KICK ASS!!!!! Her partner is Reyna Jubuki but something is amiss. She don't look like Akira Hokuto and halfway through the match they show Akira in the audience laughing, so it dawns on everyone that the woman hitting the tres cool mid-grade Lucha roll-ups and hitting the coolest reverse rana into a roll-up is none other than our gal Yamada! WOO-HOO! I didn't know she had such a whimsical side. This match was a little clunky but a lot of fun. Sugar and Nagashima finally figured out how to use chairs as weapons, KAORU hits the SWANK springboard off-the-toprope dropkick and an ass-stomping double moonsault, and Yamada gets to wrestle a neato style I've never seen her wrestle. GAEA kicks ass. GET ALLLL THIS!

NEW JAPAN TV 8/17/97
Hmmmmmmm. This is the least of the Nagoya Dome show with no Juniors so I wasn't digging this the most. The Ricky Chosu vs Fujinami match was short and stiff and pretty okay for two real old guys. If it was any longer, it would have been a lot more irritating. The Muta vs Ogawa was basically a Sheik match with cross-armbreakers. The spraying of Inoki was a nice touch. This match was not nearly as stomach-churning as it should have been, but you wouldn't want to see it twice. Muta has cool new pants. Ogawa is looking less lost, but HELL! it's Muta! Forget it! The Hashimoto vs Tensan match has been covered far more thoroughly in the TRULY viciously hilarious IdolisDead post. For those who didn't read that, I'll break it down for you. It's kinda like Sycho Sid versus Chris Benoit. Tensan sucks. Boy. Tensan sucks. But he's big. And he has a cool haircut. Hash works REAL stiff. If Benoit was wrestling Sid, there would be NO WAY that the match would be GOOD.... BUT!!! You could pray that the good ole Canadian Crippler beats the holy shit out of him. That is exactly the rationale of this match and Hash delivers the goods. Tensan has the type of massive offensive arsenal that has been unseen since the heady days of Nailz in the beloved AWF, so when Hash puts the boots to him (and thankfully he does abundantly) the real crappy time you had watching Tensan do those trapezious muscle chops that made Tony Atlas famous (HEY! more AWF!) seems a lot less painful. Hash also hits a high-grade, truly spine-fusing brainbuster. I never want to see Tensan wrestle a real wrestler again. Nope.

ALL JAPAN TV- 8/17/97
I was stoked for this! Ikeda- BattlARTS posterboy and all-around intense egg- finally gets to kick the crap out of Kikuchi. It's made the undercard fun, given Kikuchi something to do and it's given Ikeda a lot of exposure. Baba- fearlessly- only shows the last three minutes of the match. BOY! What a crock! Ikeda gets to look like shit; Kikuchi looks like total shit because he sells three submissions, makes the ropes, and hits a German suplex out of nowhere for the pin, and the undercard is in disarray again. We do get every second of the (Count the stiffs) Lacrosse (1)/Takayama(2) vs Kawada/ Tamon "C'mon" Honda(3) match which has WAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY too much LaCrosse and Tamon Honda taking it to the mat- practising the sweet science of truly loathesomely weak shitty headbutts, and scant moments of the only thing that would save this turd- Kawada beating the holy fuck out of the least of the Golden Cups- Takayama. How did someone as cool as Yamamoto ever stand hanging around with this big goof. And watching Takayama try to be Jumbo Tsuruta is like watching Pat Boone try to be Little Richard. Kawada does kick him in the face a couple of times, but it ain't enough to counter the Tamonpain.

NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP WRESTLING- May 1997
I went over to Hangman Tim's Righteous Party Palace (Where the Laaaddiiees are ALWAYS welcome) for a Saturday Afternoon of Wrestling and he hipped me to the coolest indie promotion I've seen in a while- if this one episode is any indication. NCW is out of Silva(?), North Carolina and GOD! is it great! They wrestle in this bar outside of Western Carolina University and the fans are seated right up to the apron. Tim said it seats about 150 and it looked packed with drunk redneck coeds (where was this promotion when I was 19 years old at VCU?) The style is Redneck ECW (if ECW was still any fun at all), with highflying mixed with the hard angles mixed with the festive fun atmosphere THUS the match between Will O the Wisp and Surge is just WAY TOO MUCH FUN. This goes over the toprope, through the bar, onto the pool tables, into the jukebox; fire, chairs, hurricanranas, topes into the crowd, drunk 20 year old women smoking Marlboro Lights at ringside, you name it- if its something cool in indie wrestling, it's in this match. Will O the Wisp (He's Australian!! REAlly! Well...) has the super whacked out homemade mask and he is pretty freakin crazy; as is Surge- who isn't afraid to take some hellish bumps to get the crazed throng into a frenzy. The match lasts 25 minutes and they throw the entire kitchen sink at this baby- hitting every highspot they can remember, brawling through the crowd, taking it to the mat, all the way up to the psychotic ending. I want to see a WHOLE lot more of this little group.

Tim also showed me a video tape that he made last weekend (while he was in Tennessee seeing FREAKIN PSICOSIS VS GOLLDAMN JUVENTUD FREAKIN GUERRERA!!) that was sort of a video catalogue of Tim Whitehead's Women's Wrestling Collectibles Collection and  GOLLY! do I need to break into HIS house!:) Must... get... Lady... Gongs...... My fave was the Megumi Kudo book named STAND UP where I got to make the classy "As in stand up IN MY PANTS!?!" joke. SWANK YOU, DEAN. FOR LETTING US LAUGH ABOUT LOVE. AGAIN.

LAST weekend I visited the buff, tough, the stuff, the ladies can't get enough Phil and his coolest of cool friend (also) Phil and we watched a whole bunch of stuff. The problem was that WCWSN was on when the Michinoku Pro CF from 94 was on so I didn't get to watch any complete matches. And, for the record, WE ALL marked out WAYYYY too much over the evil Brad Armstrong. Phil and Phil and I all feared an angle where Bullet Bob comes back to straighten out his son. And Ciclope is the fuggin KING. Case Closed! Sit on it, Potsie.

NEXT WEEK: JIMINY! I've been hit by an avalanche of Tape! The Walt Tapes! The Doug tapes! The Pete Tpaes! The Phil Tapes! The rest of the fantabulous Glenn tape! J'd! Lucha! LUCHA! LUCHA! LUCHA! WOO-HOO! I'm STOKED!

NANIWA~!
Dean Rasmussen, KANEMOTOCIZED!!!!