April 1993

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Surprise surprise, Allen's match is the worst on the card. Other than his judo throw, he's got almost nothing going for him. Miyato landing that debilitating solebutt to the gut was funny but Allen ultimately wins it with another judo throw into an armbar. Snooze.

Up there with Sano/Kakihara for MOTN - I mean, how can you go wrong with a suplex-heavy sprint? Within the first five seconds, Gary hits a belly-to-belly. Of course, he hits the German and the dragon to ultimately win via KO but Dennis gets in there with a very nice judo throw and gutwrench suplex. Not much in terms of groundwork - Dennis manages a head-and-arm lock off the judo throw and Gary applies the grounded full nelson off the German. But come on, you're not here to watch Gary Albright work submissions. Fun sprint!

Underwhelming to say the least. Tamura's got the speed advantage, as he's always able to find his way on top or on his feet, out of Severn's POWER ZONE. Severn has plenty of suplex throws but he looks completely lost on the mat. At times, it looks like he's just trying to hang on to Tamura but it's a struggle when he's struggling to find an actual hold. His shoot spinebuster into the head-and-arm lock was very cool but the match drags on and Severn's burnt out by the end of it. Tamura's all over him in the final minutes, taking him to the ropes several times, until Dan's finally frustrated and wins with his can opener hold. Not bad, not very good. Just there.

Maybe the MOTN? I don't know - it's got Kaki showing no respect for Sano at the outset and immediately taking him down with his barrage of slaps. He utilizes some great suplexes, including a front necklock suplex, but can't quite get anything going on the mat, as Sano's able to slip out into armbars and single leg crabs. Sano's able to hit his own front chancery suplex, working his way into the rear choke, and I loved his sneak in overhead suplex, avoiding Kaki's slaps. Sano wins it with the German suplex into the armbar. A fun sprint!

House show-level effort but still not a bad match at all between these two rivals. It takes awhile to get going but we get the usual spots - the German suplex by Yamazaki countered into the double wristlock, and then Yamazaki taking a page out of Takada's book and grabbing the arm off a backdrop. Takada attempts a terrible flying armbar and fails. On a personal level, I love Yamazaki's fish flop when Takada grabs the jujigatame. In the end, Takada heel kicks Yamazaki in the face, grabs a heel hold and doesn't let him go until Yamazaki taps.

Solid opener with a good showing from Day. There's a franticness to the match, which I always enjoy, with Day using a number of arm whip takedowns to set up the finishing armbar and supplementing them with various suplex throws. At one point, Kanehara lands on his own damn neck with a waterwheel drop but other than that, he doesn't get too much offense in before Day German suplexes him and finally taps him following a final arm whip>armbar combo.

As is the case with the majority of UWFi tags, there are some cool spots throughout but it's sloppy and there is like zero cohesion to the match itself. The best parts of this tag are the exchanges between Anjoh/Nakano. Burton is still not very good - although he does bust out a double wristlock takedown - what a trip! And Lydick looked very lost in there, even scared when up against Anjoh. As for the highlights, Anjoh's kneebar counter to Nakano's choke attempt, Nakano's snap suplex and nasty running knee to Anjoh, and Anjoh's uranage into the armbar. There are random suplexes throughout, which only add to it, and finally, Nakano counters Burton's powerbomb attempt with …

Not very good at all. I guess Fleming has kind of a fun bulldog energy about him and he's decent enough with the suplexes. But he's absolutely clueless on the mat and wins with a terrible STF. Takayama, on the other hand, always slangs the hard open hands and knees, and the transition into his own STF was very swank. Other than that, pass.

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What was Nagayo doing between the Crush Gals and this show, anyway? Or until the formation of GAEA? I do admire the booking of this show for laying out so many disparate styles, especially for a big joshi show where one of my criticisms is that the styles and matches tend to run together. This is a hard-hitting slugfest between two old rivals, with some crowd brawling and some intense submission work before we start hitting the near-falls. I don't know what Nagayo's status was but for a legend-returns-to-the-ring match this was pretty awesome, and she didn't look to have lost a step. Nagayo gets a nice comeback after kicking out of the Guillotine Legdrop, before Bull shru…

The only other Bolshoi I've seen is a submission match with Plum that's worked like joshi UWFI, so I confess between that and this that I still don't quite know her deal. That match was worked completely straight and here we get a comedy opening that's out of a Brazos match. It is amusing shtick and probably fits in well with the overall card, and Kid brings the goods when it comes to offense and bumping and selling later in the match, being the real workhorse of her team. That being said, there were long stretches of this that were loose and cooperative-looking as hell, and other than the dive train, Plum's cool takedown and leg submissions, and the JWP team doing a bunc…

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