August 11, 201312 yr Author comment_5555719 This would have sucked if not for Tenryu. He took a hell of a beating to get it over and then made the huge comeback, which included a big cross body from the top of the cage. They just kept building and building heat on the heels and I didn't think the heels were very good. I don't really care about seeing Abdullah the Butcher in 1997. The whole act feels amazingly dated. I might even say the same for Tarzan Goto. Lots of dead weight in this match, but I think it was laid out well. It also had good heat and I think they got the most out of everyone involved.
August 12, 201312 yr comment_5555877 I want to hear Childs thoughts on this because he convinced us to put this back on the set after we had dropped it.
August 16, 201312 yr comment_5556682 I knew Tenryu wouldn't be on the set a ton, and I thought people would enjoy seeing him work in a cage against a sort of freak show team. My intentions were not deep. Tenryu was a significant enough performer that it's worth tracking him in different settings across the yearbooks. And the match delivered on its promise, with Tenryu taking a big beating from Abby and Goto, then staging a fiery rally highlighted by a cross body off the top of the cage. Kitahara and Kikuchi didn't bring a ton to the table, but the energy of the match never flagged. I'm glad I advocated for it.
September 6, 201312 yr comment_5560774 Tenryu delivering the cross body off the top of the cage was great moment and his fired up comeback after being untied from the cage was good too. But that's it for this match for me. I don't get why guys were just randomly leaving the cage. Butcher's team had the heavy advantage and then he just wanders out the cage door to be followed after by Goto. Unless this was some type of escape rules match but didn't feel like that as guys would go back in cage after leaving.
October 26, 201311 yr comment_5568986 I can see the arguments for giving tenryu an extra appearance on the set and this does feel very much like a FMW style match with old ass Abby waddling around, but the actual action drug a lot and only really picked up for the big comeback by Tenryu. Fun to watch but nothing I really need to see again.
September 10, 201510 yr comment_5698087 Abby did provide one good moment: the big face-off with Tenryu was a heated, well-done confrontation between two of wrestling's all-time best minimalists. Other than that, this was the usual freakshow stabfest until Tenryu's big comeback, which was indeed awesome. I don't get all the going in and coming out of the cage either. Jun Kikuchi doesn't even have a wrestlingdata or cagematch entry, but he was a decent enough FIP type. Goto was solid in what he did but he didn't ever seem to be on defense--seems that was all that Ryo was there for. All told this doesn't make for a *bad* match but isn't really satisfying either.
August 28, 20178 yr comment_5812328 Tenryu doing "Why are you hitting yourself?" with a chair on Abby is great. Any Tarzan-Tenryu interaction is gold.
May 28, 20187 yr comment_5851288 Jun Kikuchi doesn't even have a wrestlingdata or cagematch entry, but he was a decent enough FIP type... This is really bringing up an old thread with minimal reason... but I was going through Tarzan Goto match reviews on this site today and came across this and... It's very very likely that "Jun Kikuchi" is a/k/a Jun Kikuzawa, who was in a couple of Goto tag bouts that also got reviewed here. Kikuzawa's other aliases include: Kikutusu Jack, Ebedullah the Butcher, and Kiku-Kiku-Kiku... ...but he's perhaps best known as (the original) Ebessan, or as Kikutaro.
May 28, 20187 yr comment_5851322 Interesting thought, but I've seen both Kikuchi and Kikuzawa and they are not the same guy. There are tons of late 90s japanese undercarders no one remembers and a few of them have been subject of theories regarding what happened to them. Takeshi Sato, YUSAKU, Hidetomo Egawa, Basara, Cosmo*Soldier, junji.com, I'm collecting 'em like by Pokemon by now. It probably says a lot about me that I know at one point people theorized Basara may have been Yuichi Taniguchi (I doubt it, by the way). It's a miracle Mochizuki and Ishii ended up becoming big stars given how almost everyone else was lost to time or become some type of gimmick wrestler.
Create an account or sign in to comment