BJW “Road to Ikkitosen ~ Deathmatch Survivor”, 02/10/17 @ Korakuen Hall, Tokyo

Before the show starts we get a pre-show interview hyping the matches. What is funny though is Daichi hanging around behind them just dicking about. Kind of forget how young he still is.

- Shinobu (666) & Yuya Aoki vs. Kankuro Hoshino & Tatsuhiko Yoshino

Yoshino is here, but he's following up the last few matches and acting gradually more serious, so no selfie stick and dancing on the way to the ring. He looks mightily pissed off. Shinobu is here to carry on his feud with Yoshino. Shinobu definitely looks like he's skipped a couple of meals. After Aoki and Hoshino feel each other out Yoshino and Shinobu go at it with some stiff chops and elbows. Hoshino tags in and goes to do the usual spot where the person who has just tagged in runs over and elbows the other teams partner off the apron. Instead of waiting for the elbow Shinobu actually moves out of the way to avoid getting hit. Revolutionary.

Aoki gets isolated for a while but eventually makes enough of a comeback so that he can tag out. Aoki actually looks pretty good for the six weeks or so that he's been wrestling. Really amazing to see the difference in his kick, punch and dropkick offense against Okabayashi. He takes a wicked backbreaker before submitting to a Boston Crab applied by Yoshino.

They show the back breaker in slow-mo and he really takes it full force. Aoki does the customary bow to the crowd who give him a decent round of applause. [GOOD]

- Takayuki Ueki & Masaya Takahashi (ASUKA) vs. Shu & Kei Brahman (both FREE)

The Brahmans are here, which means they are soaking the crowd and also soaking Ueki and Takahashi. When I first started watching BJW, I'd pretty much wrote off the team of Ueki and Takahashi. Takahashi i'm still not sure off but Ueki has quietly grown into something of a favourite of mine. At first I thought he was some journeyman, boring, mid-card DM worker. But he is much more than that. He can work the DM style, the strong matches and he has the charisma to carry off a good comedy match. Plus he's only 25, so he's got years to go before he has to truly start to carry matches.

This match however, is a straight up comedy match. Ueki gets his belt taken off of him which he ends up being whipped with and also loses his pants. He also seems to have his testicles targeted for a quite a lot of this match. He takes the bowling ball to the suitcase to his balls spot. Ueki pulls a gun on one of the Brahmans who squirts him with water which makes him lose his gun. Who would have guessed that water was more powerful than a gun! He loses even more of this clothes and ends up in just a thong. His chest gets covered in this black greasy substance and one of the Brahmans ends up getting smothered in it. Ueki wins the match following the Uroboros on Kei. Essentially, both of them get tangled up and have each others face in each others bumhole. [DDT]

- Yuko Miyamoto (666) & Isami Kodaka (BASARA) vs. Tsutomu Oosugi & Hercules Senga

This was a really good match which was incredibly fast paced and after the relatively long previous match, was quite refreshing at only 7 minutes. Lots of dives and one of the longest round-the-world ddts I've seen in a while. Isami wins with a European Clutch on Senga. [GOOD]

- Kohei Sato (ZERO1), Kazuki Hashimoto & Kazumi Kikuta vs. Daichi Hashimoto, Atsushi Maruyama (FREE) & Takuya Nomura

First thing you notice is that although he his only young, Hashimoto is getting an old man pot-belly like his dad! This match is all about Nomura getting the living soul beaten out of him.

Sato hits Nomura with a wicked elbow and then just has his brutal way with him. He really does do a number on him, to the point where you start to think did Nomura crap in his boots or something. After Sato kills him, the other two then have a go. There was a particularly nasty/cool spot where Nomura makes it to the ropes with his hands to break a submission and Kazuki just boots his hand off the ropes, virtually breaking his wrist. Its horrific in its violence. Nomura tries to mount some form of come back and has a go at elbowing Sato. Who is having none of it and just smacks him back down. If this wasn't a rite of passage for nearly every rookie, you'd consider calling the police at this stage.

After a bit of to-ing and fro-ing Nomura finally gets tagged back in, he starts to have some semblance of revenge by kicking the piss out of Kazuki. Nomura and his team then apply a triple submission on Sato, who sells it like death. Nomura then starts to work Sato's arm over some more with holds and kicks but Sato just wipes him out with another vicious elbow. The end of the match sees Nomura take a Michinoku driver, a foot stomp, a double kick, an elbow to the head and finally a piledriver to end the match.

He gets absolutely destroyed throughout this match, but the crowd absolutely love him. They chant his name and go mad for the plucky youngster as he shows the quality that all good wrestlers do, fighting spirit.
[EXCELLENT]

- Pre-Ikkitosen Special Fluorescent Light ~ Bring Your Own Weapons Deathmatch: Abdullah Kobayashi, Ryuji Ito & Toshiyuki Sakuda vs. Jaki Numazawa, Masashi Takeda (FREE) & Takumi Tsukamoto (BASARA)

This is a deathmatch to hype the upcoming tournament but following on from the houseshows, it focuses a lot on Sakuda. Takeda sticks a metal pad with horrific looking spikes into Sakudas arm. As soon as its taken away, you can see the puncture marks and the trickles of blood. After that, he also takes a back drop onto multiple metal pads. Sakuda is laid out and a few lighttubes placed on top of his chest. Takeda, Tsukamoto and Numazawa have a game of rock, paper, scissors to see who's going to take the bump on top of them. Takeda loses and subsequently smashes his back on top of them.

At this points, Sakudas arms are heavily. He staples a sheet of paper to Tsuksmoto head, and then ends up getting stapled himself. Sakuda starts his come back by taking his revenge on Takeda by pushing one of those metal plates into his arm. Match ends when Numazawa hits kobayashi with the Shinto (headbutt) and follows up with the pin.

Out of all the entrants for the tournament, i'm not keen on Numazawa winning. He has a really cool look about him, but his time has gone. It wouldn't increase his standing with the crowd or his place in the promotion. He's OK in 6 man tags, but really, he's a pretty terrible wrestler.

~ Numazawa with the win over the Deathmath Heavy champion before the start of the Ikkitosen tournament next month. Kobayashi will not be competing in the tournament as his belt is the prize for the winner of the league.
~ The split blocks were announced for the “Ikkitosen ~ DEATHMATCH SURVIVOR”. The league will begin on March 5 and run through until the final match on April 8.
~ A BLOCK : Ryuji Ito, Isami Kodaka (BASARA), Kenji Fukimoto (FREEDOMS), Takumi Tsukamoto (BASARA), Takayuki Ueki, and Toshiyuki Sakuda.
~ B BLOCK : Jaki Numazawa, Yuko Miyamoto (666), Masashi Takeda (FREE), Kankuro Hoshino, Ryuichi Sekine (BASARA), and Masaya Takahashi.

- Yuji Okabayashi, Hideyoshi Kamitani & Yasufumi Nakanoue (FREE) vs. Ryota
Hama (FREE), Shogun Okamoto (FREE) & Yoshihisa Uto

Here come the big boys. Unfortunately, that means Hama. Kamitani is a young wrestler who looks awkward. He's a little bit tubby, flat footed and constantly looks like he's trying not to smile at everyones shenanigans. But he is hoss strong. With Sekimoto taking the month off, I'd like to see Kamitani and Okabayashi tag for a while.

Okabayashi tries to pick up Hama, which although he is ridiculously powerful, Hama is also ridiculously fat. Naturally, he fails and the fat fuck lands on top of him. I really like Okamoto. He does this cool E Honda slap move in the corner turnbuckles, which doesn't look as painful as a slap off Okabayashi, it sounds really cool. He does also chop the shit out of Kamitani afterwards.

Okamoto does a variety of interesting back drop variations, which all look like they hurt because of his stature. Okamoto wins following a Backdrop on Kamitani. By backdrop, I mean he gets chucked over and lands on the top part of his head. Grim. Okamoto tries to congratulate him after the match but Kamitani pushes him away, which gets the crowd into it [GOOD]

- World Strong Next Challenger Match: Ryuichi Kawakami vs. Hideki Suzuki (FREE)

Suzuki is amazing. He's not a regular BJW so he shows up sporadically. He has this unique style of Catch wrestling and strong power moves. He was trained by the legendary Billy Robinson, and it definitely shows. He has a reputation for calling matches mostly on the fly and just seeing where it goes. When I was getting back into wrestling I watched quite a few of his matches on YouTube, and while not always the most consistent, he is definitely one of the most interesting guys around today.

I really enjoyed this match, I found myself not jotting to many notes down, but just enjoying the flow of the match. Essentially Kawakami was wary of his style and of being outwrestled so he is on the back foot for most of the match. The match had a lot of grappling, and suplexes thrown in. Nothing crazy fast or violent but incredibly engaging.

Kawakami hits Suzuki with a wicked elbow which he sells incredibly well, but this only serves to take him off his guard as Suzuki surprises him with a double arm suplex for the win out of nowhere. Really nice short match, which was also a pleasant surprise. I'd just finished watching recent NOAH shows with some very long matches so a 12 minute main event was quite refreshing. I'm not marking it higher than a good because of the length, but i'd definitely try and watch it [GOOD]

~ Hideki earns the right to challenge Sekimoto for belt on 3/5 at Korakuen.