NJPW Battle Satellite in Osaka (5.25.89) review 

 

May 25, 1989 

 

We’re in Osaka-Jo Hall for the follow up to New Japan’s Tokyo Dome show that was headlined by Inoki and Georgian shooter Shota Chochishvili. This is also a famous show for several other reasons including Salman Hashimikov winning the IWGP belt and Jushin Liger winning his first title. I’m looking at the card and there are EVEN MORE random Russian shooters that I’ve never even heard of. Inokism, baby! Who are you in the world of wrestling tape reviewing if you’ve never seen Timur Zalasov or Habieli Victachev?  

 

Hiro Saito & Kuniaki Kobayashi vs. Naoki Sano & Shiro Koshinaka 

This is the kind of undercard bullshit I live for. Koshinaka is way too good to be in this. They go a belting pace with Sano in particular keen on doing flips and dives and shit. New Japan is streets ahead of NWA in 1989, in terms of pacing and entertainment value. This is so fast paced! It slows down into heat on Koshinaka and then again on Sano. Kobayashi does some lovely, smooth technical stuff. His best spot is seeing Sano go for a moonsault into crossbody and just sticking his knee into the ribs. Both teams have it won with tasty suplexes but the partners break up the bridges. Saito gets horribly lost near the finish and forgets what the spot is. Sano reminds him by hitting a sunset flip for the win. ***¼. This was great. It was spot heavy at a belting pace. Sano was 100mph so it probably lacked build but otherwise fun, fun, fun.  

 

Sidenote: as part of this exploration into New Japan’s sudden obsession with Russian wrestling, I’ve been reading up on it a bit. In Russian wrestling they don’t have like stars, midcarders and jobbers. Oh no. They have technicals, loggers and padding. What a hierarchy of workers that is!  

 

Timur Zalasov vs. Masa Saito 

Saito jobbed to one of the Russian lads in Tokyo (Wakha Eveloev). Zalasov is another balding Russian logger. Saito has clearly been given him as a return for jobbing last time. Zalasov looks every bit a guy who has never set foot in a wrestling ring before but knows how to throw people. Remember that Scott Steiner WWE match where he just did a lot of overhead suplexes? This is like that but worse. To be fair to Zalasov, he has more variety but the rest of his work stinks. Saito beats him with the Scorpion Deathlock and there was much rejoicing!  

 

IWGP Tag Team Championship 

George Takano & Super Strong Machine (c) vs. Kengo Kimura & Osamu Kido 

Kido looks like a schoolteacher about to dive into a swimming pool. Kengo is well hench, but his back bumps are all on a delay. I’m in the process of writing him off as a worker when he starts throwing punches and holy shit, this guy has great punches. It’s wild seeing more good suplexes in one night than I’ve seen in North America in the last five years. Japan’s acceleration of their in-ring was really something in the late 1980s.  

 

Kimura’s weird back bumps seem to be catching, and everyone forgets how to bump. They start throwing more wild shit in there and it just gets worse. Kido tries for a swinging neckbreaker but SSM counters into a backslide. I’m certain the pin is broken up, but the ref counts it anyway. This was…not good. They threw a lot of shit at the wall and not much of it stuck.  

 

Bam Bam Bigelow vs. Wahka Eveloev  

Bigelow comes out with a USA cap on, which is quite fetching. Eveloev got a win over Masa Saito in Tokyo but did not excell in that match up. The Bammer is great at making scrubs look capable. He got a decent match out of an NFL player, for crying out loud. Bigelow’s tactic for making this look good is by throwing himself into armdrags and throws. Every time I see him, it boggles the mind that nobody ever gave him a huge push.  

He just has this knack of making other people look better than they are. Eveloev looks way better here than he did at the Dome, but I can’t tell if that’s him getting reps on the house shows or Bigelow. A mystery of this show is that Doc, aka Steve Williams, is the flag bearer for the Yanks but he’s not on the card. He worked the tour, so I have to assume he got injured. Anyway, Bigelow does a great job here but eventually gets sick of carrying the match and finishes with a Samoan Drop/Big Splash combo. I love me some Bammer. **½ 

 

Habieli Victachev vs. Takayuki Iizuka 

Look at this fucking guy! Another balding logger! Iizuka is the same guy that ran around with the iron glove in his later career. If you’ve never seen his early work, you might be shocked that he could actually work like a motherfucker. Also, I take back the logger comment on Victachev. He not only understands wrestling, he embraces it fully. He does a side step to dodge a dropkick and I’m in love.  

 

He wears a jacket to the ring, which he wrestles in. It’s not a gi or anything. He just really likes jackets. No, it’s not Jiro Kuroshio. He’s good. This is the only match under round systems, for whatever reason. Iizuka starts kicking the leg and Victachev sells it like John Ashton* with cramp.  

 

*Taggart in Beverly Hills Cop 

 

Comical selling somehow makes him better. He’s this lethal weapon on offence and a keystone cop when not. Like he put all his CAW stats into takedowns and kneebars and left nothing for bumping and hair. He even breaks out the Heath Ledger selling from Dark Knight where he gets slapped and he’s so busy selling it, he completely ignores another leg kick. A master at work.  

 

Iizuka looks confused at times. He whiffs on a dropkick and Victachev just ignores it. Damn straight! Don’t bump if there’s no contact. Victachev gets another kneebar, roughly the seventeenth of the contest, and Iizuka gives it up. I have no idea how to rate this. It was amazing. We’ll call it *** so I can put it on my spreadsheet and look back at it with great fondness. I am currently debating whether Victachev, based solely on this match, would make my Wrestler of the Year shortlist. (Spoiler: he does) 

 

Victor Zangiev & Vladimir Berkovich vs. Tatsumi Fujinami & Riki Choshu 

If there’s one of the Russians who can cope with tag team rules it’s Zangiev, the stud of the group. The Russians call themselves the “Red Bull Army”. Seeing as Red Bull, the popular energy drink, only started being made in 1987 that has nothing to do with their choice. It’s mad to think that a product as popular as Red Bull just didn’t exist when I was a kid.  

 

While Zangiev attacks the match with aplomb, Berkovich continues to look lost. At one point I can see his brain trying to figure out how to do an armbar. He can’t do it. Choshu looks unimpressed and works stiff. Part of me desperately wants to see this degenerate into a shoot.  

It won’t happen while Victor Zangiev is involved. The man is the purest of pros. He’s the Kurt Angle of Russian shooters. His facials alone put him a tier above everyone else. I’m sad he won’t be around for long. Berkovich tries to throw Choshu around, which gets him BATTERED with the lariat. Bump that, ya fuckin’ bitch. Berkovich looks stunned and has great difficulty taking a piledriver. Fujinami has to be really careful and taps the poor bastard out moments later.  

 

This match is a real mixed bag because the Zangiev stuff is excellent, but Berkovich looked scared to do anything and why on earth they had him taking a piledriver is anyone’s guess.  

 

IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship 

Hiroshi Hase (c) vs. Jushin Liger 

This is the original Liger look, before they fixed it and made him look cool. The crowd are rabid for Liger and the costume. I’ve seen his debut and it’s not great. This is a few weeks later. Hase decides to put Liger on the back foot and have him sell, early doors. You can see that junior style, which New Japan will soon become known for globally. Liger blows his lines again on offence. He struggles to implement the lucha-libre the character is designed to emulate.  

He does connect with an awesome belly to belly suplex though. A lot of early junior style comes from Dynamite Kid and that European style of throw is something Liger will have studied on his UK excursion. He also went to Canada and Stampede, which probably helped. I loved watching his shoot interview where he talked about his love of fish and chips and when Hase came up, he mentioned how large the man’s nostrils were.  

 

Hase does Liger a favour here by wrestling a grounded, borderline dull, style. Designed to emphasise Liger’s more flamboyant approach and to mark a general change of styles in this title switch. Hase also focuses on Liger’s midsection, an attempt to work a body part without ruining Liger’s exciting offence. Liger spams the hell out of the Koppou Kick and hits the original Liger finish; a cradle suplex (wrist clutch one side, leg hook the other). It’s an innovative finish.  

 

This isn’t quite the Liger we all know and love. He took a while to adjust to being masked. The pieces are all there. He plays the right notes just not necessarily in the right order. The obsessive Koppou Kicks (four in a row) is overkill and his selling is nonexistent, presumably because he was so focused on nailing everything. It’s an awkward transition into a new era for New Japan juniors. Luckily, they stuck with it, and it paid off in a big way. There’s a lot of very exciting junior division stuff to come from New Japan. It’s so close, you can almost taste it. It’s a style that would change the world of professional wrestling. Liger would go on to win eight of these titles.  

 

IWGP Championship 

Big Van Vader (c) vs. Salman Hashimikov 

This is the continuation of Inoki’s obsession with shooters, which comes at the expense of Vader’s first title run. Inoki would eventually run it back and do the Vader title run properly but it’s just bizarre seeing him piss that away for Salman Hashimikov. Zangiev, I could totally see. Hashimikov just isn’t as good.  

The whole match has a vibe of “how do you beat this mastadon?” It’s the kind of thing New Japan could have dragged out for ages. Vader completely dominates Hashimikov. All the strikes and power moves. He overwhelms Hashimikov. Just from a basic skill level, Vader is so far above Hashimikov. The aura, the look, the size, the speed, the technique. He’s miles ahead.  

 

Whenever Hashimikov attempts something, it looks like a pin attempt when it’s a submission and a submission when it’s a pin attempt. Vader is merciless. The clotheslines are brutally stiff. His slams see Hashimikov bounce off the mat. He makes the challenger work for the belt. Hashimikov ends up winning with a throw over his shoulder into a pin. If that sounds underwhelming, it totally was.  

Vader was so good that, in retrospect, it seems unhinged to do this title switch. Just a matter of weeks after Vader won the title at the Tokyo Dome. Vader tries hard in this match to get it over, but there is a gulf in talent and Hashimikov never should have been put in this position. While Inoki’s wacky love of shootstyle is often a good thing, it simply isn’t here. There’s a time and place for it and Inoki was frequently guilty of putting his core ideals over at the expense of the overall product. Look back on the way he booked Maeda in exciting matches with wrestlers. That was perfect. This is way too far in the other direction, and he simply picked the wrong guy to be the star of the Russian invasion. 

 

WWF World Martial Arts Championship 

Shota Chochishvili (c) vs. Antonio Inoki  

Inoki held this belt forever until losing it to Shota at the Dome show. This is the rematch and oddly enough, the ‘end’ of Inoki as a pro wrestler. After this match he went from wrestling a full schedule to a handful of matches a year. Literally overnight. I’ll explain why after the match. 

 

A reminder, if you don’t recall the first match between these two, Shota isn’t good. You can read his face and he’s trying to remember what he’s supposed to be doing. It’s something that happens a lot when you watch rookies. They at least learned one thing from the first match, and they keep this short. R1 is mainly Shota throws and a bit of limp grapplefuck. I’ll give them some credit though; it does look like an early MMA match. In that it’s really bad.  

 

R2 is better because Shota plants Inoki with a backdrop driver. He then goofs around doing nothing allowing Inoki to recover and when he does follow in, Inoki submits him. The whole thing is about six minutes. It’s certainly as bad as Tokyo but at least it’s much shorter.  

The WWF Martial Arts belt was only ever a trophy belt for Inoki and it’s weird that he turned it into a prop to get Shota over. It didn’t really work, and the belt was never defended again. Inoki held it for 11 years before losing to Shota. Speaking of the Georgian shooter, he wrestled precisely one more match, tagging with Inoki in Moscow on New Year’s Eve. A match that, oddly enough, would also be the next time we see Inoki competing in the ring. Inoki’s reduced schedule after this meant he went from full time to wrestling just 31 more matches in the rest of his entire career.  

 

So, Inoki’s ‘retirement’ here. What was that about? Well, he’d started taking a major interest in politics and had created a political party called the Sports and Peace Party. The party ran on the idea that sport was important, and World Peace was the goal, through sporting endeavour. Which would explain him booking Russians while he was trying to get elected. He ended up getting elected to the House of Councillors, which is the ‘upper house’ of Japanese parliament. His term ran until 1995 and is the reason why Inoki became so interested in globalisation and why New Japan ran shows in Russia and North Korea. Based.  

 

The 411: 

What a fascinating promotion New Japan was in 1989. They had so many great components, but it didn’t quite click. The interest in shooters, juniors and more traditional workers and evil foreigners could have meshed into something truly special. Instead, it felt like the circus had got all mixed up. The clowns were on the high wire and acrobats were bullfighting. Then a tiny little car pulls into the arena and 14 gold medallists pile out of it.  

 

I will say this about Antonio Inoki though; regardless of quality, his shows were never boring. I was gripped by both this and the Tokyo Dome show. From top to bottom his shows were far more entertaining than anything in North America and despite AJPW having better main events at the time, their cards were nowhere near this level of entertainment. Inoki was a proper mad bastard, and you NEED those in wrestling.