SWS Osaka Fighting Party Begins (12.7.90) review 

 

December 7, 1990 

We’re in Osaka at the Prefectural Gymnasium. Over 6k for this show. SWS generally seemed to be doing ok with numbers. People were interested in it. Vince McMahon in particular, who saw it as a chance to crack the notoriously tricky Japanese market. A market that had no real interest in watching the WWF. Despite stars like Hulk Hogan, having been big hits for other companies in Japan. This show features a tournament of SWS vs. WWF. The Fed has sent Ted DiBiase and Greg Valentine over! You are not going to believe what the other fed match is.  

 

This is a handheld fancam of the show so don’t expect screen grabs. You can barely see who’s who.  

 

Masao Orihara vs. Akira Katayama 

Orihara had just barely broken in for AJPW and decided to jump ship. I’m not convinced it was a good idea but he’s a junior and generally AJPW’s juniors get overlooked. Katayama is a very small judoka who was in NJPW before this. They hit a decent pace in this, but the crowd are not interested. Some of the cheeky roll ups are quite nice. However, it’s not clean enough and they put little flips in that don’t land.  

 

Katayama hits a huge high angle German suplex and can’t hold the bridge on it. It does have the ORIHARA MOONSAULT in it though. So weird seeing that land in 1990. That’s the middle rope moonsault to the floor, for the uneducated*. Orihara finishes quickly afterwards. This was hit and miss but Orihara occasionally looked the business. 

 

*Also known as the Asai Moonsault as Asai, aka Ultimo Dragon, popularised the move. However, I don’t know who used it first. Maybe Orihara.  

 

Kenichi Oya vs. Don Arakawa 

Oya you may know from his FMW career. Arakawa is a comedy undercard guy. A solid pick up for SWS as a start up. He gives you something different on the undercard. The kind of guy who’d get scoop slammed 100 times by Masa Fuchi on a NOAH undercard in 2006. They do quite a lot of stuff for chuckles and the crowd seem into it. I don’t like Arakawa though and he just comes across as insufferable here. When they’re not doing comedy, there’s lots of mat work. It is SLUGGISH my brothers and sisters. It’s the kind of match that makes me question what I’m doing here. Why am I watching this many shows from 1990? What do I hope to accomplish? It’s all getting a bit meta. Anyway, Arakawa wins with an armbar, and we move on.  

 

Apollo Sugawara & Fumihiro Niikura vs. Goro Tsurumi & Shinichi Nakano 

It’s around this point that you can tell why Japanese promotions clipped their undercards off all tape releases. This is also sluggish with Nakano being isolated for a while. Lots and lots of rest holds. I cannot be bothered with this. It’s not like the work is even any good. There’s the odd burst of pace about it, but the execution is clumsy, and the structure is misguided. Generally, it’s a poor match with a bunch of spots near the finish. It’s people mimicking a good match rather than having one. Nakano gets an ugly roll up for the win and people just randomly boo. This was shit.  

 

Bushwhackers vs. Rougeau Brothers 

WHAT? THEY SENT THE FUCKING BUSHWHACKERS TO JAPAN??? Even crazier is the Rougeaus, who finished as a team in 1989. This is the last televised match of Ray Rougeau’s career. Wait, this isn’t on TV, is it? Alright, the last Ray Rougeau match to get captured on camera. Jacques would soon return to the WWF as the Mountie. The crowd play along with all the bullshit and the idea that the WWF was a failure in Japan because the crowd didn’t like bullshit is wrong. They don’t like WWF because it’s not a Japanese promotion. One of the most nationalist countries on the planet. 

 

Anyway, you could probably predict every spot in this match beforehand. They always do the same match. I do quite like Jacques swearing at the crowd. Unshackled Jacques Rougeau is here to ruffle a few feathers. Naturally the match is absolutely god awful. They play it like some random house show in Des Moines. Easily negative stars. Ray Rougeau came out of retirement FOR THIS? I hope he got paid a lot by these marks.  

 

Beef Wellington vs. Naoki Sano 

Last time we saw Beef he was going by Wellington Wilkins Jr for UWF. Both guys are very solid, which results in some very solid countering. The kind of standing switches Rob Van Dam would make famous a decade later. The opening couple of minutes is THE TITS. Then they start doing dives. Not pescados either. Proper full tilt, headfirst, over the top rope stupidity. I love it.  

 

The crowd gets behind Wellington, despite his heelish tendencies. The chant of “BEEFU” makes me smile. We get an ugly dragon suplex finish but Sano does a good job of moving his body around to make sure the pin doesn’t completely collapse. This was genuinely good fun and the first match all night that’s felt like a big deal. It’s a shame so many people walked past the camera during it. Bastards. *** 

 

Brooklyn Brawler, Kenny the Striker & Rochester Roadblock vs. Samson Fuyuki, Great Kabuki & Takashi Ishikawa 

Another WWF loanee here is the Brooklyn Brawler; Steve Lombardi. Lombardi was a WWF lifer, staying there until 2016 in various backstage capacities. Kenny the Striker sounds like someone who plays up front for Liverpool with a perm and a moustache. He’d go on to an Italian gimmick for Global and was renamed Vito Mussolini. Yes, really. Wrestling. Rochester Roadblock you might know from WCW, where he wrestled under the name Roadblock. He is VERY LARGE.  

 

You know how some guys go to Japan and work completely differently. Like they realise they have to graft to get over? Yeah, that’s not Steve Lombardi at all. Roadblock is very green, and he stinks a lot. The crowd just laugh at him because he’s so bad they assume he’s a comedy act. Roadblock goes straight onto my list of ‘worst wrestlers of 1990’ and holy shit, is it a LONG fucking list now.  

 

A decade of honking in-ring lads. Kenny is somewhat passable. He takes an ok bump. He doesn’t do any striking at all, which is a bit odd. Kabuki, who looked reenergised at first in this promotion, clearly doesn’t give a shit about this match. Roadblock keeps making me laugh because he wants to go in and out of the ring over the top rope (like Kevin Nash). But his legs aren’t long enough, and he keeps tripping himself up. Just go through the ropes mate. THROUGH. Kenny gives up, very quickly, to a Sharpshooter and Ishikawa gets his hand raised. Good god, this fucking blew chunks. It was a honker.  

 

It’s mad to me that Bret Hart says he got taught the Sharpshooter by Konnan and hadn’t heard of it before using it. Everyone was using that hold in 1990. Sting used it! How did he not see it? Bizarre.  

 

The next two matches are part of a WWF vs SWS tournament. The winners will meet in the main event.  

 

Koji Kitao vs. Greg Valentine 

Greg’s hair is blonde again! Wow, he ditched that black hair look the second Honky was out of the door, didn’t he? Hammer is here to try and get a tune out of Koji Kitao, who is very tall but stinks in the ring. New Japan would have pushed this idiot to the moon. I’m sure they’re thrilled, looking back, that he got fired when he did. Hammer goes to throw Kitao through the ropes, and he just bounces off them. Hahaha. He’s so bad. Hammer tries to work his leg, but Kitao has no idea how to sell anything. Kitao finishes with a vertical suplex where he BOTCHES the pinfall. Hammer immediately stands straight up and stares a hole in him. A total DUD of a match, to go with the total DUD of a human being. I hope Greg got a bonus for keeping this above water because Kitao fucking sucks, dude.  

 

Ted DiBiase vs. Genichiro Tenryu 

What a match up. DiBiase is a legitimate pro. He’s good at every aspect of pro-wrestling. From the look to the schooling to the promos to how he reacts to the crowd, to the referee, to his opponent. Just a class act. He knows to keep his work snug and be aggressive. Tenryu plays the underdog, just taking whatever Ted is dishing out. I much prefer Tenryu to be the asshole and go after people. That’s the main flaw of the match. 

 

Secondary flaw is Tenryu’s boring control periods where he just leans into a headlock and sits in it. The idea is that the match is going to 15:00 draw territory, which hands the ‘trophy’ (or whatever) to Kitao. They flub a few bits and pieces as the match starts to struggle. Tenryu seems very off it. Ted dominates for a long stretch leading into the finish. The crowd starts getting excited, as the time limit approaches.  

 

They play it like DiBiase is just one big move away from victory and Tenryu has to survive the last minute to avoid a blemish on his record. Then he just rolls DiBiase up out of nowhere to win with five seconds remaining. I liked the end of this, but it was a struggle to get there. Not everything they did worked. Tenryu was way too passive. Rating is about **¾.  

George & Shunji Takano vs. Kendo Nagasaki & Yoshiaki Yatsu 

This is just filler before the main event. The crowd make noises with every single strike, which seemed to be a thing in 1990. They do it to Kawada too. Yatsu seems to be getting increasingly sluggish in SWS. Every match seems to be less energised than the previous one. He’s just had enough. Kendo only seems to come to life on the floor. That makes it hard to get into the match and it’s a long one. At 16:42, the longest on the entire show.  

 

George Takano is the one guy in the match who treats it like a chance to get more over. He’s the most exciting guy on offence and the only exciting guy at taking bumps. The trouble with the match structure is how heavily it leans into heat on Shunji and how long the heat segments are. I’m writing this on a very hot day and it’s making me drowsy. It’s not even bad. If it was bad at least I would have something to write about. It’s just a *¾-**¼ match that nobody will ever remember. I won’t remember it. The second this is posted it’ll be gone.  

 

George takes a great backdrop out of the ring near the finish to allow Shunji to be double teamed. However, he doesn’t sell it and pops right back up top for a missile dropkick. It’s that kind of match. Nothing really matters. Always make your bumps count, lads. You only get so many. If nobody pops your bump, then it wasn’t worth taking. Yatsu runs through an array of awful looking Enzuigiris, including one that completely misses and then hits a German suplex intended to be the finish. Only Nagasaki trips over him and fucks the bridge up. Yikes. Only George looked good here. 

 

Koji Kitao vs. Genichiro Tenryu 

The tournament final ends the show. Kitao is still selling the leg from the Valentine match. Tenryu is selling how tired he is of wrestling. Oh man, I feel you. I’ve only watched this show, and I am EXHAUSTED. They could do something funny and have Tenryu just squash Kitao and get out of there. Instead, we get a very, very, very long heat segment on Tenryu. It is relentlessly boring and a grind after a show that has already had too much of that bullshit. Kitao livens things up by blowing a clothesline to the floor so badly he falls out of the ring and leaves Tenryu, barely touched, inside it. 

 

Tenryu doesn’t even kick his ass for that. Just fucking KILL HIM. No one wants to see you be nice. Kitao starts selling the leg again, so we get a few kneebars. The timekeeper then randomly rings the bell, and everyone thinks the referee has stopped it. Kitao, dipshit that he is, mounts a comeback using his bad knee. I have seen much worse Kitao performances than this (like earlier tonight), but he loses by attempting a scoop slam and Tenryu rolls through it for the pin. The crowd do not sound happy by this outcome. * 

 

The 411: 

A huge step down from their first show. This had none of the same spark. None of that excitement or energy. I know this was never intended to be released but the performances, in general, were poor here. There’s only two matches worth seeing; Tenryu vs DiBiase and Wellington vs Sano. George Takano tried hard in his match, but he couldn’t save it. Just, in general, piss poor all around for a new company. The writing already on the wall. The company would only exist for a couple of years.