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Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to Into the Indies, your one stop shop for international independent wrestling on 411mania.

The year 2010, whether you want to call it “twenty-ten” or “two thousand ten,” is just a few short weeks old.

And with the coming of the new year, there were of course massive celebrations as people across the globe ushered in the final year of the current decade. However, perhaps nobody was partying harder than the independent wrestling community in Japan. Three promotions, Big Japan Wrestling, Dramatic Dream Team, and Kaientai Dojo gathered under the roof of Tokyo’s Korakuen Hall for a joint show that featured nine different matches highlighting the best of each company’s wrestlers. Many times, a series of matches from three different companies, some of them featuring interpromotional action, would be enough of a draw for a show of this caliber. However, the BJW/DDT/K-DOJO alliance wasn’t content with relying on that alone. Instead, they decided that they wanted to go with something bigger, something badder, and something that had never been seen before. They wanted to go with . . .

A ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHT MAN BATTLE ROYALE.

Yes, that’s right, a 108 man battle royale. Competitors from the three promotions, as well as some special guests, would all convene for one massive competition. Though I’m not going to spend the time necessary to determine whether this in fact can be called the biggest battle royale in the history of man, I can definitively say that it’s the largest one that I can think of off the top of my head. Frankly, it’s so big that I have real concerns about how it will actually work from a logistic standpoint.

So, let us wind the clock back about three and a half weeks to December 31, 2009 and take a look at what happens when three professional wrestling companies get together to book a match that contains more wrestlers than most businesses have employees.

Kengo Mashimo of K-Dojo starts off with DDT’s Yukihiro Abe, who for some reason is dressed like a school girl. As the bell rings, Mashimo steals Abe’s wig. For some reason, that causes him to bail from the ring, and the two spend a period of time chasing each other around. Well, I suppose if you’re doing a match of this size, you need to stall a bit. Mashimo begins putting the boots to Abe just as time expires and a new entrant can come out. The greatest thing about this match so far? They’re using a gong to signal the entrance of a new competitor. The Royal Rumble would be ten times better if WWE would integrate gongs into it. If that’s the pace that they’re keeping for the rest of the match, it looks like we’re going to have roughly ten second intervals. The third entrant is Dark Miyako Man, hails from Kaientai Dojo. He joins Mashimo in his assault on Abe, but Mashimo decides he doesn’t need the help and goes after him as well. Entrant number four is Western Tiger (BJW’s Takashi Sasaki doing a Tiger Mask parody), who poses on the ropes and is assaulted from behind by Miyako immediately. DMM hits the ropes and charges at Tiger, but he’s taken down. All three other wrestlers in the ring dog pile him and score a three count, eliminating him from the match. (In most Japanese battles royale, both pinning your opponent and throwing him over the top rope are valid ways to score an eliminations.

Just as Miyako Man is eliminated, the gong sounds again, and now we’ve got Oriental Dragon in the ring. Based on the scars, I believe that he is Big Japan’s Ryuji Ito in the Ultimo Dragon-esque hood. Dragon and Tiger, a.k.a. Team Knockoff, form an alliance immediately and give Mashimo some kicks to the head before Tanomusaku Toba of DDT fame hits the squared circle. Toba begins doing an odd dance instead of wrestling. Okay then. Now we’ve got Kaji Tomato in the ring, which is a play on the name of K-Dojo wrestler Kaji Yamato. It’s a bad pun, but I’ll give him some credit . . . it looks like he, Tiger, and Dragon, have put some money into coming up with decent gear for these joke gimmicks. Tomato and Abe shake hands and give Mashimo stereo dropkicks to the side of the head, after which Tomtao turns on his partner and tries to throw him over the top, with the other wrestlers joining in. As they all lean against the ropes, the gong goes off to give us my new favorite wrestler of all time (until the next entrance) MASKED HOLSTEIN. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this match is less than ten minutes in, and it is officially the greatest thing that I have ever seen because it has given the world the gift of LUCHA LIBRE CATTLE~!

Holstein’s entrance is so long that, literally one second after he gets between the ropes, the countdown for the next wrestler begins. It is Brahman Shu Sato. Somewhere in there, the team up on Abe apparently worked, because he is no longer with us when the cameras return to the action. Sato shoves some fruit into the face of Tomato and then bulls him out of the ring before following him to the floor and squirting ketchup into his kisser. Taishi Takizawa of K-Dojo hits the ring and low bridges Masked Holstein, first knocking him to the apron and then shoulderblocking him off of that for the elimination. Ladies and gentlemen, join me for a moment of silence as we mourn the greatest career that never was. DDT’s Chou-un Shiryu is the first man in the ring after the cow was tipped. He gets what I would deem a surprisingly large pop and immediately wows the crowd by jumping over Takizawa off of the top rope. Well, that’s one way to do it.

Next in the rotation is Takumi Tsukimoto, Big Japan’s rookie and a wrestler that makes me feel very old because he was born in 1991. He briefly has a seat in the front row but then enters the ring, where he and Western Tiger take turns slapping Shu Sato on the top of his very bald head. Now it’s time for the big guns to come out, as the gong brings us BJW’s Jaki “Juliet” Numazawa. Numazawa and Sato trade slaps to their equally bald domes while everybody else in the match does generic battle royale spots. Kankuro Hoshino of Big Japan comes to the ring and goes straight into a chop exchange with Western Tiger. Thank god for the quick intervals, because, otherwise, this match would just be a bunch of camera shots of guys leaning on the ropes. Now we get our first female entrant into the match, K-Dojo’s Bambi. She brings a bullwhip of all things into the ring, and she makes liberal use of it. Western Tiger, who was standing on the middle rope delivering some illegal closed fists to an opponent, gets whipped from behind and falls out of the ring to close out his time in the match. Then, in an awesome yet surreal spot, Babmi and Toba square off at center ring. Toba kicks the woman. Babmi whips him. Kick. Whip. Kick. Whip. They trade their signature strikes back and forth for a bit, including a couple of unfortunate whip shots that look like they came a bit too close to Toba’s face for comfort.

Entrant number whatever is Masahi Takeda. He dead lifts Takizawa and tosses him out of the ring like a sack of potatoes. I suppose Toba somehow got eliminated off of a whip shot, because he’s not in the ring anymore either. Now it is time for the Winger to enter the match, complete with t-shirt for the FREEDOMS promotion. Jaki gets eliminated somehow. The cameras were focused on Winger and then cut to a shot of Jaki flying down to the floor, completely missing how he got launched over the top. As the cameras focus on his body, Hoshino suddenly falls into frame right next to him, also being eliminated. Babmi eliminates herself at this point after she whips Winger and he no-sells it, scaring her into running out of the ring and making sure to step over the top rope in doing so. You know, because that’s how all 5’5″ women enter and exist professional wrestling rings. As Babmi leaves, K-Dojo’oer Kim Nam Seok, a South Korean immigrant to Japan, enters. He and Shiryu do some spots together leading into both standing on the ropes for what is presumably a superplex. That’s not a smart move in a battle royale, as Tsukamoto runs up from behind, dropkicks Kim in the glutes, and knocks them both down to the floor.

Miyako Man (not the dark version) is introduced into the match now. Sato and Takeda get him in the corner and go after his mask, and that’s all we see prior to the entry of the Great Kojika, an all Japan legend who was holding championships FORTY YEARS AGO. All of the wrestlers stop what they’re doing and face off with the Kojika. Kojika makes them all eat his old man chops, but eventually he is double teamed and overcome. We go from old to young, as K-Dojo’s Kunio Toshima enters the ring, wearing tights colored in such a way that I am reminded of Dreamsicles, and unloads on the Kojika. Kojika fires back on him with a headbutt, though, proving that sometimes there’s more to senior citizens than just AARP cards and Metamucil. Out now is a man announced as A. YAZAWA, a an alter ego of DDT’s Antonio Honda. I’m not entirely sure what the gimmick is meant to be, but it involves him wearing suspenders and doing the old American Males “clap,” though I somehow doubt that he’s going for a Scotty Riggs tribute. (I mean, really, who would do something like that?) YAZAWA two-steps his way over to Shu Sato, who is standing on the ring apron at this point. He grabs the Brahman’s arm and snaps it in his suspenders a few times, after which he pokes him in the eye. This causes Sato to fall off of the apron and out of the match.

Now it’s time for things to get a bit more serious with the entry of Big Japan’s Daisuke Sekimoto. He immediately military presses Takeda out of the ring, which is followed up by eliminations for Miyako Man and Toshima. Apparently Tsukamoto go eliminated in there somewhere as well, but I completely missed it. The next entrant is Dick Togo, doing his Francesco Togo gimmick from the Italian Four Horsemen stable in DDT. He goes toe-to-toe with his Italian Horsemen partner Honda (still in the YAZAWA gimmick), shoots him off of the ropes, and catches him in a suspender-assisted sleeper hold. Togo essentially chokes the opposing wrestler out with the suspenders, and the referee checks YAZAWA’s arm. It goes down three times, and that’s good enough to count for an elimination. There is also a phantom elimination on Kojika at this point, as he is seen standing on the floor, apparently gone from the match, albeit without any establishing shot of what got him there. Youngster Kazuki Hashimoto is in now, and he’s also out now, as he runs immediately into a Sekimoto lariat and gets pinned. I would say that’s our Bushwacker Luke spot of the match, but, with 108 men, there are likely to be several more eliminations that are just as quick.

Now it is time for arguably the biggest star of the match to date to enter the ring, and it is DDT front man Sanshiro Takagi. He does his usual crowd-pleasing entrance to a remix of “Fire” by Scooter, and, by the time he’s done, Kaientai representative JOE is on his way down the aisle. JOE blindsides Togo but gets a rana for his trouble. However, Dick doesn’t last much longer, as Takagi gives him a stunner to set up a knee strike from JOE that eliminates the former Michinoku Pro standout. As Takagi celebrates the victory, JOE blasts him from behind, sending Shingo over the top rope and resulting in a surprisingly short run in the match for him. Well, I guess if you’re the man in charge of one of the promotions running this show, you might also book yourself to do the least amount of work possible for the highest amount of money possible. Takagi’s elimination gives way to the entrance of Kashiwa Megane. JOE unloads on Megane immediately and then joins a four man sleeper chain with Mashimo, Sekimoto, and the Winger. Megane decides he’ll help out as well, but eventually the whole chain is broken up. Aku-kun (who appears to be a skinny-fat Caucasian fellow under a mask) enters the ring eating some snack food out of a box, and all he does is eat before PSYCHO of K-Dojo enters the ring. He throws a bunch of dropkicks that nobody sells before knocking Megane down in the corner. JOE hits a running ass splash on Megane in the corner and then grabs a celebratory snack from Aku.

Now we are joined by long-time DDT favorite Poison Sawada JULIE. JOE, Winger, and Megane attempt to triple team Poison, but what they failed to account for is the fact that the indy veteran has brought his HYPNOTIC FINGERS OF DOOM with him to this match. JULIE waggles the magic fingers in front of their faces, and then suddenly all three men are compelled to simultaneously eliminate themselves. If he can keep that up for the entire match, he’s a lock to win. JULIE tires to make it four eliminations by grabbing Aku-kun’s snacks and throwing them of of the ring, but Aku is so compelled to keep eating that he grabs JULIE’s arm and both men go sailing over the top rope to their doom. Well, I guess he couldn’t keep it up for the entire match. DDT’s KUDO comes to the ring and doesn’t do much of note, as this match resembles an actual battle royale for a few seconds as opposed to a comedy schmozz. The next man in? Antonio Honda! Why do I have a feeling that he won’t be the only man making multiple entrances that we see tonight?

Hey, speaking of just that concept, here’s Shining Tiger. He’s wearing yet another Tiger Mask-inspired hood, but the beard and bleached blond skullet sticking out from underneath it as well as the back full of scars gives me the impression that we are once more in the presence of Jaki Numazawa. The two repeat entries do battle for a split second before Shadow WX hits the ring. He’s not wearing a tiger mask, but he does have a tiger on his t-shirt. For some reason, Tiger decides to hide from WX, using Sekimoto and then the referee as human shields. Qiball Man comes to the ring. He throws Honda out over the second rope and PSYCHO out under the bottom rope, so he apparently doesn’t understand the rules of a battle royale. He further demonstrates this concept by performing an Asai moonsault on Honda and PSYCHO. It was a good looking move, but, because he jumped over the top rope first, it means that he has just eliminated himself. I do like the concept of the battle royale competitor who “just doesn’t get it,” but it could have been pulled off a lot better by somebody with more charisma than what Qiball seemed to possess.

It’s Shiori Asahi turn in the ring, and, right off the bat, he goes after Mashimo, who, yes, is still in the match. They do a pretty nice false finish which gets the crowd’s attention, with Asahi taking Mashimo over the top with a headscissors and Mashimo clinging to the top rope attempting to skin the cat while Asahi claws at his head and fingers. Eventually both men wind up back in the ring unscathed, as does Hiro Tonai, who is our next entrant. Tonai and Mashimo double team PSYCHO, which results in Tonai and PSYCHO brawling on the apron. As this happens, Ryuji Ito comes back to the match, this time sans mask and under his usual name. All of the wrestlers in the ring stop and stare at Ito for a second. I have no clue what that was about. Once the staring contest is over, MEN’s Teioh, president of MEN’S Club is on his way to the ring. Teioh’s first trick is to put PSYCHO into a Kiwi roll. As they roll around the ring, they bump into both Tonai and Shining Tiger, who go over the top and down to the floor for their eliminations. The roll also works on PSYCHO, as he is pinned after a large number of rotations. Right after that, Ito holds Shadow WX in position for a Sekimoto shoulderblock that knocks him off of the apron and down to the floor. Presumably, he had already stepped or been placed over the top rope.

DDT’s MIKAMI comes in to play, followed seconds later by MIYAWAKI. With all these caps, the match is beginning to look like a blow of alphabet soup. MIKAMI gets a nondescript elimination, tossing Honda. Mashimo is chased by several wrestlers at this point, running on the apron to avoid several elimination attempts. Fortunately, the heat is off of him once KOTA IBUSHI decides that it’s time to make his presence felt. Ibushi does what he does best at this point: Flips. He does a handspring over a prone wrestler and winds up in the corner, where he kicks Ryuji Ito off of the second rope and down to the floor. At this point, Sekimoto starts going crazy with an insanely long series of axe bombers on Asahi while Shuji Ishikawa enters the ring. Shuji stops the Daisuke madness, as he schoolboys him after one of the bombers and the other wrestlers pile on to help in the pin. A standard, unspectacular dropkick eliminates Teioh at almost the exact same moment.

Gota Ihashi, a tubby parody of Kota Ibushi, is now in. All of the wrestlers surround Gota and give him the Mohammed Hassan treatment, sextuple teaming him and choking him in the corner. Madness Dragon, a Shinya Ishikawa alternate gimmick, is our next entrant, and his coming into the ring seems to take the heat off of Gota somewhat. Yasu Urano of DDT is next. He lands a Slop Drop on Ishikawa and a huge kick to the back on Asahi before Daikokubo Benkei hits the ring. He’s not quite Kojika old, but his entering the ring still manages to double the average age of the wrestler involved in this match. The ring is really starting to fill up at this point, but the match comes to a standstill as a clock goes up on the big screen indicating that there is only a minute left to the new year. The entire locker room clears at this point – think of what that looks like on a show with a 108 man battle royale – and all of the wrestlers do a traditional countdown and celebration. The battle resumes as quickly as possible once the people who ran in to make merry file out of the ring, and, somewhere in the chaos, poor MIKAMI was eliminated. Gota Ihashi is tossed as well, unfortunately without even so much as a hint of a faceoff against the more popular wrestler who inspired him. Surly, middle aged Benkei is also gone at this point, the victim of another dog pile.

We get a mask-for-mask exchange at this point, as a man in a lime green mask called Mobara Star Festival 7 runs in to compete, and, seconds later, Madness Dragon is thrown from the ring. Kei Sato, accompanied by his previously eliminated brother Shu, runs out. He is caught by KUDO and Asahi, who whip him into the corner. Each tries to run in with a corner attack, but Kei elevates them up and over the top rope, after which his sneaky brother pulls them off of the apron for the elimination. Then, in a spot that I absolutely did not see coming, Kei grabs a wad of green slime from his mouth, rubs it in Kota Ibushi’s face, and effortlessly tosses him from the ring. The slime I was expecting at some point because it’s a Sato trademark, but I did NOT see Ibushi going out quite some easily. Toru Owashi, who won the last DDT battle royale that I reviewed, hits the ring, and he’s another one whose entrance takes so long that the next guy is ready to come out immediately after he sets foot on the canvas. In this case, the second entrant in the chain is Sasaki & Gabana, also of the Italian Four Horsemen. Owashi gives a big boot to the Festival, which eliminates him from the contest. Nothing of note happens until the next entrance, which is Randy Takuya from K-Dojo. Randy dropkicks Shuji Ishikawa back to the locker room upon hitting the ring.

On the other side of the ring, Owashi and MIYAWAKI brawl on the apron to determine who will eliminate whom. Eventually that degenerates into a verbal debate, which takes so long that both Craig and Shining Tiger Big Buddy (Yuji Okabayashi, a Sekimoto trainee) enter the ring as it is ongoing. Fortunately the Tiger puts an end to it, as he charges both men and knocks them off of the apron with a double lariat. At this point, Randy Takuya runs the ropes, gets low bridged, and gets eliminated. Ken Ohka enters the ring and goes after Big Buddy, but he no sells it and lifts him up for what appears to be a front slam out of the ring. Unfortunately for him Yasu Urano runs up from behind and grabs his leg. The result is Big Buddy, Urano, and Ohka all going over the top rope simultaneously and landing in a big heap o’ elimination. Okabyashi appears to have legitimately tweaked his knee on that landing. But, if you’re going to hurt yourself, hurting yourself while dressed as Shining Tiger Big Buddy is a far better story to tell you friends than hurting yourself while in a run of the mill professional wrestling match. The first wrestler to enter the ring in a post-Big Buddy era is Taro Peanut. True to his name, he spends his entrance making the Johnny Appleseed-like gesture of handing out peanuts to each member of the crowd, and it takes so long that Tomokazu Taniguchi is out with him. Peanut eliminates Brahman Kei as Yuji Hino of Kaientai Dojo makes his presence felt.

Craig shoots off some chops at Hino, but he’s grabbed by the throat for his trouble and tossed out of the ring. Hino grabs Peanut by the crotch (by the peanuts?) and gives him the exact same treatment. Next in the ring is Buto Gunso, the Porky Pig-esque alter ego of popular BJW wrestler Abdullah Kobayashi. Buto makes short work of Taniguchi but then falls victim to our next entrant, Reconstruction Snake Human Jakaider. For those of you wondering what that could possibly mean, it’s Poison Sawada JULIE, reentering the match dressed as the hybrid of a robot and a Dragon Ball Z character. Reconstruction Snake has a comically large, first-shaped glove covering one of his hands, and he positions it so that it is flipping Buto off before he punches him in the face with the thing, sending piggy back to the farm and/or her role in the WWE Smackdown women’s division. Several more wrestlers are punched by the oversized fist but not eliminated by it as Buto was. Then it’s then announced that the next entrant is ABDULLAH KOBAYASHI~! Abby pulls off his big nose and grabs a bottle of water from a ringside fan to wash off the facepaint that completes his Buto Gunso look. He charges back to the ring, comes off the top rope, and makes short work of Reconstruction Snake Human Jakaider, easily throwing him/it over the top rope.

Michael Nakazawa, the storyline CEO of DDT, walks down the aisle to compete. For reasons that are not clear to me, he doesn’t take a single offensive maneuver from any of his opponets before voluntarily stepping over the top rope and taking himself out of contention. Yuichi Taniguchi enters the match now and repeatedly says hello to the crowd. This inspires the other wrestlers in the match to do the same en route to Keisuke Ishii joining the match. Ishii is immediately chopped by several people and held in place for some running attacks by Taniguchi. Masahiro Takanashi joins the fray, and he and Ishii team up, eliminating Yoshihito Sasaki with a Poetry in Motion-esque dropkick. Ryuchi Kawakami comes to the ring as everybody for some reason decides that they’re going to gang up on Mashimo. Hino leads the assault and chokes him out in the corner, though he fails to go for a cover. Eventually, Ryuichi Sekine comes out and does another intentional elimination spot. Again, I’m not entirely certain what the purpose was. Yotsukaida enters, and he’s another wrestler who everybody decides to stare at for a while once he enters the ring. Catching a glimpse at the big screen, he appears to have been entrant number seventy into the match.



Yotsukaida is just the setup to a great, great man hitting the squared circle, though. Yes, number seventy-one is . . . YOSHIHIKO!!!! YOSHI is paying tribute to Hulk hogan tonight, complete with “Real American” theme music and classic gold trunks. Yotsukaida goes after after the YOSHIHULKSTER immediately and sets up for a powerbomb, but that is reversed into a huricanrana which gets YOSHI the pinfall and the elimination. Okabayashi, tweaked knee or not, enters the match sans Shining Tiger gimmick at this point. Being the biggest man in the match by far, he is able to easily eliminate Ishii and Takanashi. Yoku Miyamoto runs in at this point, and he scores major heel heat immediately by stomping a mud hole in YOSHIHIKO in the corner. Fortunately it’s not a literal mud hole, as we don’t want the poor guy to deflate in the middle of such a key match. K-Dojo member KAZMA hits the ring, and he puts out Gabbana, Kawakami, and Taniguchi before doing a double elimination spot with himself and Yuji Hino. Well, that’s certainly one way to clear out the ring.

American import and former ROH wrestler MASADA is in. YOSHIHIKO goes after him, but MASADA no-sells the man’s shots and chokes him for a bit. Now we’re joined by P-Air Saionji, a split personality of Kankuro Hoshino, at number seventy-six. He and Kobayashi engage in a game of hot potato involving YOSHIHIKO, and eventually a shot from YOSHI takes the fringer off his feet. That sets up the entrance of TAJIRI, who gets the second biggest pop of the match thusfar. (The biggest, of course, going to YOSHIHIKO.) He immediately cradles Saionji for the elimination but gets caught offguard by Miyamoto, who gives TAJIRI a version of the Buzzsaw’s own handspring elbow. TAJIRI responds in kind, and then the loudspeakers play some music which would have to be familiar to the former WWE wrestler. Yes, the strains of “Sexy Boy,” bring out none other than Antonio “Shawn Michaels” Honda, who is reliving his HBK parody role from the NOSAWA Bom Ba Ye. He does the classic HBK pose and busts out my favorite part of the whole gimmick, i.e. moving his hand back and forth behind his head to indicate where Michaels’ mid-90’s pyro would be going off if this show had the budget for that sort of thing. The second the “pyro” is done, Honda superkicks Okabayashi, and that’s all she wrote for big Yuji in this match. Speaking of former WWE wrestlers, here comes TAKA Michinoku! Perhaps fittingly, TAKA and TAJIRI double team the faux HBK, giving him a double elbow drop. Michinoku then tosses Miyamoto over the top, but he holds on to the top rope and tries to skin the cat. TAKA prevents that from happening by throwing Antonio Honda from the ring, and his collision with Miyamoto sends them both to the floor and out of the match.

YOSHIYA is the next man in, and he eliminates TAKA right off the bat with a big boot and a pin assist from TAJIRI. K-Dojo’s GLOBO Mask rides down to the ring on a razor scooter, and he’s followed out to the ring by yet another tiger, this one being billed as Madness Tiger. Hey, JULIE’s back, this time wearing a singlet with a picture of the State of Florida on the back of it with Tampa highlighted. He is calling himself Atsuo “Malenko” Sawada now YOSHIYA is uncerimoniously dumped from the ring as the entrance music of Jun Kasai begins to play. The Crazy Monkey is already bleeding, and I’m hoping it’s from a match earlier on the card and not just because he got bored in the locker room. He low bridges Madness Tiger to get the latest member of the pride eliminated, after which he ties it up with TAJIRI. While those two fight in a bit of an Into the Indies dream match, Sanshiro Takagi appears at the top of the entryway, wearing a costume obviously inspired by Ultraman and being billed as Binnsenn Bun. I don’t know what that means, but he “flies” down to the ring, and by “flies” I mean “walks to the ring with his hands outstretched over his head, swooping back and forth as though navigating turbulence.” The Ultraman clone inadvertently breaks off a part of his costume but puts it to good use, beating TAJIRI with it as he holds Kasai in the Tarantula. This causes TAJIRI to fall to the floor for the elimination. Binnsenn also tosses MASADA from the ring, who yells out an audible “FUCK!” at the top of his lungs when he realizes that he’s been eliminated from such a prestigious competition. Takagi and Sawada begin fighting and wind up on the apron, though they are both knocked off by the entering OK Revolution, which is an alternate gimmick for Ken Ohka.

OK Revolution also makes short work of GLOBO Mask, eliminating him in a heartbeat. A man in coveralls called Satoru comes out to the ring along with two similarly coveralled compatriots and is caught with a sunset flip by OK for an elimination. Kobe Megane and Kenny Omega both enter the ring before anything else of note happens. Omega, for the record, is eighty-nine. He immediately gets into a tussle with YOSHIHIKO, which leads to all of the wrestlers in the ring trying to eliminate the young Canadian. Yuu Yamagata, a female trainee of the Kaientai Dojo, enters at ninety. She gets a headscissor takedown on Kobe and kicks him a couple of times to knock him out of the match. We appear to have missed OK Revolution’s elimination somewhere in there as well. Then, in one of the more hilarious visuals of the match (and think about the ground that covers), badass former sumo wrestler Toru Owashi is forced to reenter the battle royale as Toru Momowashi, a man dressed as a giant peach. He’s got peach colored tights and a peach colored cape, and, most importantly, a giant replica of the fruit on his head. He’s also got a look on his face which sells the fact that he is a manly, manly man who does not want to be doing this character AT ALL. He goes after Yamagata and runs the ropes to attack her. In the process he slams into Kobayashi and YOSHIHIKO, who were standing on the apron. That knocks them to the floor and spells their end. The next entrant is PEPE Michinoku, which is TAKA reprising a Mexican gimmick that he used in All Japan a few years ago. He’s even accompanied by Mexican Amigos stablemate El NOSAWA Mendoza, who is not an official competitor in the match. PEPE gives Yuu a falcon arrow and pins her in short order. At this point, an English language version of “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” plays over the sound system in full as the Great Kirara comes out to the ring. He dropkicks Omega and gives him a rana before dropkicking him a few more times to cause the elimination of the ROH star. The coverall crew is back out again, this time with female referee Yuki being their entrant. She runs the ropes, literally falls flat on her face, and is pinned and eliminated by every wrestler left in the ring.

Next on the entry list is Hardcore Kid Kojiro. He almost tosses Mashimo (yes, he’s still alive) out of the ring but ultimately fails. Marines Mask from Kaientai Dojo, who does a gimmick based on a Japanese baseball team, hits the ring. He steals Owashi’s giant peach head and throws it out into the audience before eliminating the big ole’ fruit. Dick Togo, now not pretending to be an Italian mobster, heads to the ring. He eliminates the Hardcore Kid and Marines Mask quickly via toss over the top rope and then catches PEPE with a small package to do away with him as well. The next man in the ring? DANSHOKU DINO~! Everybody in the match is rightly guarded when he enters, but Dino seems to have taken a shine towards Mashimo, as he chases him around the ring and out through the crowd. The guy has been wrestling for well over an hour now . . . hasn’t he suffered enough? The Dino-related madness takes us through to our next entrant, who is Daisuke Sasaki, also known as Sasaki and Gabbana. (How many Sasakis do we need on the Japanese indies, anyway?) Dino sees him and jumps on him immediately, molesting the young man in the corner until he sees that a crowd has gathered in an attempt to eliminate Tomimitsu Matsunaga, the newest entrant into the match. At that point, Dino walks over to the pile of men and rubs his hand up and down Dick Togo’s backside. Ill-advised move, my friend. Togo strongly chastises Dino but does not kill him as I thought he might.

Boso Boy Raito of K-Dojo fame is out. He starts doing some sort of monologue in center ring but is quickly dry humped by Dino and given the testicular claw. This paves the way for the entrance of Takashi Sasaki, who climbs up on to the second rope and yells “HAPPY BIRTHDAY!” to the crowd before realizing his mistake and yelling “HAPPY NEW YEAR!” When he jumps off the ropes to begin wrestling, he is immediately greeted by a big kiss on the lips from Danshoku Dino. That sets up his exit form the match. In an odd spot, Daisuke Sasaki catches Dick Togo with a surprise sunset flip. A crew of other wrestlers hold Togo down, allowing Daisuke to get the elimination. However, as soon as that happens, they roll Togo on to Sasaki and hold HIM down, which apparently counts as the elimination of Daisuke. The coverall crew is back for their last run as their third member, Yuichi, enters the ring. Danshoku Dino unabashedly rubs Raito’s crotch, even going under the trunks at one point to a loud crowd response. Daigoro Kashiwa runs into the ring. Dino molests more people. The Beatles’ “Help” plays, which brings out a fellow in a singlet covered in the Union Jack and a helmet which looks like a Medieval knight’s helmet, not unlike what Kota Ibushi wore while playing Robin’s Mask during Kinniku Mania. The Kid catches Matsunaga in an abdominal stretch, but Yuichi rolls them both up from behind, getting a simultaneous elimination of two men. Atushi Ohashi is in, but Kashiwa kicks him in the face and chokes him in the corner. They are joined by Takao Soma, the rookie member of the DDT roster. Soma looks good given his level of experience, hiptossing Kengo Mashimo on to the apron, after which bald gentleman forearms Kengo to eliminate him from the match after EIGHTY STRAIGHT MINUTES of competition. It was a pretty light eighty minutes by professional wrestling standards, but it’s an impressive amount of time nonetheless. Ohashi is eliminated at this point as well, the victim of a Kasai-assisted rollup by Yuichi.

Then, finally the one hundred and eighth wrestler has entered the match, and it is Isami Kodaka. Somewhere in that hubbub we missed Yaichi and Soma being eliminated. Boso Boy Raito kicks Kodaka in the gut and tries to lariat him but winds up being scoop slammed over the top. Despite having the cherry spot in the order of entrance, Kodaka does not fare well after that. He is ganged up on by the other men remaining in the match, including several crotch grabs from Dino, and is tossed over the top rope. Kashiwa hits a stunner on Dino at this point and suckers Kasai into running into a clothesline before heading to the top rope. He goes for a diving headbutt on Dino but knocks himself out and gets French kissed. That leads into a slam from Kasai and a shooting star press from Kirara to secure Kashiwa’s elimination.

Thus, we have a final three of Danshoku Dino, Jun Kasai, and the Great Kirara. Dino goes for a kiss on Kirara and moves away just in time to avoid a Kasai lariat. Then, in an odd spot, Dino hits the “Danshoku Spider,” which consists of him placing himself in the tree of woe while his opponent lays in the corner, essentially allowing Dino to simulate oral sex on the fallen Kasai while hanging upside down from the top rope. Dino tires of that after a bit and tries to walk the ropes, but Kirara crotches him and knocks him out of the squared circle. It’s now down to the Crazy Monkey and the star man, with Kirara hitting a slam and going up to the top rope. Kasai cuts him off, landing a SUPERPLEX after yelling “Happy New Year!” and then locking Kirara in for the angel’s wings. Kirara reverses into a backslide but only gets two. An enzuguiri for two sets up the angel’s wings for real, but it also gets two. The Pearl Harbor Splash finish things off for Kasai, though, giving him a victory in this ridiculously insane match.

Overall

Just when I think that the Japanese independent circuit can’t give me anything more wacky, they go out and top themselves. This match was exactly what I expected it to be, namely a comedic spotfest that was seemingly booked for wrestling fans with the most severe cases of ADHD imaginable . . . and I don’t even really mean that in a bad way. I would probably go out of my mind if professional wrestling were presented like this every night of the week, but, for a one time match that basically featured most of the current independent scene’s top names coming together for one night and doing the “greatest hits” of their repertoires, it worked very well. Though I would say that the last ten or fifteen minutes dragged a bit because the crew seemed to run out of new material, the vast majority of the match provided at least one big laugh or cool spot for me for every four or five entrances that were made. If you’re somebody who has not watched a lot of the Japanese indies and is curious to see A LOT of the competitors on the circuit and get very brief, twenty to thirty second thumbnail sketches of who they are, this may well be the perfect match for you to watch. And, if you’re an established fan of the international independents, you have nothing to lose, because, with such a high volume of wrestlers, there has to be a high number of folks whose schtick you are into. This is an easy bout to recommend, though you might want to break it up into two viewings if you’re the kind of person who can’t take eighty straight minutes of the same basic format to a professional wrestling match.

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