Still Watchin' Tajiri

Tajiri v Psicosis (ECW TV, 8/19/00)

Well this was fucking awesome. I'm a guy that can't stomach indy stand-off "we're equal"/parity spots, but the stand-offs at the start of this actively ruled. They work some bossy lucha sequences early, and there's a bit where Tajiri counters a wheelbarrow German suplex with an armdrag, which would've been a pretty hard spot to pull off clean, but it looked absolutely perfect. Then they sort of tease a roll up exchange, which is another spot I'm well and truly fed up with, but Tajiri puts a twist on it by just dropping down and headbutting Psicosis right in the dick. Watching this Tajiri stuff lately, I'm getting the sense he's a guy that has a TON of shit he can roll out to keep otherwise rubbish stock spots interesting. I'm convinced he's also one of the best "low blow" guys in history, because I've watched a good deal of Tajiri footage over the last few weeks and he has a million different ways to hit someone in the balls. There's the headbutt out of the pinning combo, he ties Psicosis up in a tree of woe and stomps him in the nads, and he counters a flying bodyscissors by front kicking him right in the plums, which looked like it had to totally SUCK. Second half of the match kind of teetered into my turn/your turn territory at points, but Psicosis almost kills himself with a motherfucking insane tope, Tajiri throws amazing kicks, and there's generally enough good shit to keep things rolling nicely. Tajiri's kick flurry at the end looked outrageous. The spinning back kick...God that shit was nasty. Great match.


Tajiri & Mikey Whipwreck v Little Guido & Tony Mamaluke (ECW, 8/25/00)

Pretty much all I could want in a sub-10 minute tag. This was so much fun. Hammerstein crowd is MOLTEN and love Tajiri long time. Early exchanges between Tajiri and Guido rock as usual, and Tajiri continues to make stand-off spots not annoying. I don't know, maybe it's just because I'm a mark for the guy, but I hate indy stand-offs and whenever Tajiri does them they don't seem to bother me at all. Maybe it's because they don't feel forced or like they're being rolled out just for the pop...whatever, I'm not complaining about not being annoyed by stuff that usually annoys me. Mamaluke bumps around wildly and will fearlessly get kicked RIGHT in the fucking face. Seriously, there's one spinning back kick from Tajiri that I must've replayed at least 20 times. Looked ridiculous. Mamaluke takes that and then does a sort of Ted DiBiase bump where he flips over on his neck really fast, and yeah, you can kind of see why doing that shit for 10 years landed DiBiase with a wasted neck. Tajiri and Mikey also give him a double dropkick that must've hurt like a total motherfucker. I'm surprised his brains didn't squirt out his nose. Still, Tony gets his payback later when he breaks up the Tarantula by punting Tajiri in the head so hard it looked like it broke his skull. Mikey playing FIP for a spell adds the southern-ness, and I'm a happy camper. Tajiri really looks like one of the absolute best wrestlers in the world at this point.