This might just be the pinnacle of the style. It's been about 10 years since I last watched most of these guys; longer than that since watching them together in a match like this. The first comp tape of Japanese wrestling I ever bought was Jeff Lynch's best of M-Pro set, which was like 12 discs and cost about 40 quid and took as many days to get delivered. It was well worth it. That then turned me onto things like Toryumon and eventually Dragon Gate, which I started following in real time and buying Dragon Gate shows every month. Before too long I stopped doing that because it turns out Dragon Gate just wasn't really that enjoyable. Stylistically it might've been the spiritual successor to M-Pro, but I didn't find the wrestlers as good, it didn't have the CHARM of peak M-Pro, and my tastes had changed enough that my money was better spent elsewhere. Somewhere along the line the M-Pro evolutions lost me with how much STUFF they did. The M-Pro guys did plenty of stuff as well, but I cared more about those wrestlers than any of the ones that followed and so at the end of the day, I could still have fun watching M-Pro in a way I couldn't with the promotions that spun off from it. This was 100 miles an hour and never really slowed down for a second, but there was never a point where it felt like an exhibition to me, never just an extended run of cool moves and sequences and nearfalls. Maybe someone who doesn't have the sort of attachment to this particular time period of this particular promotion that I do would feel differently. Maybe to that person, Masato Yoshino, CIMA and BxB Hulk are the pinnacle and these guys are dated. To that I say you are entitled to your opinion and you're also wrong but fair enough. This had a proper sense of animosity from the start, more so than any other great M-Pro matches I can think of, and this is a promotion where GETTIN' CHIPPY was the norm. When one exchange was won and the next opponent came in, it didn't feel like it's because it was their turn to do so because that's how they'd laid it out. It was frantic and someone else would be in there immediately and it felt like that's because their teammate just got dropped. They were the next man up and there was no point pissing about. There was struggle and the first attempt at something might get cut off, but that didn't mean the guy trying it would just forget and move on. Naniwa did his little crab walk along the middle rope early on, the thing he would do to set up an elbow drop, and KDX weren't in the mood for it so they shut him down. He eventually fought back and went for it again, and as he did so Sasuke came in to hold Taka in place, the latter trying to wriggle free only to eat the elbow anyway. The early build was great and they used it to tease a bunch of dives. Basically every person in the match has a signature dive so the PA guy in the building was yelling over the mic for people to scatter every other minute. None of the dives were hit though - every time someone ran the ropes to set one up the potential recipient got out of dodge so the guy in the ring had to stop himself short. The crowd were ready for all of them but the wrestlers weren't ready to give them one yet. Masato Yakushiji was dressed like a Christmas elf in his green pyjamas and got thrown around the ring early, so I loved him being the first one to actually score on his dive, his cool basement slide headscissors that sent Togo skidding about 10 feet across the floor. Of course the place went nuts for it and they stayed nuts the rest of the way. Yakushiji was actually brilliant the entire time here, whether it was working from below taking a stomping or hitting spectacular armdrags and ranas, his dance partner Dick Togo the perfect base for all of it. The overall tetchiness really ramped up the crowd heat, so every piece of interference or double- or triple-teaming by the heels was booed while every time the babyfaces gave it back they were met with cheers. This was not a crowd there just to see Good Pro Wrestling, they wanted to see their boys lay a beating on the punks. Taka was a heat-seeking little rat bastard so Sasuke launched him over about six rows of chairs, then Taka threw one of those chairs in a rage and everyone booed him all the louder. There wasn't really a prolonged heat segment in the middle which might've propelled this into upper tier MOTDC territory, but the mini stretch on Sasuke was tremendous and capped with Teioh and Taka crushing his skull with a double dropkick. Sasuke at least got his revenge later when Togo went up top and Sasuke flung a chair at him from the floor. The last few minutes are as hectic as the very best M-Pro, with guys flying into big bombs and exchanges and the heat continually building, never reaching a point of diminishing returns with the nearfalls. There were even some ludicrous All Japan style head drops if that's your thing - Yakushiji landing all the way up on his neck off a Dick Togo German suplex, Shiryu and Naniwa both getting backdropped fully on top of their heads. Just an outstanding bit of wrestling.
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