PRO WRESTLING FREEDOMS & GAME CHANGER WRESTLING 13th ANNIVERSARY
OCTOBER 2, 2022
KORAKUEN HALL
TOKYO, JAPAN

After two and a half years, GCW is back in the land of the rising sun, and like everyone expected, they co-hosted a FREEDOMS show, too. The birthday shows of FREEDOMS aren’t as big of a deal as in other promotions so it was an excellent choice to spice things up this year with the GCW army being an invader type of promotion.

DRAGON LIBRE & KAMUI DEF. JUN MASAOKA & REKKA

The junior chaos still going strong in FREEDOMS! Especially Dragon Libre was fired up right from the start, he started the attacks in the summer, which caused the big junior brawl. When Jun Masaoka and Dragon Libre met each other in the ring it went pretty brutal, Masaoka slapped Libre disrespectfully to the face that’s when the Dragon went mad. Libre was the main man when he pinned Rekka, after the match, Masaoka and Libre had some shithousery again and had a brawl to the back. **3/4

E.R.E (DOBUNEZUMI FUKKI & TOSHIYUKI SAKUDA) DEF. GENTARO & TATSUHITO TAKAIWA

I have to say I was a bit disappointed to see Sakuda not included in a deathmatch, but here we are. With GENTARO and Takaiwa on the opponent’s side it was better than expected, althought Sakuda and Fukki aren’t great in non-death match stuff. After a mistake between the veterans, Takaiwa went out of the ring and the E.R.E team could work on GENTARO together. After a package piledriver the masked rat pinned GENTARO. **1/4

JORDAN OLIVER, NICK WAYNE & RINA YAMASHITA DEF. KIKUTARO, MINORU FUJITA & TAKASHI SASAKI

Like with Sakuda, I would have loved to see Rina in a deathmatch instead of a regular match and I’m not a Kikutaro fan either, yikes. The biggest highlights were set by the youngest competitors involved and the Yamashita-Fujita stuff again. Rina refused to get tagged in to fight her former partner, while Fujita was keen to fight her. After she refused three times, she finally made the tag and got attacked ruthlessly by Fujita. Yamashita stayed the centerpiece of the action when she pinned Kikutaro after the splash mountain with help of their GCW mates. **3/4

FREE-STYLE WEAPON DEATHMATCH
E.R.E (DREW PARKER & VIOLENTO JACK) DEF. EFFY & SHLAK

Effy wants to kiss Drew, which he made pretty clear right before the match. Violento Jack had seen enough pretty fast, like SHLAK, they both grabbed chairs and we had a four-man bar fight with some cerveza and.. something different for Effy. After some fists, Parker had enough and kicked Effy out of his chair, SHLAK did the same with the Welshman and finally, we got some short beefy SHLAK-Jack moment. While Effy showed us he can wrestle, he got back on the usual Effy stuff real fast and got his penance when Parker threw some darts on Effy’s naked butt. The whole Effy-SHLAK dynamic was cool to see, the latter tried to kill Parker while Effy wanted to kiss him. Effy and Drew met some open sharped cans, Jack grabbed Effy’s junk and Parker pinned the latter, after he kissed him, with the Swanton bomb. ***1/4

KING OF FREEDOM TAG TEAM CHAMPIONSHIP – BARBED WIRE BOARD & THUMBTACK BOARD DEATHMATCH
SOUL MEAT (TOMOYA HIRATA & TORU SUGIURA) © DEF. COLE RADRICK & JOEY JANELA

At first, I wasn’t sure what to expect from this constellation, and I wasn’t smarter after the first minutes. A lot of Joey Janela showboating, which you could skip without any doubt; not knocking on Joey I have had a soft spot for him since his early CZW days, but that wasn’t for me. With Radrick coming in and Sugiura on the other side, we went full deathmatch when Sugiura tried how many thumbtacks and wires young Cole can take. I loved him in the underdog role, the Korakuen faithful were even on his side when he did the hot tag to the “Bad Boy”, awesome. Speaking of awesome, Janela’s piledriver on the apron was pretty cool, though. Overall the match was a pretty basic deathmatch with nothing crazy happening, Hirata pinned Radrick after a moonsault while Sugiura knocked out Janela with a lighttube-assisted elbow smash just moments before. ***1/4

FLUORESCENT LIGHT TUBES DEATHMATCH
DAISUKE MASAOKA, JUN KASAI & MASASHI TAKEDA DEF. ALEX COLON, JIMMY LLOYD & JOHN WAYNE MURDOCH

A show like this wouldn’t be complete without an all-star type of death match in the main event. Team GCW versus Team FREEDOMS looked like a hell of fun on paper, and, other than the match prior, they started throwing each other in the pile of light tubes and scratching things in their foreheads, yep…that’s what I expected. The GCW team worked well on Masaoka, who looks like Yamashita with that dreadlocks, but Jun Kasai himself had enough and attacked Murdoch with several tubes and a fork, which he had put himself in his own forehead before. Crazy Monkey’s present for Jimmy Lloyd was a bunch of skewers. What a generous human being. It seemed like that Takeda and Kasai getting along again; they hugged and kissed each other in the middle of the ring, and even more lovable was that they destroyed Jimmy with tubes and a splash. Colon and Murdoch came to the rescue of Lloyd at the right time. Team GCW took things around and destroyed Takeda in the next minutes, but the FREEDOMS chaps stopped the count. Kasai hit a Destroyer from the top rope on Colon and crunch time started. Masaoka took out Lloyd and Murdoch with a moonsault out of the ring, while “Crazy Kid” pinned the former GCW Ultraviolent champ after a hard-fought battle with his Reverse U Crash on tubes. ***3/4

FINAL THOUGHTS

FREEDOMS & GCW 13th Anniversary was just a decent show. I liked the show, it brought something different to the usual FREEDOMS core, so overall I’m happy despite the lack of memorable matches or moments. The main event was the best match on the show, and if you got some time to will be entertained by the match.