The Wrestling 101 Match #8
UWA World Trios Title Four Way Elimination Match: Shin M2K (Dragon Kid, Kenichiro Arai & Masaaki Mochizuki) © vs. Crazy MAX (CIMA, Don Fujii & SUWA) vs. Italian Connection (Condotti Shuji, Milano Collection AT & YOSSINO) vs. Do FIXER (Genki Horiguchi, Magnum TOKYO & Susumu Yokosuka)
8/30/2003
Toryumon Japan
Korakuen Hall

Watch it on DailyMotion here

Look, I don’t know, man…I feel like you just have to watch this one. There are so many guys, doing so much stuff, so fast, that the idea of describing this wrestling match feels totally overwhelming. This was an absolute blur of a wrestling match, all flips and dips and interlocking limbs. One wrestler whips an opponent at another wrestler, only for the second guy to hit a headscissors on the third guy, flinging the third guy into the first guy as yet another guy bursts into the ring. Each sequence feels more complex and indescribable than the one that came before it.

I’m going to do my best, but what I want to convey is that there was just way too much action for one brain to comprehend as it was happening, much less to formulate intelligible thoughts about it after the fact. It took me 10 minutes of re-watching the ring introductions to get to a place where I could keep straight who was who—and which of the four trios teams each wrestler belonged to.

And yet, I have promised myself and my handful of readers 101 wrestling match reviews, and this is number eight in the series. So, here goes.

In a way, this match felt like the next evolution of the most recent match I reviewed in The Wrestling 101, the Michinoku Pro eight-man tag team match between that company’s top babyfaces and the heel stable Kaientai DX. Or more precisely, this Toryumon match felt like what would happen if you put that match on amphetamines. 

Like the M-Pro match, this one makes use of the lucharesu fusion style that combines the acrobatics, grand gestures, and fast-paced choreography of Mexican lucha libre with the hard strikes, big slams, and escalating drama associated with Japanese puroresu. But the breakneck pace of this match leaves its predecessor in the dust. This match has more wrestlers involved and twice as many men in the ring at any given time. The slams hit harder, and the acrobatic sequences are that much more impressive.

More than anything else, the match stands out for the extraordinary grace and coordination of its performers. For all of the performers to do what they did, with that level of synchronization, and at that speed, is truly incredible. These days, there’s a big multi-man match on every local indie show or pay-per-view event put on by World Wrestling Entertainment or All Elite Wrestling. But what sets this one apart is not just that the performers do a bunch of crazy, multi-person spots at top speed, but that they do it so elegantly as to make it look easy. CIMA and Milano Collection AT are just so smooth in everything they do. YOSSINO’s trademark hyperspeed rope running is a sight to see. Everything works, and nobody stumbles.

The match also mixes in a nice dose of pro wrestling camp that feels like a predecessor to the big, all-star multi-man matches you often see at U.S. independent wrestling tournament weekends, such as Pro Wrestling Guerilla’s Battle of Los Angeles, CHIKARA’s King of Trios, or the old Ted Petty Invitationals. There’s a conga line, a sequence where all of the wrestlers line up to slap Don Fuji, and one of those spots where all twelve guys line up in two rows of six to do a big ol’ vertical suplex. Genki Horiguchi, in particular, stands out for his comedic timing and goofball charisma.

All in all, it’s easy to see why The Wrestling 101 team selected this one for The Canon. The fast-paced, Cirque du Soleil acrobatics and winking-at-the-camera pro wrestling comedy are reminiscent of the Young Bucks at their very best, and you can really see what makes longtime stars like CIMA and Milano Collection AT so special. Just don’t ask anyone to keep track of all the action.

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