Kitao Dojo – Buko Legend 10/03/95
By Maffew Gregg on 21 April 2024
Kitao Dojo
Tokyo, Japan
Korakuen Hall
Attendance: 1,650
No tournaments this time and judging by the dimmed lights, no crowd either.
Ring ropes are back to help contain our excitement.
The prelim bouts are virtually all squash matches aside from a time limit draw, so there’s not a lot to talk about individually. A young Minoru Tanaka makes mince-meat out of a boxing gloves-wearing Hiroyuki Wakasa, and then Takeshi Ono wraps himself around Toru Oishi like a hungry snake for a popular victory.
The matches all seem to go longer than what we’ve expected from the last shows, which I don’t think is for the best as they’ve had to trim the hell out of them just to fit onto a tape that’s less than an hour.
Takashi Okamura vs. Masanobu Kurisu
Ah, good ol’ Kurisu, the walking snuff film. Kurisu flat-out embarrasses Okamura by ducking his jumping swinging kick and following with disgusting headbutts. Okamura lands his big kick and the crowd gives an ironic “hooray!” Tough crowd. We’re clipped to Kurisu escaping an ankle lock with train-track heavy kicks to the head with Okamura practically begging off. Kurisu doesn’t care and stomps Okamura’s poor face as it is visibly swelling.
We clip ahead to Okamura writing his last will & testament so Kurisu heads outside to ask the crowd if he should bring a chair into the ring to let his opponent catch a breath. Sadly for him Kurisu slings the chair directly into his face, with Okamura retrieving his nun-chucks from his second. Okamura has a look in his eyes that says he really wants to use them on Kurisu but decides a choke may be more effective for his long-term career. It isn’t, so he takes even more stomps to the face before we clip ahead to Kurisu pretending to sell before coming back with a backdrop suplex to end the massacre.
Oh my God was that brutal. I’ve seen some shit-kicking in my time and they’ve all involved Kurisu. Not for the faint-hearted but enjoyable for the miserable bastards on this blog (the ones who care about TV ratings in 2024).
Ryuma Go vs. Masahiko Kochi
We’re JIP with the very popular Go clobbering away with headbutts. Kochi gets the ropes and Go celebrates like he won. Clipped to hell but Go’s forearms are vicious, ending with a double armbar. The clipping destroyed this but crowd seemed up for it, laughing even when Go was on defence.
Jado & Lion Heart Chris Jericho vs. Koji Kitao & Masaaki Mochizuki
Jericho tells Kitao “this ain’t sumo or karate, it’s pro wrestling baby!” No Jericho, it IS karate.
Jericho throws a Greco-Roman middle finger at Masaaki who responds by trying to see how old Jericho is by kicking into the centre of him to count the rings. Jericho slaps Masaaki in the face which results in further destruction. Jericho launches Masaaki with a release German Suplex after realising how small he is. Kitao doesn’t like that so Jericho has to sell for his slow-mo kicks until Jericho throws a chair from the outside, thinking Kitao won’t follow. He does and Jericho ends up in the front row. Jericho mouths off before realising how hurt he is which brings in Jado to wrestle ‘properly’ I guess. Crowd really enjoys Masaaki taking Jado apart but quiets down when Kitao plods along. Jericho dropkicks Kitao in an attempt to give Fuyuki-Gun something, but Kitao simply looks mad and drops Jado. Masaaki tags in for some more offence but Jado is like COME ON LADS WE NEED TO GET *SOMETHING* IN and aggressively suplexes Masaaki to set up a double powerbomb on the outside. Masaaki sells it for five seconds before tagging in Kitao. Hope you enjoyed the offence lads. Jado sprays Kitao in the face with Lynx Africa to set up a double backdrop suplex. Sadly they follow it up with a double dropkick which sends Kitao into his corner so Masaaki tags in to ankle lock Jericho. Jado saves so Masaaki can be suplexed around a bit, but he hasn’t been trained to sell so he delivers his own before swing kicking Jericho who looks completely fed up. Kitao uranages Jericho across the ring and finishes with the Al Snow Killing Piledriver and an Abominable Stretch.
I feel for Fuyuki-Gun here, it’s hard to put something watchable together when even the Young Lion won’t sell for you. I think the Public Enemy got more offence in against The Acolytes. Masaaki looked amazing but Fuyuki-Gun’s offence was clearly not suited for this type of show as Masaaki took any break in the action as a prompt to resume killing people. Fun if you like awkwardness or A24 films.
Jericho of course has nothing but praise for Kitao:
Koji Kitao was an ex-Yokozuna (sumo’s highest honor) who had gotten into wrestling after being thrown out of sumo. Kitao was 6 foot 6, 400 pounds, with a black belt and a bad attitude. He was a nightmare to work with because he just wanted to kick the shit out of everybody. Guess who had to work with him the most? If you guessed William Hung, guess again.
So I had to suck it up and accept getting the shit kicked out of me night after night. Working with Kitao reminded me of a Tae Kwon Do tournament when I was eight years old. My opponent was a foot taller than me and was beating me up so bad that the ref said, “Fight back already!”
“I’m trying,” I replied before eating another toe.
This was the same story.
Overall: Ooof, not a lot to type about this week. If you want to see Jericho in an even more awkward position than being asked about his wife or NDAs then be my guest.
Other than an insanely brutal one-sided beatdown, there’s nothing else here which is how we’ll end the brief existence of Kitao Dojo.
The WAR off-shoot would hold three more shows (none if which were recorded) before stopping in 1997, likely due to Kitao’s diminishing status as a draw due to some very bad decisions he’s about to make.
But more on those next week!
