WAR Wrestle Association-R WAR-ISM ’97 10/06/97
By Maffew Gregg on 2 February 2025
Wrestle Association-R
Kanagawa Club Citta Kawasaki
Attendance: 510 (!!!!)
Oh I’m letting you know now that this is not a good show.
Tomohiro Ishii vs. Hidetomo Egawa (Mobius)
Egawa hailing from a company that doesn’t exist. Decent pace to start off with Ishii smashing Egawa’s leg like it’s filled with tasty sweets inside. Egawa lands some nice hard slaps to the face, letting Ishii know he can batter his non-existent company face. So he does! Ishii’s German Suplexes can’t put Egawa Eg-away so Ishii rolls back reeeally high on a Boston Crab to get the submission at 7:31 to end a really solid opener.
Shoichi Ichinomiya vs. Takashi Okamura (Kitao Dojo)
Kitao Dojo is still barely alive which is fair enough because so is Shoichi’s career. Okamura lets Shoichi do stuff until a face-kick puts him down and require a status check. Once the ref’s confirmed he knows what day it is, Okamura immediately kicks him in the face again. Ahhhh the 90s.
Shoichi tries to show off with some jumps but they look rubbish. Shoichi gets nearly KO’d again so we cut ahead after the smelling salts have been dispersed. What happened to the quality of wrestlers in this company? Could Tenryu only afford untrained guys? Okamura manages to drop Shoichi directly onto his head in a brutal moment intended as a Brainbuster to end it after a long long 6:30.
Shoichi should have been fined for even looking at a wrestling ring.
Jun Kikuchi vs. Yoshikazu Taru
Taru gets some streamers but the fans probably wanted to run in and get them back after Kikuchi dogs him with his boring not-ready-for-WAR-time mat work. After several minutes of nothing, Taru eventually pulls the trigger on his gun-leg and fires multiple shots at Jun’s horribly-dyed skull. Taru kicks and kicks, Jun sucks and sucks.
Jun at least is able to deliver a kick to Taru’s head before the lads trade back suplexes. Jun drops Taru on his head from a Butterfly suplex because apparently it’s all the rage tonight. Taru recovers to kick Jun in the head some more before completely messing up by falling off the top rope and I wish a meteoroid or an old Russian Space Station would land on this show already and we’re only three matches in. Jun manages a Butterfly Suplex off the top to polite applause at 10:49.
OK this wasn’t that bad but some wrestlers annoy me for no reasonable reason and Jun is all of them.
Arashi & Yuji Yasuraoka vs. Genichiro Tenryu & Masao Orihara (Mobius)
Bell rings and Tenryu immediately lariats and powerbombs Orihara. What? I think this pairing was the result of a lottery, which explains the random teams. And low attendance.
Yuji lands three dropkicks to the back of Tenryu who almost laughs before dropping Yuji with a neckbreaker. Face kicks annoy Yuji into daring to land the double-jump dropkick to Tenryu. Arashi tags in to land a big ol’ dropkick as the ex-Sumos go at it. I assume Arashi is ex-Sumo. I mean, he is fat. He powerbombs Tenryu who instantly recovers and sumo chops away. A top rope Superplex stops Tenryu from moving long enough for a Frog Splash to connect. For two. Crowd isn’t buying any of Arashi’s offence no matter how hard Tenryu sells it. Orihara helps Tenryu escape a Boston Crab by having Arashi ignore all his offence and push him away. Tenryu lariats Arashi who neglects to sell for Orihara and tags in Yuji for his bollocks instead. Yuji is able to get offence on Orihara (!!) before taking a hard powerbomb. Yuji MANS UP to instantly take a lariat. Yuji comes back and somehow misses his fucking double jump kick in the corner that’s his trademark move that he somehow misses 33% of the time. Orihara lands his brutal Spider German Suplex but misses the follow-up moonsault. Tenryu runs in to punch and kick Orihara HARD before politely heading back to the apron. Orihara takes a pounding from the guys he’s supposed to be wrestling against as the crowd wonder if they’re supposed to be cheering Orihara. I can’t blame them for being confused. Tenryu finally tags in to land Blind Elbows and Enziguris. After nearly losing him mid-flight, Tenryu powerbombs Yuji to win at 11:53.
Well I don’t know what the point of this and neither did the crowd. Action was decent but the finish was flatter than that jobber that annoyed Yokozuna on Raw that one time. Complete waste of Tenryu and no-one got a rub here by being associated with him.
Koki Kitahara & Osamu Tachihikari vs. Koji Kitao & Masaaki Mochizuki (Kitao Dojo)
JIP thankfully to Kitao no-selling Osamu. I’ve heard the Japanese sense of humour blends with their sense of horror and seeing Osamu booked against Kitao confirms this. Mochizuki tags in to kick away on Osamu who no-sells everything. You know you’re Osamu, right? Kitahara (wearing his finest Marty Jannetty tribute gear) tags in to kick Mochizuki directly in the face and cause him some distress. I hate this show. I’ve generally enjoyed watching WAR despite some of the woeful undercard matches but this show with this tiny crowd with it’s unnecessarily stiff shots to the face that requiring clipping to get something watchable out of the dozy wrestlers is making me doubt myself.
Kitao has to buy time by trying to brawl on the outside. Mochizuki finally recovers to tag in Kitao who bodies Osamu around with axe kicks and we clip ahead mid-offence as that must have indeed been some mid offence. Kitahara tags in to casually punt Mochizuki in the chin some more. The Dojo lads wander in to distract Osamu with kicks when a set of shiny keys would have done the trick just fine, allowing Mochizuki to land a spinning kick for…no pin as the ref refuses when there’s blatantly a member of the Dojo right there in the ring looking at him. I mean that’s fair enough.
Kitahara saves his fat mate by powerbombing Mochizuki. Kitao tries to save his less-fat mate but Osamu pushes him over unconvincingly. Kitao standing up gets more heat and heckles than anything else on the show and his rubbish strikes only increase the hate, especially when Kitahara blatantly sandbags him on a Sambo Suplex. Camera catches Koki’s completely done-with-this-shit face, with the wrestler suddenly more awake when Mochizuki tags in. Osamu nearly wins with a roll-up but Kitao kicks him with his swollen feet, causing Kitahara to charge Kitao and the two of them brawl in the crowd again. By that I mean “Kitahara hilariously oversells a gentle sidekick by throwing himself into the fans because he doesn’t want anything to do with Kitao.”
The Dojo lads run in to take DDTs from Osamu as this match continues to be tragic. As I type this, Mochizuki slips on his jumping corner kick but makes up for it by embedding his foot into Osamu’s skull. Kitao returns to back senton Osamu and land the Fire Thunder Driver That Killed Al Snow to finally end this debacle.
CageMatch says this match lasted 16:29 and I can only assume that’s days/hours rather than the usual minutes/seconds. This was such a poorly put together match between wrestlers who were sometimes capable of doing better that it felt longer than Undertaker vs. Triple H from Wrestlemania 27, including the entrances and Kick Off Show. The only enjoyment you could gather from this would be seeing how completely done Kitahara was with Kitao, and even that’s a stretch. Osamu wrestles with the grace of a street light.
God-fucking-awful.
Nobutaka Araya vs. Nobukazu Hirai
THIS is the headliner? I’m glad this show only drew 510 people.
Hirai takes a lariat seconds into the match and lands dangerously high on the back of his head so he rolls outside. He’s dragged back in but is unable to even run the ropes. Araya assists by dropping him on his head with a Brainbuster and what a fucking way to end this shit show with one half of an already suspect main event is KO’d immediately. Araya lands powerbombs and moonsaults until Hirai is able to shake the cobwebs out with a soft enziguri. He’s able to move around now but he’s still clearly on wobbly legs and manages to Frankensteiner Araya off the top rope and onto himself in a worrying moment.
Araya lets Hirai stretch him with a STF while he remembers what colour blue is. Hirai and Araya decide to willingly let one another piledriver each other while recovering to insult the other’s ability to piledrive, before giving up on that to punch each other in the face. This is turning into The Sandman vs. The Sandman. After a small crowd brawl in the small crowd, Hirai unleashes the face wipes in the corner as we think maybe this match has restored some order. Then Hirai brains himself on the top rope while running.
Crowd are getting behind Hirai because he’s so loose right now but if this match had happened in 2025 it would have been stopped and Sammy Guevara would have been suspended. Some more stretching on the mat kills a few minutes until Araya’s moonsault is kicked out of. Hirai throws whatever he can to give Araya something with the situation he finds himself in. Hirai drags Araya outside and he delivers a piledriver on the stage which is safe-ish I guess. Fuck it who cares anymore. Hirai then delivers a brutal elevated DDT which is much less safe but it looked like it was going to be a suplex. Jesus. Araya trusts his concussed-mate enough to take a chokeslam off the apron and through a Japanese Table which looks impressive, with a top rope elbow finally setting up the match-winning WAR Special at 16:41.
Well God bless Araya’s willingness to allow his mate to batter him around to turn this Chernobyl into a mere Three Mile Island. Some crazy hardcore bumps and a clearly concussed individual do not a good main event make. But it could have been worse? I guess?
Whatever. I’m done.
Post-match Tenryu beats up Araya with a Singapore cane. Cheers mate.
Overall: WAR have put on shows that were middling or disappointing but none of them have been as offensively terrible as this one. Staggeringly amateurish performances, terrible production, guys getting KO’d for no reason and a nearly tragic main event.
Why would WAR willingly release this? Why would any company? By far and away the worst show WAR put out and worse than even the worst SWS show. Hell, worse than World WAR Two.
One time I asked a twin out and they politely declined so I asked the other twin IN FRONT OF THE OTHER TWIN WHO JUST DECLINED ME and they also declined. That awkward feeling I still feel from time to time is still not as bad as this show was.
