Raven vs. Kaz Hayashi, WCW Worldwide (3/20/1999)

Commissions continue again, this one coming from Ko-fi contributor Ri Ri. You can be like them and pay me to write about all different types of stuff. People tend to choose wrestling matches, but very little is entirely off the table, so long as I haven’t written about it before (and please, come prepared with a date or show name or something if it isn’t obvious). You can commission a piece of writing of your choosing by heading on over to www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon. The current rate is $5/match or thing or $10 for anything over an hour, and if you have some aim that cannot be figured out through simple multiplication or other processes, feel free to hit the DMs on Twitter or Ko-fi.

People talking about pro wrestling on the internet in the 1990s got a lot wrong.

No more than people in the 2000s or 2010s, really, but as the birth of this horrible mental terrain that we all share, a whole lot leads back there.

Canonizing and lionizing a lot of stuff that doesn’t hold up, further codifying a lot of real dumb and rigid beliefs about what “good” wrestling is along with things like “workrate” where the actual intended meaning is both flawed and also mostly unknown by the sorts of people who refer to them a lot, and a whole whole whole lot of terrible writing. These are not things solely confined there, the disk horse has never been good, but it always felt to me like a firm foundation for a whole lot of dumb and annoying things.

There are some things they got right though, like the promotion and the preservation of the memory of certain WCW B or C show matches, to the point that even people who haven’t watched literally every minute of WCW programming that exists like I have know about them, like Jushin Liger showing out against Barry Houston or Fit Finlay vs. Lorenzo, one of the best squashes of all time.

Also this match, which has been a favorite of mine since the first time I saw it probably like twenty years ago.

Raven and Kaz Hayashi have something like three minutes, four at the most, together and make as much of it as these two together seemingly could, at least for a match on WCW’s least in-canon and least important show. Which is to say that it is not all insane — although Hayashi’s missed flip dive to the floor that creates a remarkable thud is individually — nor is there any presence of the things that get matches of this length praised usually like awesome selling or what have you.

The match is just pretty cool and very fun.

It’s one of those matches where, if I were to begin listing the things I liked that happened in the match, I would just wind up recapping the entire thing, and nobody wants to read that.

Hayashi is a lunatic, Raven is Raven, and when hurled together by the beautifully negligent pencil of WCW in 1999, some low level magic breaks loose between them.

Beautiful wrestling TV.

three boy

Yoshinobu Kanemaru vs. Kaz Hayashi, AJPW Pro Wrestling Love in Ryogoku ~ BASIC AND DYNAMIC (3/17/2013)

This was for Kanemaru’s AJPW World Junior Heavyweight Title.

It’s a low level dream match for me, as a big Hayashi fan and also as maybe the only person in the world who would have zero qualms about loudly saying, “Yes. I am a Yoshinobu Kanemaru superfan.” It more than delivers on that level. This is not gonna be some masterful epic, but given that you would have to be some sort of a dope to expect that.

What we get is a lot of fun though!

Dueling neck work, smart composition, and black boot style lunch pail work. Nothing complicated, always incredibly straight forward and honest. Real team leaders. The sorts of wrestlers you’d want to take home to mom and dad. Incredibly high wrestling IQs. Real gym rats. The first guys to show up and the last guys to leave. Sneaky athletes who really get the most out of their abilities. Such intangibles. Real Wes Welker types.

They play the game the right way!

After spending the match building to it and cutting off all of Hayashi’s showier offense at the end, Our Hero brings it home with the Touch Out.

A very fun match, but not quite as much fun as I had throwing out all those bits in the last section.

***

 

 

Burning (Jun Akiyama/Yoshinobu Kanemaru/Kotaro Suzuki) vs. Takao Omori/Manabu Soya/Kaz Hayashi, AJPW Excite Series 2013 Day Two (2/10/2013)

Burning is in All Japan! Things finally get interesting!

This is no longer an interpromotional match up, but they manage to convey enough raw dislike and intensity that it still feels like one, and wrestling is way more about what things feel like than what they actually are.

Akiyama is real pissed off and he and Soya wind up being remarkable against each other. Kanemaru is still one of the all time great dirtbags. Omori can be pushed into a quality performance by his old partner Akiyama once again, and Hayashi is a terrific face-in-peril. Nothing out of the ordinary, certainly nothing you wouldn’t expect going into this, but obvious doesn’t always mean bad.

Kotaro Suzuki is also in this match, unfortunately, and that limits it. It especially limits the match near the end when his struggle against the eternally steady Kaz Hayashi takes focus. Kotaro’s whole deal is supposed to be this Misawa successor, big elbow guy, double underhook moves, etc. It would be more helpful to him here if all of his elbows didn’t suck absolute shit and if he wasn’t like the fourth or fifth best elbow throwing guy in the match. The result is that he feels like a fraud and as such, his victory over Hayashi feels like a fraud and takes away from the rest of the match. Still, everyone else was really good here and the match was terrific in spite of his best efforts.

It’s a smaller show effort for sure, but still the sort of match that shows that those matches can still be great if they have people in them who actually give a shit. Wrestle like it’s of some consequence, and it will feel like a match with some consequence, which is all that’s ever really mattered.

***

Junior Stars vs. Team 246, AJPW New Year Shining Series NEW YEAR 2 DAYS (1/3/2013)

This was for Kanemoto and Tanaka’s All Asia Tag Team Titles.

Not quite a dream match, but an incredibly interesting one between two teams both made up of former long-time rivals, and in the case of Kanemoto and Tanaka, have now been through two different cycles of that. Beyond that, they’re very different and it makes the match real fun.

Hayashi and Kondo once again benefit from working such different styles themselves. Kanemoto and Tanaka have the same plan for both of them with grabbing holds and throwing kicks, but Hayashi and Kondo attack them from drastically different places and it’s always enough to matter. More beneficial than anything though is how well Kaz Hayashi lays out a match like this once again. It’s a textbook dumb juniors spotfest, down to a largely meandering first quarter or so, but Hayashi has a gift for constructing things like this and they get the most out of every cool thing they try and do. There’s no false pretense to it, it doesn’t wear out its welcome at any point, and it’s just a really good time. Not a match anyone should love, I don’t think, but an incredibly easy watch. The divide and conquer from the champions works out in the end, answering the italicized question underneath all this of if it’s better to have a team of similar styles or a team of wildly different styles. Hayashi taps to the Minoru Special.

Not complicated at all, but simply very elegantly constructed juniors nonsense.

***1/4

Suwama/Kaz Hayashi vs. Masayuki Kono/Minoru Tanaka, AJPW Junior Hyper League 2012 (7/29/2012)

It’s another Suwama build up tag to a match that almost definitely won’t be half as good, but that’s no reason to dismiss just how fun this was.

In short, Suwama and Masayuki Kono really really hate each other and spend the match absolutely hauling off and wailing on each other.

That’s the match.

Delightful stuff. 1

Two very great junior heavyweights are also in this match, but they may as well not be. It’s A Choice for sure, but it’s not stupid if it works. It’s unfortunate because I had a bit all written about how Minoru Tanaka can bring the HEAT (that’s free. you can have that one. my gift.), but it’s the ultimate credit to these Suwama/Kono scraps that this match doesn’t suffer much at all for barely featuring the two more talented wrestlers in the match.

Big Sue and Kono begin by slugging at each other, but with each interaction, there’s less control and form to it. It is fighting. They are fighting. They stumble into the crowd at Korakuen, and have a more engaging K-Hall Brawl than most in the 2010s. Not just walking and grabbing, but traversing up to the bleachers and throwing each other into the walls. It’s messier every time. People try and restrain them back at ringside. Nobody can. Tag partners are shoved aside, referees and security get pushed. The referee stops the match when no order can be found. Simple as hell, but a true pleasure.

A Thing has suddenly broken out of nowhere, which is truly the most satisfying and realistic place it can ever come from.

***

 

Jun Akiyama/Go Shiozaki/Atsushi Aoki vs. Suwama/Shuji Kondo/Kaz Hayashi, NOAH Great Voyage 2012 in Nagoya (6/3/2012)

NOAH vs. All Japan doesn’t boast quite the same hit rate as NJPW vs. NOAH or AJPW vs. BJW, but they come together here for a real fun middle-of-the-card six man.

This isn’t as good as it’s been when these tags happen in AJPW, as the superior NOAH wrestlers are confined by their role as the home promotion heroes, and can’t just wreck everything and be absolute demons. Suwama, Kondo, and Hayashi are good wrestlers, but aren’t especially well suited to that. This is neat though, as it’s accidentally a preview of the next few years of All Japan heavyweight stuff, as a large amount of this is Suwama going back at it with Jun Akiyama and then facing off with Go Shiozaki. They get to fight here and there, and it’s always very good. Weirdly, the most heated pairing in this is Kaz Hayashi against Jun Akiyama. It’s a shock to me too.

My firstborn son Atsushi Aoki also does terrific here. Every new Aoki match I can find is a treat, so this was nice no matter what, but he excels in an interpromotional tag yet again. The boy takes a wonderful beating, and while he’s certainly no great fiery babyface, he’s very good in the final third of this, which he carries off almost entirely on his own, save a brief Go Shiozaki interlude.

Suwama does at least become a bulldozer at the end, even if he’s not quite the force of nature that I’d like him to be in a tag like this. He gets in while Aoki can’t tag anyone else, and you know how it goes. Aoki puts up a super endearing fight against it, but there is no escape. The boys try to save him, but Suwama dispatches with Jun and Go at once, and then cuts off Aoki one last time, just running through the team. Big ass Last Ride for the win.

Hardly essential, but a real satisfying and cool little thing, in case you’ve ever laid awake at night and wondered what Jun Akiyama vs. Kaz Hayashi would be like.

three boy

Strong BJ/Kazuki Hashimoto vs. Ryota Hama/Shuji Kondo/Kaz Hayashi, AJPW Champions Carnival 2012 Final (5/7/2012)

The best interpromotional rivalry in wrestling delivers again.

This is a build up tag for a Strong BJ vs. Kondo and Hayashi All Asia titles match that seems to have vanished from the internet. So, if you’ve got a line on that somewhere, hop in the DMs either here or on the non-review account @ElHijoDelSimon on Twitter. Be a pal.

This is a real hoot. Classic sort of a midcard tag hoot.

Not long, but every moment of it is a blast. Hashimoto is one of the great fiery young boys of the decade, managing to exist perfectly both as petty and vaguely dangerous. Hama vs. Strong BJ delivers yet again. Most importantly, this succeeds at the one thing it sets out to do, which is making me want to see the title match. Hayashi gets to play underdog and he gets to try and outmaneuver big guys, which is the thing he’s best at. Kondo gets to face equals for the first time in some time, and it truly does appear to throw Sekimoto and Okabayashi off to be up against a powerhouse who’s fast enough to hang with them at every step on top of being Strong.

As it goes, the boy gets trapped at the end. Hayashi and Kondo have an insane double rope running routine with the aim of trapping him up and allowing Kondo to mow him down with the King Kong Lariat. Hashimoto is surprisingly game for this, and avoids the big shot three or four times. Unfortunately, his focus on that half of the sequence he’s stuck in allows near-genius Kaz Hayashi to fly in and take him down into a Peterson Roll for the win.

Not a end of the year list match or anything, but yet another testament to how good this feud really is.

three boy

Kenny Omega vs. Kaz Hayashi, AJPW Excite Series 2012 Night One (2/3/2012)

This was for Omega’s AJPW World Junior Heavyweight Title.

After the children (and Minoru Tanaka in Nov. 2011) have failed to stop this division’s invader, longtime junior ace Hayashi now steps up to try and do it. There’s historical precedent, as it was Hayashi who stopped Naomichi Marufuji’s title run in February 2009. Hayashi was able to stop one overly ambitious dullard once before for this title, can he do it again?

No, but it’s a lot of fun anyways, warts and all.

By warts, I primarily mean the things that Kenny Omega brought to this.

The wild gesticulating that always just seems phony, weird attempts at being an Invading Heel, this WEIRD bit where he keeps selling a taped up right elbow for a minute or so without Kaz ever having touched it before moving on and suddenly using the elbow constantly and never bringing this up again, and especially all of the Michael Nakazawa interference. It’s very poorly done, all real cliche interference stuff, and feels tonally different from every other bit of the match. Omega didn’t need this in the wonderful KAI match that started this run, and Kaz Hayashi is a much better wrestler at this point than KAI was. It all holds the match back, but it’s also hardly the first or last time that my general sentiment is “that Omega match could have been even better without the bullshit!”. It’s a useless sentiment to have to begin with, as he is the bullshit.

Kaz Hayashi does a really great job though. I’ve grown to hold Hayashi in a very high esteem because of how honest his wrestling is. He’s a very sharp and exciting wrestler on a mechanical level, but when so many other wrestlers in the division and working the same sort of style always feel the need to add something or fill space, Hayashi never does. There is no pretense, it’s all cool moves, but it primarily builds very very well, and has very little downtime. Given how Omega matches often go, it’s the sort of thing that’s easy to attribute to Hayashi, and the sort of thing that really makes me appreciate the guy.

They do all of their moves, but it’s skillfully put together (outside of the Nakazawa stuff) and never ever drags its feet getting to the bomb hucking. Hayashi survives the Croyt’s Wrath after a distraction, so Omega has to break out the One Winged Angel for the win.

This was a very easy match to like, largely abandoning the pretense and structural issues that Kenny’s work at this point is usually plagued with. Kenny Omega rarely feels like a confident wrestler, but Kaz Hayashi almost always does, and did his best tonight to make Kenny feels less shameful than usual. A relative virtuoso performance from Hayashi, managing to reign in someone with a lot of problems but never allowing it to look quite so obvious. The sort of soft little touch that always leaves me really impressed, if never blown away.

The rare juniors spotfest that presents itself without shame or regret, but also without congratulating itself by the end of the thing. Just honest wrestling.

***

 

Bryan Danielson/Kaz Hayashi vs. CTU (Dick Togo/Katsushi Takemura), NJPW Super Junior Fiesta ~ G1 Epilogue (8/17/2004)

BRYAN DANIELSON VS. DICK TOGO.

This is not so much about Bryan Danielson vs. Dick Togo, but Bryan Danielson and Dick Togo do wrestle in it. They’re much more interested in teasing out some Hayashi vs. Togo stuff, as Hayashi is weirdly mad at Dick Togo for taking a spot in a villainous stable, like he forgot how they got famous. This is good though. Takemura isn’t on the level of the other three all timers (I like Hayashi, I’ll give it to him, a real top 250 all time guy) but he’s totally fine in this.

This never becomes a real epic and there’s a reason nobody bothered to keep it online for the last sixteen years, and it only came about recently because someone bought it from IVP and was cool enough to share with the class. It’s a very normal midcard sort of tag. Everyone looks good and it’s a tight sixteen or seventeen, but nothing SENSATIONAL. You don’t need to see this match. It’s a curiosity, but it’s a curiosity that’s just great enough. Bryan gets worked over and he’s a wonderful FIP, always fighting back and making them work for it. Dick Togo is Dick Togo, Kaz Hayashi has a real nice hot tag, everything is good.

Everything is good in this match.

Dick Togo broke up the Cattle Mutilation with the Back Senton, and Takemura hit THE VERDICT on Danielson for the win.

This is a match for completionists, but being a completionist, I’m throwing a three boy on the thing because every part of it was very strong. What a formula tag should be. Pretty embarrassing for every promoter in the world from 2001 to 2009 that this is one of only two Danielson/Togo interactions on film, and the most recent one of them. Shameful to think about.

***

 

Kaz Hayashi vs. Alex Shelley, PWG All Star Weekend V Night One (4/7/2007)

Something a little less than a honest-to-God dream match, but a lot more than a regular match. Retroactively, it’s incredibly cool to see, as they both wind up occupying somewhat similar roles within their eras and movements.

If you’re reading this blog and don’t know who Kaz Hayashi is, I feel like you skipped a step in the process somewhere. Simply put he’s a junior heavyweight legend, but in a more undercover sort of way. Not all that dissimilar to Alex Shelley’s perception ten plus years later, which is why this is such an interesting match. Hayashi was [art of the famous Michinoku Pro glory days in the mid 1990s, a WCW cruiserweight sleeper standout, and All Japan’s junior ace for the better part of the decade to this point. He doesn’t have quite the profile in the US of the NOAH juniors at this point, but Hayashi vs. Shuji Kondo from August 2006 isn’t too far below the famous KENTA vs. Marufuji match in 2006, if it’s below it at all. He doesn’t quite have the star quality of so many of his contemporaries, but he’s so smooth and sharp that he almost always has something to offer. If you know your shit, you know Kaz Hayashi at this point, it’s no small deal that he’s in PWG for the weekend. 

Perhaps more importantly is how clearly he’s someone who Alex Shelley has patterned himself after. It’s a real unique thing at this point to see Shelley show deference to anyone outside of maybe 2 Cold Scorpio in his 2004 Ring of Honor appearance, so if you’d somehow come to this show or began watching it at home for other reasons, Shelley’s so good here at immediately getting him over as someone to take seriously, both in terms of how much he gives him and how he constantly reacts to Hayashi, a guy doing so many of the things Shelley does, but with a little more precision and practice. There’s also a competition there, but it’s very one sided, as Shelley either does a Hayashi bit and gets owned by the real thing, or he tries to repeat something and usually pays for it. Shelley is able to go into more effective arm work than Hayashi, but Hayashi one ups him with some especially mean knee work that dominates the majority of the match from then on. 

The selling of Kaz Hayashi is passable here, he’s a legend on a vacation, but this is where Alex Shelley shines and finally does something better than a hero of his. Shelley’s always been a favorite because of his attention to detail and how much he clearly cares about the little things. This isn’t quite as dramatic as his big 2004-5 sells of having a bad arm from hitting the railing in anger at Reborn Completion, or switching the elbow pads to cover up his bad elbow against CM Punk in 2005, but he’s still all about the small things. Not being able to run well, or having trouble planting for strikes. The biggest thing you get is that the Border City Stretch isn’t so effective here because Shelley can only bridge with one leg in it. None of this really means all that much for the rest of the match, as Hayashi has Bad Junior Brain (his one bad quality, truly) and attacked the leg to fill time, but a sell like that makes it matter. Even if Hayashi’s plan has nothing to do with the leg after that segment is finished, Shelley putting it out there as maybe a reason why he doesn’t win means that it did matter, at least a little bit. I love Kaz Hayashi, but Alex Shelley is the best. Hayashi gives Alex a few bits and then goes through his routines, as he is again a legend on vacation. He sets up his finishing Final Cut with the Last Rites first, and that sequence is enough to pin Shelley. It sounds ruder in 2020 than it did in 2007, before we were all so exposed to the various ways that the politically savvy can use deep movesets to tell you just how little traveling matches mean to them, but it’s more just that Hayashi didn’t really have his big super epic finish yet and this is what he was using at the time. If Kaz Hayashi was going to win this match (and he was, given that TNA had likely already made the deal for Chris Sabin to win their junior heavyweight tournament a month or two later) this was simply how that was going to happen. 

No great epic here, but a nice little treat for anyone who ever looked at this match and got excited.

***