[Kyushu Pro #2] Three Masked Comedy Gimmicks
Recap and review of Kyushu Pro Wrestling 12/04 and 13/04, PLUS a bonus recap/review of 22/02
Since Last Time…
Since my last pair of event reviews (16/03 and 30/03), KPW has held three events. The first consisted of a single six-man tag at the Avispa Pro Wrestling Festival in Fukuoka, which was otherwise dedicated to meet-and-greets and teaching kids wrestling. There are some photos on the official website. Interestingly, these show the six guys in the tag match plus Batten Blabla at ringside; he often turns up at events he’s not wrestling in, I guess because he’s one of the most recognizable gimmicks/workers. KPW seem to run different size events for different dates and in different markets – here they use 7 workers (including Blabla, plus referee and the rest), whereas in the bigger Fukuoka gym shows they might have 12 or more.
As far as I can tell, entry to the shows is basically always free (unsure about at the very biggest) but if you’ve bought a Membership there are certain advantages – KPW is charitable, remember, so I guess this is a way of creating cashflow and building a core set of fans whilst remaining accessible to the community.
The second and third events were over the weekend of the 12th-13th April and were both in and around Miyazaki, a city on the southeastern coast of Kyushu (Fukuoka is on the northwestern side).
(Remember, you can watch all this stuff on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpoDpVFhUGHPWVYqmJ8TBwA)
Kyushu Pro Avispa Pro Wrestling Festival – 06/04/2025
Kodai Nozaki & Mentai Kid & Naoki Sakurajima vs Genkai & Jet Wei & TAJIRI
No footage, alas, but this is the faces beating two heels plus Jet Wei. Notably, for this small event they put out the two biggest names in the company (Mentai and TAJIRI) and they put out both their key homegrown talents (Nozaki and Jet).
Kodai Nozaki & Mentai Kid & Naoki Sakurajima win at 10:11.
Kyushu Pro Miyazaki O Genki Ni Sutcha Ga! – 12/04/2025
Held at Miyazaki Machinaka Square with an announced attendance of 530. This is a covered forecourt space in a mall – it’s a multi-use outdoor performance and display space, basically. This makes this a very distinctive kind of show to watch – KPW usually perform in daytime in well-lit spaces anyway, but here you get nice side effects (there is just a fascinating sort of theatre vibe, especially with people sitting up on balconies), the amusing (buses driving on the main road in the background), and the kinda shonky (the workers entering from the mall’s office as if they’ve just had a team meeting with the Department Head of Facilities and Sewage). Oh, and they have a little girl as guest announcer! She won some kind of contest – there is a video up on the YouTube channel about this but I haven’t watched it as I’ll be even more baffled than usual. It’s nice, though!
Genkai & Super Strong Kishan & TAJIRI vs Asosan & Mentai Kid & Naoki Sakurajima
I haven’t seen SS Kishan before. He’s some kind of masked half-wild insect guy? He has to be guided to the ring, he makes high-pitched noises, he is sometimes confused about the rules, and I love him. Asosan (who is named for and billed as a volcano) enters with his cone-head-mask thing smoking (because he’s a volcano). Mentai obviously goes around so all the kids can put their garlands on him, which is legitimately been a highlight of every match I’ve seen of his.
This is genuinely great fun and just very competent, especially given these guys’ limitations (Asosan is permanently gassed, TAJIRI’s knees looks shot). It’s not a classic, but it combines some good comedy moments with a genuinely solid six-man “heels beat up the small face” layout. There’s one point early on where they use the space to their advantage, too, as the heels brawl between the blocks of chairs to prevent Mentai receiving any relief.
The finish is the one the crowd wants: Asosan hits Kishan with an absolutely thunderous Senton, and then Mentai hits his Splash, and Asosan and Sakurajima hold off the other heels during the pin.
Asosan & Mentai Kid & Naoki Sakurajima win in 10:23.
Shigeno Shima vs Batten Blabla vs Hitamaru Sasaki
No footage, and I don’t think there is any forthcoming, which is a bit surprising. This will have been the two hard-hitting guys, including designated shoot-style vet Sasaki, hurting each other and especially Blabla who will have been running away and hiding.
Shigeno Shima wins in 10:58.
Kodai Nozaki vs Jet Wei
This is a significant match: Mentai is retiring soon, and these are his two trainees, KPW’s homegrown talent. This looks to be their first singles match, too. This is the future of the company on show. Nozaki is a big sumo-ish guy and Jet is a skinny high-flyer.
And it’s good. I’ve had some concerns about Jet’s timing in other matches, but this is a great large-against-little match. Nozaki has great aura and great execution, though I am suspicious of his cardio, but here he gets to smash up Jet for ages at a moderate pace and build lovely heat. The crowd get behind Jet, and Nozaki looks around slightly baffled. (It’s Jumbo vs Misawa! Well, maybe that’s an overstatement…)
Jet gets to break out and they build up a really compelling series of nearfalls both ways before the nascent company ace puts his junior to the sword with a Spear (a decent 7/10 Spear, but Nozaki’s Spear against Mentai on 16/03 was a real 9.5/10).
What strikes me is that – with Mentai retiring, who is both the star of the company and one of its best performers – these two guys need backup. They’re both legit, and KPW can build a lot around them, but you do feel like one or two more younger (read: under 40) performers need to be found.
Kodai Nozaki wins in 11:31.
Kyushu Pro Hyuga O Genki Ni Sutcha Ga! – 13/04/2025
Held at the Hyuga Cultural Exchange Center in a smaller city in Miyazaki Prefecture, announced attendance of 426. The “Cultural Exchange Center” is obviously a multi-use space – the ring is down on the floor, which looks fitted for sports, but the seating is set in a single high rake like a theatre or lecture hall.
Hyottoko Mask & Hyottoko Naoki & Mentai Kid vs Genkai & Hitamaru Sasaki & Super Strong Kishan
Okay, so I had to do some research to understand some of this. Hyottoko is a cheerful old man in Japanese mythology, and there are Hyottoko festivals all over the place, where people put on his distinctive mask and do his dance – but Hyuga, where we are today, is the site of the biggest festival. So we have one guy (not quite sure who) as Hyottoko Mask, and a mysterious “Hyottoko Naoki” who gets a laugh immediately and who is obviously Naoki Sakurajima under a mask. He copies the main Hyottoko’s dance inexpertly for more laughs.
This is nice little show-opening six-man with strong comedy overtones – it has three masked gimmick wrestlers, though of course part of Hyottoko Naoki’s gimmick is that the heels eventually unmask him! This runs long but there isn’t an enormous amount to this, not to slight it; it just does the basics of this format well enough. The faces take heat segments, they brawl up on to the rake amongst the crowd, eventually Mask especially takes a beating, Mentai gets his team back in the fight, and then they set up triple teams for Mentai to pin Sasaki after the 450.
This was fun – the number of guys obviously keeps downtime to a minimum, the actual guys involved are all pretty good, and I laughed at some of the spots. I drew two further things: I’ve never seen Genkai pinned, which seems to me like a way of protecting the future champ during the coming transitional phase, so he can be a credible opponent for Nozaki; and when you look at most of what Mentai has been doing since his retirement announcement, it’s comedy six-mans where he gets the pin. That’s pretty intentional, I guess: Nozaki now does most of the main eventing, and Mentai gets nostalgia wins for all the fans coming to say goodbye to him.
Hyottoko Mask & Hyottoko Naoki & Mentai Kid win in 16:44.
Asosan vs Batten Blabla vs TAJIRI
No footage, and that may be a mercy, because Asosan is absolutely only fitted to be a big guy in a tag team at this point and TAJIRI’s knees are shot. This looks like a way of putting the three biggest remaining names on the roster in a match on the day.
Asosan wins in 5:29.
Kodai Nozaki vs Shigeno Shima
No footage. Nozaki main eventing as Mentai does his retirement tour of nostalgia wins. Shima is (1) the spare guy and (2) a heavyweight to allow Nozaki to continue cementing his rep as the top guy. I’d imagine this was fine but slow – neither guy is high-speed.
Kodai Nozaki wins in 10.26:
BONUS: Kyushu Pro Fukatsu Ba Genki Ni Suru Bai 22/02/2025
I’m watching through the recent backlog of KPW matches on YouTube and this is the first one I finished watching through. It’s held at the Tsuyazaki Sports Center in Fukutsu, a city in Fukuoka Prefecture, with an announced attendance of 515. These gyms are so obviously off the peg – no complaint there, it’s a good model, but there’s a strange merging of the various KPW gyms I’ve now seen into one Ur-Gym.
This is a smaller market than some of the other shows and I think this is why there are fewer wrestlers (they also have a big show on the 24th February so may be keeping powder dry). One of the big appealing things here, though, is that as well as TAJIRI and GENKAi, they have some notable guests: 2AW’s Shioro Asahi is main eventing, and they have popular foreigners Adriano and…Dynamite Kid?!? Well, this is Tommy Billington, nephew of the original. He enters to DK’s music which is a trip. Adriano is very over with the crowd, which is also strange, in its way – not bad, just strange. Some random young Italian wrestler on his second short tour is just getting a massive reception from a regional Japanese audience.
Asosan & Naoki Sakurajima vs Hitamaru Sasaki & Shigeno Shima
Non-title match for the tag champs. This is a decent little matchup. One thing you see on the KPW posters is that each rostered wrestler has an English word overlaid: Mentai has “Jump!”, Genkai has “Fight!!”, for instance. Batten Blabla just has “???”, which I enjoy. The tag champs are “Big!” (Asosan) and “Heat!” (Sakurajima, not so sure what this one means). The opposition team here are “Excite!” (Shima) and “Shoot!” (Sasaki). Sasaki is a shoot-style worker, and Shima actually works like that here.
So basically this match starts them with them kicking and stretching Sakurajima all over the place. My general sense is that Sakurajima and Sasaki are the two key workers amongst the older cohort, aside from Mentai. I don’t mean they’re the best, but you just see them glue matches together and keep stuff moving. They’re both fit, athletic, have decent cardio and can do stuff that entertains.
So anyway, this is a face-in-peril setup, and eventually the champs win out via their big guy getting off some moves. It’s nothing earth-shattering, but it’s fun.
Asosan & Naoki Sakurajima win in 10:23.
Genkai & TAJIRI vs Adriano & Dynamite Kid
This isn’t bad but it’s just okay, and I think that’s because you have an unfortunate confluence of events: the heels are both slightly slowed by age, especially TAJIRI, and whilst their opponents are young and can really go, the layout is kinda a bust for them. Adriano doesn’t really do much, though he’s strong and quick; the heels beat on him in a fairly dull way, and though eventually Young Dynamite gets in and beats people up, but then tags Adriano back in who promptly loses. TAJIRI wins with the Buzzsaw which is absolutely magnificent, it has to be said.
Genkai & TAJIRI win in 8:38.
Mentai Kid vs Shiori Asahi
I don’t know if Asahi is a comedy worker or not: one of his hands is a flamingo or stork beak (I mean, not literally, he just has this little bit where he makes it act like one, and his shirt has the bird on it), but he is also very, very explosive and these guys have a really decent match. This match was at times a little “slow” or “obvious”, but I had this revelation: they take time to teach the “civilian” crowd how this storytelling works, and you can see it works. KPW crowds have about the healthiest and most consistent reactions of any promotion’s crowds ever. Asahi puts heat on Mentai, Mentai breaks out, and he wins with a very beautiful 450. It’s a formula Mentai match, I think, but there is much to be said for formulae.
Mentai Kid wins in 15:40.
Match Notes
Kyushu Pro Fukatsu Ba Genki Ni Suru Bai! 22/02/2025
*Asosan & Naoki Sakurajima vs Hitamaru Sasaki & Shigeno Shima (February 22nd, 2025): 10:23. Non-title. I like Sasaki and Shima as a tag team because they both work shoot kicks as a major component of their style – Sasaki is the promotion’s designated “shoot-style” guy – and this gives a nice contrast to Asosan and Sakurajima. Sakurajima, as usual, takes the heat after he leads a decent early grapple session. Asosan comes in as the hot tag, and does his “falling volcano” selling. Asosan hits a glorious Senton, but otherwise is only moderately mobile. Sakurajima does a solid job here. You get the standard light comedy elements, but this isn’t replete with them. Eventually the faces win. 2.5/5 [Link:
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*Genkai & Tajiri vs Adriano & Dynamite Kid Jr (February 22nd, 2025): 8:38. Oddly mediocre. We start in a semi-promising way, with some grappling, but we quickly get to heat on Adriano and it’s not super high quality. Young Dynamite comes in and briefly clears the heels out, but then tags Adriano back in and Adriano gets beat up and then Buzzsawed for the heel win. We get plenty of idiotic refereeing to justify the heel win, too, which I just don’t like. The disappointment is not the result – and Tajiri’s kicks are fantastic – but is that we don’t see the piece developed, and we don’t get much more than a taste of Adrinao’s work (he just slams guys a bit). It’s a missed opportunity. 2/5 [Link:
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*Mentai Kid vs Shiori Asahi (February 22nd, 2025): 15:40. Asahi is from 2AW and has a hand that attacks people like a flamingo. He doesn’t otherwise work like a comedy gimmick, though, and he hits some very snug stuff and looks really good on a few moves. These two play to the crowd plenty, revving them up for each moment. It’s really obvious some spots are extended and indeed even slowed down to teach the crowd their meaning – though not the most exciting way of doing things, there is a real sense of this being a teaching experience for a “civilian” crowd. Mentai takes heat but then eventually breaks out, winning with the 450, which is beautiful as ever. 3/5 [Link:
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Kyushu Pro Miyazaki O Genki Ni Sutcha Ga! – 12/04/2025
*Asosan & Naoki Sakurajima & Mentai Kid vs Genkai & Super Strong Kishan & TAJIRI (April 12th, 2025): 12:32. Solid curtain-jerking six-man. This isn’t the most mobile line-up, though Kishan, who I haven’t seen before, isn’t too bad – he’s similar to Genkai. However, this has Mentai, who takes the heat segment and who comes in for the winning Splash, so this naturally has a decent energy level. Asosan comes in with his volcano caldera hat smoking, and Kishan has to be guided around and is a semi-savage fish or insect or something, and this all adds to the enjoyment. 2.5/5 [Link:
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*Kodai Nozaki vs Jet Wei (April 12th, 2025): 11:31. The future of the company – the two home-grown guys, Mentai Kid’s trainees – go at it. This is what we have once Mentai retires in May, we are being told. And this is good. Nozaki is a hard-hitter with great aura, but not rapid – this is mitigated by Jet taking lots of heat from him and bumping around, and then Jet’s comebacks being executed at speed. This is the best I’ve seen Jet, and they build good comebacks for him and surprisingly plausible nearfalls – even though it’s clearly been booked in recent weeks that Nozaki is the definitive ace and Jet is a step down (Nozaki beat Mentai, Jet lost to him), this – their first singles meeting – shows that they’re not far from each other. It’s a nice little-vs-big matchup, and Nozaki shows he’s got the goods to lead, with his moves and his bemusement as the crowd chant for Jet and his selling. 3/5 [Link:
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Kyushu Pro Hyuga O Genki Ni Sutcha Ga! – 13/04/2025
*Hyottoko Mask & Hyottoko Naoki & Mentai Kid vs Genaki & Hitamaru Sasaki & Super Strong Kishan (April 13th, 2025): 16:44. Fun and competent six-man to open the show. This is another match for Mentai’s retirement tour where he gets to pin some stooge for the crowd’s future nostalgia, and I’m here for that. The other thing here is the two Hyottokos, two of them because we’re in Hyuga, the home of the biggest Hyottoko festival in Japan. The Hyottokos dance around, including during moves, and everyone (including me) laughs. Eventually one Hyottoko is unmasked as Naoki Sakurajima, though this is an open joke as they head in. This is a series of heat segments and a crowd brawl leading into Mentai leading the final face comeback, them hitting a few triple teams and then Mentai 450ing Sasaki for the pin. Solid. 3/5 [Link:
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