Volcano and Dante’s Peak, Armageddon and Deep Impact, Camp Nowhere and Heavyweights, Gordy and Babe, Showgirls and Striptease, Antz and A Bug’s Life, the Truman Show and Ed TV. Similar pairs of movies that came out around the same time, probably because someone ripped off someone else in Hollywood. These movies are used as examples of the phenomenon all the time. I submit that the wrestling version is the FMW Independant Junior Heavyweight Championship and the WAR International Junior Heavyweight Championship. They were both started by smaller Japanese companies in the mid-’90s, they both outlived the companies that created them, they’ve both been claimed by multiple companies since, and they both exist to this day. I started reviewing the International title because Tenryu Project is currently treating it as their top prize. The Independent title just finished a stint as the top prize of a company, so I’m going to take a look at that stint.
The title was a midcard belt in FMW from 1993 until 1999. From there, the title spent two and a half years in Battlearts, then a few months in Michinoku Pro before it was retired. It showed up again on the independent circuit in 2007 and then became a midcard title in Kaientai Dojo for almost nine years, with a brief stint in Osaka Pro during that time. Then in 2017, DDT took over and used it as the top prize in their Ganbare☆Pro offshoot.
According to Dramatic DDT, “Ganbare☆Pro Wrestling is an attempt to recapture the spark of mid 90s cult feds like FMW and IWA Japan with the ultimate goal of growing into a major wrestling promotion.” I reviewed the Union Max title from a time when BASARA was also a DDT offshoot “indie,” so I’m sort of familiar with the territory.
September 24, 2017 – Tokyo, Japan
Daisuke Sasaki def. Ken Ohka and Konosuke Takeshita {Independent Junior Heavyweight Championship vs. KO-D Openweight Championship vs. DDT Extreme Championship Triple Threat Match}
From DDT Who’s Gonna Top? Dramatic General Election 2017: Last Request Special! Ohka, the brain behind the Ganbare brand, had won the title in K-DOJO, while Takeshita came in as KO-D champ and Sasaki as the Extreme champ. The referee and ring announcer hold up all three belts at the top of the match, but the ref hides the Junior belt behind the KO-D title. I wonder if that was an error or an insult. The crowd was heavily invested in Ohka. That didn’t exactly speak well of DDT’s champion, but Takeshita has managed to stay on top for the last five years so it’s not like this cratered him or anything. I am very upset that Ohka’s entrance music is muted for copyright reasons because the crowd probably went nuts singing along with it. I haven’t seen a lot of triple threat matches in Japan, and this one was pretty impressive. There wasn’t a lot of nuance, but there were a lot of wild moves and cool reversals. That’s a big draw for me. It also had a wild crowd that really wanted to see Ohka take home one of the DDT belts. That was not meant to be, as Sasaki caught him in a crossface and he tapped at 21:46 just before Takeshita was able to make the save. Winner of the fall takes the belt from the loser of the fall, which makes Sasaki the new Independent Junior champ. ****
December 20, 2017 – Tokyo, Kapan
Ken Ohka def. Daisuke Sasaki {Independent World Junior Heavyweight Championship Match}
From Ganbare Burning’X’Mas. Sasaki defended the title a couple times each in DDT and K-DOJO, but this was his first defense on a Ganbare show. All of the title changes from here on are in Ganbare so I’m going to stop calling that out. This was twenty minutes of Ohka getting his ass absolutely handed to him, barely surviving through Sasaki’s cheating and weapon shots. Things took a turn in Ohka’s favor when Sasaki fell off of the turnbuckle and Ohka hit him with an insane brainbuster on the apron. That couldn’t put Sasaki down, but a few lucky spears did the trick at 23:48. ***½
April 28, 2018 – Tokyo, Japan
Keisuke Ishii def. Ken Ohka {Independent World Junior Heavyweight Championship Match}
From Dreaming I Was Dreaming. Is it surprising that Okha is over as the top guy of his own brand? Not at all. Does the way the crowd sings along with his music make Judas and Kaze Ni Nare seem dorky as hell by comparison? Absolutely. This match didn’t do much for me. Ohka was on offense for a lot of it, and it’s clear that his matches are more compelling when he’s fighting from behind. Ishii came back at the end with a quick flurry of offense that culminated in the Kneel Kick for the win at 14:27. **¾
January 6, 2019 – Tokyo, Japan
Shuichiro Katsumura def. Keisuke Ishii {Independent World Junior Heavyweight Championship Match}
From Do It On Your Own Hands. I don’t believe I’ve ever before seen someone attempt a schoolboy and then from that position lift up their opponent into a gutwrench powerbomb, but basically throw them sideways across the ring. Ishii did that to Katsumura here and it was neat. Katsumura, unsurprisingly, brought a lot of striking offense to this match. Watching him try strikes from every angle reminded me of that clip going around of Paul McCartney tinkering with his guitar until eventually his random jamming turns into what would become the song Get Back. That might sound like lofty praise, but I bring it up more to point out how a lot of Katsumura’s offense came off as half-cocked, and Ishii selling it looked silly. For example, a spinning heel kick where little more than Katsumura’s butt collided with Ishii looked bad. Anyway, the match moved along briskly given its length, so it wasn’t all bizarre. Katsumura caught Ishii with the Ninja Choke for the win at 23:43. ***
September 28, 2019 – Tokyo, Japan
Keisuke Ishii def. Shuichiro Katsumura {Independent World Junior Heavyweight Championship Match}
From I Do Not Need a Comic Magazine! I had a really hard time focusing on this match, probably because I wasn’t blown away by their match in January. The last few minutes of this were pretty wild, and wrapped up with Ishii hitting the arm-capture Michinoku Driver and the Kneel Kick for the win at 18:56. I guess it was on par with their first match, mostly because it was shorter and more to the point. ***
July 26, 2020 – Tokyo, Japan
Hagane Shinnou def. Keisuke Ishii {Independent World Junior Heavyweight Championship Match}
From Killer Queen. I think I’m good on Ishii for a while. This is not who I would have booked this title around. And I am sorry but I have very little to say about this because it wasn’t so much different from his last two title change matches. I kind of remember Shinnou from when he was Madoka and worked the King of Gate tournament once, but he didn’t make much of an impression then. I suppose Shinnou brought more of a high flyer vibe to the proceedings and none of the MMA inspired stuff that Katsumura displayed, but once again the match was based around Ishii looking for his weird Michinoku Driver, that not getting the win, and then his opponent winning with something rather surprising. In this case it was like a spike legsweep that he calls the Ranhei, which he hit for the win at 16:37. **¾
August 22, 2020 – Tokyo, Japan
ASUKA def. Hagane Shinnou {Independent World Junior Heavyweight Championship Match}
From Heaven’s Door. I don’t know if I’m rating this on a sliding scale because I was so happy to watch something different, but I had a good time with this match. ASUKA was able to look like she was on Shinnou’s level mostly because the champ is about as waifish as she is. The match won me over completely when Shinnou went for one of those double stomps onto ASUKA while she was in the Tree of Woe, but he had the decency to lift her up by her hair before hitting it, rather than what everyone else does which is just have the person taking the move do a sit up for no reason. ASUKA strung together a bunch of German suplexes, and moonsault, and a Northern Lights Bomb for the win at 16:17. ***¼
December 26, 2020 – Tokyo, Japan
Shota def. ASUKA {Independent World Junior Heavyweight Championship Match}
From The World. Shota came into this wearing one of the KO-D Six Man Championship belts. This was pretty good too. I don’t know anything about Shota, but it was interesting to see him wrestle as the underdog here against ASUKA. He spent most of the match getting beat up, but a gnarly super jump put him back in contention. From there, he became ultra focused on pinning ASUKA with a V9 Clutch, and eventually got the win with one at 17:04. ***
Shota defended the title in Ganbare a couple times before losing it in humiliating fashion to Arata in JTO (Michinoku’s new company). Arata held it until recently, when Naoki Tanizaki beat him for the title. But JTO doesn’t treat it as its top title, much like FMW, M-Pro, and K-DOJO never did. And in the time that I was writing this retrospective, Ganbare filled the void left by this title with the Spirit of Ganbare World Openweight Championship. So I’ll be covering that belt going forward instead.
From Diamond Ring Kensuke Office Changes. They emphasize that Nakajima beat Dragon Gate wrestler Kenichiro Arai 
From Dynamite 131. This is a qualifying match for the Owen Hart Foundation tournament. Joe debuted at ROH Supercard of Honor, saving Jonathan Gresham from Jay Lethal (whose soul searching apparently led him to turn heel) & Sonjay Dutt after the main event. And now that ROH and AEW are the same thing, that seems worth mentioning. Caster’s pre-match rap was cute. This was real squashy, with Joe needing only two minutes to put Caster down with the Muscle Buster at 2:52. Lethal & Dutt pop up on the big screens and Lethal says he’d been trying to get a hold of Joe during his difficult soul searching time, and Joe never picked up. They have a present for Joe next week. N/A
From Dynamite 132. Jay Lethal & Sonjay Dutt were in the front row cheering on Joe. Sarcastically, probably, as they brawled with Joe at ROH Supercard of Honor XV. 
From Rampage 39. 
From Dynamite 137. 
From Dynamite 138. This is a 
From Double or Nothing. 
From PWF York Cougar Football Fundraiser. I didn't know that this match happened until over a month after the fact. This started out as a non-title match, but we'll get to why I've listed it as a title match in a moment. FTR have Mick Foley in their corner while their opponents have Bill Behrens. I’ve never actually seen Behrens do an on-camera gig before. He's holding a tennis racket, presumably as an Umaga to Jim Cornette. But it's confusing because there was actually a tennis player named Bill Behrens. They announce this match as having a 20-minute time limit. Only 11 minutes in, they say there are three minutes remaining. Until then, this was as run-of-the-mill as a modern FTR match gets. But the announcement snapped everyone out of their heat-on-Wheeler funk and forced them to go for desperate pins. They announce ten seconds remaining a couple of times, but no one can get the roll up pin they're looking for. The 20-minute time limit expires at 1
From NXT UK 183. McGuinness started by essentially saying that Fraser is going to pee or poo himself during the match. Unnecessary. Had Shawn Michaels been game to have a good match against Vader, this is what it would have looked like. Actually, a more appropriate and modern analogue is Brock Lesnar vs. Seth Rollins from SummerSlam. Much like that match, Frazer used quick strikes and avoided his larger opponent’s signature big move to stay alive. Here it was the powerbomb whereas there it was suplexes. Here, Frazer also successfully damaged WALTER’s knee, which slowed the big man down and made it hard for WALTER to hit the powerbomb. Unfortunately for Frazer, WALTER was able to bide his time and clothesline Frazer’s legs out from under him. An inevitable powerbomb followed and won the match for WALTER at 14:02. I hate to say this because I’m happy that he’s healthier, but the way WALTER has slimmed down has taken some of the magic away from his aura. At least for me it has. That said, dude can clearly still go as well as ever in the ring. ****
From NXT 659. Strong was feeling it here, which is thanks in large part to the crowd being maniacally loud from the get go I’m sure. His whole game was fast and devastating stick and move attacks. That worked pretty well, as WALTER was dazed from time to time. But as with all good WALTER matches (which is pretty much all WALTER matches), everything WALTER does is devastating here so it takes very little for him to take back control. And eventually he did just that and hit the powerbomb for the win at 9:46 (shown of 12:18). After the match, WALTER gets on the microphone and says that his name is Gunther now. I did not think WALTER would be a victim of the renaming curse this far into his run. What will they rename Strong?! ***¾
From NXT UK 185. Andy Shepherd helpfully announces from inside the ring that the reason for the stipulation is that the feud has gotten so violent that it wouldn’t be safe to have fans around. Devlin says during the match that it’s because he thinks Dragunov could only muster the energy to win if he had the crowd behind him. I like that explanation a lot more. The only real reason I could think of to do this without fans is that there was a scheduling conflict with one of the wrestlers for the regular TV taping date and they needed to get this thing filmed. We just had such a long stretch of empty arena NXT UK episodes that I can’t imagine anyone was dying to get another taste of it. This aired the day after Adam Cole vs. Orange Cassidy in a match that was also no disqualification and falls count anywhere, and this served up everything I felt was missing from that match. Now you might say, “Brad, Cassidy is not the same kind of character as Devlin or Dragunov, how could you expect the same level of violence or intensity?” To that I say, when Cassidy started his match by breaking his own sunglasses and rapidly punching Cole, he was indicating that level of violence and/or intensity. And instead the match was mostly wacky. Anyway, this was not wacky. It was stiff and intense and featured weapons that made sense and spots the didn’t take forever to set up. Dragunov got in trouble when his eye injury acted up. Devlin took control and beat the crap out of him. I wasn’t wild about how meek Dragunov was when Devlin was zip tying his hands, but I did like that in the end it turned out to be an error on Devlin’s part anyway because Dragunov’s finisher requires no hands. And indeed, a bound Dragunov jumped off the steel steps (which had been brought into the ring) and hit the Torpedo Moskau on Devlin for the win at 21:43. NXT UK is still sneaking in these dope matches that no one is watching. Y’all should watch them. ****¼ 
From AAA Triplemania Regia. FTR come out with Vickie Guerrero. This was supposed to be explained at an earlier AAA taping but FTR and Guerrero all missed them. AAA is notorious for having this kind of luck/being incompetent lately. FTR is also wearing Eddie Guerrero tribute tights, with American flags on one side and flames on the other, I suppose to pay homage to his Gringos Locos and Latino Heat gimmicks. This match mostly sucked, but one cool spot saw FTR tie Pentagon’s mask to the ropes and force him to unmask with his hands over his face to stop them from climbing the ladder. That would have been a very meaningful moment to lead up to the Lucha Brothers winning the titles back, but unfortunately instead it led into nothing. He just got his mask back and the match continued on in its lame, derivative way. At one point, Pentagon was the only man standing, but instead of climbing the ladder he grabbed a table from the floor. So the titles mean enough to him that he’d unmask to stop his opponents from winning, but not enough for him to get the titles when he had a clear path to do it? Vickie powered Pentagon, causing him to voluntarily jump through the table and Harwood grabbed the belts at 12:12. This was abysmal. *
From AEW Full Gear. Silver was hamming it up a lot more here than he was the year before in New York. That said, this had stronger just-a-match vibes than the aforementioned match. After Silver ripped out Cassidy’s pockets, Cassidy turned up the heat and these guys put on a middle of the row undercard match. Not bad by any means, but nothing memorable either. Cassidy hit the Beach Break rather out of nowhere for the win at 9:42. **¾ 
From the second Honor Reigns Supreme. The commentators sold this as Gresham getting a big shot against a top ROH guy after being an also-ran in the Television Championship division for a while. This was terrific. Both guys did a fantastic job selling their respective targeted limbs, and Gresham in particular played the role of the tenacious underdog perfectly. He didn’t just watch to see where Lethal would have trouble executing his finisher because of the damage he’d done to the former ROH Champion’s arm, he pressed the assault whenever he could, taking out the arm to make sure the Lethal Injection would never come. But what he couldn’t do was stop Lethal from battering his knee and ultimately winning with a Figure 4 Leglock at 17:54. ****¼ 
From the second Masters of the Craft. Columbus has way more Gresham fans than Concord did. That’s a neat little advancement to the plot, innit? They both went after the same limbs that earned them dividends in their previous match. And then they went ahead and built an incredible match out of that story. At first it seemed as though Lethal wasn’t going to be able to get Gresham’s leg to give out. But about halfway through the match, Gresham’s knee was in trouble. Gresham was able to escape the leglock this time by using the momentum of Lethal pulling him away from the ropes to shift to an armbar. But Gresham’s focus on the arm bit him in the ass. Lethal went for the Lethal Injection and collapsed again, but when Gresham went for a roll up after that Lethal cut back on it for the win at 18:27. This is one of the best American examples that I've seen of a match building on the match that came before. Rather than try to outdo the maneuvers from their first meeting for the sake of a big crowd reaction, they adjust their game plans in logical ways that, to me, were just as exciting. I think this match is slept on, by virtue of the fact that I’ve never heard anything about it before watching it. ****½ 
From ROH Wrestling 364. In real life, 
From Death Before Dishonor XVII. Gresham and Lethal had been teaming, but Gresham grew frustrated and started heeling. Ultimately, he turned on Lethal. It took them a little while to get there, but once they got into a groove this was exactly what I wanted from this match. It was back to their old tricks, with Lethal targeting the leg to set up for the Figure 4 Leglock and Gresham targeting the arm to block the Lethal Injection and set up for his Octopus. In the end, Lethal tried the cutback trick that worked for him in Columbus, but Gresham countered to a pin and then put on the gnarliest Octopus for his first win over Lethal at 17:20. This is the best kind of wrestling series. And none of it felt stale because it was a year after they’d wrestled last and because they found ways to energize the old tropes. And that’s not to mention Gresham busting out what I can only describe as a sumo-style assault. Gresham and Lethal make up after the match. ****
From ROH Wrestling 500. During the pandemic, ROH made the most of their empty arena shows by kicking them off with a tournament to crown a champion for the revived Pure Championship. Gresham won the tournament, and this was his fourth defense of the title. Lethal and Gresham were still allies here. In an interesting move, the other match on this milestone episode was two other partners fighting in Jay and Mark Briscoe. They cut to a commercial break about six minutes in, though the action didn’t get beyond (admittedly fast-moving) mat wrestling until the 10-minute mark. That had me thinking this was going to go long, but things took a different turn. Both guys had abused the other’s shoulders, and Lethal used that to his advantage best. He forced Gresham to use his first rope break to stop a pin, and his second to escape a crab. Then, he used the failed Lethal Injection to bait Gresham into a crossface, forcing the champ to use his final rope break. But he made the mistake of giving Gresham a breather and was quickly caught in a head scissor takedown giving Gresham the winning pin at 14:06 (shown of 16:40). For an empty arena match, this held my attention. It was totally different than their previous matches while still using a couple elements from the rivalry to elevate it just a bit. Not essential viewing, but if you’re working your way through their series you shouldn’t skip it. ***¼ 
