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Submitted by Optimus Schwab on Wednesday, November 21, 2001 at 5:06 PM EST
 Hello and welcome to another edition of the Optimus Files. It's my pleasure to provide you all with my little column and today I plan to cover a decent amount of material, so let's get right to the column. Weekly BS -Monday night on RAW, the ending segment had to be one of the weirdest things I've ever seen. As a wrestling fan, I almost wanted to pinch myself at the site of Ric Flair and Steve Austin having their showdown. It was like a dream. One of the best wrestlers ever staring directly into the eyes of one of the best of the 90's. I know I primarily watch for the matches, but segments like that are totally necessary and much appreciated. Applause is in order for the WWF as a Steve Austin/Ric Flair alliance is a mighty interesting booking decision and should turn out some interesting material for future WWF events that I will look forward to watching. The Alliance angle started off good though, so hopefully the WWF won't screw this one up because if they don't it could be huge. Those two as a team is really the only necessary booking they need for this angle. I hate sports entertainment, but when done right things like this are produced and actually keep the material interesting. -Speaking of RAW, the rest of the show sucked besides the previously mentioned closing segment, although RVD took one hell of a beating in his match. That neckbreaker was a nasty bump as was the frog splash spot. I'm surprised the table didn't break on the first 3D because Rob hit with an incredibly hard impact. Bubba took an equally nasty Vandaminator to his credit. That match was made by the hard hitting impact, but as a whole it was bad. Wrestler of the Week- Minoru Tanaka The wrestler of the week in this edition is NJPW wrestler Minoru Tanaka. Many people view Tanaka as one of the best Junior heavyweights in the world, if not the best. Personally, I feel he's the best as of right now. He works a completely different style of Junior match than most of you are probably used to as it's more on the technical/shoot style BattleARTS side, considering he did work for the company for a good portion of time. He's also one of the more impressive wrestlers as far as success goes, scoring victories over greats such as Shinjiro Ohtani and Jushin Thunder Liger, plus having had a reign with both the IWGP Jr. Title and the IWGP Jr. Tag Titles. He's had two fantastic matches this year, one against Liger on 6/4 and one against Takehiro Murahama on 4/20, the later being in my top 5 for 2001 match of the year so far. He's simply one of the best and most impressive wrestlers in the world today and I highly recommend you track down his work, perhaps a compilation of some of his matches. What's in Schwab's VCR? Going to the old VCR, I see it contains the Toryumon 7/1/01 PPV. No clue why I was watching it, but it's there so I guess I'll review it. By the way, I just ordered the 10/28 New Japan PPV (would have had it sooner but funds are low), so expect a review of that one next week as there's a 95% chance it'll be in my VCR unless I go on one of my AJPW viewing streaks. Anyway, on to the show. Toryumon PPV 7/1/01 A lot of stuff before the actual matches begin, like a bunch of promos from Crazy MAX, M2K, and team Toryumon, none of which I understand due to not speaking Japanese but I get the idea of what they're getting across. I think it's pretty apparent who doesn't like who. Genki Horiguchi and SAITO v. Kenichiro Arai and Apache: This was a decent opener as it featured some nice action and good sequences. Apache impressed me the most considering I haven't seen much of his work before this show. Genki, Arai, and SAITO were the usual here. Not bad at all, but nothing noteworthy. TARU v. Masahiro Stoker: Yes, you read that right. It's imitation time as Stoker takes the role of Masahiro Chono and TARU relives his Ultimo Dragon imitation. Of course some funny stuff follows for a pretty good comedy match. This is probably the best one I've seen where they fill roles, the match where Stoker imitates Liger coming in a close second. I like TARU in these matches much more as he doesn't do much for me in straight up wrestling matches. To me, Stoker is bland and unfunny in any other type of match he works as the style and jokes get boring fast. These imitation matches are a breath of fresh air for some strange reason. Dragon Kid, Ricky Marvin, and Ryo Saito v. Darkness Dragon, Susumu Mochizuki, and Yasushi Kanda: I like everyone in this match and the result is a very fast paced and exciting six man tag. I'll put it at the good-average level when placed next to other Toryumon 6 man tags. Marvin is the real shining point here as he pulls off some amazing aerial stunts, as does Dragon. These two have to be up on the top of a list that contains the best aerial workers considering they do the spots at such an amazingly fast pace. Some of the stuff may be a bit contrived like Dragon's rana where he spins around the guy twice, but it's damn fun to watch and most importantly, it's original and fits in the match. Of course Dragon whips out his sweet springboard moonsault to the floor and Ricky also does his springboard tornado plancha. Some mind blowing stuff here. Also, for some strange reason Marvin and Dragon's stunts never outshined the other workers for me, as everyone was equally solid and worked their stuff in as well. This is a fun match. Dick Togo v. Chocoflake K-ICHI: I'm a Togo fan but this just didn't do anything for me. It wasn't very good. Not even decent really. CIMA, Big Fuji, and SUWA v. The Great Sasuke, Gran Hamada, and Tiger Mask 4: This was really good and better than the other 6 man on the show. TM 4 is just awesome and CIMA and SUWA never fail to impress. Of course Hamada and Sasuke are in there so you know they'll never disappoint, and Big Fuji is kind of outclassed by the others here. I just love everything TM 4 has been doing recently. Crazy MAX are their normal rudo selves as they throw the flowers that are handed out before the match at the Mpro guys to gain the upper advantage. Oh, and Dickmania returns in this match as Togo runs in and goes medieval on Sasuke. The run in was awesome and totally necessary, concluding with Sasuke getting pinned by CIMA. I enjoyed this. Masaaki Mochizuki v. Magnum TOKYO: Great match for both guys. The psych and selling was good, the wrestling was nice, and Masaaki kicks like a mad man. TOKYO just keeps getting better. I highly recommend watching this match. Well, Toryumon is one of my current favorite promotions for a variety of reasons and many of those reasons are displayed in this show. They're very capable of whipping out a fast paced, exciting lucha style match, but at the same time they can put on a match with some nice psychology and pacing like the main event. Nothing is flat out horrible on this card as even the Togo match is watchable the first time. It's just not good to go back and watch again. The 2 six man tags and the main event are really good though and I recommend you watch this show because probably the whole Toryumon roster sees action here, plus the Mpro guys, and they all put forward a good effort. They never fail to impress me. The Optimus Files Well, with the Toryumon review, I might as well make it Ultimo Dragon day. It just sounds logical...I think. Match #21: Ultimo Dragon v. Rey Mysterio Jr.- WCW World War 3 11/24/96 This is really underrated just because the offense is so heavily weighted in Ultimo's favor. Rey gets his ass kicked is the short way of saying it. Actually, it's not the squash most people make it out to be as Rey gets in all the offense necessary in order to push the match forward. This is one of those matches where one group rates it too highly and another group rates it way too low. I have it right in the middle, close to the top, on my list of great WCW Cruiser matches. It's a very well worked, smart match to watch but not the best the Cruiser's had to offer. Still, as an opener it was excellent but matches like Liger/Pillman, Rey/Psychosis, and Eddie/Rey will always prove to be better WCW Cruiser matches in my eyes. Not that I'm saying this is bad. It's great and you should definitely track it down. Match #22: Ultimo Dragon v. Jushin Thunder Liger- WAR Super J Cup 12/13/95 This is the best Dragon/Liger match you'll see. You get your standard painful Liger submissions to start as they build up to the great near falls which is the standard of matches worked this style. Pretty interesting finish too as Liger is able to reverse la majistral and beat Dragon, yet at the J Crown in '96 he was defeated by the move, almost as if he forgot how to counter it. I always found that weird, but I know Liger was working with a brain tumor in '96 and had to end the match as quickly as possible. Plus he was able to get the la majistral reversal before Dragon beat him with the move for good. Whoops, I'm rambling. Dragon is really at his best when he's working as crisply as he does in this match. Despite blowing his Dragon attack in his previous match with Ohtani during the tourney, he was on target for this match and it's great as an immediate result. Excellent match. I would have loved a Dragon/Benoit final but history has already written itself. Well, that's another column in the books. I hope you all enjoyed it. As always, your feedback, comments, requests, suggestions, or whatever can be directed to OptimusSchwab@lordsofpain.net. Peace.
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