Shozo Kobayashi/Haruka Eigen vs Mighty Inoue/Isamu Teranishi (6/29/80 IWE)

[I'm participating in the massive Death Valley Driver Best Matches of the 1980's jamboree; for details on this, head over to the 80's Forum at the DVDVR board. Currently, I'm going over the matches on the "Other Japan" ballot (for those of you who have no earthly idea what "Other Japan" could possibly mean: in the 1980s, Japan had two major, multi-million-yen, arena-selling-out wrestling promotions - All Japan Pro Wrestling and New Japan Pro Wrestling. Most of the big stars and classic matches from that era occured under the banner of one of these two groups. Meanwhile, a few tiny, bush-league groups managed to eke out a living under the ankles of these two giants. These are the "other" groups, they're in "Japan", hence" "Other Japan." The official list of nominated matches can be found here.). For no particular reason, I'm going to post daily reviews of the nominated matches here as well as on the DVDVR forum. So enjoy.]

I had no idea who most of these guys were for most of this match, except for Mighty Inoue - I'd read somewhere that he wore funny-looking multi-colored shorts. Plenty of jumping and slapping and weird submission moves - I especially liked the odd leg scissors that Kobayashi had on Teranishi (oh you remember - the one where he picked him up with his legs and dropped him repeatedly on his butt. It looked like something someone'd do in a Hanna-Barbara pro-wrestling cartoon.). Man, what was with Kobayashi's missing left nipple? Did someone give him a shining purple nurple? The first fall was the longest and best, and I'm excited to see the next match, which appears to be a score-settler with the guys who disrupted the third fall. Fun match, although I think I liked it better than I might've due to it being the first on the set. I really dug the drums in the crowd, and the sudden highspots right before the screwy end were a nifty little treat given the submission-y nature of much of what preceeded it.