A Look At.. Akira Jo #2

It's almost one year to this day since A Look At.. started with Akira Jo as the first protagonist of the series. Sure it wasn't meant to be that long of a hiatus, but I spoke about it in another piece here on the blog, so let's dive into more of Akira Jo, this time with three matches a bit newer than before.

Akira Jo & Tatsuhiko Nakagawa vs. Raito Shimizu & Rikiya Fudo (Kazushi Gumi, 01/11/2020)

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We are starting with a tag team from a show of Super Hard Fighting Group Kazushi Gumi. The name is as intriguing as the shows itself, with killers like Super Crafter U, Daisaku Shimoda, Takahiro Tababa and others being regulars for the promotion of Kazushi Miyamoto. With Rikiya Fudo and Tatsuhiko Nakagawa we see two former International Martial Arts Champions, the primary title of the promotion, in the match as well as with Akira Jo one who will win the title just two months after this match.

So what was served to us here? To be honest it was really awesome stuff. BASEMENT MONSTAR is an awesome venue for some gritty atmosphere, four men who showed as a very hatred match between them and some cool stuff happening. Tatsuhiko Nakagawa got busted wide open after a chairshot by beefy monster Rikiya Fudo and it add even more to the match. Nakagawa just ruled with his karate stuff, headbutts and being a prick here while doing some heel schtick, too. Albeit Fudo turned the tables around and used Nakagawa's black belt against him as well.

Shimizu, Fudo and Jo were running like tanks around, hitting each other pretty hard, too. I just loved the intensity of the fight, you just had the feeling both teams want to badly hurt their respective opponents. I also enjoyed Raito going into some holds against Nakagawa, which was a nice change of pace. It eventually lead to Jo's awesome knee to the face while Shimizu had Nakagawa in a crab hold. Special kudos to the drunk fan in rose who yelled at Raito and needed to be guided back to his seat.
RATING: 8/10

Akira Jo vs. Kenta Kosugi (VKF, 10/23/2023)

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Three years later we see our boy in VKF Pro Wrestling, a promotion which is ran by a video production company called Video Kid's Factory. This particular show was held at Azalea Taisho in Osaka and is called Halloween Havoc, the logo is also veeeery similar to the old WCW one. Akira's opponent is Kenta Kosugi, who is from Aichi Prefecture and mostly works for promotions based in that Prefecture like Team DERA, Sportiva or when Big Japan is coming to town.

These two men had already two matches before against each other in VKF. In 2020 Kosugi came out on top while Jo got his revenge just a year later when he defeated Kosugi as the VKF King Of Naniwa Champion in a titlematch, this time they met without a championship on the line again. This was two beefy boys starting to hit each other hard, with Jo mixing the match up with some nice kicks as well.

Sure it lacked some excitement at the beginning and came across a bit slow, but the change of pace came later during the match when both man met in the middle of the ring and Jo even hitting a shoot headbutt on Kosugi. I loved Jo's knee and forearm strikes here, but Kosugi got the win with a bad looking chokeslam attempt.
RATING: 5.5/10

Akira Jo & SAKI vs. Hiroshi Yamato & Rydeen Hagane (Okkon, 10/12/2020)

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Okay now we are talking. We're at a small little venue, which is a restaurant for Hiroshima-style Okonomiyaki (a kind of pancake), where Okkon de Mat Pro Wrestling helds their events in front of 31 people, according to ShuPro. Some random dude filmed the match where Indy allrounder Hiroshi Yamato teamed up with Rydeen Hagane (PURE-J) against SAKI (Color's) and Akira Jo.

So of course this is just a laughing party. All people, from the wrestlers to the audience, are having a great time in those twelve minutes and that is the best thing in pro-wrestling, right? Do you miss something if you don't watch that piece of wrestling? Of course not.

But you will also miss a very cool sequence when Akira Jo and Rydeen Hagane finally met on the mat. They literally f*cking each other up with forearm strikes, which was pretty cool to be honest. Yamato also ate some strikes by Jo, but ultimately won the match though.
RATING: 4/10