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[1991-04-01-SWS-Wrestle Dream in Kobe] Earthquake vs Koji Kitao


Loss

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  • 1 month later...

Really weird match that turned into a shoot for some reason. I never fully understood the story. Anyway, Kitao refuses to cooperate and knocks down the referee to get himself DQ'd. I'm disappointed that they edited him grabbing the house mic and saying wrestling was fake out of this, but I'm not surprised.

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Really weird match that turned into a shoot for some reason. I never fully understood the story. Anyway, Kitao refuses to cooperate and knocks down the referee to get himself DQ'd. I'm disappointed that they edited him grabbing the house mic and saying wrestling was fake out of this, but I'm not surprised.

Short story is that Kitao didn't want to do anything for Tenta, as he was a much lower rank of sumo wrestler, so he didn't respect him. He had done a clean job for him a couple of days earlier and he wasn't about to do the same thing again.

 

Great Kabuki alerted Tenta of the entire situation (the SWS office were tired of Kitao's bullshit) and told him that SWS was OK with him shooting if he had to. So he was ready. Legend said that if a shoot was going to go down, Bret Hart and Hulk Hogan were ready to have John's back.

 

Then you saw what happened. Both men got into a situation neither wanted to be in. In theory John should have used his wrestling to take Kitao down (he took him down like a child when he didn't go down for the bearhug spot) but it's also clear he had no clue on how to react to the kicks.

 

Kitao was fired, Kabuki was reprimanded, and I guess they were OK enough with it a few years later as they fought each other in tag matches for WAR.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Heh--mute this and you'd swear it was an MSG house show. Earthquake does a semi-shoot-looking takedown and that pisses Kitao off, and he throws a tantrum outside the ring. Crowd is NOT impressed with Kitao's reaction. Kitao attempts a shoot armbar and this breaks down, with the crowd clearly on Tenta's side which I find quite interesting. I guess Kitao's rather disgraceful exit from sumo didn't do much to endear him to his native audience. This ultimately is exhibit A of why pro wrestling shoots are rarely interesting--it's generally a lot of standing around with neither guy willing to compromise himself and thus neither guy's willing to do anything. This results in minutes upon minutes of thrilling footage of 'quake and Kitao staring at each other.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Tenta had his guard up from the beginning. Kitao is going for the two eye poke and Tenta gets pissed off. Non cooperative matches are bad. Kitao kicks the referee for good measure. Being on WrestleMania must have gone to his head or something. Kitao came off looking real bad here throwing a fit like this.

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  • 2 months later...

Kitao comes off as a real dick here if you know what's going on. He's prepared to attack Tenta until he realizes Tenta is going to fight back then suddenly he's lost all his courage. So you get a standoff where Kitao knows there's no real going back but he's not prepared to actually be in a fight where he might get hit back. Tenta doesn't really want to fight but he's not about to let anyone take advantage of him either.

 

Granted, Tenta isn't really a guy I'd want to get into a street fight with. But Kitao still comes off as a coward who's only willing to jump Tenta without warning and, like most bullies, not someone that knows what to do when pushed back. Trying to shoot armbar a guy out of the blue is pretty low, and Kitao really is lost when Tenta was ready for it.

 

Bizarre, but I must admit I found it strangely entertaining as a one-time viewing in its own way. Nothing you ever need to see twice though.

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  • 1 year later...

So this is what an unplanned shoot looks like. Pete's right; it was boring as hell. The only thing that kept my interest was hearing Quake challenge Kitao to fight him like a man (at least I'm assuming that's what he said; the Japanese announcers talk all over it), Kitao not only refuses to fight, he kicks the referee down to get himself deliberately disqualified. Real sweet guy, huh? Did he actually think that Vince was going to let him beat one of his hottest heels, even in his (Kitao's) home country?

 

Knowing their feud history, it would have been neat to see Hogan back Quake in a real-life shoot. I almost wish Kitao would have tried something for just that reason.

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  • 1 year later...
  • 9 months later...

Tenta was definitely a guy that you wouldn't want to mess with. Stevie Ray's recent interview when he talked about Tenta wanting to kill Arn Anderson was pretty hilarious because it was so out of character for him. But it's a credit to Tenta's professionalism that he'd later work with Kitao again AND put him over in a match five years later.

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  • GSR changed the title to [1991-04-01-SWS-Wrestle Dream in Kobe] Earthquake vs Koji Kitao

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