Naohiro Hoshikawa Appreciation Reviews!

I feel like watching alot of Naohiro Hoshikawa matches over the next 10 days or so, and as a result all you readers are going to be forced to read my thoughts (I’m proficient in water-boarding, don’t test me).

So for those who don’t know, Hoshikawa is a wrestler whose extremely awesome (and under-appreciated) career was cut short due to an accidental injury while wrestling for the Zero 1 promotion in 2004. He fell into a coma and had severe brain and nerve damage. It looked really, really bad for him for a while. However he has made a really promising recovery in recent years, to the point where he visited a Zero 1 show this past Christmas and was able to stand and talk to fans. He was said to be in really great spirits as can be seen from this picture with his great partner and rival Ikuto Hidaka:

While there is no chance of Hoshi ever wrestling another match again (walking will be a miracle and that’s something he’s really trying for), he was able to assemble a catelogue of matches in his career that from what I have seen, compares admirably with the best juniors of his era. So lets dive right in, with a match from Hoshi’s first promotion – Michinoku Pro.

Super Delfin/Naohiro Hoshikawa/Masato Yakushiji vs Dick Togo/MENS Teioh/Shoichi Funaki (10-10-97)

OH MY GOD, This match ROCKED BALLS!!!!!!

You knew things would be good when KDX come out looking like the biggest pimps ever. Dick Togo with a DICKMANIA t-shirt and a skull balaclava, Funaki with killer blue/white facepaint and beads, BEADS in his hair, and Teioh with a fur coat that pretty much screamed “I am above everybody else on earth and you can all suck my big gay dick”.

So the match…. oh man, this was right up there with the best M-Pro tags for me. Easily one of the best Kaientai performances I’ve seen. All three of them were just unleashing KILL on the babyfaces, particularly the more inexperienced Hoshikawa and Yakushiji. Funaki hit a demon of a brainbuster, Dick hit three picture perfect belly to belly throws in a row, and Teioh was hitting whatever ridiculously awesome move came to mind at any moment.

First time Hoshikawa was in the ring I thought he looked way less impressive than what I saw from him in 2001/2002, but within a minutes or two that changed and he was on fire. He had some amazing exchanges with Dick and Teioh especially. Anyway, the highlight of the match was THE SICKEST THING I’VE SEEN IN AGES – Dick and Teioh unleash this German Suplex into Backdrop Murder Driver combo on Hoshi and he rolls out of the ring, destroyed. Then Yakushiji comes in and gets the EXACT same treatment just more brutal. So Delfin has to go it alone for a while.

Eventually the two youngsters come back to life to aid Delf, and we get a crazy ass finishing sequence with all kinds of amazing nearfalls. Finish kinda sucked but the crowd still went nuts, as Togo was trapped by all three faces and put down by a slightly botched Shouda type move.

I’d go ****3/4. A gem of a match.

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