August 31 2004
International Wrestling Association Japan
IWA Japan 10th Anniversary
Yoyogi National Gymnasium #2 Tokyo, Japan
I knew a match like this had to come at some point: something that leaves me simultaneously unmotivated and driven. Unmotivated in the sense that mostly everything surrounding this match is either bad, uninteresting, or depressing; therefore, I have little desire to write about it. Driven in the sense that I was desperately looking for anything else to do. The best thing I can do is get on with this one and quickly move on.
IWA Japan had arguably peaked in 1995 with their famous Kawasaki Dream show featuring the King of the Deathmatch Tournament. Still, they would continue for another 19 years without the connections founder Víctor Quiñones had provided the promotion, who had left at the end of '95. By the early 2000s, it's been claimed things started to turn around with a TV deal with Samurai TV and the bringing in of Steve Williams. I remain skeptical of the extent of the benefits from those two things. While it helps any promotion to have a television presence, I can't determine when their show aired and how many people were watching. As for Williams, he obviously had value in Japan with his lengthy All Japan run, but finding paid attendance figures also hasn't been easy.
By late August 2004, Williams' throat cancer had spread, forcing him to pull out of IWA Japan's 10th Anniversary show, at which he was apparently slated to win the IWA World Championship. Fortunately, the promotion had several past-their-prime wrestlers to fill in. Among them were Jim Duggan, Big Boss Man, and The Barbarian (working as Konga the Barbarian), all participating in a tournament to determine the IWA World Champion at the anniversary show.
The match we have here is Jim Duggan against Bruiser Kong in the first round of said tournament.
Duggan finished up with WCW in 2000 and spent a few years wandering the indies. In there somewhere, he had a stint with XWF (the missing variable in pro wrestling) while that promotion lasted. I pray to any higher power that I don't have any of those tapings. He came into IWA Japan along with the parade of broken-down guys for only seven shows. In fact, this is the second-to-last one. He would get one last run with WWE from 2006 to 2008, where he would look slightly more motivated.
Jeff Bradley was originally an independent wrestler from Florida who got a spot as a jobber for WWF for a very brief amount of time. In May 1995, he worked two ECW house shows in Florida against Taz as the Evil Snake. Cagematch has it listed as "Evil Snack," which may be due to some of the site's translation hiccups, but honestly, I kind of like that name more. He'd be brought into ECW that summer as Dudley Dudley, the most pure Dudley, and jumpstart the Dudleys in a run that lasted until late October that year. He'd follow that up with runs in IPW (Florida), Big Japan, and a near decade spent going back to Puerto Rico for tours.
We start off the match with a lockup. Kidding. This is a four-minute nothing match that acts, I guess, as a mini-brawl. Really just a complete waste of time. All but one of the matches in this tournament go under four minutes, the exception being The Barbarian defeating George Hines in four minutes AND twenty-three seconds. The only spot I remember from this is Kong slowly placing a plank of wood on Duggan. There was another brawl after the match just to serve as both guys' exit to the back. Duggan would go on to win the tournament and IWA World Championship in a final against Big Boss Man. Duggan's last match in IWA Japan was a title defense against Bruiser Kong in October 2004, successfully defending his title and never going on to lose it.
Moving on.
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