Found Footage Friday: KIMURA~! FUJINAMI~! INOKI~! HULK~! CHOSHU~! YATSU~! KHAN~! MAEDA~!

Kengo Kimura vs. Tatsumi Fujinami 11/19/82 NJPW

 

MD: Another day, another Japanese HH channel. This one feels particularly interesting as it's a new challenge by Kimura for Fujinami's title and in some ways it feels like a precursor to their 86/87 singles feud after they have great success as a tag team. Kimura comes in with a chip on his shoulder, refusing to shake Fujinami's hand and then immediately bypassing the early feeling out process for a belly-to-back and a jumping kick to the head off the top. Throughout this match, Kimura would strike first, but Fujinami would shut him down until slowly, surely, he rose to a level of competitiveness and likely anger to meet him in the middle. Case in point, Fujinami would wrestle his way back into the match, containing Kimura, but Kengo would refuse to break clean in the ropes, slapping at Fujinami multiple times before Fujinami started to return the favor. No matter how much aggression Kimura showed, Fujinami could hit a dropkick out of nowhere and get back in it. Eventually, Fujinami had enough and started working at the leg. Kimura took advantage of that eventually by catching a kick and hitting a dragon screw. That opened Fujinami up for a pile driver. He was able to fight back though, reversing a whip into the rails on the floor before eventually taking over just enough to hit a belly-to-back (with a close kickout) for the win. I know it took a few more years for it to all bubble over, but Kimura did not look like a guy who fully got it all out of his system here. Definitely an interesting piece of the puzzle.

Antonio Inoki/Tatsumi Fujinami/Akira Maeda vs. Riki Choshu/Yoshiaki Yatsu/Animal Hamaguchi NJPW 10/19/83

MD: I've seen a bunch of these tags and six-mans from this feud but I don't have a chronological sense of everything and how this one fits in. The universal traits are all there though. Over time, six-man tags have been about a lot of different things. Right now, very often, they're an opportunity to get in as many spots as possible, to keep cycling through to ensure that the action never ends. Here though, it was all about the mood of danger. If you got too close to Choshu's corner, you were going to pay. If you couldn't stop them from pulling you back in that direction, you would pay. The extra person took up an extra ten, fifteen percent of the apron and created an additional danger zone. Likewise, if you were able to roll towards your corner desperately, there was that much more chance you'd be able to tag your partner. The physical space of the ring had a different value assigned to it than in normal tag matches and they leveraged that value to create an overarching sense of peril and opportunity. It's fun to watch it play out in the moment. Everyone had a chance to face everyone else here. Maeda got to hit his suplexes and spin wheel kick, Fujinami his dropkicks, Choshu to throw some lariats. Obviously, the most electric pairings were Inoki vs Choshu and Fujinami vs Choshu, but everything felt dynamic. There was a moment where they were able to down Inoki with a couple of double teams (which contrasted with the moment early on where Inoki shrugged off a double headbutt to burst out of their corner), and Choshu, sensing the opportunity rushed at full speed towards him to lock on a Scorpion as only he could. Choshu just had an extra theatrical gear he could tap into that electrified the crowd and made everything feel larger than life, and of course, if he was doing with Inoki, the effect was multiplied. Things broke down eventually, as you'd imagine, but Inoki got at least a moral win by throwing everyone out as the bell rang. Nothing particularly stood out here relative to other matches in this series but it's all good so that's ok.

Antonio Inoki/Hulk Hogan/Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Killer Khan/Tiger Toguchi/Yoshiaki Yatsu NJPW 11/19/83

MD: What stands out immediately is just how hot the crowd was for this, or at least how hot they were for Hogan and most especially Inoki. He was getting chants far before arriving and when he and Hogan came out in matching robes, the place went nuts. This was more or less back and forth but I didn't agree with all of the backs and all of the forths. Starting with Fujinami and Toguchi made sense. Things cycled around with a slight good guy advantage until Khan carried Fujinami over to his corner so they could double team (a fireman's carry clubber followed by an Argentinian backbreaker clubber). Then the other side cycled around on Fujinami until he came back on Khan. That was unfortunate. I don't mind double heat with some comeback/control in the middle but it would have been better if it was, let's say, Yatsu getting his leg worked over as opposed to the monster. There was a bit of a foreboding feeling as it cycled back around to Fujinami doing it as you just knew Khan would come back, and of course, he did. Eventually Fujinami got a hot tag and Inoki and Hogan cleared house. Things built to Hogan vs Yatsu, which went about as you'd expect. At one point, Yatsu half ducked an Axe Bomber and I'm not sure Hogan expected it as he followed up with some big clubbers before doing it again. Things devolved into chaos and everyone getting counted out shortly thereafter. Hogan was repeating himself a couple of times and Yatsu especially wasn't there yet, but they were very, very over and that's always fun to watch.

ER: A very entertaining Tiger Toguchi and Killer Khan match, with them and Yatsu carrying a kind of uninspired Hogan and Inoki (Fujinami was plenty inspired). Inoki has this major presence and the crowd is dying for him, so it's funny when he finally gets into the match and just ices everything down with a standing leglock. 1983 Hogan in Japan has that Bodybuilder Dauber Dybinski posture, lumbering around and looking like a neanderthal with no juice. It's alarming how wild the crowd is for Hogan as he doesn't acknowledge them once the entire match. But if Hogan was a first year Batista and Inoki was mostly indifferent, Toguchi and Khan knew how to keep this moving. 

Toguchi looks like the largest possible Japanese member of Mamas and the Papas and I love how he never hesitates to step to Hogan or Inoki. The longer the match goes, the bigger Toguchi bumps, and he has this great Clumsy Taue motion. He gets run upside down in the corner and takes a big bump through the ropes to the floor from a Hogan knee. He bumps so hard to the floor, and Hogan just stands in place like Bull Buchanan. Killer Khan has to jump to the floor and tell Toguchi to stop selling and get back in the ring because Hogan wasn't budging. Hogan didn't budge until Yatsu ducked instead of taking an axe bomber, but wound up making the spot cooler by getting scalped and stumbling face first into the ropes. Hogan doesn't see it that way and is suddenly Stan Hansen but in a kind of bratty way. Look at the slappy stampy way he tags out after stiffing up Yatsu and hitting his Realest axe bomber. Hogan stiffs up Yatsu and suddenly looks really overpowering, and it stands out as the first time he's looked alive all match. The thing is, that's basically how overpowering Khan looks whenever he is in. Khan is a huge guy who knows how to wrestle big. He's one of the all time great Hogan and Inoki opponents because he could push pace and fall big for stars. But you see Inoki's jawline and pompadour and it's pretty easy to see why he still gets the biggest reaction in Chiba for his loaded up enziguiri. 

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Found Footage Friday: LAWLER~! DUNDEE~! TAYLOR~! RAPADA~! GORO TSURUMI RIP~! LLPW vs AJW~!

Goro Tsurumi/Animal Hamaguchi vs. Great Kojika & Motoshi Okuma IWE 11/3/77

MD: Goro Tsurumi died last week and the IWE tribute channel released a match that we hadn't had before, for the All Asia Tag Team Titles. I'll admit that I've seen all of these guys older but not necessarily a ton of their 70s work. There was a lot to like here, though. It was a long 2/3 falls match and that's with us coming in at the ten minute mark. My guess is that we primarily missed a lot of matwork because for a title match, this didn't have much. Kojika and Okuma were in green and Hamaguchi and Tsurumi in red and both felt like real teams. Kojika and Okuma were heels, de facto or otherwise. They tried to cut off the ring and were quicker to go to eye rakes, for instance. Hamaguchi had big energy and a very pronounced way of wrestling, with Tsurumi maybe scrappier. There was a sense that they had the general idea of what they were trying to do but the execution didn't always work. You got the idea though.

The first two falls were fairly back and forth, with the champions cheating and taking an advantage and the challengers coming back and then punishing them for their transgressions. The first fall ended in a Hamaguchi airplane spin and then the second started with a great near-fall off of one from Tsurumi. The end of the second fall was Tsurumi getting stuffed on a roll up due to cheating and eating a diving headbutt from Okuma. The third fall wasn't long but it was pretty great, as they opened up Tsurumi with a posting on the outside and really targeted the wound with chops and punches and especially headbutts as he desperately tried to fight from underneath. Good blood, good fire, great woundwork. Good hot tag and comeback. The finish was a little wonky as Kojika broke up a pin with a knee off the top and immediately scored a pin of his own when there was no way he was the legal man, but no one seemed to blink at it. The great stuff here was really great and the rest was good in concept even if not always in execution. It's a good tribute match for Tsurumi for some of the dominant offense and that bit of fighting back bloodied.

Suzuka Minami/Bat Yoshinaga vs Rumi Kazama/Yukari Osawa LLPW 5/11/93

Sebastian covered this over at his blog and it's really worth a look. He said that this made the LLPW vs AJW feud the joshi equivalent of NJPW vs War and it's not far off. Hokuto was ringside here and this is all leading up to her facing Kazama (LLPW president) later on. As best as I understand it Yoshinaga was generally banished to weird Inoki-ism style matches against athletes on the AJW cards but as LLPW wrestlers were presented as shooters, she was brought into the limelight to face them. She certainly made the most of the opportunity and everything she does here is worth watching. Here, she's got swagger, a bullying presence, a toughness, a meanness, a chip on her shoulder. It could be anything from the way she drives in a double axe handle to set up a pile driver to the way she absorbs kicks  and stares down her opponents. Osawa, who is dressed like the world's most violent Christmas elf here, is not afraid to throw brutal, brutal kicks. At one point, Yoshinaga has Kazama in a half crab and Osawa comes in. Yoshinaga stares her down to the point where she starts kicking and absorbs and absorbs until the ref has enough and pulls her back to the corner. Later on, a real point of transition has her absorb until she gets fed up and lays in on Osawa (letting Kazama recover enough that she gets a roll up and can make a tag a bit later). Their advantage leads to Osawa putting a half crab onto Minami; Yoshinaga comes in and with one kick practically sends Osawa across the ring in a lovely moment of contrast. Kazama, shortly thereafter, put on a bit too lackadaisical a cover on Yoshinaga, so she just lifts her arm up, hand outstretched, and gets out of the pin by locking in a devastating iron claw. It's the sort of thing you wish Miro would steal. Ultimately, this does go quick and there are spots a plenty but never once do you lose the sense that they're trying to cause one another severe bodily harm so it's sort of hard to complain.

Jerry Lawler/Mike Rapada vs. Bill Dundee/Terry Taylor NWA Main Event 6/2/01

MD: It's Lawler vs Dundee so we have to cover it, but there wasn't a lot of Lawler vs Dundee here. Some weird things with this one as the audio cuts out early in the match but the announcers (including Bart Sawyer) talk over the footage. You get the whole thing but have no idea how the crowd is reacting audibly. It also has one of the weirdest, most counter-intuitively set up turns I've ever seen but more on that in a bit.

I like Taylor and Dundee as partners in 2000 because Taylor plays into Dundee's natural corniness and, at the same time, makes Dundee look more credible and like a killer. Just Dundee's punches and stomps (and one brutal double stomp) during the long heat on Rapada are great. Taylor's offense looks ok but he always had that patina of hokey; it works when he's taking Lawler's punches on the comeback but less so when he's in control. You do want to see him get punched, granted. Lawler works the apron for a lot of this but we get another example early on on how he throws his head back into the turnbuckle when taking shots in the corner, which is one of those all time great things he does. Dundee and Taylor have funny tandem bits where they'll set something up and the payoff won't be all that impressive. Again, it's a lot more impressive when Dundee's just laying it in.

The finish is bonkers with Rapada taking and taking and having a couple of hope spots and finally getting the tag but then choosing to pile drive Lawler out of nowhere when the ref is distracted after the fist drop. If they had built up tension where Rapada thought Lawler wasn't doing enough to make the tag or there was some miscommunication where Lawler accidentally hit Rapada or if it was a ruse all along and Taylor and Dundee were only pretending to hurt Rapada or if Lawler was the one playing face-in-peril it might have worked, but as it was, it just seemed bizarre that he got beat on so much by Taylor and Dundee (and so meanly by Dundee especially) only to care more about nailing Lawler for no reason when they were about to win. Match overall still probably registers as fun though just because there's a real novelty to Dundee and Taylor working together and because Lawler's really good when he is in there.

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New Footage Friday: RIP Masa Saito, Frank Andersson, Ron Simmons, British Bulldogs, Terry Gordy, Masa Fuchi

We decide to find a couple of Masa Saito Handhelds to focus on, along with a unique All Japan singles match.

Masa Saito/Animal Hamaguchi vs. The British Bulldogs AJPW 5/14/85

MD: I might not be the biggest Hansen fan, but that doesn't mean I'm not one at all. He's the most uncooperative guy imaginable at times, occasionally to the detriment of a match having any structure at all, but he more than makes up for it in atmosphere and visceral intensity. You get exhausted watching a Hansen match. In this setting, Dynamite has all of the drawbacks of Hansen and none of the upside. This is about ten minutes. Nine of those, including the final minute, have the Bulldogs in charge. Dynamite doesn't sell a single thing (including getting tossed off the top rope). Some of the Bulldogs' stuff is pretty cool, like the tandem set up second rope power slam and Dynamite's tombstone and the finish is fine with Saito and Hamaguchi getting fed up after a ref bump and just demolishing Davey Boy in the corner for the DQ, but the match itself is problematic at best. There's a reason why so much of the far-too-revered mid 80s WWF tag team scene doesn't hold up to scrutiny and you're looking at it in this match.

PAS: I can totally understand why Saito and Hamaguchi got fed up and shoved the ref. I would be pretty pissed if a roided out midget ate me up like that. Saito and Hamaguchi are both legit badasses, Saito beat up multiple cops, you figure they would just make Dynamite sell. I did like a bunch of the Bulldogs moves, that powerslam was great and Dynamite was really explosive, and his one bump to the floor looked great, but I was hoping for an all action match between two dynamic offensive teams and I got the Bulldogs working like the Road Warriors.

Masa Saito/Frank Andersson vs. Hiro Saito/Ron Simmons NJPW 9/23/91

PAS: Andersson is a Swedish Olympian, who had a brief WCW syndie run in the mid 90s, so we had an Olympic tag team against the odd couple of Saito and Simmons. Andersson is super green in pro-wrestling, although he had a nice run of cool suplexes at the end of the match. Still he had some of the worst dropkicks I can remember seeing, it felt like the local football coach was working in a charity Southern tag and insisted on doing a dropkick. There was a nifty bit of business when the Saitos squared offf, and Simmons hit a nice powerslam, but this was an Andersson showcase when he probably shouldn't have been showcased.

MD: Andersson is best described here as a lankier Alex Wright without the smoothness or the rhythm. The best part of the match may be that some kid seems to be ring announcing. The second best part is probably the crowd's reaction to Andersson's lame kick. That's one thing I've enjoyed with these house shows: the crowd is very willing to crack up at something they find funny, be it Enos' reaction to the countered Doomsday Device or just a strike that doesn't look good. At the same time, if someone earns applause, they get it. To be fair to Andersson, he's got occasional explosiveness and his suplexes to lead to the finish were fun. The little bit we get of Masa Saito vs Ron Simmons makes me want more. Simmons is always so good at being in the moment, expressing frustration at a two count or exuberance in breaking a hold. This needed more Masa Saito and less Andersson.

Masanobu Fuchi vs. Terry Gordy AJPW 4/2/92

MD: Now this is the stuff. Just what you'd want from these two. I just wish it went another couple of minutes. I loved the early standoffs. There's such a promise of violence to Fuchi and a promise of impact to Gordy. His one hand slams are the best. Fuchi equalizes things by targeting the knee and it's just vicious. Just like Gordy made those slams look effortless, Fuchi is able to make locking in holds (even a stump puller against a guy Gordy's side) and limb manipulation look so easy. That's true with his small packages late in the match too. He's just able to snatch up body parts out of nowhere like the most natural thing in the world. Anyway, Gordy, who had been selling huge, recovers by repeatedly tossing Fuchi out of the ring, which is a hugely believable way to transition off of selling, and finally puts him down by hitting a short clothesline (after Fuchi had ducked one or two standard ones), and locking in a Cobra. Great stuff. It would have been nice to have five more minutes of it.

PAS: Fuchi was such a huge part of what made All Japan in the early 90s so great, but we really don't have many singles matches during that run, especially against heavyweights, so it is really cool to see what he brings in that situation. Loved Gordy hurling Fuchi with those one armed bodyslams, really contemptuous, and Fuchi responding by tearing up the knee. I especially dug Fuchi catching the up kick and turning it into a stump puller, such a nifty counter. I am the worlds biggest Fujiwara fan and I love watching someone use craft and guile to overcome power. I do think the match could have used one Fuchi reversal or escape when he was trapped in the cobra clutch, the crowd seemed ready to really explode for a Fuchi comeback and the finish felt a little flat. Still this was a real treat, and I want to track down a bunch more Fuchi singles.

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New Footage Friday: UFC vs. Memphis, Blackhearts, Can-Ams

Shinya Hashimoto/Riki Choshu/Ricky Steamboat vs. Big Van Vader/Animal Hamaguchi/Bam Bam Bigelow NJPW 10/11/90

MD: We went with this because it had Vader in it so it was timely. It's not the best showcase match for him, though. There's some exciting brawling with Choshu to begin but this one is really much more about Bigelow, Steamboat, and Choshu. Vader and Hashimoto just aren't in the ring as much. I love Bigelow from this era. Vader may have been more willing to ham it up with crowd interactions than he would be later, but Bigelow takes it a step further. He does a flip bump on a Choshu clothesline. How great is that?

Steamboat really is the X-Factor here, though. He's as Steamboat-y as it gets, providing the heart of his match with his selling, allowing for a stretch of heat that you'd never get in a match like this without him, but also realizing he's in Japan and being double tough in his attempts to fight back and way, way over the top in his offensive bursts. There's this clothesline duck-jumping kick to the head-karate pose that he does against Bigelow that is the most flawless bit of pro wrestling imaginable Post-match angle goes on forever but Hamaguchi makes it worth it with his unexpected charisma. I imagine most people would be glad to watch this.

ER: I've not actually seen any Steamboat/Vader matches in WCW, but I don't think they matched up that often and I certainly didn't realize they had matched up before WCW. But I don't seek out a lot of Steamboat, so this is not something I likely would have known. I am definitely low vote on Steamboat, and didn't think he looked good here, but it worked because everyone treated him like Kikuchi in the classic AJPW six mans. He was nowhere near as good as Kikuchi here, but his light chops and almost connecting dropkicks made him the easy choice to isolate from the group. At one point Bigelow is throwing nice right hooks and has to remind himself to acknowledge Steamboat's little chops. Bigelow had a really great performance and never tried to out-monster Vader, who looked like an outright monster. Hamiguchi would tag in and work like an actual animal let out of a cage. This heel team probably only teamed up on this show, but man that is a winning trio. Bigelow was there for big man bumps (even taking this great banana peel bump onto the apron after the pinfall), Vader looked gargantuan and completely unstoppable, and I loved Hash and Riki as the guys running in to save little Ricky. Bigelow and Vader are a fun team and I loved them using their fat, like Bigelow holding onto Steamboat in the corner while Vader just squished him in a fat sandwich. We didn't get a ton of Hash, but he made his presence felt with a squarely planted DDT, and not many people are better than Choshu at tagging in and blasting folks with a hot tag lariats. I also loved Hamaguchi hugging it out with Choshu after the match. "Hey, no hard feelings, I just teamed with who they told me to" leading to Bigelow and Vader immediately calling him out on his bullshit. "We were still here dude. We saw you."

PAS: I thought this was great and mainly great because Steamboat was spectacular in it. I thought he was a great face in peril, he is an all-time great seller, and I loved how he kept fighting back during the beatdown section, he gets pounded by Bigelow or Vader, but he always fires back with a chop. I loved the section where Bigelow and Steamboat kept exchanging and each shot was faster and harder until they were just unloading on each other. That is a matchup I can't remember seeing before, and I feel like they would have had an all time singles match. The Vader vs. Hash sections were awesome, although it was more of a taste then a meal, but man is that an all time battle of badasses. The finish run was great, with every body running in a throwing big shots ending with a classic Choshu lariat.


Can Am Express vs. The Blackhearts AJPW 9/4/91

MD: This got a lot of time and was big and dumb. Kroffat is one of my favorite AJPW 90s guys because he is a hugely natural de facto heel in a place where you don't always get that. Here, though, the Can-Ams were playing de facto babyface, and they don't hold up as well. Furnas is a solid muscleman hot tag in that role, but Kroffat, even with some flashy flourishes, was playing against type.

The Blackhearts deal is that they have a great entrance in the dark, will bump big, and have so, so many ridiculous tandem double teams, none of which actually look good. The sum of it all gives them an A for effort but this was far more fun than good.

PAS: This was an amusing big dumb heavyweight tag spotfest. It was more Eliminators then Steiners, but it was some big dudes with ideas. Some of them looked bad (the Blackhearts double bulldog was conceptually interesting, but looked dumb), some of them looked cool ( the assisted face buster by the Can-Ams was nifty) but they were all kind of thrown out there without a ton of substance. Still I enjoyed large parts of this in a turn off your brain off kind of way. I could see an ECW video montage of this match set to an Alice in Chains song being pretty cool.

Dustin Starr/Din Thomas vs. Derrick King/Matt Serra 6/15/18

PAS: This was a match in the long storied southern tradition of the sold show money mark tag match. Instead of opposing high school football coaches, we have two ex-UFC guys Thomas and Serra working with old Memphis hands Dustin Starr and Derrick King. This was part of Dana White's Looking for a Fight travel show. Starr and Thomas work heel and Dana White and Jerry Lawler are at ringside along with Starr's valet. Fun shticky match, with King and Starr having really great punches and Thomas and Serra doing some nice amateur rolling. The stuff with the UFC guys against the Memphis guys was a little awkward (Thomas looks like he might have gotten knocked silly by Starr's axehandle), but I am always going to enjoy this kind of match.

MD: Well, this was something. The best thing about this was the fact it felt so Memphis. Really, the first twenty odd minutes or so (out of 27) were pure Memphis. Calhoun was ref. Lawler switched the sides and big timed Dana. Starr is pure throwback, not the Brian Christopher we want, but probably the Brian Christopher we deserve in 2018. There was stalling, jawing, strutting, pretty good punches and over the top selling. The next best thing was Serra and Thomas sparring, with Serra throwing Thomas all over the place. And the last best? Probably Dana White's shit-eating grin as he watched Starr stooge all over the ring.

It all fell apart in the last few minutes with Serra and Dana spending the entire run-up to the hot tag just talking to each other casually as King struggled his way to the corner. That was pretty much the worst hot tag in wrestling history. There was maybe one too many bits of White getting involved with Maria post-match but ultimately this was fine. I was curious how they were going to protect the UFC guys, especially when they were in with the wrestlers and that all worked pretty well. Serra bullied Starr. Despite Serra having the cartwheel, Thomas was the one who seemed more natural for wrestling. He was having a blast, even relishing a bodyslam. And it all ended with a reminder that everyone should spend some cash on Jerry's food. It's the most Memphis thing I've seen out of Memphis in a while

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Now The Earth Was Corrupt in the Sight of Yoshiaki Fujiwara

Pete over at PWO unearthed a bunch of previously unseen New Japan HH which includes some previously unseen early Fujiwara jams. Because there is all of this Fujiwara handheld stuff, plus a couple more new PWFG shows, I am going to intro a Fujiwara advent calendar. New Fujiwara review every day until Christmas!


Yoshiaki Fujiwara/Riki Choshu vs. Roland Bock/Micha Nador NJPW 8/6/81 - GREAT

Neat chance to look at baby Choshu, young Fujiwara (who still looked 45) and a couple of Euro dudes with very little footage. This was an undercard tag, so it didn't have a lot of big dramatic moments, but it had a bunch of nifty smaller ones. Loved the opening Nador v. Fujiwara sections with Fujiwara doing a bunch of spots holding on to a hammerlock. There was also a cool fast reversal section between Nador and Fujiwara later in the match. Bock was fun as a steamroller, he looks like David Crosby but he portrays a powerhouse well, he comes in with some big shoulder blocks and finishes the match with a couple of violent Irish whips into the corner and a nice butterfly suplex.

Yoshiaki Fujiwara/Kengo Kimura/Osamu Kido vs. Animal Hamaguchi/Isamu Teranishi/Ryuma Go NJPW 8/29/82 - GREAT

This was sort of a Choshu's army style six-man before the Choshu's army was a thing. The IWE boys really brought the pace, Go especially was a workrate machine for 1982, he must have really had some demons for his career to end up where it did. Fujiwara isn't a guy you think about as a workrate sprint guy, but he was unsurprisingly awesome in this, throwing cool looking snap suplexes, hitting these cool open hand chops to the head, and isolating Hamaguchi and blasting him with headbutts. Finish was cool with Animal hitting a nifty airplane spin into fallaway slam on Fujiwara for the pin. I also liked how they kept brawling after the bell. I imagine they ran a variation of this trios every show and I imagine it was always great.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE FUJIWARA

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Digging in the Crates Podcast #1

Welcome to my new podcast, as Phil and guest create an on-air Schneider Comp, we pick a couple of matches each episode, discuss what we dig about them and at after a half dozen or so, we will have a new comp.

Digging in the Crates Episode #1

Here are links to the matches

Riki Choshu, Kantaro Hoshino, Kuniaki Kobyashi, Kantaro Hoshino, Kensuke Sasaki v. Animal Hamaguchi, Super Strong Machine, Tasutoshi Goto, Hiro Saito, Masanobu Kurisu 2/3 Falls (New Japan 6/26/90)

Negro Casas v. La Fiera Cabellera contra Cabellera EMLL (1/10/93)

Yukimiko Hotto v. Aja Kong (AJW 1/21/94)

Low-Ki v. Chris Dickenson (JAPW 3/21/15)

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Thunder on! Stride on! Yoshiaki Fujiwara. Strike With Vengeful Stroke!

Yoshiaki Fujiwara/Antonio Inoki/Akira Maeda vs. Riki Choshu/Yoshiaki Yatsu/Animal Hamaguchi NJ 2/9/84-GREAT

This is part of the Choshu's Army feud and Fujiwara got his first big run here and was awesome. The match is focused around the Army triple teaming and beating on Fujiwara. They bust him open and he fights them off with blood running down his face, there is a moment where he blocks a shot, smiles a bloody smile and just unloads with headbutts. Choshu's army matches all pretty much have unsatisfying finishes, and this ends with a crappy ref DQ, still this was the earliest super Fujiwara performance I have seen, and all Fujiwara fans should check it out.

Yoshiaki Fujiwara v. Riki Choshu NJ 3/2/84-FUN

Real short brawl, which was still a blast. Fujiwara comes out ready for war and they just go at it. Choshu gets a bit of advantage with some big lariats, and Fujiwara roles to the floor and grabs a bolt and tries to stab Choshu with it. The Army runs in and we get a big multi man brawl. More of angle then a match, but you have to love the intensity and heat from this period of New Japan

Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs Super Tiger UWF 9/11/85- EPIC

This is the final UWF 1 match up between these two, and really their masterpiece. Kris Zellner described the beginning of this match resembling a heavyweight title fight, and that is really accurate. The first part has a lot of feints and shrugs, Fujiwara throws some jabs, Tiger tosses some range finder kicks but neither guy wants to make the first move. At one point Fujiwara grabs Tiger's wrist and just yanks him in to take him down.

Then you have the Fujiwara controlling Tiger on the mat. The two most trite moves in the first UWF are the half crab and sitting leg lock. Watch some of the lesser matches from this period and they are loaded with diffident half crabs and somnambulant sitting leg locks, watching Fujiwara work those moves shows the real gulf between him and everyone else. He is constantly moving and working to improve his position, and Tiger is constantly trying to counter. There is never a point in the hold where nothing is happening. After being controlled on the mat, Tiger is able to get a break and unloads a nasty jumping knee right to Fujiwara's face. Fujiwara gets up at nine, backs Tiger into the corner and just blasts him with one of the best straight right hands in wrestling history. And it is on. Most UWF1 matches have a slow build and a hot finish, but this was the best slow build of any of the UWF, and damn near the best hot finish.

The end run of this match was really all about establishing distance. Super Tiger needs to have some distance to unleash his kicks, and when he gets that distance Fujiwara does an amazing job of selling them as deadly, even when they don't land clean. He is drooling, eyes rolling back into his head, checking his tooth to see if it still there, gasping for breath when he gets hit in the belly, Tiger looks like a guy who has the eraser in his feet, he can end a match with one shot. Meanwhile Fujiwara is attempting to keep it close, either on the mat, or in the corners where he can land body shots or headbutts. The finish run is perfect example of that, Tiger gets a couple of near fall KO's, but makes the mistake of locking up with Fujiwara, he tries for a German suplex, but Fujiwara, throws a back elbow, and just drops into a Fujiwara armbar for the tap out. Just an awesome perfect finish for a great match.

Yoshiaki Fujiwara/Antonio Inoki v. Akira Maeda/Tatsumi Fujinami NJ 9/7/87- GREAT

This is a battle of teams who really match up well against each other, Fujinami and Maeda are two of Fujiwara's best opponents, and Inoki also really works well with both. Built really well, with everyone hitting the mat with vengance, Inoki and Maeda had an especially neat exchange with Inoki using an Elevator to reverse position and land some nasty punches from the top. Finish was spectacular with Inoki avoiding all of Fujinami's attacks and catch him with his enzigiri, however Maeda comes in and catches Fujiwara with a nasty liver kick for the KO. Total chaos at the end which ruled.

The Complete and Accurate Yoshiaki Fujiwara

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