Digging in the Crates Podcast Episode #7

All Segunda Caida Episode with Phil and MattD investigating SC favorite Yoshiaki Fujiwara. Matt breaks his Fujiwara cherry with four great matches


http://www.placetobenation.com/digging-in-the-crates-7/

Yoshiaki Fujiwara v. Super Tiger UWF 9/11/85

Yoshiaki Fujiwara v. Riki Choshu NJ 6/9/87

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3m34p8

Tatsumi Fujinami, Keiichi Yamada, Shiro Koshinaka, Yoshiaki Fujiwara & Kengo Kimura vs. Hiro Saito, Kuniaki Kobayashi, Super Strong Machine, Masa Saito & Riki Choshu (9/12/88)

Yoshiaki Fujiwara v.  Bart Vale Miami Shootfighting 3/20/92

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_XVxuyARHY

In addition Phil recommends the Whit Stillman directed Jane Austen adaptation Love and Friendship

Matt recommends George McDonald Frasers Flashman novels

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Tuesday Night Digging in the Crates

Terry Funk/Freddy Valentine v. Johnny Slaughter/Hector Guerrero ACW 4/17/99

This is the kind of thing that youtube has been a boon for. This is a random match from a indy somewhere put up by some guy named Johnny Slaughter, and we get to see a battle between two all time greats. Hector and Terry are both guys with lots of amusing shtick and it is fun to watch that shtick collide. Hector breaks out a star, and some fun rolling around for a tag, plus great brawling with Funk. Funk wanders around throwing windmills, beating the piss out of Slaughter doing Terry Funk stuff. The two local guys were fine, but this is obviously a blast mainly to get a glance at a couple of legends doing their thing.

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Digging in the Crates Podcast #5

Phil is joined by multiplatformed Internet journalist David Bixenspan to discuss some cool under the radar matches

Digging in the Crates #5

Perros Del Mal v. Dinamitas

Caribbean Sunshine Boys v. Kung Fu Fighters

Danny Cannon v. Kongo Kong

The Weeds podcast

Some CTI Records Jazz

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Digging in the Crates Podcast #4

Will returns for a special all NWA Classics 24/7 episode of the show.

Digging in the Crates #4


We talk about Andre v. Harley, Fantastics v. Midnight Express, Jose Lothario v. Hecto Guerrero and JYD v. Butch Reed chain match. If you haven't subscribed to NWA Classics, what are you waiting for???

NWA CLASSICS 24/7

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Digging in the Crates Podcast #3

It is an all Segunda Caida show as I am joined by Eric to discusses some matches for a future Schneider Comp.

Digging in the Crates #3

Here are links to the matches

Spoiler v. Wahoo McDaniels NWA Houston 4/21/79


Bradshaw/Terry Funk/Dustin Runnels v. Too Much/Jerry Lawler 7/25/98

Giant Baba v. Killer Karl Kox 3/81

Carlos Colon v. Stan Hansen 2/87

Also check out

Shock Cinema Magazine 

The Mynabirds

And stay listening past the theme song for a post credit scene!! Marvel style!

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Digging in the Crates Podcast #2

Welcome to Episode #2 of the Digging in the Crates Podcast. Phil is joined by Kris Zellner as we add four more matches to the ongoing Schneider Comp, We also add some non-wrestling recommendations at the end.

Digging in the Crates episode #2


Here are some links to matches

Cactus Jack v. Tarzan Goto 10/5/95

Daisuke Ikeda/Takahiro Oba v. Kengo Mashimo/Makoto Hashi 10/24/10

Dean Malenko v. Bobby Eaton 4/27/97


Brazo Jr. v. Kortiz 9/24/14

Tattletales

The Violent Century by Lavie Tidhar

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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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THE MOTHERFUCKING INTERNET- Satanico v. Sangre Chicana 1983!!!

Satanico v. Sangre Chicana CMLL 9/24/83




I have a flight in the morning. I was about to go to bed when this bombshell drops on my youtube feed. If the date on this is correct this is not only the earliest Satanico match we have on tape, this is Sangre the day after taking MS1's hair in maybe the greatest wrestling match of all time, working a dramatic lucha title match. This isn't a TV match, it is filmed like a close up HH, possibly by an infant Black Terry Jr., we get some great close ups of the struggle in each hold, and when Satanico torches Chicana with a tope into a light poll, we get a close up at the glazed and bloody face of Chicana, it actually looks like his eye is swollen shut. The third fall was pretty dramatic with Chicana surviving several submissions before coming back and getting a revenge tope. Finish was a double pin, and a bit of a cop out, to what had the feel of a budding classic. We do get a couple of minutes of post match brawling which were as great as you might expect. Maybe a step below an absolute classic, but a hell of a late night treat.

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Tuesday Night Digging in the Crates - Santo/Espanto v. Panther/Blackman

El Hijo Del Santo/Espanto Jr. v. Black Man/Blue Panther 3/5/90

During my random internet surfing I find this previously unseen lucha handheld in the middle of a 6 hour file on youtube (1:58). This was listed as the first tag match of rivals Espanto and Santo, and like one might expect it was a a countdown until the turn. More of an exhibition then a great match, it was a cool chance to watch Santo and Panther do their dance, along with some fun brawling by Blackman. Neat discovery

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Thursday Night Digging in the Cates

Hashimoto would have turned 49 today. That's sad. Here's a weird match he was in.



Shinya Hashimoto & Shinjiro Otani vs. Atsushi Onita & Great Sasuke WEW 5/5/02

PAS: Fun inter-promotional Puro match which is one of my favorite types of Puro matches. One minute in Onita sprays Hashimoto in the face with mist and we get a DQ and a crazy brawl with the ring filling up with WEW and Zero-One trainees. We get some mic work and a restart and we get a solid match with Hashimoto doing some nasty pummeling, Sasuke hitting a couple of crazy dives and Onita and Hash having a charisma off. Onita gets DQ'ed again for a fireball, and unfortunately the youtube cuts out at the bell and we don't get to see much post match melee. Not a stone cold classic or anything, but the inter-promotional war is a venue which Hashimoto excels in, and this is a neat little seen example of that.

ER: This is pretty bad, but also not bad and completely worth your time. I love ring clearing brawls from Japanese sleaze promotions, and this one had one early. Onita tries like one shoulderblock exchange with Hash, it doesn't go well so he immediately mists him and tons of people in white jogging suits run in and everybody kicks the shit out of everybody. It didn't have quite the same fire as his own Ocean Pacific wearing FMW punks vs mulleted karate doofs from early FMW, but the sentiment was there. Otani has a good time here and Hash projects an attitude of "why the hell did I sign up for this match", just wandering around and throwing thundering left kicks to Onita. Onita is lean and ripped, probably due to his Japanese Diet (wakka wakka) and he seems plenty willing to get kicking and have his face stomped on. Sasuke is still a total nut at this point, doing two wild swantons from the top to the floor, completely 100% whiffing both of them. One of them sees Otani laid out on a table in the foreground, while Sasuke swantons to nothing in the background. Later on he wings himself off the top and crashes and burns to the floor again, right past his standing opponent. Moment and visual of the match has to be Hash beating Onita into the corner and hitting a wild kick, resulting in Onita spitting out mist into the air. Never seen a guy's mist attempt backfire and I loved the spit take visual.

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Saturday Night Digging in the Crates

We take a trip to late 70's Japan for an earlier version of one of the best matches of the 80's

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPO7BeZVXP4

Stan Hansen v. Andre the Giant 5/18/79

PAS: This is an awesome match up and has the craziness you want from these two guys. Hansen comes in starts trying to stomp a bunch of geishas with flowers. It continues from there. Andre wasn't really working heel like he was in the 80's match as he kept getting cheap shotted by Freddie Blassie and he ends up bloody from an Hansen lariat. We get the expected double count out finish with both guys hurling chairs. May not be the certified classic that they had later, but it was a total blast

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Monday Night Digging in the Crates

We take a trip down to Puebla to see a bunch of great under-pimped locals, including our favorite lost but not forgotten chubster.



Toro Bill Sr., Toro Bill Jr. & Policeman vs. Asturiano, Lestat & Centella de Oro CMLL 2/2/09

ER: Man do I love this match. This match is only 5 years old but at times feels like it could be 20 years old or 5 years into the future (where people will still be whining about hoverboard technology). Obviously the immediate standout is Toro Bill Sr., who works and looks like fat Satanico. His brawling is nice but you came for the bumps and Bill delivers the bumps. Aside from just an insane bump to the floor, he takes armdrags more gracefully than most luchadors half his size. Centella de Oro seems like a cool regional Freelance type, though with less flying. His arm drags are gorgeous. Lestat has some cool offenense, Toro Bill Jr. hits an out of control fat guy trainee dive, Policeman works like a cool Dinamitas throwback worker. What makes this match so great is that these are six local guys you had never heard of before, being given an opening slot on a CMLL show, and just completely making the most of it. Maybe an opening match shot on a Monday night Puebla show doesn't sound like a big deal, but nobody told these guys if it wasn't. This felt like their M-Pro Barely Legal showcase, and it delivered. Now 5 years removed, Toro Bill Sr. stopped showing up a year after this match, TBJ shows up sporadically (as recently as last year in CMLL for a few matches), Policeman, Lestat, and Centella de Oro haven't made tape in a few years, and Asturiano still gets pretty regular work in CMLL. So they had their shot, delivered, and things don't always work out. But this match will always exist and will always rule.

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Sunday Night Digging in the Crates

We take a trip to Japan to watch Russians fight



Volk Han v. Andrei Kopylov Rings 11/22/94

Very cool shootstyle match that feels like what Soviet Pro Wrestling would have looked like. Han is a mat savant, and Kopylov was very cool in using his strength to force his way out of armbars. I loved the RINGS nasty slapfight and the finish was very cool with Han trying one too many counters and almost twisting himself into a submission. I love all Han, but I feel like I should go on a Kopylov run too.

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Saturday Night Digging in the Crates

We take a trip to the turn of the century for some nasty inter-promotional nastiness

Shinya Hashimoto/Tadao Yasuda vs. Tamon Honda/Masao Inoue Zero-One 04/18/01 



Man was this fucking great. Z1 v. NOAH so it had the kind of crazy heat those matches have. Both Inoue and Honda are totally fired up going at Hash and Yasuda at full speed. This was the best I have ever seen Yasuda look, as he was way stiffer then I had seen him, including a great punch to the throat on Inoue. Honda looked great here too with some really cool exchanges with Hashimoto, including cracking him with a headbutt and locking in some nasty Rolling Olympic Hells. Finish was awesome with Hash mangling Inoue's shoulder with chops and armlocks, so the ref had to stop it.

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Saturday Night Digging in the Crates

We take a trip back to a couple of months ago to check out a rare bit of good Japanese wrestling

Osamu Nishimura v. Tajiri WNC 8/8/13

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1irq6m_tajiri-vs-osamu-nishimura-c-wnc_sport

Always happy to see either of these guys show up, and it is pretty cool to see them match up. Nishimura works a very specific kind of match, full of cool takedowns, grappling and stretching. Tajiri is mostly on defense in this match, Nishimura works over the leg with some awesome looking uppercuts right on the patella and cool indian deathlock variations. Tajiri spends most of the match selling and trying to escape, and he gets the win, but only by a flash rollup. I think this would have been even better if we had gotten a little more cool offense in, but I really enjoyed what we got.

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Saturday Night Digging in the Crates

We take a trip to the Bay Area to watch a couple of guys hit the mat hard.



Mr. Athletic Jeff Cobb v. Timothy Thatcher Supreme Pro Wrestling 2/17/13

PAS: Really odd awesome match. This is as close to RINGS as US wrestling is ever going to get. Thatcher is a Billy Robinson trained Catch guy, and Cobb is on the Guam Olympic wrestling team and outside of a few highspots, this is all grappling. Thatcher mixes in some cool WOS escapes and Cobb throws some nasty suplexes. I loved the finish, which had Thatcher mixing in some very cool counter wrestling as he reverses a german into an armbar.

ER: Thatcher is my favorite Bay Area guy (though it appears he's getting a lot of gigs all over the country, which is awesome for him) as he does cool throws and stiff strikes like Cesaro, but since he works on the indies he can do a lot more mat stuff, and he's really good on the mat. Cobb is a cool freakish power wrestler who can do incredible deadlift type throws. Cobb throws some beastly suplexes in this, including a nasty deadlift German where Thatcher desperately grabs for the ropes or anything to prevent from getting tossed (it doesn't work). One of my favorite show-off moves that Cobb does (which really not many can do in wrestling since few have his strength) is doing a move or slam almost to completion, then stopping his momentum and doing the move back the other way. Starts doing a powerslam, stops before the slam, and then goes back the other way with it. Just a total awesome feat to show that he's running things.

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Saturday Night Digging In The Crates

This week we take a trip to an Armory in scenic New Jersey and watch Puerto Ricans beat the bricks off of each other



Da Hit Squad v. The Shaolin Wrecking Crew JAPW 6/7/02

PAS: I used to love watching DHS beat the ever loving crap out of little dudes, the one thing better might be watching them beat the ever loving crap out of giant dudes. This was basically like a Moondogs v. Moondogs match. Suba is a giant fat dudes and he takes a bunch of suplexes right on his ball park frank looking neck, and gets the leftover chili dog juice slapped out of his mouth by an especially nasty Monsta Mack. Might be a bit one sided, but a total blast.

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Sunday Night Digging In the Crates

We take a trip to Juarez as another in our sub theme of 80's Villano 3 mask matches which showed up too late for the 80's Lucha set.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMmteW-cAaw

Flama Roja v. Villano 3 3/17/87

Roja was a veteran rudo who according to OJ at Great Lucha had the awesome nicknames "The Lord and Master of Scandal" and "The Scourge of the Technicians" no fair for one guys to have two great nicknames like that. Good first fall with some nice mat wrestling by both guys, until V3 hurts his knee with a pescada and gets tapped. FYI There is a weird clip after the first fall to the middle of the third skip to 20:00 for the end of the segunda. We get a classic gorefest third fall with Flama cutting open V3's bandaged arm with a chair shot, and wasting him with an awesome tope. By the end V3 and Roja are on their knees covered in blood exchanging nasty head butts. I am bummed this didn't make the DVDVR set, but I am happy we keep getting Villano 3 mask matches showing up. May I suggest the lucha gods send us his Nacaulpan hair match with Perro Aguyao?

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Saturday Night Digging in the Crates

We take a trip to the glory days of 1992 WCW and get a visit from the co-founder of our little home

Nikita Koloff v. Vader 5/16/92

PAS: Vader is one of my favorite Clash of the Titans wrestlers ever. He is so good at those kind of Godzilla v. Mothra matches, although he didn't have a ton of them in WCW. Here he is matched up against face Nikita who was only five years removed from playing a similar unstoppable monster role. Dusty comes out with Nikita in a Superpowers reunion moment and immediately starts brawling with Race, such a cool random moment, as I don't remember Dusty and Nikita being aligned in 1992. Match it self is a total slugfest, with Nikita taking a big beating early and doing some really nice pained selling, lots of tensing up his hands to see if there is nerve damage. This goes out to the floor and they have a cool double countout, with Vader taking a nasty post shot. I am a fan of 1992 Nikita as he turned into a really fun wrestler and this was a match I could see getting way more hype if it happened on a bigger stage then a random Worldwide

TKG: Complete and accurate 92 Nikita? Are we going to do a complete and accurate 92 Nikita? That would be amazingly preposterous. Nikita comes back to WCW in April of 92 does a Ross sit down interview in a Hawaiian shirt where he apologizes for his 91 heel run and then asks for a shot at Vader. Nikita retires in November of 92 after getting injured in a Halloween Havoc match with Vader (where Vader replaces Rude, to prevent Rude from wrestling twice on same show).  The seven months that Nikita wrestles in 92 are a really fun little run where it feels like he puts it all together and figures out how to fill out consistently entertaining matches. It may not be as impressive a run as 89 Luger but probably more impressive than 00 Helmsley. Nikita isn’t really getting a big push (here he is announced as “#8 contender for title”) and it’s a year where lots of guys are having great to amazing runs of matches, so Nikita’s fun little run is going to get overlooked. This Vader match is all about the Nikita selling. Nikita really throws his body around both in and out of the ring for Vader (although I only remember one flat back bump). Nikita does a ton of wobbly winded selling where he needs to lean or rest on ropes, he’ll spasm and throw his body away from Vader to recover from eating moves. Nikita eats the first big lariat doing a Hennig style big spinning rotation into Kawada crumple sell, and then eats the big stiff lariat with a more realistic bump into another AJ sit-down style sell. The AJ 80s count-out finish also made me wish these two had a bigger program.

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Saturday Night Digging in the Crates

We take a trip to a bullfighting ring in Mexico in the 1980's for a lucha apuestas match which showed up too late to throw on the 80's set



Villano 3 v. Rambo 10/25/87

This arrived on youtube pretty recently and is a true treat. Rambo comes out firing brutalizing Villano with nasty punches and postings. He sweeps the first fall, and dominates the second until Villano is able to make a quick comeback and win with a top rop armdrag. In between falls they show a close up of V3 face and his mask is ripped and he is covered in blood, he looks like a gunshot victim. Third fall has some clipping which makes it a bit hard to follow at the beginning, but once that ends we get an epic lucha apuestas third fall with Rambo taking some big bumps, dramatic near falls and both guys masks getting soaked. Villano has really great headbutts and knees, you can see why he has such a rep as a brawler. I loved all of the submissions by Rambo, Villano is really great at soaking the last bit of drama out of a submission before he escapes. I didn't love the finish, which keeps it out of the absolute elite level of lucha mask matches, but it is pretty close. Great discovery.

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