SEGUNDA CAIDA DECLARES WAR!! 2/8/97

 

1. Ryo Miyake vs. Tomohiro Ishii

ER: Miyake is representing Tarzan Goto, and Sensei Goto is lurking in the crowd just waiting to invade. Goto is sitting alone in Korakuen wearing a purple suit and a white collared shirt with the top buttons unbuttoned. He appears to have an entire row to himself and looks smug, and powerful. They cut to him a lot during the match and they're right to do so. Where can I get Miyake's yellow Tarzan Goto shirt? I would pay very good money for it. Miyake is representing W*ING and Tokyo Pro and Japanese sleaze in general and the Goto shirt is firing up Shinichi Nakano at ringside. Ishii has neon green tights, and a neck. 

It gets good when Miyake starts toe kicking Ishii in the back and side of the head as the latter was getting up. There hadn't been any kind of Kurisu energy and that sparked something. When they go into an elbow exchange, Ishii works his a little and Miyake just runs through him with extra pounce on impact. Ishii kind of tenaciously goes after a hammerlock and that's a cool Ishii I don't know. Ryo Miyake looks like Satanico crossed with Akitoshi Saito but in a fucked up way and not a cool way. Ishii lays out for a Dynamite Kid diving headbutt 2/3 of the way across the ring and this Ishii is so much better. Miyake throws a WAR level lariat running out of the corner. His single leg crab and Texas Cloverleaf looked back backbreaking. I don't think Dean Malenko had a better application and execution of the Cloverleaf any time in '97. I've seen fucking all of them. 

Miyake invites Tarzan Goto into the ring and he takes his time walking from the 15th row of Korakuen, carrying an attaché. Nakano and now Arashi get hot and riled up at the sight of Tarzan Goto in a perfect suit jacket looking The Most Dapper Tarzan Goto Can Look, meaning his stubble is only 6 days old. Koji Kitao comes down, Goto just leaves and holds court outside the building, taking questions on the street as he's hailing a cab. You ever seen a god? 

2. Onryo vs. Choden Senshi Battle Ranger

ER: This is going to be an exciting mess with more crashes than hits and I love it. Onryo's pescado sends him crashing to the ground in front of Battle Ranger, who is still wearing his cape because Onryo hid under the ring and jumped him. Ranger takes a great ringpost bump that looks greater because he's still wearing his big cape. Onryo is remembered for his bumps and risks but his worked punches are a lot better than you remember. He throws an excellent dropkick and is good at leaning into kicks, including Battle Ranger's missile dropkick to the floor, springing off the middle rope. Battle Ranger takes a fucking Jerry bump (!) and Onryo runs up the buckles and dives into him with a Jerry bump AS OFFENSE! It all looks great. 

All of Onryo's offense is tighter than I remembered, and Battle Ranger does little things like kick Onryo in the face hard before hitting an Asai moonsault, not just focusing on hitting the move but actually thinking about believably neutralizing his opponent before hitting it. There's an unexpected and fantastic fight over a rear waistlock, where Onryo keeps trying to kick back - hard - at Battle Ranger's legs but Ranger keeps dodging while holding the waistlock, before suplexing Onryo onto the back of his head. Battle Ranger looks like he damn near snaps Onryo's neck with a muscle buster and this whole thing started cool and kept getting better. We used to seek out WAR tapes for Ultimo Dragon matches and here are two better WAR undercard juniors in the post-Ultimo Dragon era. I don't think anyone was ever getting tapes for the Onryo or Choden Senshi Battle Ranger matches, because we didn't know anything then. Now we can change. 

3. Kamikaze vs. Atsushi Kikuchi

ER: Yume Factory mentioned. Kikuchi is a black trunks white boots no kneepads guy like Riki Choshu but with Tenzan's head. Their matwork is strong and tough, locked in, forearms across jaws. Kamikaze's moonsault has impact like 2 Cold Scorpio's. Kikuchi throws a lot of weight behind lunging elbow smashes and a dropkick, and jumps off the apron with a clothesline the way someone who wasn't totally thinking it through would do. He throws a butterfly suplex with real physics and hits a lariat even harder than Riki's. Kikuchi is one of our great post-peak lost WAR guys; a guy who was only around a few years during the WAR era with less available TV. We need the 1999 Atsushi Kikuchi handhelds. Every suplex thrown is stiff: vertical suplex with brainbuster drop, a German that snaps Kamikaze's legs over his body, a Kamikaze back suplex that was clearly meant to drop Kikuchi on his neck, with intent. Kamikaze returns the lariat from earlier and these lariats are Made in WAR, for WAR. A great lariat is the best roster prerequisite of any wrestling company in history. Kikuchi has no human idea how to take a tornado DDT but that's great because instead it just folds and crumples his body in a painful way. Kamikaze kicks him in the head a bunch after the match, after dropping him on his head with a fisherman's buster. Kamikaze knew WAR so well for a guy who didn't wrestle there very often. He was a natural fit who should have been a regular.  

4. Miho Watabe/Michiko Omukai vs. Sayuri Okino/Michiko Nagashima

ER: I don't know these women. I wasn't watching LLPW tapes in the 90s and I only know a few who have since. I know Watabe I guess. She's the one who looks like a small child. Watabe gets whipped around all over the ring by her hair and it's one of those women's wrestling spots from the 50s that can look so violent when done to a woman who is 90 pounds. Okino's snapmares are more violent but Nagashima's were quicker. Omukai has strong pinfall saves, always taking advantage of the situation and kicking Okino in the back of the head a few times, and Okino bumps nicely for Omukai's hot tag. Watabe can't get any weight behind her dropkick because she has no weight but she does it 20 or so times, spamming quantity, which is important. Omukai's dropkick hits like a joshi dropkick should, and she is very good at small things. Watabe has one good neck bridge spot that's very effective, and Nagashima is really good at hot girl dead eyed interference. She's like one of the Heathers, only with a kendo stick instead of a croquet mallet. 

5. Osamu Taitoko vs. Masakazu Fukuda

ER: WAR show giving us a sumo vs. freestyle match, which is why you watch WAR shows. Fukuda is listed as having a sumo background but wrestles with amateur single legs and pins like Takashi Sugiura or Chad Gable when he did that stuff a decade ago. Fukuda died tragically during the start of his New Japan career. Taitoko - the future Tachihikari - wants to treat him like a punk and Fukuda keeps fighting back against the charges. Fukuda tries to bulldog Taitoko and pretty soon (and pretty easily) gets him in mount with an elbow held across this throat. When they start hitting each other it's one of those great exchanges you get so consistently in WAR, as the much smaller Fukuda is fighting with speed while Taitoko punches him in the nose. Fukuda is small Sugiura, Taitoko is large Kamikaze. Taitoko hits harder and has a great standing sleeper, but Fukuda is relentless and hits a cool uranage on a very heavy man. Why do sumo guys always have such good kicks to the face? Were they all bullied and kicked in the face so much in training that they know how to deliver them naturally and pay them pay gleefully? Powerbombs are real in WAR. They are never faked. They are sincere. Fukuda keeps refusing to stay down for Taitoko's back suplex and powerbomb and chokeslam, all of which were delivered with intent, so Taitoko just clotheslines him in the back of the head and Gedo clutch's that wrestler of inferior style. 

6. Masaaki Mochizuki vs. Nobutaka Araya 

ER: 1997 Araya is still trying to do trunks and this boy is too beefy for these orange crush trunks to contain. Everybody's pants look a size too small in WAR and it's one of the best unsung features of WAR. Mochizuki throws six kicks to six different parts of Araya and they all make loud contact. Sumo vs. Kicker is going to be so damn good. It always is. The matwork is rugged, Araya is like Greg Valentine on the mat but his half crab moves into classic WAR torture. Araya is a real prick and he's so good when he wrestles as sadistic sumo Valentine. It's not enough to lock in a crunching STF, he starts pulling at the side of Mochizuki's eye with his fingers for leverage. Araya can really take - and sell - good kicks. He flies back into the ropes so convincingly and takes more than one cool bump to the floor. He also has a WAR level clothesline, per the prerequisite. His corner clothesline hits like Dr. Death, big impact. 

Araya drags Mochizuki's body through a good Korakuen brawl, throwing him down so hard on a bodyslam in the stands that some people around it reacted in real shock. His piledriver is perfect, and Mochizuki is bleeding, and bleeds even more when Araya starts throwing full force headbutts. Araya can absorb all of Mochizuki's good kicks, because he punches back so much harder. Araya starts suplexing him around like a corpse, then hits this killer running lariat and pounces into the cover, an excellent example of a man Trying to Put This Away. Araya even does a Valentine timberrrrrr bump after taking a kick to the face, and when he leans head and neck first into a springboard spinning heel kick it's an incredibly done nearfall. All the nearfalls down the stretch are great nearfalls because Araya starts spamming clotheslines and powerbombs until Mochizuki stays down. It genuinely felt like the real finish was Mochizuki taking as many of them as possible until physically incapable of lifting his body. This rocked in all ways, a near 20 minute match that kept getting stronger the longer Mochizuki persevered. 

7. Arashi/Shinichi Nakano vs. Yuji Yasuraoka/Lance Storm 

Storm and Yasuraoka are dressed like Fruit Stripe gum and they are one of the worst fucking teams of the 90s. Neither man looks like they belong in WAR and this match confirms that repeatedly. It's a minor miracle that Arashi and Nakano were able to make anything about this work, as Storm/Yasuraoka never looked like they belonged in the same ring as them. This is lavender tights/mullet era Arashi. Not to be fucked with. Lance Storm opts to fuck with him all match by hitting the worst offense in WAR history which leaves Arashi and Nakano wondering how to even acknowledge it. Imagine you're Lance Storm, coming into WAR, hitting your cartwheel clothesline and dropkicks that wouldn't budge a soul. Storm's matwork with Nakano is more interesting than watching him attempt any other offense. Are there any good mat-based Lance matches? The man was trained by one Hart brother for one day, there must be some matwork Lance out there. 

The match peaks when it's time for Storm and Yasuraoka's big comeback, where they manage to string together several pieces of offense that either miss entirely or land but wouldn't hurt a fly. It all starts when Lance slingshots himself to the floor with a cannonball...and launches himself far over Arashi's head, landing on his ass on the floor without making contact with a human body. Perhaps he was paying tribute to his partner, who tagged in early in the match with a slingshot senton that completely overshot Nakano. The two of them set up a kind of Total Elimination on Arashi that sees them both throw spinning heel kicks (Storm to the back of Arashi's head, Yasuraoka to the face) and both kicks mostly miss their target, so Arashi is left just standing there while they crash around him. Panicking, Lance follows it up with a dropkick that mostly misses and Yasuraoka has to hit a clothesline just so something finally connects with the largest man in the match who has been standing perfectly still this entire time waiting for anything to make contact with his body. 

You know who is a pretty badass tag team? Arashi and Nakano! They look like two men who should be able to effortlessly hit offense on Lance Storm and Yuji Yasuraoka, and they do! They are especially punishing to Yuji. Arashi lands heavy on elbowdrops, piledrives the man. When Nakano hits him with a brainbuster, Arashi comes in just to stomp him in the head, as it should be. Arashi is such a beast. He hits a big boy frog splash and an awesome nodowa otoshi where he lifts Yasuraoka up by the rear waist of his rights, then slams him forward by the throat. It's brutal having to see Lance Storm try and break up their offense to save Yasuraoka, because we are forced as a viewer to have to pretend a Lance Storm forearm had the power to knock Nakano off the apron. We are forced, as fans of wrestling, to treat Storm's silly leap to top buckle back elbow as a thing that could move a man. It's foolish. I liked how they finished Yasuraoka, him charging straight into a powerslam upon tagging in, Arashi giving him a couple powerbombs on a hard part of the ring, then finishing the job with a twisting frog splash. 

I don't know why WAR fans accepted these Fruit Stripe goofs. 

8. Genichiro Tenryu/Koki Kitahara/Tatsuo Nakano vs. Koji Kitao/Nobukazu Hirai/Hiroshi Hatanaka

ER: Not to the level of the highest of high end WAR trios, but the same kind of memorable as the best WAR trios. What made this match great, is Tenryu working simultaneously as the aace of the promotion babyface AND as a shitheel cheap shot artist. Tenryu is the god king of the promotion, the chairman, yet all match he's taking cheap shots whenever he can, kicking guys in the eye to break up pins, directing his boy Kitahara to do the same shit, that air of unprofessionalism running rampant. It is incredible to see Tenryu both humbled by Kitao, and act as a guy who doesn't want Kitao around. He cheap shots him, and takes liberties with Nobukazu Hirai just because the boy happened to be teaming with Kitao. It leads to the best parts of the match. 

Every Tenryu/Hirai interaction is good. Hirai has the fucking nerve to powerbomb him and Tenryu gets up pissed and starts kicking him in the face, then punching him in the face and eye. Tenryu tells Kitahara to do the same, so Kitahara tags in to kick Hirai in the face, but it's not hard enough so Tenryu comes back to show Kitahara how to kick Hirai in the face while Hirai is downed. Learning from the master, Kitahara tags back in and he throws even harder kicks at Hirai's head and face. This is the kind of wrestling storytelling I can follow and understand. We are all here for Nobukazu Hirai getting kicked in the face any time he steps over the plane of the ropes. It enrages Kitao while offering us nothing but joy. 

This is also a match that makes us ask the question, "Was Koji Kitao getting good at this?" The more he worked, the more his in ring confidence grew, the better he looked in the ring. This is one of those matches that highlighted his upside that was always there. How could there not be upside in a tall, 300+ pound disgraced sumo who can't control his anger? Kitao, in his large yellow pants and large yellow exposed breasts, attempted to mock Tenryu, and I loved all the exchanges between Kitao/Tenryu and Kitao/Kitahara. Kitao actually looked surprised at the fight Kitahara brought to him, as Kitahara came with hard leg kicks, and kept kicking at his legs after Kitao got dropped to a knee. When he has him suitably ripened, he tags Tenryu in, and the fireworks get bigger. Tenryu hits an enziguiri and cannonball, and you know it's good because Tenryu does that thing where he gets to his feet pumping his fist...only to turn around directly into a hard Kitao clothesline, then gets to feel what a fat boy senton really feels like. As Tenryu is recovering on the floor from his flattening, Kitao hits a baseball slide dropkick....and that is when it is officially Okay to ask if Koji Kitao Turned Actually Good in February 1997, and dare yourself to go back deeper to find any earlier moment that compares. 

The breakdown of the finish is excellent stuff, as we knew it was going to come down to Kitao and Tenryu going full unleashed on the other, and they do. Kitao is completely unmoved by two punches to the nose and rocks Tenryu with a right. Kitao walks through Tenryu's punches and throws great jabs, and anything Tenryu tries Kitao just spam blocks with kneelifts. Tenryu, getting nowhere, hilariously tags in sacrificial lamb Nakano, who gets immediately BURIED by a Kitao sitout tombstone. With Kitao distracted by a different body, Cheapshot Babyface Tenryu comes in and starts kicking Kitao in the face to chase him from the ring and bring the weaker members into the fray, because he is great at slapping and clotheslining Hirai and Hatanaka around. Tenryu's whole team is great at kicking and clotheslining and powerbombing Hatanaka. When the clear weak link of the match manages to hit Tenryu with a missile dropkick, all it does it back Tenryu into the ropes, giving him momentum to wreck him with a clothesline. This was a WAR heavyweights main event, driven by complicated relationships and in-fighting that we wouldn't understand but is tangible in all actions. 

THE COMPLETE SEGUNDA CAIDA DECLARES WAR!

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Found Footage Friday: SEGUNDA CAIDA DECLARES WAR!!! Matches from WAR-ISM 11/11/93

Full Show 11/11/93 Handheld

 

1. Ultimo Dragon vs. Dan Sileo

ER: Is this the same Dan Sileo who was a football player and lame sports talk host on Bay Area's KNBR in the 2000s? I didn't know his football career but I remember him on KNBR, but it can't be the same guy. That guy was a defensive lineman and this guy doesn't look that much larger than Ultimo, but whoever it is, this True Blue Rex Kwon Do practitioner really adapted to pro wrestling almost shockingly well. I thought this was great, and I loved every part of it. Sileo has a gaudy stars and stripes gi and, while I know the Danny McBride strip mall karate guy is an easy and well-used reference at this point, goddamn is this guy just the millionth strip mall karate guy to look exactly like that. 

I loved the way they kept advancing this. The leg work was really cool, with nasty heel hooks off caught kicks, and a cool deathlock where Sileo was applying different kinds of pressure and then even ripped his gi off before rolling through the deathlock (which I don't think I've seen before?). When he got frustrated and threw a chair into the ring, Ultimo did incline push-ups off the chair and then had the ref hold his ankles down while he did a couple sit ups. Everything had nice snap to it, from things like (both men's) chops, to a super impactful version of Dragon's handspring elbow, to all of the kicks everyone threw. Sileo had an impressive command on selling, too. I was really impressed when Dragon whiffed on a spinning heel kick over Sileo's head, and he knew not to bother selling it and instead went right after Dragon. That's not an instinct most heavily trained wrestlers would have. Sileo broke out a majistral that looked as impressive as any I've ever seen Ultimo do, and the two counts down the stretch were all incredibly well done and worked through. This is the first time I've seen Dan Sileo and I am now honestly wondering how Dan Sileo didn't become a bigger star. This man understands pro wrestling, has great instincts, and is incredibly entertaining. This man takes a German suplex high up on his shoulders and somehow has great suplex selling? Who the hell is this guy? 

There is an incredible moment when Sileo is whipped into the buckles and does this awesome cocky flip over the top to the floor, landing on his feet, posing for the crowd, and by the time he turns around thinking he had evaded Ultimo, Dragon was already doing a suicide dive past the ring post into him. I did not think we'd be seeing Ultimo hitting a dive onto a some karate guy, trusting some strip mall karate guy to catch a high speed tope, a high speed tope that is already well in motion when Sileo is facing away from Dragon. This spot was timed so well, it was somehow a great catch, and Sileo was able to be facing away for most of it and turn around just in time to be annihilated. The most seasoned wrestler you know will never look this natural while waiting to catch a blind dive. I am going to need to write about more Dan Sileo matches. Complete & Accurate Bonecrusher Sileo coming soon!

PAS: Rewatching WAR over the years, I have been pretty underwhelmed by the Ultimo Dragon matches, but I guess I just needed to see him working ex-NFL linemen in Gi's rather than juniors matches where he's being outclassed by luchadors. Loved this, an awesome weirdo fight, with Ultimo ruling and Sileo being really fun too. Loved Ultimo doing pushups on the thrown in chair and hitting a wild tope on Sileo while he was celebrating. Sileo's entire shtick was great, he took a German suplex right on his neck and hit a cool jumping La Magistral. I really need to see Sileo work Dave Taylor and Ulf Hermann in Germany, and I really wish that Ultimo got a chance to work Jerry Flynn on a WCW Pro or something. 

2. Nobukazu Hirai vs. Shigekazu Tajiri

ER: This was a rounds match between a gi guy and a pro wrestler, and the best parts of this had the bad blood that we all associate with pro wrestlers vs. gi guys. There were multiple moments, in the first round especially, where it was clear that Tajiri did not want to cooperate, which is a best case scenario for a match like this. A couple of things got crossed up, Hirai grabbed Tajiri aggressively by the gi lapels, and then you had Hirai forcing his way into a shoot northern lights suplex and shoot bodyslam with Tajiri very clearly trying his hardest to sandbag. Hirai had started all this chippiness by throwing a playful kick at Tajiri when the former was entering the ring for the match, and that energy kept coming back, like when one of the rounds ended and Hirai kicked Tajiri in the ass on the latter's trip back to his corner. Not all the kicks land, and that plays to the match's benefit, as one of the best moments is Tajiri suckering Hirai into doing a spinning heel kick and just ducking it, then kicking Hirai in the face. Hirai does some great cocky shit like throwing a couple of German suplexes and then standing on Tajiri's neck, then deciding to let the ref count Tajiri down for a potential KO. I don't think the submission or kicks in this worked as well as the ones in Dragon vs. Sileo, but the 3rd round build was satisfying, and I liked Tajiri increasing the use of spinning heel kicks down the stretch. His (surprise) winning spinning heel kick looked Hashimoto level.

3. Masao Orihara vs. Satoshi Kojima

ER: I have a feeling there are a LOT of unseen or unheralded classics in the WAR vs. NJPW feud and this is ranks with the best of them. This was the only time Orihara and Kojima wrestled each other, and brother, I don't know why that is but based on this match alone they seem to fucking hate each other. These two are total assholes to each other for over 10 minutes, egging each other on into really violent match that stayed within a pro wrestling framework, just a really stiff constantly-verging-on-unprofessional pro wrestling match. The fans chant for Orihara at the bell, but after Kojima refuses a handshake and instead slaps him and German suplexes him on his head before the bell, then throws elbows as hard as possible and dumps him with a powerbomb, and the fans start chanting KOJIMA. 

Every single thing in this match was thrown with the intention to hurt, and there were a ton of great moments that looked like they were luring each other into fully committing to a move only to pull the rug out at the last possible moment. Kojima goes for his elbowdrop and lands teeth first into Orihara's boots, but the elbow was thrown with the confidence of someone who never thought his face would meet boots. Orihara does a pescado into nothing and his body does not look like someone who expected to be diving into an empty pool. They manage to make missed dropkick and sidestepped spinning heel kick spots look good, because every single thing done in this match was thrown with real intent. Orihara's leg work and heel hooks were as violent as anything you'd see in a Fujiwara fed, with the holds really sunk in. You could see how suctioned he was to Kojima's leg when Kojima was trying to yank away like he was in a bear trap but Orihara's grip only tightened, so Kojima had to start throwing legit strikes to desperately try to force some kind of break. 

It's tough to find cool examples of no-sold piledrivers but I'll have to tip my cap to them here, because this was it. Orihara spikes Kojima on the top of his head with a classic Lawler piledriver and Kojima rises to his feet and attempts to cripple Orihara with a Tombstone like he was Undertaker working Hogan in 1973 PRIDE. Orihara responds by spiking Kojima even harder with another Lawler piledriver, and brother, it feels okay to throw selling out the window when your neck is suffering this much real impact. These were piledrivers thrown by men who wanted to just feel something. No move is guaranteed to land, and it doesn't stop either man from throwing everything with full conviction, and yet the whole match maintains a vibe of "worked pro wrestling" while also feeling like both guys are sneaking in offense that the other wasn't expecting. It sure didn't look like Orihara was expected to be dumped on the back of his head by a couple different suplexes, and it sure didn't look like Kojima expected to take two boots up kicked into his chin....and yet it also seems like both guys fully expect it? Let me tell you, *I* did not expect Orihara to hit his insane moonsault over the ringpost to the floor, because I cannot imagine the level of trust it took in Kojima - a man who had not felt trustworthy at any part of this match - to even think about hitting that moonsault. Orihara wins by kicking Kojima in the eye and rolling him up with la majistral, and Kojima is so pissed after that he starts punching Orihara, and Orihara just leaves the ring, no selling all of the punches as he goes. YES!!

4. Arashi vs. Yuji Yasuraoka

ER: Arashi is in his mask and just poured into his bicycle shorts. He looks like a dream scenario where they brought in Giant Brazo as part of Los Brazos. He is humongous, and his tits are spectacular. This was short but entertaining, with Yasuraoka throwing kicks as hard as fast as he can but none of them ever phasing Arashi, so Arashi just lets the man kick him for a bit and then just starts throwing him around the way a large sumo would throw around a smaller man, with years of training and muscle memory behind the throws. The finish is great, as Arashi absorbs kicks and decides to let Yuji know what striking is really like, and so bullies him into the corner with open hand sumo thrusts and I swear, Arashi is just palm striking Yasuraoka's head back and forth between his open hands like he was forming a pizza dough. Arashi wins the match with two headlock takeovers, locking his arm around Yasuraoka's neck so tightly and then rolling over with his own large body with such force that it looks like he's trying to pop Yuji's head off his own body like a Barbie doll. 

5. Great Kabuki vs. Tommy Rich

ER: Tommy Rich still comes out to REO Speedwagon's "Roll With the Changes" in 1993 and it's hard not to think of this song within the context of Tommy Rich's life. 23 years old, making towns around Georgia in his Ford Fairmont, waiting to see if there's another radio single off You Can Tune a Piano But You Can't Tuna Fish before committing to buying the 8-track. Rich and Kabuki go way back and worked each other several times over the preceding decade, but it's hard not to be disappointed with this match. You could not call this a bad match, but on this card it kinda was. I love Tommy Rich kneeling on the inside of Kabuki's leg and throwing worked elbow strikes, complaining to the ref about hair pulls and shit, but this was a show where every match so far has had moments where someone almost got knocked out and moments where guys were actively trying to knock the other out, so the bar had been raised pretty high over the first half of the show. The final stretch of this was great, when Rich blasts Kabuki with a stiff clothesline and a perfect fistdrop off the middle buckle, and Kabuki starts throwing knee trembling thrusts to Rich's throat, but Rich losing to a small package is going to feel like a downer after the violence that had taken place in every match prior. 

6. Black Cat vs. Hiromichi Fuyuki

PAS: Total out of nowhere classic. This was a lumberjack match and part of the WAR vs. NJ feud, with Black Cat coming in as a New Japan stalwart and trainer to take on Fuyuki. Just a pair of barrel chested bruisers clocking each other with clotheslines and hard punishing shots, each one a little further then it was supposed to go. Cat, for example, cracked Fuyuki right in the eye with a short elbow and Fuyuki responded by splitting his head open on a turnbuckle bolt. Cat then proceeds to lose blood at an alarming rate, leaving stains over the mat. Cat fought valiantly, but eventually was felled by a pair of super nasty looking powerbombs. Hard nosed violent WAR style stuff, just an ugly treat to watch.

ER: The WAR/NJPW feud has produced some of the most agreeably great matches ever, an incredible success rate, unparalleled heat, and this show has two more of them that we've never seen. Orihara/Kojima and Black Cat/Fuyuki are completely different matches and completely great additions to the WAR/NJPW legend. The latter has great blood and is much more punch based, the former is two guys doing pro wrestling moves as stiff as possible. It's wild that the one with juniors and without blood is more violent, but even without blood the hate was palpable. This match felt less like hatred, and more like a great bloody pro wrestling dramatic-selling brawl. This was long, nearly 20, and I don't think the holds moved the match along as well as Orihara's leg attacks did, but this was a bloody match between two brick shithouses cracking jaws, and we don't have to choose a favorite. This was also a Lumberjack Death match, and I wish I knew all the things that went into these two needing a Lumberjack Death match. WAR really wasn't a gimmick match fed, choosing instead the superior gimmick pairings. Who needs stipulation matches when you can just team weird guys up against each other? 

Fuyuki looked like the best version of Takeshi Morishima, or perhaps a more accurate comp to Gordy than Morishima was. This felt like the most violent version of a classic Crusher match, two guys with barrel torsos throwing hooking punches across each other's jaws and throwing clotheslines set to smash. Fuyuki's diving clotheslines were engulfing, blowing through Cat with insane closing speed. Black Cat threw short elbows across Fuyuki's temple and Fuyuki threw down right back, and whenever it threatened to spill into the middle of warring WAR vs. New Japan Lumberjacks, it only got better. This feud was so perfect, because everybody involved on both sides of it was a total asskicker, and everybody seemed like they really fucking hated each other. Satoshi Kojima acted like a fucking asshole to Orihara, Tenryu trolled Tatsumi Fujinami so hard earlier in the show that Fujinami got Actually Upset and ripped off his suit jacket while needing neck tendon flaring restraint from Manabu Nakanishi. Tommy Rich and Bonecrusher Dan Sileo are left looking like cornered southerners trying to stay between the WAR gang and New Japan crew whenever Fuyuki got an asshole smirk across his face and threw Cat into the fellers. The blood came midway when Cat got run face first into a turnbuckle bolt, and Fuyuki must have sent the sole of his boot into Cat's cutout least eight times. Black Cat wobbled his legs and fought back and Fuyuki managed to dominate and make Cat bleed out without coming off like a bad guy, instead looking like a man representing his cause. Sometimes a 30 year handheld shows up online and when you're done watching it you can say that you've seen upper echelon Kodo Fuyuki, Satoshi Kojima, Masao Orihara, and Black Cat performances, and everything feels right. 

7. Koki Kitahara/Super Strong Machine vs. Heisei Ishingun (Kengo Kimura/Tatsutoshi Goto)

ER: This is a really cool tag that brings together four guys who I think are almost always universally underrated as workers. Out of these four, I think Kengo Kimura probably gets the most respect as a worker, and when was the last time you saw literally anybody talking about how much they love the career of Kengo Kimura? Super Strong Machine is the best possible Bison Smith, throwing nothing but hard elbows and clotheslines and slams, Vince McMahon's idea of a perfect wrestler in 1977, and I don't think I've ever not been entertained by a SSM match. Koki Kitahara is a WAR punk through and through, and it gave this match a fun dynamic, as he was the one WAR guy in with three NJPW guys, with Strong Machine the guy who's playing both sides without acting passionate allegiance to either side. So This match was all about three of these guys having a tough but professional tag, while Kitahara tried to get under everyone's skin before eventually succeeding in doing just that. Everyone else has no problem throwing spirited elbows and clotheslines but Kitahara's the one kicking people in the eye and throwing kicks at knees, with Kimura's Red Gi crew yelling at him from the floor only causing him to act like more of a pudgy punk. It all escalates when Masashi Aoyagi gets on the apron to try to settle him down, and Kitahara chooses to go after AOYAGI with a chair! Kitahara is enough of a crazed asshole to go after AOYAGI with a chair and you just have to love and appreciate a psycho like that. I love how Kitahara finally gets Kimura to snap, kicking at him mockingly while he's down, and getting the vet all riled up until Super Strong Machine can't save him. I loved Aoyagi sneaking in at the finish to hit Kitahara with a spinning heel kick to set up the finish, and thought the tag unsurprisingly kicked ass. 

8. Genichiro Tenryu vs. Ashura Hara

PAS: This delivered everything you want from this matchup on paper. A pair of guys built like sacks of flour chopping, lariating and headbutting each other in unsafe and violent ways. Not a lot of fancy moves, although Tenryu did hit a enzigiri right to Hara's eye and cheek, but just crazy violent shots. I love how Tenryu just lets his chops float. At one point he catches Hara right in the trachea and the ref looks at him like "c'mon man I am just trying to do my job." Hara doesn't back down at all either, laying in some really meaty clonking headbutts, and sick lariats right into the clavicle. This is WAR as WAR gets.

ER: I always associate Hara with Tenryu. Hara was the longest term Tenryu tag partner in Revolution, left All Japan at first opportunity to join him in SWS and then retired in WAR in 1994. Hara is a Tenryu guy, and that means that we really don't have many Tenryu/Hara singles matches. I think they had less than 5, and I'm sure this is the only one I've actually seen. This is Tenryu VERSUS Hara and that is an incredibly cool thing. And this really is the exact thing you would want from a Tenryu/Hara match, which is two best friends trying to urge the other one to hit them harder and harder, except you've never had a friend who wanted you to hit them harder and harder because we've never done competitive sumo. Tenryu and Hara hit each other so fucking hard in this match and I've never known another person in my life who could hit somebody this hard. WAR Hara is the fattest Hara which makes him the coolest Hara, and he looks even cooler when Tenryu runs into him incredibly hard with a shoulderblock and then drops his shoulder and winces hard and shakes out that limp arm after Hara doesn't budge an inch. 

After Tenryu hurts his shoulder on Hara's torso and Hara didn't even give him the liberty of acting like he had even been touched, Tenryu makes it his match long mission to make Hara lose sensation in at least one of his arms. These two are old ass running buddies and if you are old sumo running buddies that means that sometimes one of you will get chopped over and over in the neck and slapped insanely hard across the face. Hara does his best to not budge whenever Tenryu hits him and is shockingly successful, and none of us can ever comprehend how hard Ashura Hara has been hit in his life, and how hard he has hit people. You have to get hit in the face and neck an absurd number of times to be able to take six straight chops to the neck from Genichiro Tenryu without registering any pain. Hara is able to walk through a shocking amount of pain to repeatedly murder Tenryu with his perfect lariat, but Tenryu drops him to his knees with a chop right to the throat. The only time I even notice the referee in the match, is after that throat chop when he steps up to Tenryu like "hey man that guy is your best friend." Hara can't use one of his arms his whole chest and neck and shoulder is all purple bruising just a few minutes in, so he has to just spam Tenryu with lariats from the arm he can lift. When he keeps hitting Tenryu in the ropes as hard as he can, he gets a full head of steam for a killshot and flies hard through the ropes to the floor when Tenryu just drops to the ground as his only possible defense. Hara's sell of Tenryu's enziguiri is more perfection, taking it to the teeth and crumbling to his chest and knees, butt up in the air. 

Imagine the ways these two could have surpassed Ikeda and Ishikawa if only their friendship was just a little bit different. I'm glad we got them murdering each other a few times over the span of their Revolution. 

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Found Footage Friday: MASAMI~! KANDORI~! TENRYU~! FUYUKI~! TIGER~! LEWIN~?!

Devil Masami vs. Shinobu Kandori JWP 1/16/89

MD: I'm missing some context on this one as most of the Kandori I've seen was later on, but there's a lot you can pick up from the text alone. The first couple of minutes of the match were about her making herself seen by Masami. She starts by putting out a hand only for Masami to refuse to shake it. They lock up but Masami overpowers her and casually hits her with a butterfly suplex, really just dropping her. So Kandori works her into the ropes on the next lock up and starts to slap her repeatedly. After the first, Masami sees her, and after the third or fourth she really sees her. Kandori got what she wanted but soon learns to regret it as Masami powers her immediately into a dangerous back drop, but Kandori was ready to take the punishment and is able to maneuver her into a crossface chicken wing and by that point, they have a real match going (Masami gets out by biting Kandori's wrist and Kandori answers with kicks to the spine, if you were wondering just what sort of match).

The beating that followed was fairly hellacious and one-sided. Kandori would occasionally slip out, pry off a leg, and try to do some damage, but even then Masami eventually had enough and tried to tear apart Kandori's leg for revenge. They went back and forth as the match went on, but always with Masami having a clear advantage, and always with Kandori having to slip out and over to get in a bomb of her own. Usually that came in the form of going back to the leg. Meanwhile, every big impact was made all the more thunderous by Kandori leaning in as hard as humanly possible. Her selling was consistent pain. Masami's on the other hand, appeared when it was most meaningful, especially as they rushed to the finish. Again, I can't put this thing in context, but on its own it stands up extremely well.

Genichiro Tenryu vs. Hiromichi Fuyuki WAR 11/8/93

MD: Tenryu and Fuyuki were stablemates here, but I think even more so than that, they were two guys who knew each other so well in the ring, even if they hadn't matched up all that many times. Fuyuki knew everything about Tenryu and that's why he got dirty first with a stomp and a suplex and holds. He knew he had to in order to get the advantage he needed. Likewise, there was such subsequent tension when Tenryu escaped and had his back, had him up against the ropes. You, the viewer, like Fuyuki, the about-to-be victim, knew the other shoe was about to drop. It was just exactly when and how and Tenryu wrestled as if he was acutely aware of that tension and anticipation.

And the payoff came, because it was inevitable. A shoulder block and a series of these peppering, flicking kicks. The price sufficiently paid, Tenryu was happy to settle back into a Greco-Roman knucklelock but Fuyuki was going to keep stepping over the line (as he must if he was to have any chance at victory and to prove his worth as a man. And Tenryu was there over and again to put him back in his place as only he could. It was when Fuyuki finally pushed Tenryu, finally got him to go for the second rope elbow instead of reverting back to another knucklelock that he was able to capitalize, but even that couldn't last for long, for Tenryu was always back up, always rushing back at him clothesline or powerbomb or a simple shove onto the back of his head at the ready. Still, Fuyuki was no longer a young man. He had size and resilience and an understanding of his mentor's techniques and he hung even in the face of the storm, right up until the point that it blew him away. But not before reaffirming Tenryu's respect for him, however, and maybe that was all that really mattered in the end.

Super Tiger vs. Mark Lewin UWF 9/8/84

MD: If you look at the list of foreigners in UWF (even early UWF), Lewin has to be up there as one of the oddest stylistically. There are Takada and Maeda matches that I've never seen (and I have seen Meltzerian claims that Takada's win over Lewin was a big deal for Takada and UWF, but all I can say for sure is that Phil didn't like it much); I really need to go back for those but this one was pretty out there. Lewin didn't change up his act in the least. It began with Super Tiger throwing a lightning fast kick and Lewin recoiling back wondering just what he had gotten into and it doesn't really look back. Lewin sells all of Tiger's holds like he's wrestling Dusty in Florida, big broad selling. Late in the match he even lets himself get tossed off the top rope. The best bit of that is when the tiger feint gets him in the face and he starts climbing the guardrail in fury. On offense, he's clubbering with stomps, throwing ridiculous karate chops, and yes, gets behind Tiger with the dreaded nervehold. And Sayama is left to try to figure out if he's going to break the illusion by not selling or if he's going to break the illusion by selling. He chooses the latter and I'm not at all sure it was the right decision. The finish, both impressive and merciful is Super Tiger actually getting him up for the tombstone and after the match Lewin goes full maniac and starts dismantling the ring. All of this left me wishing we had the Fujiwara matches from this tour, but I doubt they were as bizarre as this.

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Found Footage Friday: TIGER~! MAEDA~! FUJIWARA~! KIDO~! TENRYU~! KABUKI~! MOCHIZUKI~! FUKUDA~!

Yoshiaki Fujiwara/Osamu Kido vs Super Tiger/Akira Maeda UWF 10/5/84-GREAT

MD: You could more or less sum this one up as two of the most dynamic offensive wrestlers of all time against two of the greatest defensive ones, though that would be understating Kido and Fujiwara, both in general and in this match. It's undeniable that Tiger and Maeda were the aggressors here for the most part though, constantly driving forward, constantly throwing kicks and suplexes and leaps from the top, all with varying levels of complexity. Meanwhile, Kido and Fujiwara would get battered, would endure, would capitalize on a mistake or create an opening and would fire back, Kido with forearms or Fujiwara with his headbutts, only to get cut off once again. The magic of this style and the magic of the Fujiwara/Kido team is that you know that no matter how thoroughly Maeda and Tiger might run up the score all it would take one moment, one mistake, one opportunity for Kido to escape or Fujiwara to win the day. So while you watched the cumulative damage rack up, the tension always increased. Unfortunately, the finish was almost perfectly clipped to make it look like Fujiwara was pure magic, but you can connect the dots in your head to figure out how they got there. Still, a little frustrating after almost thirty minutes, but you can hardly fault the journey for a technical blip upon arriving at the destination.

PAS: New Fujiwara is basically Christmas for me, and especially this period where he was smack dab in the middle of his prime, lots of tiny little moments of genius from him, along with some great stuff from Kido who is kind of the Dick Slater to Fujiwara's Terry Funk. The highlight of this match for me was Super Tiger, I have no time at all for NJPW Sayama, but UWF Sayama, a Sayama where he just embraced his inner crowbar was perfection. He is just killing Kido and Fujiwara with sick unpulled kicks to the head and stomach and some uncalled for jumping knees, at one point he splits Fujiwara with a knee, and we get see our guy Yoshiaki work his way through the blood in his eyes. So amazing that there is still new HH from 1984 which just show up on the internet on a random Tuesday

Genichiro Tenryu vs. Great Kabuki WAR 11/9/93

MD: As a general rule, I prefer Kabuki in tag matches over singles. He's great at coming in and disrupting things, with two of the great sudden strikes in wrestling history between his uppercut and the cut off kick to the face, but sometimes he has a tendency to take a relatively short singles match and eat up too much time with holds when you'd rather see him scrapping. I wasn't too worried about that here since he was up against Tenryu so you know that one, the holds will all be full of struggle and two, eventually, Tenryu will get him up and to the ropes and will throw some killer chops. Then, you know, Kabuki will come back with the uppercut and things will be off to the races. That's what happened here after a methodological start. It bled into mid match heat where Tenryu got roughed up on the outside and a great comeback where he blocked the uppercut and drove forward with the sumo palm strikes across the ring. Finishing stretch was Tenryu overwhelming Kabuki and Kabuki just getting points for surviving as long as he did. Nothing overly surprising here, but you don't watch something like this for a surprise. You watch it to see Kabuki and Tenryu hit each other repeatedly.

SR: These two could have just punched and kicked each other and done some staredowns and it would‘ve been a quite good match, but we got something more neat here. Tenryus resume of great houseshow matches is for sure impressive. We get a fun opening with Kabuki trying to stand up to Tenryu with his great uppercuts, and Tenryu just chops and lariats him in the throat with Kabuki sells passionately. Tenryu seems to have this in the bag easily but then Kabuki catches him with a surprise thrust kick and Tenryu tumbles outside. Immediately a bunch of Heisei Ishingun goons start swarming Tenryu and brawling with his seconds. Tenryu eats chair shots while Kabuki cuts a promo. Back in the ring Tenryu is bleeding and Kabuki takes him apart punching and kicking the cut. Tenryu is able to snap a Fujiwara armbar but has to let go of the hold because his blood is blinding him in a really neat moment. Tenryus facial expressions and body language are outstanding even on a blurry handheld. His exhausted surprise abisegiris were really cool, also. Great little match due to structure and grit.

Masaaki Mochizuki vs. Masakazu Fukuda Yume Factory 8/4/98

MD:  This went a little over 11 minutes but I wouldn't necessarily call it a sprint. There was just a bit too much substance to it for that. Mainly, it was Mochizuki's kicks against Fukuda's throws (and general sense of resilience because Mochizuki struck first and frequently), but what I loved the most about it was how well it implemented pro wrestling tropes or spots to make them feel organic and natural. Mochizuki would cycle his brutal kicks right into a ten punch in the corner. The match turned on him missing a clothesline into the post but it wasn't telegraphed or set up or winking. Nothing about it felt like a spot, but instead a thing that just happened to occur during this fight. Tack on to that a really strong finishing stretch with a few near-falls that got me and you get a great hidden gem.

SR: This thing getting uploaded by the cameraman almost 25 years later has to be a near miracle, but then we‘ve seen a lot of miracles by now when it comes to highly improbable things ending up on the internet. This was a great striker vs. grappler matchup. Seeing Mochizuki here makes one sour that he retired to Dragon Gate, as he was throwing kicks and hands in a totally unpredictable and non-choreographed way here that was really cool, coupled with some swank agility. Fukuda's style is really unique, he is this lanky tall guy who just glues himself to opponents when he grabs them and drags them into his throws and submissions. He also absolutely rattled Mochizukis shit with a nasty dropkick and some stiff strikes, but Mochizuki kept firing back. The match had a few Hondaish moments, at one point Mochizuki went for a punch to Fukuda and Fukuda attached himself to Mochis arm and dragged him into another hold. When Mochizuki went to recuperate Fukuda just dragged him over the ropes and threw him, with Mochizuki landing hard on all his throws. This was to the point and absolutely no nonsense with both guys giving each other little space a nd all the offense looking like it required zero cooperation, I get WYF was a niche indy back then, but this kind of indy match is a real breath of fresh air these days.

PAS: This was really cool, Fukuda has kind of a tragic story, but he was on his way to being one of the coolest Japanese wrestlers of the 90s. I just love how he would clasp and throw Mochizuki. Always finding cool ways to cut off Mochi's flurries of offense. Mochizuki is pretty great here, as he is just a kicking machine and not a spot guy. His big kicks meshed really nicely with Fukuda's grappling, and you never got a sense of who was going over and the finishing slam by Fukuda was a great coup de grace on a very exciting finish run. Really makes me want to see more WYF stuff. 

 

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Found Footage Friday: ARQUEROS DEL ESPACIO~! LOS TEMERARIOS~! TENRYU~! HANSEN~! FOOTLOOSE~! PANAMANIAN LUCHA RIOTS~!

Los Temerarios (Black Terry/Jose Luis Feliciano/Shu el Guerrero) vs. Arqueros del Espacio (Lasser/Danny Boy/El Arquero) UWA 1989 - GREAT

MD: Half an hour of pure action and motion here. Just one killer exchange after the next building to a tercera of multi-man spots and dives before honing in on an exciting finish. El Arquero is Robin Hood, generally considered to be a B-Team Alvarado, but this match is a great example how that has nothing to do with him and everything to do with how great his brothers are. He was spectacular here, including a step up moonsault press and an amazing contribution to the dive train. The VQ was a little rough, with a blue tint, so it was hard at times to tell Danny Boy and Lasser apart but they both more then held up their own so it hardly mattered. You could tell Feliciano and Terry apart on the rudo side but they based and kept up on all the exchanges equally well, each outdoing the last with every opportunity. The match started with a very good mat based Shu/Arquero exchange and basically didn't let up for twenty minutes and two caidas until things ultimately escalated even further. There wasn't really a beatdown or a comeback so the momentum shifts were slight and the finishes somewhat sudden but you definitely couldn't fault the action here.

PAS: Outside of a bit of a wonky finish, this is at the level of any classic trios we have on tape. Loved to get a chance to really see Shu El Guerrero do his thing. What a slick mat wrestler, he is so good at using Amateur style takedowns and level shifts. Robin Hood feels like a guy who if we had more footage of would have the rep of the rest of his family. He's so fast, so elegant in his movements, just a treasure of a wrestler to watch. Our boy Terry isn't a focus of this match, but looks like a great business like rudo in his ability to stooge, bump and base. I wish things didn't fall apart at the end, because before that this looked like an all time classic, and while I love unearthing cool oddities, finding an all-timer is really special.

ER: I'm a few days late to the party but was excited to check this one out. It delivered. It's 1989, but between the ref's untucked shirt and the video angle, it feels like a weird modern indy lucha. The main giveaway that it's 1989 is that no wrestler would be caught dead shirt-cocking it the way the Space Archers do. The matwork is modern as hell and showed hardly any light. When you're talking the Carlton Celebrity Room, the quality of your night depends on the luchador. You know, Jose Luis Feliciano, ya got no complaints. Feliciano was so quick, with Terry not too far behind him, both basing impressively for Danny Boy/Lasser. I'm not sure which one of them it was (if you're wondering, Shu has the mask with the white plume, Arquero is Robin Hood and has the bandit mask, Terry is the shortest Temerario), but let's say Lasser had two of the slickest armdrags I've seen, Robin Hood hits one of the sweetest moonsault presses (making contact while perfectly vertical and them landing on his feet like Kerri Strug) and a dive that was just as nice. If you're looking for the Terry highlights, my favorite bit with him was at the very beginning of the tercera. It's not the Black Terry you're used to seeing brawl through gravel, but it's great classic luchador Terry, a treat seeing him work airtight fast exchanges. 

Stan Hansen/Genichiro Tenryu vs. Toshiaki Kawada/Samson Fuyuki AJPW 7/16/89

MD: Just to put this into context, it's just five days after Hansen and Tenryu win the tag titles, on a Brody memorial show. In 89, we see Tenryu against both Fuyuki and Kawada in singles matches, but this tag is new to us. A person might expect all of them to go easy on one another since they were stablemates in Revolution, but that person simply wouldn't know the first thing about Genichiro Tenryu. This was a war, with Hansen and Tenryu working to teach Footloose a lesson and Kawada and Fuyuki fighting to prove a point, sure, but also for their very lives. They did best when they were able to work as a unit, and they shined most individually when Tenryu pushed them to far and they furiously fired back, Kawada with kicks and Fuyuki by punching Tenryu repeatedly in the face. More often than not though, they ended up on the ground having the meanest boots from Hansen and Tenryu crashing into their back or ribs. 

Hansen created emotional opportunity better than any wrestler ever and an Irish whip reversal never looked as real as when Fuyuki managed to reverse Hansen and throw his entire body into him with a back elbow so he could make a tag. Likewise, Kawada hit a front missile dropkick, which rarely looks great because it always just pushes his opponent into his own corner, into Tenryu who leaned into it and not away from it. All four of these guys leaned into everything, except for that tragic moment after Footloose had gotten Hansen on the ropes through staying on him two-on-one where Kawada went for a dive and crashed and burned as Hansen moved. There was a lot of that here, with Footloose knowing they had to take higher risks to stay in it and Hansen or Tenryu simply being able to move, including the finish where Tenryu got a clever cradle out of nowhere after a dodge. It was a clever finish but maybe a slightly anti-climactic one after the violence that preceded it.

ER: I really loved what Matt said about this match, and I love AJPW matches that have all of these little story elements going on that you can really get into, all of these little hierarchy moments where you know when Kawada or Fuyuki are really punching above their weight and the crowd is half getting excited to see how they might test Hansen/Tenryu, and half getting excited to see how Hansen and Tenryu are going to punish their insolence. But I also love AJPW matches like this where you can pay no kind of attention to the stories or relationships and just sit back at 1 AM on a Friday night and have a ball watching all these guys beat the hell out of each other. I love how hard Footloose came out of the gates, fearlessly going for the kill on Tenryu knowing that the punishment will be threefold. I couldn't believe how hard Kawada was throwing lariats in this match, what a murderer. When you are in a match with Stan Hansen and you are the one throwing lariats that make me flinch away from the screen, you are a murderer. I love how Footloose really felt like they were throwing the kitchen sink at the champs, how a lot of their strikes were thrown at odd angles and not just "proper kick exchange" form. It felt like Footloose were just wildly throwing all of their limbs at the larger champs and praying something would land significantly enough for them to capitalize. 

When Hansen tagged in and started going after Fuyuki's arm and shoulder (just to be a dickhead), it's so perfect that Footloose pay all of that back when Hansen misses a charge shoulder first into the corner. Hansen's lariat never even comes into play, but Footloose were so good at capitalizing and changing gears that it was easy to see them somehow getting an upset. The whole thing is wall to wall nasty kicks to the back, Kawada's wild missed running plancha, Hansen's great bump where he builds up a head of steam and crashes headlong between the ropes to the floor, and Footloose throwing their bodies as hard as possible at the champs. I thought the finish really worked, as not only did Tenryu's inside cradle look impossibly snug with no way of escaping, but I loved the visual of Tenryu having to "resort" to just using weight and leverage to win the match. Tenryu was getting beat worse than he expected, and instead of staying in and fighting fire with fire, he saw a quick way out and took advantage of it. I don't know if the finish would have worked as well in other Tenryu/Hansen title defenses, but I thought it worked perfectly here as the champs won but showed how vulnerable they might actually be, a vulnerability that was non-existent 20 minutes earlier. 

Sandoken vs. Rocky Star Panama 1980s

MD: More Panamanian lucha. The primera didn't waste any time. After a bit of jockeying for position, Rocky Star hit three dropkicks, moved Sandoken right into a butterfly suplex flawlessly and then press slamed him and locked in a bow and arrow for the win. The segunda was even more abrupt. Rocky Star pushed the advantage with some shoulder tackles, but ran right into a fairly nasty submission all within a minute. So in that regard, this felt almost like modern CMLL. They had a long tercera and they did a lot. Rocky Star just had a lot of stuff in general. Neckbreakers, goardbusters, drop down No Future style kicks. Sandoken's comeback was big but could have been even bigger, and led to the dives. I loved the finish. Rocky Star made a grab between the legs with the ref trying to talk to Sandoken. In doing so, he made it so Sandoken's leg fouled the ref. That gave him an opening for a foul of his own and the win. The fans, as you can imagine, were not pleased and the last five minutes of this clip are people walking around with chairs over their head threateningly. At first I gave it the benefit of the doubt as there was a lot of potential energy but very little kinetic energy and figured that maybe they were just packing the place up for the night, but nope, it all turned south by the end and became a well-deserved riot scene. 

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Found Footage Friday: All Japan 12/5/85

Haru Sonoda vs. Shinichi Nakano

MD: Good performance here from rookie Nakano. He showed a bulldog's tenacity in attacking Sonoda's arm (especially good headbutts to it) and never felt like he shouldn't be in the match. I'd seen him quite a bit recently in 89-90 and past a bit of meandering at times, I would have believed you if you told me this match was from that era. Maybe that was part of the problem in him not advancing more. Sonada (who was Magic Dragon but I imagine most people reading this would know that) came back with headbutts and inside shots and a lot of focus on the eyes. Nakano sold an eye rake with a back bump which was a choice. Finishing stretch was okay in that you at least wondered if Nakano had a shot.

Nick Bockwinkel/Curt Hennig vs. Mighty Inoue/Masa Fuchi

MD: This was what drew me to this show as much as anything else. A new Bockwinkel match. Against two of my favorites of the decade for AJPW in Inoue and Fuchi. AWA babyface Hennig was in for a lot of this, having his leg dismantled by Inoue and Fuchi as they cut off the ring. The nature of the handheld made the ring look huge and the distance insurmountable at one point for Hennig. There were a couple of clips there in that part but you got the idea. Once he did make it to Bockwinkel, Bock was amazing as usual. He immediately pressed Inoue in the corner, then raised his hand in a flamboyant gesture of an exasperated clean break before laying in some shots anyway. He followed it up with a deep slam across the ring before Fuchi came and the two of them scrapped their way to the floor. When it was Hennig's turn to get some revenge, he showed a lot of fire. The finishing stretch was definitive but unique, with Bock lifting Fuchi up for a Hart Attack move with Hennig's "Axe" and then hitting a rare power bomb for the win. I don't think it was ever better than the sum of its parts, but the parts were all very good.

ER: Normally I'm a fan of minimalist wrestling but I wanted a bit more from this one. I was hoping to see Hennig and Inoue work quick and land hard and instead it was a lock of Inoue holding Hennig in a leglock. It was engaging enough, but it wasn't the kind of engagement I wanted. Mockingly, the handheld cuts away right as Hennig starts punching Inoue from his back and Inoue starts connecting back. Fuchi wasn't as much of a dickhead here as he'd become, wrestling much more like Jumbo lite. I did really like Fuchi catching a Hennig kick and Hennig punching him a couple times while hopping on one leg. Bockwinkel hit hard when he tagged in, and the finish was spirited. Inoue splats Bock with his senton and then hits the mat just as hard when Bock rolls away from the next one. The Hennig Axe bomber Hart Attack looked awesome, and Bockwinkel's powerslam finish looked just as good. 

Tiger Mask II/Genichiro Tenryu/Motsohi Okuma vs. Yoshiaki Yatsu/Isamu Teranishi/Norio Honaga

MD: First couple of minutes here had me a little worried as everything was nice and clean and sportsmanlike. Then Yatsu came in and everything changed. 85 Yatsu came off as far more of a disruptor and dissident than Tenryu, a real chip on his shoulder, a real attitude, and more than happy to toss people around with one throw after another. Tenryu would meet him halfway, blasting him with shots and tossing him around on the floor, but he wasn't nearly as violent against anyone else, even Honaga who he was paired up with in the finishing stretch (a standard "junior getting some hope against a star before getting put down" bit). In fact, it was Okuma who came off as both a force and, really, a star, even though he was teaming with Tiger Mask and Tenryu. His headbutt act was perfectly suited for a house show setting and over. Following up from a bit where Yatsu (using Teranishi's distractions) kept coming in to break up submissions, Okuma did the same with headbutts. Eventually, the other side got revenge by all getting their own headbutts in on him (with the crowd egging Honaga along as he was the last and most hesitant of the bunch). I would have liked some of the teams' control segments to last a bit longer as it all felt a little too back and forth but once they got past that initial reluctance to really fight one another and Yatsu reset the mood, this became overall enjoyable.

British Bulldogs vs. Kuniaki Kobayashi/Fumihiro Niikura

MD: Pretty typical ten minute Bulldogs match here. It's 85 so Dynamite was mobile but roided to the gills. Kobayashi especially made the Bulldogs look good, not that it took a ton of work. They were leaping off of pin attempts for both of them and not just Davey Boy which I found interesting. Davey always looked like he was having so much fun in there while Dynamite never did. When it was time to eat offense for the Bulldogs, that was Davey too. I don't know. Unless we're talking 1980-2 jerk heel Dynamite, I always see the stuff I expect to in his matches. Hard to come in with an open mind. This was fine though.

Jesse Barr/Harley Race vs. Jumbo Tsuruta/Giant Baba

MD: I had some hopes for this one. Generally, I think Race gives way too much in Japan given who he is and what his rep is and how awesome he can be when he's really laying it in. His partner here was Barr though so I couldn't imagine Barr carrying too much of the offense. This still had a decent amount of Race stooging though. Some of it was pretty ginger. He moved super slow out of a corner whip, for instance, but then he walked right into a belly to belly, so it's not like you can complain. When he did go on offense, it was pretty great, with some killer headbutts out of the corner and then holding Jumbo up for the world's longest delayed pile driver. Even the way he'd turn a Jumbo front facelock into a suplex, just the way he powered him over, had a ton of presence behind it. Barr was okay, bumping big for Baba (and glad to do it) and rewarded later by getting to belly-to-back him. The finish had Jumbo and Baba repeatedly kill Barr only for Race to save him again and again until both teams got counted out. My favorite part towards the end was the guys with the handheld camera shouting out what they thought Jumbo's next move would be (they got the clothesline right but didn't realize he wanted to do a revenge pile driver instead of the belly to back).

ER: This managed to be a bit dull and a bit surprising all at once. Jumbo had a couple dry runs on offense, and Race was a bit slow and deliberate at times, but I love these kind of matches because it's always fun seeing guys like Jesse Barr interact with huge legends. Race bumps a lot, getting big air on a Jumbo hiptoss and really tossed with a belly to belly, gets the legs knocked out from him by a Baba back elbow (after Race punched Baba in the eye), and down the stretch he takes his big rope flip bump backwards to the floor. I agree with Matt that it's more fun when Race fights back harder, and we get a feel for that when he's punching at Jumbo and gives him a hard atomic drop. I think '85 Jumbo is more interesting as a dynamic seller than on offense, buckling his knees at the impact of Race's strikes. 

Jesse Barr interacting with Baba and Jumbo delivered what I wanted, and I liked how the guys recording this either really liked Jesse Barr, or at minimum were pretending to like Barr to crack each other up. Every time Barr would pull off a move they'd yell "Barrrr!" I didn't really hear them react to any Harley Race offense, but they reacted to Barr the whole time. Barr had a really nice high bearhug on Jumbo that Baba had to come in and break with a chop to the back of Barr's neck, and later he got to throw Jumbo with a nice belly to belly, and drop Baba with a high delayed back suplex. Jesse Barr dropping Giant Baba with a huge back suplex was too much, I love it. Baba had a bunch of great chops and Jumbo knocked Barr to the floor with a big running knee, then Barr rearranged every ringside barricade with his body. It had dull parts, it had some great stuff, it's a good enough 12 minutes. 

Dory Funk Jr. vs. Riki Choshu

MD: First and last third of this were really good but I thought they'd be striking a lot more. Instead they worked the mat and that first third had them moving in and out of things frequently and really fighting for positioning and counters. Gritty stuff. In the middle, it devolved a bit more into fighting for one particular hold, be it a half crab or the Scorpion, but they picked things back up for the finishing stretch. At one point Dory hit a belly to back followed by a butterfly suplex and a Russian legsweep. Just boom, boom, boom. Then Choshu blocked the fourth boom (an atomic drop) and started throwing the clotheslines leading to one great near fall where Dory ducked it. Eventually, they hit the floor and Hansen and Dibiase (and then Hara and Rusher) came out to cause chaos and set up the next match and that was that. The good stuff here was very good.

ER: I thought this was pretty great, a hardscrabble match where nothing looked easy. This looked like a real workout for Dory and Choshu, and I thought Dory was especially impressive. Choshu is a real bulldog and goes after Dory on the mat, and it's cool to start a match with 6-7 minutes of catch as catch can before going into the stuff where you really need a gas tank. Dory was just a couple months away from his WWF stint and looked really big, far bigger chest and arms than he had earlier in the decade. That extra size comes in handy as he and Choshu have some pretty nasty collisions. The matwork was tough on its own, both guys working hard to block single legs and Funk fighting off the Scorpion, and I didn't think the finishing run would be as hot as it was. Not only did Dory start dropping Choshu, but both guys were getting to their feet quick, and the excellent camera work really zoomed in and showed how hard that 1985 AJ mat was. 

Every bump looked body jarring and Funk really looked like he was powering a heavy Choshu up. Funk's back suplex looked great and his butterfly suplex was strong, guy looked like he was out there on the farm loaded bales, and if Stan Hansen hadn't pulled a Russian legsweep even more deadly looked in the very next match then I would have said Dory clearly had the best legsweep on this show. Choshu threw a few lariats right at Dory's neck, and I like how accurately Dory sold them: one knocked him flat on his back, one to the side of his neck knocked him sideways and onto one foot, and when Riki started swinging his arm my man had to act fast. Dory ducking THEE lariat was perfectly done, as Riki swung for the fences and Dory just dipped his head under and hooked the waist, a nearfall on an O'Connor roll that would have been a really good finish. Tough as hell match, shocking this kind of workout was what they were doing when the cameras weren't rolling. 

Rusher Kimura/Ashura Hara vs. Ted Dibiase/Stan Hansen

MD: This had one clip in the middle but probably not a big one. Hara and Rusher took it right to their opponents, with both sides trying to drive each other back into the corner when possible. Dibiase tries hard but when paired with Hansen he always comes off as a guy trying to wear his dad's suit. This was short and entirely back and forth but it had the sort of energy you'd want given who was in there.

ER: Man how cool does Baba look at ringside with his yellow stripe on black track pants, black shirt tucked in? Our director was 100% right to zoom in on him. The Yellowjacket ringside track suits were a real highlight of 1985. There was a cut in the middle of this one, so I'm not sure how much we missed, but what we have is 8 minutes of a real good fast-paced scrap. Everybody comes off like a tough son of a gun, with Hansen bullying Rusher around and the still-spry 44 year Rusher fighting back hard. Rusher was easier for Hansen to bully 5 years later, but he was still beefy and mad in 1985. I love the way Hansen tangles guys up and spins and rolls around the ring with him, really tussling. His body language is always the best, and he pays close attention to things that could easily be throwaways, like the way he clamps heavily on Rusher and Hara's traps when he locks in a nerve hold. 

Hansen never makes it easy on anybody. He's always pulling on you, laying on you heavy and not giving you rest holds, and always hitting so damn hard. Hansen is just the most annoying opponent, more relentless than Fit Finlay and 60 pounds bigger. And I like when guys like Kimura and Hara can deflect that relentless energy, even if only temporarily. I loved the finishing building to Rusher's hot tag, when Hansen rushes into a Hara boot and spirals his way dramatically down the length of the ring. Rusher tags in and throws a ton of headbutts and Hansen reacts to them like he's in a swarm of bees. I liked Dibiase here too, holding his end of Large Gaijin Hansen Partner of a big tandem shoulderblock that knocked Hara ass over elbow, and bringing the beauty of the falling fistdrop to Hiroshima. He dropped a bit of the technique here and to focus on the energy, and I kind of like Dibiase wrestling like Joel Deaton. Hansen hits one of the smoothest violent Russian legsweeps I've ever seen, Dibiase wins it with a big rotating powerslam, and Hansen slides out of the ring and gets the hell out of that arena like he was missing his bus. Great stuff. 

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Found Footage Friday: KUNG FU~! ROCCO~ HANSEN~! JUMBO~! TENRYU~! AWESOME KONG~! DEVIL~! BORSHOI~!

Kung Fu vs. Rollerball Rocco UK 11/19/85

MD: Rocco is a guy who always feels like he's too bombastic for the style, always ready to explode out at any moment, always too quick to rush back to action, never settling for the comparatively refined (even when entirely dirty and underhanded) World of Sport wrestling. Here, he was able to draw entirely outside the lines and it felt like Cheshire by way of Puerto Rico, especially in the first few minutes which had brawling around the arena, a low blow, a flip bump from the stage back into the ring, moves off the top, choking with a cord, the corner pad taken off and the buckle used as a weapon. It was all pretty wild. Meanwhile, Rocco was leaning in and through and around and up and over for all of Kung Fu's offense, making kicks and straight shots look absolutely deadly, and more than happy to hit some bombs of his own, like dropping Kung Fu with a back bump pile driver of sorts. It calmed down a little in the back half and felt more like a normal Rocco match, to the point where the escalation almost went in reverse, but it was all quick enough that you never were too far away from that crazy beginning. Primarily, this whole thing made me badly wish that 85 Rocco vs 85 Colon in a baseball stadium in San Juan had somehow happened.

PAS: This was great, totally different then you would expect from a match in England. Matt's comparison with Puerto Rico was on point, because it totally had that unhinged vibe, it also reminded me a bit of Poffo's ICW. Rocco was great in this bringing intensity from the beginning, All of the brawling on the stage was awesome, including Rocco eating an insane beal from the stage into the ring. Really liked Kung Fu's Chuck Norrisish martial arts, that thrust to throat looked sick, and his kicks were more Stan Lane then Low-Ki, but great looking Stan Laneish kicks. These guys matched up a bunch, and I want to watch them all, it feels like two guys that meant to be matched up.


Jumbo Tsuruta/Yoshiaki Yatsu/Great Kabuki vs. Stan Hansen/Genichiro Tenryu/Samson Fuyuki AJPW 7/3/89

MD: This was recently uncovered by the new round of Classics and it's a match that fits the moment, that period where Hansen had just joined with Tenryu, a month after Tenryu had taken the title from Jumbo. The clash up against each other with absolutely no give for thirteen or so minutes here, never, ever, allowing for the least bit of disbelief. It's all suspended the whole way through. There's no space for doubt. Revolution controls the ring better, but Jumbo's more than happy to charge in and assert himself when he's not the legal man. In the few matches we have of them working together, Fuyuki always seems more confident when he's with Hansen. Here, even though he eats the early big boot by Jumbo (and Jumbo loved to do that to Footloose), he comes back with his own later as Jumbo's trying to get into the ring. That would set up the exchange they'd have towards the end when Jumbo finally put him down. The match opens up a bit after Hansen and Tenryu hit an assisted powerbomb on Kabuki. 

Yatsu ends up brawling on the outside with Hansen but Jumbo targets Tenryu, absolutely crushing him with a jumping knee in the corner, which led to bleeding and Jumbo being absolutely unrelenting with repeated stomps. Kabuki having to shove Jumbo to get him off felt like a real lost (and now uncovered) definitional moment for 89 Jumbo and the fury he felt towards Tenryu, the only person who could really get under his skin. For all of Jumbo's high and mighty sportsman's nature and noble chin, Tenryu could bring him down to his level, in the gutter with blood and violence. Otherwise, Kabuki was in there to lose the offense a few times (as was Fuyuki) and launch those awesome uppercuts at Tenryu and Hansen. Fuyuki made a try at it towards the end, but he was overexuberent and Jumbo caught him off the ropes with a hotshot and the belly to back for the win. Post match, the violence unsurprisingly continued with bullropes and tables getting involved. This was a worthy release from the AJPW archives that sums up the moment in time very well.

PAS: Goddamn was this my shit. Just six nasty crowbars unloading on each other. I am a low voter on World Champion title match Jumbo, but pissed up Jumbo stomping and punching Tenryu until he is bleeding I am all the way in on. Hansen was great as a background character in this match, a half blind bulldozer smashing everything in sight, I loved the sections where he was getting strafed by Kabuki uppercuts until he unloaded with a knees and punches. Yastsu, Hara and Fuyuki also bring the appropriate level of crazy and this match basically never lets up. This was WAR before WAR, mixing in pissed off Jumbo and reckless Hansen, and I couldn't recommend it more. 

Command Bolshoi/Devil Masami vs Amazing Kong/Haruka Matsuo JWP 9/18/05

MD: Interesting match that covered a lot of ground. Very different Bolshoi than what we've been seeing from her stuff a decade later. Here she was competent and quick but not some sort of maestro. Kong was probably still finding her legs to a degree. She worked to her size fairly well but not so much so as she would a couple of years later. Some of her positioning felt a little more obvious. Each of the exchanges here were a little bit different and the most memorable probably ended up being Matsuo vs Masami, where Masami was just an absolute tank against her. At one point, she ate a dropkick right in the face while she was kneeling, to the point that you could see the flesh move, and she just shrugged it off and pressed on. Later on, she not only prevented Matsuo from making it to the corner with her hair alone, but then threw her across the ring with said hair. It was pretty wild and maybe not something I'd want to see over the span of multiple matches, but dropping in to see her as a force of nature counterpoint to Kong with Matsuo just bouncing off of her was ok for one match. And Matsuo, while she earned many of her openings with Kong's help, did certainly throw herself with everything she had against Masami. I would have been curious to see what the Bolshoi we've been seeing lately might have been able to do with a Kong from a few years later. 

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SEGUNDA CAIDA DECLARES WAR: WAR 6/20/99

WAR 6/20/1999

Masao Orihara vs. Tomohiro Ishii

SR: Both these guys were pretty great in the late 90s, so I was pretty salty about this being clipped down just a couple minutes. Ishii was a wreckingball during this period, but Orihara easily outstiffes him trying to crack his jaw with lariats. We also get Ishii working Orihara over with chairs and whiping him out with a crazy rolling senton to the outside. Fun stuff but I wanted atleast 3/4ths of the thing.

Nihao vs. Koki Kitahara

SR: This was a CAPTURE showcase match and holy fuck after this I‘d kill to get the entire CAPTURE back catalogue. Brutal brutal match, just the most primitive grimy shootstyle you can imagine, two  guys with gloves trying to pummel each other into oblivion. Nihao takes Kitahara down and bloodies him with punches and headbutts, but the boss comes back just trying to crush his face with punches and teeth loosening kicks. There was one spinkick that would‘ve made Daisuke Ikeda wince, and also at one point Kitahara reverses a takedown into an armlock that looked to almost tear Nihaos shoulder. They showed 4 out of 6 minutes, and really would it have killed them to include those 2 minutes? Still 80 % of a sick spectacle is better than most, and those 4 minutes were some of the most insane of the year.

Ryuma Go vs. Thunder Warrior Alpha

SR: I respect Tenryu's tendency to bring in Go to squish random aliens. This was clipped to almost nothing but we got to see Go acting crazy and destroying the alien.

Genichiro Tenryu/Magnum TOKYO vs. Nobutaka Araya/Sumo Fuji

SR: The boss is involved, so we got the full match here. Didn‘t know what to expect from this, but it ends up a really entertaining match thanks to Tenryuisms. Basically Sumo Fuji acts like a big shot and annoys Tenryu some and ends up paying for it. Also really liked Araya as a scuzzy guy potatoing Magnum TOKYO. Toryumon guys also looked solid in their sections against each other, and TOKYO hit a pretty great top rope asai moonsault amongst other things. Loved Tenryu here, I think he didn‘t even take a back bump but pretty much carried the match by being a prick, as he usually does.

Osamu Tachihikari/Arashi vs. Daikokubo Benkei/Ichiro Yaguchi

SR:We get about 30 seconds of this and I am not bummed at all about that. I liked Tachihikari busting out random move like an STO and a Magistral.

Yuji Yasuraoka/Masaaki Mochizuki vs. Super Delfin/Naohiro Hoshikawa

SR: This was 4 solid pro wrestlers doings lots of solid pro wrestling, building to a pretty exciting second half. WAR reckless kicker Mochizuki ruled, I am just going to pretend he retired after WAR folded. He had some pretty great exchanges with Hoshikawa here, and I loved him flying into the scenery out of nowhere to take out people with spin kicks. Delfin & Hoshikawa worked well together and it was cool to see them acting as a crew. For some reason, juniors getting dumped on their heads or diving around the place was a lot more satisfying to watch in the 90s.

Masaaki Mochizuki vs. Yuji Yasuraoka

SR: I guess Mochizuki wasn‘t happy with Yasuraoka's performance in that tag, so he gets on the mic to challenge Yasuraoka to a singles. Yasuraoka then proceeds to hit his awesome dive, getting insane height, and we get a fun short explosion of them throwing bombs at each other. Wouldn‘t have minded if this went longer, but they just did a 17 minute long match before so it made sense for this to be short and intense.

Shigeo Okumura/Sambo Asako/Atsushi Onita vs. Nobutaka Araya/Genichiro Tenryu/Shoji Nakamaki

SR: Exactly what it looks like on paper: Six tubby asskickers brawling all over the place, bleeding and pasting each other with chairs and lariats. That plus the megastar charisma of Tenryu and Onita. Tenryu is such an awesome menace here, punching people in the face and chucking chairs at them. Him vs. Terry Funk would’ve been one hell of a program. Then again, Tenryu  was pretty much untouchable at this point in his career. Onita & Asako looked pretty much like regular guys at this point, which made Asako getting abused by Tenryu feel all the more violent. Okumura was in charge with bringing a slight bit of workrate to the match and he did fine, hitting a pretty stiff dropkick. Very predictable match but all too fun.

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New Footage Friday: All Japan 1/8/90

FULL SHOW

Tsuyoshi Kikuchi vs. Mitsuo Momota

MD: For a first match young guy, Kikuchi looked to have a ton of promise here. The dropkick stands out but he sold well and just looked like he belonged in there for the most part. Momota is a guy you want to see as an underdog, so watching him tear apart an arm in interesting ways is compelling but not what I enjoy the most out of him. They dropped the arm stuff in the last third which didn't necessarily do the match justice but you could see hints of the wrestler Kikuchi would become here.

ER: This felt more like a 1990 WWF house show match than a 1990 All Japan match, which still has some pluses. Much of the match is Momota grinding at Kikuchi's left arm, and Kikuchi's screaming during the arm work really made a lot of it resonate. But once you know that the left arm is never going to come up in any way once they go into the home stretch, it kind of renders the bulk of the match as "lets see if these front rows fill up a little more before the bigger matches". So you lop out the long arm section, and you're still left with a couple of cool things. Kikuchi's dropkick is fantastic and the way Momota sells it makes it seem like it hits with as much force as it looks like it's hitting. Later in the match Momota merely tosses Kikuchi to the floor and Kikuchi flies through the ropes as if he's hitting a tope on an invisible man, just a nutty bump to be taking in a "work the arm" match. I really loved how Momota blocked a Kikuchi hip toss by holding the ropes in the corner, then violently shoved Kikuchi to the mat. But I just can't by a single DDT finishing off Kikuchi, not after I seeing the decades of coconut clonks his head would end up enduring. 

Goro Tsurumi vs. Steve Gatorwolf

MD: Man, Gatorwolf's chops suck. I'll just lay that out there. He's big, has some presence, but Wahoo he is not. You know who could have had a good match against Tsurumi? Wahoo. Tsurumi's stuff is all good though. Good knees, took up space well, etc., but this was too long and Gatorwolf disappoints. We go deep on these cards, look under the overturned rock, but there maybe should be some limits? This feels like a match that no one's ever seen certainly, including the people that were actually in the crowd that night.

ER: I liked this more than Matt, and disagree about Gatorwolf's chops. Bad kneedrop? Sure Gatorwolf had a bad kneedrop. But All Japan fans had different ideas of what overhand chops to someone's forehead were supposed to look like and I think Gatorwolf's chops worked really well within the context of All Japan. What is kind of odd about Gatorwolf, is that his overhand chops are easily his weakest strike, but also the strike he uses 75% of the time. It would be like a pitcher with a terrible curveball who still used his curveball almost every pitch. There's a traditional chop exchange out of the corner, and Gatorwolf really blisters Goro's chest with a couple. He also threw this short right hand to the jaw a couple times that looked really good, but mostly it was the tomahawk chops. Goro Tsurumi is always an entertaining low card guy for me, but I think of him as a mid 80s AJ guy, not a 1990 AJ guy, and his offense that is primarily eye rakes and punches doesn't seem like anything that would fit into AJ (outside of Rusher Kimura). 

Tsurumi essentially works like Tarzan Goto working as Rusher Kimura, and that is a thing that I like. His punches look really great (and I love how he shook out his hand occasionally), he has a nice jawbreaker (which Gatorwolf bumped nicely), a couple of fun kneedrops where he just dropped both knees down into Gatorwolf's stomach, and a few eye rake variants. I couldn't believe Gatorwolf got the win here. Early 90s AJ had this weird habit of bringing in WWF job guys for tours, but it's not like they were giving those guys wins! Gatorwolf worked Tsurumi far more than any opponent on his tour, and was 8-2 against him! He lost to everyone else, so this might have been Baba really blatantly saying "You do not belong in All Japan any longer, Goro. Also you will be losing to David Sammartino and Joel Deaton in a couple months."  

Yoshinari Ogawa vs. Rip Rogers

MD: Rogers was just infinitely entertaining. If I was Baba, I'd have put him right in the comedy six mans (That weren't quite comedy six mans yet, but we'll get to that). He's a super over the top parody babyface here with lots of clapping and oh yeahs! He carried a kid around the ring on his shoulders before the match, which felt unique but was something he did multiple times on the tour. And if this was 1997 Ogawa or 2002 Ogawa or whatever, he would have been able to react and respond to it and it would have been amazing. 1990 Ogawa? He played grumpy with a chip on his shoulder as Rogers is just having a good time. I liked this a lot better than his Kobashi match a couple of days later, because Kobashi, in the midst of a big 7 match series against various opponents (including allies like Kabuki and Yatsu) just took it all way too seriously with the ability to take it to Rip, forcing Rogers into more of a heel role, where here he felt like a bizarre attraction. 

ER: I love the Rip Rogers All Japan tours, and Rip really should have been a regular undercard gaijin for the rest of the decade. Mike Modest basically secured a long term NOAH gig by getting a simple thumbs up gesture over, and Rogers has 5 or 6 different bits that are a definite hit with the AJ crowds. I've looked at some of his other matches from his two tours (here are matches against Fuchi and Sato, and here are matches against Kobashi and Eigen), and the act is a hit. Clapping, toting around kids, taking an eternity to hand off his robe, checking out his hair in his hand mirror, it gets a reaction every time and I have no doubt that he would have added to the routines with a longer stay. Rip has the shtick (which Ogawa plays into a little, mussing up Rip's hair), but he also works stiff, and this was when Ogawa was more of a stiff younger worker too, so we get a great mix of goof off yelping from Rip and then some stiff arm lariats from both. Rip has great punches (and he shakes his fist out too! A bunch of guys after my heart on this show...) and both bumped convincingly for the other. I loved Rip finishing with a superplex, too, but I just couldn't shake the idea that this guy should have been a gaijin undercard star.  

Mighty Inoue/Isamu Teranishi vs. The Fantastics

MD: Inoue was really good. I don't think he gets enough credit. Huge energy. Everything's crisp. Everything's mean. He has something special in how he moves and hits stuff. Teranishi, on the other had, does not. He was in there to lose offense and get beaten on. Fantastics kept taking advantage on him with teamwork and then Inoue had to come in and fix things. Fulton and Rogers had good stuff, like always, and fed well for Inoue, but I like them more when they get to lean into either face or heel roles generally.

ER: The Fantastics are so great during their 90s All Japan run that I have to imagine a ton of people just weren't seeing their matches, or else they would have been talked about as one of the greater 90s tag teams. The are total asskickers in All Japan, small, but packing a wallop. Matching them up against the still very fast and hard hitting Mighty Inoue and the super tough sumo Teranishi is just a super fun pairing. Fulton kept cutting off Inoue and Teranishi with his great right hand, Rogers had a lot of force behind everything he did (he hit a legdrop on a hot tag at one point and it felt like he was trying his hardest to destroy his tailbone), but perhaps his greatest strength is in taking all of Inoue's nastiest shots. Inoue sticks Rogers with a disgusting gutbuster/senton combo and looks like a truck tire rolling over Tommy. Teranishi hits a great kneedrop off the top and it felt like a possible finish. But the Fantastics were too good with cutoff spots and watching them peel Teranishi far enough away from Inoue was great, loved their Drive-By finish, and Fulton's running punch to keep Inoue from breaking up the pin was the sweetest icing.

 

Giant Baba/Rusher Kimura/The Great Kabuki vs. Masanobu Fuchi/Motoshi Okuma/Haruka Eigen

MD: You can't say that they didn't make good use out of Fuchi in these matches. He was able to switch on a dime between hanging with his legendary opponents and stooging all over the place for them. Due to the HH, I had a hard time telling Fuchi's side apart at times, but that's more on me. Baba's more mobile here and Rusher hasn't shifted over completely to the bit where he just stands around stoically as people hit him, but I'm not sure that's even a good thing. The matches get a lot funnier a few years later even if they're probably more technically sound at this point.

ER: I thought this was great, and maybe the best fusion of comedy and the guys still being able to work. Everyone in a trios having the average age of 45 just feels like a modern WWE match, and most of these guys could still go in the ring. It's much more wrestling with some comedy, as opposed to comedy with a little bit of wrestling like this style of trios would become. A lot of these guys (Eigen, Fuchi, Kabuki, Okuma) are still real ass kickers, Baba was still able to hit with a surprising amount of force and was still quite spry, and Rusher was inflexible but still had several cool tricks. 

Baba and Fuchi were a great match, with Baba hitting him with some really impressive stuff for a 52 year old giant. His Russian legsweep makes him look like an actual powerful giant, he hits one of the loudest Baba chops I've ever heard to the side of Fuchi's neck, Fuchi runs super fast directly into Baba's big boot, it honestly looked like they could have had a great singles match in 1990. But for some reason Fuchi hardly worked singles matches in 1990, not defending his World Junior title for a six month stretch. It's not just those two with chemistry, everyone works really well with everyone else, all get nice moments to shine. Kabuki looked as violent as ever, starting a match long trend of Eigen and Fuchi getting kicked in the shoulder blades. Kabuki makes kicking guys in the back and look so fun that Baba throws several great ones of his own. Eigen is really spirited and mean here, throwing stiff chops, slapping the taste out of Rusher's mouth with a hard fast combo, taking a quick flipping bump to the floor; he didn't look too old to be out to pasture, but he was working 90% tags and trios as one of the lowest totem pole guys on the roster. It's a real testament to how deep the native roster was. 

Okuma is a guy I always forget about, but contributed nasty headbutts (including a big standing splash variation) and has some great battles with Rusher and Baba. Even Rusher has his vicious moments, taking a ton of headbutts and throwing heavy chops, choking Eigen hard in the ropes. The comedy is well integrated and smartly played, not nearly so much a focal point of the match style, but a fun added feature of a quicker paced match than you'd expect. There was a lot of movement for a match that would become the old man style, and the few comedy spots provide nice breaks in the action. We get the Eigen spitting spot, except nobody has newspapers and he makes it to the 3rd row. And we get a great comedy callback spot to play off an earlier Baba moment. Kabuki had hit a hard bodyslam on Fuchi and Baba stepped firmly down onto Fuchi's stomach with his gigantic foot, then firmly walking on and over him. Fuchi later tries to do the same, only to get his foot grabbed, tripping him on his way over. The finish is a bit abrupt, which is a funny thing to say about one of the longest matches on the show. But I thought this was really one of the best matches from a style not known for it's high end in-ring. 

Shinichi Nakano vs. Randy Rose

MD: You feel a little bad for Rose to have to follow Rip on the card. He tried hard, though, including hitting an axe-handle off the apron, but his stooge stuff (like getting pulled off the ropes in a double leg or teeter-tottering like Funk in the ropes while getting chopped or getting atomic dropped onto a chair) wasn't going to play post-Rip. Nakano, like usual, was just there. This was fine but the crowd didn't come along.


Shunji Takano/Akira Taue vs. Abdullah the Butcher/Ivan Koloff

MD: A nothing match. This was a good tour for Koloff, but you don't really get to see that here so just take my word for it. Taue wasn't even close to being The Taue at this point, and watching him here, you couldn't be blamed for thinking he'd be another sumo guy who didn't make it. Takano (who was a couple of years younger actually), on the other hand, seemed like he would have been a player.

Yoshiaki Yatsu/Kenta Kobashi vs. The British Bulldogs

MD: This was mostly Davey Boy putting young Kobashi through his paces, but that was a lot of fun to see. Davey looked great and like he could have been feuding with Jumbo or Tenryu for the Triple Crown if he didn't go to the WWF towards the end of 90. I'm iffy on late Bulldogs matches because it's not very enjoyable to watch broken-down Dynamite, but he wasn't in much and mostly threw headbutts or did a little bit of grinding on Kobashi when he was in. Yatsu got to clean house towards the end but this felt about getting some more miles on Kobashi.

Jumbo Tsuruta/Tiger Mask II/Isao Takagi vs. Genichiro Tenryu/Toshiaki Kawada/Samson Fuyuki

MD: This came just a few days after Takagi brutally ambushed Tenryu before a singles TV match with Koloff. It's also one of Tiger Mask Misawa's first matches back after missing most of 89 with an injury. Tenryu had faced Jumbo dozens of times over the last year, but generally, Tenryi had the younger guys (in Footloose) on his side and Jumbo would have older warriors like Kabuki or Yatsu on his. There wasn't a lot of opportunity to see Tenryu be a grumpy bastard against the youth. He made up for lost time here. Every time he got into the ring and got his hands on Takagi, it's great. He just brutalizes him for a few seconds and then dismissively tags out to one of his partners. He's equally a jerk to Tiger Mask (chopping him for no reason whenever he gets too close to the corner while he's on the apron) and, of course, Jumbo (just leaping into the ring, running across and tagging him). 

My single favorite bit was him wrecking Takagi after Isao had the impudence to pull Tiger Mask out of the way of the Tenryu top rope elbow drop. It was obvious that he took it personally and no one was better at taking things personally than Tenryu. Even though that was my favorite, the match was just full of great Tenryu moments: dropping a table on Takagi from the outside, eating some Tiger Mask kicks only to yank him down to the mat by his mask, smugly dodging a double knee by Takagi and Jumbo. All the while, he's incredibly giving, letting Tiger Mask and Takagi both have big moments against him. Jumbo and Footloose play their parts well and this ends up being as a really nice piece of business and a great lost match.

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