Found Footage Friday: 1989 NJPW~!

2/8/89

George Takano vs. Hiro Saito

MD: Pretty solid match. Takano was being pushed more at the start of 89 (with his team with Super Strong Machine) than at any point since he dropped the Cobra gimmick. He looked good here in a singles against a very game opponent. He did take most of the match. Saito would try to get him in a hold and he had an interesting technical escape to everything (be it stepping through to set up a takedown or a headstand to get out of a headscissors). Saito had a nice escape or two of his own. Things really picked up down the stretch as they absolutely paintbrushed each other for thirty seconds. That led to a nearfall off of Saito's senton and Takano catching him out of nowhere with the spin wheel kick and then finishing him off with a suplex and top rope splash. You'll be glad to know they shook hands post-match.  

ER: This was good. Tight grappling, real force applied during submissions and lock ups and knuckle locks, real physics used in takedowns and near misses. Takano had some great stuff to steal, including a cool low kip up out of an armbar (going straight into leaning his weight down into Saito's legs to maneuver out) and a cool pendulum swing spinebuster takedown, shifting Saito's weight back and forth before slamming him. Saito's figure 4 headscissors is impossibly snug, and all of Takano's eventual escape looked well earned. Once he escapes he locks Saito into a disgusting leg-grapevined camel clutch that would have played as the finish. You know maybe someone shouldn't steal any of this Takano stuff as I don't know who would be able to apply it as well as he does. They work these holds until the 10 minute announcement and then get right up and go into the finishing stretch. I was getting used to these snug holds and suddenly we're getting suplexes, Takano going up for a high backdrop, Saito hitting his senton famously full weight. I think Takano is much more interesting working holds than he is doing actual running offense. All of his holds looked like he was stretching Saito, but his top rope splash finish looked like he was trying to avoid full contact at all costs. 

Bello Greco/Sergio El Hermoso vs. Hirokazu Hata/Naoki Sano

MD: When Hata and Sano came back from Mexico, they brought their sparring partners with them. There's a Fujiwara match with them that people should seek out. As best as I can tell, Greco was the real base and worker and Sergio was the flash and lead for the comedy. He kissed the announcer before the match and blew one to the ref, causing all sorts of havoc. Hata and Sano had some big climb up armdrags on Greco. And the kiss spot where Sano went flying the first time but Hata blocked it to tweak the nose/lips the second worked about as well as it could. Sano had a bit more style to what he was doing maybe, whereas Hata just played into what he was given more, but both looked good. Finish had Hata hit a dive to the floor off the top and Sano hit a German (but not able to hold the bridge) for the win. In context, a lot of these spots were repeated from the TV matches they were having, but they were all crowd-pleasers for the house show crowd.

ER: The exoticos' music is incredible. It's like someone doing a muted trumpet sound with their mouth doing a sexy Peter Gunn theme. They have a great act. You can tell it's a great act, because they got constant laughs for the full 14 minute runtime, while tons of wrestlers on this card couldn't buy a reaction. Matt Borne and Italian Stallion can't buy a single sound from the people of Sapporo, but they love every single thing Greco and Sergio do, with good cause. The fans love the silly rope running, they love the butt stuff (I wonder if Rick Rude ever saw Bello Greco and lifted an entire career of selling atomic drops), they love the accidents and the misdirection, just involved in every single movement both do. Their timing is great throughout, the absolute best bit being Greco running down the length of the apron to just miss Hata, running his own face into the turnbuckle. Sano looked like a guy clearly in the middle of his breakout year whenever he was in (his stepover armdrag early in the match was so fast and clean) and Hata looked like a guy who was not that, and I loved how they worked with the exotico tandem. They weren't guys being worked around, they were integrating nicely. I would have loved to see Greco and Sergio stick around longer than these few weeks of '89 and work with more opponents, see what the act could do in singles, but all the footage we have is so good in the way that I'm happy it never burnt out. 

Seiji Sakaguchi/Kengo Kimura vs. Matt Borne/Italian Stallion 

ER: This doesn't add up to anything big but has plenty of fun working parts. I have not seen much of Italian Stallion's 1989 New Japan run, and it's crazy how much time he spent there that year and only that year. Sakaguchi makes chopped liver out of him, swallowing him up whole and chaining judo throws while never letting go of his arm, which he caught when Stallion tried to throw one punch. One punch that doesn't land and Sakaguchi treats him like he's Seiji Sakaguchi fighting The Italian Stallion. Stallion isn't bad at all, but he is much better when he wrestles like a poor man's Matt Borne rather than his usual rich man's Joey Maggs. His dropkick hits like a truck and he throws Kimura with a cool belly to belly, but needs a better clothesline. 

I love how Matt Borne moves. He's just as unpredictable as Buzz Sawyer but keeps things more compact. He's a bulldog, goes hard after Sakaguchi and gets hit hard by the large man. I loved a double leg trip Kimura and Sakaguchi pulled on him, like they were actually trying to pull him apart like a wishbone. Borne really smothers Kimura whenever he's in with him, riding him on the mat and not letting him land anything until the finish. He even pulls some bullshit when the ref misses Sakaguchi's tag and Borne goes back to picking on Kimura, shutting down a hot tag. Crowd doesn't react in any way to his bombs away which is just cold. He eventually takes the pin when Kimura gets a piledriver, and I like how he sells the piledriver with confusion instead of neck pain. 

MD: Little bit of a weird one to me. Stallion (and Borne to a lesser degree) gave a bit to Kimura but mostly ate him up on the mat. Stallion would just roll around on top of him. As you can imagine, they'd give more for Sakaguchi though. Kimura did get the win with the leg lariat/pile driver combo so maybe he felt giving but it did seem like Stallion was going to assert himself as much as possible when given the chance (just not with one of the bosses). Maybe that's why he stayed around so much in 89? 

Super Strong Machine vs. Yoshiaki Fujiwara 

ER: This doesn't rise to levels of Fujiwara singles match greatness, but it is a Fujiwara singles match against one of my favorite New Japan 80s natives so it's obviously a great 12 minutes. Fujiwara is in house show antagonist mode and just trolls Strong Machine with annoying stuff all match. He breaks every lock up with a slap, in a way that's not meant to hurt but meant to rile up Machine into making mistakes. It's all mischievousness where he retains plausible deniability over being a troll but it's all there. Look at Machine finally make his first inroads and throw Fujiwara to the floor, only to see the insanely aggravating way Fujiwara casually walks back around the ring after hitting the floor. Fujiwara gets his head bounced off the turnbuckle bolt and just strolls away adjusting his trunks. I don't think there was a wink thrown to the crowd, but it was implied. Just a cool fucking guy catching eyes with a girl in a car while crossing the street. 

Things open up when Machine starts going after Fujiwara's taped up knee with an ankle lock, and you can tell it's getting to Fujiwara because he starts throwing backfists from his back into Machine's neck. Machine wisely maneuvers things into a single leg crab, much harder to throw backfists from that position. Fujiwara breaks free from it by fishhooking Strong Machine's mask with one hand and throwing punches with the other, gripping a handful of the bottom edge of his mask with his left while punching him straight in the jaw with his right. When he gets to his feet he throws half a dozen headbutts, still holding Machine by the mask, hopping on his bad knee while throwing them. There's a great moment where Machine fires up after Fujiwara kneels on his face, and demands Fujiwara punch him some more, like a man. Fujiwara happily obliges and buckles Strong Machine's legs. 

The finish sequence is hot as hell. Fujiwara catches a clothesline and puts his weight behind an armbar in one motion, but Machine rolls through, so Fujiwara tries to take him down again with a Fujiwara but Machine blocks it, so Fujiwara pulls an inside cradle. Fujiwara's greatest successes come from never wanting to finish a match a specific way, always willing to pivot to whatever might be available. 

MD:  Not top tier-Fujiwara, sure, but it was definitely chippy and snippy. They leaned on each other. Battering in the corner, etc. I'd say SSM had the advantage until he tried slamming Fujiwara's head into the post. Then he tried to stop the headbutts that would come (self aware in a very good way) but couldn't. He did pull Fujiwara out and post his leg and Fujiwara had to fight from underneath for a bit. Fujiwara came back with huge headbutts though and ultimately after two arm bar attempts (first rolled through) locked in a small package. Nice little self-aware bits in this, the sort of thing you'd be more likely to get from Super Strong Machine than a lot of his contemporaries.

Hiroshi Hase vs. Shiro Koshinaka

MD: This was really good. Super high on it. There's a rule for 1987-1989 NJPW Juniors matches: The best ones start with an immediate ambush/advantage, and Koshinaka got that, nailing Hase in the ropes on the first exchange and going after his taped knee. Lots of nasty little shots and bigger submissions. At one point he went for a suplex, and Hase's leg went out and his head just crushed into the mat. Koshinaka hit the butt butt, the top rope knee drop and even the power bomb. Then he shoved Hase out. The ref got in his face and that let Hase pull Shiro out to take over. 

I wouldn't have minded if Hase sold just a little more but I was generally ok with it. Most of his offense wasn't hefting Koshinaka up but slamming his head into the exposed post instead (the best kind of offense). Koshinaka bled. Hase stayed on the wound. The ref tried to stop him at one point and Hase pointed out that Shiro had been unsportsmanlike in going after his leg and this was warranted. 

Eventually he did hit the Northern Lights but couldn't keep the bridge given his leg. He ended up choking Koshinaka for the DQ, which is way better than it sounds on paper, trust me. Post match Hiro Saito came in and they beat on Koshinaka and anyone that tried to stop them. Honestly, as a finish, it's not something we saw much during this era in New Japan and it was grisly and effective for me. Really good match.  

ER: This was really good. There was a different Koshinaka/Hase match on the New Japan DVDVR 80s set that happened the next month, from 3/16/89. I was higher on that match than the consensus (I had it 25 spots higher than the final results) and I think this is the better match. Koshinaka goes after Hase's leg like a heel and works the first third of this match as Junior Heavyweight Tenryu. Hase's comeback goes on so much longer and is equally violent, so much so that it turns Koshinaka into a bigger babyface by virtue of Hase being such an asshole. Hase pays merely lip service to Koshinaka's knee work - had the knee come back in any meaningful way, instead of Hase occasionally shaking it out while otherwise not acknowledging - it would have been one of the best New Japan juniors matches of the late decade. Koshinaka throws sharp kicks at Hase's knee that do not look pulled, so much so that it seems absurd when Hase goes on offense for 10 straight minutes with no sign of slowing down. 

Until Hase just flipped the switch, his knee selling was great. There was this almost third wall breaking spot where Koshinaka went for a snap suplex and Hase couldn't make it over on his bad leg, so instead whips nose first into the mat in one of the more disgusting DDT bumps I've ever seen. It's such a fucked up looking bump that it looked like a blown spot or miscommunication. It hits this meta level of "Hase's leg is so bad that he can't take moves the way you all expect guys to take moves" and it was something that could have made this match legendary. But Hase messes that up to and actually treats the spot like a fuck up, not acknowledging the bump he took at all and kind of quickly getting to his feet. 

But he went so hard on Koshinaka that I think he overcame the lack of selling. I've never thought of Hase as a kicker, but he unleashes some hellish kicks on Koshinaka. At one point, Koshinaka on his knees, Hase is just kicking him right across the bridge of the nose and Koshinaka hangs in for more, so Hase kicks him in the back of the head. He's really merciless, and Koshinaka turns into this fired up screaming babyface while taking everything Hase brought. Hase's torso and legs wound up smeared with Koshinaka's blood and he looked like a deranged animal biting at Koshinaka's head. The DQ finish looked great as there really was nothing the referee could do to separate Hase's mouth from Koshinaka's head. That man looked like he was pulling with all his might to pull him off and it was not happening. I'm curious what the consensus would have been on this match. Enough DVDVR voters would have hated Hase's selling, but I think more would have loved the violence. 

Antonio Inoki/Riki Choshu/Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Big Van Vader/Bam Bam Bigelow/Rip Morgan 

ER: A great house show main event that never quite settles into a structure but has the two biggest gaijin taking tons of big bumps for the freaking powerhouse native team. That's a star studded lineup and Vader/Bigelow treat them as size/power equals for long stretches. Bigelow takes a full flip for Riki's second lariat one minute in. Just a full backflip like he's Jeff Hardy. Fujinami isn't taking a flipping bump for Vader's clothesline, he's blocking it and getting a sick backslide instead. This is Riki's lariat though, so even Vader is taking a big leaping bump for it late in the match. Vader and Bigelow get rocked by suplexes and clotheslines all match, from all of them. Choshu even suplexes Vader in from the apron! Everybody was taking suplexes man.  

There isn't even really any hierarchy in this match, it's kind of strange. Going into it Rip Morgan feels like the most obvious Guy Taking Pin in Main possible but he's in there working big exchanges with Inoki and Choshu. He hits a kitchen sink knee to Choshu that Riki takes so well that it made my stomach hurt. Riki leans into his Scorpion Deathlock like he's applying it to Morgan as a shoot submission. Nobody felt like a bigger start than anyone else, it was just six stars working a main event that nobody outside of this sports center will ever see.

Bigelow was the one who worked this with joy. Everybody works with energy but Bam Bam was having fun. He's not a monster, he's the guy working with some color, a little whimsy. He shakes his fist out after punching Riki, bodyslams Inoki with force, breaks up a pin with a falling headbutt to Inoki's face. He's doing light axe handles off the top and throwing headbutts, but also looks like he's giving Vader ideas on how to wreak havoc. Vader had this amazing press slam hoist of Choshu, super impressive, made him look weightless. Bam Bam gets in the ring and directs Vader to throw Riki onto his knee in a gutbuster. It rules.  There's an awesome 1-2 where Bigelow breaks Inoki's octopus hold on Morgan by leveling him with a clothesline, and right when he hits it he gets wasted by a Riki lariat, great bookend to him getting flipped by one early. There are some little clips in this so we don't get a full feel for the finish, but this is six guys I loved watching run around each other. 

MD: 1989 starts with the Power Elite of Inoki/Choshu/Fujinami coming together against Vader and Bigelow. They do a bunch of these matches in January and the start of February, so it's a little overdone by this point, but the plus side is that they've been practicing and honing the match. That meant some spots like the Inoki kicking off out of the over the shoulder double team worked quite well. 

I really enjoyed the start of this one, with the heels ambushing and then Choshu ducking a Bigelow clothesline, hitting a lariat that just staggered him and then hitting the real one that Bigelow took a flip bump for (very rare for 89 in general and especially a guy Bigelow's size). In order to keep things fresh and prep for the Russians coming in, they had Rheingans join Vader/Bigelow as their American player/coach and he was at the margins of this one. 

This was fairly back and forth. You feel bad for Fujinami here. He's fine but he doesn't come off as the ace/champ when teaming with two of the most charismatic wrestlers ever. Vader was there to basically get control again. It boiled over (with a clip, and during that clip Inoki may have actually won it) to either the DQ or the post-match where heels controlled in the corner wouldn't stop double teaming and charging in. 

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Found Footage Friday: NJPW 85~! DANCING ANDRE~! CAPTAIN REDNECK~! INOKI~! BACKLUND~! SHARPE~! ADONIS~! HIRO~!

NJPW 5/18/85

Masked Superstar vs. Kim Su Hong (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbKieuAaBEQ)

MD: Kim is a South Korean wrestler who shows up on these NJPW cards now and again. I can't say that he stands out much. I love Eadie, love him, one of my favorites, but in New Japan he is so often a gatekeeper, just an incredibly credible wall for people to push off against. He takes 90% of this. Still some neat small things like losing Kim early and then claiming he was oiled up. That sort of being alive within the match. All of his stuff looks mean and credible with both a killer neckbreaker and then a twisting drop down into a front facelock. He also whacks him with something outside of the ring to big effect. Kim does come back late and his stuff is middling, some good, some bad. Superstar drops down on him and nails him with a clothesline to end it.

ER: We don't have Hashimoto/Sano, or the Canek/Enrique Vera tag, but we have Masked Superstar throwing Finlay level clubs to Su Hong's chest and killer knees to the side of the head. I liked how Superstar held the ropes to block a single leg and just went right back to clubbing. Superstar kind of jams Su Hong up on his small pieces of offense, running too hard into dropkicks that really shouldn't have moved him but looked worse with how he treated them. His clothesline looked like a match finishing clothesline and there's a good chance I won't watch a Kim Su Hong match the rest of my life. 

Super Strong Machine vs. Tony St. Clair (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pADWavSmgM)

MD: Just a credible back and forth match. I wouldn't say any of the transitions were particularly interesting but everything looked good. SSM is a tank and St. Clair can hold his own. They traded advantages and holds. Machine had a nice leaping headbutt off the ropes and a killer clothesline. St. Clair turned a headlock into a backbreaker (by slipping out, not a Robinson backbreaker). Good finishing stretch where St. Clair got a nearfall on a sunset flip in but Machine was able to get a German for the win. Wakamatsu got involved pre-match even though Machine wanted nothing to do with him and then tried to attack SSM post match only to get thrashed for his trouble. Added a little spice to what would have otherwise been a meaty but straightforward midcard match.

ER: This crowd is so fired up for Super Strong Machine. He was getting clapping Misawa-type chants during his entrance. I wasn't expecting Tony St. Clair to look larger than Strong Machine. My mental pictures don't always give me accurate reads but both are 15-20 pounds in the opposite direction I picture them. Made it look good when Tony started hitting Machine. SSM can work real tough and St. Clair looked like he was moving him good with his back elbow and uppercut, sharp front chancery. His dropkick pushes up under the chin and he makes a whip into the buckles look like it made all his limbs go briefly numb. I like the way these two hit each other. St. Clair is great at leaning into lariats while selling how much he doesn't like taking them. Strong Machine has one of my favorite German suplexes. Both of them work exactly how Bret Hart would have worked New Japan in 1994. 

Kengo Kimura/Seiji Sakaguchi vs. Adrian Adonis/Dick Murdoch (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bqyZdnuwVU)

MD: Honestly, this is yet another all time Murdoch performance, and on a house show too. Granted, the stuff I loved here was stuff Meltzer wouldn't have liked anyway but what are you going to do about it. For instance, there's a moment in the middle where Sakaguchi's on a rampage. He takes out Adonis and then goes to the apron to get Murdoch and Murdoch moves to the other side of the post and the crowd cracks up. It's great. But it's such a tiny little wrestling thing. His reactions are great throughout. The way he takes the Inazuma leg lariat by covering his face like he'd just lost his nose is amazing. Dick Murdoch. Captain Redneck, or as they call him in NJPW, the Super Rodeo Machine.

This had a great heat on Kimura where he kept almost coming back and Murdoch and Adonis would just make a quick tag. Eventually, instead of going for a hold, he threw a dropkick instead and made it to Sakaguchi. They did another bit of heat on Kimura and then a big hot comeback. Everything ended up thrown out. Post match they had both a great bit with a chair and being afraid of it and an even better one of double elbowing the ref. Great stuff.

ER: Great Dick Murdoch handheld matches are the best, because not only do you get to see Dick Murdoch being the greatest pro wrestler, but it makes me think of DEAN. To take us back at least 15 years, the moment I always remember from Segunda Caida Radio - something I am not sure exists online anymore, but was loved by all the real SC Heads - was DEAN making fun of Meltzer for thinking Dick Murdoch was a guy who only worked for the cameras. By then we had a lot of handheld footage and had all seen Murdoch wrestling exactly the same as in all of his great matches. DEAN had seen Murdoch live. We were all talking about how great Dick Murdoch was, but DEAN was the one who saw him live and knew how good he was off camera. I always think about DEAN doing a bit as Murdoch, where he's dogging it in Korakuen and does a Don Knotts reaction when he sees a Japanese guy in the crowd with a huge 1985 camcorder.  

This is the only match on this show that doesn't have a listed cagematch runtime, and I didn't realize it would be the longest match of the show. And in that time, Dick Murdoch kept putting on a performance that grew in elegance the longer they went, arguably peaking two minutes after the count out when he got cheers for beating up the referee and then running shenanigans around a chair swinging Kengo Kimura. The match goes long enough that we get several momentum shifts and each one peaks the action and story and Murdoch grows with the story. I think my favorite part was when he had been worked over for awhile and got to tag out, and he stayed in the ring shaking out and rubbing his arm after tagging in Adonis, not participating in but watching Adonis lay a beating on Kimura. The cattle branding looked like a wild rapids ride, his punches matched the energy at all times, and he sold Kimura's like they were the stiffest punches of the match. The fans treated him after the match like a charming folk hero. 

The Cobra (c) vs. Hiro Saito (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIud5l0HlGc)

 

MD: I am not at all a Cobra guy. I think some of his Rocco matches are really bad, for instance, as he tried to fill a post-Tiger Mask gap and ended up with the worst of two worlds. A lack of substance and not even all that much style. Action for the sake of action and the action tends to frankly just be okay. This was great though, and so much of that was on the contrast. Saito is the prototypical cruiserweight bully and he gave everything weight and heft as the two of them threw everything they had at each other.

 

That meant that when Cobra was going to do an unnecessary backflip charging at Saito in the corner, Saito would come back and take his head off with a lariat. Or if he'd get pushed off after a kick and do another backflip within the ring, Saito would dropkick him out and crush him with a dive. They worked it like a title match starting with holds and going back to them, building to big spots and exchanges, with meaningful momentum shifts usually based around a big reversal/mistake/missed move. As time went on they traded some really great pile drivers and the dives you'd expect. Saito got a German mid match but couldn't put away with it and down the stretch Cobra finally escalated to a Tiger Suplex for a win. Very good lost Jr. Heavyweight Title match.

ER: We don't really talk much about how cool Hiro Saito is, and for how long he was cool. He's cool in all the eras. He was cool when I started getting New Japan tapes in 2000, and he was a bleach blond black beard surf punk with a tight bod, punk groupies and surf licks. Cobra feels like a throwback in 1985 by comparison, and it's punk scum vs. Mil Mascaras. Cobra's Mil hits hard, and Saito keeps spiking Mil with martinetes. The crowd was real into Saito's grounded piledriver when Cobra tried standing out of a headscissors, and they kept coming alive when they see how tough and well worked. I knew it was really good when Cobra's cravat into a stump puller and how Saito slowly powers out of it by eventually digging into Cobra's mask and hitting a GREAT fistdrop. Direct, hard. His piledriver after is perfect. Two kids in the crowd invent TomK's famous Dueling Chant 15 years before he did while Saito takes a crazy bump getting dropkicked to the floor. Cobra's kip up to dropkick is as beautiful as anything by our most graceful lucha legends. Saito hits a massive tope that is what you want a tope to be. I was going to write about how Cobra's flying offense isn't as good as his matwork and hitting but then he hits a piledriver so good that I felt I shouldn't harp on his lesser offense. Hiro Saito is so good. He's such a hard bumper, and strong, and fast. His forceful kickout just after 3 is the exact right energy. 

Andre the Giant vs. King Kong Bundy (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kntbQ5SjUs)

 

MD: I wasn't going to cover this one since it was already out there, but it's pretty remarkable. My gut says that this was during the period where Andre was really breaking down, before his surgery and the switch to the singlet, but also before he really figured out how to work his late era style. So he was left in there against Bundy not entirely sure what he could or couldn't do. And what he ended up doing was being as entertaining as humanly possible. Yes, they did the bit where Bundy walks up the ropes to try to escape a hold and gets dropped, but Andre's mannerisms and little dance moves in this one are all over the place. Little shuffle steps. Hand motions. Weird faces. Outright dancing. He doesn't do the Fargo Strut but basically everything else you can imagine. And the fans do respond to it. I mean, who knows. Maybe he was just ribbing, maybe he was drunk, but I've only ever seen him do one or two of these little crazy finger motions or screw around like this, not build a whole match around it.

ER: I think every single Andre match I write about has me talking about some little thing I've never seen Andre do before, and I always mean it. But this Andre is an entirely new Andre. This is a house show taped by some saint, and without it I'm not sure we ever get to see Andre as a dancing babyface. It's incredible. I've seen Andre do something that could be considered sassy before but never a full match of him working as Dusty Rhodes. It's incredible. It doesn't start right away, but when it starts it does not stop. It feels like it's going to be your standard great Andre performance, smothering the humongous Bundy, muscling him into corners, hooking him in heavy sleepers, and I was excited about how he was going to sell for Bundy's comebacks. But when things take a turn, they really take a turn. I certainly was not expecting Bundy to walk up the ropes like Bret when Andre had a sleeper locked on, a real Dig Up mentality, and when Andre just drops the big man flat the crowd erupts. 

That's when Quirky Andre comes out. He makes the cuckoo sign, twirling his finger around his ear, and then does a kind of soft shoe routine, a little tap dance with a hard final step, like he's letting everyone in on his bit. If he'd had a cane and top hat it only would have made more sense. He keeps it up. While holding Bundy in another standing choke, he floats some butterfly steps, skipping in place in a movement that I have not once seen Andre do. He becomes Dusty Rhodes, flip flopping and flying. Bundy himself seems confused, he doesn't seem to understand the timing of the dancing and the strikes, leaning out of Andre's first punch after a perfect dance, so Andre has to catch him even harder with a backhand. This is truly an Andre I've never seen. Bundy takes a huge bump over the top to the floor and eventually just leaves, but not before more Andre dancing. How does history's greatest wrestler keep raising his stock? You think you've seen everything the biggest spectacle in wrestling history has done, but he keeps bringing out new tricks. This is no different than if a dancing babyface Stan Hansen match had just been discovered. It's bizarre, it's great, it's nothing you've seen. It's Andre.   

Bob Backlund/Iron Mike Sharpe vs. Antonio Inoki/Tatsumi Fujinami (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsW8GclZnt4)

 

MD: Honestly, I was here for Backlund vs Inoki and we really don't get that. What we do get is very good though. A lot of it is Sharpe being as vocal as humanly possible in a ring but entertaining and credible. Most of the rest, though, is Fujinami vs Backland and of course they match up so well. They matched up well years earlier and they match up even better now that Fujinami is a credible heavyweight. Right place, right time, smooth, slick, imapctful. And yes, they do a great short arm scissors sequence leading to the Gotch lift, just like you'd want. I just wanted a little bit more Inoki in here though. 

ER: I went into this wanting the most Popeye noises ever heard in one wrestling match. This was our chance. I wanted to hear Backlund and Iron Mike Oh-Whoa-Whoa-Whoaing all over the ring in the only time these two ever tagged. But we didn't get that. Backlund ceded the constant vocals to Sharpe and Sharpe ran with them. Backlund was shockingly silent. 1985 Backlund is interesting. It's his first year at sea after his long reign on top. I wonder what drove him to wrestle that year, seeing how much he pulled back for several years after. He surely could have been working regular Japan schedules had he wanted to, so he clearly just didn't want to. He only worked this one short New Japan tour and now we have another small piece of it. Sharpe vs. Inoki is an amusing footnote. You look at this tag and you've never seen a more obvious Taking the Fall guy than Iron Mike. Backlund's matwork with Fujinami was something I could have seen a lot more of. The crowd was so into Backlund's slow powerful reversals, but most of this tag felt like it was just about to kick into gear and never really did.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE ANDRE THE GIANT

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New Footage Friday: WE DECLARE WAR!!! 6/25/93

WAR 6/25/93

This is a six match series with WAR vs. Heisei Ishingun. Sort of a border skirmish in the WAR vs. NJ conflict, with Koshinaka's band of outsiders taking on a group of WAR defenders. Weird show, having a WAR card in 93 with no Tenryu, but tubby interpromotional asskicking is about the best thing in wrestling and this had it in spades

Show starts with sort of a drawing of straws to set up the match ups


Koki Kitahara vs. Kuniaki Kobayashi

PAS: This was the longest of the matches on the show, and goes into several different phases, all of them pretty great. It opens with both guys throwing taters at each other, they spill to the floor and wildly fling chairs. One of the things that made this match so great is the raggedness of it. There isn't very many smooth exchanges, and lots of the time they are just grabbing each other by the hair and sneaking in punches and headbutts. Large parts of this feel  bar fight, where both guys are a little unskilled and a little unsteady. I loved Kobayashi just throwing multiple fisherman's suplexes and not going for the pin and Kitahara's dickish little kicks to the head. Finish was cool with Kitahara DDTing Kobayashi on the floor, rolling him in and locking in a bodyscissors sleeper for a but until Kobayashi passes out, it wasn't really a dramatic pass out, and it almost felt like a questionable UFC stoppage, I loved the shoving and the "hold me back" from both camps. Thought it worked really well for the opening of a series like this.

MD: I love the dissonance of a tug of war rolling right into this match. It's a twenty minute match that's almost entirely uncooperative all the way through, which feels pretty long for this sort of thing. It's brutal and it's great. Kitahara took the brunt of this, coming off like an absolute killer, with nasty headbutts, chair shots, and kicks, but throughout most of it, he couldn't really lock in a hold. Midway through Kobayashi comes back with these amazing running headbutts, really just a momentum-laden collision and then finally locks in a leglock which feels like a big deal given the struggle up to there. They roll into the finishing stretch not long after with Kitahara hitting a German, Northern Lights, and Backdrop Driver all in a row. It felt like a clear moment of escalation which means Kobayashi popping up almost immediately thereafter to hit three fisherman's suplexes of his own felt a little unearned. It was somewhat forgivable due to the unclear death match rules but it did take me out of the match a bit. Thankfully, it set up the further escalation with the three DDTs on the floor and the rear naked choke to close it all out so it more or less worked out in the end. Anyway, the sheer brutality more than makes up for that. What a way to start a show.

Ashura Hara vs. Akitoshi Saito

ER: Tenryu may not be on this show (which is weird for a WAR show, but I see Tenryu worked a Hashimoto singles match a week before this show and then didn't work again for a month, so taking a month off work after 20 minutes opposite Hash does make sense) but Hara is clearly the Tenryu proxy as he works this match almost exactly like I think Tenryu would have, and even has a bunch of great Tenryu selling moments. It's almost as if Hara was ALSO great or something. This is the kind of match you want out of a WAR/NJ showdown, Hara roughing up the relative newbie, beating him down with chairshots on the floor and lariats to the neck, and there's a great moment where you hear the buzz of the crowd building as they anticipate Saito finally hitting his first big spinkick of the match. Hara is running to set up a killshot lariat, and the crowd knows exactly the mistake he's making, and Saito hits that spinning heel kick that is arguably the best spinning heel kick of anyone who does a spinning heel kick, and that sets up the next several minutes of Saito kicking Hara a TON. Hara's selling of Saito's kicks is downright lordly. He leans into brutal baseball bat shots to the chest, Saito comes off the ropes with a punch right to the guy that sends Hara staggering beautifully into the ropes. Saito stops him in his tracks with a couple high kicks, throws a couple of crescent kicks that glance off Hara's temple (loved Hara's selling of a glancing blow) and Hara gets literally moved back on his feet like a tackling dummy by a couple of Saito lariats. We get a couple great moments of Hara eating kicks and occasionally catching one, only able to toss Saito away to get a couple seconds or reprieve before eating more kicks. And the longer Saito kicked him I knew Hara wasn't just going to just keep getting kicked and NOT pay him back for it, and when we got to the Hara payback it delivered. Hara throws the three meanest kicks of the entire match, one to Saito's ribs and two more right to the face - the kind of thing that would make Futen main eventers blush - and then gets to show off a couple more lariats of his own. This is the match I want to see when I sit down to watch WAR.

MD: Great, straightforward nine minute match. Hara's initial demolishing of Saito was great, straight up to the nonchalance in his nasty clotheslines and chairshots. I liked how he kept tossing him out of the ring. There was just so much personality to the violence. Saito's comeback spin kick was a thing of beauty. I'm a sucker for matches that can turn on a dime on one big move like that. Speaking of personality, Saito losing the gi and then posing before every kick like he was charging up was definitely memorable and seemed to work for the crowd. Hara willfully absorbing kicks (gritting through) is a much preferred method of selling than just eating three suplexes with no real effect and the finishing flurry of clotheslines felt like the inevitable destination the match had to go.

PAS: This was pretty much a poor man's Tenryu vs. a poor man's Hashimoto, but you can match up poor man's versions of those two and have it still be fucking incredible. I loved Hara hurling Saito to the floor and plastering him with chairs, Saito's big spin kick was incredible, and he really leaned into those body kicks, those are the kind of things which would turn ribs into popcorn. Hara just grumping his way out and chucking lariats was great stuff too, I love a larait to the back of the head and Hara was just cracking Saito with them. WAR as fuck.

Masashi Aoyagi vs. Super Strong Machine

ER: I both liked this, and was disappointed by this. I didn't love the layout, there were a couple dodgy moments from Aoyagi, and the finish is literally the exact same finish as the Hara/Saito match that happened right before this match. What I liked, is further evidence that Super Strong Machine may be one of the more under discussed ass kickers of this era. He is not flashy, his offense is simple, but he executes the offense with a Finlayesque reasonable recklessness, hitting his body slams hard, sitting down fast on his piledriver, throwing running and standing lariats with a full arm, the kind of guy with a vertical suplex you can set your watch to. He's a real bully in this, beating Aoyagi through the crowd and battering him with a chair. Now that I think about it maybe the entire layout of this match is a lesser executed version of Hara/Saito. But SSM is a fun smotherer, I can really get into a guy with a nice headlock or chinlock, and he really looks like he's hooking that arm to suffocate Aoyagi. Aoyagi throwing fast kicks over his head to escape was a great touch. Aoyagi's kick section isn't as nice as Saito's, he even whiffs a kick over SSM's head by several inches, but he hits a couple really nice rolling kicks and I always love his out of control corner spinkick that ends him spilling to the apron. The leaping knee to the back of Strong Machine's head is just icing. It is strange to me that Machine finishes this in the exact same way as Hara, even bouncing off the same ropes in the same order. And the match had flaws, but really played as a nice Super Strong Machine showcase for me, made me want to dive into some more.

MD: Context has an impact on this one. As a standalone match, it was definitely good, but following the two matches that it followed, it came up a bit lacking. I liked the opening exchange with Aoyagi rushing SSM and the paralleled violence on the outside, though the punctuation of the DDT on concrete felt like it came a bit early, especially considering how it was used to end the first match. I suppose it did set the stage for Aoyagi working from underneath for most of the rest of the match, though with no particular focused selling. I like SSM because he stands out relatively with the clubbering and power moves and presence, but I don't necessarily want to see Aoyagi fighting from underneath because his stuff is so good (like that knee to the back of the skull off the ropes!). The best parts of this was when they were going toe-to-toe and there just wasn't enough of that. At least Aoyagi got to take it out on the ref after the match. Again, still good, just not "this card" great.

PAS: I agree with Matt and Eric, this basically felt like the same match we just saw, just not as great. I dug chunks of this, Aoyagi is a C+A guy, one of our all time favorites, and had a bunch of fun athletic spin kicks and I loved his early bum rush. There was a great heads up section with both guys throwing bombs at each other, but man was that finish hurt by comparing it to the previous match. Hara is looking to decapitate with his clotheslines, and SSM just didn't deliver that. This was solid WAR undercard stuff, but we are getting bigger and better then solid on this show.

Tatsutoshi Goto vs The Great Kabuki

MD: Whereas the SSM vs Aoyagi was more of the same as the first two matches, just not as good, I thought this was a nice palette cleanser on the card. Goto rushed in early (though instead of a killer knee to rush in on, it was more hugging and rolling) and took an early advantage on the outside. He pressed that into the armwork that would take up the entirety of the match. There was a great consequence-laden hope spot early into this where Kabuki punches with the bad hand/arm and immediately drops down selling it. Past that, Goto working on the arm wasn't super varied but it was focused and mean with Kabuki selling well. When he finally was able to fire back, late in the match, the crowd was definitely into, but then things sort of meandered to an out-of-nowhere finish. If they had tightened this up by a couple of minutes or let Kabuki get a more sustained comeback at the end, it would have been better. I liked most of it for what it was though.

PAS: Very different match with this being mostly just Goto working over the arm of Kabuki and Kabuki selling. The arm work was fine, and Kabuki's selling was great, the moment where he finally hits his uppercut only to collapse in pain was awesome. Still Kabuki is a so much more dynamic offensive wrestler then Goto, it was a bit of a bummer to see him smothered for most of the match. I liked the surprise roll up pin, but I just felt a little robbed of a big Kabuki explosion. 

Hiro Saito vs Kengo Kimura

MD: Another very solid match. This one felt just as violent as the others (especially everything that happened on the outside), but at the same time, somehow more cooperative, or at least conventional. I think that says more about the rest of the card than about this match in and of itself. The first third of the match was focused around chairs, beatings on the outside, one brutal whip into a tiny table, and the setpiece of the exposed corner buckle (Kimura's attempt to expose it partially lets Saito come back, Kimura cements one transition by tossing Saito into it, etc.). The exposed buckle is a non-factor for the rest of the match, which is a shame. The finish is set up by Saito missing a top rope senton out of that exact corner. Kimura diving to crotch him on it to set up the exact same finish would have been more rewarding. Small thing. Also, this was probably a good spot on the show for color with Saito's head rammed into the buckle a few times. (Note after the fact: PWO's Jetlag got to these before we did and I went to check his review on this and he had the exact same notion. That makes me feel less monstrous). Some of Kimura's jumping knee offense looked muddy with the fancam, but I really love his double axe-handle clubber. He throws himself into it more than anyone I've seen. This was a good mix of brawling and more conventional moves and transitions.

PAS: I dug this, there is something very appropriate about sitting in the front row of a WAR show and having fat ass Hiro Saito flying over the railing and landing on top of you. No reason to think that this feud should respect the fans anymore then the wrestlers respect each other. Hiro Saito doesn't do a lot of different things, but does the things he does exceedingly well. His senton is honestly one of the greatest looking individual wrestling moves ever, just pulverisingly beautiful, the standing one looked bad enough, but that second rope one was like an anvil hitting Wile E. Coyote. If Kimura didn't move out of the way of the tope rope attempt he would have looked like spilled condiments. I do think this was the match that could have used blood, but otherwise this show keeps delivering. 

Shiro Koshinaka vs Takashi Ishikawa

MD: This was one-third a really good match and two thirds an excellent one. I loved how Koshinaka took it right to Ishikawa to start, but that first third got dragged down a bit by holds that lacked struggle (though, once the armwork started, not necessarily direction). What it did manage to have, however was Koshinaka being the only guy on the card really to play to the crowd and just enough brutality to keep things somewhat interesting. They get way more interesting when Ishikawa takes over. Everything he does here is great. He can't transition from one piece of offense to another without making sure to pepper in a stomp on Koshinaka's face. In the middle here, it breaks down to a lumberjack match of sorts with both camps going at it. We only see bits and pieces of this as the camera stays with Koshinaka's selling. That's ok, I think, because that was another strong part of the match. He's definitely a guy who could get the crowd behind him and they pop big when he hits his comeback butt bump (and as goofy a move as that always is, it has a symbolic power with the crowd so it absolutely works). His offense on the back half was a lot better with nothing seeming meandering in the least. Instead we get some nice knee drops and an unforgiving double stomp off the top.

I liked how smart the end of the match was too, with clever use of repetition and payoff. As much as anything else, the key moments of the match were the transition points: Ishikawa armdragging his way out of an armbar (followed by a huge stomp, of course), Koshinaka countering a three point stance clothesline attempt with a butt bump, and then late, when Ishikawa turned the third butt bump attempt in the match into a snap clotheslining on the top rope which allowed him to set up a series of chokeslams and the second three point stance attempt clothesline (this time successful for the win; I need to work in how great his rapid fire clotheslines to the front and back of the head were earlier in the match so I'm sticking that here). A match like this didn't need that sort of narrative cleverness. It could have just been these two guys killing one another. It's a testament how good this was and how well it closed out the show that they went a step beyond.

PAS: Takashi Ishikawa's WAR run was one of the great short term wrestling runs of all time. He was there from 92-94 and was uniformly excellent including several all-time level matches. This was a step below that level, but not a huge step and his performance was excellent. Koshinaka was really great as a underdog babyface (which is weird because this was a WAR show) and takes a big time bloody beating from Ishikawa and really rallies the crowd behind him. Matt is right about how awesome that butt but is as a momentum shifter. I loved all of Ishikawa's nasty stomps, he really looked like he was trying to extinguish a brush fire on Koshinaka's head. The spot were Ishikawa blocks a hip toss, lands a judo throw and just stomps Koshinaka in the eye was good stuff. Loved the die on his sword performance by Koshinaka at the end, as he is able to string some big stuff together before getting absolutely smashed by a big clothesline.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Digging in the Crates Podcast Episode #7

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Matt recommends George McDonald Frasers Flashman novels

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Digging in the Crates Podcast #1

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

Digging in the Crates Episode #1

Here are links to the matches

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

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

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

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

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