AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 7/6 - 7/12

AEW Dynamite 7/8/26

Konosuke Takeshita vs Kyle Fletcher

If you want a good example that literally any match can be criticized, for years people had one major complaint about Savage vs Steamboat. If you come into it blind, not knowing about the angle that drove it, it's hard to find fault. If you have the context of Savage destroying Steamboat with the ring bell, however, it raises questions. Why did they wrestle it so athletically, so much like a title match? Shouldn't it have been a blood feud? Shouldn't Steamboat have been out for revenge? Shouldn't that have meant something more than just taking the title from Savage?

There is an answer to that but it was one that actually required quite a bit more context, context that was sourced over the years that followed as we obtained and organized more and more footage from the televised house shows leading up to WrestleMania III. They had already worked those heated bloody matches around the horn leading up to the big show. They had gotten it out of their system. Crowds throughout America had seen it. Steamboat (and the fans') bloodlust had been abated and now it was time to hit him where it hurt the most by taking the title in a wrestling match.

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Takeshita had coexisted with Okada for half a year, more. He had lived through transgressions: Okada cheating (the use of a deadly weapon, not just pulling the tights) to defeat him in the C2 semi-finals, disparaging his skills and honor and brotherhood with the rest of the Don Callis family including getting between him and Fletcher, contriving to overshadow him at the Tokyo Dome even though he was the IWGP champion, dissension in a tag team match at a PPV.

Finally Takeshita had earned his match, finally he had him one-on-one for the International Title. And given that honest, earnest chance, Takeshita triumphed. He upset the balance of the Don Callis Family. It seemed like it was going to lead to something more than dissension, to betrayal. He was ready for that though, ready to fight them all off it need be. Then, Kyle Fletcher's music hit. He made his triumphant return, stood side by side with his brother, Takeshita. And then he struck him down. A brother may have been enough for Takeshita, but Fletcher needed the comfort of a broader family. 

AEW is a company full of stories but that has less angles than one might think. This was a clear angle however, and despite AEW's tendency to move right on to the next thing, it was one that could lead to even greater matches. 

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Kyle Fletcher is one of the best heels going. He's shown instincts to inhabit the space of a match, both the feeling out process at the start and the down period of a commercial break, that almost none of his generation (or that prior even) possess. He's excellent at working to a crowd, at reacting in the moment, at creating inciting incidents and then rolling with the results of them. 

His warm up match against ELP was full of this, even despite later knowledge that he was having a bit of a panic attack during the match. ELP began the proceedings by doing his best Bret Hart impression and giving a girl at ringside his tricked out glasses. Later on in the match, when Fletcher had scored a kick out of nowhere and reversed a whip on the floor, he went right over and menaced the girl, getting in her face and drawing heat. Maybe I'm wrong, but it feels almost impossible this was something that was worked out in the back. He saw an opportunity, understood the purpose behind it in ensuring the crowd was turned against it, and he took it, damn the plan, damn the risks. 

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Konosuke Takeshita is a generational talent in specific areas. At his best, he evokes presence like almost no one in wrestling today. He radiates intensity and energy. He combines size and speed and power and ease of movement in a way that is reminiscent of Barry Windham or maybe even Jumbo Tsuruta. I tend to find his instincts far more suspect than Fletcher's, his matches becoming bloated and wasteful, not nearly as efficient as his physical movements across the ring, but I also can't (and wouldn't begin to want to) deny what he excels at and what makes him stand out.

He's one of the greatest raw talents of this decade certainly. Lately, he's been firing up by punching himself in the head repeatedly. He did it during his tag match with Hechicero in Mexico not long ago, and he would do it here as well, and I can hardly think of anyone else that could do that with so much earnestness and verve. Against the right opponent and in the right setting, he's phenomenal. And very much to his credit, even in the wrong setting, doing the wrong things, he's still undeniable in certain ways. 

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So here they were, bolstered by a hot angle, two incredible talents, both off strong recent performances, ready to achieve in the middle of a big card, a supercard so far as weekly television went, title on the line.

And they wrestled. They locked up and chain wrestled for a bit. 

Ah, but then after a few exchanges, Fletcher got a hand up in Takeshita's face and things threatened to boil over, like they should, into a forearm exchange.

And instead of letting really reach a fever pitch, they went right into stilted moves and counter attempts, a tease for bombs that would come later in the match. 

Things spilled out to the floor. Takeshita got distracted by Callis. Both men drank water. Takeshita missed a shot and hit the ringpost. Fletcher worked the arm for a minute. Takeshita came back and hit a big dive and smacked his face, fired up. They went to commercial.

The match would go on with them starting to hit those bigger bombs, including a huge one on the apron. Takeshita would get an advantage. Don Callis would grab his foot. He'd hit his finisher anyway. Fletcher would get a foot on the rope and then, more or less cleanly (despite those two arguable blemishes that did not lead to the finish) would win the match as the commentators noted how good a match these two had wrestled.

Where was the Kyle Fletcher of the ELP match? Why didn't Takeshita's intensity lead to bloodlust? How did any of this stem from the betrayal? What were they even doing here? 

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On my first watch, I was so thrown by all of this that I was going to come in hot, come down hard. 

I've subsequently watched again and I have softened on the match. 

Occasionally you see people say that matches shouldn't be criticized on the basis of "what you want" and I don't think I agree.

You want what you want for a reason. You have expectations coming into a match for a reason. You have a baseline in your head and a best possible scenario. You have those things for a reason, based on your understanding of other matches, of the story at play, at all the possibilities inherent in the artform. These are all completely valid things to judge a match against. That said, I think it's worth trying to understand the match that they did wrestle. If you're going to judge it against the vision in your head, at least go out of your way to wrap your head around what they gave you.

There were a number of factors at play here. This match was premature. It was premature because Takeshita's about to go off and do the G1 for a month. It was maybe premature because they wanted to ensure the International Title was taken off of him for that period, maybe so he didn't eat a bunch of tournament losses while he had it, maybe because it would be more valuable to AEW on AEW TV during this time. Fletcher had never been supposed to lose the TNT title. That was due to injury. If this wasn't going to be the blowoff, having Fletcher win could potentially just heat things up more for later, get more heat on him in general. This match was a supporting player to the main event title change that was Omega vs MJF and it followed another grudge match with a bit more plunder and chaos (and that probably needed it more to be good) in Jericho vs Ciampa. 

Plus it was hot. It was so damn hot out there in the admittedly cool outdoors setting. You could tell. I've seen thousands of matches and you only see guys actually drink water (presumably for cramping reasons) once in a blue moon. You always saw them spit it back out in World of Sport for a reason.

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Those would all be excuses, but none of them would be drivers. 

There are absolutely wrestlers who go out to wrestle the best match possible on paper, that try to check as many boxes as possible, to try to make things as conventionally exciting as they can, story be damned, character be damned, moment be damned.

While it's tempting to think that's what happened here, I don't think it actually is.

You can make the argument that this fit their characters perfectly. Takeshita only ever wants to prove himself against others. Fletcher, on the other hand, has a constant chip on his shoulder, and a need to prove himself. He did against Ospreay. He did in the Continental Classic. He does here. They wrestled this match like brothers, not trying to hurt each other, necessarily, not trying to maximize harm, but instead trying to outdo the other. Outwrestle. Outstrike. Outbomb. 

Here, the heat helped matters. It gave everything an imposing, sweltering tone. It pushed down upon them, pressed them into a corner. It gave everything more weight. Maybe it forced them to focus directly at the task at hand, at the title on the line, and it melted animosity and turned it into a blind sense of competition instead. 

It made for a good match, a very good title match. It distilled their youth and passion and a certain desperation to be seen and recognized into twenty minutes of combat over the International Title. 

I was going to lean hard into the idea that while this was a great match, it wasn't good, because it didn't live up to the build and the potential. I was going to use the timing of it as an excuse.

On a second watch, I don't think that's fair. I think it was both great AND good, that it was plausible and believable given who these two are, where they are in their career, their overall relationship with one another.

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But I don't think it was RIGHT.

I don't think it was the right match for the moment. I think it was shoehorned in due to externalities, due to necessities. 

The betrayal was too recent, too raw, too deep. They hadn't gotten it out of their system yet. 

This is a match that is built to, just like Savage vs Steamboat from Mania III was a match that was built to. Maybe the outcome would have been different, but this the sort of match that should have followed the grudge match and the chain match and the lumberjack match and the cage match. 

I don't think Takeshita should have the bloodlust out of his system yet. I don't think Fletcher should be past the self-delusion and the spite. This match had competitiveness and even moments of brutality but it lacked cruelty. 

They can bring Takeshita back later, have his music hit, have him ruin one of Fletcher's moments, have him make some sort of save, have him get a pop. They can do another angle to get heat back on this.

But they can never have this specific first match again. They can't go back to the start. Fletcher betrayal was answered by Takeshita here by having the best darn wrestling match he could. And yes, it was valid, great, and good. He tried to show his brother up, show that he was better. 

But even that didn't come close to matching the moment. 

They left the blood on the table, chose to honor sweat instead. This was one of those times that blood would have been everything. 

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Found Footage Friday: '86 CROCKETT HANDHELD~! GARVIN~! FLAIR~! NIKITA~! ARN~! MAGNUM~! DUSTY~! RAGING BULL~! WAHOO~!

JCP Handheld Cincinnati 4/27/86

Wahoo McDaniel vs. Jimmy Garvin

MD: We just get five minutes clipped here. It's a real morality play though. Clear, clear lines. Garvin earns nothing. Whenever Wahoo gets the chants, he's smacking him around the ring. Garvin begs off and gets a cheapshot low. He uses Precious pulling the hair from the outside to distract so he can take over. He uses an eye rake. When he's in charge he's laying in stomps or tossing Wahoo into the rail. Wahoo has big definitive shots. Garvin is underhanded and peppers things in. Night and day. Wahoo comes back, does the war dance, hits the chops, but Garvin kicks out at one and runs away to the draw a count out and fight for another day. 

ER: I don't think I ever thought Cincinnati was a place Crockett even toured but I'm also old enough now that a lot of information sounds like new information. I know they ran Cleveland frequently but maybe I didn't ever think about Cincinnati as Crockett Country because we didn't have footage until some guy who loves awful chili that tastes like pumpkin pie brought a camera to document it. I'm glad he did. He wanted the match bad enough to record it as fully as he could while editing on the fly to save battery for the bigger matches. This man, who smelled of raw onion, knew Flair and Garvin had worked broadways in the Carolinas. He couldn't risk it. So we got this clipped, but it's house show perfection. The crowd is so entertained by professional house show Wahoo, not murdering Garvin but doing all his same painful strikes and Native Stooges chops. Wahoo hits Garvin hard and forces Garvin to work up to him. Garvin had excellent worked stomps and the way Wahoo sold being punched in the corner could teach every wrestler today. Watch Wahoo flinch away from a shot under the ribs, reflexively rear back for a punch, before taking another. The best punches and strikers are almost always the best at selling punches. 

Baron von Raschke/Ivan Koloff vs. Manny Fernandez/Hector Guerrero

MD: This was probably a rough 20 minute draw that turned into a good 13 minute clipped draw. Though there was nothing we saw in those 13 minutes to really make me think the full 20 would have been that much of a slog. They went with a double heat structure with a long shine that consisted of Raschke being a pole in the center of the ring that Hector got to roll around and Ivan's arm getting worked over as he bumped, stooged, and fed more. First heat was on Manny and had some good assisted holds that drew in Hector and got heat. Then Hector got to make a big house of fire entrance with rapid punches until he got swept under. The idea was that once he got the hot tag (again rolling all over the place) there just wasn't enough time for Manny to get the win, though he came real close. I don't remember too many draws being worked quite this and it's a solid structure on paper. 

Most fascinating thing to me is just watching the Baron. He lost the offense once by goose stepping and setting up the claw. He had a way of both hitting offense (even stomps) and bumping that he'd move his waist but not his abdomen. He's like an old action figure without enough points of articulation. You can make him sit up in the middle, but then you can't bend his knees or waist. And he still takes bumps and hits offense, but it's amazingly stilted. I've seen plenty of Baron matches but maybe it was just worse by 86? Anyway, maybe this was helped by the clipping, maybe not, but it worked for me.

ER: We love guys who move weird and nobody moves around a ring weirder than 1986 Baron, who is my exact age but he moves like someone re-animated a 75 year old monster from memory. His bumps are terrible, taken only one way, rolling back to his seat waving his arms like he's Accredited Giant Gonzalez. I like how Manny works like Chavo when he teams with Hector. I wonder how he worked when he teamed with Chavo. Probably like an asskicker. Manny hits like a rock and pulls off a flying headscissors, Hector brings energy and the crowd loves his evasive tumbling. Koloff works like the best Haruka Eigen. He did an All Japan tour in 1990 when he was in his late 50s and I need to see every match we have from that tour. I loved how he bumped for Hector's late match hot tag, Korakuen would have gone wild for the ways he ran into the turnbuckles and bounced his way halfway back across the ring. While I'm curious how Baron worked his bearhug, I respect the camera's choice to edit. 

Dusty Rhodes vs. Arn Anderson + Magnum TA vs. Nikita Koloff [Cage]

MD: This is still a bit clipped but you get the sense of what's going on and I loved the Dusty vs Arn portion until the finish. This being a house show, there was such freedom for Dusty to absolutely demolish Arn. Arn sold the cage at first, not the danger of it but the fact he couldn't get away. Then he managed to run himself knee first into the cage. Dusty took over on it with such one-of-a-kind timing on seizing the foot, taking him down, holding it, looking to the crowd, stomping, stomping again. If a conductor of an orchestra is primarily worried about controlling the time and volume, Dusty was the best conductor of a crowd I've ever seen. Just a virtuoso. 

After smashing and rubbing Arn's head against the cage a bit, Arn actually came back with these beautiful low kicks from the ground, just sweeping his leg against Dusty's as if he was dance fighting. He honed in and then, once he had a real advantage, the Russains came out with the chain. I would have probably liked it more if Dusty mounted a comeback and then they came in? But there was also the sense that this was the plan all along if Arn got even the smallest bit of advantage. 

I suppose it worked either way as Magnum rushed in to break it up and start his match with Nikita. This had a totally different feel. Magnum did control early including a goofy atomic drop that sent Nikita in (and justified the blading) and using the cage to help himself bound up to the top turnbuckle for a double axe handle.Nikita lawn darted himself head first into Magnum's gut to take over and Magnum worked well from underneath. At one point he ate a backbreaker and crawled on his knees across the ring and it really worked for me.

Great transition, maybe even an all time one honestly, as Nikita went for the sickle, Magnum moved, and he went arm first into the cage. Things opened up from there with Magnum throwing all sorts of punches and a great sweeping dropkick. I loved the finish too, as Magnum went to toss Nikita head first into the cage, but Nikita grabbed Magnum's head at the last second and they both went in at equal speed. Just a real symbolic sense of them being equals/rivals/fated. That led to a ten count where it seemed like Nikita might beat it but he collapsed and Magnum shot up at the last second to a huge pop. Lots to love here.

ER: I appreciate that we got a little handheld ambiance before the match, our documentarian filming the people at the Cincinnati Gardens, reminding us that Miller Lite tastes great and is less filling, giving us a too brief glimpse of the ringside guardrails getting moved around before the cage goes up. As Dusty goes after Arn's ankle, I appreciate that everything you hear yelled by the crowd sounds like create-a-crowd ADR. "Do it again, Dusty!" "Give it to him!" "Stomp that ankle, Dusty!" It's clipped up, but I'm glad we get Arn's killer missed knee strike into the cage, Dusty seated on the middle rope but dodging, Arn's knee going into the cage, Arn throwing the knee to actually connect with Dusty and thus hitting the cage just as his knee would have connected with Dusty's stomach. After getting his face ground into the cage, Arn misses a wild swing and takes perhaps the fastest faceplant I've seen from a miss, a reaction to a Dusty elbow that swings him into the mat faster than anything Dusty could have done to him. 

TA vs. Nikita portion is a real hot fight. Koloff was great at taking punches and Magnum was great at throwing them. Koloff took an axe handle better than most I've seen, really selling the impact in how he let it drive him spinning to the mat. Koloff is great at taking Magnum's punches, none better than in the aftermath of him missing the sickle into the cage. Magnum lands a jab to Koloff's nose and Nikita winces up like he's prematurely stopping a gush of blood. Wahoo hit this great swinging axe handle to Garvin's chest in the opener, and I thought that was the coolest strike of the night, until Magnum threw the same swinging axe handle at Nikita's face. It's funny that the "first man to his feet, Wins" finish came after both ran each other into the cage, which was treated much more seriously than Magnum straight up murdering Nikita with a piledriver moments before. I still loved the drama around both men getting to their feet. 

Ric Flair vs. Ron Garvin

MD: Opening few minutes of this were great. Flair would press Garvin into the corner, try to take a liberty, smack him, immediately get smacked back, sell it with shock. It was a lovely bit of vaudeville. I'm torn on parts of this one overall. Flair's narratives just don't come together how I'd like. What happens in minute 17 doesn't necessarily stem logically from what happens in minute 6 like with other greatest-of-all-time wrestlers. But that doesn't necessarily mean that what happens in minute 17 isn't good and that it doesn't fit the moment or the characters. But it leaves me wondering if something was left on the table sometimes. But maybe I'm wrong and this is better and more organic somehow. 

Here, when Flair did take over, it felt clear like he was fed up from all the shots he took from Garvin and that he just wanted to lay shots in, not worried about winning or any sort of strategy. It was raw and human and effective, and I think the issue isn't it necessarily, but when he went into the finish and started to target the leg. I preferred him punching Garvin in the face to being just as mean about the leg, but then when things had to slip into some sort of finishing sequence, it wasn't one that matched the rest of the contest. My favorite shot he did was when he had Garvin draped over the top rope like Sheamus (or like he was setting him up for Eigen's spit spot) and instead of just whacking him in the chest, he punched him in the cheek. 

Maybe I'm wrong though. Maybe the narrative is that Flair was angry and he was mean and cruel but in the face of Garvin constantly firing back, maybe he was a coward and maybe he blinked first, and he went to the knee out of desperation and then tried to cover it with bluster like it was his plan all along. Maybe it's my fault for just not having enough faith in Flair. Maybe I'm not fair to Flair. Regardless, the finish did hit, with Garvin, leg torn up, eating a second shinbreaker anyway to punch Flair in the face. Both guys went sprawling to the floor and got counted out. You can't say the fans didn't get their money here at least.

ER: Love the guy in the crowd who, as Tommy Young is holding up Flair's title, keeps saying, "Garvin's leaving with it! Garvin's leaving with it!" Super physical match, which I greatly respect, and if we had it in full I'd say it's one of my favorite Flair matches of the era. We don't know how long the actual match may have gone, but we have 21+ minutes of it here and it's easy to think they went past 30, and they were fighting the whole time. Garvin unsurprisingly throws the hardest punches of the night while Flair takes the hardest bumps, but it's so much more than that. Unless edited out entirely, they don't hit the mat at all. No long builds out of headscissors, no wear down holds, just pure physicality in every exchange. Even though it had several staples of Every Town Paid to See My Shit Flair, this feels paced differently from a lot of Flair touring champ matches. The schtick blended into the fight a lot better than I've seen it in many highly acclaimed Flair matches, and his cumulative selling felt like a guy who really had been battered and beaten for 30 minutes. There were no moments where he was taking bigger bumps for Tommy Young or running ropes after selling fatigue, this was always fought like two men getting progressively worn down and hurt from their fight. 

When Flair goes into his own personal Showstopper mode, many things can feel disconnected from everything else in the match. This never felt that way, every blur of fighting felt like a part of their larger war, and every exchange had such physical power that by the time we were 30 in and both men were limping around the ring after each other, artistry out the window, scrambling and crawling over each other for any advantage, it felt like a righteous culmination to their war. Some of my favorite moments include Garvin popping Flair right in the forehead for a nearfall and shaking out his fist while still lying across Flair's body, fanning his fingers while still pressing Flair to the mat. It's no secret that Garvin has amazing punches, but you could randomly step into any minute of this match and see a perfect example of some all timers. Garvin's punches all look sped up, like the punch is sped up at the point of impact to make them look harder than they are, but Garvin is just that good. When he throws three perfect punches before rolling smoothly into a jackknife pin, I thought it was an honest to god real finish. 

Flair getting pressed off the top actually served the match, wasn't just an excuse for Flair to take one of his bumps. It leads immediately to Garvin dropping an elbow for 2, and the punches he rains down on Flair after the kickout are incredible, standing over him punching down at Flair, Flair groggily trying to sit up but just getting punched over and over, like he's being punished for kicking out. Garvin also does this beautiful thing where he takes a knee breaker and fucking decks Flair upon landing, before falling in a heap himself. Wrestling needs more guys who lash out instinctively upon feeling pain, before the pain consumes them and they are forced to sell. Garvin definitely sold the damage of that knee breaker, but he reacted like someone who stubs their toe and foolishly lashes out and attacks the bed frame he stubbed it on. It makes much more sense to have that reaction to a man trying to hurt you, and once you see Garvin deck Flair you wonder why it's something we don't see more. This is the most boiled down raw version of Misawa popping up to hit an elbow and it's beautiful. Great match, great war. 

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80s Joshi on Wednesday: Jaguar! Richter!

Volume 4  

3. Jaguar Yokota vs. Wendi Richter (WWWA Singles Title) - 10/5/82

K: This is all long before I was born so I don’t have the same level of interest in seeing the famous American women wrestlers in Japan that others will. For example I’ve probably seen more of Leilani Kai wrestling Japanese opponents than anyone else. Wendi Richter’s a slight exception in that I first saw her when I was exploring the early Hulkamania period and hadn’t gotten into Japanese wrestling yet. She’s an interesting personality for being pushed as such a big star in 1984/85, just from watching the shows you’d think she was a bigger than than anyone in the company other than Hogan and Andre. Of course that run would end quite abruptly. It’s also hard to tell how good she was from watching that run as her matches were mostly just Moolahisms. I’m not the expert so there may be some standouts that I’m missing/forgetting, but from what I’ve seen so far, if you want to see Richter at something close to her potential, this is the match you should watch.

Wendi works as a very skillful technical wrestler here, and she has the legit skill to pull it off effectively and make it entertaining. Jaguar is usually dominant at this sort of thing so her even going 50/50 is putting her over in a way. She fights a little dirty sometimes, for example the moments where she throws Jaguar throat-first onto the ropes. But her most heelish trait, and her undoing, is that she’s so arrogant. Constantly stopping to strut, show off to the crowd and complain to the referee about non-existent affronts. She’ll get the advantage on Jaguar and take her down, but then rather than really press it, she’ll stop to do a pose in the ring to taunt the crowd, which gives Jaguar the time to recover and hit her with a quick dropkick.

If the narrative here is supposed to be that Wendi was initially underestimating Jaguar, I think they pay it off well when about 2/3rds in Wendi offers Jaguar a handshake, with a very “ok I respect you now” facial expression that I don’t think we’re meant to take as completely earnest. Jaguar’s not gonna allow it to break up her momentum anyway and continues on her offensive stretch. Her figure four looks really great. It feels a bit deflating (if you’re rooting for her) that Wendi is able to - with a lot of struggle - break free of it.

There’s a very cool move where Jaguar locks Wendi’s arm behind her back, and then walks up her from the side to lock in a submission. It doesn’t go well for her in the end as Wendi throws her off eventually, I thought Jaguar was gonna turn it into an offensive move for a moment. 

I don’t like the finish of this, even if I liked the match as a whole. In the final 3rd I thought they did a good job on conveying that the momentum is gradually shifting towards Jaguar. Like she’s winning a war of attrition. Every stretch on offense she gets just gets slightly longer and Wendi’s more and more fleeting. Jaguar hits a great missile dropkick after dodging a flying legdrop. Then, for some reason, the AJW wrestlers grab Wendi when she’s on the outside and pull her in front of Jaguar for her to hit a very impressive flip into a dive, which she follows up with another excellent tombstone and the win. The execution of it all was great but I just question the idea of the babyface winning due to outside help that wasn’t really in retaliation for anything? Maybe politics got in the way of logic.

***1/2



MD: Rarely in this project so far have I been surprised. A lot of that is just because I don’t know what to expect coming in, sure, but this one really did surprise me. Richter looked great here. She looked like she was going to be one of the best heels of the 80s. I don’t even think that’s hyperbole. I came in and watched the entrances thinking that her jawing and posturing and rooting and tooting cowgirl act was going to be the best part of the match.

Then she started by basing big for Yaguar, basically allowing her to climb up her for monkey flips and the like. And when she took over on offense, she used the size differential to the fullest and her stuff looked really good and was varied and interesting. She suplexed her from the apron in. She spun her around with a dangling choke in the center of the ring. She caught her off the turnbuckles and dropped her with a backbreaker. She hit this wild one legged front dropkick out of nowhere. She worked the fingers. She had a hanging tree choke toss and walked around the ring with an over the shoulder neckbreaker and a Canadian backbreaker. And her in between movements, with knee drops and big boots and choking was all good. At one point she held on with the hair on a headlock, retook it that way once, and then on the second pull, got her knee up for a sort of short knee trembler which looked awesome. This was Wendi Richter, offensive dynamo. 

Jaguar would take any chance she had. When Richter gave her a little space, she used it, especially tossing her about on the outside. But Richter had such a size advantage that she was able to cut her off pretty easily. Still, Jaguar kept coming. After she hit her butt butt and butterfly suplex, she put Wendi into this gnarly twisting submission I haven’t seen her do before, and later on she was able to put on both the figure four and to climb up her for a hanging armhold. She even managed an airplane spin. Finish had Jaguar’s seconds get Wendi in position for her doing a front tumble into a tope which the camera barely caught well but looked amazing nonetheless and then her front tombstone. Very solid win for Jaguar here as it felt like she overcame a mountain. 

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AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 6/29 - 7/5

AEW Dynamite 7/1/26

MJF vs Mark Briscoe

MD: This, much like MJF's 2026 overall, is a story about vulnerability and about strength. If I've learned anything about pro wrestling over the last twenty years, it's that the greatest tool that a pro wrestler has is vulnerability. It's counter-intuitive maybe, and dozens upon dozens of wrestlers over the years have certainly felt that way, almost entirely to their own detriment, but it's the skeleton key. Pro wrestling isn't math. Sometimes it's magic. But if there's one lever that can lift up the world, it's vulnerability.

You know some of the great examples. You have Honky Tonk Man, who let himself look the coward and fool and was set up to lose each and every night only to somehow escape with the belt. It's more than just him though. It's almost every great heel champion during the territory era. They were primed for failure (and thus success; weakness and thus strength) through non-title matches, through angles, through time limit draws, to give hope to crowds, to build up expectations, to get people into the building. They'd win with a banana peel finish, with the feet on the ropes, due to interference, and thus the babyface came out stronger even in defeat. 

There's Terry Funk in Japan. Why did Terry get over unlike almost any other foreigner? It's because he let himself get beat down like no one else around him. And then, of course, once he got beat down, he never quit, he always kept fighting. There's Stan Hansen, who was a force of nature, an absolute beast, but if he smashed his arm into the corner post, if he had someone who could work him over in just the right way, it'd be a wedge that would shatter even steel. 

The wrestler that feels like he can't show ass, the heel that can't or won't stooge, the babyface that has to look overly tough, all of the wrestlers that have to get all of their stuff in, those are the wrestlers who'll always be a step behind in the end, whose matches won't hold up in the grand scheme of things. 

Vulnerability moves hearts and minds even today. It creates dissonance. People know that MJF can do so many things, yet he still goes for shortcuts, still begs off. The match started and the crowd chanted almost equally for MJF and Briscoe. So what did they do? 

MJF started with a cheapshot kick to the gut. He put on a headlock, got tossed right off, and then hefted up into a sidewalk slam. He scooted back to the corner and tried to beg off, tried to call time out just seconds into the match, and Briscoe stomped him. He tossed Max into the corner but Max lifted up and over, sold his bum leg like it was really hurt, but it was all a feint so he could step over and hit the pile driver. 

In the span of a minute or two, he showed that he was willing to start the match ignobly, to run away and beg off when things didn't go his way, to fake an injury to get an advantage. And guess what? The fans weren't chanting for him anymore. He had the advantage. He had clearly shown that he was capable and dangerous, had survived a big early move by Briscoe. Yet, he had done it in the least admirable way possible. Strength in vulnerability. Vulnerability in strength. Your lead heel. Feel free to boo him.

And of course, once he got under the crowd's skin, he doubled down, pulling Briscoe's bandage off, taking a bite of the wound, then mocking the crowd for buying into his hurt leg with a smirk on his face. He worked the wound. He hit a back body drop. He posed and preened. He worked the wound. He hit a back body drop. He posed and preened. He worked the wound. He hit a back body drop. He posed and preened. Of course, because pro wrestling is better than real life, on the third back body drop, Briscoe landed on his feet and Max turned around, frozen like a punching bag, unafraid to be vulnerable, unafraid to stooge, as he stumbled right into some redneck kung fu.

Briscoe would beat on Max for a bit, would go for the Froggy Bow. Max would fall onto the rope, crotching him. Strength of action, vulnerability of character. He'd point to his head, let it sink in, and then get knocked off the turnbuckles when he tried to follow up, eating said Froggy Bow. Vulnerability of action to go with his vulnerability of character. It's a morality play, one that feels so incredibly refreshing against the backdrop of a real world where the bad guys seem to get away with just about everything.

The match would continue along these lines. MJF would go out of his way to give the fans nothing to admire. When Briscoe tried to use a table, Max reversed things and tossed him onto the apron instead. Then he carefully put the table away and subsequently played to the crowd as if he was going to get another table before flicking them off. The table might have given him an advantage, but here his vulnerability was his hatred of them, his ego. That's the thing about Max at his best, he sets himself up to lose either way, and in doing that he wins at being a heel, especially when he still somehow gets away with it. 

And get away with it he would. This time around, the match ended with MJF surviving the Jay Driller, no foot on the ropes, no rolling out of the ring. He kicked out. Undeniable strength in the face of all that vulnerability. It's a difficult balance, strength and vulnerability. You need that title to stand for something. You need his ultimate comeuppance to matter. Honky Tonk Man was pretty vicious when he had his opportunities, but that was also a secondary belt. This is the world title. 

Briscoe is a folk hero, bulletproof to a degree (him winning the TNT title last year was very important just to keep the faith), and Max had so much vulnerability to cash in on, both in this match and in general. He had lost to Darby in a similar circumstance right after a PPV. He had never kicked out of the Jay Driller before. The way things have gone this year, people are well and truly left guessing. There's something to that if you want to draw a weekly TV rating. All of this made the stip next week where Omega (like Hangman before him) won't be able to challenge again if he loses all the more poignant, and MJF kicking out of the Jay Driller will give them some capital to cash in if Omega gets to hit the One Winged Angel. All of this matters. All too often, pro wrestling spends and spends and spends. Max has been investing well this year, and my gut says there are plenty of payoffs left to come. 

And yet none of this would be possible if he didn't have the bravery to be the most vulnerable guy going, even as yes, he hangs on to that belt for yet another week after finishing as strong as ever. That's pro wrestling for you.

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Found Footage Friday: 1989 AJPW~! MALENKO~! FUCHI~! ABBY~! BABA~! KAMALA~! MIGHTY~! RUSHER~!

Mighty Inoue vs. Shinichi Nakano AJPW 2/23/89

MD: Another set of Classics drops as we go down the list of new footage. This one is probably one I wouldn't have gone out of my way for in general, but it was good overall. A Jr. Heavyweight Title match. We've gotten pieces filled in for this lineage and defenses and the matches hold up quite well against late 80s NJPW title matches really. You have guys like Fuchi, Inoue, and Momota carrying the division with people like Joe Malenko popping in.

I don't have a lot of time for Nakano in general, but this was set up to be almost impossible to fail. For one, he ambushed right from the start, giving things early direction and not forcing them into feeling out matwork he might not excel at. He slapped Inoue out of nowhere and then hit his signature power slam before tossing him to the floor and destroying him on the rails. Back in the ring, it was a seated chinlock. He at times had a sense that he wasn't sure how to best capitalize on the moment. 

None of that from Inoue. First chance he got (grabbing the head out of a Nakano toehold) he focused right in and chained three or four things together perfectly. As the match went on and they went back and forth, he wouldn't let things meander much either. At one point, Nakano was hitting shoulder thrusts in the corner with not enough pepper behind them, so Inoue asserted himself and started shin kicking him in the face. 

They had an exciting finishing stretch where Inoue got him down for the flipping sentons but missed the second. That allowed Nakano to hit his fisherman's suplex but Inoue got out to win with a very cool headscissors roll up out of a side slam. This overachieved, but it was entirely because Inoue is so good.

ER: I love Matt's specific, targeted dislike of Nakano, but I'm not sure I agree. I thought this match was great, but because of both men, and how easy they made it to buy in to an All Japan juniors match based around stiff work and snug holds. When I first started trading tapes, traders were not fans of the All Japan juniors division. If you wanted "Juniors Wrestling" there were so many other options: Michinoku Pro, New Japan, WAR, lucha, all filled with small guys working fast and flying, building to big highspots. All Japan's juniors division had none of that. It was permanently understocked with talent, AJPW never used it to showcase a future star, gaijin imports mostly focused on heavyweights (meaning you might get at best Rex King in a juniors match), and the matches were mostly worked like Kings Road undercard matches. It was not the style people associated with juniors wrestling, and now I'm far enough removed from that, that I can see the style for what it is and love it. 

Nakano tried to get the drop on Inoue and wear him down with holds, but since he is just a lesser version of Inoue it only worked until Inoue got fired enough to put him back in his place. Nakano came out hot, staggering Inoue good with a slap across the face and trying to secure a quick surprise title win with an awesome powerslam, knowing Inoue would be favored the longer the match went. When he moved into wearing down Inoue with holds, I bought all of them, because every submission felt like Nakano was working it to specifically finish the match. He believed in this firmly held submissions, and it made each one matter. His camel clutch, late match Boston crab, his single leg crab, all felt like something he was locking in to force a submission, never just to kill time. I bought into the struggle on every hold, and especially got into Inoue's long escape pulling a chinlock out of a deathlock, stretching Nakano until breaking. It all led to organic advances. Inoue's grounded headlock was snugly pulled into a swinging neckbreaker, the way he fanned Nakano's legs while locking in a butterfly stretch looked punishing, and when he locked in the tightest headscissors possible it was nice foreshadowing for the headscissor cradle he used to retain his title. 

If I'm talking about guys pulling snug submissions that look like they could get a tap, none looks better than Nakano pulling Inoue into a bow and arrow and holding it firm. How many bow and arrows subs have you seen fall apart at the seams? The legs come uncrossed, the knees aren't pressed firmly into the back to hold the sub taut, it's almost as common to see someone inadvertently slip out of the hold while rolling onto their back than it is to see a firm successfully applied lock, and Nakano puts the work in on every part of the sub. He put in the visual work of digging his knee into Inoue's back while securing the deathlock, worked through every bit of securing the hold at both ends of Inoue's body, leaving no wriggle room when he rolls to his back with Inoue stretched. 

Does Inoue "look better" as a wrestler? Yes, probably. His fast and weighty crucifix pin was so good I thought it was the finish for sure, and the way he makes cradles and backslide attempts feel threatening in general means there's always a sense he can surprise with a finish, which made his cradled headscissors work so well. He gives weight to opponents' with good selling in holds and fast bumps. His flipping bump through the ropes to the floor is one of my favorite signature bumps. I love how this man exits a ring. But, All Japan Juniors matches were never about crazy bumps or building to big highspots, which was why the division never got acclaim 30 years ago. I'm not even sure what the biggest highspot of this match was - the crucifix pin? Inoue's somersault senton? - and that's why people weren't seeking out this work. Viewing it outside of its Juniors framing you can see how tight the work was. 

Giant Baba/Rusher Kimura vs. Abdullah the Butcher/Giant Kimala AJPW 3/8/89

MD: It would be easy to dismiss this, to just say some fun things about Baba's cool trip on Kamala, how Kamala fought out of the corner, or how great Rusher's strikes against Abby looked. Or we could play into the amusing bits here, the amazing look on Baba's face when Abby got a cheapshot on him on a rope break and then did the whole martial arts hand waving shtick. We could go on about how they were like a married couple having a spat and how delightful that was. And that'd be valid. We could talk about how into this the crowd was, how they buzzed for Kamala's big moments or Abby asserting himself or Rusher making a comeback or whenever Baba came into the ring. 

And on some level, I am going to talk briefly about the sum of all of that. But I just don't think I can do this justice. I'm not even sure I want to do this justice. This match, ten minutes or so until the countout, is its own sort of magic. It's delightful. I was smiling the whole way through, out of delight, and I rode the same wave as the crowd, decades later. I could argue that we were taught and trained and conditioned not to enjoy matches like this and then I'd feel dumb, because of how stupid that sounds, but also because how stupid it makes me feel that at one point in my life many years ago, I would have denied myself this sort of joy, would have tried to hide behind a sort of self-important sense that wrestling had to be something else. 

Sometimes wrestling should be this. Hell, most wrestling should be begging to be this, because this clash of characters, of timing, of conducting a crowd, of heart and humor and misfit, monster, mythic heroism and villainy... it's just so different than we can hope to find out of most other forms of entertainment. There's nothing in the world quite like this. Watch this. It's ten minutes plus some before and after. Let yourself feel what that crowd was feeling. Smile along. Be delighted. It's okay. The world is a dark place, but there's light to be found in the least likely of places.

ER: I get so excited whenever Matt and I get to write about Abdullah the Butcher and Kimala 2 teaming in All Japan, that I went into this having no idea it was actually Abby teaming with the real Kamala. I've seen so many Abby/Kimala 2 matches, several matches where both Kamala's team with Abby in a trios, but I've seen little of Abdullah and original Kamala as a team. I think it only happened on this one tour. Also, it's important to note that I don't think Real Kamala is an upgrade overall, but it does make the team more threatening and less beatable. Kamala in Japan is weird. He looks like he'd be a natural fit, because his size and appearance makes him stand out more than at any time he was in WWF, it's just that his work does not fit in with Kings Road style at all, and at times he comes off like a total first year fat guy who isn't sure how to work with any of the old pros he's in with. He throws his overhand chops somehow worse than he threw them in 1993 WWF, but at least he tried throwing spin kicks like 1986 Kamala. His early match spin kick into Rusher's chest was easily his highlight of the match. 

So, with no Kimala 2 to work the heel in peril role, it is down entirely to Abdullah to create all the match's intrigue, which he is great at doing. His work against Baba and Rusher is always worth seeing, regardless of what current freak is teaming with him. Abby's aura lifts other, differently fat ships, because there is no other situation where Kamala would have grabbed Rusher to headbutt him if he wasn't headbutting him with Abby. I was impressed by Baba's work with Kamala, how all his chops looked like they were moving the large savage, knocking him down to build to the big Abby/Baba showdown that everyone was dying to see. Abdullah looked like he had so much fun working with Baba, just try not to smile as Abby is doing his karate posing. He looks like he's having a ball, and while I think it is very silly that Abby gets busted open by Kamala's tribal mask, it leads to Baba straight kicking Abby in his forehead grooves several times and Rusher opening those cuts with headbutts, so the silliness leads directly to violence. The karate chops and backhands Abby throws at Baba's neck to stop the onslaught are one of the things that make their showdowns worth watching no matter the year. 

I take it back, maybe Kamala's best contribution to this was when Rusher swarmed him with chops and punches, Kamala selling the swarm by backpedaling in fear while flailing his arms to keep hornets away from his face. Kamala feels so out of place in Japan, that there can be awkward moments...but when a moment like that plays into his fish out of water placement, suddenly it all makes sense. 

Joe Malenko vs. Masa Fuchi AJPW 10/20/89

MD: I can't help but think about this match in context. 1989 All Japan is defined by the war between Tenryu and Jumbo, between Hansen teaming with Tenryu and tearing through people, by Footloose having spotfests, Rusher and Eigen and Okuma doing comedy, guys like Shunji Takano and Kabuki scrapping and holding down the midcard against both Revolution and foreign monsters. And yet, here is a an absolute throwback to both the sort of 70s hold-driven matches Jumbo had made his name on and the sort of Junior Heavyweight technical battles we'd expect out of Fujinami at the turn of the 80s before Tiger Mask changed the paradigm in New Japan. It feels like the pinnacle of the Denny Brown/Nelson Royal style of NWA Junior Heavyweight Title matches that riddled the undercards of certain territories for years. 

I also can't help but think of Newborn UWF, a native monster that was threatening all traditional ways of doing business in Japan. To watch Maeda, Takada, Yamazaki, Anjo, and all the others is to feel a constant sense of danger. One mistake could bring a fight to an end or allow for severe punishment. There's a tension that leaves viewers on edge the whole time through. It's exciting but it's also exhausting. There can be narratives. There were always narratives. But they were based on an incessant pressure. This is different. It's a slow unlocking, a game of chess instead of a perilous tug of war. Damage had to be done, joints had to be weakened, effort had to be put in. It required a different sort of investment, both for the wrestlers and for the crowd. The struggle is somehow more simulated but also richer and broader for that simulation. It may not feel quite as real but it feels just as true. The wrestlers struggle for every inch, sell every twist of a joint, and react emotionally to consequences (such as Fuchi retreating from the ring, arm damaged, after it seemed like Malenko had an answer for everything he tried). If UWF was constant sudden death, this was regulation soccer, where the ebb and flow of shots on goal and ball possession would add up over time.

And of course, I couldn't help but think about Fuchi. He's the most versatile wrestler I've ever seen. He could go from comedy, to a title match like this, to mauling younger wrestlers. You see wrestlers manage that over their career, but for him that might all be within the same week. I think about him destroying the knees of the Super Generation Army on tables, brutality on top of brutality. Here though, it was a chess  move. It opened the match up, turned everything on its head, gave him a lever to pry on for the rest of the match, and pry he did. Malenko was constantly off balance and every subsequent move he hit was full of desperation. Fuchi could, would, and did throw little pokey kicks to the knee to take back over whenever the opportunity arose. It was the same move, even the same brutality, but it was used in an entirely different way than those Tsuruta-gun trio matches of a year or two later. 

It all built to a spectacular finishing stretch. Malenko's desperation paid off for him as he caught Fuchi in a bridging blockbuster fallaway slam. He followed it up with a northern lights suplex and then a clutch armbar. With leg damaged, he couldn't put Fuchi away. Fuchi, arm possibly still hurt, went with leaping enziguiris instead, and then was able to jam Malenko's final attempt to slip around him for a bridging butterfly suplex and the title win. So while I thought back, forward, and laterally to 70s Jumbo, to Denny Brown, to 1989 AJPW, to UWF, and to 1991 six-mans, what I thought about most of all was how this match stood on its own, and just how good it all was. History might show these late 80s AJPW Juniors matches to be a last gasp of an older tradition in some ways, but it was a gasp that showed how much vital, vibrant, and worthwhile life might have still been left to be found in the style.

ER: I wrote about the maligned/unregarded All Japan juniors style up above as we were breaking down Mighty Inoue/Shinichi Nakano without realizing that Matt went into different detail on the style in this review down below. Denny Brown is an interesting style comparison for this type of match, and it's interesting because at one point that would have been considered a pejorative and now it's clearly being used as a positive comp to something that we both miss from modern wrestling. This match is nothing but excellent, honest work, both guys gluing themselves together to craft something tough and true while making my own joints and ligaments scream out in pain. 

They build this around increasingly torqued holds, no traditional "highspots", no strike exchanges of any kind, just one blunt attack that leads to a long full match of superglue. The blunt attack comes when Fuchi begins smiling and taunting Joe with a couple of head fakes, a couple of lunges that weren't ever leading to anything, but Joe sees the evil behind Fuchi's smile and just headbutts him in the face when he gets his hands on him, wrestling him to the ground and beginning the always satisfying wrenching. Joe's holds all look like the finish: his cradle, grapevining one leg while concurrently forcing Fuchi into a painful half nelson, using all his limbs to manipulate Fuchi's body, not going for a pin just going for pain; a camel clutch with no pullback on the chin, all focus instead on hooking both arms and pulling back on them as he sinks into the hold, leaving Fuchi wincing and rubbing out his shoulders after he escapes to the floor.

Joe Malenko is someone who can make a Fujiwara armbar takedown look like a hold that damages the entire body. The way he takes Fuchi's arm and drives him down with his full weight sends Fuchi's head, face, and shoulder into the mat, like he was using the arm as leverage to do something more sinister. He uses that same leveraged arm to do a Russian legsweep when Fuchi eventually fights to his feet, holding the arm the whole time and using that as the point to pivot into attacks that folded in other limbs. 

Fuchi makes no inroads working the mat with Joe so eventually involves his tried and true friend Ringside Table to smash Joe's knee into. Joe's knee selling is real and escalates the match instantly. I love an injury coming into play late in a match, rather than give someone a memory exercise in the first couple minutes that makes it near impossible to do an actual match without conveniently forgetting your injury. Once Fuchi smashes Joe in the knee, Joe's strategy changes entirely and you can see in his eyes that this was the worst thing to happen to him. Fuchi is now in kill mode and Malenko is bringing out the big guns. The way Joe swings his leg away from Fuchi's single leg attempt before swinging him over with a front face lock takeover, catching a high crossbody and floating over with Fuchi's momentum into a bridging pin, and a clean northern lights that I'm sure he wished he had pulled off earlier with a sturdier knee. Fuchi doesn't so much as wear Joe down as he does hold him down long enough to win, the same thing Joe had been doing all match long. Excellent work all around, showcasing a style that really wouldn't be hard to integrate into any modern work, you just have to be honest and actually put in the work. That's the thing I don't see happening.  

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Every Dog Has Its Day: Zack Sabre, Jr. vs. Darian Bengston

PRODUCE Volume 1: The Octopus 6/29/26

Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Darian Bengston

"Let Hercules himself do what he may,

The cat will mew, and dog will have his day."

Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 1

MD: Wrestling, even artful wrestling, especially artful wrestling, is quite often purposeful. An opener serves a purpose. This is just as true for a first scene in a movie, the first track on an album. It sets the stage. It establishes a mood.

While there were pre-show matches on PRODUCE Volume 1, they were tastes and teasers, a glimpse of the wide breadth of the possibilities of the indies in the span of fifteen minutes: comedy, power, toughness, style, and just the right amount of karaoke.

This was the start of the main card and the main course, and it had to do heavy lifting. It had to make a statement about PRODUCE itself, about independent wrestling, about all of the possibilities in the previous paragraph and more.

Zack Sabre, Jr. is often likened to Johnny Saint, and for good reason, but I see him more as a modern day Billy Robinson, not necessarily in how he wrestles, but in who he wrestles. I've seen footage of him in places of the world few other foreigners delve and it reminds me of the stories of Robinson in Iraq or India. While his home base is New Japan, he presents himself as someone who wrestles who he wants, when he wants, where he wants. He is a globetrotter, a world warrior. He created a role for himself and then, over time, with effort (and not at all a sure thing), he grew into it. For him to be starting off a show like this represents something.

Bengston represents something too. There's such life to him, such joy in how he wrestles. This is a guy who loves wrestling, loves technique, loves to challenge himself, loves to open up those little moments of triumph and celebrate them (even sometimes to his own detriment). It's clear as day to watch him move. And that technique is underpinned by a humanity and vulnerability. He has fun, he flexes his skills, he certainly has his pride, but he's relatable. He's a wrestler, and wrestlers do manipulate by trade (and we welcome them to do so; we invite them in and, in turn, they invite us in; that is the pact between us), but there's an earnestness to the process to him that just makes it all the more effective. You want to root for the guy. You want him to succeed. 

This would be a battle of technique, but not wrestling for the sake of wrestling (which can be fine and good, of course, but often is best seen as a starting point and not the destination). Personal issues are at the root of professional wrestling, and they contrived a fine one between these two for this opener.

ZSJ is on record in saying that putting on a great technical match for an American audience is like “reading Shakespeare to a dog." It's a notion that undermines the audience, the audience here being far more important than the country as a whole. PRODUCE touts a different relationship with the audience, claiming that it won't insult their intelligence. At the same time, it expects something more from them, that they embrace professional wrestling as art, something worth thinking about and engaging with, worth experiencing with an open heart instead of irony and self-conscious minimizing. The wrestling will be brave and confident and the fans will be brave and confident as well.

It insults Bengston as well. To hear it from him, he went to England to learn both wrestling and Shakespeare. This is an opportunity against an opponent who was on a featured match on a huge PPV the night before, against one who is considered one of the best technical wrestlers of his generation, but it's also a chance to prove Sabre wrong, to lift up himself, the crowd, and the fledgling organization.

So yes, there was a mood to be set, and they managed it admirably on the mat. Sabre controlled to start, using one hold to unlock the next (sometimes a criticism of him, but in 2026, it comes off as strategic to me more often than not). He was able to pry down Bengston's leg despite an attempt to jam it. When controlling the arm, he gave a little wave to the crowd. He saw this as easy work. Bengston however, snuck a leg in as a simple too to create leverage, breaking a hold and turning things around on ZSJ. Bengston chose to use his superior positioning to ride ZSJ's back in the most insulting way possible. Sabre, of course, took offense. The mood was set.

ZSJ came in hot, separating arms and stepping down upon them, forcing pain to blossom across Darian's face. Bengston cartwheeled away at first chance and was able to return favor to ZSJ's legs. Sabre managed an elevated half crab but when he went for a bow and arrow, Bengston snuck in a tight short dragon screw. It wasn't necessarily a human game of chess so much as frenetic technical table tennis of joints and limbs.

Sabre volleyed back, dropping down and kicking out the arm. So far the match had its rhythm, its punctuation, but that felt like the first real transition as Sabre honed in on one specific body part. That's how we break down matches, how we analyze and organize them. Some have clear shine/heat/comeback structures, but so many don't. In those, you're looking for the transitions, the shifting of the tides of fate and advantage. You're watching to see how the characters interact, how they are affected, how they affect one another. And how they interface with the rules and norms of the world.

This match was an opportunity not just to establish these two characters, the style, the stakes, but also the rules and the potential consequence for them. Sabre doubled down on the arm, starting in with his trademark joint manipulation with the fingers. The ref immediately pulled out a yellow card, something new, something different, something perhaps timely in this World Cup year. Sabre complained, and riding another wave of transition (or, perhaps were we to lean into the narrative itself, opportunity), Bengston was able to recover.

He reversed a whip into a headlock takeover, and, much like Sabre before him, shifted from one hold to the next, looking for what he wanted. Unfortunately, what he wanted here was to preen and taunt, to shoot an imaginary basketball through an imaginary hoop and right down upon Sabre's head. Character drives action, and Bengston's character, human as it might be, allowed Sabre to drive right over him, and right into a cross arm-breaker.

A few minutes later, after the two traded uppercuts and once Sabre took over himself, Sabre's own character reared his head, for good and ill. The holds became less rote and more experimental. In this, Sabre was an artist dabbling in bodily architecture. What if a joint was twisted this way, one limb stacked over the other, a leg raised high over head? What edifice might he create? There was a schoolyard element to it, an older sibling contorting a younger, something that wasn't done with respect, but perhaps with familiarity and affection. Bengston had proven himself worth this sort of playful effort, worth an affectionate bullying instead of just a professional dismantling. It was a welcome into a global family of grapplers.

Unsurprisingly, Bengston took it like all younger siblings take it, with frustration and aggravation. He broke free, slapped the mat, pushed up and kept fighting. Sabre, at times, and as the match went on, certainly wanted this, but Bengston needed it. It gave him fire, but it left him well-suited for table tennis, not chess, and at some point, when it was time to bring things to a close, Sabre shifted gears from jamming (literal and figurative) to precise mastery. 

Bengston held his own during the pin exchanges of the finishing stretch, but even being admirably and effectively reactive was never going to be enough in a world where you have to think three moves ahead. Sabre was, unsurprisingly, perhaps inevitably, able to trap him for the pin.

Zack Sabre, Jr., wrestling nobility in his own way, having christened another ship, will trot off to another part of the globe, will go off to fight elsewhere, and, as revealed post-match, will return to create a show of his own. 

PRODUCE, thus christened, still has a journey before itself. One match does not make a show. One show does not make a legacy. But at least the stage had been set.

And Darian Bengston? Even though he lost the match, he won something greater. The quote above wasn't about Hamlet winning anything. It was simply about him being heard. Was Bengston heard? Absolutely. Was he seen? Undeniably. He had his day here, and there's every reason to believe that his tomorrow will be brighter still.

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80s Joshi on Wednesday: Mimi! Yukari! Masami! Tarantula!

Volume 4 

2. Devil Masami & Tarantula vs. Mimi Hagiwara & Yukari Omori (WWWA Tag Team Titles) - 8/10/82

K: This is a rematch of the 1/4/82 main event, since Tarantula is Wild Kazuki in a mask.

This has a very measured start. Tarantula doesn’t actually do anything other than start the match, stalls a bit and just tags in Devil. I was reminded a bit of Randy Savage’s heel stalling tactics, but it didn’t actually turn into that. Rather we had Devil methodically grinding Mimi Hagiwara down, she does a cool little sidewards half crab sticking her knee into Mimi’s back. When she’s in Tarantula is actually the more aggressive one this time. 

There aren’t many big moments here other than a well worked match typical of the style. People following these write-ups won’t be surprised to learn that the first transition came after Mimi got thrown into the chairs on the outside before getting a good comeback getting back in. After that the momentum never really swings back to the heels like it was in the opening minutes.

2nd fall is where things get more intense. Mimi starts things off by unloading her boxing skills on Tarantula with a load of skinny-armed bodyshots. This sets up Devil a bit later on getting her hands on Mimi, and first thing she does is start savagely biting Mimi’s hand and working over her that way. That’s her way of working a limb basically. The babyface team are protected a bit by only losing this fall by countout due to the heels throwing them out and attacking them with weapons. Mimi does some really great selling on the outside as she’s being helped out, looking like she might vomit into a bucket. Not very glamorous of her I know.

When the 3rd fall starts, Devil and Tarantula stand in front and behind of Mimi holding her in place, and take turns to headbutt her? Like, Devil will headbutt her and send her head backwards a bit, but then Tarantula headbutts her from behind like a human pendulum system. Made them look very creative as well as a bit nuts.

More brilliant selling from Mimi throughout all of this. She looks like she’s just struggling to move any part of her body and is not fully conscious as she crawls over to her corner to try and tag in Omori. The longer this goes on the more it feels like the babyfaces just aren’t going to turn this around. They’re being outgunned constantly. And just at moments where you think this would be the natural time to start a big comeback, it just doesn’t happen, and when it nearly happens it gets cut off pretty quickly before any real damage was done. To add to the relatively humiliation. The finish is Omori tapping out to Devil Masami’s Romero Special, which rarely ever won matches.

Mimi adds to her stellar performance tonight by going absolutely berzerk at the result. Looking like she’s going to try and beat up the AJW officials for not intervening to stop the heels cheating. It’s quite the scene as she has to be physically restrained and carried out by her fellow wrestlers. 

This felt like a lesser version of the 1/4/82 match. I wouldn’t normally review a match as good as this with what seems like a negative comment, I just wish they added some extra element to it other than getting the opposite result (Mimi’s tantrum not really being part of the match). Still this was very good and effective at furthering the feud.

***3/4

MD: Most interesting thing from the pre-match commentary is that they outright note that Tarantula is Wild Kazumi who has donned a mask. Look, I’m working off of the youtube translation here so it’s dubious, but I think the commentators start to get on her case for choosing a creepy name like Tarantula instead of the name of a flower. So that’s 1982 AJW for you? I guess? 

Devil and Tarantula controlled this to start when Devil nailed Mimi off the ropes. Lots of stretching her, hairpulling, etc. Devil did a sort of side crab at one point. Tarantula came in with dramatic claws and chokes. Things spilled to the outside and both of the champs got stacked on the announce table. Tarantula had some nice knees in the ropes in here. She was working quite big. Mimi and Omori got a bit of hope but were cut off until Tarantula accidentally hit Devil with a missile dropkick and knocked her from the ring. That let Omori and Hagiwara fight fair and Mimi soon had Tarantula down and out with her bodyslam suplex variation and one shoulder electric chair finisher to end the fall.

Second fall had Omori and Hagiwara pressing the advantage. Tarantula hit an explosive dropkick (she feels a little more explosive than most of the heels, more like the faces, maybe, at least in this guise), but they couldn’t control things until they reversed a whip and hit simultaneous tombstones (with Devil’s a really nasty front one). After that Mimi was in really bad shape and they were able to take things outside and whack them with objects until the countout to win the fall.

Third fall had Mimi as basically a walking corpse. She has some of the best body language I’ve ever seen. I don’t think that’s hyperbole or wanting to rediscover someone. She really was that good in this specific area of her selling. They hit her with so many headbutts including pingponging ones back and forth. Omori tried to assert herself but the ref kept taking her out. Finally, she did make it in and was able to turn the cane attempts back on the Army. The numbers game was too much and when she had an abdominal stretch on Tarantula, Devil grabbed her hair from outside. Things spilled to the outside and Mimi tried to help but she was just too worn down. Inside the ring, Tarantula did a splash off Devil’s shoulders and then Devil locked in a Tapatia as Tarantula held back Mimi for the win and the title change. Post match, Mimi lost it on the ref, looking like a woman possessed. I thought this was good and very complete (even though I swear some of it was clipped). I liked the ending of the second fall especially. They could have finished it after the tombstones but it was more to the heel’s style to force the countout with chaos and violence. It was gratuitous but that was the point. Tarantula looked good and added something different (even from what I remember of her as Kazumi) on the heel side and it was another legitimately great performance from Hagiwara.
 

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AEW Five Fingers of Death (and Friends) 6/22 - 6/28

AEW Forbidden Door 6/28/26

Jon Moxley vs Bandido

MD: I want to be clear about something before we dive in. I don't actually think this is the story they're telling. I don't think they're telling any story at all, not really. I think TK is making matches. I think Moxley is flexing, enjoying himself, proving he can do whatever he wants and make it "work." They're slotting the Death Riders in wherever it makes sense. Can they do something down the line with Ospreay one way or the other? Sure. But the point is "one way or the other." It's the flexibility, the ability to make whatever matches make sense. 

Maybe one day that means putting the Death Riders against STP, United Empire, or the Don Callis Family as de facto babyfaces. Maybe another day it means Mox defending the Continental Title against Bandido as a de facto heel. It's exactly how they used the BCC for long stretches and while it's a matchmaker's dream, it's a booker's nightmare, because nothing resonates nearly as much as it ought to. Everything is ultimately wishy washy. There's no moral truth to the universe. There are never any real consequences. Jon Moxley didn't get turned on by the Death Riders because it would have been "predictable." 

Yes, Jon. It was predictable because it was good fiction, because your character committed unforgivable transgressions and then never fully paid for them. It was predictable because the appeal of a fictional world of pro wrestling is to get to live out and experience all of those moral consequences that don't really exist in the real life. We're dealing with this bullshit day in and day out in everyday life. We don't need you wrestling through it.

Yet here we are. And the fans are more or less going along with it (though far, far less than if there had been clean lines and true consequence, which is the true crime of it all). 

I should just accept it, should just move on.

But the text is the text regardless of whether it's truly going anywhere or whether there's true intention behind it. 

And I will call the text as I see it.

Which is to say...

----------------------------------------

Jon Moxley sits on a throne of lies. He rules over a kingdom of dust. He is full of shit. Maybe he can back that shit up, but it doesn't make it smell any better.

He talks a good game. He tears down institutions not with anarchy or revolution but with nihilism. Then he builds himself up in their stead. 

Against most wrestlers, that's fine. Maybe they're not much better.

Bandido is not most wrestlers. Bandido stands for something. He wears a white hat and a white mask. He fights for justice. He never gives up. 

Jon Moxley doesn't even believe justice exists, not anymore, maybe never. And he succeeds, triumphs, gets away with it all, so long as he makes sure everyone else believes the same. That's the only way he escapes with his head held high.

Bandido has a good heart, sees the best in people, wants to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, even Moxley. The fans seem to want to give him that benefit and Bandido listens to the fans.

So he thinks this is going to be a title match like those he grew up on, a lucha title match fought within the rules. Matwork to start, escalation, two men pitting skill against one another, not an apuestas match, not even a heated trios. 

He starts it with swagger, winning an exchange and pointing the finger gun right at Moxley.

This isn't a game Moxley can play. This isn't a game Moxley can win. He knows there's no solid footing underneath him. He knows that his actions won't stand up to scrutiny. He needs the crowd to buy into what he's selling. He can't have Bandido outdoing him, outflashing him, out shining him. 

He tries to shoot it down, to put his middle fingers up instead. He refuses to play along with the Yay - Boo dynamic. He has to take the air out of the room. He tries to draw a line in the sand instead, tries to intimidate Bandido. 

Bandido does not back down.

Moxley tries to outquick him, to beat him at his own game, slipping his way back into the ring to hit a dive. Bandido hits a far more spectacular one.

So he gets his feet up as Bandido charges in and drops him skull first onto the ring stairs. This isn't a game. It's not a clean, honorable title match. Maybe Mox could win that. Maybe he couldn't. But he's too much the coward to take the chance. He can't afford to lose. He can't afford to look weak. He can't afford to let anyone, the wrestlers in the back, the Death Riders, the fans, doubt him for a second.

He tears at the mask. He makes that "white hat," and the white mask, and the white gear, turn red.

Yet Bandido does not give up, for Bandido does not give up. He bounds back at Moxley with superior athleticism. Despite the size difference, he presses him over his head with superior strength. He survives the Death Rider and then manages an astounding feat, taking Moxley over in a fall away slam from the top.

But while Bandido stands for something, Moxley knows the price of his own potential fall. If Bandido fully fathomed the filthy rancor delving underneath in the wretched heart of Jon Moxley, maybe he'd have risen to the occasion, maybe he would found a strength greater even than his own, but on this night, Moxley's eyes were the ones that were open, and he simply needed it more.

He caught Bandido on a 21-Plex attempt and pulled him back into a choke. Bandido's courage drove him to lift Moxley up and drive him down, but Moxley's fear meant that he hung on for dear life and won the day.

And post-match? Bolstered by the fans (and Bandido listened to the fans) and entirely despite the depths he dragged himself, the match, and the title, Moxley dared to hold his hand out as a sign of respect. He was wrestling through it again. And Bandido, with his good, forgiving heart, a heart better than any that we possess, expressed admiration and respect.

The King with No Clothes pulled the wool over everyone's eyes once again. Evil triumphed over good once more because evil believes in nothing and good cares far, far too much. 

So is there a payoff coming? Is there comeuppance? Is he just going to get away with this again and again and again and we are just to accept it as the new face of valor? 

I don't know. It's all sure convenient and easy isn't it? Maybe in 2026, that's all that matters.

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Found Footage Friday: R2W!? TARZAN~! FUJIWARA~! ORIHARA~! KURISU~! GORO~! AOYAGI~! NOSAWA~!

R2W True Winner 1/28/98

Akira Kawabata vs. Kenji Fukimoto

MD: Hey, it's an opening match. These guys hit the mat hard. My lasting memory of it will be the sound of them doing so again and again and again. Constant noise in this one. You weren't going to get much crowd noise as this place was either sparsely attended or people just hadn't filed in yet (we'll see on later matches). But for this crowd and this spot on the card, they worked hard. I will admit it was a little "your move, my move" or in this case "your earnest offense ending with a half crab, my earnest offense ending with a half crab" as they went to that well again and again. Cross arm breakers too, but mostly half crabs. And the transitions weren't much to write home about, a couple of caught kicks, a couple of opportunistic shots. Lots of rope breaks. After one, Kawabata hit a waterwheel drop and locked in a cross armbreaker of his own for a quick tap. 

ER: It's weird that Akira Raijin was just in TNA for a couple years. What a stupid promotion. Here he is young and has baby fat, working a young lions match with another Kurisu guy. Kurisu Young Lions sound like they should create some horrific violence, and while we didn't get there I felt it rose to something prickly by the finish. I found the matwork scrambles engaging and could have seen a lot more before we moved into the half crabs. Fukimoto had this charming thing where he would stumble over his own feet no matter what he tried, but not in a clumsy way? It looked more like he was putting his whole body into everything, overly committing his weight, and would lose his footing if Akira shifted. They don't budge on a stiff shoulderblock, Akira has a wicked spinning heel kick, and the submission trading at the end felt like Fukimoto was seriously trying to make Akira tap by putting his full weight into half crabs. No prior limb work was necessary, he was trying to fuck up Akira's knee and lower back. When Akira made the ropes and put a hand on his love handle, I don't doubt that lower back was sore. Fukimoto's quick armbar looked like it might get the tap as Akira kept missing the ropes with his swiping boot, but once he got there and earned the break he had much better ring placement with his armbar. 

Chihiro Nakano vs. Misa Okada

MD: Can't say I'm too familiar here. Okada had facepaint and crosses on her gear and a size advantage. Nakano was pretty spry and had a clear technical advantage. Lots of great struggle early on be it over a headlock or Nakano trying to hit a slam or just getting her legs up to block kicks. Okada was able to impose with her size but Nakano was quick to come back with kicks or a flash takeover. At one point Nakano stopped and screamed at Okada only to get run over anyway. When Nakano finally did hit the slam she could have made a slightly bigger deal out of it before hitting the kneedrop. There were a couple of bits of weird positioning where Okada wasn't quite where she wanted her to be and moving her took away just a little snappiness/plausibility maybe. The stretch had some very tricked out stuff though, including some nice roll throughs into leglocks by Nakano and a great go behind into a bent-in-half German by Okada. Eventually though, one of those leglocks did Okada in. Not the smoothest thing at times but great effort overall.

ER: Nakano is a Tarzan Goto trainee and looked confident, while Okada looked much less trained and much less confident. Okada had no idea how to sell offense, she only knew how to take one specific kind of back bump. Any strike that landed, and offense that landed, she froze; but if it was something where she could do her one kind of back bump - a measured, disconnected from impact, wrestling school back bump - then brother you know she was falling to her back. Nakano had to actually slow down her work because Okada kept freezing and not blocking anything. I appreciated how sound Nakano's snapmares were, how she cast a long arc and actually looked like she was flinging Okada onto her back. Nakano was, at times, moving around a corpse and it's a miracle the match looked as much like a match as it did. Okada really gave Nakano nothing to work off, even though Nakano was the one almost always in control. Hilariously, Okada breaks out two gorgeous suplexes during the finishing stretch, a German and a high bridge northern lights, and they were so unexpected because nothing else she did looked anywhere near as good as those suplexes. We needed more of her folding Nakano rather than being mystified by what a kick is supposed to be doing. 

Kazushige Nosawa vs. Masashi Aoyagi

MD: Oh hey, these guys I know. This went pretty much like you'd expect. Aoyagi came out striking, knocking Nosawa all over the place with kicks and throat shots. Lots of variety, with a spin wheel kick, spinning kicks, roundhouses, axe kicks, etc. Nosawa got a few leglocks and even caught a kick and slammed an elbow down on the knee which let him take over for a minute or two, but when Aoyagi had enough he took over with a corner charge that sent him out of the ring, coming back in with a overhand chop off the top. When he lost the gi jacket, you knew it was over, and one kick later, it was. He was quite nice to Nosawa after the fact though, so I guess despite the beating, he could be glad he didn't draw Kurisu instead.

ER: Nosawa is in a green and orange singlet with yellow fringe down the sides, and with his faded red kneepads he looks like he's wearing the fringed singlet version of Tito Santana's El Matador gear. Aoyagi is in a black karate gi and shows no emotion. It's so cool Aoyagi became a NOAH lifer after the first decade plus of his career spent as a karate guy whose style often didn't fit into other feds (in a way I liked). Misawa had such a great eye for talent, all the Japanese veterans and indy scum guys he brought in fit the style so well. He had that vision that led to karate guys like Aoyagi and Akitoshi Saito, BattlArts guys, the kind of mixed fight/background guys that Baba didn't want in Kings Road. 

But what surprised me about this, is that I appreciated what Nosawa brought more than what Aoyagi brought. Aoyagi, a decade into his career, looked like the guy less aware of how to put together a wrestling match. The crowd was rightly into him because of his aura and gave the first somewhat noisy reaction of the night to his big spinning heel kick, but this got good when Nosawa took over and made it a fight. When Nosawa caught a kick and turned it into a hyperextended kneebar, it looked like something that could have actually gotten a quick tap from Aoyagi. Nosawa stood up and knocked Aoyagi around much more than I expected. The way he hammered Aoyagi's leg and threw a dropkick to the kneecap was fired up tough stuff, and his running dropkick to Aoyagi's chest was 0.7 on the Joshi Dojo scale, knocking him dangerously back into the ropes. Fans had been reacting to Aoyagi from his first kicks, but Nosawa had to win them over by establishing toughness. 

Aoyagi removes his gi (!) before delivering his match winning roundhouse to the chest. Nosawa was recovering from a near fall spin kick that could have hit better, and the gi removal was the right call. I've never seen anyone remove their gi as a Lawler strap spot, let alone the stoic Aoyagi, who for all the expression he was showing may have just been removing it because he was hot. 

Yuka Shiina vs. Kiyoko Ichiki

MD: Kiyoko Ichiki came out to Heaven is a Place on Earth, so that's how we're starting this one. She did great to start too, ambushing Shiina and tossing her into the (empty, so, so empty) chairs and then grabbing a chair and hitting a triple jump plancha to the floor like she was Sabu! Then she wiped out completely on an inner springboard attempt and Shiina took over. Ok, ok, I had to stop to watch the rest of the match and Ichiki is pretty great actually. She's definitely someone who went under the radar as best as I can tell. She had mean, mean shots, would step on both hands at once to jump on them, would do a mare and then hang on to the hair to bridge to the next move. Speaking of bridges she had one really clutch bridge out of a pinfall late that was a killer moment too.

But they also did a ton of STUFF down the stretch. This had a sunset flip power bomb and a top rope armdrag. Shiina won it with a series of missile dropkicks including one that was like a sniper rifle to the back of the head. Definitely an ambitious match but they hit the mark more often than not and kept things chippy and mean-spirited the whole way through. I'd like to seek out some more of her stuff.

ER: I instantly fell in love with Ichiki when she came out to "Heaven is a Place on Earth" because you can tell she really loves the song. She waits to enter so the song can build, she takes a circuitous route to the ring so the song can play longer, and at the bell she ambushes Shiina and drives a knee into her hip. I don't know where cagematch got the 1,200 attendance number, but I think these Tarzan Goto indies were cooking some books, as was Japanese tradition. The bulk of this match focused on meanness and had great energy, and that was the stuff that carried this. I liked it less when they went into a few pin sequences that felt out of place for the match they had been working. Despite the pin sequences looking fine, you can tell the crowd also thought they were unnecessary, as they were some of the only parts that got meek reactions. 

No, you wanted Ichiki jamming the sole of her boot into Shiina's face and both stomping and stretching the other's knees. Ichiki's triple jump plancha looked awesome, whatever joshi trainee did a great job of making it look like she was actually checking on Shiina while getting into position to help catch the dive. Shiina's dropkicks all looked really good, punctuated by how quickly she was able to get to an elevated position before delivering them. She gets quickly to the middle buckle before jumping around with the kicks, all in one fast motion, and later delivers the same from the top. There was one moment where Shiina slipped climbing the ropes, that would have been a good time to acknowledge the work done on her knee, but instead she just looked frustrated and climbed back up. No matter, the crowd bought into this because it was good, and the loud ring made every impact of the top sound huge. 

Masanobu Kurisu vs. Goro Tsurumi

MD: Tsurumi was around 50 here. Kurisu was a couple of years older. Kurisu held out a hand. Tsurumi didn't shake it. Kurisu gave him the middle finger. Why would you antagonize Kurisu? Why would you antagonize Tsurumi? This was a war and is, as much as anything else, why we go back and watch these things. Sometimes something is everything you'd want from a pairing. This was probably more.

Kurisu was the early aggressor, brutal shots interspersed with insulting slaps. For the most part though, it was like attacking a giant tree trunk. Tsurumi absorbed everything, even stomps, and then, to Kurisu's misery, the tree trunk started to hammer back with headbutts and shots of his own. Eventually, Kurisu finally opened things up by grinding is foot in Tsurumi's face, getting him to the floor, and burying him in blue plastic chairs. 

Tsurumi decided to get back at Kurisu by prying off an arm, working it int he ropes and then bending it on itself to step on the elbow once or twice. Kurisu returned favor by prying off a leg and forcing Tsurumi into the craziest split imaginable, something you wouldn't imagine this big fro-clad older warrior would be able to manage. Kurisu stayed on the leg, putting it on top and working it. There were little moments of whimsy among the violence here, Tsurumi grabbing at the ref for not breaking it, for instance. Then when Goro took back over and slammed a chair repeatedly into a prone Kurisu and then knocked him off the apron, Kurisu tried to toss a chair into the ring, failed, and then walked right over and sat down in one of those blue chairs, making a scene of it. 

Things devolved into both men working king of the mountain or pulling each other out and walking to a far wall to slam each other's head into it, or trying to use the post, only for the ref to intervene one too many times and get manhandled for his trouble, calling for the DQ. It should have been unsatisfying but it was pretty much the only way this thing was ending. Our last image is of Kurisu bringing in a trash can to try to cause a bit more chaos but finally just giving up on it all. Hell of a thing, this one.

ER: The exact kind of fun, disrespectful old man fight you would want when you see a Kurisu match, with the great twist that old man Goro is actually the one being disrespectful! Kurisu was out here working a regular (i.e. Great) stiff old guy match with sharp chops, forearms that actually look good, headbutts to the jaw and face...and then Goro is the one who turns up the heat with chops to the damn neck and the kind of punches that can only lead to bad things. Tsurumi has the kind of short stiff punches - several variations, lefts and rights, right to the chin and mouth - that fucking KURISU has to sell. Kurisu is an expressive, loud seller, letting out multiple loud yells after getting dropped to his knees with stomach punches. Kurisu, forced unexpectedly to scream his own screams, is forced to make Goro scream.  

Kurisu does this by bending Tsurumi in a way I've never seen Tsurumi bend. Kurisu steps on Goro's instep and forces him into a splits, and the way Goro screams when Kurisu gets him in a wishbone...you never could have convinced me that 50 year old Goro Tsurumi could do the splits. Kurisu stands on the man's back and neck AFTER forcing him into a splits and brother, I don't think I've never seen anything like it in a wrestling ring. Old man Tsurumi is somehow so flexible that I don't think a stump puller would even work as a submission on him. Their fighting is so good, trading shots that all feel like direct reactions to the strike that just landed. Kurisu kicks him in the knee, Goro back chops him in the neck, Kurisu slaps him across the face, it all feels like escalation and a response that says, "Oh yeah, you old fuck? How about this?" 

Kurisu starts throwing chairs into the ring and it builds to a great moment where Kurisu angrily drags a chair to the ring just to use it as a step up to the apron, a hilarious moment in a fight just before the fight is thrown out. 

Mitsunobu Kikuzawa/Shigeo Okumura vs. Crusher Takahashi/Masao Orihara

MD: This could have been a super indie tag five years later (maybe without quite as many low blows?). Really, this is 18 minutes of Orihara (and to a somewhat lesser extent Takahashi) being an absolute jerk. Pure cruiserweight bully stuff. It starts with him chucking the flowers out of the ring. It ends with him killing Kikuzawa (Ebessan/Kikutaro) with a sit out power bomb for the win and leaving the ring with a backlip just because he can.

In the middle, it's just one nasty piece of offense after another. On a lockup, he kicks the leg out brutally. He hits Kikuzawa with a pile driver where he turns to face all four sides of the ring before dropping him. He jams a rana off the top with the meanest sheer drop power bomb. And in between there's all the connective tissue of headbutts, kawada kicks, raking the eyes, that you'd want. Takhashi has a killer brainbuster and one of the meanest snap suplex you'll see too. And then to their credit, Kikuzawa was scrappy, headbutts, throwing himself at his opponents, and a nice leaping tornado DDT.

There was a completely absurd bit in the middle where Orihara would pile driver Okumura, Okumura would snap back up, Orihara would hit a low blow, do it again, and he'd pop up. He'd get one of his own before Orihara finally kept him down with the third. It was entertaining at least. It knew it was absurd and leaned into it. Nothing boring about this match even though it was pretty much a one sided mauling with a bit of hope/retribution here or there. 

ER: Awesome tag with a ton of pride and ego and bad attitude. It's a given that a match with Orihara would have bad attitude, you just never know who exactly he's going to take it out on. Before their opponents are even entering, Orihara shoves the ref with one palm to the chest. Orihara shoves the ref not in the way a heel would, but in the way a bully who does this to someone every single day of their life would. He is one of the most watchable wrestlers and seems like the most unpleasant prick. Crusher does not match Orihara's asshole energy but he understands his mission. He's the one who goes after Okumura's taped up shoulder. Orihara does not target existing injuries, he just focuses on finding how many ways he can kick Okumura in the face. 

Everyone is catching strays. Kikuzawa almost gets his nose busted when Okumura tags out while throwing Crusher into the corner, as the throw whips Crusher's elbow back into Kikuzawa's face. There's some great face in peril work as they isolate Kikuzawa. Orihara throws punishing corner clotheslines, drops Kikuzawa with a brainbuster, the spikes him with a piledriver after showing it off to people on every side of the ring. I get excited for such a great piledriver, and I had no idea we were yet to see several of the most disgusting piledrivers ever to be publicly inflicted on a man. There's a real nasty double team when Crusher locks on a Boston crab so Orihara can come off the top with a double stomp to Kikuzawa's back. 

There's a great bit where we learn that Kikuzawa has the head strength of a Tongan, where Orihara starts dishing out headbutts and does more damage to himself. Orihara is always unprofessional, always a punk, but he's also a gifted salesman with great ideas. I love the way he staggered and dropped himself to his knees after repeatedly, stubbornly headbutting Kikuzawa Fifita. It leads to us witnessing some horrific neck and spine trauma as Orihara and Okumura refuse to sell each other's piledrivers, several times, even though you can see how badly their heads are connecting with the mat on each one. These are some of the most disgusting piledrivers I've ever seen, just intentionally stuffing head and neck into the mat. The way Okumura's legs whip forward on each one just focuses more of the impact and I have no idea how they kept getting up. To add perfect insult to certain injury, Orihara swiftly kicks Okumura in the face before delivering his final one. Imagine already knowing you're going to be dropped full weight onto your head, ducking down to wait for it, and getting a fast kick to the nose and teeth before it happens. That's Orihara, baby. 

Ichiro Yaguchi vs. Rikio Ito

MD: I don't know. Do you guys know about Ichiro Yaguchi? We've only done one match of his ever on SC. He's a big guy, dressed in sort of blue scrubs with holy crosses on them, in red. He has a phantom of the opera deal and long bleached blonde hair. He comes out to Hell's Bells and has Kiyoko Ichiki with him. He's a character and is bombastic, over the top. Plays to the crowd, the ref, his opponent, though not quite as consistently as I'd like. Anyway, they sort of hit each other hard, I guess. My favorite part of this was Yaguchi making a huge deal out of turning Ito over for a Scorpion Deathlock like he was Choshu, arm up in the air, wide stance. Ito immediately forced his way out and stepped on Yaguchi's throat. I got a kick out of that. This ended in a double countout after which Yaguchi chucked out the ref and raised Ito's hand. I don't regret watching it. Yaguchi could have had a pretty fun Onita match at this point but he spends a few years later fighting Nise Onita instead (though he's with him a lot in the 2010s and I don't really want to know this honestly. I just want to get to the Fujiwara vs Goto tag).

ER: Yaguchi has undeniable presence, a big dude with black metal face paint and crosses on his gear. Had he come out to King Diamond rather than "Hells Bells" I would have considered doing a full Yaguchi deep dive with Matt. Black Metal Mr. Gannosuke sounds like one of the coolest Japanese wrestlers of the 90s, even if this dude doesn't wrestled anywhere near as well as Gannosuke. Ito might be the better worker, Yaguchi feels like kind of deadweight (but not in a way that's fully detrimental to the match). Yaguchi is so-so Gannosuke, Ito is so-so Arashi, and honestly I wish a lot more wrestlers now were so-so versions of 90s Japanese scum guys. I really wanted Ito to go through with his press slam, because it looked insane that he was even attempting it from a deadlift. It was used only so Yaguchi could slip out, but I appreciated the ambition. Ito had better clotheslines, but if Yaguchi learned to do Kabuki-level throat thrusts he could have been a legend. Crowd loudly boos the count out finish, as they should. I suppose we need to keep Yaguchi and Ito strong for the next weird empty show in a giant convention center. 

Keisuke Yamada/Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs. Katsutoshi Niiyama/Tarzan Goto

MD: Best as I can tell this was the first encounter between Goto and Fujiwara. They both toss the flowers out into the crowd to start. Yamada wants to start but Fujiwara doesn't let him and that means Niiyama leaves the ring so Goto can come in as well. This is still a sparsely attended crowed relative to the single level rows of chairs around the ring but they do realize that they're about to see something entirely novel.

It's a game of inches to start, Goto prying an arm off. Fujiwara works him into the corner and batters him though. Then he starts with headbutts with dramatic hairpulls to keep it when Goto tries to shove him off like they were working in the WWWF or something. Fujiwara tagged Yamada (who would be Black Buffalo) in. Yamada was incredibly game in this match. That didn't mean he didn't run right into Goto's crashing weight and go down though. I'd say Niiyama was much more of a weak link, but that primarily meant Fujiwara and Yamada would take back over on him as opposed to letting him hit dubious offense. That let them control for a few minutes before Goto finally took over on Yamada.

The rest of the match wasn't the direct Goto vs Fujiwara match up we might want but it was indirectly wonderful. Goto took it all out on Yamada instead, taunting Fujiwara, rubbing it in his face. At times Yamada would heroically fight back, showing wild fire, only for Goto to cut him off like only he could. At one point, Fujiwara had enough and dragged Niiyama into the ring, punishing him, but Goto didn't care one bit, not like Fujiwara seemed to care about Yamada. 

Yamada finally got free from Niiyama and made a big hot tag. They were able to play the numbers game for a minute but Fujiwara was too much and got the armbar on Niiyama. People streamed from the back to interfere, taking Fujiwara out of the match and leaving things Goto vs Yamada. You'd think that'd be the end of it, but Yamada had one last huge heroic moment, reversing a whip into a barbed wire board. Goto survived that and slammed him down upon it for the win. Things completely broke down after that but as best as I can tell, this never led to anything. Still, so much of what we did get here was iconic.

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