I'm a big giant fan of tag team wrestling. I'd say that I prefer tag and 6-man matches over singles competition. All Japan and NOAH are more known for their epic title matches but, have always had great team wrestling. I don't think that's a surprising statement however, there are others worth enjoying besides the classics. Here are some that I've enjoyed:
Steve Williams & Terry Gordy vs Stan Hansen & Joel Deaton (06/03/93 AJPW): Although it was only 6 minutes & 47 second
I love wrestling from the 70's. Its got that actual sense that the guys are engaged in a grappling contest. That the contestants are actual wrestlers. Well, in most cases. You've got Abdullah the Butcher forking people but, even then, it feels real...or real enough. Here are a couple of my favorites from AJPW in the 1970's:
Destroyer vs Abdullah the Butcher - US Title (04/27/74): Put this match behind watching a Dory & Jack Brisco match and you can see why Abby & the Sheik we
A couple years ago I found out that my fiancé's college friend (who lives in Japan) was a wrestling fan and regularly goes to shows in Tokyo. Awesome! After talking, it turns out he's good buddies with Kotaro Suzuki. Holy crap, really!? Being the awesome nice guy that he is (both our friend & Kotaro), I received a signed poster and tee shirt in the mail a few weeks later. My mind is still blown
I've become a big fan ever since. So, I'd like to repay his kindness in the best way
I know blogs aren't the hip thing anymore. That's probably been the case for a long time actually. I'll admit that I'm out of it. Anyhow, I've been keeping a journal of my views on puroresu since I got hooked on it 11-12 years ago.
I've typed a couple hundred pages of reviews in a Word pad file on a Dell desktop. Then, for some reason a couple years ago, I've regressed into writing reviews into spiral notebooks. I've got to share this with someone, right? Eh, perhaps not the seasoned
Torneo Cibernetico (CMLL PPV 03/17/00)
I thought this was a terrific Cibernetico. The famous Ciberneticos from '97 featured well-known names and high profile feuds. This threw a spotlight on the midcard, showcasing how much depth there was on both the rudo and tecnico sides. The most interesting thing about the bout for me was that even though it felt like a pure lucha libre bout with the rapid-fire exchanges and the off-kilter submission and pin attempts, you could feel how heavy the junior
Atlantis, Tarzan Boy & Rayo de Jalisco Jr. vs. El Satanico, Cien Caras & Bestia Salvaje (CMLL 03/02/00)
Stone Cold! Stone Cold! CMLL is getting more WWF by the second. I liked how you had all these old school luchadores working a classic rudo beatdown and suddenly there were run-ins and shit. That wasn't unprecedented in Mexico but for CMLL it was like reinventing the wheel. A couple of things stood out to me here. The first was that they did a nice job of intertwining the various st
El Satanico vs. Tarzan Boy (CMLL 02/25/00, Hair Match)
Here we go! I'm psyched. Satanico's Phantom of the Opera entrance was amazing. Just when you thought the lucha GOAT couldn't get any greater he produces one of the finer Arena Mexico entrances in living memory. Tarzan Boy has lipstick kisses on his torso and upper body. He stops to give us the Rick Martel view of his six pack and I wonder if his valet gave him a kiss on the pecker for good luck. That seems to be the implication. Tarzan B
NB: I watched these out of order but am posting them chronologically.
Mr. Niebla & Olimpico vs. Blue Panther & Rencor Latino (CMLL 02/01/00)
Not content with two blood feuds, CMLL decide to add a third. This is some old school booking from CMLL. It reminds me of the early 80s when they'd have an apuesta match nearly every week. This was a bit different as it was being booked toward a mano a mano and not a mask vs. mask match, but you wouldn't know from the bloodshed, Olympic bled
Atlantis, Negro Casas & Mr. Niebla vs. Dr. Wagner Jr., Villano III & Pierroth Jr. (CMLL 01/14/00)
This was another strong lead-in match. I'm not a huge fan of trios matches where the wrestlers rip each other's masks off but it wouldn't be much of an apuesta feud if they didn't do it. And to their credit, they didn't spend an eternity doing it. Villano looked badass in his alternative strip and I liked how he used Atlantis' mask to clean the dirt off his boots. Atlantis' comeback was
Tarzan Boy vs. Rey Bucanero (CMLL 01/01/00)
This was an effective mano a mano bout. Mano a manos usually have a glass ceiling on how good they can be but this had a bit of meat to it. The double juice helped. Blood is so rare in CMLL these days that it was a surprise to see Bucanero bleed so much. There were a couple of gaffes on the bigger action stuff, like the blatant calling of the flash pin in the segunda caida and Tarzan Boy overshooting his dive, but it was a decent Coliseo bout, and
Negro Casas, Lizmark & Olimpico vs Blue Panther, Bestia Salvaje & Scorpio Jr. (CMLL 01/18/00)
I thought this was excellent while it lasted. I could have sworn I'd had my fill of Casas vs. Bestia & Scorpio over the years, but it's been a while and I dug watching Casas and Bestia trade blows. Panther was excellent in this, which isn't always the case when he's the lead guy in a rudo team. I wasn't sure how legit Olimpico's injury was considering how long Panther kept him in the arm
Volador Jr. vs. Cavernario, 2016 CMLL Reyes del Aire final, 9/30/16
I didn't start enjoying this until deep into the terceda caida. The crowd was at a fever pitch and there was a lot of selling and drama. Prior to that, it was move after move, dive after dive, with it all feeling pretty hollow. People often complain about the first two falls in lucha being short and pointless. You watch a match like this and it's hard to dispute that claim. The first two falls were rubbish, especially the se
Volador Jr. vs. Cavernario, NWA World Historic Welterweight Championship, CMLL 10/7/16
Well, it was obvious watching this that CMLL title matches are no longer mat-based classics but generic singles matches, and that lucha is more influenced by outside influences than ever before. That said, I still enjoyed this.
What I liked about it was that the rudo, Cavernario, had the momentum for most of the bout. and the tecnico, Volador Jr, had to keep fighting back even after he'd squared thing
Negro Casas vs. Rey Hechicero (Arena Coliseo Monterrey 4/24/16)
This was a decent match, but would have to have been a hell of a lot more dramatic to be in the running for Match of the Year contention.
The match peaked with the primera caida, which isn't a great place for a two-out-of-three falls match to peak. The idea of Casas working holds with Hechicero appealed to me. Casas isn't a great mat worker, but he knows how to hang in there, and I thought the flow of the matwork and Casas'
Trauma I vs. Canis Lupus (mask vs. mask, IWRG 9/4/16)
It seemed impossible for this match to live up to the hype. Over the past few weeks, I've seen it described as one of the best brawls ever, one of the best mask matches of all-time and a match of the decade contender.
For the first two falls, it failed to live up to the hype. The work in the first fall wasn't bad but there was too much pandering to the crowd instead of the intense focus on maiming your opponent that you expect from an
So, it's the first day of 2017, and as usual I've done a piss-poor job of following the modern lucha scene as it happens. But in this day and age of YouTube playlists, there's no excuse to not get caught up.
I'm going to start with the Black Terry vs. Aeroboy apuesta match, which is where I left off last time.
Black Terry vs. Aeroboy (mask vs. hair, 6/10/16)
This was a nice, scuzzy apuesta match. I liked how they started fighting before Aeroboy had taken his jacket off just like in
Black Terry vs. Aero Boy, Funcion Estelar, 3/18/16
Black Terry, what drives this man? What keeps him in the fight game? Lacing up the boots, ignoring the lumps and bruises, tending to the cuts. Terry is almost the same age as my father but still he fights. The early exchanges here showed that Terry isn't as quick as he used to be. He can't bump like he used to, can't pull a kick to the back like a young man might, but as soon as this goes to the outside Terry is in his element. Outside the r
Black Terry vs. Barbaro Cavernario, Cara Lucha 6/11/16
Holy crap this was awesome. I haven't seen Terry wrestle for a couple of years and barely recognised him with the bald head and yellow t-shirt, but brawling Terry was always my favourite kind of Terry and he brought the same level of stiffness as his Hechicero matches from a few years back. I watched this straight after the LA Park/Rush Liga Elite mano a mano and blow for blow this was the more violent match. The older and lumpier Terry
El Signo vs. Villano V, UWA World Light Heavyweight Championship, UWA 4/3/92
I first saw this many years ago when sharing lucha online was still in its infancy. I may have written about it for this blog (I have a cold today and can't be bothered trawling through the archives.) The version I remember didn't have the pre-match interviews or workout footage, and really, who doesn't like watching luchadores train? Villano's neck-strengthening exercises were so freakin' cool. This was 13 minutes
We all know that dataintcash is an invaluable source of lucha libre footage, and we all know that invaluable sources of wrestling footage invariably disappear from YouTube, so I thought instead of letting dataintcash's channel go to waste, I'd start throwing out some thoughts about his uploads for prosperity's sake. Originally, I was going to do an hours worth of footage at a time, but since his uploads tend to be fairly long, I'll just watch what I can. With Arthur Psycho's uploads, I did these
Katsumi Usuda vs Masanobu Kurisu-Big Mouth Loud 29.12.2005.
This is my kind of wrestling right here, I was coming in hoping for this to be a festival of ultraviolence but they chose to work the mat which I would have also accepted, I don't really ever remember watching Kurisu roll, he looked good here, doing neat stuff like using his knee to bend Usuda's ankle which you'd expect to see from Fujiwara. This "matwork" section also included Kurisu shoot headbutting Usuda like ten times. The crow
Negro Casas/Fuerza Guerrera vs. El Hijo del Santo/Octagon, Cd. Juarez, circa 1990-91
I'm hopelessly out of the loop (not that I was ever really in it to begin with), but it looks like some Mexican channel is re-airing footage from the Cicudad Juarez territory that Alfredo Esparza grew up watching in El Paso, which is pretty cool to say the least.
To me the single most interesting thing about this bout is watching Casas work with Octagon. It's almost like watching a proto version of the C
Naoya Ogawa vs Kazuo Yamazaki-NJPW 6.7.1997.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vG7_3p9rc5Q
First Fujiwara-Frye, now this, today has been a good day. Ogawa is still in his gi-wearing phase and his offence is limited to judo stuff, it creates an interesting styles clash against a shoot wrestler like Yamazaki, there were a bunch of good looking slams and strikes in here but what really made it is how smartly they were built up, every offensive maneuver made here made sense from the persepctive of a
