SHINYA HASHIMOTO VS SATORU SAYAMA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7QXDdHai-c
This is probably the most important video of my life. Like I think there's a chance I encountered it somewhere before and then forgot about it but finding it right now, at this stage of my life, holds a meaning that is hard to put into words. It may not even be worked but who cares it's HASHIMOTO AND SAYAMA. This is a boxing match from a japanese TV game show. It's awesome. Great visuals, goofy gloves, punches to the
Satoru Sayama vs Yuji Ito-Gracie Tournament 29.7.1994.
Firstly I'd like to thank the person that helped me decipher Yuji Ito's kanji/name and made this review possible. One of my favourite things right now is finding as many Sayama shoot matches as possible and their inaccessibility and the convoluted youtube journeys I have to go throught to find them make them even more amusing. They mostly seem to be exhibitions on MMA cards. This was completely badass, just them trying to cramp as much
AKIRA MAEDA vs DUTCH MANTELL-UWF 11.4.1984.
OH BOY HERE WE GO. I am sure this is a match that is very famous among pwo elders but I am young and inexperienced and had no idea it happened until today. I envisioned this as a shoot style blog but really I'll post anything that I can somehow connect to shoot style here and this was too bizarre for it to not end up here. I guess this blog's philosophy is closer to UWFi than it is to RINGS. This wasn't even a shoot style match but it took plac
Jushin Thunder Liger vs Satoru Sayama-NJPW 1.5.1994.
An exhibition match with a ten minute limit-you know how those end. Glimpses of this were really great (Liger's Abisengiri, the slap-punch exchange and Sayama avoiding a shoulder block by just walking away) but it looked like they were too tentative to create something that would be more than merely good. It was completely devoid of conventional drama and had almost no highspots so I can't see traditionalists liking it much. I was curious how
Satoru Sayama vs Yoshinori Nishi-LUMAX CUP 13.10.1995.
This was an "exhibition match" that took place during a shoot tournament. I always thought worked judo would be an amazing form of pro wrestling and this is probably the closest we'll ever get, they still used leglocks and punches/kicks but wore gis and fought on tatamis. Nishi looked really great in this, his kicks were wonderful (there was a great counter spot where he sweeped Sayama's legs with one) and his flying armbar looked de
Satoru Sayama vs Tiger Mask IV-BJW 25.7.1995.
This was short and a really great Sayama carry job, his kicks looked beautiful, he performed a couple of great looking takedowns and punches the shit out of his protege when he was in a position that allowed him to do so. There's a really cool moment where TMIV goes for a wheelbarrow leglock and Sayama tries to quickly block it by grabbing TM's foot an pressing his stomach/chest with a knee but doesn't execute it fast enough and gets caugh
JAPW 6/7/2002: American Dragon vs. Low Ki
This was a submission match that would've stylistically fit right into Battlarts, hence its inclusion here. The great thing about early 2000s indies is that they could've done an amazing experimental match like this because there weren't really any indy tropes established at the time. They go out of the ring and use some pro-style offence but about 90% of this is based on grappling and struggling for submission attempts and escapes. They don't shy away
Yuki Ishikawa vs. George Terzis - BATTLE ARTS: GENESIS - June 14th, 2014
First two moves that happened were a bodyslam and an elbow drop so this is either going to be amazing or incredibly frustrating. Ishikawa punches George Terzis (seriously, that's the best pro wrestling name he could come up with?) square in the face and I am ALL IN. I googled George Terzis and there's a video of him wrestling Ken Kennedy on Velocity where Kennedy introduces him as "George". It was really funny, kind of li
Yuki Ishikawa vs. Sansyu - BATTLE ARTS 4: PUSH - November 15, 2014
As you'd suspect this was a pretty obvious carry job, kind of like Taue-Nagata or Goldust-Orton. Sansyu really makes you appreciate the things you've grown accustomed to from most puro workers, no one really talks about Super Tiger II as a great worker but he has great kicking technique and makes his stuff look absolutely devastating, Ishikawa is a great seller but there's only so much he can do when about 15% of Sansyu's kicks
El Dandy vs. Bestia Salvaje, CMLL World Middleweight Championship, CMLL 9/4/92
Recently, I've only heard negative things about this bout, but it's really not that bad. It's not as good as it could have been; I'll throw that out there right now, but it's not terrible. Would it have been better as an apuesta match on the 1992 Anniversary show? Probably. Is it one of the the better title matches from the 90s? Nope. But is it one of the 90s' biggest disappointments? Not really.
They forwent
I didn't really feel like I had anywhere else to post this thought, it wasn't worthy of a thread reply anywhere that I could think of. However, I've realized that I get enjoyment from WWE, especially RAW, the same way that I get enjoyment from watching bad movies.
I can get on Netflix and watch shit like Wolf Cop and it cracks me up. I can live-Tweet about a new Sharkado movie & be entertained for hours.
That's what I do with WWE & RAW. I get enjoyment & fun from making fun o
Negro Casas vs. Mocho Cota, hair vs. hair, CMLL 9/23/94
This was the main event from the first weekend of Anniversary celebrations in 1994. A show which only drew 4,000 people; a shockingly poor number for a CMLL Anniversary Show. For some reason, the promotion decided to make it an una caida one fall, presumably because of the glut of apuesta matches they ran over the Anniversary Show weekends.
I may as well get my first bias out of the way and confess that, outside of tournament lucha,
Satanico vs. Sangre Chicana, NWA World Light Heavyweight Championship, Arena Puebla 9/24/83
Ever wondered what a luchador does the night after a legendary hair match? Take a booking for a title match of course.
This was very much a "house show title match" in that the fans were left short changed by the finish. I imagine a lot of matches from the 80s that look awesome on paper were booked this way. The really great thing about the footage is that it was a handheld shot from ringside; so
Atlantis/La Fiera/Vampiro Casanova vs. Negro Casas/Mano Negra/Black Magic, CMLL 9/17/93
Negro Casas/Dr. Wagner Jr./Sangre Chicana vs. La Fiera/King Haku/Pegasus Kid, CMLL 9/24/93
Some more of the lead in to the Casas vs. Fiera Anniversary Show match has become available. I think the Haku match was on YouTube previously but the account was deleted. Matt reviewed it a while back mostly for the novelty of seeing Haku in Mexico; which reminds me, since he's probably reading this, that he needs
Volador vs. Pirata Morgan, mano a mano, Monterrey 1991
Now here's a hidden gem for you: a disgustingly bloody Pirata Morgan bout.
I haven't seen a Morgan bout this good in ages. With Morgan, you can draw a line in the sand between the stuff that's good and everything that came after. Fortunately for us, this was during the period where he could rightly lay claim to best in the world, at least in the world he moved in, and still looked as dashing and cavalier as his namesake rather than
Negro Casas/Emilio Charles Jr./Mano Negra vs. El Brazo/Ultimo Dragon/Oro, CMLL 3/19/93
Negro Casas could do no wrong at this point. It never really occurred to me that 1993 might be the best year of his career. It was such a dark time for the company that you tend to ignore everything that happened, but in terms of physical prime coinciding with in-ring ability, the period from when he entered the company in 1992 through to an as yet undefined point in 1993 represents the best I've seen from
Negro Casas vs. La Fiera, hair vs. hair, CMLL 10/1/93
This looks like it was the show-stealer on the 1993 Anniversary Show. I'm not sure how wildly available it was before, but if Lynch sold it I doubt many people bought it.
It was a fascinating match for me on a number of levels. Casas was going through his whole "is he or isn't he a tecnico?" phase, and Fiera appeals to me as a scumbag rudo and not a worn out baby face, so I wasn't sure how the heel/face dynamic would play out. There
Fuerza Guerrera vs. Octagon vs. Huracán Ramírez II, mask vs. mask, CMLL 12/14/90
This was the main event of CMLL's season ending show for 1990. We all know that triangle matches don't make for the best of apuesta matches, especially with a non-brawler like Octagon, but circumstances here were out of the ordinary. CMLL was coming off a record breaking Anniversary Show and business was hot. Arena Mexico was packed, and anticipation rife. Virginia Aguilera once said that the lucha public were b
La Fiera/Espectro Jr./Kahoz vs. El Brazo/Brazo de Oro/Brazo de Plata, CMLL 12/25/92
So, we've established that washed up Fiera (who really wasn't that old) was better than I ever gave him credit for, especially in scummy lowdown trios matches that reflected the shadiness of his character outside the ring, but here he got to show off his comedic talents. Comedy is an important (often misunderstood) element of lucha libre. No matter how great your brawling is, or how bloody your apuesta matche
El Hijo del Santo/Espanto Jr. vs. Blue Panther/Black Man, UWA 3/25/90
This was discovered by Phil Schneider in the middle of a six hour YouTube video. Don't ask me how he does it; he's like a bloodhound when it comes to these things. The match was billed as the first time rivals Santo and Espanto had tagged together, and could have easily been parejas increibles given Panther had taken Black Man's mask in '86. Santo was swarmed by kids to start with and I swear he wasn't that much taller tha
Los Temerarios (Shu El Guerrero, Black Terry & Jose Luis Feliciano) vs. Los Arqueros, LuchaMania
I couldn't pin a date on this one. In fact, I wasn't really sure where it as being held. The Sindicato Nacional de Luchadores y Referees had its name plastered everywhere, but I'm not sure if that means the event was promoted in association with the wrestler's union or if it was some sort of specially promoted union funcion. At any rate, these teams had a long standing feud that involved bot
Ultimo Dragon vs. Negro Casas, UWA World Middleweight Championship, CMLL 8/28/92
This was a curious match to say the least. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't all that great either. The build up had been fantastic -- really vintage Casas -- but they made the cardinal mistake of not paying off the set up.
Everyone wanted to see Casas get his ass kicked, and he took a hell of a beating, but for some reason he spent the entire bout working like a sympathetic babyface. That may have worked if they
Negro Casas/Bestia Salvaje/El Felino vs. El Dandy/Ultimo Dragon/Blue Demon Jr., CMLL 7/17/92
There are times when I'm convinced that Casas' first few months in CMLL represent the absolute peak of his career. It's difficult to describe the excitement generated by his arrival. The fans had been used to the independientes coming in and working EMLL shows, but Casas was special. Not only was he at the height of his powers; it was like watching an artist unleashed.
We don't have much of Casa
