We're almost at the end of the year and we're going to take a look at the first part of 2000 in the GAEA promotion. 1999 was great so let's hope that they keep it up!
Lioness Asuka & Aja Kong vs. Akira Hokuto & Mayumi Ozaki (01/16): Great start to 2000! 10 minute sprint of chaos. Heel team has their gang, face team has there's, all kinds of crap is going on. This isn't what you would expect if they met in '95 but it is still super enjoyable and exciting wrestling. The fans were goin
Let's just jump right in!
LCO vs Hokuto and Ozaki (09/15/99): This is one I hadn't seen recommended. It's a battle of badasses...it's worth a try, right? Oh yes, its so very worth it. Oz & Akira ambush LCO at the entrance way. And it is mayhem from that until the finish. Chairs, blood, guard rails, no actual tagging, 16+ minutes long...if you're a FMW, ECW fan then this exactly what you want. It isn't always pretty. Everyone looks legitimately beat up. It's '99 so if definitely is more
We're FINALLY on to 1999 which has some of the best matches in the company's history according to many fans. I've got access to all of those but there are a couple others that are right out of that top tier that I can't seem to locate. Therefore I'm going to do my best to find some reasonable replacements. It's been so long since I made my watch list that I'm not sure which these are though Also I'm at my busy season with work so I'm going to break it up into two parts.
Lioness Asuka &
I thought I would give myself some time and wait til after Thanksgiving to post this. So here we are at the end of 1985, we've got a bunch of tag matches. Let's get going!
Dynamite Kid/Davey Boy Smith v. Yoshiaki Yatsu/Norio Honaga (12/04/85): Good match but not really anything special here. I'm sure you can guess the outcome. If this is on a . compilation for the Bulldogs then, its enjoyable enough.
Jumbo Tsuruta v. Curt Hennig (12/04/85): Good match but boy was the crowd dead for thi
Here we are just a couple days past due but, finally November 1985 is ready to go. A couple of the matches were longer this week and therefore made my list a little slower to get through. It was worth it as you'll see. Let's dive in!
Riki Choshu vs Jumbo Tsuruta (11/04 aired 11/09) Long time limit draw match...in my younger days I would have watched this. Anymore, I just don't want to devote this much time to one match especially knowing that it's a draw. But I did jump around (as does the
And we're back with AJPW 1985. We're looking at October.
Riki Choshu vs Ashura Hara (10/04 aired 10/12): I noticed I had no Riki Choshu this post. The booking has separated Riki/partner from Jumbo & Tenryu for a little bit. Presumably to build to another encounter for RWTL drama. Anyway this was blazing right out of the gate. Full speed ahead ass kicking. Unfortunately it didn't get too far in before a DQ was called but Damn! this was a blast while it lasted.
Dory and Terry Funk
I'm taking a week break from 1985 AJPW to celebrate Halloween by watching some spooky wrestling. I'm going to look at some stuff you might have missed in TNA and Japan because that's more my jam. But there's plenty of Halloween/horror wrestling in lucha libre and lord knows there's always a spooky character in the WWE/F
Raven vs Vampiro (TNA PPV #68 2003): This was fun but maybe for the wrong reasons. The execution of moves was pretty lazy. Like only of handful of things beyond the dog col
Sorry for the delay! I'll get to that in a minute. It's nothing dramatic. So here we are in August & September of 1985 All Japan Pro Wrestling! The Funker...the late great Terry Funk is here. Lots of Stan Hansen and yeah this one is pretty star studded. Let's begin!
Riki Choshu/Killer Khan vs Genichiro Tenryu/Jumbo Tsuruta (08/02 aired 08/03): A great match without a doubt! Things started out with Jumbo and Riki having a technical fight. Once Khan started slapping people in the face, th
Hi folks! A short impromptu post this week. I actually wasn't going to have much of anything to post as this has been a stressful week. Sometimes a good wrestling match can help blow off some steam or whatever but, I wasn't feeling it. Much of the stuff scheduled for this week was more high stakes than I was in the mood for. So I thought I'd give some AJ Jr. wrestling a shot. It just so happens that everything I picked out features Kuniaki Kobayashi
Mighty Inoue/Tarzan Goto vs Kuniaki Kobay
A shorter post this week but still going strong with All Japan 1985.
Genichiro Tenryu & Takashi Ishikawa & Haru Sonada vs. Riki Choshu & Yoshiaki Yatsu & Animal Hamaguchi (07/08 aired 07/13): Oh man excellent finish! Yeah this was a really good match. It's not top of the line effort since Jumbo isn't in there but that's an observation and not a criticism. Ishikawa really thrives in these matches since he's functioning as Tenryu's #2 rather than Jumbo's #3.
Ashura Hara v
Back with more 1985 AJPW goodness! Let's get going with April!
Giant Baba & Jumbo Tsuruta vs. Stan Hansen & Ted DiBiase (04/21 - aired 04/27): This from the Roy tapes as well. I needed to get some Stan Hansen in my life. This is a fine way to introduce him and Ted DiBiase into 1985. They make an excellent team (not my first time seeing them together) that has a different dynamic than the Brody or Gordy teams. Ted is more technical and has a calmer more calculated approach that makes
Sorry for anyone who checks in regularly for posts! Got a little overwhelmed with stuff and wrestling wasn't a priority. However I have begun my look into 1985 All Japan as a result. I needed some low stakes stuff to watch and I figured I could chip away at some stuff. That led me to the more substantial stuff and I'm on the project now. Everything Riki Choshu comes from Roy Lucier's '85 AJPW TV. For some reason all of his matches are omitted from the AJPW Samurai Classic tv episodes (although
This is a continuation of my "get through some DVDs I bought a couple years ago" project. Ha! Who am I kidding? That's 90% of my reviews I just can't seem to keep up. I'm starting to put a dent in it this year. This week I'll be looking at some early battles of Bryan Danielson. These ones are lesser known for one reason or another. For folks that are only aware of his WWE or AEW stuff, this might be something you'd be interested in checking out. My guess is you may have seen some of his better
I'm going through more of my DVD library. I'm trying to knock out some odds & ends DVDs I got during the early years of the Covid pandemic. This one was part of a small lot of DVDs from eBay. I always wanted to get into Evolve but never did. So this wasn't the main draw of the lot but it was a nice bonus. As always, I pick & choose what I watched. I will say it is fun to watch Evolve/DGUSA after watching a fair amount of Full Impact Pro. It brings me back to that time
Let's take a
I'm going through my one-off DVDs trying to get some wrestling in while reducing my backlog of unwatched stuff. I've been meaning to watch Reborn Stage 2 for awhile after picking it up for cheap on eBay (longer than I can remember ago). As always with these things, I cherry pick. This is a pretty historically important show so let's begin!
Austin Aries vs Nigel McGuinness vs Jimmy Rave vs Rocky Romero: Aries' big show debut, Rocky Romero's 2nd night in ROH, Nigel's biggest match to date...
My old friend TNA from the 2000's always helps ease me back into watching wrestling. Here I'll review their Best of the Bloodiest Brawls - Scars and Stitches DVD from 2008. In addition to my normal review, I'll give a scars rating for how bloody and extreme the match is. That doesn't always translate into a worthwhile match so be forewarned.
Jeff Jarrett vs Rhyno (Turning Point 2005): This was a good to very good hardcore match. It was a lot fun as it was mainly a bunch of different spots a
Here we are with Part #3 of the very best of GAEA. We are looking at '98 which features a lot of Meiko Satomura and not so much Chigusa Nagayo. Don't think that's intentional just Meiko along Sonoko Kato seem to be the featured in the best stuff.
Etsuko Mita & Mima Shimoda vs Meiko Satomura & Sonoko Kato (01/15/98): Great match with Satomura and Kato getting plugged into the LCO vs young team equation. So this is very much Mita and Shimoda's match with the youngster team hanging on
I'm back with part #2 of the Very Best of GAEA. This time we're looking at 1997 which is a big year in Joshi. The whole landscape changes and you'll see that here with more familiar faces from AJW.
Akira Hokuto & Toshie Uematsu vs KAORU & Kiyoko Ichiki (01/19/97): Wow! That was awesome! For a good portion there they had a classic match on their hands. Things got a little loose with the younger wrestlers towards the end (disruption to the flow and not so much unforgivable sloppiness)
I am really glad to be watching more Joshi this year. I got burntout/jaded a few years back when watching some of the 1996 AJW tag matches with Double Inoue and my 1997 AJW DVD purchases weren't exactly as expected. See the previous post. So I just turned of the whole thing for years. I'd watch a match here and there but other than a couple odds & ends matches, I figured I'd seen what I wanted. Clearly this year, I've found out that I was wrong. 1997, 2000-01 AJW, Megumi Kudo, 1990-91 JWP h
All Japan Women's Wrestling in 1997 is something I've been interested in from a far. It features many matches that have been favorably reviewed but there's something very different than '92-'96 AJW. The roster is pretty similar but they're finally pushing some of their younger wrestlers to the top. Mima Shimoda and Etsuko Mita (Las Cachorras Orientales) go full heel and become the chair swinging baddies. Kaoru Ito and Tokoko Watanabe were always great in mid card tags and 6 mans are elevated as
This post came about by accident but it's been a fun one. KAI is one of my favorite new guys from watching 2010's AJPW. So here we're going to take a look at some of his bigger matches while in W-1. His arc here probably reflects his booking had Muto & his loyal pals not left and formed Wrestle-1. Anyhow all but the last match are readily available on the 'tube. Let's take a look
vs Seiya Sanada (09/08/13): I think this might be clipped a few minutes based on the time they give
I've had some solid themes for the past few months but June sort of ended up being a time that I am using to handle a bunch of single show projects. This is in an effort to actually work my way through my backlog of DVDs. Here we take a look at the AJPW show from 01/02/15. It's my lone DVD for AJ 2015.
Kotaro Suzuki & Ryuji Hijikata vs. Masanobu Fuchi & Yoshinobu Kanemaru - There's a couple matches before this but this is the real start of the show. Fast paced opening with Kanemaru
This is a small project that I've been pushing back for awhile. No big plans for June so let's take a look at the Briscoe Brothers in NOAH.
Briscoes vs Yoshinobu Kanemaru & Takashi Sugiura (01/07/07): I'm not sure if the fans knew what to make of The Briscoes. This looks like it might be their first appearance in NOAH. They dominated the home team early on with their high energy offense and team work. Eventually the NOAH team has their chance for some payback. The fans are into this and
