I stumbled on a clip from Madusa's podcast discussing Bret Hart & Curt Hennig wrestling each other. It's pretty entertaining and I think is referring to their '91 Summerslam match which is probably a classic. And this got me thinking about Madusa's time wrestling in Japan. I went through her backlogs to see if there's any reference to wrestling the AJW women or wrestling for AJW. And lo and behold, there were a couple clips. Then that led me to want to check out if she had any interesting ma
Nothing says "Halloween" like two grown men dressing up as skeletons. La Parka is that fun "mom made my costume" skeleton and Mortis is more like you went to Kmart and bought your outfit. Watching all of these matches should hopefully put you in a good mood. Have some candy or pumpkin spiced snacks and check these out
Mortis vs Silver King (01/09/97): Silver King!!! This is a lot of fun. This is probably a little too even considering the size difference and everything but screw it! It's 20
Here's the final post for AJPW 2002. This covers more of the Real World Tag League.
Otani & Tanaka vs Dr. Death & Mike Rotunda (11/27): Half shown but no idea where the other half was clipped out. No matter this was great in this format... absolutely back on track with the quality here. We get tastes of Dr. Death vs Tanaka (Tanaka taking the first real Dangerous Backdrop in a few years for instance). I'm not sure this match would hold up in it's full form since the full match tim
We're back with Part Four of my review of Muto's AJPW 2002. Thanks for waiting! There's a bunch of tag matches this post.
Arashi, Dr. Death, Tenryu, Koki Kitahara, & Masao Orihara vs. Keiji Muto, Hiroshi Hase, Jinsei Shinzaki, George Hines & Kaz Hayashi (08/31): A very good elimination match that was best earlier on. In all fairness, this would have been great if it were a single fall match and kept the pace up. In this form, things dragged on too long with the younger/athletic guys
I'm on the quest of working on my DVD backlog. Clearly I go on internet wrestling side quests. But my main quest, is totally to watch all the DVDs that I blew.. I mean spent...spent my money on. Here I am going to be tackling my Davey Richards American Wolf DVD from Ring of Honor. I got this baby back in 2016 (probably on sale) from Highspots. Davey is one of those guys that I wasn't a giant fan of back in the late 2000's but that's because I never saw him enough. This was during the faction war
Here's the final part of my 1980 NJPW cherry picking expedition.
Kengo Kimura vs Tatsumi Fujinami 09/25: One of the longer matches. Classic Inoki Strong Style technical game-of-human-chess duels. Competitive, non-profit cooperative looking. Doesn't rely upon stiffness but instead counters, reversals, escapes and blocking of moves & holds. There's moments where at first you think they've made a flub but they transition into to capitalizing on the "flub" that it was either planned or the
Kuniaki Kobayashi has passed away recently. If you've read my Tiger Mask posts or my 1985 AJPW posts, you'll find that he's one of my favorites. Hell, even if you go back to my 1988 NJPW posts, he still was having some of the best matches of the year. He's one of those underrated wrestlers that makes his opponent look great. A kind person has put up the following matches so I thought I would give them a look:
vs The Cobra (01/06/84): This was rough around the edges but as as result had a
Here's part # 2 of my 1980 NJPW cherry picking expedition.
Gran Hamada vs Baby Face 04/03: Very good lucha/junior type match. This definitely translates well into contemporary wrestling. The wrestling on the mat was very good albeit more of the sit and stretch variety than the fighting over holds/escapes/reversals like we'd see in other NJ "strong style" junior wrestling. The running and flying stuff was the real showcase here. The only drawback was the finish where it was not really clear
This period of New Japan stuff is quickly becoming some of my favorite wrestling. I think it is more relatable to the modern wrestling fan than AJPW/NWA style. The tempo is faster and there's more action between holds. Or at least that is the case with this high quality stuff. And to be fair, most of the matches here are technically Junior matches whereas the top shelf stuff I'm thinking of in AJPW is heavyweight. Honestly, to me, it just seems like they wanted to separate Inoki from Fujinami. A
I'm currently reading Lion's Pride: The Turbulent History of New Japan Pro Wrestling. I bought this on Kindle years ago but never got around to reading it.
I really dig all of the information about 1970-1980's New Japan. The development of Fujinami & Choshu and their feud. Why the UWF split happened as well as Choshu and company moving to All Japan. Maybe this all feels like an extended Wikipedia article but I enjoy it. I like how the author keeps tying things back to Inoki and his dea
I have put a pause on my AJPW 2002 project for the time being. In the meantime, I thought I would share some "vintage" Dr. Death Steve Williams reviews. Early 2000's AJPW has renewed my interest & appreciation for him. He's certainly not at his prime but he brings something special to every match. So below is a collection of reviews of his peak era AJPW work. I'm going to remove any spoilers that I wrote and if you're looking for stars (*) in your reviews, this one has got 'em
Mitsuhar
Sorry for the delay! My family health issues are ongoing and I really haven't been in the mood to watch wrestling. I have chipped away at my list and finally got this week done. It wasn't a slog or anything at all. In fact, I've really enjoyed it. It's the diversion that I've needed. I'm just not in the head space to watch it on a regular basis right now.
Arashi, Nobukazu Hirai & Nobutaka Araya vs. Dr. Death, Mike Rotunda & Yuto Aijima
(07/17): A fun steak and egg kind of match.
Things are starting to pick up with AJPW 2002.
Arashi vs Satoshi Kojima (04/01): Fantastic heavyweight battle! Arashi being a super heavyweight is fun. Cozy can basically hit him as hard as he wants. Arashi/Isao Takagi is big enough that he can toss and pummel Cozy with confidence. His sleeper hold looks great & don't forget his awesome frog splash! Exactly what you want in a 13 minute Carnival match. Maybe I'm getting old but, I'm really enjoying these shorter matches... there's no fl
We're back with more wrestling action! Let's take a look at AJPW 2002!
Arashi & Koki Kitahara vs. Genichiro Tenryu & Yoji Anjo (01/14/02): Almost got this mixed up thinking it was 2001...anyhow fun match here. Tenryu basically gets to hit Arashi as hard as he wants. Kitahara is badass as is Anjo who pulls out the shoot style moves to keep things spicy.
Kawada vs Hase (01/14/02): This is shown in full on the Gaora YT page below. Good to very good match. It wasn't fully develope
Thanks for waiting This wasn't a "quickie" blog post/watch...but for consistency I'll label it such.
Now onto ASW V Night 2!
No Holds Barred Match
Joey Ryan vs. Kevin Steen - I'm not sure how I feel about having this booked first but they didn't make this an over-long match. It was heated and pretty brutal with some of the spots BUT it didn't feel like a hardcore spot fest. Steen can definitely get over indulgent with the brutality but I think it was just right here. If you legitima
I never thought that I would have done 350 blog posts when I had started this. Doing the blog has helped me keep up with my wrestling watching. There's been times where there's been burnouts or I just don't have the time/energy to get any watching in. This blog has motivated me to keep up with the hobby. But I think my biggest motivation is to share my views with everyone reading... and not because I think I've got the best reviews out there I want to help spread the word about wrestling from y
Sorry for the delay! I have had some family health issues that I've been dealing with the past couple weeks. I've got a few matches left to watch of PWG All Star Weekend V - Night 2 but it's probably not going to be ready for another week or so. Sorry if you're looking forward to that! In the meantime, it's time for the Best Matches Watched (thus far) for 2024. I've sorted things by year. It's all 2000's & 2010's. I definitely have to get some 80's stuff in this year...but anyhow HM stands f
Here's a couple teaser videos that PWG still has on their YouTube page:
Not sure on video quantity but hey...it's better than some homemade music video from 2008, right?
Now if you're interested, here's the reviews!
Nosawa vs. Disco Machine - Good simple opening match.
Roderick Strong vs. Rocky Romero - This was really good stuff. It was hard hitting and while longer than you'd normally see a second match go, they never went crazy
Sorry for the delay! The big draw for this show is the return of Shingo and his challenge for Gabe's golden boy Johnny Gargano's title.
Shingo vs Johnny Gargano - This is the big selling point of the DVD. Shingo is back in DGUSA after right around where I stopped in 2011. Gargano's in ring abilities have greatly improved. He seems to know what to do more than before and doesn't have to do a fancy move all of the time...but he still favors doing something fancy over something basic. And this
I'm back with the second half of 2001...and I bring you more reviews & Gaora videos
Dr. Death & Mike Rotunda (The Varsity Club) vs. Kojima & Hiro Saito (06/08/01 AJPW PPV): 11+ min match that was 100% action. Obviously Mike Rotunda (even in '01) is going to bring good stuff. I was worried about Saito but no! He was really good. I think he was perhaps as good as Tenzan at least. Another great k.i.s.s match. This easily could have been a match from 1991 instead of 2001 but I find
The 2000 AJPW matches were very encouraging. I'm going to keep watching All Japan into 2001. Call me crazy but this is fun stuff! Again, tag team matches are going to be featured and they really are the bread and butter of this period of AJPW. Since there's a full years worth of wrestling, I'm going to do this in two parts.
Taiyo Kea & Mohammed Yone vs. Masahito Kakihara & Mitsuya Nagai (01/02): This looked good on paper but I wasn't feeling it at all. It's kinda aimless and there's
I'm not really sure why I watched these matches. This is a notoriously poorly rated year for AJPW. I don't think many people have thought highly of AJPW after the NOAH exodus. And as a result, I don't believe there's been a good consensus of if AJPW was ever any good post July of 2000. Sure there's been a handful of matches that have gotten some hype and even some wrestlers but I think Western fans have gone elsewhere. I've done some projects in the past looking at early 2010's AJPW (which when
The YouTube account that had the DGUSA matches also has a bunch of PWG. Way too much if you know what I mean. But I was able to narrow it down to a few matches by the Motor City Machine Guns over the years. It's not complete or anything just some stuff I wanted to see.
Sabin vs Shelley (Hollywood Globetrotters 2006) - Pre Machine Guns...Shelley with two tone hair and Sabin with the alien on his trunks, yes! This was probably more towards Sabin's style (and the MCMG style) as opposed to Shel
Sorry for the delay! I figure with Mania & the solar eclipse people would have some diversion for a few days. So I gave myself a couple more days to cover Dragon Gate USA for 2011. This is pretty much the end of the beginning for DGUSA. Although it rarely was simply Dragon Gate in the U.S. only, this early period really does focus on the Japanese talent being the centerpiece of the promotion. 2010 sees the formation of the Ronin stable which despite being a Japanese word/concept is comprised
I've really been digging the 2009-2010 Dragon Gate USA shows that I've purchased. So I thought to look online to see if there's any other well regarded matches available. And wouldn't you know it, there's a bunch! I'm pretty sure the account that's posted them will be taken down imminently so I'm jumping on the opportunity. Below is a kind of "best of" watch list from what's available. I've used a couple sources like Cagematch as well as my own preferences to guide my selections. I'll list the s
