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
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
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
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.
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
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
Sorry for the delay! Here we are with the fall & winter of 2002 and it is a doozy!
KENTA & Kenta Kobashi vs Kotaro Suzuki & Mitsuharu Misawa (09/01): We get our first appearance of KENTA in his true form Gone is the surfer hair, orange trunks & white boots. He's in his dark grey tights with kick pad boots...and he is kicking. I know that sounds weird but up until now KENTA wasn't doing his shoot style kicks. This is a good match that gives us some good Misawa vs Kobashi mom
So I found a Japanese YouTube channel that has some more obscure/hard to find stuff for 2002. Most of it is clipped but I'm happy to see at least some of these matches. Looks like this person has a lot of Ogawa/Misawa/Wave stuff...and in turn more Wave vs Sterness so I'm pretty psyched. So we're going to kinda start back at the beginning of 2002 with these videos.
Jun Akiyama, Akitoshi Saito & Yoshinobu Kanemaru vs Mitsuharu Misawa, Yoshinari Ogawa & Naomichi Marufuji (01/16): 7 of
Here we are back in Pro Wrestling NOAH! It's 2002 and the matches this year is known for are the NJ vs NOAH Jr tags. I did some digging and found the reviews - yay! I'll mix those in with this week's new stuff. Per the 2001 posts, this is mainly going to be stuff that is a little under the radar. The exceptions are Akiyama, Yuji Nagata vs Kenta Kobashi, Mitsuharu Misawa (02/17/02) & Misawa vs Takayama rematch from 09/02. I only ever saw highlights and dammit this is the time to finally see
Here's more 2001 NOAH! Along with the Sterness post and my Zero One vs NOAH post, https://forums.prowrestlingonly.com/blogs/entry/862-spotlight-noah-vs-zero-one-2001/ , I feel like I've got a pretty good sense of the company in '01. There's a lot to like with the fresh match ups, up and coming wrestlers and new twists on old rivalries. With the benefit of hindsight we know that NOAH hadn't quite hit its stride yet. Of the big 3 puroresu companies in '01, I think it was the most consistently good
This is a project that's been in the works for awhile. So long that a handful of matches I had bookmarked on YouTube are no longer available. This early NOAH stuff is hard to come by through the normal "free" channels. I'm guessing a lot of folks didn't pony up and buy the tapes/dvds. And I'm pretty much past that part of my life now...I've got a mountain of stuff that's in need of watching. Still, this along with joshi and supplementing my late 80's AJPW with Riki Choshu content, is all I'm rea
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
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
I'm just going to jump on in!
Brody & Hansen vs Terry & Dory Funk Jr. (12/08): An absolute all time classic match in my book. The sense of chaos and animosity is as high as its been in all of 1984 All Japan. Terry and Dory Jr. against Brody and Hansen finally is the culmination of one of the main themes of the year. Dory and Baba have faced the absolutely dominant monsters on a few occasions. They have hung in there but never truly were able to match the intensity and ferocity of Br
Sorry for the delay! Busy week last week so I missed my self imposed Sunday deadline. But made my Wednesday deadline We're getting to the end of '84 and you know that means Real World Tag League stuff. Excited for that! Let's begin!
Rick Martel vs Jumbo Tsuruta (10/11, aired 10/13): Joined in progress but we get the majority of the match (it seems). Very technically orientated match that stresses their equality. Eventually things get cooking and we get more high stakes action. We get a
Let's keep going with 1984 All Japan!
Brody & Hansen vs Baba & Dory Jr. (08/26): This was fought like a gang fight more than a wrestling match. Absolute furious pace with a stiffness you could hear. A near classic match but with the post match brawl this is a classic. There's a part of me wants to call this an all time classic if you're counting entrance to exit. Did I mention Terry is at ring side?
Team Grandpa!
Rough necks is scared!
-----
At
Let's take a look at more of 1984 AJPW. We've got a really good batch!
Jim Brunzell & Greg Gagne vs Dory Funk Jr. & Kerry von Erich (04/24, aired 04/28): These next two are Roy Lucier's 1984 AJPW TV episodes and not the Retro Classics that were broadcast in the late 90's. These technically should be with Part #2 but I'm putting these here. I'll try to work new ones in chronologically as I go on. A big reason for expanding beyond just my DVD set was I noticed that there were a couple
Here we are with week # 2 of AJPW from 1984. It's a pretty good one. Let's take a look!
Billy Robinson & Brad Rheingans vs Steve Regal & Kevin Kelly (03/04): Wouldn't it be funny if it was the Steve Regal and Kevin Kelly you thought it was? Its not But it's 1984 AWA via AJPW Classics. I thought this might be a boring match but it was quite fun. Regal & Kelly bumped really well for Billy and Brad. I thought they had some good chicken shit moments as well. I don't know if you're
I'm going to be looking at the AJPW Classics for 1984. I want to make an effort to put a sizable dent into my DVD collection this year. I was pulled a little off track with the JWP and Muto AJPW last month. And I am planning on going back to Muto's All Japan perhaps in May. Anyhow we're looking at 1984 AJPW right now. It's interesting to me as it features quite a few Americans that weren't necessarily AJPW regulars. A big part of that is the inclusion of AWA talent since this is when Jumbo was
Back with more of Muto era AJPW! This time I'm going over 2005-2010. Well I'm actually going to sneak in a '03 & a '04 match that I found as well. This post I thought I'd change it up a bit and focus more on the Junior Heavyweight side of things.. or at least matches that included them. AJPW was never really known for their Junior division so I thought I'd check that out since there was a concerted effort by many companies to feature these guys in the 21st century. Just a guess but NOAH see
Here we are for the final portion of my early JWP project. We'll be looking at the end of 1991. The dates are not evenly spread out but this is what I wanted to see based on others recommendations and my own preferences. There is more out there like the Cuty vs Scorpion stuff from the fall that I could do without. Anyhow, let's begin!
Harley Saito vs. Rumi Kazama (05/12): Wow! I was impressed with what they were able to do in an under 10 minute match! Lots of stiff looking kicks, good bits
