Hi, not taking a break from 2013 AJPW but wanted to share something in the meantime. This is a review of ZERO1 07/31/08 & 08/03/08 from Samurai TV. Its the last 2 days of their Fire Festival which is their Champion Carnival or G1Climax. A side project that I'm working on is checking out Zero One, Zero1, Zero- One Max and every iteration of that company. Its not going to be a deep dive since there's no ready made compilation that I'm aware of. In fact there's not a ton out there in general...
This is a big post today so let's get going!
Kyoko Inoue vs Lioness Asuka (04/29): So these two have had a couple/few acclaimed matches in other companies. I think it was fun but definitely not up to standard set by the others (or so I've heard). Where the best GAEA matches remind me of the best that FMW/ECW offered, this one felt like a TNA match. It was like half the match was Lioness on offense and then the second half was Kyoko. And honestly I don't this Inoue did that much whereas Lion
I am going to keep going with GAEA for the New Year. As I've done for the past few posts I'm going to split the wrestling year up. So let's look at early 2001!
Akira Hokuto & Mayumi Ozaki vs. Chigusa Nagayo & Lioness Asuka (01/27): This was a great under 10 minute match. The energy of the bout is what makes this so enjoyable. Its in Korakuen Hall, its noisy, there's blood, chairs flying, dives etc. Its not out of control but there's that energy. And even when the match is over, that
I'm just jumping right in:
Sonoko Kato vs. Akira Hokuto (09/15): Waaayy too short of a match but it was fun. Seems like more of an angle than a match. I dig it though.
Meiko Satomura vs. Devil Masami (09/15): I liked this pretty well. They did a good job telling the story that Satomura couldn't go toe to toe with Devil. So she uses her quickness and technique to weaken Devil's arms. Masami sells this pretty well and although she's able to power bomb Meiko, we can tell there's some
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 &
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
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
I'm back with the second and final installment of the Samoa Joe - World Champion DVD released by ROH in 2004. Let's pick back up where we left off.
vs Christopher Daniels (Glory by Honor II - September 2003): A fighting champion for sure! Daniels used his speed & agility to take Joe to the limit. In a way Daniels maybe should have won because he showed tons of toughness withstanding Joe's awesome offense. If you've seen their TNA battles then you know Joe can really toss The Fallen Ange
I very much wanted to call this post "The Champ is Here" but that is the title of Joe's second volume ROH DVD. Today we'll be looking at volume one which looks at Joe's first defenses of the ROH World Championship after defeating Xavier. These are the matches that really put that title on the map and really establish the prestige of that position. You may forget that Low-Ki was the first champ and his climb to the top was greater than his time there. That's OK since Xavier was a project for Gab
This is a two birds with one stone post. I wanted to get a little more Zero One in this year as well as get back to early 2000s NOAH. I was going through my 2001 list and realized I had a mini project with Zero One vs NOAH in 2001. There's some better known stuff and a couple I'd never heard of. Let's jump in!
Mitsuharu Misawa & Yoshinari Ogawa vs. Shinya Hashimoto & Alexander Otsuka (January 13th, 2001) : A good match that goes a long way on the Misawa vs Hashimoto interactions. Ve
In all honesty, this was going to be a quickie post of just a few matches that I stumbled across. But then I became intrigued by the match ups or was impressed by a worker and wanted to see more. And here we are! The entire 2003 Differ Cup watched out of sequence reviewed out of sequence. I'm not going to pretend it didn't happen. Sit back and read on:
KENTA & Kotaro Suzuki vs Great Takeru & Kappa Kozou (02/08): Was going to skip this since I'd never heard of the IWA Japan team. But
I'll be looking at the breakout year for Michinoku Pro - 1994. This is the year where the Great Sasuke won over fans during the Super J Cup in NJPW. Many consider that to be one of the best shows of the 1990's. From 1994, we continue to see the wrestlers of Michinoku Pro featured in New Japan, AJW, WAR and FMW. Eventually many will make it over to the U.S. in ECW, WCW and WWF. That's pretty amazing when you consider M-Pro was a regional promotion with no big nationally known star to anchor the p
I'm going to be looking at Michinoku Pro Wrestling for the rest of May. Much like FMW, it's one of the first Japanese promotions I really was familiar with. In some part this has to do with Kai En Tai DX coming over to WWF around when I got back into wrestling as a teenager. Then from there its probably WCW vs The World on PS1 where they had TAKA, Shinzaki who I remembered as Hakushi (but also from clips of he & Hayabusa vs RVD & Sabu shown on ECW) and the Great Sasuke who I saw very bri
I decided to take a little break from JWP. No way I was going to meet my self imposed deadline. Instead I thought I would switch stuff up and watch the best of Megumi Kudo. As an FMW and joshi fan, it's a bit crazy that I've only seen like 2 Kudo matches and some clips. I skipped the one's I've seen 04/02/93 AJW and 05/05/96 Combat Toyoda retirement match. Oh I have seen the first inter-promotional match with Toyoda vs Bull & Bonito in 1992. That's covered in my 1992 FMW post from a couple y
I've got a few New Years Resolutions and watching more Joshi is one of them. It's been a while so doing a spotlight on one of my faves Mariko Yoshida seems like a great way to get back into this style. As always, I'm cherry picking but here I'm omitting her stuff from 98-99 Arsion on purpose. I think I should do a separate post on that. Enjoy!
Kyoko Inoue/Takako Inoue/Mariko Yoshida vs. Cynthia Moreno/Etsuko Mita/Mima Shimoda (AJW - 08/15/92) Great 6 woman tag match! Intensely fought from s
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
Back with Part 2 of FMW in 1999. Got some cool pics (too many actually...maybe I'll post those later). All grainy & shit like we watched our Japanese wrestling back in the day son! This time it is all tag and 6 man wrestling. Fans of this stuff, you are going to find out about some good stuff. Let's go!
Gannosuke/Kanemura/Oya/Hosaka/Hido vs. Ishikawa/Ikeda/Yone/Usuda/Hijikata (05/05/99): Big cross promotion elimination match for the anniversary show! BattlArts vs Team No Respect/Gannosu
Here we go with the final entry in my FMW 1999 project. Let's see what we've got!
Darkside Hayabusa & Tetsuhiro Kuroda & Hisakatsu Oya vs Koji Nakagawa & Yukihiro Kanemura & Hido (08/20/99): jip. This looked to be like a graveyard match or something as there were big banners up, a coffin and wooden grave markers (which were used as weapons). This was fun! Hayabusa is sporting a different mask here which shows some of his face plus his hair is bleached orange. Both were ways
This post I'm taking a look at some of the best of FMW in 1999. Without further ado, let's begin!
Hayabusa v Tetsuhiro Kuroda (01/05/99): Really exciting match with some really great sequences and spots. This is a textbook example of working a body part and blowing it off though. He hurts Hayabusa's leg the Hayabusa hurts Kuroda's arm and it unfortunately has no bearing on the match's story or outcome. This is not a deal breaker at all. It's actually pretty well worked as Hayabusa keeps it
I'm very excited to be watching more FMW after a long time away (Kudo stuff excluded!). I'm not limiting myself to just FMW but am including interesting stuff from ECW and AJPW as well. I'm going off my DVDs so there's a bunch of pics. They're grainy but you get that old school VHS video quality vibe like you're watching these in '98. Hope you dig 'em. Let's jump on in!
Hayabusa & Jinsei Shinzaki vs Yukihiro Kanemura & Hido (01/06/98): Oh yeah, this was just a blast! You kinda get e
This is probably the last "classic" period DGUSA show that I'll review. I have one last DVD and that's from near of the company the end Open the Ultimate Gate 2013. That features the Shingo vs Gargano main event. It actually looks like a pretty good card as well. However I might have found some stuff online and perhaps a compilation type post is in the works. But let's get onto the show, Untouchable 2010!
Arik Cannon vs Kyle O'Reilly - This was a dark match and a bonus on the DVD but I am p
