What's kinda funny is that people will see 1 or 2 of the crazier death matches from original FMW and think they understand or get "Onita." It's probably worse as he's gotten older as he's had to rely more and more on the actual gimmicks to hide his mobility issues. I know I felt this way before I started researching, reading about and watching Onita. There's a notion that Onita was great in AJPW but, got hurt and etc.
So, I think there may be this misconception that Onita sucked in F
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
A couple years ago I found out that my fiancé's college friend (who lives in Japan) was a wrestling fan and regularly goes to shows in Tokyo. Awesome! After talking, it turns out he's good buddies with Kotaro Suzuki. Holy crap, really!? Being the awesome nice guy that he is (both our friend & Kotaro), I received a signed poster and tee shirt in the mail a few weeks later. My mind is still blown
I've become a big fan ever since. So, I'd like to repay his kindness in the best way
I miss watching 90's M-Pro. Its probably my favorite stuff to just sit back, enjoy, and smile. This tournament really helps capture the nature of the promotion at the time. Its just a lot fun. Another important aspect that's lost is the back injury story that Sasuke carries across the tournament. Here a young Naniwa deals a serious blow to Sasuke and this establishes the anyone can win nature of this tournament.
7/27 Iwate: Super Delfin vs. Gorgota Cross (Jerry Lynn)- A fine first ma
Ah Big Mouth Loud we hardly knew ye! Now twelve years passed and you are forgotten by all but a few! Seriously though, I remember hearing about this promotion and not knowing what the hell it was about. I think my understanding was that it was a shoot style group. I no longer was into that so, I walked away. Recently however, I'd come across matches recommended by YouTube. Kurisu vs Kudo isn't shoot style! OK, this is something I've got to take a look for myself.
It does start out as
I'm a Hayabusa fan. I think my first exposure was from ECW clips of he & Jinsei Shinzaki vs RVD & Sabu. Then around that time, I bought a used copy of WCW vs the World for the PS1. Awesome game, tons of Japanese stars with fake names. I recognized a few though, Hayabusa being one. Thing is, I probably didn't know he was called "Hayabusa." I just knew he was this high flyer with a mask and baggy red pants...and he could keep up with Van Dam & Sabu in the crazy move department. The vid
I've recently acquired a big chunk of the AJPW Classics broadcast in 1999 & 2000. Generally speaking, I've got a good portion of 1988-early 1990 covered. There are a couple notable matches missing but, I'm more interested in finding hidden gems. I'm looking forward to seeing matches people talked about in the distant past and have since been forgotten or brushed aside for the newer slicker wrestling of today. I'm excited to be able to watch wrestling in a somewhat episodic fashion again too.
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
Work was busy and the weather was nice so, I didn't get around to watching day #2 of wXw's 2010 tournament
I thought about skipping today but, figured I'd share my take on the most popular wrestlers not in WWE- Kenny Omega & the Young Bucks.
Although both are sort of the antithesis of the blog as they are just so darn well known and praised by Dave M. And that's cool because I do like them both. No, they're not my favorites or wrestle according to my stylistic prefer
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
Hiroshi Hase: Hase is probably the most overlooked great in-ring worker of Japan's 1990's golden era. His abilities and athleticism have been compared to Kobashi in the past. However, he was not regarded as such within NJ. First he was considered an excellent Jr. until Liger and contemporaries changed the style. He was a heavyweight but, would only see tag teams success. That seems very good but, compare that to the successes of his peers in NJ and even AJ at the time. Its clear that he wasn't u
I'm getting back to more of my DVDs. This time I'll be looking Extreme Championship Wrestling or ECW!! E-C-W! E-C-W! Haha! Specifically I'll be looking at WWE's ECW Unreleased Vol. 1 DVD set (along with some YouTube videos to round things out). For a little back story on this purchase, I had gotten vol. 2 a few years after it's release in 2016 or 2017 as I was pretty interested in a few of the matches featured. I bought it used. Vol. 1 I just got a couple years ago new as the price dropped and I
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'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
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
It seems like people are into current joshi and that's cool. I watched some Wave & Stardom a year or two ago. Its not bad. Its cool but, not really my cup of Earl Grey.
Here's a run down of one of my favorite old school joshi shows:
1) Miori Kamiya vs. Etsuko Mita: jip A brief little example of joshi wrestling. There were some nice moves in what was shown.
2) 3 Minutes 5 Rounds: Sakie Hasegawa vs. Kaoru Ito- These are two of my favorite underrated wrestler
No one really seems to talk about the 1980's Japan anymore. That ship has sailed and people have moved on to other stuff, I suppose. A few years ago...maybe 5 years...I can't remember, NJPW, AJPW, and essentially UWF were being watched in depth and ranked by a good handful of folks. Pretty awesome stuff. I've got the lists saved on a USB drive. I'm not going to even try to recreate or resurrect the 80's projects with my Saturday posts but, I love the 80's Japan stuff. 1986-1988 NJPW is one of my
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
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
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 is post #3 where I'll be looking at the 1997 matches from the ECW Unreleased vol.1 DVD and a boat load of matches from YouTube
Rob Van Dam & Sabu vs. Perry Saturn & John Kronus (ECW Cyberslam 1997 Feb. 1997) - ECW World Tag Team Title Tables & Ladders Match - An absolute war between the two most innovative tag teams in ECW. Bell to bell craziness... it's hard to tell what was planned and what was on the fly. Expect a few blemishes, this was a great ECW tag title match with
I remember being really stoked when Ayako Hamada, Awesome Kong and Cheerleader Melissa joined TNA for a brief time. Women's wrestling was actually the best stuff they had at that time. Hamada seemed to be a big deal to me as I was really getting into Joshi at the time and seeing a legit Joshi wrestler every week was pretty cool. Her and Cheerleader Melissa had an awesome match..maybe a hardcore match or something. Anyway, I never really got too see too much of her stuff in Japan. There's a coupl
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...
AJW TV January 4th 1991 (1/4/91)
Yumiko Hotta vs. Bat Yoshinaga- Nothing too awesome here other than Hotta kicking Bat in the face a few good times and busting out a top rope backdrop. ***
Mima Shimoda & Etsuko Mita & Toshiyo Yamada vs. Takako Inoue & Miori Kamiya & Mika Takahashi- Really weird seeing Mita with short hair like Yamada and Takako was a little chubby here but, not in a bad way. Kind like you could tell she was 18 or so. Surprisingly Mima was
