I've been in a bit of a down period with wrestling the last month or so. I got a Highspots Best of 2003 compilation off eBay a little while ago and I thought it might be the thing to get me back into things. It starts out with matches from the January 10th show. A couple of them are ones that I always wanted to see but never got around to. Looks like a good place to start.
KENTA & Takashi Sugiura vs Takuma Sano & Kotaro Suzuki - Man alive this was a Jr. tag fireworks display. Kotaro
Holy cow! Its been awhile since I've posted. I've finished watching the 2013 AJPW Champion Carnival but just haven't done the write up yet. I guess I'm on a bit of a wrestling break with the weather getting better. Been trying to get out and go for walks/hikes as well as get some skateboarding in as well. But you don't care about that, you want some wrestling reviews! Well you're gonna have to wait a little longer but I've got some sweet wrestle-art to feast your eyes on in the meantime.
We're back and going to look at 04/25 & 04/26 AJPW. Its the Champion Carnival tour.
Akebono vs Jun Akiyama - Short match but good. Akiyama gets an Akebobo singles match worthwhile.
Hirosho Yamato vs Yoshinobu Kanemaru - Quick somewhat average match with a very good finish. Reminded me of a early 80's AJ Jr. bout.
Joe Doering vs KENSO - The giant gaijin manhandled KENSO but they had a good match. Good chemistry but they have a better fight in them.
SUWAMA vs Seiya Sanada -
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...
We're going back to the 04/20 (Blaze ) show from 2013 and then moving on to the 04/24 show. These are smaller events so nothing on paper is mind blowing awesome but let's see.
First thing first, I only have access to what has been uploaded so perhaps I'm not capturing the full experience but this is a review of what I've watched. Take it with a grain of salt.
The two actual Champion Carnival matches (Funaki vs Doering & Kono vs Suwama) can be skipped from the 04/20 show. I felt tha
This post is all about the early parts of Champion Carnival for 2013. This stuff is out there online for your enjoyment. But no screen shots to give you a taste. I'm watching these on my living room TV/streaming rather than the trusty one hooked up to the DVD player. You don't care about that. You want wrestling! Here it is! The first two matches are from April 18th:
Seiya Sanada vs Takao Omori - This felt like a Champ Carnival of old where the finish actually played off working over a body
This is only what I was able to find online for the 03/17 super show. There's a good looking Omori/Soya vs Akiyama/Shiozaki match but there's no sign of it. So like I said before we say goodbye to Soya then. Kinda bummed but I'm not complaining about what's available as you're about to find out.
AJPW World Jr. Heavyweight Title: Yoshinobu Kanemaru (c) vs Kaz Hayashi - This is an awesome 14 minutes of Junior wrestling fireworks. It never overstayed its welcome which many junior matches do an
Now we move on to AJPW in 2013. This should be one of my longer projects of the year as I have a bevy of matches available online to bolster my DVD collection. I'll say I'm really digging 2013 from what I have seen so far.
Here is my first show & dvd. Per usual, I skip stuff that I'm not interested in. If you're feeling these matches then by all means, watch them & let me know
3 Way Match: KENSO vs MAZADA & Andy Wu - A squash for KENSO which was pretty enjoyable.
Mas
This final installment of my brief look into AJPW in 2012 takes place on 11/27/12. There's some other stuff on the show but I'm giving you the last 3 matches as those interested me most.
Masakatsu Funaki/Masayuki Kono/Minoru Tanaka/Koji Kanemoto -vs- KENSO/Hiroshi Yamato/Kaz Hayashi/Shuji Kondo : A very good 8 man match that I was surprised that I enjoyed as much as I did. The opening was pretty exciting but a good portion was Yamato getting his ass kicked by the very dangerous Stack of Arm
Nick Bockwinkel v. Jumbo Tsuruta (AWA Title, 07/13/83): It was 30 minutes or so and was very much a match from 1983 in a technical style. Its Bockwinkel vs Jumbo but its not a classic or anything. But man is this quality stuff. Jumbo's jumping knee never looked better and Bock's pile driver was deadly. This is their first encounter that I have in my dvds. So I'm hoping that things get better and better. I would say this is ***3/4. My feeling is that it never kicked into top gear. We never got Ni
The DVD is listed as 06/01/2012 but as we see from the actual show, it takes place 05/20/12. In case you are joining me now, this is not going to be a comprehensive look at 2012 All Japan. Its more like a few snapshots to pique your interest. Let's go!
Minoru Tanaka -vs- Yasufumi Nakanoue - Good opening match. Vet vs newcomer
Kaz Hayashi, Shuji Kondo & Azteca -vs- KAI, MAZADA & Hiroshi Yamato - Really good 12 minutes of cool moves and action. I was really surprised by this. Sta
I received this from eBay instead of the Best of Abyss DVD. I'm not one to make a big stink especially since I wasn't dead set on the Abyss tape. Plus this is a pretty damn good ppv...
Jay Lethal vs. Alex Shelley vs. Senshi vs. Sonjay Dutt vs. Austin Starr (Paparazzi Championship Series Five Man Elimination Match) - Austin Starr is Austin Aries and Senshi is Low-Ki. Very good multi man match, the paparazzi stuff has something to do with Shelley &Aries' gimmick under the tutelage of
Hello and welcome to my end of the year Best Match Watched list! Its like your Match of the Year lists but isn't limited to matches that took place this calendar year. Obviously, right? I haven't watched much of anything from 2021. Let's take a look at the first part of this year's viewing.
Tiger Mask vs Pete Roberts (09/10/82 NJPW)
Masato Tanaka vs Mr. Gannosuke (01/06/98 FMW)
Hayabusa vs Masato Tanaka (03/13/98 FMW)
Hayabusa vs Mr. Gannosuke (04/30/98 FMW)
Tetushiro Ku
In October, it was announced that Ring of Honor would be taking time off from Jan-March of 2022. The hiatus would end with Supercard of Honor. In the meantime, portion of the roster would be let go at the end of the year while others would be let go in early 2022. Many including myself believed this was the end of the road for the promotion. I'm not sure calling the Final Battle 2021 'End of an Era' helped dispel our speculation. I just posted on ROH thread that I thought AEW might have some int
Kaitlin Diemond vs Karen Q - sorry, I skipped it. Long show for me.
Chuck Taylor vs Adam Page - From last night's main event, we get a really good opening match. Seriously, this felt like a regular ROH opener compared to the previous show in Buffalo. That's even with me skipping matches too. The Buffalo show was anemic up until the Silas vs Juice match. This was just as good as that and we really haven't gotten started!
Vinny Marseglia/TK O'Ryan vs Tetsuya Naito/BUSHI - What is Naito d
We're back with Ring of Honor 2018 Global Wars in Buffalo, New York.
Dalton Castle vs TK O'Ryan - skipped...this starts off as The Boys vs Vinny and Taven which kills the momentum of the show right off the bat.
Kenny King vs Cheeseburger - skipped
Kelly Klein vs Madison Rayne - skipped...notice a pattern?
BUSHI vs Jonathan Gresham vs Flip Gordon vs Kushida - Ah a match that I'm interested in! This was fun but pretty underdeveloped and predictable. Nonetheless it still was enjoyable
Thanks for sticking with me! We're finally to the end of Tiger Mask in NJPW. Or at least to the end of my DVD set! Let's take a look
Tiger Mask/Kantaro Hoshino vs. Kuniaki Kobayashi/Isamu Teranishi (7/20/83): One clip in the match but that didn't hurt anything. All high speed action match. The finish was really nice too!
Tiger Mask vs. El Halcon - WWF Jr. Title (7/29/83): Return to early form with the Falcon. This was a near great match (***3/4+) since it was just so clean and well e
If you've read the blog in the past or you've looked at enough entries, you know this is my busy time of the year for my job. So, I'm going to try in earnest to finish up the Tiger Mask set up before Xmas. I watched all of these yesterday and I have four more that I'm going to try for tonight. I don't like to rush things if you haven't seen yet But I don't want to stretch the set out into 2022. I am looking forward to doing my 2021 Best Match Watched list along with other superlatives at the en
Here's stop #2 on the 2018 Global Wars tour. We're in Lowell, MA.
Matt Taven vs BUSHI - Nice start to the show. Good action from both guys. A little quick but its the opening match so, I can't complain!
The Bouncers vs Dalton Castle/Juice Robinson - This could have been good but I skipped it. Too much comedy...I should have Fast Forwarded the intros and maybe I wouldn't skipped this.
Frankie Kazarian vs Flip Gordon - Whoa this was your X division title match! Wait wrong company! G
I got the 4 disc set from ROH last year on a season sale and shoot might as well check it out. I always wanna watch stuff in chronological order but I got to give that up or I'll never watch everything. This set is $5 for 4 discs. This is disc one...just want to keep it simple.
Eli Isom vs Flip Gordon - I skipped this...great start, right? I got too much to watch to spend time with this.
Frankie Kazarian/Scorpio Sky vs The Bouncers - The start of my show and this was the way to do it.
I've been watching some TNA Year One which wasn't really something I thought to blog about. The Low- Ki, Styles & Jerry Lynn ladder match is fantastic though!
In the meantime, I wanted to post some more of my fractured photos :-)
TNA Double J
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AJ, Sting & Earl
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Wahoo & Tully...bleeding
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Sekimoto Maddness
I should be posting some actual written materials shortly...probably some ROH stuff.
Hello again! Part 3 will cover the 03/04 show from Tokyo's K-Hall. Then we close out with a tag title encounter from 03/20 which may be at Budokan or some other larger venue. So its a big time match-up.
Let's go!
Okabayashi -vs- Takumi Soya: We see a very good to great under 10 minute match between two rivals. Soya (Manabu's brother) is ranked below BJW's Okabayashi but he has tons of fight in him. That intensity raises this match up to be something special. And when I say intense, thi
Here we are at Part #2 of my non-comprehensive and completely based around my cheapness look at AJPW 2012. I have this and the 03/04/12 showon a AJPW comp type DVD. I think there's two more shows after that. Let's see how things go!
Mutoh/Akebono/Ryota Hama vs Daisuke Sekimoto/Yuji Okabayashi/Yoshito Sasaki - This was a fine example of Korakuen hall 6 man magic. Mutoh and his team's limitations were hidden because no one was in there long enough to be offensive. Also the BJW team (who are s
Ring of Honor 2003 was something that was interesting to me for a couple reasons. The first was that it featured so many highly regarded matches with great show titles - 1st Year Anniversary (3 way), London vs Daniels from Round Robin II, The Epic Encounter, Night of the Grudges, Main Event Spectacles, and Bitter Friends Stiffer Enemies and War of the Wire. ROH 2003 was also intriguing because these shows or matches are pretty hard to find. Comparatively 2004 stuff is still easy to track down be
Here we go again with more of our hero Tiger Mask! We're getting close to the end.
Tiger Mask vs. Gran Hamada - (2/3/83): This featured great matwork, agility, timing, counters and reversals. Much of this was on the mat and that's where Tiger is best despite being known as a flying innovator. These two are just amazing together. A classic encounter.
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Tiger Mask vs. Black Tiger - (2/7/83): JIP 8 minutes in, good match with state of the art offense. Black Tiger isn't T
