Here is my list of the best matches that I watched this year. Again, this isn't a MOTY list but, is more of a year in review for me AND a guide for folks looking for wresting to check out.
So first is my January to May list:
Inoki/Sakaguchi vs Thesz/Gotch (NJ 1973)
Strong BJW vs SUWAMA/T. Soya (AJ 11/26/11)
Onita/Tarzan Goto vs M. Kurisu/Dragon Master [Kendo Nagasaki] (FMW 04/01/90)
Jun Kasai vs Takeshi Iizuka (TAKA Prod. 01/28/18)
Roderick Strong vs Kyl
My apologies for anyone regularly following this little project. Work has been crazy as its the holiday shopping season and I haven't had the time to write up my next entry. But fuck it, I get one day off a week so, let's do this!
Bobby Fish vs Davey Richards (Reclamation-night 1 07/12/13): A very intense kick filled contest with very nice spots and holds. It was a good match that felt great at times. It just had a weird pace and I never felt like it kicked into overdrive. Perhaps I'm wrong
Texas and Ring of Honor don't necessarily go together on paper do they? I think of the Northeast and Midwest when thinking of ROH but, here they are in San Antonio, June 1st, 2013. The fans are enthusiastic and the wrestlers are game so, let's take a look.
Kyle O'Reilly vs Mike Sydal: Matt's younger brother vs one half of the tag champion reDRagon. This is a fine opener that makes Sydal look credible and make Kyle look like a rightful champ.
A local TV anchor comes out and talks a bit
Now we're back on track to the proper reDRagon retrospective. This would now be Chapter 3 in the ROH DVD set. It's the most substantial one. So, let's just jump in!
vs The Briscoes (11th Anniversary show): The tag straps is on the line boy! That's my Briscoe impersonation. You try now. It was fun right? That's something the Sandy Fork brothers have that most ROH wrestlers lack- a good character & gimmick. Everyone at this point in time is a "great" or "phenomenal" athlete but, shallow i
So, before I continue with the reDRagons set, I'd like to review this show from January of 2013. Now, in case you were wondering, this isn't some essential show to Fish and O'Reilly's story. It just so happens that I have a few ROH DVDs that I've been meaning to watch that fit in with this watch-project's chronology. This one has been on sale for awhile and has gotten recommendations. Plus once ROH dvds are gone, they're gone (I just can't do the streaming subscriptions, I learned from my WWE n
The next few entries are going to follow Bobby Fish and Kyle O'Reilly's early days together as reDragon. I'm using the ROH compilation as my main guide but, also have a few show reviews as well. This introductory post covers Chapters 1 & 2 on disc one. It's chill but, things pick up next time. But, let's get started!
Fish vs Claudio Castagnoli (2007): This was an OK match. Fish's ROH debut.
OReilly vs Austin Aries (2010): A good match and Aries was the man at this time period. Don't t
Surfing around Youtube and found a neat bunch of Junior matches from the IWA Puerto Rico which was sorta kinda linked to the much loved IWA Japan while Victor Quinones was alive. Afterwards, eh I'm not sure...but, with talent from Japan, the US Indies, Mexico and Puerto Rico, it has Quinones' stylistic stamp on it.
Taka Michinoku & Pepe Prado v Super Crazy & Rey Bucanero: Nice fun tag match. TAKA & Crazy is sorta a dream match fulfilled. Maybe it happened in WWE n the early 200
Generally speaking, I'm not a fan of the Great Muta. I'm OK with Keiji Muto but, the Muta gimmick just doesn't do it for me. Well, correction...the gimmick is cool but, the work stinks. It's dull. I'm OK with the 90 & 92 Hase bloodfests but, really it was a waste of both guys athleticism and talent. I'm sure they could have put on matches equal to Misawa at that time period but, we get kinda-sorta great matches with a tremendous amount of blood. I was kinda bored with wrestling for a moment
I've been a life long fan of wrestling and comic books. The only time I faded from both was in college. Beer, skateboarding and school work took the driver seat during those years. Now that I'm older with no more parties to go to, no more tests to study for and a bad back that allows 1-2 hours of skating a week, wrestling and comics are my go to source of entertainment.
Surprisingly, it's rare for these two mediums to mix however. I'm sure we remember the awful WWF tie-in comics from the la
I cannot say what exactly prompted me to explore Dragon Gate. My project from a couple months ago looking at DGUSA was perhaps the genesis (I still have one DVD to go). But, I've become a Shingo fan after the AJPW 2018 Champion Carnival . Then, I saw he is/was in this years PWG BOLA. Oh that's what prompted this! yeah, I have a mountain of older PWG DVDs to watch but, I might have check those out. So, let's get on with this!
I'm going to list these in order of viewing so, you can get a bet
This isn't going to be a full and complete review since I chose (that's right, chose) not to watch some of the more hyped matches. Specifically, I skipped Bullet Club vs CHAOS because I've been watching wrestling long enough to know that throwing a bunch of superstars into one match does not make it good. That's some bone throwing lazy booking of NJPW talent. But, I'm guessing that ROH doesn't have a lot of say-so. Its pretty clear to this walking fart of a man that the NJPW talent is just throw
This time period in puro is one of my absolute favorites and, due to lack of availability or my cheapness, NJ in 1990 is a little bit of a blind spot. Hell, a bunch of NJ in the early 90's is a blind spot! Regardless, I've come across some stuff recently that I wanted to share. Now, some of this is on the Match Discussion Archives for 1990 when the the Yearbooks project was underway. So, if you want some second & third opinions, I recommend you go there as well.
On to the fights!
R
Dropping some old school Joshi Puroresu recommendations, son. Git with it, boy! (cringe) Sorry...got caught up there for a sec. Here's another set from the graveyard...
On to the wrestling!
Mima Shimoda/Manami Toyota vs Double Inoue (05/11/96 AJW): Man, the team of Shimoda and Toyota is really a great one. I believe they were a team in the late 80s as well.Tokyo Sweethearts. That sounds right. It's certainly a better name than Double Inoue. The double Inoue team is a gimmick in the sen
Jeez, I've been watching a lot of NOAH lately. I suppose it's because I'd turned a blind on it for so long after so many drawn out strike battles, over long "epics", and a roster that resembled a pop talent show more than puro company (at least from their names and appearances..more on that later).
Eddie Edwards is one of those guys that I've come to consider a favorite of mine recently. I'm not exactly sure why however. He doesn't have a real remarkable look and he doesn't seem like a real
Pro Wrestling NOAH after Misawa's passing is uncharted territory to me. I know that it exists and I've even seen a little bit of it but, I tend not to wander around too long. This cluster of matches popped up because I wanted to do a brief "Shiozaki vs the Stars" post. Like most wrestling projects, I got sidetracked Here we have a sort of triple main event for NOAH's Great Voyage in Tokyo show.
GHC Junior Heavyweight Title Match: Ricky Marvin vs Katsuhiko Nakajima: 18 minutes- Nice strikin
I totally should have posted my AJW 09/02/95 show review TODAY instead of back in July...stupid!stupid!stupid!
But, fear not! I've found some AJPW matches from the spiraled notebook graveyard. I'll post my original comments then, see how I react today. We've first got some action from the 1989 Summer Action Series II tour taped 09/02/89 in Tokyo at Nippon Budokan!
Asia Tag Title Match: Danny Kroffat & Doug Furnas vs. Toshiaki Kawada & Samson Fuyuki- This match whew! It bit way
This post is all about surfing Japanese YouTube channels and going off video thumbnails. What a find!
Kuniaki Kobayashi & Shiro Koshinaka vs Masashi Aoyagi & Akitoshi Saito (03/09/92): Keep an eye out for Too Cold during the entrances. Koshinaka & Saito engage in a fierce stare battle before the bell. Already this is good! Saito looks like a villain from a Jean Claude flick- Lionheart 2: Bloodsporting Kickboxer.
This thing starts and Karate takes over quickly. This is torna
This is my 100th blog post! Yay!
So, I wanted to make it about something special. An overlooked wrestler, a series of great matches, or something like that. Of course that would take me starting from scratch and I’m just a little busy with my day job & life-things to deep dive into a theme. Damn you Go Shiozaki and Youtube for taking me down a path unfit for this milestone post. So, instead I decided to offer 100 tidbits to you the reader. What’s funny is that I thought it would be a ti
The final installment of my 2006 NOAH Navigation. It is pretty stacked so let’s get on with it!
Takeshi Morishima & Mohammed Yone vs Takeshi Rikio & Takashi Sugiura (11/17): To be up front, I was not excited about this match. 3 out of 4 of the guys are good only in tags or short matches so, I’m tuning in for Takeshi M. Frankly, this starts out bland as unsalted popcorn. Even the Korakuen krowd were not into this! Business eventually picks up and this is actually fun to watch. Wait a
So, I decided to make this a 4 parter after all. There was way more NOAH that I wanted to watch than I thought. So, this installment will cover July to October. There's a ton of stuff at the very end of the year so, I figure that can have its own entry.
Takeshi Rikioh & Takeshi Morishima vs Naomichi Marufuji & KENTA (07/16/06): This is a tremendously exciting match where they did a sprint without going over board with moves or sequences. Morishima vs. KENTA was of course the sweete
Installment numero dos por la lista de la lucha libre NOAH en 2006. No idea if that is correct. It sounds sorta right. Spanglish perhaps. I took a lot of Spanish in middle school, high school, and university. That's all I've got left. Terrible. Absolutely terrible. And I blame myself really. I'm not going to claim that the 'system' failed me or such nonsense. I was an average student in middle school. High school, I actually did really well. Well enough that my college courses in Spanish were af
Pro Wrestling NOAH was probably the first puro promotion that I actively followed in "real time." They had an English language website, top talent appearing on ROH DVDs, and of course Misawa, Akiyama, Taue & Kobashi. Having never seen any of their 5 star classics, keeping tabs on NOAH was the closest thing for me at the time. They had great photos of fights & a nice archive of results. Looking back, I think I got in at the tail end of their golden period in 2006. However, it wasn't until
So, this little project came about by searching for Tanaka vs Makabe matches on YouTube. How I got to that is a bit of a mystery. If I had to guess, I'd say it was out of curiosity alone. I don't think I found a singles encounter on the 'tube. However, there was a crap ton of tags available. Investigation revealed that a whole chunk of house show matches from the Fall of 2010 were recorded and uploaded by NJPW. These matches show some of the early battles between NJ main roster & CHAOS.
Part 2 to my Fire Pro World prepubescent-like obsessive compulsive hype up.
This entry was going to have a couple more matches but, I ended up going down a NJ rabbit hole. So, my next post will cover that, hint its CHAOS vs NJPW house shows in 2010.
In the meantime, we've got a couple Fire Pro Returns dream matches that I never knew happened. I mean, for real, these are some FPR match maker multi-man battles. And a couple single bouts as I'm a Nagata & Tanaka fan.
Genichiro Te
The Fire Pro World and NJPW partnership has got me really psyched up. The glut of posts I've made on the forum is evidence of that Its all good though because I thought Fire Pro was done after Fire Pro Returns. Its funny because its a little bit of history repeating as I bought a PS2 back in 2007 specifically for FPR and I'll be buying a PS4 for the sole purpose of playing FPW.
Admittedly, Fire Pro Returns was a bigger deal as the game never had a US release and I could only mod my PS1 so
