I have put a pause on my AJPW 2002 project for the time being. In the meantime, I thought I would share some "vintage" Dr. Death Steve Williams reviews. Early 2000's AJPW has renewed my interest & appreciation for him. He's certainly not at his prime but he brings something special to every match. So below is a collection of reviews of his peak era AJPW work. I'm going to remove any spoilers that I wrote and if you're looking for stars (*) in your reviews, this one has got 'em
Mitsuhar
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.
Things are starting to pick up with AJPW 2002.
Arashi vs Satoshi Kojima (04/01): Fantastic heavyweight battle! Arashi being a super heavyweight is fun. Cozy can basically hit him as hard as he wants. Arashi/Isao Takagi is big enough that he can toss and pummel Cozy with confidence. His sleeper hold looks great & don't forget his awesome frog splash! Exactly what you want in a 13 minute Carnival match. Maybe I'm getting old but, I'm really enjoying these shorter matches... there's no fl
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
Thanks for waiting This wasn't a "quickie" blog post/watch...but for consistency I'll label it such.
Now onto ASW V Night 2!
No Holds Barred Match
Joey Ryan vs. Kevin Steen - I'm not sure how I feel about having this booked first but they didn't make this an over-long match. It was heated and pretty brutal with some of the spots BUT it didn't feel like a hardcore spot fest. Steen can definitely get over indulgent with the brutality but I think it was just right here. If you legitima
I never thought that I would have done 350 blog posts when I had started this. Doing the blog has helped me keep up with my wrestling watching. There's been times where there's been burnouts or I just don't have the time/energy to get any watching in. This blog has motivated me to keep up with the hobby. But I think my biggest motivation is to share my views with everyone reading... and not because I think I've got the best reviews out there I want to help spread the word about wrestling from y
Sorry for the delay! I have had some family health issues that I've been dealing with the past couple weeks. I've got a few matches left to watch of PWG All Star Weekend V - Night 2 but it's probably not going to be ready for another week or so. Sorry if you're looking forward to that! In the meantime, it's time for the Best Matches Watched (thus far) for 2024. I've sorted things by year. It's all 2000's & 2010's. I definitely have to get some 80's stuff in this year...but anyhow HM stands f
Here's a couple teaser videos that PWG still has on their YouTube page:
Not sure on video quantity but hey...it's better than some homemade music video from 2008, right?
Now if you're interested, here's the reviews!
Nosawa vs. Disco Machine - Good simple opening match.
Roderick Strong vs. Rocky Romero - This was really good stuff. It was hard hitting and while longer than you'd normally see a second match go, they never went crazy
Sorry for the delay! The big draw for this show is the return of Shingo and his challenge for Gabe's golden boy Johnny Gargano's title.
Shingo vs Johnny Gargano - This is the big selling point of the DVD. Shingo is back in DGUSA after right around where I stopped in 2011. Gargano's in ring abilities have greatly improved. He seems to know what to do more than before and doesn't have to do a fancy move all of the time...but he still favors doing something fancy over something basic. And this
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
The YouTube account that had the DGUSA matches also has a bunch of PWG. Way too much if you know what I mean. But I was able to narrow it down to a few matches by the Motor City Machine Guns over the years. It's not complete or anything just some stuff I wanted to see.
Sabin vs Shelley (Hollywood Globetrotters 2006) - Pre Machine Guns...Shelley with two tone hair and Sabin with the alien on his trunks, yes! This was probably more towards Sabin's style (and the MCMG style) as opposed to Shel
Sorry for the delay! I figure with Mania & the solar eclipse people would have some diversion for a few days. So I gave myself a couple more days to cover Dragon Gate USA for 2011. This is pretty much the end of the beginning for DGUSA. Although it rarely was simply Dragon Gate in the U.S. only, this early period really does focus on the Japanese talent being the centerpiece of the promotion. 2010 sees the formation of the Ronin stable which despite being a Japanese word/concept is comprised
I've really been digging the 2009-2010 Dragon Gate USA shows that I've purchased. So I thought to look online to see if there's any other well regarded matches available. And wouldn't you know it, there's a bunch! I'm pretty sure the account that's posted them will be taken down imminently so I'm jumping on the opportunity. Below is a kind of "best of" watch list from what's available. I've used a couple sources like Cagematch as well as my own preferences to guide my selections. I'll list the s
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
I've been watching a lot online and need to get back to my massive DVD pile. Dragon Gate USA is what I have in mind. This week its Dragon Gate USA's Enter the Dragon 2010. This is their first anniversary show and takes place in the ECW Arena (or whatever it was called in 2010). Since CZW runs a lot of shows here (all?) this has some very prominent CZW wrestlers. I think many of these guys do get incorporated into the DGUSA/Evolve program. In hindsight, DGUSA was Gabe using B-level (at the time)
I got in the mood to check out some vintage (vintage?!) TNA wrestling after enjoying my copy of TNA Impact for the PS2. I checked the matches listed and Hard Justice 2008 looked perfect. Check they even are promoting the game during the show.
This one has been up for 11 years so I'm thinking they won't pull it down or put it behind a pay wall any time soon. I am going to put it up top if you want to watch it sans reviews. I don't do spoilers/play by play reviews but if you want to go in fre
I'm going to level with you. I have written a ton of stuff prior to this. I'm not going to include most of it because it amounts to me rambling on about game mechanics, what I think the developers intended, my struggle to understand the move system. I'm going to get that part of the review out of the way now.
This is more like the Smackdown games than Fire Pro for PS2. To me Fire Pro Returns is the best wrestling game ever. This took me some getting used to because the controls are closer t
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 we are back trying to watch some of my DVD backlog. This is/was a pretty well known show for the Danielson and Davey matches. I didn't give two shits back at the time but I have mellowed out about DGUSA (it took 10 years) :D. I was able to get a few of the more praised shows for cheap on eBay a few years ago. Like FIP a couple years ago, I might skip a match and I will definitely watch these out of order for the best viewing experience. Also I watched this with commentary off (nice to have
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
