I'm going to be looking at the AJPW Classics for 1984. I want to make an effort to put a sizable dent into my DVD collection this year. I was pulled a little off track with the JWP and Muto AJPW last month. And I am planning on going back to Muto's All Japan perhaps in May. Anyhow we're looking at 1984 AJPW right now. It's interesting to me as it features quite a few Americans that weren't necessarily AJPW regulars. A big part of that is the inclusion of AWA talent since this is when Jumbo was
Back with more of Muto era AJPW! This time I'm going over 2005-2010. Well I'm actually going to sneak in a '03 & a '04 match that I found as well. This post I thought I'd change it up a bit and focus more on the Junior Heavyweight side of things.. or at least matches that included them. AJPW was never really known for their Junior division so I thought I'd check that out since there was a concerted effort by many companies to feature these guys in the 21st century. Just a guess but NOAH see
Here we are for the final portion of my early JWP project. We'll be looking at the end of 1991. The dates are not evenly spread out but this is what I wanted to see based on others recommendations and my own preferences. There is more out there like the Cuty vs Scorpion stuff from the fall that I could do without. Anyhow, let's begin!
Harley Saito vs. Rumi Kazama (05/12): Wow! I was impressed with what they were able to do in an under 10 minute match! Lots of stiff looking kicks, good bits
I'm doing a mixed up March type thing so I'll be getting back to JWP 1991 next week. For this week, I wanted to follow up on another little project Muto's AJPW. This covers 2001-2011. As you may know, I did a look at AJPW in 2011 sometime ago and was really impressed. It's not the Baba era but has its charm and quality wrestling. That along with post Muto AJPW made me question my preconceived notions about the 2000's All Japan. Generally speaking, I think most people skip over it entirely except
I'm back with JWP 1991. Thank you to the folks who have posted these matches online. I've got the dates in an irregular order but you still be able to find these for your own enjoyment. Hopefully you find something you'll want to check out. Let's get going!
01/06/91: Miss A vs. Itsuki Yamazaki
A great bout pitting veteran technician vs the young powerhouse. I think they told that story wonderfully. Yamazaki's leg work on A/Dynamite was masterful. A eventually found the opening she needed
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
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
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
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
This is a project I wanted to do for a good while now. When I decided to watch all Joshi this month, this it the one I've been itching to start all month. Jetlag has done an awesome overview and Quebrada.net's reviews are really great as well. I've used those as my guide. As Jetlag has said, so little is talked about this era. I hope to add a little bit to the conversation. For reference here's Jetlag's Microscope topic: https://forums.prowrestlingonly.com/topic/39849-early-jwp-pre-splitinterpro
Joshi January continues! This little post started out about Momoe Nakanishi and me reviewing a DVD I got 6 years ago. Anyway I was watched a couple matches and realized that the real hero was Kaoru Ito. Well shoot, I'm down with that. She's a great wrestler that unfortunately doesn't get the love because she was pushed at the tail end of AJW after many of the stars left. But Ito made the absolute best of it and had some fantastic battles. Here's just a sample from 2000 & 2001.
Kaoru Ito
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
It has been quite some time since I watched 1980's AJW. After getting a taste of a few of the classic matches of the 90's from a couple Best of the 1990's compilations, I was bit by the Joshi bug. I wanted to see what all of talk was about with Crush Gals. I have always been partial to wrestling from the 80's and I wondered some 14 years ago if it was as good as the stuff from the 90's.Well hells yeah it is! Just as wrestling changed for men's wrestling so did women's wrestling 90's. So as long
I was psyched to find this inter-promotional JWP show online. It's from right around the era I want re-explore. Having watched a ton of full Joshi shows, I skipped the following:
Kumiko Maekawa & Rie Tamada vs. Fusayo Nochi & Hiromi Yagi, Command Bolshoi vs. Bolshoi Kid, and Cutie Suzuki vs Takako Inoue.
Chigusa Nagayo vs. Mayumi Ozaki - Well, that was a war! I wasn't quite sure what to expect but the hate in this match was off the charts. It wasn't the quick burst of hate typ
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'm going to organize this years matches by what's 2010's AJPW and what's not. Sorry for some inconsistency with the labeling of dates & promotions. I hope this helps folks find cool stuff to watch as well as stir up a little interest in going back and reading old blog posts. Its my version of Match of the Year and other year end award type stuff. Let's do the superlatives first.
Best Surprise
I think something I would say to start with would be the high quality of wrestling AJPW
Hi folks! Going through my notes and reviews while working on my year end Best Match Watched stuff and found a bunch of AJPW stuff that I never posted. Very interesting stuff. I'd normally do pictures but I think I used some of them from my last wrestling art show thing.
Giant Baba vs Stan Hansen (09/08/83): PWF Title match. For a Baba match, this was pretty good. He and Hansen work well together and work with Baby's limitations. Baba also pushed himself a bit. Perhaps I have seen this bef
This year has been relatively an AJPW focused year. So I thought I'd squeeze in a quickie spotlight on my favorite NJ wrestler, Tatsumi Fujinami. No real theme or anything beyond matches I found online that looked cool
Bob Backlund vs Tatsumi Fujinami (NJPW 01/01/82): Man, this is 40 almost 41 years old. Anyhow, this is 15 minute technical duel and I loved it. Its the type of match (and time) where they escaped or reversed holds rather than use rope breaks. This could have gone on much long
It's about the end of the busy season at my job. My eyes and brain are fried. I've got a quickie review in mind but in the meantime I thought I'd write something up. One thing I have been interested in talking about is my perspective on wrestling and how that effects my reviews.
I try not to do work rate reviews. I'm not trying to give you a play by play of a match. I'm past the phase of nitpicking every match to see if the arm work leads to something. I've out grown the idea that selling
Welcome back! Another Big Japan show from 2007. This is another DVD from Highspots that they no longer sell in the U.S. Its listed as BJW #134 & #135 (07/08/07) but I believe it is episodes #132 & #133 if that'll help you locate it elsewhere. Let's begin!
Hiroyuki Kondo & Onryo vs Men's Teioh & Shinobu - clipped comedy match mainly. Really cool finish.
Takashi Sasaki vs Ryuji Ito: 300 light tube death match for the title. Sasaki and Ito do not disappoint at all. A great
I got this DVD from Highspots when they still had Japanese wrestling. They've got this labelled BJW #118 & 119 (03/14/07) . I think the correct numbers are episodes #116 & 117 episodes. In any case, this is for for the 03/14/07 show.
Takashi Sasaki vs Yuko Miyamoto - Scaffold and Light tube death match for the title. We get a really nice build up and back story to Miyamoto etc. I don't speak Japanese so other than the match footage, I fast forwarded much of this. But you can tell t
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
Let's go back to 2011 and see what I missed the first time around. I'll post the links to the Gaora YouTube videos for your enjoyment:
Minoru Tanaka vs Kaz Hiyashi (01/02/11): This was a very good junior battle with two legends of the style. I think they have something better in them but this was still pretty good stuff. My issue is with how they're not really transitioning control from one guy to the other. It does seem a bit like 'your turn-my turn' and I'd like to see a reason why Minoru
Here we are back in 2013 -again! Some kind soul posted these since my 2013 project wrapped up. I stumbled upon them will looking for 2014 stuff. This is some really nice wrestling so let's take a look!
Minoru Tanaka, Koji Kanemoto & Hiroshi Yamato vs Atsushi Aoki, Yoshinobu Kanemaru & Kotaro Suzuki (04/29/13) : Thought maybe I saw this but, no! So this was from the 2013 Champion Carnival final night. First things first, kudos to the dude who gave Aoki the double birds right in his f
