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
Here we are at the end of the road for 2014 AJPW. We're wrapping up with the 11/29 show which I found online.
Masanobu Fuchi vs. Naoya Nomura -skipped
Takeshi Minamino vs. Yohei Nakajima - Fun indie heel vs babyface match. Just simple stuff but so enjoyable.
Keisuke Ishii & SUSHI vs. Enoshima Man & Ultimo Dragon - I started watching this and it was pretty bland. It was just a generic junior tag match with not much spark. I fast forwarded to the last couple minutes and it n
Well looks like my sample of AJPW for 2014 is going a bit shorter than expected. My disc for 09/28/14 is defective. I'm going to be perfectly honest, this is why I stopped getting stuff from my "Internet Video Provider." This disc was probably from my last or second to last order when half the stuff was either defective like this or just the wrong show (labeled date matched what I bought but what was on there was different). And here it bites me in the ass a couple years later. If you're interes
Part Two and our first combo entry. We start off with a match found online then we'll go over a full show. As you can tell from the date we're skipping ahead a few months.
Jun Akiyama vs. Takao Omori (Vacant Triple Crown Title - 06/15/14) - I guess Akebono had to vacate the title. We get a nice lead in to the match showing the history between Omori and Akiyama. I'm a dork and know it already... it's one of things that makes this period of AJ special. It's as if Akiyama never left and he and
Thanks for waiting on me! If you've followed my blog you know I am easily distracted. I have a real good plan that gets interrupted by something that draws my attention elsewhere. I'm not like this with serious matters but it's something I do with my hobbies. The seasons usually play some part. In the summer, I tend to focus (fixate) on skateboarding. Invariably I'll get hurt or its too damn hot to skate and that's when I make time for other stuff like wrestling. In the winter, I just tend to ge
I haven't been watching anything lately but wanted to post something. I've been messing around with old AJPW footage and flares and distortion from the bright lights. I take whatever halos, prismatic effects, after images or saturation of light that occurs when filming (and temporarily blinding the camera men no doubt) and further manipulate it.
Baba
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Kabuki vs Flair
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The Funker
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
I was really psyched on the Doug Williams match vs Samoa Joe from a couple weeks ago. Williams has been a favorite of mine since seeing TNA in 2007. I remember how it really impressed me with how he used his knees for much of his striking offense. Knee drops, knee lifts and such really resonated with me at the time. Not only didn't you see them very often at that time, Williams used them in such a deliberate manner. It wasn't just one knee drop, it was a myriad of attacks. Its almost like when I
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
This show was kind of a holy grail DVD for me. Well holy grail for a reasonable price. But it is actually rather uncommon to find compared to later ROH stuff. The big draw of this is the main event of AJ Styles vs Bryan Danielson. It was the one major omission in the excellent ROH Year Two compilation. This match completed the trinity of all time classics from AJ, Paul London and Danielson in 2003 - Epic Encounter, Night of the Grudges being the other two. And let me say it again, Paul London w
I got interested in the Atsushi Aoki & Kotaro Suzuki team from watching 2013 All Japan. Their bouts against Koji Kanemoto & Minoru Tanaka are some of the best this year. So I was curious what they were doing in NOAH a year before they jumped to AJPW. Let's take a look!
Suzuki & Aoki vs Nakajima & Kajiwara - (NOAH 01/15/12) - Story here is Aoki is gunning for Nakajima's Jr. Title. Man do we get that. Aoki is like Kawada or KENTA by going after Nakajima every chance he
I very much wanted to call this post "The Champ is Here" but that is the title of Joe's second volume ROH DVD. Today we'll be looking at volume one which looks at Joe's first defenses of the ROH World Championship after defeating Xavier. These are the matches that really put that title on the map and really establish the prestige of that position. You may forget that Low-Ki was the first champ and his climb to the top was greater than his time there. That's OK since Xavier was a project for Gab
Saw this pop up online and thought, what the hell, why not!? Its free and put out there by Impact Wrestling so I'll post it here for you and put my thoughts below.
Roderick Strong & Austin Aries vs The Naturals - Wow ROH tag team royalty taking on a Hardy Boyz type indie team. Its pretty good stuff with Aries & Strong looking best with the Naturals doing their cools moves like a Shooting Star body block to the floor, double team moves etc.
Alex Shelley vs. Pe
I saw a few Steven Regal matches pop up as I was doing my Eddie Guerrero post. A 1996 Nitro match. I wanted to watch it but I'd wisely limited my little project to 1997. Here I found another cache of bouts all featuring Lord Steven Regal from WCW. Most if not all are from Nitro and all are on the 'tube. Let's see what we've:
vs Chris Benoit (01/01/96) - Very good aggressive match. Looked like more potatoes than Idaho. Regal got dumped on the German suplex, it was great! Unique finish too.
Chavo Guerrero vs Masa Fuchi (NWA Int'l Jr. Title, 08/31/83) - Great technical match and while not as crisp as what Tiger was doing in NJ with others at the time, this is the type of great stuff the NJ juniors and especially Eddie & Dean were doing 10+ years later.
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Bruiser Brody vs Jumbo Tsuruta (Int'l Title, 08/81/83) - Slow feeling out process at the start but it was OK because it built into a bloody and dramatic title fight. Two giants of Japanese wrestling go head
I've got a pretty big gap in coverage for end of the year unfortunately. So I'm quoting the prowrestling.fandom Kento Miyahara entry to fill in some gaps for me & you:
"In August 2013, it was announced that Miyahara would be taking part in AJPW's 2013 Ōdō Tournament the following month. On September 9, Miyahara announced he was officially breaking off his affiliation with Diamond Ring and becoming a freelancer. On September 14, Miyahara was eliminated from the Ōdō Tournament in his firs
I've been in a bit of a rut regarding wrestling. My momentum was lost once the weather got nice and I've been skateboarding more. My brain has switched over to "skate mode" but if you're like me it gets stuck on one thing and its tough to get unstuck sometimes. I find that watching old WWF, WCW or TNA helps. I don't know if it's the low expectations or just the familiarity but it seems to work pretty well. I put in my copy of Rise and Fall of WCW and started digging the Eddie Guerrero matches an
Honorable Mention:
Dory Funk Jr. vs Stan Hansen (11/28/83)
Near Classic Matches:
Mitsuharu Misawa & Masahiro Chono vs Kenta Kobashi & Akira Taue (01/10/03 NOAH)
Jun Akiyama, Yoshinobu Kanemaru & Kotaro Suzuki vs Takao Omori, Manabu Soya & Kaz Hayashi (02/10/13)
Jun Akiyama vs KAI (04/29/13)
Suwama & SUSHI vs Go Shiozaki & Kotaro Suzuki (07/21/13)
Kensuke Sasaki, Jun Akiyama & Go Shiozaki vs Suwama, Takao Omori & Kento Miyaha
Now we're back to 2013 AJPW...well Diamond Ring with the two top matches involving AJPW top talent. Its their 08/31/13 show.
Akira Hokuto Produce ~ Women's Pro-Wrestling Special Tag Match: Yumiko Hotta & Nanae Takahashi vs Natsuki*Taiyo & Sareee - Clipped here and there but not much really. Good to see Joshi again especially with familiar faces like Hotta & Takahashi to a lesser extent. The younger and smaller team were new to me but they were a lot of fun. This was fun stuff! H
Let's take the way back machine to 1983!
Shoehi Baba/Jumbo Tsuruta vs Tiger Jeet Singh/Umanoseke Ueda (07/26/83): Before the introductions, Tiger was so enraged that Ueda and young boys needed to hold him back. That's really cool. I miss madman heels in wresting. This was a good match but Tiger's antics while on the ring apron were really the most memorable moments. The final portion when this spilled out to the floor was quite enjoyable but the heels dominated too much. Their offense was b
This is my 250th post and I have the wild idea of going through the top 250 wrestlers as voted on during the Greatest Wrestler Ever project from 2016. I'm not going to rank anyone specifically but am going to give my opinion on the workers and maybe complain a little bit about who's in front of or behind them
250) Koko B Ware - Ah man just remember him from being a little kid but no real memories.
249) Tamon Honda - Probably like a lot of folks I've seen his big matches a multi man ma
Here's a quickie covering a few Ikuto Hidaka matches that I found online. I guess it's all a part of looking for Zero One wrestling matches. He's a guy that really impressed me from my brief foray into BattlARTS and from an ECW match back in 2000 or so. Had ECW lasted longer perhaps he'd be in the mix with Super Crazy, Tajiri, Jerry Lynn, Little Guido etc. and the best Juniors matches on US TV. Anyhow let's take a look at what I found.
& Minoru Fujita vs T. Kuroda & Yoshihito Sasak
Lets keep on truckin' with AJPW in the summer of 2013.
Akiyama & Shiozaki vs Omori & Suwama (2/3 falls 07/28/13) - One week after a under the radar great show, we get this big match main event. The 4 biggest stars in Akiyama's AJ going head to head. Omori & Akiyama friends and rivals but Suwama & Shiozaki is ace vs ace and a build up to their long awaited Championship confrontation. I think I have their Champion Carnival match as the best singles match of AJPW so far. They
Yeah, we're back on track and are in summer of 2013 and the big Wrestle -1 exodus has happened and the AJPW roster is lean and mean. Its Akiyama's Burning stable and a few guys who wanted to stay on like Suwama, Omori, KENSO, Joe Doering & Sushi. From there they are going to have freelancers...you know I think Masa Fuchi is still on as well. And to be frank I'm only going to miss Kaz Hiyashi, Koji Kanemoto & Minoru. They lost some big names like Akebono, Masa Funaki & Sanada but they
