It's that time of year where I like many people look back at the past year and make lists or hand out superlatives My reason for doing this is to provide a guide for people looking for new or different wrestling especially starting out. All the different lists people made helped me either get started in watching old wrestling or helped me decide where to go next. HR stands for Highly Recommended or honorable mention... near classic match, stars denote an all time classic...these are the front
Watching all of that late stage ECW got me interested in checking more IWA Puerto Rico. This period of IWA Puerto Rico is definitely worth tracking down. It's Victor Quinones' development territory for Vince. Paul Heyman was already working with or perhaps for Vince at this time.. which is why there's a ton of crossover between the three promotions plus Michinoku Pro and CMLL. That's pretty darn cool that we get to see it here for a short time! I've skipped reviewing them but Gangrel & Edge
Here's the final post for the ECW Unreleased vol. 1 DVD. This is for the year 2000. Strangely, the DVD has more matches from this year than any other year. It's also not terribly representative of the year as they've avoided Steve Corino as a wrestler... was he doing commentary for ROH when this was released? Or maybe still wrestling with them? But I think he's a really big part of ECW from 1999 until closing. I really dug his feud with Dusty Rhodes for instance. I'm going to start with that.
Daddy done did it again! Watched a bunch of YouTube videos in addition to the DVD... It's 1999 and may be the last great year of ECW so it was tough to keep it even this lean. I'm planning on doing a fan cam 1999 post in a few weeks.
Shane Douglas vs. Taz - (ECW Guilty As Charged 01/10/99 - ECW World Heavyweight Title Match) - They are in big time now. This is a big arena for a PPV and the fan base has changed as the Monday Night Wars era is in full swing. I remember the cool kids in High
I'm not going to go crazy with YouTube videos this time. 1998 is when I started watching so I could really go too far with the nostalgia trip from 1998-2000. So I'll keep things manageable this week A couple YouTube videos to kick things off:
The F.B.I. (Tommy Rich, Tracy Smothers & Little Guido) vs. Balls Mahoney, Axl Rotten, & Tommy Dreamer (Houseparty '98 01/10/98) - OK I'm marking out but this is the most fun I've had watching wrestling in a long ass time. This was an absolute
This is post #3 where I'll be looking at the 1997 matches from the ECW Unreleased vol.1 DVD and a boat load of matches from YouTube
Rob Van Dam & Sabu vs. Perry Saturn & John Kronus (ECW Cyberslam 1997 Feb. 1997) - ECW World Tag Team Title Tables & Ladders Match - An absolute war between the two most innovative tag teams in ECW. Bell to bell craziness... it's hard to tell what was planned and what was on the fly. Expect a few blemishes, this was a great ECW tag title match with
It's the second installment of the ECW Unreleased Vol.1 DVD and we're looking at 1996. As before, I'm adding some things not on the DVD to flesh things out.
Shane Douglas vs. Cactus Jack - ECW Cyberslam 1996: Absolute great match! There's a real grit and intensity to this match. There's no brawling in the stands or crazy table spots. Instead both guys look like they're really trying to hurt each other. This is American wrestling so we don't necessarily get a clean finish... I mean it's ECW
I'm getting back to more of my DVDs. This time I'll be looking Extreme Championship Wrestling or ECW!! E-C-W! E-C-W! Haha! Specifically I'll be looking at WWE's ECW Unreleased Vol. 1 DVD set (along with some YouTube videos to round things out). For a little back story on this purchase, I had gotten vol. 2 a few years after it's release in 2016 or 2017 as I was pretty interested in a few of the matches featured. I bought it used. Vol. 1 I just got a couple years ago new as the price dropped and I
I stumbled on a clip from Madusa's podcast discussing Bret Hart & Curt Hennig wrestling each other. It's pretty entertaining and I think is referring to their '91 Summerslam match which is probably a classic. And this got me thinking about Madusa's time wrestling in Japan. I went through her backlogs to see if there's any reference to wrestling the AJW women or wrestling for AJW. And lo and behold, there were a couple clips. Then that led me to want to check out if she had any interesting ma
Nothing says "Halloween" like two grown men dressing up as skeletons. La Parka is that fun "mom made my costume" skeleton and Mortis is more like you went to Kmart and bought your outfit. Watching all of these matches should hopefully put you in a good mood. Have some candy or pumpkin spiced snacks and check these out
Mortis vs Silver King (01/09/97): Silver King!!! This is a lot of fun. This is probably a little too even considering the size difference and everything but screw it! It's 20
Here's the final post for AJPW 2002. This covers more of the Real World Tag League.
Otani & Tanaka vs Dr. Death & Mike Rotunda (11/27): Half shown but no idea where the other half was clipped out. No matter this was great in this format... absolutely back on track with the quality here. We get tastes of Dr. Death vs Tanaka (Tanaka taking the first real Dangerous Backdrop in a few years for instance). I'm not sure this match would hold up in it's full form since the full match tim
We're back with Part Four of my review of Muto's AJPW 2002. Thanks for waiting! There's a bunch of tag matches this post.
Arashi, Dr. Death, Tenryu, Koki Kitahara, & Masao Orihara vs. Keiji Muto, Hiroshi Hase, Jinsei Shinzaki, George Hines & Kaz Hayashi (08/31): A very good elimination match that was best earlier on. In all fairness, this would have been great if it were a single fall match and kept the pace up. In this form, things dragged on too long with the younger/athletic guys
I'm on the quest of working on my DVD backlog. Clearly I go on internet wrestling side quests. But my main quest, is totally to watch all the DVDs that I blew.. I mean spent...spent my money on. Here I am going to be tackling my Davey Richards American Wolf DVD from Ring of Honor. I got this baby back in 2016 (probably on sale) from Highspots. Davey is one of those guys that I wasn't a giant fan of back in the late 2000's but that's because I never saw him enough. This was during the faction war
Here's the final part of my 1980 NJPW cherry picking expedition.
Kengo Kimura vs Tatsumi Fujinami 09/25: One of the longer matches. Classic Inoki Strong Style technical game-of-human-chess duels. Competitive, non-profit cooperative looking. Doesn't rely upon stiffness but instead counters, reversals, escapes and blocking of moves & holds. There's moments where at first you think they've made a flub but they transition into to capitalizing on the "flub" that it was either planned or the
Kuniaki Kobayashi has passed away recently. If you've read my Tiger Mask posts or my 1985 AJPW posts, you'll find that he's one of my favorites. Hell, even if you go back to my 1988 NJPW posts, he still was having some of the best matches of the year. He's one of those underrated wrestlers that makes his opponent look great. A kind person has put up the following matches so I thought I would give them a look:
vs The Cobra (01/06/84): This was rough around the edges but as as result had a
Here's part # 2 of my 1980 NJPW cherry picking expedition.
Gran Hamada vs Baby Face 04/03: Very good lucha/junior type match. This definitely translates well into contemporary wrestling. The wrestling on the mat was very good albeit more of the sit and stretch variety than the fighting over holds/escapes/reversals like we'd see in other NJ "strong style" junior wrestling. The running and flying stuff was the real showcase here. The only drawback was the finish where it was not really clear
This period of New Japan stuff is quickly becoming some of my favorite wrestling. I think it is more relatable to the modern wrestling fan than AJPW/NWA style. The tempo is faster and there's more action between holds. Or at least that is the case with this high quality stuff. And to be fair, most of the matches here are technically Junior matches whereas the top shelf stuff I'm thinking of in AJPW is heavyweight. Honestly, to me, it just seems like they wanted to separate Inoki from Fujinami. A
I'm currently reading Lion's Pride: The Turbulent History of New Japan Pro Wrestling. I bought this on Kindle years ago but never got around to reading it.
I really dig all of the information about 1970-1980's New Japan. The development of Fujinami & Choshu and their feud. Why the UWF split happened as well as Choshu and company moving to All Japan. Maybe this all feels like an extended Wikipedia article but I enjoy it. I like how the author keeps tying things back to Inoki and his dea
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
