I came across this commercial DVD compilation of the '01 G1 Climax. I was going to just do a small selection but there's too many neat match ups. Since it's a commercial compilation, assume everything is clipped/joined in progress unless noted.
(08/04)
Tadao Yasuda vs. Minoru Tanaka - This was good stuff mainly due to Minoru fighting from underneath with heart and guts. Yasuda is no ring wizard but here he's the bigger, stronger man and he nailed it. I liked it.
Jushin Liger vs Hiroy
The second post is Davey/American Wolves/Steen centric post. So I'm only looking at 4 matches this week. I was going to watch American Wolves vs Bryan Danielson & Tyler Black (Tag Title Classic (Double Feature) 2009) but it's a long ass match. I don't have time for that. I'm not in my 20's...I'll get around to this at the end if I have the will to continue. Seeing as its called Tag Title Classic, I'm not really unearthing anything new, overlooked, or forgotten...which is an objective of thi
I'm still trying to get through my pile of DVDs. A big blind spot is Ring of Honor starting with the HDNet era stuff. I'm going to start with 2009 and I'm going in with the DVDs that I got: Best of ROH on HDNet vol. 2, American Wolf: Davey Richards comp and Best of the American Wolves that was a bonus DVD compilation with Champions vs All-Stars 2011 (pretty obscure place to put a Best of Comp). I think I have 3-4 matches from YouTube. I'm not going to find more...there's way too much material to
Here we are with the second half of 2002 GAEA. If you're new to this project, I am cherry picking what looks to be the very best that GAEA has to offer. This is based on reviews others have given and now that I've watched a good chunk, some personal preferences.
Meiko Satomura vs. Chikayo Nagashima (06/02): Who the fuck is clapping when they trade finishers and no sell them? Do they actually believe it would be a pin? Talk about killing their moves off and not thinking. It makes no damn sen
The time has come when nearly all of the 2002 GAEA matches that I have wanted to watch are up on YouTube! It's been a year and I'm in the middle of another project but dammit! we're getting back to GAEA for Joshi January!
Meiko Satomura vs. KAORU (01/14): Unfortunately only half was shown but it was really good stuff. Ozaki and Police (their toady) were interfering and it really seemed like a handicap match. But it was great seeing Satomura repelling their attacks. A strange outcome given
I'm doing a quickie this week even though I've got some stuff ready to go. I always think about the New Japan Tokyo Dome show for January but - nah! You can get that somewhere else. Let's do an old TNA show instead! 20 years ago there was TNA Final Resolution 2005. If you're getting long in the tooth like me then, 2005 seemed like just a few years ago.
Christopher Daniels, Kazarian & Michael Shane vs. 3 Live Kru (BG James, Konnan & Ron Killings) - Fun but pretty muc
I really thought it would be worthwhile to check out the matches of Jerry Lynn outside of ECW. That's really where I know him from. Since I'm starting to look at ROH in 2009, I'm coming across a few matches featuring the man. It dawned on me that I really dig his work. He's really what holds the best RVD matches together and his stuff in ECW with others was always very good to great. Anyhow, I combed through YouTube, an old review and heck through in ECW match I missed in order to do this Spotli
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
