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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 no inherent excitement. Plus they don't really generate any energy with a good story or neat moves. I think a Kakihara vs Kea match would have been good to very good. This was just OK. Hiroshi Hase vs. Masanobu Fuchi (01/02): A little bit of comedy but still some quality wrestling. Of course we only get a portion but I would have liked to see more of the early stuff. Glad to see Hase. It's been awhile! Masanobu Fuchi, Nobutaka Araya, Shigeo Okumura & Toshiaki Kawada vs. Masahito Kakihara, Mitsuya Nagai, Mohammed Yone & Taiyo Kea (01/10/01): That's a lot of 0's and 1's Anyway this is a really good elimination Tag endurance match. So it's a series of different tag matches with the man who gets pinned/submitted must leave and a new team member replaces him. Blah blah it's cool. The teams don't make a bunch of sense to me. But maybe Kea's team has something to do with the above tag match? What keeps this from being great is there's just not enough Kawada and too much Okumura (who isn't bad but isn't Dangerous K). Also there's probably not enough Kea vs Kawada either. You want to see your big star captains square off but it really doesn't happen. I don't think there's any meaning behind this bout other than a New Year novelty match. I saw the full version (40+ min) but there's a clipped version too. You would be OK watching the clipped one I think. Kakihara and Fuchi doing some shoot style stuff and Fuchi face punching Nagai were my favorite parts btw. Masanobu Fuchi & Toshiaki Kawada vs. Johnny Smith & Taiyo Kea (01/14): 24 minutes long and shown in full on the New Year Giant Series commercial tape. Very good tag match between AJ's's top old school teams. It didn't really seem to have a fourth gear but every one looked pretty good nonetheless. It was a very hard fought match. They are definitely giving Kea a push and I'm all for it Taiyo Kea & Johnny Smith vs. Steve Williams & Mike Rotundo (02/24) : We only get the the last third but it's quite enjoyable stuff. In this format, this would be a very good TV match in the States at about 7 minutes shown. Taiyo Kea vs Tenryu (03/03): Sadly only 8 of 20 minutes are shown. So I'm hesitant to say this is great but I really liked what was shown. Nice little touches from Tenryu and Kea. Kea definitely is showing he belongs in the upper echelon of AJPW. Quality strike exchange here where you can actually hear Tenryu's punches landing! Toshiaki Kawada vs. Mitsuya Nagai (03/03): This is exactly what I was looking for. Nagai & Kawada do an excellent shoot-flavor match. The hit the crap outta each other. Nagai whiffs on a head kick and grazes Kawada on the next and wisely never does another. This is in the first minute and the recover wonderfully. Ultimately it's one of those younger guy showing he's got toughness by withstanding the vet's attacks. Since they work this like a MMA type match, Nagai is still getting shots in and is hurting Kawada without necessarily doing anything significantly damaging. I don't want to say it's great but yeah it's pretty damn close to being great. More singles matches like this please! Taiyo Kea vs Tenryu (04/11): 8 of 17 minutes shown. This was also really good stuff. It didn't have the great strike exchange but they have good chemistry. I think if we see the full thing we might have some added drama here but as it is Taiyo trying to take on the legend Tenryu yet again. Dr. Death & George Hines vs Satoshi Kojima & Hiroyoshi Tenzan (04/14/01): A great keep it simple stupid match. About 15 minutes of action where the crowd was going nuts seeing the NJ team in an AJ ring plus taking on Dr. Death who was still pretty awesome. Having watched a good deal of NOAH stuff at this time...man it would have been sweet to see Dr. Death vs Akiyama in a title fight. George Hines is pretty good too...awesome drop kick and lariat...wouldn't mind seeing more of him. Also recommend Toshiaki Kawada vs. Keiji Muto (04/14/2001) as it's a great match. So on those two matches, A pretty good night of wrestling. Nobutaka Araya & Shigeo Okumura vs. Masato Tanaka & Hideki Hosaka (05/20): Holy crap! ECW/FMW era Tanaka was in AJPW! And they showed the full thing! I would have liked him up against a couple bigger status guys but Araya & Okumura step up and have an excellent showing. It's not ground breaking but it's great stuff... especially if you're a Masato Tanaka fan. This was a treat! Taiyo Kea & Hiroshi Hase vs. Tatsutoshi Goto & Michiyoshi Ohara (05/20): Sadly 5 of 18 shown...and I'm not sure we need 18 minutes of Goto & Ohara but this was very solid... brawling in the stands, good action...this felt like a late 70's-early 80's match in the best way but then again we get only 5 minutes. Glad to see more Hase Yoshiaki Fujiwara & Masa Fuchi vs. Mitsuya Nagai & Masahito Kakihara (05/20): Another one that's pretty truncated but it was fun. I'm not sure I wanted to actually see this whole thing but at 5-6 minutes, it's neat. If they did more shoot flavored stuff then I think this could have been something. Should have Part 2 next week! Should have some Gaora footy too. Thanks for reading!

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 originally intended to be completed was actually timely). I found that not only was it good/watchable but it was pretty great. I'm never one to be completionist or do super deep dives...if you've read my blog you know that I watch the stuff that interests me. I favor matches that have wrestlers that I like. And ultimately all of that is what led me here. Post split AJPW has a bunch of Kawada, Tenryu, Masa Fuchi, Dr. Death Steve Williams and even Mike Rotunda. I'm willing to give these a shot. I know from others that there is some quality amongst the junk. The good thing about 2000 All Japan is that the junk is spray painted safety orange with big "do not watch" stickers tacked on the sides. They were booking anyone who would show up for the undercard. I am also favoring tag team matches as these feature the best looking matches. So per usual I am cherry picking and let's get started! Toshiaki Kawada & Genichiro Tenryu VS Stan Hansen & Maunakea Mossman (07/23/00): I am not sure if it's a great match but this is way better than it had any right to be. Mossman gets a big push out of necessity. Hansen can still do mean & stiff. Tenryu is doing his thing. I feel like Kawada is dejected (rightfully so)...like all of this is a step down for him and you can tell his heart isn't in it here...but he still gives a very good effort.. don't get me wrong. And the match is really good and I really dug the last few minutes. Genichiro Tenryu, Nobutaka Araya & Toshiaki Kawada v Johnny Smith, Mike Barton & Stan Hansen (08/20/00): Joined in progress with only the last third shown. It was good at times but also very random feeling with Barton/Bart Gunn especially since he pinned Kawada. Again, Kawada is almost getting punished for staying with AJPW... Genichiro Tenryu & Stan Hansen vs Steve Williams & Toshiaki Kawada (09/02/00): This was actually pretty good especially when Tenryu was in. Hansen was done by this point... he was still pretty good a year earlier with Vader but at least here he no longer seems to have it. It's pretty crazy they wanted these guys to work a nearly 30 minute match. I only saw half so maybe he looks better earlier. Tenryu vs Kawada was great and definitely a prelude to their October classic. Toshiaki Kawada vs. Steve Williams (10/14/00): Half shown, good match but weird pacing as Williams' back or ribs were injured. For 2000 post split, it's worth a watch though. It's different but still good... Genichiro Tenryu vs. Stan Hansen (10/21): Stan is really done here...he's clearly in a ton of pain from the wrestling. It's a good match though because Tenryu works within Hansen's limits. Its mainly chops, punches and other things Stan can just stand or lay there for. Early on they are much more mobile but even at 11 minutes it's too much for the Lariat. He's fighting from underneath the whole match but Hansen is the best at that so this actually makes the match look competitive and real. Satoshi Kojima & Tatsutoshi Goto vs. Steve Williams & Nobutaka Araya (10/21): This is cool...I didn't realize they started the AJ vs NJ stuff this soon. I know they tip toe into it at the end of the year. That's when we get the awesome Kawada vs Nagata tag match in December in NJ. The crowd is going crazy. It's only 11 minutes but man this is fun. Doc is much better than in the Kawada match and he vs Kojima is really good. They have a couple minutes where he looks like the Dr. Death of old. Goto and Araya do their part (Araya being more interesting) and we get a good little match. More Doc vs Kojima please! Masa Chono, Hiroyoshi Tenzan & Hiro Saito vs. Toshiaki Kawada, Shiro Koshinaka & Masa Fuchi (10/21): Very good 6 man match. The NJ team (Team 2000) was actually pretty dynamic and did quite a few moves compared to what the AJ team did. Kawada was the most exciting man for his team which you you wouldn't think since we're used to the bigger stars taking a back seat in these types of matches. In actuality, there was quite a bit of Kawada vs Chono and that is what I wanted. Of course it's only 17 minutes and the middle portion is your punch & stomp variety but it works. This really is preamble for bigger things to come so I was never expecting anything mind blowing. It definitely delivered upon expectations (AJ vs NJ skirmish) and went a little above by giving us some good Chono vs Kawada moments... which I'm not sure we got many more of those. Jinsei Shinzaki & Masahito Kakihara vs. Taiyo Kea & Mohammad Yone (10/28): Only half aired but I really liked what was shown. What's weird is about 6 of the 8 minutes shown was the first 6 minutes... and it was really good. They started working over Kea's taped up ribs and back...then it skipped to the last couple minutes and was over. Kinda a bummer since it was starting to get good. Toshiaki Kawada/Masanobu Fuchi vs Taiyo Kea/Johnny Smith (11/18/00): This is on the Gaora site so I'll share it below. Even they have it joined in progress...very much a theme with the TV as you can tell. But they have most of the match and thank goodness as this is really really good stuff. Kea vs Kawada is fantastic...their kick exchanges especially. Johnny Smith is also excellent... I think Dangerous K is out of his funk by now. I like having Fuchi as his partner because it protects everyone in a business sense. Like a few months ago Kawada & Taue would have eaten this team for breakfast but there's parity with Fuchi as his regular partner. Toshiaki Kawada & Masa Fuchi vs. Genichiro Tenryu & Nobutaka Araya (12/06/00): Great 20+ minute tag match. This is almost like an alternate universe match if Tenryu didn't leave AJPW in '90. Because of the exodus, we get to view this match (as well as the Tenryu vs Kawada singles title fight). They are wrestled almost as if the Misawa era did not take place. It feels like you could draw a straight line from 1988-90 heavyweight AJPW to this. Since I am a big fan of that period, I dug the heck outta this. If you liked their singles match then this is a must see. Fuchi clearly was wasted during the later 90's as he is a face punching, bone grinding SOB still. He and Kawada continue to be an excellent team...again calling back to the early 90's. Tenryu has the young but burly Araya under his wing. There's an interesting balance struck based on size, experience, rank etc. This makes for a really great tag match...everyone had to be beat up by the end of it...like a Wahoo vs Valentine match. Taiyo Kea & Johnny Smith vs. Steve Williams & Mike Rotunda (12/09/00): Oh man other than that one flub in the beginning, this was a very good match. Keeping it simple, keeping the intensity up, yeah this was on its way to maybe being great but they had to keep it short since they're wrestling again this night. Williams/Rotunda are good...surprisingly good in '00. Genichiro Tenryu & Mitsuya Nagai vs. Yoshiaki Fujiwara & Mohammad Yone (12/09): This one almost was missed. It's a little bit shoot style, a little bit WAR...there's nothing to hate here. Maybe there's not the epic Tenryu vs Fujiwara elements you're looking for but Yone & Nagai truly make up for it. Yone doesn't get enough love past some BattlArts stuff and I seem to be the only person who actively is excited to see Mitsuya Nagai matches... which is a shame. Neat little stuff like this is why I comb through some of these long TV episode uploads Toshiaki Kawada & Masa Fuchi vs. Steve Williams & Mike Rotunda (12/09/00): RWTL final. A great tag match with Kawada trying to beat the Varsity Club all by himself. Eventually he's got to tag Fuchi in. But dammit Fuchi holds his own...again we missed out on Fuchi in the mid & late 90's. This is probably the top Doc performance of 2000 where he & Kawada seemed right at home together. Rotunda is someone who I wish we had in 90's AJPW. He's been an excellent addition to the 2000 AJ roster. He's not spectacular but is solid as a rock. This isn't going to make anyone's top RWTL list BUT it's a great improvement from where they were in July...not only that but AJ actually is pretty damn interesting & has a few quality tag teams. I think that's my big take away for this project. The tag team landscape is great... perhaps unspectacular compared with the NOAH guys but the matchups are fresh... nothing feels set in stone, no outcome seems predictable. It's definitely a company in flux. The tag scene (sans Steele & Barton who's absence you might have noticed) is really where AJPW is thriving post split. I would say the only singles match worth watching is that Kawada vs Tenryu classic from October. But there's plenty of tag stuff that has not gotten the love it deserves especially if you're into late 80's AJPW/SWS/WAR like I am. My favorites were: Satoshi Kojima & Tatsutoshi Goto vs. Steve Williams & Nobutaka Araya (10/21) Masa Chono, Hiroyoshi Tenzan & Hiro Saito vs. Toshiaki Kawada, Shiro Koshinaka & Masa Fuchi (10/21) Toshiaki Kawada & Masanobu Fuchi vs Taiyo Kea & Johnny Smith (11/18) Toshiaki Kawada & Masa Fuchi vs. Genichiro Tenryu & Nobutaka Araya (12/06) Toshiaki Kawada & Masa Fuchi vs. Steve Williams & Mike Rotunda (12/09/00) I'm definitely going forward with this to look more at early Muto's AJPW in 2001. Thanks for reading!

For a while, this is everything the Tenryu vs Mutoh match the year before wasn't : actual hatred and intensity, leg work that looked crisp (thank you Kawada for making it seem so) and actually meant something and better selling down the stretch. Kawada is just as terrific as always here, although the regular no-selling comebacks back and forth I know annoyed the old AJ fans back then. Mutoh is also much crisper than during the Tenryu match and demonstrates a lot more heelish attitude too, as he should because he's still the fucking outsider with a title that should not belong to him, which Kawada reminds him in spades by kicking him in the face. The leg work with kneecaps dropkicks gets much more dramatic here as Kawada refuse to let them take him down, meanwhile letting himself open to Shining Wizards, the most copied spot of 2001/2002. This leads to a moonsault when he just can't take it anymore and lays down the mat, but Mutoh hitting his knee on the way down prevents him from covering Kawada immediately. Okay, so now this whole knee business led us somewhere. Some more cool counters incoming, including an attempt at delayed selling by Mutoh who just pops back up after a backdrop driver and runs to ShiningWIzard Kawada again. Well, if Kobashi can do it, why not Mutoh ? He doesn't do it as well (and by that I mean, he just pops out barely even registering the move he just took), but whatever. You gotta wonder what the hell happened toward the end though. I vote on Mutoh trolling Kawada by not going for the powerbomb then doing a miserable failed attempt at... something. Well, he ended up on his head, so no luck for him. Well, the match is great for enough time, despite this awful botch at the end. So, quite the terrific match with its share of Mutoh goofiness which is acceptable or not depending on your personal tolerance for Mutoh goofiness. Mine is high, so I really loved most of this match. Kawada was the glue, of course.

Other Deep Dive stuff Introduction This is a kinda/sorta continuation of my AJPW series from 1995 all the way to the start of 2000, mostly covering the weird/interesting matches that others may have overlooked or simply not known about from surface viewing. I was comfortable with ranking that stuff because I had pretty good experience watching and grading that material, but AJPW in 2000 was WAY different in scope so I really wanted to just watch every single thing possible from those extremely rough 6 months when nearly all of the roster had left and guys like Wolf Hawkfield and Giant Kimala were left to keep the boat floating. This is a era that historically has been spoken of as the company's lowest ever point and one which almost killed it stone dead. Money-wise this is true, but was it really THAT bad in terms of match quality? I'm going to try to find out the answer. This will involve reviews for pretty much every All-Japan match between the first event (the first Super Power Series, which took place on the first of July) to the end of the year. Some have so little footage on them (like legit sub-30 seconds) that reviewing them would be a waste of time, but I'll try to fit in as much as humanly possible regardless. I'll be generally ranking them like this: 1. Great (MOTYC/highlight of project) 2. Good (worth watching) 3. Decent (average quality generally, not a must-watch) 4. Forgettable (don't watch) This is more of a formality so anyone who's skimming these can get a quick synopsis of what to watch and not to watch without having to read through paragraphs. Like with any ranking system this isn't really anything refined, so always try to make your own mind up on a match if you are really that curious about it. ======================= Giant Kimala v Scorpio (01.07.2000) At least 2 Cold Scorpio is still getting paychecks while AJPW burns, lol. This match really isn't that interesting for what's left of it, which is only a couple of minutes. It's a bit of a shame given Kimala did have a legitimately really fun match with Rob Van Dam a couple of years back and this could've been close to that had this been given more attention. It didn't, so erm, this is what it is. Scorpio hits the moonsault but Kimala gets out of the way and hits a running splash for the three count. Impossible to tell if this was good or not, so I'm just going to leave it as inconclusive. RANK: ??? Maunakea Mossman v Yuto Aijima (same day) Kea is the real winner out of everyone on this first event. He's the only fairly big name alongside Kawada/Fuchi to stay loyal and as such, he's gonna be rewarded with a huge push moving forward. This match really isn't a indicator of that though as it's against Yuto Aijima, a really quite crappy worker who inexplicably will end up working pretty much everywhere until getting a retirement match against the likes of Jun Akiyama, Akitoshi Saito, etc. I don't know how he got to that from this, but credit to him for grinding out a career from pretty much nothing. This was essentially a semi-squash as it went three minutes and Yuto more or less got some weak offence in before Mossman ate his lariat and finished him with some kicks + Hawaiian Crunch. Pretty nothing match. RANK: Forgettable Jinsei Shinzaki & Johnny Smith v Shigeo Okumura & Yoshiaki Fujiwara (same day) Oof the growing pains hurt in this one. This is one of the first shows without the Pillars or basically 98% of the roster, who erm, these are who's left, a bunch of freelancers and some occasional AJPW guys. We only get around about four to five minutes of this on tape and what we do end up seeing is pretty standard. Shinzaki still does all of his spots bit for bit like you'd expect as Okumura jobs his heart out for everyone, eventually falling to the Gokuraku-Gatame submission after two powerbombs off Shinzaki to boot. Nothing to really rank here beyond the footage left over, not enough for a proper rating sadly. Smith and Fujiwara not even getting a look-in bar some occasional brawling is rather unfortunate. RANK: ??? Masanobu Fuchi v Toshiaki Kawada (same day) Kawada comes into this one with a "Fight for Tomorrow" shirt on, so you know shit is real. I always seen this as a middle finger to what NOAH were promising. NOAH was offering this huge, high-budget high-production wrestling, a continuation of the excesses of Kings Road that Misawa had spearheaded during the 90's. In response, these two went out and wrestled a minimalistic, hard-hitting yet simple wrestling match all about Fuchi as the only remaining core from the Baba-era 70's against the next generation. Fuchi is obviously never going to win this and I think he knows he can't, so he drags this down to the only place where that might change: the mat. In a way this is them showing that the days of old (Fuchi's 70's style mat-wangling) simply will not cut it anymore in this new AJPW: they've moved on from the past, they don't need what the Pillars were building at this point. Fuchi tries to invoke the past further more by throwing cheap shots and trying to bully the guy like in those early 90's Tsuruta tags; Kawada's not that guy anymore though. He's not the punching bag that had to struggle in New Gen tags, he's THE guy now and he's not taking any shit from this asshole, so any attempt to skirt the rules gets answered with some pretty good aggression by Kawada. You really feel like Fuchi's whole gameplan has been utterly exposed in the first five minutes and now all he can really do is take the beating that he's had coming to him for a good while. Now as much as I like Fuchi, he never quite is able to get those peak reactions: maybe that's to do with the crowd, exposed to him mostly though his status as a undercarder/Baba six-man tag guy in the mid to late 90's, maybe that's just Fuchi's ring work. Either way, he's not quite got the chops to get this to a fever pitch, something the match really needed. Both men are still great; but there's that missing X-factor to this that just bugs me out when I'm trying to get into it. Kawada's shoot-style flirtations continue with lots of cross-armbreakers, rear naked chokes, etc. It makes for a more fleshed out Dangerous K as opposed to the more generic kick-happy version he can at times snooze into being. The two wanted to show that AJPW's hierarchy of talent was still a thing post-Pillar era and, well, they accomplished that pretty well I'd say. Wild Kawada is put over THIS much yet will only hold the Triple Crown once proper three years later. This is by far one of the better matches of the year and pretty much a must-watch for the era despite lacking that crowd heat to really make it special. Regardless of how weird it seems, this match was essential to establish Dangerous K as the ace and to redefine Fuchi from his earlier work. RANK: Good Masanobu Fuchi v Shigeo Okumura (02.07.2000) Shigeo Okumura! More known for his politicking in CMLL as a agent and talent these days, back here Okumura's just a undercarder that'll do not a whole lot but job in his years in AJPW. Fuchi's chest is still red raw from the beating yesterday by Mr K but he's all up to get the new guys over anyway, what a nice chap. We only get a few minutes of this though so it's mostly Okumura in control until Fuchi manages to impressively counter the guy by catching his arm for a inverted double wrist lock, making him tap-out pretty easily. Not much to say about this bar it being a enjoyable Fuchi opener. RANK: Decent Giant Kimala v Wolf Hawkfield (same day) Clipped slightly: we only see five minutes of this bout in action. Hawkfield scores a top rope shoulder press and works over Kimala until he counters with a running neckbreaker and a rolling senton. He tries to go for the three but Hawkfield is able to kick out, and then counters him when he tries to go to the top rope for some reason. Another top rope move in the form of a generic splash finishes things off. Not the most eventful and barely a match in of itself, complete filler. Kimala's just not cooking with much by this point. RANK: Forgettable Jinsei Shinzaki v Scorpio (same day) Now HERE'S a match worth talking about, and we thankfully get a few minutes to showcase the two. Scorpio looks pretty damn young when you consider what he'll look like in just a few years, but his apparent biggest vice (crack cocaine!) probably had something to do with that. As much as you might want to see a Shinzaki/Scorpio matchup as this really cool matchup between two guys with very innovative high-spots and tricks, sadly this was not it. Scorpio was overshooting on his big spots and Shinzaki was making him look like shit by kicking out of his moonsault at 1 and generally not being very cooperative. Scorpio immediately makes him take a proper 2-count right after for that as a dig. They also botched what I think was supposed to be a Frankensteiner counter to Scorpio's own powerbomb as Shinzaki shifts his weight wrong and they end up badly crumpling as a result. Shinzaki basically just says "fuck that" and rather than repeating the spot he just does his finish for the win. This was....pretty bad, which is crazy to say when you have two typically really reliable workers going at it. Maybe it was the fact they'd never faced off before, maybe it's a language barrier, maybe it was just bad luck. Either way, this wasn't good, sadly. RANK: Forgettable Johnny Smith v Steve Williams (same day) Clipped to be about nine minutes long. Smith has always been known as a fairly mediocre to decent worker as a guy trying to cash in on the British boom in Japan with Davey Boy and Dynamite Kid: he's not exactly amazing, especially now that he's getting on a bit and isn't far from retirement, even if he is fairly reliable in his role. Williams is a few steps from what he was at the start of the 90's and with Gordy. Smith does turn on the gas a bit with a top rope dropkick and a tornado DDT but a sloppy neckbreaker botch doesn't help any. Williams takes over and does a bunch of power moves that look fairly fine. Smith blocks the big Oklahoma Stampede and smartly holds on to his opponent's leg to evade the Doctor Bomb, but Williams just smacks him across the head and smashes him with a backdrop driver anyway for the three. These guys don't work the best together and there are some noticeable botches but this was perfectly suitable for a regular bout, no real complaints. RANK: Decent George Hines & Mike Barton v Maunakea Mossman & Toshiaki Kawada (same day) Cut to around about 6 minutes. Tenryu has been allowed back into All Japan after more than a decade of Baba-induced exile. The seal has been opened, the curse has been lifted. Sadly the negative Karma for this is massive: having George Hines and Mike Barton be a threat to the ace of the company...maybe not worth it in that case. This is also cursed in other ways that we'll talk about very soon here. The action for this was mostly by the numbers, with Kawada being the big dog that Hines and co have to double team to put down, namely with fairly decent work on their part as a powerhouse duo with some tricks in their bag, Hines is quick on his feet and all that. Anyway, the pace is solid, everyone is moving around well, Mossman is slowly getting better and better with every match....and then the finish goes wrong. Kawada goes for his typical Gamengiri to the back of the head and this gets the three count on Hines: it's a bit stiff but hey, that's generally how he does it. Kawada seems a bit surprised by the fact that this is a three count, and even slaps him on the chest afterwards, almost to see if he's awake or not. He's not. Kawada immediately knows Hines is out and the guys come in to make sure he's ok. Kawada even stays long after until Hines gets dragged out by about three guys holding him. So yeah, AJPW is in the pits AND they keep messing up matches! Not a great start. Anyway, from what I seen this was relatively solid for a main event, even if Hines and Barton being at this level is very forced and not at all natural. It's the best they can do without guys like Tenryu, and yeah, they REALLY needed that to change because this was not gonna be enough. RANK: Decent Scorpio v SHINOBI (09.07.2000) Scorpio fights SHINOBI, known for..... well nothing really, he's basically just a indie/lucha undercarder with some random appearances here and there. His match is so forgettable that we skip everything up to the end, which is Scorpio hitting a moonsault and 450 splash for the win. Nothing to say about this one: too short to judge, especially with only a minute of footage. RANK: ??? Jinsei Shinzaki v Yuto Aijima (same day) Shinzaki goes up against Aijima, who was hyped up in prior showcases as a big deal. I think management legitimately did think he'd be a get for them in the long-run with his rugged appearance and admittedly decent lariat, but he just seems like a bit of a bad prospect here. Shinzaki dominates Aijima for the most part, gives him no room to do anything, gets all of his spots in, and then makes him tap out with a modified Red Ink submission. Basically just a squash match but Shinzaki looked great here so I'll give it a bonus based on that alone. RANK: Decent Johnny Smith & Yuki Ishikawa v Masanobu Fuchi & Shigeo Okumura (same day) We miss out on nearly 15 minutes of potential awesome Ishikawa/Fuchi action due to clipping, ugh. We still get a fragment of that in what's left though, with the two battling on the mat as Fuchi mostly can't handle the snappiness and speed of his younger opponent. Johnny Smith does his typical dropkick/kip-up/lariat, but gets caught with a back suplex by Fuchi in a fun alternation of his usual routine. It was cool that they were trying to at least semi-push Okumura as he beat up on Smith for a minute or so with some generic but completely competent offence. He tries for his own top rope dropkick but Smith's been spamming that move for 10+ years now so he definitely knows how to dodge it as well. He beats on Oku with a impressive piledriver into his typically weird bad British Fall: takes way, way too long to do and generally doesn't look that impressive (especially when guys like CM Punk were doing it where it looked even worse somehow) but that's the finish, amazingly. This seemed to be solid but with so much cut, it's hard to judge as anything more than average despite having some pretty nice changes in the formula for these kind of undercard matchups. RANK: Decent Maunakea Mossman & Toshiaki Kawada v Mohammed Yone & Yoshiaki Fujiwara (same day) PWFG vs AJPW? Sort of? It's a bit late for that. We got about 10 minutes of this left and hey, it's actually pretty good! Fujiwara and Kawada do some pseudo-shoot style grappling (alongside Fuji just laughing off K's kicks while sticking on a double wrist lock and socking him in the face with a punch, which was funny) we get some good heat between the two as well that's pretty solid, with Fuji managing to pull Kawada from his usual comfort zone in places. Yone is mostly the whipping boy as the AJPW faithful focus on him and.....yeah it's pretty much just that with some minor Fujiwara interactions as Mossman just goes though all of his spots, hits the Hawaiian Crusher and wins, basically. It's a clear and focused attempt to get Mossman as over as humanly possible as a new star going forward, something that will become very obvious as the year goes forward. Again, the clipping is pretty harsh here and we do miss out on a lot of the interactions that I think would've made this a little bit better than what we seen. I mean even Yone, who I historically just super dislike looked fine here with his leaner look and focus on strikes instead of mindless lariats and bad heavyweight shtick. It's a knowing look into AJPW barely staying afloat and what they were trying to do to fix that; even if it wasn't perfect, these sort of slapdash matches could at times be real solid when you had the proper pieces in place. RANK: Good Ryuji Hijikata v Shigeo Okumura (11.07.2000) Cut down massively to a few minutes! What we see isn't that interesting; just pretty generic opener-level stuff between the two until Okumura slaps on a Octopus Stretch and finishes things off. Man, Ryuji has fell off a fair bit from his Battlarts days if this is anything to go by lol. Not much to say. RANK: Forgettable Giant Kimala & Scorpio v Mike Barton & Wolf Hawkfield (same day) 20 minutes of these four in action? Hmm. Thankfully we only get a couple of minutes left over from the official VHS copy. Kimala is no longer wearing his tribal gear, instead having a pair of shorts that say "K" on them. Dangerous K? Is that what the K means there after all these years? Amazing stuff. Anyway this is just here to get over the impending Barton/Steele duo that'll have some pretty good matches in the future. Now? Not so much. Scorpio bumps like a trooper for the two as they throw in some double team offence; Barton finishes things solo with sloppy stuff, Scorpio flopping after a right hand, few quick Scorpio counters until Barton throws the dude in the air for a big Ace Crusher for the pin. This wasn't really anything super remarkable (especially with the fact that this went on for 20 MINUTES and 80% of that got chopped) but it was fairly enjoyable for what it was and Scorpio is always a treat, even when he's stuck with all of these lumpy heavyweights. RANK: Decent Masanobu Fuchi v Yoshiaki Fujiwara (same day) This was aired with a couple of minutes, was caught in full via camcorder. Fuchi and Fujiwara for 30 minutes of technical work.... in the 2000's doesn't sound like the GOAT match of all time, but this wasn't actually bad at all, outside of some stalling at the start and unnecessary ring work. I love the intensity that goes on here: Fuchi tries to play it cheeky with some toying around but Fujiwara immediately grabs on multiple armbars despite Fuchi's best technical attempts to escape and this plays into the rest of the match, as Fuchi now has to wrestle with one good arm while Fujiwara does some vicious limb work to it. Fujiwara is pretty brutal as well during this, wrapping Fuchi's arm up in the ropes and just not letting go, stomping on it, kicking it, basically anytime he can get his hands on Fuchi, he's working the arm in some manner with some cool stuff. Fujiwara's aggression allows Fuchi to get openings as well: both men struggle with a cross armbreaker but Fuchi is able to roll him up and get some stiff slaps in with his other arm, and manages to get a free leg to grind his face in as well. Not withstanding later when Fuchi's just booting the dude in the face multiple times for the sake of it. Second half has Fuchi slap on a very long STF/leg vine submission, as well as using his free arm to also make sure Fujiwara can't get to the ropes, and when he does, he manages to escape a second attempt with a very good ground to standing transition via a monkey flip as per Fujiwara spots tend to include. Not to be outdone, Fuchi focuses in on Fujiwara's leg, using the ring post multiple times to damage it further. From then on in, Fujiwara limps through proceedings. Latter half has Fuchi and Fujiwara exchange leg and arm holds, with Fuchi getting a really good leg vice wrapped in, even arching for the move itself. Fuchi has his opponent on the ropes a few times but Fujiwara uses closed fists to take back any lost ground, as well as choking the life out of him. Dude nails him with like at least 10 headbutts in a row yet Fuchi won't quit and nails some big slaps. He pulls through a few attempts to make him tap as well as expertly reversing a Fujiwara Armbar into a sleeper hold until the bell sounds for the time limit draw before he could've potentially got the win. This is a pretty well hidden gem: it's not just two old guys beating the crap out of each other, it's also a super basic, albeit very well done technical showcase by two masters of the game really grinding things down into a simplistic rhythm. Solid showcase that you could only really get out of this weird age of All Japan. RANK: Good Steve Williams v Mohammed Yone (same day) Steve Williams could still bring the goods and this further shows that as the case despite no longer being the more workrate/smark favourite from the 90's. Yone still bumps big for the guy, but Steve's got a good niche as being a slower heavyweight that just throws people around, even if it means he has to eat a few shots in return to get his hands on someone. Him hitting Yone with a Dangerous Backdrop on the turnbuckle was a surprisingly safe spot for how impactful it looked, especially with Yone selling it like he just lost consciousness right afterwards. There's some good struggle between the two as Yone tries using a lot of speed to counter and escape, yet he's still pretty much helpless to deal with Williams just running him over until he can finally put the spirited lad down. Good sprint of a match; you have to wonder what Yone would've looked like if he hadn't went to NOAH. Would he have been a bigger deal? I'm not sure, but these sort of matches were way more engaging than what they had him doing. RANK: Decent Jinsei Shinzaki & Yuki Ishikawa vs Maunakea Mossman & Toshiaki Kawada (same day) Reviewed this already. RANK: Good Masanobu Fuchi v Shigeo Okumura II (23.07.2000) Few minutes left on this (namely the beginning and most of the middle) but for what it's worth I thought it was better than expected. Mileage for Fuchi can vary but I thought he did a decent job working the opener as a experienced and confident vet, easily countering a German suplex into a double wrist lock transition and generally keeping control over the match. Despite Okumura getting over with some spirited resistance he's eventually put out with a limp flying kick and big backdrop.....or so you think, but nope! He kicks out of that as well. Few limp dropkicks into a second huge backdrop finally finishes things off proper. Real nothing match that was mostly a Fuchi squash, but hey Fuchi's pretty good at those after about two decades or so, who knew? Okumura bumps super well for the guy and it gets to the point where even Fuchi was checking up on him post-match to see if he was alright, which says a lot all things considered. RANK: Decent SHIIBA v SHINOBI (same day) Clipped to about 2 or so minutes. I'm gonna be honest I have no fucking idea what was going on here, it's just a cut into SHIIBA doing a big elaborate drum routine while SHINOBI looks at him and kicks the drum over like a uber heel. It felt like a weird DDT skit where you just have to go with it because it's all meta-jokes that you'd only know if you were Japanese, it's silly. Cut to SHI doing a weird leaping headbutt off the top rope and things seem interesting...but then the two just have really sloppy exchanges that pull you right out again. Things finish quick with a snappy SHI modified German suplex, pin-fall and we're done. This would be SHINOBI's last proper match as this German suplex was seemingly botched/he got injured earlier, suffering from what appears to be a shoulder injury which pretty much ended his career bar a final battle royal appearance he'd do next year before vanishing. I'm not going to pretend like he was any good, but no one likes to see that in a wrestling ring. Pretty sad and weird end to All Japan's original experimentation with lucharesu (though Ryota Chikuzen will do a 2001 tour of the company with the SHIIBA gimmick, it's the last we'll see of it). Can't really rate this knowing what was going on here. RANK: ??? Giant Kimala v Yuto Aijima (same day) ...yeah this stunk. I'm not going to pretend like these two actually had a five star classic, that's just insulting your intelligence. They still showed about 4 or so minutes of it though for some reason. Kimala is gassed up but still bumps and jumps for Aijima's stuff fairly reliably until he lands a flying clothesline. Kimala lets loose with shitty forearms before hitting a splash into his signature rolling senton. Also not enough, he then gets the crowd hyped for a classic Kimala splash that gets the fall and the match. I mean it wasn't terrible or anything but good lord it's sad seeing what used to be one of the most acclaimed companies in the world stick matches like this up for paying crowds, rough times. RANK: Forgettable George Hines & Scorpio v Mike Barton & Wolf Hawkfield (same day) 5 minutes left on this one and it's the first actual decent outing of this entire card, who knew? Scorpio is doing sick spots as per standard and the beefy Barton/Wolf pair are starting to get a grove on together as a unit with some custom double-team moves for the occasion. Hines almost fucks up bumping for a double flapjack as he doesn't keep his back straight, almost going headfirst into the mat, yikes! Nice double top rope move as we get a Wolf splash into Barton elbow for another broken up near fall. Hines and co decide "nah we can do a cooler version" and we then get a Hines diving headbutt into a Scorpio 450, which was pretty damn flush and way too cool for a All-Japan undercard. Finish is amazing: Scorpio is out on the apron, Bart misses a lariat and gets hit with a forearm to the back of the head. Scorpio flings himself off and gets hit with a Barton Ace Cutter out of nowhere! Actually amazing to see a Orton-tier spot involving a cutter before he was even a wrestler lol. That's the finish of course, and wow, this was quite good. Granted there's next to no selling and it's almost all spots, but shit I would've liked to have seen a bit more of this given how well everything was going here. Solid stuff. RANK: Good Johnny Smith v Yoshiaki Fujiwara (same day) We only get a few minutes of this and my god it was probably the best Johnny Smith has looked in years if ever. I mean it's Fujiwara, expected, but these two just clicked in the footage I seen of this, it was unreal. Smith struggling for the back to snap on some brutal German suplexes, Fuji furiously trying to get on a submission or even to slip away onto the ropes....like it was super well done just to build up a simple move, the levels of struggle involved were really well produced. Fuji had zero escape as Smith shifted weight and used his legs to make sure the leverage never went Fuji's way, so he was kinda stuck and had to turtle for his life. It's understandable why Smith would be so relentless given his opponent could snap him in any other angle, just wish we got the build-up for this so it would mean more. Smith hits a second German and shoves his forearm in the face of Fuji for the near fall. He tries for a top rope dropkick and hits it for the usual kip-up, but Smith's a dummy so instead of going right into more suplexes he tries for a lariat, because that's how his routine usually goes, right? Big mistake. Fuji grabs his swinging arm for a easy namesake armbar and a equally easy tapout. Fujiwara is such a dick post match, smiling like he was never in any trouble. Anyway this was a few minutes of some solid wrestling. Do you know these two ALSO had a 30 minute time-limit draw next year....and that it wasn't filmed at all? Sigh. If Smith had these matches properly recorded by anyone he'd probably be a top 200 wrestler by now. RANK: Good Jinsei Shinzaki v Steve Williams (same day) Super rare match here, and it shows: this is just seven minutes of what was a 15+ minute bout, pretty severe clipping there. Both guys start with stiffing each other with some pretty hard strikes, and then Williams dumps Shinzaki outside with a gorilla press, which looked pretty nasty as he'd slam on his side on a nearby table. Match later picks up with Shinzaki knocking Williams down with a few Enzuigiri attempts. He tries to fall up with a shoulder press from the top rope but it's pretty obvious that Williams isn't going to be tagged by it by how long it takes for the setup lol, and he dodges and gets a Doctor Bomb off for a close two. A powerslam doesn't get the job done either. Shinzaki reverses a Backdrop attempt into a close pin, but Williams overpowers and goes for another: Shinzaki gets up almost at once afterwards but flops to the ground, which looked pretty silly. I get this spot is supposed to be dramatic and one based on someone essentially pushing their body with raw fighting spirit, it's just that the actual application of the spot has almost always looked really stupid, and Shinzaki doing it here was pretty much just as if not worse given how he was doing it. A last Backdrop and a scary looking bump into Shinzaki's neck ends the match. From what I've seen, both guys were pretty gassed throughout the match that was shown, which seems to imply that the cut footage was probably a lot of downtime and rest spots. Either way, it's near impossible to grade this with how little we do see, but the action of what was shown was fine, so I can't really grade it beyond a average rating. Table spot was crazy though. RANK: Decent Genichiro Tenryu & Toshiaki Kawada v Maunakea Mossman & Stan Hansen (same day) Mossman still comes out to his old theme but with a new hairdo and all black gear it's clear his impending push is coming in more than one way. The people want to see Tenryu...so we get Kawada and Mossman doing amateur wrestling for a few minutes, of course. It's not bad actually but definitely not what the fans want, though a fairly fiery striking exchange gets the crowd a bit more interested. Hansen even at this point has these great little tendencies: when Tenryu matches in and starts throwing shots to him on the apron he doesn't just sell a bit and then reset, he gets in there and starts just throwing hands back like you would in a actual fight. We even get Hansen headbutting, which he sells wonderfully afterwards because, you know, headbutts hurt on both sides in a actual fight. As I said, Hansen's just a supreme little things worker, even with his back wrecked beyond belief and a near incapable ability to bump he's still able to play with the crowd here as both a hard-hitter but also a old cowboy riding with little left in the tank, spending most of this on the backend of beatings and having to use every little scrappy trick, dirty or otherwise, to survive. Tenryu comes in to beat up Mossman during a fairly awkward sequence with Kawada and they do quite well; Kea has talked about how Tenryu was one of his best opponents and teachers, showing him about how to pace himself during wrestling matches, intensity, etc. You really get that from here as Tenryu eats lots of hard shots from the younger opponent but always answers back with his own, really dragging any advantage out and hooking the crowd big when it does happen, rather than just going tit for tat over and over ad nauseam while the crowd just sits and watches. Hansen gets his signature outside brawl and throws sick punches, always a treat. The middle is mostly a control segment with Kawada doing all of the selling, so as you can imagine this was quite solid! Mossman even gets some good fire scrapping with him on the mat, though can't get a win despite even hitting his greatest hits. Tenryu runs in for some nasty shots, Mossman does the spit sell for some chops in particular that just look rough as anything. Brutal German suplex from him thanks to some Hansen assistance, he teases another Smasher on Tenryu before getting double-teamed. Road to finish has Hansen interrupt a 53-Sai but get wrecked off a great double team kick combo but just manages to recover to tag Tenryu off a Western Lariat, which balances the books and more or less leaves Mossman by himself. A fresh Kawada comes in to pick off Mossman and despite some spirited exchanges the latter is just way too fatigued to do much about it; he has no strength left bar kicking out and no selling a few times before a powerbomb firmly stops him for the pin. This is a great tag match that firmly puts over Mossman as a rising star, but also showcases everyone else in their respective roles, with Hansen still being a threat alongside Kawada as ace and Tenryu as his biggest challenge to date. The pace is kept strong despite some messy moments and all in all it works for what it tries to do. It's not a match you could stick tons of GIF's on, but it is one that you can watch a few times over and appreciate the amount of detail that the four try to work in. RANK: Good Masanobu Fuchi v Yuto Aijima (20.08.2000) Oh boy my favourite, Aijima matches. Sigh. This was Fuchi trying to carry this lump to something and succeeding somewhat, even if that something was rather boring. Fuchi dominates with basic unimpactful work (AKA stuff this guy can't botch or muck up) Aijima gets up to do a powerslam and a lariat before Fuchi slams some great backdrops to make the dude look like ass before tapping him out with the vintage rookie-killer, AKA the single leg Boston Crab. Nothing opener that was mostly there to showcase Fuchi in his new role as rookie stretcher. RANK: Forgettable Damien 666 & Halloween v Super Calo & Super Parka (same day) This is shown in a dramatic and super edited way, so the amount of actual match we get out of the whole slice is pretty small; just a few cool spots and that's around about it for anything worth mentioning from myself. 666 does a cool double springboard arm drag, Halloween lands a big double dropkick, but Calo is able to steal a win with a top rope Frankensteiner on Hallo to get the fall. Post-match has M2K show up to talk trash to build for their mini-feud to come, thus starting the beginning of more lucha stuff being involved with All-Japan cards. Nothing much else to add, it's more or less a competent lucha spotfest for what was shown. RANK: Forgettable Sabu v Shigeo Okumura (same day) Basically a typical Sabu match, so tolerance varies depending on how much you like watching those. Sabu was also working this at half-speed as well, kinda just waiting to do his spots. He smashes his neck off the guardrail when he misses a chair-assisted plancha to the outside and Okumura takes over with headlocks and lumpy WAR-style offence, so forearms and slams mostly. There's a cool (ish) spot where Sabu dodges a chair swing by sliding his legs between Okumura to trip him up before then doing a shitty Arabian Skullcrusher that he fell basically ass first on; you can hear him groan afterwards if you don't believe me. Good Triple Jump Moonsault gets a near fall, Sabu is too occupied with chair arrangement to notice Okumura recovering and trying for a superplex, but failing. Sabu grabs the chair for a fucking vicious shot to the back of Okumura's head before finishing things with a Arabian Facebuster for the finish. As I said, if you love Sabu shit then this'll work, but even then it's a fairly low-end Sabu performance with a generic baby-blue Okumura, so you know he's getting jobbed out and...yep, he does. RANK: Decent Genichiro Tenryu, Nobutaka Araya & Toshiaki Kawada v Johnny Smith, Mike Barton & Stan Hansen (same day) This almost felt like a cool 90's All Japan main event bar Araya and Tenryu being here. Also cool to see more of Hansen's last months working, even if he doesn't do a whole lot. Araya is cool with his moonsaults and fat-guy work, even if he's by far the weakest link here. I don't get Smith no-selling a full on lariat to do a German suplex though, seemed awkward looking back at it. Hansen can't work for longer than maybe two minutes or so by this point and most assuredly can't bump big, but he uses that smartly to lead into the other big guys as this huge old vet that can knock people around and takes a lot to properly put down. Him and Tenryu bring the hate with scrappy stuff, but it's arguably Barton with his sharp strikes that gets more out of the same exchange, putting him over by having Kawada need to assist to allow Tenryu to get the advantage against the big puncher. Him and Kawada do this awesome double Enzuigiri and Kawada leads with his usual mannerisms, inevitably having to eat the bumps when Barton digs out of the hole with a cutter and forcing everyone to get in as a result. Hansen strolls in to deliver a sneaky Western Lariat to Kawada during the commotion, allowing Barton the upset with his gut punch and powerbomb to steal the win over the guy in one of his first big victories. Not bad! Everyone here mostly is on B-show mode, so we got sneak peaks at feuds and matches but not a lot of substance, especially with Kawada barely showing up until the very end. I definitely think this is one of the weaker main events at the time, namely because of how many people are here who are either limited, out of their prime, or just not capable of a great showing at this point and time. Heat was definitely solid, it just didn't translate into much worth talking about. RANK: Decent ========== end of part 1

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Another year, another thread. Just managing to finish 1980 is a milestone I initially wasn't 100% sure I'd reach but it turned out to be a good starter year to find my footing on a project like this. As I delve further into the decade the task only becomes more daunting as more promotions have more footage exposure, and the sheer quantity of matches is about to explode in a few years. But that's a problem for another day. For 1981 I'm thankful that we seem to be getting more matches from the Mid-South Coliseum, AWA footage takes a big jump, by the end of the year we have both Mid-Atlantic and Mid-South TV, and the Network has finally started uploading Championship Wrestling episodes. On the down side, WCCW footage doesn't seem to take off until 1982, I only have one Puerto Rico match and maybe no Lucha matches at all lined up in my watch list, so will have to wait until future years to begin on those. Just as a recap for anybody who actually cares, I try not to go too deep in the play-by-play of each match, but I'll cover the key moments for context and it helps my memory when I go back and look at my reviews, otherwise I try and focus on the individual wrestlers, their performances, and how that weaves into a general GWE discussion. I know not everybody does star ratings, but for me it helps just demarcate stuff into general tiers. I'm much more picky and granular at the top level, so I do quarter stars for those that I think are 4 stars and above, but otherwise I just pool matches into three tiers for simplicity: 1 star = not good, 2 stars = fine, 3 stars = good. January 1981-01-XX AJW Mimi Hagiwara vs. Lucy Kayama Japan ★★ It’s been a long while since Hagiwara made tape and it felt like she’d put it all together here a bit more than her last time around. There weren’t so many dead spots where she seemed a little lost. I can’t say that she made a strong impression on me though, she still just feels a bit like the pretty girl of the roster that the guys come to see. And there certainly were some leering looks from the front row for this one. Kayama herself appeared decidedly older here despite it only being a few months since her last taped match. She definitely looked more mature. I’m not sure what effect this’ll have on her work as I thought one of the most endearing qualities she had was how her Bambi-ness made her offense feel more earnest and made her eminently more rootable than most of the roster. If she loses that moving forwards then I’m not sure she necessarily has the tools to compensate. She still has a beautiful looking neckbreaker though which she pulled out a couple times here. The match itself was completely forgettable really. Not a good sign when the most notable event was Hagiwara braining Kayama with a giant yellow melon that one of the commentators had inexplicably brought to ringside. It went the full 20 minutes for a time limit draw, but I can’t really remember any point where either girl looked like they were properly in the driver’s seat and pushing for the win. A real placeholder match that didn’t seem to elevate either woman. 1981-01-XX AJW Devil Masami, Mami Kumano, Wendi Richter vs. Yukari Omori, Mimi Hagiwara, Tomoko Kitamura Best Two Out Of Three Falls Six Man Tag Match Japan ★★ As to be expected with these six person matches, it was all a bit chaotic. AJW isn’t noted for its coherent match structures and this was no different. The face team of Omori, Hagiwara and Kitamura were so nondescript as to almost fade away entirely, and perhaps it shouldn’t have been a surprise to me that the heels won the thing in two straight falls. All the best parts of the action were driven by the heel team. I much preferred Richter when she showed up in the Guam footage from August ‘80 - here her actions felt much more clumsy, but Masami and Kumano displayed their chops and kept this ticking along just enough to make this somewhat enjoyable. Despite being the smallest of the bunch Kumano certainly felt like the team leader and I wouldn’t be hesitant to say that at this point she’s a little further along than Masami as a worker as well, as she does a few little things each match that it feels nobody in the company is doing, especially in terms of heel psychology and characterisation. That said, I would absolutely be down to watch these two partner as a permanent tag team. I feel that they would have excellent chemistry together and I have a hunch Ikeshita isn’t long for AJW. 1981-01-XX AJW Jackie Sato vs. Mami Kumano Japan ★★ Both women had their entourages at ringside, and we know that means the faces will stand around and do nothing while the heels will interject themselves into the match with impunity. Kumano’s main ally was of course Masami, and she liberally interfered, to the extent that this may as well just have been a handicap match. It feels like a lot of Jackie’s run on top over the past year has been booked similarly, giving her insurmountable odds that she, you know, surmounts. From a match quality perspective I think it definitely hurts her matches, as the push to get her over with the crowd comes from booking rather than through her actual performances, when I feel they could have got the same result by just letting her do her thing. Kumano had several neat little moments, like shadowing the referee and using him as a human obstacle, that added some nice flavour to the match, but the aforementioned interferences broke up the flow of the match. Jackie was forced to work underneath for nearly the whole thing, but wasn’t given the room to sell due to just being swarmed most of the time, so it lacked that narrative hook you’re looking for. That said, the stretches when Jackie was on offense just consolidated my view that nobody had better offense than her in the world at this point in time. Things finished with an awkward pin that the referee seemed to botch for a very anticlimactic Jackie victory. This could, and should, have been so much better than it was. Increasingly I feel like AJW are getting in their own way.

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1980-04-18 AJPW Abdullah The Butcher vs. Terry Funk Champion Carnival 1980 Match Osaka Prefectural Gymnasium, Osaka, Japan Card ★★ Can’t say this was good but it definitely was a spectacle. Both guys were pouring blood by the end of it. There was no messing around and they got right to it off the bat. Abby can barely sell a thing but with Terry shrieking like a banshee throughout it was never less than compelling viewing. After the inevitable double count out they even had to cut away because the ensuing attack on Terry was too violent to be shown. This is exactly what you would expect a Funk vs Abby match to be and it was a whole lot of fun, if you don’t mind a bit of blood. I thought Terry Funk was great, as usual, but Abby here was a bit too static to give any real sense of threat or drama, so in a sense it did feel a little bit like two guys getting together to bleed in a ring.

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1980-04-04 AJPW Jumbo Tsuruta vs Terry Funk Champion Carnival 1980 Match Tendai Town Gymnasium, Chiba, Japan Card ★★★ Terry is often described as the Gaijin babyface ace of All Japan but I wanted to see how the crowd responded when he matched up against somebody like Jumbo and it was pretty clear from the start, and throughout the match, that Terry was, in fact, the fan favourite between the two and he generated far stronger reactions at various points. I think they spent far too long on the mat-work portion of the match, and what they did was rather poor. It felt at times that they were completely out of sync and it was hard to figure out what they were going for at various points. Things picked up a lot in the final 15 minutes or so when they just started throwing bombs at each other and we had a strong stretch where things reached a fever pitch. Ultimately they ran out of time and we had the predictable time limit draw. Funk really stood out between these two as he just about did everything you’d want a wrestler to do better than Jumbo here: selling, bumping, facial expressions, great offense. Jumbo’s offense, especially his slam and suplexes, are great but that’s about the only thing he was able to match Terry on. There are glimpses here and there that I find promising but I think it’s obvious, especially when matched up against such a great babyface like Terry Funk, that Jumbo isn’t the kind of guy who’s inherently lovable. I think he could be likeable and obviously he wasn’t a heel that was looking to be disliked, but he didn’t have that loveable quality. Instead I feel like he works best when he leans into being more smug and more entitled. When he transitioned into his Grumpy Jumbo phase it was these qualities more than anything else that really solidified his persona. He was fighting to retain his top spot, he couldn’t believe that these young guys were trying to usurp him and those were the defining characteristics of late Jumbo. Either way, in 1980 he was still more of a bland generic babyface than any clearly defined character and I think it would have served him well if he’d leaned into those aspects of his personality sooner.

Every wrestler here fit their role perfectly. The standouts were Baba with decades of skill and experience, Fuchi with smarts and skill and Tenryu, the god of grump. No one is better than Tenryu in showing strength and weakness simultaneously...other than Kawada and Terry Funk IMO. One really felt that the Triple Crown champ was on the ropes when 1000 year old Rusher Kimura was head butting him but, seamlessly, Tenryu would chop Kimura in the fucking throat and change the momentum. Brilliantly, Fuchi would storm in like Jr. Tenryu that he is and get brutal even on the bully champ. Fuyuki and Kawada were perfect lackeys in this match and kept their schtick simple. This benefitted Kawada the most. Here he looked like the Kawada who would bloom fully in late 1991 and 1992. Godbless Dangerous K. This period of wrestling is full of diamonds in the rough and this is a perfect example.

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Dempsey dominates the early going, with the champion not being able to string together much offense. Nakajima realizes he can’t out-grapple Dempsey, so he resorts to striking and goads him into a skirmish on the outside. Dempsey’s work is smooth yet rugged. His European uppercuts have a little more oomph behind them, and he nearly bent Nakajima in half with a Boston Crab. Regaining control, Dempsey adjusted his game plan of gradually wearing down Nakajima for a more direct approach, going after his opponent’s leg. Dempsey’s dragonscrew leg whips are gorgeous, as he almost bridges backward with Nakajima’s leg while holding onto it. Dempsey hit a rolling Cattle Mutilation at one point, a neat variation on that spot I can’t recall seeing before. He also seamlessly transitioned from that into a gorgeous Fujiwara armbar. I also dug Nakajima baiting Dempsey in by going for a move with his bad leg, only to catch him with an Enziguri. Dempsey provided a little more focus than Nakajima’s recent matches have had, but I don’t love the showtime spot where Katsuhiko poses in the corner. It just feels unnecessary. Nakajima and Dempsey throw heaters, so the late elbow exchange didn’t bother me too much. Dempsey’s brief comeback was also a standout, with his late bridging backslide and Regal Plex dazzling. Nakajima eventually retained with a Northern Lights Bomb. While there’s still work to be done, working with a younger wrestler who hasn’t had time to pick up bad habits did wonders to rein in Nakajima’s worst instincts. Only time will tell if Dempsey will continue to develop steadily, given the wasteland that is NXT, but if he does, he could be something special. As is, this was a quality match to kick off the new year.

Talk about it here.

It's been said before, but parts of AJPW felt pretty old hat by 1999. Case in point: matches like this. Misawa no sells a few moves, parts of the Kawada/Misawa sections came dangerously close to current NJPW elbowfests, and the build and sense of escalation seemed to be lacking overall. It picks up here or there, but it speak volumes to me that 2 minutes before the finish in this match Misawa and Kawada were still working fairly standard exchanges that didn't feel like they were preceded by a 20 minute match at all. It was a pretty stiff match, so even if it wasn't exciting, it was atleast painful. Shinzaki didn't really add much besides a few different moves. He threw a few uppercuts, so I guess that makes him the stand-in for Great Kabuki.

Fuchi the GOAT for being 70 and having a 20 minute match with one of All Japan's brightest and youngest stars. It was also really cool to see 90's prick Fuchi return; cool uncle Fuchi is nice and all, but that was his peak years in terms of entertainment and even here with all of the natural wear and tear he's brought with him you still get that occasional moment of greatness out of the guy that brings you back to those times. Anzai humours the vet with some basic lockup exchanges until Fuchi pokes the bear a bit too much with a cheeky slap to the face and a flash backdrop to try to end the match early for the upset, inviting a big beatdown from Anzai as he essentially runs over the guy with his Jumbo knee and other finishes. I do like how the match doesn't try to pretend that Fuchi is on any big equal footing with his opponent: he's consistently struck down and having to really sell through a ton of work just to get maybe a couple of shots in, and even those aren't really that effective. Consistent great camera shots of Fuchi's struggle as he has to claw himself back up from his beatdowns conveys a naturally very compelling narrative that the crowd took easy to with numerous chants and big heat whenever Fuchi did actually manage to get something out. Was also cool seeing him hit some throwbacks like the Fuchi dropkick and Baba chops/boot. I thought this also really did a great job with how minimalistic it was at times; getting convincingly solid sequences out of exchanging and struggling out of surfboards, getting huge reactions for them struggling over who can bodyslam who, etc. It was a breath of fresh air to see someone throw actual good punches for once as Fuchi gets to do his dirty antics for old times sake. The last third being a battle for survival as Fuchi battles his own ailing body more than Anzai himself, taking consistent running knees and barely able to do anything but kick out. The big finish being around imparting his signature facelock to the younger talent by tapping out to it was especially cool to see. Obviously this is going to be limited by your tolerance for a 70 year old wrestling but in terms of guys his age Fuchi is WAY better than a lot of wrestlers both his age and younger, you can tell he's at least kept himself in relatively good shape all this time given he could still hit the beats here and whatnot. It's less about the workrate anyway, it's all about milking crowd reactions with a beloved talent with relatively little action, and guess what? It worked very well in that regard. Anzai did a solid job carrying Fuchi physically to something beyond what he would do normally, but as a consequence of that he seemed a bit muted by contrast, more as the wall for Fuchi to bounce off and work off than his own standalone personality.

Pretty by the numbers japanese big match but not bad. Sasaki gets the advantage using his power early on, finisher on the floor, some limbwork ensues, lots of stiff shots etc. It's a formula that works and these two are good at it. Sasaki is pretty fly here hitting a big plancha to the floor and really walloping Kawada with potatoes. There is some neck work which ends up not being of much importance but leads to some fun moments. Sasaki cosplays 90s Kobashi by chopping Kawada in the neck and hitting flimsy bulldogs, it also leads to a pretty sick piledriver. Kawada was halfway into lazy mode as he had some nice transitions such as kicking Sasaki in the face when he tried his silly facebuster or slipping underneath for the cheap powerbomb, but he would also just go back on offense at other times. Kind of dumb finishing stretch, but not offensively dumb.