FLIK

Finally got to see this as it got put up on XWT a little while ago and it did indeed rule. Equal parts pure wrestling match, gang fight & all out prison riot. Not the greatest joshi brawl of all time but it's a keeper for the set for sure.

Black Pair is a fairly recent discovery for me & I instantly fell in love, felt like I was watching LCO's moms.....

The majority of that stuff is from Ginetty's 70's/80's AJW comp set (a little might be from Lynch too) and that's just how it was labled originally on there

New Japan had a long standing relationship with WCW and had sent many previous talents over there (Muta, Liger, Sasaki) for long stints. WWF signing a Michinoku Pro indy guy is way more random as fuck...

In the Leilani shoot she talks about how Martin learned the powerbomb over in Japan and tells a funny story of how Martin got pissed at Moolah over something (I forget what) at the 87 Survivor Series so she kept threatening to powerbomb Moolah in the 10 woman tag but Kai talked her out of it. It took me a little while to come around on Martin because Kai had the flashier moves but I really appreciate her work now. And yeah, always loved how she murdered girls with the powerbomb back then.

Just listened to Cornette tell the story of coming in earlier today on 1 of his MLW podcast. Said Bruce Pritchard was the 1 who brokered the deal, it was sold to him & the Bodies as they'd come in, only work tv & ppvs & SMW would get put over on WWF TV. 3 hours before his debut at TV Vince & JR told him about the plans for him to be Yoko's manager which is what they wanted Cornette for to begin with but neglected to tell him until he was allready there.

It was, looking around it got taken down Searching I did find this however AJW TV w Nancy Kumi & Jackie Sato vs Yumi Ikeshita & Leilani Kai http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kr1uKco2uhk Same account has a lot of other 70's/80's AJW with a few other Leilani matches you haven't reviewed The Kumi/Sato vs Mami/Kai match is from AJW's tour of GUAM

Some stuff i'd reccomend that you haven't covered AJW 9/1980 (2 out of 3 Falls) Jackie Sato & Nancy Kumi vs Leilani Kai & Mami Kumano LPWA Wendi Richter vs Leilani Kai 2/28/1991 (LPWA Tag Titles - 2 out of 3 Falls) (Team America) Misty Blue Simmes & Heidi Lee Morgan vs The Glamor Girls 12/29/1991 (LPWA Tag Titles - 2 out of 3 Falls) Glamor Girls vs Rockin Robin & Wendi Richter Might be hard to find, at quick glance, a lot of the LPWA that was on youtube isn't up anymore WWF 2/18/1985 (WWF Women's Title) Wendi Richter © vs Leilani Kai 3/16/1986 Crush Girls vs Leilani Kai & Penny Mitchell 1987 (WWF Women's Tag Titles) Leilani Kai & Judy Martin vs Velvet McIntyre & Angie Minnelli 11/22/1987 10 Woman Survivor Series match 1988 Leilani Kai vs Noriyo Tateno The Jumping Bomb Angels vs Glaour Girls series. The 11/87 & Royal Rumble matches are the most famous but I think they've had atleast 5 or 6 total that are available on tape

Part way through the Leilani Kai RF Shoot interview, especially by the standards of RF shoots it's pretty damn good. A few notable things I took away - She considers the 86 Chigusa match her best ever. Said it was Chigusa's idea to drop the belt to her and they gave her the title so she could take it back to the US as a way to try and get a working relationship going so the Japanese girls could come over to the states & tour. AJW paid for her to go to Hawaii for a month and train to get ready for the match because they wanted it to be really special and Kai droped 20 lbs in the process. Originally was supposed to be close to 60 mins long, they did about 40 and it was cut to 20 or so for tv. - Moolah comes across like the biggest ass hole in the world from the stories Kai tells. Only ppl she has any bad words for were her & Vince Russo - It was Kai & Judy Martin's idea to bring over talent from Japan for them to work with because they were tired of working with Moolah's other girls and they thought it'd be fresh & diffrent. - It was Jimmy Hart's idea to call them the Glamour Girls, change their look and be their manager. When it 1st got pitched to Vince, Moolah tried to weasle her way in to be their manager instead with out mentioning Jimmy at all. A few weeks later they got to pitch the idea again to Patterson when Moolah wasn't around and that got everything rolling. Vince agreed to still pay Moolah to use them but didn't want her being part of the act which pissed her off. - Out of jealousy / spite Moolah sabotaged the JBA vs Glamour Girls feud and basically got the division killed. The original plan was to have the Bomb Angels take them on at Wrestlemania in 88 and drop the tag titles back to them there. WWF sent them over to Japan for a tour so that they could work out a really great, special match for the ocasion. A few days before the tour ended, Moolah called them in Japan and told them to do the title change on the last show of the tour which confused everyone. Turns out the WWF hadn't approved it but Moolah lied and said they did so when Vince & Patterson found out about the title change they were pissed, canceled the Mania match and didn't believe them that Moolah had told them to do it. - Had things gone according to the original plan. After Mania they were going to do more of a talent exchange with other Japanese girls coming over to work with them and more US girls getting tours over there to exspand the division. Between wrestlers, staff & press, AJW was going to have almost 60 people travel over for Mania that year.

Any plans to explore much more of her work OJ? A few years back I started really getting into her stuff and came away thinking she was the best American women's wrestler of her era and someone that doesn't get near the amount of props she deserves.

A few years back I brought up the Matsunaga's being an oversight and also thought the family as a whole should go in. But if just one member had to go in, Takashi was the best choice based off what I read in Meltzer's bio he did on him after he passed away.

Majority of the joshi stars started when they were 15-16 or close to that age range, by product of the time when it was mandatory for them to retire by 26. And even today decades removed from that rule being in effect it's still fairly common for the women to debut in their mid to late teens. Never hear many drug stories but sure plenty of drinking that's just life tho, not wrestling specific...

It wasn't modern day WWE, you shouldn't look at it from that perspective. Things like the champions not bringing the belts to the ring for every match and going months between defenses was just the norm for how Japan was period, All Japan, New Japan and everyone else did the same. And after the initial 70's, early 80's era when they hot shotted all the time, title reigns became significantly more meaningful in AJW and if you paid enough attention it wasn't hard at all to recall the title history or who had held what belt.

APW still runs shows there every month, they anounced earlier today they're having a tribute show for Roland this Friday. It's funny, I probably attended in the range of 50 or so APW shows over the years and have wrestled on 4 or 5 shows for other promotions that Roland's attended but I never once spoke to the man. Ironically, the last thing he ever posted on his Facebook page was a msg promoting the DMW show this Saturday that i'll be wrestling on and he was going to attend as well.

Don't have any details yet but Roland Alexander of APW / Beyond the Mat fame passed away earlier today

Dump's been out of retirement working atleast semi regularly for like a decade +....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFJObNk-VhI 10/18/1996 Tokyo Pro SABU vs 2 Cold Scorpio Scorp comes out dressed as a dime store Max Moon rip off dancing the Macaraina to the Macaraina The match is fucking bad ass too

Loved the story on Austin's podcast that Bruce Pritchard tells about how Doink came about because Borne showed up to a WWF show looking miserable so Road Warrior Hawk started calling him Krusty the Clown then pitched the idea to Vince...

????? Fill me in

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ceWh6UftnY SWS 6/10/1991 Gauntlet Tag match The Rockers vs Power & Glory vs Randy Savage & Genichiro Tenryu vs Haku & Yoshiaki Yatsu vs Ishikawa & Great Kabuki Rockers vs Power & Glory start out and have the best section of the match, Tenryu/Savage vs P&G is real good too, the rest of the pairings atleast have fun moments.

Couldn't agree less. AJW was always built heavily around the pecking order and with most of their roster built around home grown stars slowly moving up said pecking order starting out as rookies. Jr title was for the youngsters AJW title was for the mid carders All Pacific title was for the upper card wrestlers 3WA was for the elite main eventers Same deal with the 3WA & AJW Tag titles It was always really easy to keep track of for the most part since if you followed the product close you knew where everyone stood on the pecking order usually. The IWA title was sort of on the lvl of the All Pacific but was always more of a gimmick belt that wasn't defended that often and was inactive for large periods of time until they bothered to remember it existed. Mostly used as an excuse to give an upper card wrestler something to do for a while or to give an extra boost to a feud/angle. Same deal with all the other short lived belts they had over the years, CMLL Women, UWA singles & Tag, 3WA Martial Arts, 3WA Light Weight, 3WA Midget....

Big renewed focus on the cruiser division + new faces & younger guys getting a push. Years of dominance by the "millionares club" and Russo crash tv make you quite grateful for a Natural Born Thriller push and a 15-20 min Rey/Kidman vs Skipper/Romeo tag match........oh and JASON F'N JETT ....

Don't have the set but wanted to pop in to say this is one of my favorite matches ever. Not a wrestling match, not a fight, but a god damn war of a battle...

Gypsie Joe & A Toddler? Jerry Lawler & his teenage girlfriends? Dory's looked like a walking corpse 75% of his life....minimum. He was like 28 when he won the NWA title and allready looked like he was in his late 40's early 50's by then.

Watched the 2 Tajiri vs Minoru Tanaka matches today Their Battlarts match i'd keep for sure, the BJW re-match is good but nothing special. Bat Bat match is longer, has better action, more exciting, better crowd, etc...