FLIK

God I remember this like it was yesterday, with all the hype promos they gave Backlund to build up his challenge it really felt like a huge deal to me at the time. I always recalled this being a great match, one of the first I think I ever apreciated for the pure in ring aspect. Re-watched it for the first time since it aired yesterday and god damn if it's not just as epicly awesome 17 years later Watched a lot of Backlund the past few days, boggles my mind how anyone could hate that man too.

True but my point is that that's because they took more time to establish it so that it would mean something. Hell, this was sort of the 1st era whear something like this would have even be an issue for AJW/Joshi. Vader was following in the US tradition of decades of "fat guys being body slamed is giant deal". With AJW they never went that route to start with so it's not like Kyoko or Toyota or others are tearing down something that was built up. The Aja's & Bull's of the world wouldn't do it for everyone of course but yeah, if you were a main eventer or even upper mid carder and had a big suplex or powerbomb in your arsenal then it was more or less a given that they were gonna go up for it. Also, by the point of this particular match, Kyoko & Bull had allready wrestled a bunch so it kind of was "old news" to see her toss Bull around since they'd allready established her as someone who can give Bull a run by then. Bull to Vader actually is a good compariosn though since aside from a few minor style diffrences like this, they had a ton in common and I actually think Bull was better at the Vader role then Vader was

I hated that match for the longest but it wasn't nearly as bad as I remembered when I re-watched it a couple months back. The 1st 1/2 is good and the 2nd half was enjoyable as a trainwreck plus, yeah, Sakie being crazy pissed off in the whole way through made for some fun times

I've seen this point come up a few times now and I think it's kind of an unfair complaint, sorta penalising them for not doing something they weren't intending to do in the first place. Ocasionally it would come into play of course but as a general rule the bigger monster type wrestlers in joshi were never portrayed in that "immovable object" type way you see in other promotions, atleast not when they faced off against your upper tier wrestlers. Toyota & Kyoko kind of stand out because they happen to have a more suplex heavy move set compared to most but Bull & Aja & others would bump big for others as well so it's not exclusive to them. You're gonna love 90 & 91, 92 is a "down" year for Bull compared to what she was churning out the previous two Actually, be interesting to see what you end up thinking of Kyoko in 91 too as that year was all about giving her the mega super push and features the big Bull vs Kyoko title match.

Yeah that's about right. Sakie & Debbie were a pushed team and always treated as a threat any time they wrestled the big dogs but pecking order wise they're still at that mid to upper mid card level. Toyota & Yamada were also doing a subtle losing streak/Toyota's the weak link story at the time so this plays into that too. Aja & Sakie beat them in a tv match in Sept actually, though that was mostly Aja being a monster. Sakie as an individual actually was getting the biggest push of her career though up to this point though 92, you could def tell they were moving her up the ranks. Debbie had been with the company full time for around 2 years by now as she ended up getting Madusa's spot as the main foreign girl in the promotion after she left for WCW. She kind of falls into the same catagory as Yoshida around this time, a girl who doesn't have a lot of stuff one would pimp for a best of the year type project such as this but was routinely tearing things up in solid to good mid card matches. Some of her better ones to track down i you want to see more of her work 4/21/1991 Manami Toyota & Debbie Malenko vs Kyoko Inoue & Bat Yoshinaga 10/4/1991 Bull Nakano vs Debbie Malenko (only goes like 5 mins but for a 5 min match it's really enjoyable and I bring it up since you didn't see Debbie mixing it up with the main eventers that often, especially in singles) 11/15/1991 (AJW Title) Takako Inoue © vs Debbie Malenko 12/9/1991 (Tag Leauge The Best 91) Manami Toyota & Debbie Malenko vs Takako Inoue & Mariko Yoshida 1/4/1992 Suzuka Minami & Yumiko Hotta vs Sakie Hasegawa & Debbie Malenko (Sakie & Debbie's debut as a team, similar story to this one with the theme of young mid carders really pushing higher up team) 4/25/1992 (AJW Tag Title Match) Debbie Malenko & Sakie Hasegawa © vs Takako Inoue & Mariko Yoshida (For me I think this may be the best match Debbie was involved in) 4/29/1992 Debbie Malenko & Sakie Hasegawa vs Bison Kimura & Aja Kong 6/27/1992 (JGP 92) Sakie Hasegawa vs Debbie Malenko 7/15/1992 (AJW Tag Titles) Takako Inoue & Mariko Yoshida © vs Mima Shimoda & Debbie Malenko 10/17/1992 (Tag Leauge The Best 92) Debbie Malenko & Sakie Hasegawa vs Aja Kong & Kyoko Inoue Haven't seen yet but her singles matches vs Hokuto & Terri Power in early 93 have also gotten a lot of praise from diffrent people. After this she gets injured and sucked into a black hole disapearing completely from wrestling until they somehow managed to dig her up in 2001 for that one exhibition match in ARSION vs Bionic J. Dave Prazak told a funny story about her contacting him a few years back out of the blue inquiring about making a possible comeback but it never went anywhear since I guess there weren't too many places for her to wrestle in the area she was living in at the time.

K, so i've never actually seen a Jerry Blackwell match. Someone point me in the difrection of a match or 2 that'll show off how great he was, perferably something on youtube or elsewhear that's easily accesable.

Hm, weird After all these years this is the 1st time i've ever heard the story that the wheel actually was rigged. Makes me wonder how the story of it being a legit spin became the excepted truth for so long if that's the case.

I forget the exact number Meltzer gave but their new deal is for something like twice as much as they were getting from Spike. Situations like this always remind me of 2 quotes Terry Funk saying something along the lines of "if you make even $1 more then you spent then you're profitable and a success" and Scott Hall saying something along the lines of "you don't gotta pay me the most, just pay me a lot". Yeah you can boo hoo about how such & such is getting more and "only if" they could too but why bother? They're getting significantly more money, gaining the potential to reach a much larger audiance and by any other criteria you can think of doing better then they were before they had this deal so why not jump for joy over it?

So does it ever bother anyone else when someone passes away and Meltzer will post the headline as something really vauge and open ended that could apply to any # of people???? He usually only does it for older stars or indy wrestlers most people wouldn't immediatly know and it always kind of struck me as a dick head thing to do and in really bad taste to bust out the whole "click here to find out" thing when someone dies. 2 recent examples Former Los Angeles regular passes away Former woman's champion passes away

Never heard that part before about NOAH/Misawa wanting him to open his own school. Story i've always heard from them was that they were just tired of dealing with Roland in APW so that's why they split off and moved down the road (literally as their new school was only a few mins away from the APW garage). Always found it weird that for as close a ties as they had, pretty much no one from their school ever actually ended up getting a shot in NOAH. Bison yeah but he got trained by them when they were still in APW. I thought a lot of guys who came along after they started Iron like Hook Bombery, Apollo Khan & The Thomaselli's would have fit in well with NOAH's jr division but it never came to be. But yeah, Modest got burnt out for a while near the end as he bailed out a fair amount of time before Iron shut down and wasn't even thear for their last show. Course, like everyone he did eventually come back. Last I heard he is/was runnig a new school out in Vegas.

So is the order going 95, 97 & then everything else chronologically from 90 on?

10/5/98 (B-CUP '98 Tournament R1) Yuki Ishikawa vs Mitsuhiro Matsunaga Good vs Evil, Them vs Us, 2 mother fuckers that don't like each other about to fight. Ishikawa, Battlarts Ace, representitive of clean pure skill based sportsman like grappling & striking contest. Matsunaga, Mr. Danger, dastardly invader, representitive of anything goes, weapon wielding hardcore matches. Matsunaga waste no time getting things started as he whips out a fuckin sword he smugled into the ring and goes after Ishikawa. He then uses every other dirty trick he can think of, he stabs him with a fork, he uses chairs, he chokes, he stomps, he bites him with his vampire fangs, just for the hell of it he goes back to his martial arts roots and tosses in a few karate kicks and a suplex too. Ishikawa fights back here and thear but keeps getting cut off and gets bloodied up. He does kind of wussy blade job on his head actually but all is forgiven when a few mins later he goes to the complete other end of the spectrum of balls out manliness and gets his arm legit carved up by Matsunaga's fork and starts driping blood all over. Finally he's able to catch Matsunaga with something and make his comeback to the delight of the crowd, and since this match is about pride as much as anything he never results to using Matsunaga's own weaposn against him. Instead he proves his style is better and finishes him with holds & suplexes, a quick sleeper puts Matsunaga out and Ishikawa mounts him and rains down punches as the ref calls for the bell and gives him the KO victory. Pro Wrestling can't get any more Pro Wrestling then this match here.

I liked this but it's more goofy fun then a quality match, i'd have it as a borderline pick at most. Instead i'll nominate 10/23/1998 Yuki Ishikawa & Bob Backlund vs Alexander Otsuka & Hisakatsu Oya You can really tell the Bat Bat guys are just totally marking out to be in thear with Backlund, loving it just as much as the fans. Anyways, this was much better then the Ikeda singles match wth a more impressive Backlund performance as you still get all the crazy old man fun but also get more "hey don't forget i'm still a really great wrestler who'll rip your freakin arm off" stuff to go along with it. Lot of diffrent things going on in this match, some comedy, some shoot style, some old school Muga goodness, someone busting out a suicide dive. Really impressed by how well they blended it all together. They aren't doing 1 long stretch of a certain style and then moving on, they pretty rapidly switch from one mode to another but it all feels totally natural and seamless with everyone on the same page. Good stuff

DVDVR used to be huge pro Daniels place. Among other things, reading all his hype on the board thear and in the the video reviews & work rate reports is what first got me into the guy and other indy wrestling to begin with. Like other people have mentioned, he USED to be a guy who was well loved and he still is among some circles. I still like the guy a lot myself. Around here and DVDVR and such it's def more that people's taste have just changed.

Yeah, around mid 91 or so is when Yoshida 1st started turning that corner. That whole Yoshida, Takako, Sakie, Debbie, LCO, Moreno Sisters, etc... mid card sceen was so much fun back then.

It's been so long so I don't recall who the source was, someone reliable or just msg board chatter. As best I can tell Flair and Arn have never talked about it directly that much in public though. The "pussy whiped" part was more fans coming to that conclusion after hearing the story.

I don't recall a ton of details but i'd sort of heard that story before. The gist I think is that Arn's wife & Beth are really close so Arn sort of sided with them when the divorce went down which led to the bad blood between him & Flair.

Hmmm, for stuff along that route 3 most historic things that happened in the history of joshi (besides it's creation) as far as shaping the entire industry. 1) Whenever one of the Matsunaga's had the bright idea of investing all the money they'd made into real estate. 2) Lifting the rule forcing wrestlers to retire by 26 3) Deciding to do interpromotional matches

True she didn't have as huge a personality as some of the top tier wrestlers but I don't think it was a major hinderane. She was one of the most popular wrestlers on the roster in 92, in K-hall especially but other places too, and she was getting the biggest push of her career that year. AJW singles & tag titles at the same time, JGP semi finals, etc... I don't think she'd have ever gotten a sniff of the 3WA singles (no knock, lots of people didn't, Yamada never got a title shot for example) but had the injury not derailed her career and cost her 2 years, I think she'd have gotten the All Pacific eventually and been in that upper top mix on a reg basis. Yeah, year book maybe isn't the best way to show off someone like her who wasn't routinely turning out great (moty lvl) matches but was consistently having very very good ones in which she'd personally have great performances if that makes sense. As for what else i'd recomend that didn't make the set, obviously vs Mita 6/27 which made the low end of my top 20 Besides that her best stuff would be 4/25 (AJW Tag Title Match) Debbie Malenko & Sakie Hasegawa © vs Takako Inoue & Mariko Yoshida 4/29 (All Japan Title) Takako Inoue © vs Mariko Yoshida 7/5/92 vs Kyoko JGP 8/30 vs Kyoko JGP 6/21 vs Sakie JGP 7/15 (AJW Tag Titles) Takako Inoue & Mariko Yoshida © vs Mima Shimoda & Debbie Malenko 7/15 (AJW Title) Mariko Yoshida © vs Sakie Hasegawa The singles match is the only one you really NEED to see but these 2 matches happen back to back so seeing the tag which is also pretty good helps. There's a few others besides this but those are more random good mid show tags and stuff, the above are the major things that leap out if i'm going to point out why I thought Yoshida was the best in the company at this point.

Go read my review of the 6/21 match. I go over what set it up in detail thear. Short version though is, Toyota's a sore loser so she snaped and wanted the hair match. Her trying to stop the hair cutting is the reality of her request crashing down on her, an "oh shit what have I done, I didn't REALLY want this" type moent. Going in cold this match didn't make much sense to me either (the reasons for it) and didn't for a long time. Wasn't until I watched everything that came before it in order that it really clicked for me and I realised what a great angle it was.

1/2 way through reading it, never heard the stories about Reid before, sad stuff. Seems like a small miracle Flair's never gotten any significant jail given how many legal troubles he's had. Comes across like one of the greatest con men to ever live given how many diffrent people he's managed to get to give him loans he wouldn't/couldn't pay back and invest in businesses with him that were doomed to failure.

For some reason I remembered it as a RAW match but yeah that must be the one I was thinking of

I vaugely remember them having a short feud and atleast 1 big tv match sometime around this time.

When/whear did he say this?

If you haven't seen it track down some late 91/92 AJW shows Long stretch of Sakie, Yoshida, Takako & Debbie Malenko ripping things up in various combinations against each other in the mid card.