FLIK

Tanaka/Gannosuke was awesome but strongly disagree on the bolded part. Don't have time right now to put up a recomendation list so i'll do it later but FMW was having a great year in 99. Like I wouldn't even put the 5/5 battarts elim in the top 10.

No clue if this is what they were using in this particular match, i've seen diffrent variations in diffrent promotions but the classic British Rounds rules were Rounds last either 3 or 5 mins each Matches usually have 10, 15 or 20 rounds Short break after each round Matches are usually 2/3 falls The round ends after you score the fall so if you pin someone 30 seconds into the round the next round starts after that. No punching allowed If you get caught punching or doing anything else that's typically illegal in wrestling you get a public warning After 2 warnings you'll be disqualified the next time you break the rules No attacking the opponent while he's on the ground unless you go to the mat with him in the middle of applying a hold so for example Snapmaring a guy down and immediatly floating into a headlock = OK Body slamming a guy and stomping him = Not OK If you toss a guy down and don't follow it up with a hold the ref will start a 10 count for him to get back up May be missing one or 2 more rules but that's the gist of things

Makes me really want to hurry up and finish my 92 joshi watching so I can move on to re-watching all this 93 & checking out the little i've never caught. For me personally based off memory i'd have it low top 10, high top 20 though. But eh, like you said, really all just speaks to how strong a year it was.

Was the Power Plant really around that far back? Weird, always thought that was a mid 90's thing

You should really track down Aja/Hokuto from earlier in the year. No it's not the best match but it adds so much to Hokuto's story from this year. LCO especially but Suzuka & Aja too watching on from the outside and losing their shit as this is going on is a classic moment for sure, made even better now that I know more about how much history they all had with Hokuto then I did at the time I first watched it years ago. Hokuto only wrestled 3 shows in 94 and they allready knew by this point that she was falling apart and on borrowed time for a while.

Kudo did a great job of it but that type of thing is a Kong match staple. She hadn't done it THAT many times up to this point before but "Aja throws a ton of urakens so opponent tries to take out her arm" is a story you'll see repeated in a ton of her big matches over the years. Not complaining either as it's always fucking awesome and so many of Aja's opponents have unique ways to go after the arm (submissions, kicks or other strikes, weapons, etc..) that it never becomes repetitive. Yeah that's more or less the concensous opinion on this. Almost no one would put it ahead of Dream Slam, Thunderqueen, etc.. but most everyone considers it a great match and one of the better ones of the year. Fuck, haven't seen Coey's name brought up in forever. That brings back memories, few of them good It's weird to say this since there are a lot of Kudo fans out thear but she really doesn't get as much credit/respect as she deserves. Both for how big of a star she was for a while and for how talented she was. She didn't get to work as much high end talent as some of her contemporaries so her list of great matches isn't as long as others but i'll take the very best matches Kudo's had over all but a few others out thear. In general you mean? For just joshi i'd say this is an easy top 20.

Glad to see people bring up Killings vs Ki. One of my fav matches from the early TNA days but at the time it sort of got lost in the shuffle and didn't get as much props as the X-division matches and some of the others around then.

Originally missread that as All Heels Wrestling....what it actually is sounds stupider. 3 of the 4 team captains are guys TNA's fired no longer working for the company so...yeah

Some more joshi recomendations Hopefully not too late bringing this up but i'd hate to see GAEA miss the cut again. (Some of my dates for these might be off as i've got some stuff listed by air date and others by taping date) For GAEA Debut show main event from 4/15/95 is a must include. (Street Fight) Devil & Ozaki vs Chigusa & Kansai. Just as good, if not better then the famous Kansai/OZ Street Fight from a month earlier in JWP. Then of course there's the debut matches for all the rookies on the undercard, Chikayo Nagashima vs Toshie Uematsu, Meiko Satomura vs Sonoko Kato & Sugar Sato vs Maiko Narita. Nagashima/Toshie is the best of the 3 and a really good match period. The other 2 are decent but nothing special. I bring those 2 up more because they're short (combined 10 mins maybe) and they have the historical significance of being the 1st matches for Kato, Meiko & Sugar who'd go on to become 3 of the bigger names in joshi over the next 10-15 years so hopefully they could be squeazed on the set too. You can really tell the diffrence in how GAEA pushed/treated their rookies compared to AJW as GAEA didn't have many vets or any drawing names besides Chiggy to start out with so they had to rely a lot on outside talent the 1st few years and needed their youngsters to advance at a faster pace 6/17/1995 Miki Handa & Michiko Nagashima vs Kaoru & Sonoko Kato. Not the greatest match ever but really good, kind of a borderline pick. 6/18/1995 Chigusa Nagayo vs Devil Masami. Won't comare to their 80's stuff but this is great on it's own. Another i'd say is a must include. 8/12/1995 Chigusa Nagayo vs Bad Burse Nakamura - GAEA was in a big feud with FMW women at the time and this is a great little brawl. Way better then it looks on paper. 8/26/1995 Chigusa Nagayo, Sonoko Kato & Meiko Satomura vs Devil Masami, Tomoko Kuzumi & Tomoko Miyaguchi - Kuzuki & Miyaguchi would go on to become Azyumi Hyuga & Ran YuYu. You'll find a lot of these GAEA vs JWP 6 woman tags around this time frame and this is one of the best. Awesome match, one of the better ones of the year. 9/17/1995 Hikari Fukuoka & KAORU vs Devil Masami & Dynamite Kansai - Right around the time Fukuoka & KAORU, one of my fav joshi teams ever started clicking together. 9/17/1995 (Street Fight) Mayumi Ozaki vs Chigusa Nagayo - Another in a series of great brawling matches for this year. 11/25/1995 Devil Masami & Mayumi Ozaki vs Hikari Fukuoka & KAORU - 45 min draw (around 30 aired) One of my fav tag matches ever and a huge giant hidden gem as I never hear anyone else pimping this like it deserves to be. JWP Only the 3/17 street fight & 3/21 tag have been mentioned in the thread so far but there was a bunch of other good stuff that year. The main event from 3/17 Candy Okutsu & Devil Masami vs Cuty Suzuki & Hikari Fukuoka is a pretty damn awesome tag in it's own right. Random kick ass tags were kind of staple of JWP for a while, especially if it was the main event and this is a great example of their "style" of match. 6/16/1995 (JWP Junior Title Tournament Final) Candy Okutsu vs Hiromi Yagi - Only 6 mins but it's a rockin 6 mins. 6/16/1995 Devil Masami & Mayumi Ozaki vs Hikari Fukuoka & Kaoru - their match later in the year is better (they only get like 1/3 the time here) but this is great in it's own right. 6/16/1995 Dynamite Kansai vs Chigusa Nagayo - Awesome big match/main event style match if that makes sense. 7/23/1995 (Street Fight) Mayumi Ozaki vs Dynamite Kansai - I love 3/17 but fuck 3/17 THIS shits all over it and in a year of a billion awesome joshi brawls this is the greatest joshi street fight match ever period. 11/11/1995 Devil Masami, Hikari Fukuoka & Candy Okutsu vs Mayumi Ozaki, Cuty Suzuki & Hiromi Yagi - Another really good JWP style tag. 11/11/1995 (3WA Title) Dynamite Kansai © vs Takako Inoue - Kansai's only succesful title defense. Begining of Tak being handed the role of designated 3WA title sacraficial lamb. Not a top 10 or 20 contender but a good match none the less. 12/16/1995 (Street Fight) Devil Masami vs Mayumi Ozaki - In a year of a billion awesome joshi brawls this is the least of them but again, judged on it's own still a good match. 12/16/1995 (JWP Tag Titles) Dynamite Kansai & Cuty Suzuki © vs Kaou & Hikari Fukuoka - lack of crowd heat hurts this a little but otherwise another really good KAORU/Fukuoka tag.

Heh, this was one of those "that's cause it's real" moments as Kanemura legit got majorly fucked up from the fire spot. Aside from a 1 time match on the last W*ING show he didn't wrestle again for like half a year or so after this.

Not really. Kandori was a legit big Judo star before going into wrestling (and she'd been pro for like 7-8 years at this time) so she pretty much always had submission cred going for her in her matches.

..............It's called the Fisherman Suplex because the guy HOOKS the leg. Fuck, that took me 20 years of watching wrestling to notice

I've always liked that type of dynamic. It's worked really well in Japan as well over the years. Crazy Max vs M2K vs Toryumon RO&D vs Voo Doo Murders vs AJPW Jungle Jack vs Gokumonto vs AJW Etc...

I like this thought process a lot. Is there a clear division (outside of the internet, probably) between fans of TNA and fans of WWE? Are there fans exclusively watching TNA and ignoring WWE? I do expect a certain percentage work it vice-versa. If TNA doesn't have it's own exclusive fanbase of some signifigance, I agree completely with Dylan here. Heh, funnily there actually was a few month period whear after I stoped watching WWE I still watched TNA every week since I liked it better. Course this was also years ago and i've long since given up on TNA too. Still have all mine with no plans to ditch them soon. Probably atleast 250+ just for wrestling alone (maybe 400+ counting the non wrestling VHS) almost all at 6-8 hours each. Eh, on that top list most of those guys all had atleast somewhat of a name in wrestling before getting to the WWF and came in an era whear it was exspected that you worked lots of diffrent places and were succesful before coming thear. On the bottom list, except for Danielson, RVD at certain times, Goldberg to a degree and maybe Vader pretty much everyone got pushed about as much as they deserved by Vince. Wow, I always thought Chavo would be a lifer. Course, I only really ever thought they'd do that out of some combination of pity over what happened to Eddie & wanting to keep Vicky around.

Agree few casual fans would bother paying for it but it's only like $2.30 a week for the Observer site if you get a year long sub.

My votes for Strangler Corleone

Heh, not that he's horrible but having seen Paul Isodora wrestle a ton of times before he woud not exactly be at the top of my list of guys I would think of as making good trainers either. Cool blog tho, hope the guy makes it.

Mikey Whipwreck confirmed this in one of his interviews on Wrestling Observer. Broke my heart Can't believe in anything anymore... If wrestling is supposed to be a reflection of life, if wrestling is supposed to appear "real", nothing in the world is realer then imperfection & failure.

My top picks for AJW in 1991 list is here http://flikreviews.blogspot.com/2011/02/aj...op-10-list.html To exspand on this, other matches that didn't make my top 10 list but I still think are set worthy 1/11/91 Toyota vs Hokuto 3/17/91 (Noriyo Tateno Retirement Match) Noriyo Tateno vs Takako Inoue 3/17/91 Aja vs Hokuto 3/17/91 Bull Nakano & Kyoko Inoue vs Bison Kimura & Mika Takahashi http://flikreviews.blogspot.com/2011/02/aj...uary-march.html 4/29/1991 (3WA Martial Arts Title) Bat Yoshinaga © vs Akemi Torisu 4/29/1991 (3WA Title) Bull Nakano © vs Monster Ripper 5/26/1991 Aja Kong vs Manami Toyota 5/26/1991 (2 out of 3 Falls) Bull Nakano & Bat Yoshinaga vs Akira Hokuto & Sakie Hasegawa 6/5/1991 Aja Kong & Bison Kimura vs Manami Toyota & Toshiyo Yamada 6/5/1991 Bull Nakano & Kyoko Inoue vs Akira Hokuto & Mariko Yoshida 6/18/1991 Takako Inoue, Mariko Yoshida & Manami Toyota vs Esther Moreno, Cynthia Moreno & Mika Takahashi http://flikreviews.blogspot.com/2011/02/aj...april-june.html 8/18/1991 (AJW Title) Takako Inoue © vs Mariko Yoshida 8/18/1991 (JGP Semi Finals) Aja Kong vs Bison Kimura 9/7/1991 Manami Toyota vs Toshiyo Yamada http://flikreviews.blogspot.com/2011/02/aj...-september.html 10/4/1991 (Tag Leauge The Best 91) Toshiyo Yamada & Kyoko Inoue vs Bison Kimura & Aja Kong 10/26/1991 (All Pacific Title) Suzuka Minami © vs Bison Kimura 11/15/1991 (AJW Title) Takako Inoue © vs Debbie Malenko 11/15/1991 Toshiyo Yamada & Kyoko Inoue vs Akira Hokuto & Manmi Toyota 12/9/1991 (Tag Leauge The Best 91 FINAL) Toshiyo Yamada & Kyoko Inoue vs Aja Kong & Bison Kimura http://flikreviews.blogspot.com/2011/02/aj...r-december.html

If it's not too late i'll add this i've pretty much been reviewing every AJW show from late 89 currently up to late 92 on my blog rather then copy/pasting anything over, out of lazinesss i'll just link to my top 10 list / end of the year thoughts for 90 http://flikreviews.blogspot.com/2011/02/aj...op-10-list.html

............

Fuck it, I had to laugh at another of these topics popping up, like really? I support wwesucks sticking around just for shits & giggles.

Just popping in to add that Morton did a few FMW tours in 97 & was awesome thear too

Heh, kinda amused this is becoming a story now since the "Kong got rejected from WWE for being too fat" story has been around for like 8 or 9 years. Double funny since anyone paying even a tiny amount of attention to what types of girls the company hires should have been able to figure out their mentality anyways.

Haven't seen any of Mistico's WWE stuff and except for a short couple weeks whear I kind of got re-interested to see his heel turn I haven't followed CMLL closely in years. Based on all the talk i've been hearing about how bad he's done so far though, i'm wondering just what the main thing is that's preventing him from adapting so much? Lots of luchadors have made their way outside of Mexico to the US/Japan over the years and i've never heard people make as big of a deal out of anyone failing to catch on to the new style as I have about Mistico in WWE. And yeah this. When I heard about this match I actually thought it might be good but that's because the last time I saw Chavo he was still a pretty awesome worker. That was quite a while ago ofcourse and maybe he's declined since then, dunno, some people seem to be down on him for a while. But as far as lucha style goes, as far as I know I don't think he ever worked for any of the Mexico promotions did he?