FLIK

The feud with Mike Awesome always gets the most love but to me Kanemura was always Tanaka's best opponent hands down (Love the Awesome matches but I wouldn't even have him top 5 for fav oppoentns of Tanaka actually). They've had every kind of match you could imagine, from the craziest of brawls to mat based technical stuff like this and always delivered. You'd probably dig a lot of FMW stuff from about 95 thru 99

Good match though not as great as it looks on paper. Enjoyed all their matches together but the Street Fight in LLPW is the only one that really lived up to the potential.

One of the weaker FMW matches on the set but still a really fun brawl judged on it's own and I can see people liking this a lot. Historically significant as it has Onita making what was supposed to be a 1 time in ring return for what was supposed to me Pogo's retirement match. Instead Onita would come back full time next year and Pogo poped back up in 97 working for BJW. Ironically almost 2 years later in 98, Pogo would make his 1 time return to FMW to wrestle Onita in his last match working for the company.

Fukuoka & Kaoru are one of my favorite teams ever as their styles just perfectly complimented each other. Wish their run would have lasted longer as it was only a little over a year but they had some great matches in that time and they go out here putting on a really good one for their final pairing. Old music video I made last year in tribute to them

Re the grudge aspect - OZ & Kansai were always long term rivals on & off. Even the Toyota/Yamada tags were more about them teaming up out of company pride then friendship as they weren't ever a regular team. They'd been heavily feuding for much of 95 as well including 3 really great street fights that year (2 singles & opposite sides with Chigusa & Devil in the main event of the 1st GAEA show). Re being more mat work heavy then AJW - that was always more JWP's style but it was mostly born out of necesity then anything as they had a very thin roster & couldn't put on as many matches per show so they'd regularly stretch things out by doing long ass main events.

For people who've seen it, i'm curious what'd people think of the W Inoue vs Toyota/Shimoda 50+ min match from May 96??? Didn't make the set but I thought it was really good myself. This has been my own theory for a while as well. You had to go out of your way a lot more to read reviews and talk to people to find out what was good when the only way to get footage was to spend money on it and you didn't want to be wasting cash picking up crap. Stuff becoming so easy to get online for free killed off a lot of that. What's funny about Toyota & her selling issues is that it's not like she couldn't do a great job of it when she wanted to, she just didn't work that way most of the time. That or her blowing moves has never been something that hugely bothered me though I do atleast understand the complaint. Personally I always thought it added to the realism of things to see people fuck up ocasionally (only magical robots are perfect creatures after all) and don't usually hold it against a match unless it's just massively bad. Kudo doesn't have as deep a resume but i'd take her at her best over Toyota at her best too. I wouldn't agree with Takako over her but I can see how the case could be made atleast. She was great at a lot of the things Toyota was flawed at and really good at a lot of the things Toyota was great at. Agree 100%. If people don't like her/her style fine but she was hugely popular with the fans and the major one who held that sinking ship together. You take Toyota away in 97 and AJW wouldn't have lasted the 7 more years they did. Her eventually leaving in 02 & Momoe (the only real big new star they created post 97) going freelance the following year were the final nails in the coffin and it was all a slow limp to their death after that though there were a few highspots (better circumstances Hikaru would have been a huge star, prob Nishio too). Disagree as I thought she was still great up until a few years ago and atleast ocasionally good up until the last year or 2. Only recently whear I finally thought that yeah, she's going down hill now. Which 2 Kong matches are you talking about? I'm guessing Big Egg in 94 is 1 but i've seen them in like 8 or 9 singles matches and I know they've had more then that. And is the Yoshida match you're talking about the ARSION one in 2001? Kind of an odd choice. I thought it was really good but there's a ton of Toyota matches i'd name before that one to make an argument for how great she was. Kinda sucks what joshifans turned into. Not that it was ever the greatest place to have a serious discussion but of late it's such a pit that going thear gives me a head ache half the time. Like 90% of the reason I started writing old AJW reviews over thear & DVDVR was out of sheer boredom & trying to atleast spark a conversation. What's the JWP story? Don't think i've ever heard that before.