Jetlag

Quite great as a pissed off asshole in shootstyle matches punching people in the liver. The 2002 Hoshikawa match is an excellent violent little stifffest and his U-Style work is great. Probably spent a bit too much time in HUSTLE and I haven't really seen anything amazing from him in RINGS, but there sure are a lot of workers worse than Wataru Sakata.

I would, if I knew where to find them!

If this list was about dedicated bumpers, Anton Tejero would be a #1 contender. This guy would fling himself wildly out of the ring dozens of times per match all the way until his last days in 1980s. Really a special case of a guy who had absolutely no problem bumping his ass off endlessly. Also super impressive on offense, when he gets to show of that as often his matches were built around showing off the offense of the babyfaces. His tag work with Inca Peruano in the 1960s is totally radical even in the context of the high level of French wrestling at the time. Definitely a big part of what made the French scene so great considering for how long he keeps showing up and doing his thing. His work doesn't quite lend itself to the conventional understanding of a 'great worker' as in someone who colours matches with his offense and control segments, but as a rudo he's definitely an all time great. I don't recall a single bad match that he was involved in.

You can actually find a bit of Catch related videos in the RTS archive website if you just search for Catch, but it's just short newsreel/documentary type stuff starring the usual suspects: https://www.rts.ch/archives/recherche/?q=catch Apparenlty the Luxembourg archive is going through some work this year to make it more accesible and won't be open to requests until next year, so there is a faint glimmer of hope that whatever they still have might become available. The Monaco archive actually also has an on-demand streaming page but they only have a few videos there, nothing wrestling related.

Amazing research. It would be sick to have these, some killer match ups. Masahiko Kimura? I did not expect him at all. Definitely holy grail material. I remember hearing about a match between Achim Chall and Rene Ben Chemoul taking place in Luxemburg, so I think that country had wrestling.

I made a topic about this in the hidden board, but since nobody ever looks there, I figured I might as well make one here, because it's quite the interesting subject. Apparently the NWA ran some wrestling shows in the early 1980s in the Philippines. The country was still under a dictator then, who apparently gave his explicit permission for the shows to be run because he was taking some heat for an assassination. There was a Jr title tournament, and apparently even a Harley Race title defense. Raven Mack talks about it here a bit, and reviewed a tape of the lightweight tournament: https://web.archive.org/web/20121004044522/http://deathvalleydriver.com/dvdvr/dvdvr151.html I'm mostly asking if anyone here knows more about that stuff and if perhaps the footage still exists somewhere. Hector Guerrero vs Les Thornton in Manila in 1983 sounds like the kind of stuff I'd enjoy.

If it's someone you enjoy watching, what does it matter?

And just the other do, I was thinking of doing a blogpost specifically dedicated to Regals 1994... dude was an animal that year. Looks like you got me beat! There was also a match against Jungle Jim Steele of all people that I really enjoyed. And that Armstrong match is a gem indeed. Great work!

Let him be a lesson to us all that we work on ourselves to be good people, so we don't have to leave this world as hated men.

Maybe I have mentioned it before, but the Modesto Aledo/Kamikaze looks reminds me a lot of something out of Fantomas

I'm not really buying this Bryan is a cosplay wrestler talk. Guy learned from Regal and Brookside and was in the Inoki dojo, he has as much claim to legitimate skill as any other guy. He also came up with a lot of stuff on his own, like who really used the Cattle Mutilation the way he did before him, he'd turn basic things like an elbow or face stomp into his signature stuff and plausible finishers. Even the stuff he lifted from other wrestlers (like the kneecap stomp from a surfboard setup or the surfboard dragon sleeper) he made into his own. Mind you this was in an era where a lot of guys wrestled like a puro move randomizer. Clearly that and his more ground based style elevated him a lot in the eyes of the fans back then compared to the more highspot centric stuff others were doing. Granted I've not watched as much of his RoH stuff so I don't know how indulgent it gets (probably a lot considering it was RoH).

That guy saying he's gonna shoot Finlay is actually Austrian Viktor Krueger of BattlARTS fame. AFAIK they actually had a 'shootfight' match at some point but I don't think I've ever seen footage of it.

He has racked up a number of technical epics in the last couple years, in part thanks to the promotion known as MUTOHA, since that is their signature style and they were gracious to make a lot of footage available that was hidden in storage for over a decade, but also in a number of other promotions whenever they let him do stuff. The 60 minute match he had with Arai is insane, and possibly a greater 60 minute long technical epic than almost anything from the classical era, which is pretty crazy. Other notable GENTARO matches: vs El Samurai, FREEDOMS 9/27/2009 vs Osamu Nishimura, VKF 11/16/2015 vs Akira Jo, Mutoha 7/7/2024 vs Dekai Ichimotsu, 4/15/2018 vs Yasushi Sato, Mutoha 3/19/2022 vs Hiroshi Watanabe 5/30/2009 vs Yuki Ishikawa, Batos Cafe 2/23/2020 vs Kazuhiro Tamura, Mr. Gannosuke Produce 3/31/2011 vs Kenichiro Arai, Masamune Produce 6/19/2022 Obviously the times are on his side, with him making tape often and even smalltime performances like the match against Ichimotsu being uploaded by generous providers, but it's hard to deny that his resume stacks up extremely well even against top tier wrestlers. It's a really impressive reinvention when you consider he transformed into the technical master only after suffering a stroke and has been a very different but also great wrestler up until that point.

No comments on Lufisto, what a crying shame! She really did trailblaze before it was cool. Fun stiffness, deathmatches, actually a pretty decent wrestler when they let her. Honestly thought she had a really cool career with lots of fun matches in so many different promotions throughout and you can tell she was insanely passionate about wrestling. I think she wouldn't make my Top 100 wrestlers ever because that's a high bar and she's not perfect, but definitely on the shortlist of my favourite wrestlers to come out of the north american indy scene, male or female. Few things embody the spirit of the mid 2000s indys as her holding her own in a savage punch exchange with the likes of Necro Butcher.