Jetlag

I actually think his best stuff is in WAR in the mid 90s. He was just allowed to let lose and be a stiff technical bruiser like a more shooty William Regal. Granted, that lasted only about one tour. God damn I wish he had done more stuff like that, or at least that we had more of his indy career on tape. The UWF stuff is cool but I'm not sure he's better than random eastern europeans having brief stints in RINGS.

I hope people will give Jackie Sato more attention this time around. She was quite the badass and with more eyes being on that era of joshi and more footage becoming available people should watch. The Yokota match is brilliant and Sato is every part of it. There's also some of her JWP work becoming available, something that was completely in the dark to me 5 years ago. It seems she pretty much reinvented herself. She had an interesting superstar match against Nancy Kumi. I also just now watched her in a tag where she grappled with Shinobu Kandori like a BattlARTS match.

I must be a weirdo because I recall really liking another Tenryu/Dibiase match. Also, how can you forget that we get a Tenryu/Kawada handheld from 1989? Tenryu is the gift that keeps on giving. Even if with no strictly "new" footage there are ton of handheld matches that are barely talked about where he looks really good. I mean really really good, like "getting a great match out of Daikokubo Benkei on a WAR houseshow" level good.

Scorpios universal appeal is incredible. Whether Mexico, Germany, WCW, ECW, Japan, seedy IWA Mid South show, he looks great and gets over.

They had another really great match in 2018. That Doi match is a really good carryjob. He also had a really good match against Nishimura in WNC. Tajiri may actually be one of the best wrestlers of the last decade. He doesn't have a huge resume of "OMG Superclassics!!" but tons lots of crafty good little matches against guys who were otherwise largely useless. Remarkable consistency in his old age. He was also in the cruiserweight classic, even.

I even did a 2 disc WYF compilation. That was after I bought all the available TV footage from Lynch. However, recently, more handhelds have popped up thanks to Max Lanciault. The following list only includes matches that were available on TV and comm tapes at the time: Canek / Principe Maya vs. Motegi / Kamikaze (Tag Tournament Finale, 3/31/95) Motegi / Kamikaze vs. S. Nakano / Hirofumi Miura (7/30/95) Motegi / S. Nakano vs. Okamura / Mochizuki (5/25/97) Kamikaze / Masakazu Fukuda vs. Y. Fujiwara / Hiroyoshi Kotsubo (5/25/97) Y. Fujiwara / S. Nakano vs. Kamikaze / Masakazu Fukuda (5/30/97) Tadahiro Fujisaki / M. Saito vs. Cosmo Soldier / Takeshi Sato (6/10/97) Ryo Miyake vs. Shigeo Kato (6/10/97) Shinichi Nakano vs. Masayoshi Motegi (6/10/97) Kamikaze / Fukuda / Kotsubo vs. Mochizuki / Okamura / Taru (6/10/97) Shinichi Shino / Rikio Ito vs. Masashi Aoyagi / Gokuaku Omibozu (7/16/97) Kamikaze / Fukuda / Kotsubo vs. Mochizuki / Okamura / Taru (7/16/97) Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs. Shinigami (7/16/97) S. Nakano / Motegi vs. Tarzan Goto / Ryo Miyake (7/16/97) Kamikaze / Fukuda / Kotsubo vs. Mochizuki / Okamura / Taru (8/9/97) S. Nakano / Motegi vs. Goto / Kikuzawa (8/9/97) Tadahiro Fujisaki / Makoto Saito vs. Great Takeru / Akinori Tsukioka (9/23/97) Shinichi Nakano / Basara vs. Tarzan Goto / Jun Kikuzawa (9/23/97) Kamikaze / Fukuda / Kotsubo vs. Mochizuki / Okamura / Taru (9/23/97) Tadahiro Fujisaki vs. Makoto Saito (1/8/98) Masayoshi Motegi / Cosmo Soldier vs. Takeshi Sato / Makoto Saito (3/20/98) Masashi Aoyagi vs. Gokuaku Omibozu (3/20/98) Masked Angel Rosetta / Cosmo Soldier vs. MAKOTO / Masked Angel Freia (11/30/99)

Albert Sanniez Another guy who massively benefited from the French footage becoming available. The man looked world class from his first appearances in the 60s up to his last in the 80s and virtually always had an outstanding match. Amazing technico, but also amazing rudo. Looks great both doing high end technical work as well stooging for faces and being a rough playing bastard. Has both great singles matches and great tags under his belt. One of those French guys whose matches you can show to anyone and their jaw will drop. Matches: w Francis Sullivan vs. Bernard Caclard/Tony Martino, 10/21/1967 w Bernard Caclard vs. Kader Hassouni & Claude Rocca, 3/20/1976 vs. Le Petit Prince, 10/15/1977 http://segundacaida.blogspot.com/search/label/Albert Sanniez https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/wrestling_ko/viewtopic.php?p=46647#p46647

That Rae match was fun, but I actually thought Rae looked better. She did all the fun/unique spots, unpredictable bumping, ate some nasty punishment and was super expressive while Mercedes looked a little bland faced. I actually like that Martinez carries herself like a badass I don't recall ever thinking she was high end. There's def. some good looking match ups there, tho.

There has been quite a resurrgence of interest in joshi on social media, with wrestler like Satomura being signed to WWE and characters like Maki Ito attaining a decent following. Whether that increase in interest is due to the work being good or the idol factor is for the reader to decide.

No but also yes. He's got a shitload of boring as hell material but also some goodies. I am particular to the Inoki matches, but due to Inoki magic.

The Guy Robin match is really good, but to be honest he doesn't stand out a ton among the legion of really great French babyfaces who throw one hell of a forearm and I wasn't super in love with the Hunter team (mostly due to Hunter). His later heel stuff is fun but didn't exactly produce much high end wrestling. I'll pass but it was cool discovering him in his young age.

Pretty good doing worked shootstyle and I'd like to see more of his Style-E material. That said this nu age deathmatch stuff is dreadfully boring and sameish and dead last on the list of wrestling I want to see.

All too little footage of him. He looks like a beast in his one French appearance. The AJPW stuff was right before he quit wrestling. In Germany, he was arguably the most succesful promoters golden boy and wrestled in front of millions each year, a golden era of which we have nothing. I like him in the AJPW stuff, but it feels like judging Lawler without Memphis.

Her JWP run was fantastic: Itsuki Yamazaki vs. Plum Mariko (JWP 5/25/90) Rumi Kazama & Shinobu Kandori vs. Devil Masami & Itsuki Yamazaki (JWP 9/30/90) Itsuki Yamazaki vs. Miss A (Dynamite Kansai) (JWP 1/6/91) (UWA Tournament First Round Match) Devil Masami & Rumi Kazama vs. Miss A & Itsuki Yamazaki (JWP 4/26/1991) Devil Masami & Hikari Fukuoka vs. Itsuki Yamazaki & Cuty Suzuki (JWP 5/25/1991) Dynamite Kansai & The Scorpion vs. Harley Saito & Itsuki Yamazaki (JWP 8/8/91) Unfortunately, she quit right before the interpromotional era. I imagine if she stayed around for that we would be raving about her. Her veteran style was so cool. I'm a bit lukewarm on the mid to late 80s AJW style, but I'm open to recommendations.

France in 1957. Futen in 2010. CMLL in 1997. ARSION from 1998 to 1999. Wrestle Yume Factory from 1996 to 1998 ca.

Very interesting stylist. She's had lots of good to great matches which are really overlooked and there's still many matches from her back catalogue that I have yet to watch. On the other hand, I have seen her in some stuff that was pretty bad/underwhelming. The plus side is she stayed good for a really long time, like she was clearly good up to her retirement, just dealing with really bad opponents most of the time.

Just watch everything you can find. It's not like there's a metric tonne of stuff. The best match is the Zrno singles. There's also a Zrno rematch, even, although it's not on the same level but still cool. He also had some nice bloodbaths in the early 80s against the likes of Gypsy Joe.

Creepy Japanese handheld guy is back online, and he seems to be doing Google Drive filesharing now. He hasn't responded to my email, though. Too bad because he seems to have a pile of hard to come by joshi footage.

I really don't think so. If you watch that stuff there was far, far fewer "I hit you - you hit me stuff". And almost no "waiting for the other guy to hit you back". Even in matches centered around strike exchanges like Tenryu/Hashimoto. Instead there was far more guys trying to maul each other in the corner or in the ropes. If you watch young Ishii, you can even see him trying to do the "puff his chest and act tough" thing but his opponents wouldn't let it fly. There really was nothing like those Ishii/Shibata matches, and whether you think that is a good or bad thing is probably down to taste. I think Ishiis matches becoming more robotic may be due to him being pretty shot physically (and transitioning to heavyweight/roiding) and him being allowed to max out his tough guy act.

Shinobu Kandori looked pretty great in the original JWP, something that was barely explored by the community 5 years ago: Shinobu Kandori vs. Miss A (7/13/89) Shinobu Kandori vs. Harley Saito (7/19/90) Rumi Kazama & Shinobu Kandori vs. Devil Masami & Itsuki Yamazaki (JWP 9/30/90) Miss A & Harley Saito vs. Shinobu Kandori & Rumi Kazama (JWP 10/10/90) Mayumi Ozaki & Rumi Kazama vs. Shinobu Kandori & Harley Saito (JWP 1/6/1991) Dynamite Kansai & The Scorpion vs. Shinobu Kandori & Harley Saito (8/4/1991) I had never heard of the Saito singles before, and it absolutely blew me away. I also stumbled upon a Satomura singles in 2007 or so that was really great too and something overlooked. I look forward to diving more into Kandoris work in LLPW and the more obscure JWP handhelds. She could crack my Top 50 next time we do a list.

Shocker is one of those lucha guys who would be washed up for years and then suddenly turn around and have an awesome run. He probably doesn't have the consistency to be worth serious consideration, but he probably has more great matches to him than a few nominated workers.

Gilbert vs. Finlay in Germany got reuploaded and its a tremendous match: This probably won't sway the consensus on Eddie Gilbert but it's kind of a What could have been? as it's just a really heated long match in a smoked out German hall. The best Germany matches are kind closer to Memphis main events. This does a tremendous job building. Finlay brings his European style stiffness and snug holds, and Gilberts southern funk in this setting is wonderful. Gilbert mostly sticks to forearms and elbows but unloads a Lawleresque punch combo at one point. Finlay is an all out hell here barraging Gilbert with cheap attacks and rough moves, but the crowd is still split which amuses me. Last round was just great. It's insane they ran this and Liger vs. Schuhmann the same night.

This guy lately uploaded a metric ton of European era Finlay. Some of it has seeped out on various German handheld channels, but this is everything in one place and it has some matches that I haven't seen online in forever, like the Scorpio match and him taking on Eddie Gilbert. https://www.youtube.com/user/signsquad123/videos

Great post! I had no idea that even happened. Did Dos Caras make TV in the 2000s here or there? He looked sharp.

Brief, all too brief Koichiro Kimura watchlist. Wish there was more early DDT footage. Koichiro Kimura & Hopper King vs. Black Hole & Fumio Akiyama A bunch of legit martial artists and strange masked gimmicks step up to work a more surrealist BattlARTS match. Lots of nasty potatoes and credible shootstyle exchanges. Black Hole was inspiring - a fat dude with a genuinely cool mask, clubbing Vader like blows and judo throws. Hopper King is Super Rider and doesn't hold back with the kicks. Most importantly this had the kind of chippy fighting that elevates pro wrestling. Loved how Kimura wouldn't accept Akiyama breaking up his submission attempts. Then Kimura tried tooling Black Hole only to get rocked by those swinging fists. Even the crowd brawling was fun and the finish absolutely nasty. This was everything. Tanomusaku Toba & MIKAMI & Super Uchu Power vs. Issei Fujisawa & Yuki Nishino & Takashi Sasaki (DDT 1/16/2001) - GREAT Man DDT used to be awesome, what the fuck happened to that company?! This was 6 dudes who have no problem cracking each other hard cracking eachother really hard for 11 minutes. Fujisawa is a Kensuke Sasaki lookalike doing a tribute gimmick, and while that would result in a lot of lame jokes nowadays here he plays his shtick completely straight. He makes for a really effective underdog and comes back throwing hard crowbar lariats. Super Uchu Power is so menacing and awesome in these matches, like Super Dragon without the humor, in a match where everyone is working stiff he cracks dudes extra hard, anytime he is in there with Fujisawa you expect him to kick that poor little dudes face in. MIKAMI also has no problem hitting stiff dropkicks and just crushing dudes with full bodyweight sentons and double stomps, how have I never heard anyone talk about how awesome that guy is?! Toba is of course the man punching everyone in the face. He had some particularily great exchanges with Takashi Sasaki (man I’m pissed about how that guy wasted the rest of his career) and busted out some fun out of nowhere rollups. The match was a grandstand Toba exchange in the finishing stretch away from reaching into EPIC territory and these guys were working an undercard match on a small show, why don’t we get pro wrestling this cool anymore?! Uchu Power X vs. Super Rider It’s alien shootstyle, baby. I think this is Koichiro Kimura under the Uchu Power mask. This was a completely straight grappling match. They didn’t even do any floor brawling like I’ve seen them do in West Japan and DDT, and there were only one or two vicious strikes from the alien. Other than that, this was all guys in poncho and freaky masks scrambling for chokes and heel hooks. Rider looked good tenaciously grappling with his bigger opponent. Cool match and I wish we had more alien shootstyle. Koichiro Kimura vs. Fumio Akiyama, West Japan 3/22/1995 This was quite good mostly due to some nasty stomps and kicks and dislocating submissions from Kimura. Also because this is West Japan they did a brawling section where somebody got bowled into chairs and then they did shootstyle strike exchanges on the floor. Akiyama had a whole lot of respect for Kimura but moved in for the kill when it counted. Finish came a little sudden but it looked really painful. Tanomusaku Toba & Koichiro Kimura vs. Sanshiro Takagi & Exciting Yoshida (DDT 7/6/2000) - EPIC This was from the early period when DDT wasn’t yet a full on entertainment company but rather a diverse style blend that reflected the sleaze indies of the 90s that preceded it. This was a great sprint. I would’ve liked it a bit more if it was more of a straight up destruction of Takagi & Yoshida at the hands of the Toba/Kimura crowbar team, but it still ended up being really good. Takagi can be hit or miss with his WWF imitation shit, but the opening segment where he caught a Toba barrage and dropped him with a deadlift uranage followed by a People’s Elbow spot was kind of badass. Lots of violent exchanges throughout with Toba & Kimura throwing serious potatoes, there is an awesome floor brawling section between Takagi and Toba that looked like a street fight. Kimura was put over as a real monster at this point, whenever he would come in he would just crush dudes with kicks and bombs. He also did all those BattlARTS level violent saves that whenever someone put a submission on Toba he runs in to kick their head in. Exciting Yoshida is a guy who was doing an Animal Hamaguchi tribute act, and this is probably his finest performance ever. The cool thing about Toba is that he gets guys who are otherwise dull to throw potatoes and come up with realistic comebacks, and that was the case here. Him and Yoshida were just brutalizing each other, and the finishing run that saw Yoshida throwing brutal shoot headbutts and Otsuka level suplexes was totally awesome. Our boxing gloved hero just keeps delivering the good shit. Tanomusaku Toba & Tomohiko Hashimoto vs. Super Uchu Power & MIKAMI (DDT 7/19/2001) - GREAT So much fun to be had here, DDT missed the boat big time when they stopped doing hybrid shoot matches like this. Tomohiko Hashimoto is all judo throws at this point, and he and the pure striking based style of Toba make a fun team. MIKAMI for a junior can handle himself with the shooters, he hit an awesome flying armbar counter to one of Hashimotos throws, and generally sticks to offense that requires little cooperation, mostly just hitting cool sentons and open hand strikes. Super Uchu Power is totally awesome in this match, the shooter alien is such a great menacing monster crowbarring dudes with kicks like baseball bat shots, locking in shoulder popping shoot submissions and dropping ridiculous bombs. He also works some really nifty exchanges with Hashimoto, there is a cool moment where the alien goes for a gi choke and Hashimoto reverses into a Fujiwara armbar, and several great spots centered around Super Uchu Power trying to block Hashimotos STOs and other throws. Toba narrowly avoiding destruction and and catching the beast with some hard punches and backfists was great. The finish was between Toba and MIKAMI and while it wasn’t as epic as the best Toba faceoffs it was fun. [1999-02-28-DDT] Super Uchu Power vs DAISAKU DAISAKU is a kickboxer dude who has worked CAPTURE, so can handle himself against a stiff monster. Doesn't matter though cause S.U. Power just crushes him. Daisaku puts on a good fight but is put to sleep in about 3 minutes. Very brief but very painful looking. Amazing promo after the match and Super Uchu Power struts away as the theme from Terminator 2 blasts from the speakers. All hail the Super Cosmic Force! MIKAMI, Super Uchu Power, Tomohiko Hashimoto & Tanomusaku Toba vs Shoichi Ichinomiya, Tomohiro Ishii, GENTARO & YOSHIYA (DDT 10/30/01, Elimination Match) This was an Elimination match which kind of showcased the amount of WWF fandom that was going on in DDT. Toba was only in this for a short time, but he looked damn great potatoeing dudes as usual. He also took some big ragdoll bumps during his FIP section. Tomohiro Ishii was kind of working like a regular heel wrestler here, which was a bit underwhelming considering how awesome he was when he was a stiff psycho during this time period, but there was a great moment where Toba woke him up and he started throwing big damn potatoes. The non-Toba portions were good but never reached those early violent heights again. It builds to a WWF style finishing run with Shoichi Ichimiya doing heel run ins, Mikami overcoming a 2 on 1 scenario, all the heels attacking with Stone Cold Uchu Power running in to lay everyone out only for a sudden heel turn to happen. I liked GENTARO a lot in this, such a cool unique wrestler in his early days with his blend of athleticism and WWF New Generation era worship, and MIKAMIs athleticism is also really fun, but I thought it got a little silly down the stretch. Still, someone who’s really into WWF Elimination Matches will probably dig this a lot. Koichiro Kimura vs. Munenori Sawa, BattlARTS 6/1/2008 Koichiro Kimura vs. Akitoshi Saito, WING 10/25/1991 - Reupload needed! Koichiro Kimura vs. Mitsuya Nagai, RINGS 1/25/1992 Koichiro Kimura vs. Poison Sawada, DDT 10/11/2000 Super Uchu Power & Super Rider vs. Sanshiro Takagi & Kazushige Nozawa, DDT 3/25/1997 - the DDT debut show main event features quite the epic destruction of Takagi & Nozawa at the hands of two psychotic shooter aliens. Daisaku & Yusaku vs. Kengo Takai & Super Uchu Power Masashi Aoyagi & Mitsuya Nagai & Ryuma Go vs. Kendo Nagasaki & Koichiro Kimura & Masahiko Orihara I know Phil didn't like Kimura in Futen, but I'd like to revisit that stuff. His match against Fujita Hayato Jr. was plenty brutal and great.