Jetlag

Damn, I forgot what a good little match this was. This was a match between two young guys who normally lean more towards pro style than shootstyle when they are working BattlARTS, but they do a shockingly great job approximating PRIDE imitation serious shootstyle. Just a loaded 6 minute sprint with awesome suplexes and some big exchanges. Really the perfect opener for your shootstyle fed.

This was a fun undercard match that they actually showed in full. I liked the opening basic hold exchanges with both guys doing something nifty – Fujita hitting a cool STO from a front headlock and Yamakawa with a nice leg trip. The rest of this was mostly a Fujita showcase. His basic offense is much more vicious than your average junior – dropkick to the head, hurty looking headbutts, kneedrop to the back of the head etc, while also mixes in innovative stuff. Yamakawa didn't look quite up there as he seemed nowhere near as in shape as Fujita and was struggling to get into position at times, but he got it together for the finishing run, hitting some huge kicks. The win actually felt like a nice achievement. Really fun unpredictable match.

Hugely entertaining match. Kinda surprised this hasn't gotten more play. DDP was probably the smartest worker on earth in 1998, mixing up the left right punches and working really interesting exhanges against just about anyone. Him blocking a Giant punch with a trashcan is one of those rare moments that look visually impressive and make perfect sense. DDP sells great and Giant looks like a killer when controlling, dropping some big elbows on DDPs leg and hitting a crazy huge backbreaker. I also loved him kicking out at 1 even after eating a massive chairshot. Perfectly executed, smart finish which is the kinda stuff DDP has a knack for.

In 1998 Nagayo was mostly working short bomb throwing sprint, but in October, she for some reason decided to put on wrestling shoes and work some 70s style more grappling oriented matches against her student, perhaps MUGA inspired. This is a fun match kinda like an old studio TV squash where the jobber gets some offense. Matsumoto is a forgotten worker and not a standout in any way but she can add some fun touches. Highlights include a nifty out of nowhere leg trip, a surprise uranage and a great struggle over a neckbreaker. Nasty looking finish.

Here's a rare creature – a slow paced GAEA match. Yamada looked really good dominating with her superior striking early on and Kaoru would only get minuscule offense. A superplex and sleeper spot end up being important and setting up the stretch run. Both sold well down the stretch and KAORU avoiding Yamadas finisher was really good. I wasn't sure how these two would click in a singles match but they did just fine.

I gotta say, Hirotas underdog act was highly entertaining in 1998. If she had kept working like this she might have become a really good rich girls Masao Inoue. She took some big bumps and kept the hip attacks coming. Ozaki of course relishes in stretching and smacking lower ranked opponents and did a good job carrying this. Also, she wasn't required to sell too much, so that is also a plus. Some fun moments where Hirota gets the better of Oz and some pretty brutal stiff backfists in this.

A lot of these GAEA sprints have the tendency to go into mindless back and forth. That was not the case here as they did all these clever, unpredictable transitions. Surprisingly good opening exchanges involving Sugar Sato, who is far better than her rep for sure. You also had Yamada kicking people in the face. All the cut play spots where well timed and added to the match (not something that is the case in every joshi match). Enjoyable stuff despite 1-2 missed spots.

Han looked godly, as he always does. Some really exciting moments but also some breaks in the matwork. Kohsaka looks tough just by surviving 30 seconds against Volk while he went 30 minutes against Tamura. Weird finish makes this look like a set up.

Really fun all star tag which delivers more of that Hash/Tenryu goodness. This time with the added dynamic of having Koshinaka ready to cheapshot Hash when needed. Not an epic showdown and not as heated as this would be in 1993, but a really well worked match with everyone playing their role. It's always so much fun to watch Hash and Tenryu slugging it out and Fujinami is also really cool here, knocking the taste of Tenryus mouth with a huge slap and working in nifty counters in this fast paced match. He is a great contrast to the heavyweight sluggers.

Another night of Hashimoto & Tenryu trying to slice through eachother with chops. It never gets old!! Really you always find something new when these guys are tearing into eachother. Hirata is one of the more non descript japanese guys but he is perfectly fine here getting kicked in the face by Tenryu and getting a nice run of offense near the end until he gets caught by a flying chair cause Tenryu knows no rules. W-A-R!

Quality info: Pro filmed VHS comm tape. Every match except Yamada/Ito is clipped. Hiroshi Osuma vs. Katsumi Hirano Yukimasa Yokota vs. Shingo Shigeta Takashi Hara vs. Masamitsu Kochi Yoshiro Ito vs. Keisuke Yamada Koichiro Kimura vs. Fumio Akiyama Ricky Fuyuki/Jado/Gedo vs. Hiroshi Itakura/Hideo Takayama/Ichiro Yaguchi Ratings: Every match shown is FUN. Main event has a strong Fuyuki/Jado/Gedo performance. Ito/Yamada is the best match. Rec yes/no: Watch if you're a shootstyle or japan indy completist. Most of the fights were too clipped up to be assessed, but the fighters looked polished and worked plenty stiff, with Shigeta taking a pretty brutal beating in the second match but refusing to give up. Osuma vs. Hirano was a boxer vs. Wrestler match that was actually pretty good, which is a rare accomplishment. I assume most of these guys are from SAW given that Koichiro Kimura is also on this card, but that's pure speculation as I can't find any info at all on this fed. Ito vs. Yamada was shown in full and was a pretty cool little clash, like a poor man's Vader/Tamura. Lots of potatoe shots, and Ito, who could still move well at this point, was slamming the fuck out of Yamada with pro style powerbombs and suplexes. Yamada is the future Black Buffalo (of all people) and had some cool judo throws on Ito's roided ass. Yamada looked the most talented of anyone on the card and it feels like a waste that he went on to do garbage wrestling for the rest of the 90s. The main event was a typical Fuyuki/Jado/Gedo affair where they beat the shit out of the NSPW guys, bloodying and triple teaming them and waffling them with chairs. The NSPW all had kickpads (future face painted garbage brawler Yaguchi was doing a sambo gimmick at this point) and liked to kick hard, Itakura had a really nice dive aswell, but it seems most of their offense was clipped out which is a weird decision. They just got destroyed and the Fuyuki trio hit all their huge triple team moves including a powerbomb off the top and a huge assisted butt drop from Fuyuki. Fun stuff and Fuyuki is such a bastard in the match.

Quality info: Mostly watchable grainy handheld altough not everything is caught. Crypt Keeper & Nightmare Freddy vs. Jason the Terrible & Shoji Nakamaki Shinichi Nakano vs. The Winger Head Hunters vs. Jado & Gedo Ratings: Every match is FUN. Nakano & Head Hunters had standout performances. Rec yes/no: watch the whole thing on YouTube if you can stomach a handheld or skip to the main event. Crypt Keeper & Nightmare Freddy vs. Jason the Terrible & Shoji Nakamaki - this was a tornado tag and some of the best stuff I've seen from the horror creatures. That doesn't say much, but the layout was right, as Keeper & Freddy were the heels beating down on the faces, while Jason & Nakamaki were your charismatic babyfaces bleeding, being charismatic and making fun comebacks. Keeper was really spry here, doing a flip entrance to the ring and then landing huge boots to people's faces like he was Kawada or something. I feel like a hypocrite for it, but Jason is really fun to doing his Undertaker stuff and hitting absurd spin kicks. Shinichi Nakano vs. The Winger - post-SWS Nakano matches are rare as hen's teeth, which is awful because he is such an interesting worker, as his basic technical stuff looks tough as nails, and then he will stand up and kick you in the kidney. This was an extremely basic juniors match (that was half missed by the camera guy) where Winger added nothing, but was still a decent Nakano carryjob. Nakano made Winger struggle for everything, and at one point popped Winger straight in the mouth with a huge punch and then proceeded to stomp and kneedrop the back of his head as if trying to give him brain damage. Japanese sleazy unprofessionality at it's best. Head Hunters vs. Jado & Gedo - this was pretty much a sprint and made me think the Headhunters might be one of the most underrated tag teams ever. This was not just funny sleazy pro wrestling, it was basically like a Twin Towers vs. Rockers match, except far seedier, blood-drenched and violent. Headhunters were absolutely pasting the Twins with chairshots, powerbombs and their combined FATNESS, and I loved every second of it. Meanwhile Jado/Gedo were hitting superkicks and flying around, and the Headhunters did a really good job setting themselves up for their offense and bumping around like huge bowling pins. Also, the guy operating the camera finally gets his shit together and we get a full picture of this match. The only bummer was that the camera missed a huge Headhunter dive outside the ring. Watching this grainy footage zooming in on a Headhunter rampaging about in the stands of Korakuen Hall felt kinda like a found footage monster movie. The finish - a giant Headhunter moonsault - was one of the most ridiculous spots I've ever seen as the poor little japanese guy lying in the middle of the ring basically disappeared underneath as this giant fat dude splashed into the ring like free willy. Fantastic match

Oriental Pro 12/3/1992 Quality: this was a very watchable handheld, the guy caught everything in ring and most of the brawling outside too. Wellington Wilkins Jr. vs. Katsumi Hirano Akihiro Mikada vs. Nobutaka Araya Brian Lee vs. Masahiko Takasugi Yukihiro Kanemura & Masayoshi Motegi vs.Kazuhiko Matsuzaki & Hiroshi Itakura Ryuma Go & Jesse Barr vs. Ron & Don Harris (Texas Deathmatch in a cage~!) Ratings: Every match except Lee/Takasugi was FUN. Rec yes/no: watch if you're feeling adventurous or a japan indy completist. Well, this show was super interesting to watch. Way more polished than you expect a handheld random indy show with a bunch of nobodies + Harris Bros (of all people) to be. The opener was pretty great because PWFG Wilkins showed up to school his opponent with awesome takedowns, suplexes and stiff headbutts and shotais. It was a postively Negro Navarro performance from old Wellington. His opponent didn't look like much, but he didn't look lost in a match with a lot of grappling and he had a nifty leg trip. At one point, Wilkins went for a kick and fell over, to which Hirano rushed for an Achilles Hold. It was a minor detail, but about the only way Hirano could see any land in this match. Badass stuff from Wilkins. The next match was an extremely young Nobutaka Araya (here's a guy who's been everywhere) and Mikada, a guy I've found no information on. Mikada had really sharp, stiff kicks and didn't let up. The match was pretty basic and two guys this green probably shouldn't have gone 15+ minutes, but they delivered a good finish with Mikada landing a huge crossbody off the top. Charming in parts. The next bout was veteran Takasugi vs. An ultra generic blonde Brian Lee. Takasugi was still pretty spry and they worked an IWE type match with Lee roughing up his opponent and then Takasugi fighting fire with fire. Basic stuff again, and they ended the match just as it seemed to get hot. The co-main event was another match where you have no idea what to expect going and then you end up being positively surprised. I'd never seen pre-deathmatch Kanemura or Matsuzaki before, only snippets of Itakura and Motegi is a guy who is a notorious fuckup. All 4 guys won me over, though. Matsuzaki was a black trunks rookie, but he had really nice sharp kicks and headbutts, and Itakura was a fairly athletic tubby guy. Motegi looked pretty sharp, and everyone worked stiff and got the crowd into the match. They did flaring tempers nicely, leading to 3 guys hitting awesome dives and then a double countout which they turned into a restart and then did a really nice finish with Motegi hittig his awesome triple german into Kanemura getting the win. The main event was a serious match and worked US style. Harris Bros came in with long flowing manes – and bah gawd they both look like Chris Hero!! Go and Barr were your babyfaces, and the Bros worked them over good. Harris Brothers had really nice punches and stomps, eventually hitting some huge double teams including a big powerslam off the top rope. Everyone bled, and eventually Go got the hot tag and ran wild on the nazi vikings as if they were space jews, hitting a bunch of flying clotheslines and eventually getting the win with an octopus hold. Barr didn't look like much, only hitting some stomps and kneedrops, but the crowd got into him when he refused to quit, and Ron & Don did a pro job here, knowing to fly headfirst into the cage when it counted. Won't make you forget Final Conflict and probably went a little long, but I thought it was a good little formula match.

Terrific match. RINGS at it's finest. Always get a kick out of Yamamoto trying to beat that clown Tamura, in this case by going after him palms swinging. Opening mat exchanges were very good and the 2nd half had some of the most exciting standup exchanges and counters you'll ever see. I guess some of the mat stuff near the end wasn't as exciting as it could have been.

Really cool match which saw the future Ran Yu-Yu trying to take down Kansai. Kansai was past her prime at this point but could still bring it and kick you in the face hellishly. She works nice, simple and snug and doesn't allow any sprint work, so this match was a nice change of pace for joshi. I'm a Miyaguchi fan as she has solid simple spots (stiff european uppercut, enzuigiri that kills, big Samoan drop) and she works well against Kansai here. There is some weirdness early on with Miyaguchi working some armbars on the arena floor and refusing to let go, but it lead to a funny moment where Kansai grabbed a random umbrella and used it to hook Miyaguchis leg. While the arm work ended up being not important I really liked Kansais selling of Miyaguchis subsequent leg attack and a few suitably great, well timed spots ensued. This had a good story, never got silly, was plenty violent and solid all the way through.

Stiff match with plenty of neat moments. Unfortunately the structure was kind of a mess. Kato was wearing a bandage from her match against LCO and got bloodied again, but simply refused to be face in peril and no-sold through the attacks against her. Ozaki & Sato looked good when they got to work the cut and Satomura and Sato have really nice chemistry together. The nearfall section was good when it was Satomura and Kato trying their darndest to pin that witch Ozaki but I thought it went too long. Ozaki is hit or miss but she looked got kicking a bloody Kato in the face here and she threw a rotten backfist at one point. I'm all for experimentation in wrestling but this would've been really great with a traditional structure.

East Europeans were pretty much carrying the RINGS undercard in 1998. This was a genuinely great Ilioukhine performance as he basically manhandles Naruse for your amusement. I wouldn't say Naruse was carried but he wasn't doing anything super exciting either. Atleast he has a nice backhand. Some really good exchanges in this one.

Hey look, it's an ECW match which uses some psychology. Right away Sasuke is blasting Credible with dives. Later Sasuke is working an armbar and immediately „Boring“ chants are breaking out. Sasuke goes for the dives again but Jason trips him and he ends up missing a plancha to the floor, bumping his knee in absolutely horrific fashion. Credible proceeds to beat the fuck out of his knee with chairs and splashing the leg. They even work a classic Figure 4 tease. Sasuke gets a brief, awesome one legged comeback before missing a huge Phoenix Splash and eating Credibles brutal looking finisher (better than Okada). Sasuke looked great and Credible (aside from not knowing how to defend against an armbar) didn't look half bad either.

It's another chapter in the series of Improbably Great Usuda vs. Indy Scum matches. I wish Usuda had worked IWA Japan so we could see what he could do with the Great Takeru. I think Honma was already doing regular deathmatches at this point as he looked sleazier and seemed to have forgotten about the finer intricacies of pro wrestling. He just went for big fucking bombs and looked noticably worse during stand up sections than he did earlier in the year. Aside from some slight lack of direction on Honmas part this was a real good match, let me tell you: Usuda pretty much held the whole thing together with his selling, ability to come up with exciting counters and absolutely blasting Honma with brutal kicks. Anytime Usuda was on offense you felt the match could end at any moment. Honma is good enough as your crazy highspot machine. All-time brutal finish.

Norton was getting some bad reviews from smarks in 1998, but then so did Fujiwara and Tarzan Goto. This was of course an IWGP title match that was worked like a WCWSN semi squash, but still thought Norton looked really good. He did a great job selling for Nakanishi, including bumping big over the top rope and selling accumulated damage. He also absolutely blistered him with chops, so he was kind of your 1998 Walter type. That they got the somewhat quiet crowd to go bonkers for Nakanishi over the course of 7 minutes was great too. Wouldn't mind checking out more Norton.

Volk destroys the legend. Has anyone made locking in an armlock look as triumphant as he did? Good in the same ways as the previous match, altough in this case it's a little sour that it ended so quickly. Being the main event and all that.

Here's a rare creature: a bad Tamura match. There's a few injuries happening in this match, but it wasn't even good up to that point. I blame Naruse, who was way too limited at this point to be going 20+ minutes. Pretty dull opening matwork as it was mostly both guys moving from positions in not partiularily interesting ways. Nothing felt hard fought and I think there wasn't a single submission attempt in the first 14 minutes. Then Tamura injures Naruses leg with a kneebar. Ironically the following short stoppage woke up the crowd and produced some hot striking exchanges, but the match quickly fell apart again as Naruses knee started buckling. The leg injury may have been an abstract work to keep folks believing in the realness of RINGS. Eitherways Tamura beats easily Naruses after 24 minutes of mostly dull shootstyle. See, not all shootstyle is great. Supposedly Tamura got his nose broken too but I didn't notice when.

The wild ride that is 1998 continues as now Kanako Motoya of all scantily clad joshi fairies is stepping up to provide the kickass grapple oriented pro wrestling. Shockingly great performance from her as she did a great job selling a bandaged leg and also worked that cool convoluted submission based style that was so en vogue then aswell as throwing in some nice high kicks for good measure. Amano is another girl who does the flash submission based style and she does it exceptionally well as she has really cool looking and natural ways to get submissions. Both of them sold extremely well and they did a really nice job working a 50/50 type contest without things getting silly as the selling and fire was in place. Highlights include a gritty palm strike exchange, great sleeper hold spot and whacky La Magistral into armbar. Only nitpick – which might be pretty major depending on what type of person you are – was that they showed the last 9 minutes of what seemed to be a 30 minute contest, so that has to make you think a little. Still what they put together was exceptional & great.

Bigger and better version of the dome match earlier in the year. Man alive Vader and Hansen are killing machines in this, anytime Vader swings his fist it looks like a potential KO, and Hansen is such a bastard in this too, almost knocking out Kobashi with his punches and kicking him in the face for good measure. Kobashi & Akiyama trying to fight out of this was quite the epic struggle and they ever got their shit in. Vader falling on top of Akiyama when he tried a Northern Lights suplex may be one of the craziest spots of that kind ever. Finish was perfectly executed and filmed. One of the funnest bouts of the year, and that's something that's sorely been lacking in AJPW... fun.

Wouldn't be shocked if his was the best heavyweight match from a US main promotion in the late 90s. Just a perfectly worked clash of the titans style match which rightfully had the fans flipping out. Opening wrestling exchanges were really entertaining as it was basically DDP trying anything and everything to chop Goldberg down and Goldberg just destroying him. Goldberg tackling him through the ropes and backflipping out of a leg trip is why he's special. He also made an indy-ish twisting suplex move look brutal. Last few minutes were just great as Goldberg sold his vulnerability (including knocking himself out) just right while still retaining his dangerous aura and finishing DDP off quickly.