Jetlag

BJW 1/ 2/98 Let's check out some old school BJW, shall we? Not a forgotten or obscure fed, but this period certainly is. I mean, look at this card! How many things can you say about any of these names? Neftaly vs. Miho Kawasaki Shunme Matsuzaki vs. Shadow VII Yone Genjin vs. Naohiro Hoshikawa Kendo Nagasaki & Gennosuke Kobayashi vs. Masayoshi Motegi & Makoto Saito Katsumi Usuda & Ikuto Hidaka vs. Tomoaki Honma & Minoru Fujita Gedo & Jado vs. Yoshihiro Tajiri & Yamakawa Jason the Terrible & Shoji Nakamaki & Mitsuhiro Matsunaga vs. Great Pogo & Shadow WX & Shadow Winger Aaaaand of course a 1998 indy show opens with a forgotten japanese girl wrestler and a luchadora working quasi lucha exchanges. This and the other first 3 matches are really clipped so it's mostly just to get a quick laugh, but what they showed of the ladies match wasn't bad. Neftly hits a nasty senton and wins with a nifty powerbomb variation. Matsuzaki is a sad case as he always looks ridiculously polished (for a guy in the second match of your typical sleaze card) and always gets saddled in some non match, in this case against a mexican Mini-Mr. Pogo (sorry Ricky Santana, you're better at lucha than garbage brawling). All these BJW undercard matches quickly devolve into crowd brawling shenanigans. I would've liked to see more of the BJW vs. WYF tag – because Motegi is GOOD and Saito is COOL and I am actually liking Nagasaki with his nice back elbow and quick bursts of wrestling and actually dangerous floor brawling. The unrecognizable rookie Kobayashi is yet another indy guy who doesn't know how to take Saito's springboard moves properly which almost feels like a rib at this point. So they actually showed the BattlARTS vs. BJW dudes tag in full and it's AWESOME. I am not playing a trick on you here, if that match happened in BattlARTS it would have a good shot at being the tag MOTY. It's not a BattlARTS style match but it has enough cool shootstyle matwork and stiff shots throughout to keep you entertained, and the whole thing is just ridiculously tight, innovative stuff. Hidaka & Fujita are all skinny and young but they join the 98 GAEA crew by looking spunky, inventive and super talented. Pre-bumpfreak Honma is good as your kickpadded guy who sells really well, can work a kneebar or two and gets kicked in the head by Usuda. Usuda looked like a badass black belt tumbling with some purples trying their best to push him. He is a stoic shooter guy with some really spectacular counters and he always works really well with these indy juniors he can just rip apart and this was no exception. I also liked that because Hidaka and Fujita are scrawny 1 year rookies any basic move on them looks like a plausible finish. But the whole thing was just a bonkers match with breathtaking lucha meets shootstyle submissions and counters and nasty double teams and some brutal stand up exchanges (Usuda just dropping bombs) and yeah this is just the kinda gem you hope for when going through this old stuff. Also, great moment where Honma botches a springboard move so Hidaka just pounces on him and they beat the shit out of eachother. That's how you cover up a blown spot. There was no way in hell that Jado/Gedo vs. Tajiri/Yamakawa could follow up the workrate of the previous tag and they wisely didn't try. They worked more of a US style tag with Gedo and Jado bringing the heel cutoffs and punches and rope stun guns and Figure 4s and what not. Pretty bread and butters stuff but it wasn't a bad match and I always enjoy checking out young Tajiri who is such an ultra sharp wrestler with the kicks and lucha flying moves and so forth. The main event – well, you know what you're getting. Mostly wandering brawl with 2 guys occasional rolling into the ring to do stuff, then back out. In between that you get shots of Winger putting a headlock on Matsunaga backstage and strolling up the stairs. There were a few cool individual moments, such as the big Nakamaki dive to open the whole thing, Pogo hitting some Tenryu kicks on a bloody Matsunaga, Matsunaga hitting karate kicks and the Undertaker walk on the balcon, Pogo bringing out a barbed wire drill and Jason working Jason spots. This was falls count anywhere so there were also some cool spots where they had multiple referees and fans on the outside would count along when a nearfall happened. Finish is Jason working his „resurrection“ spot a bunch (yeah Shadow WX you loser you're not going over JASON) and winning with a god damn Northern Lights Bomb. Jason The Terrible is indestructable and it rules. This show top to bottom was not as good as the IWA Japan stuff but it had an absolute killer obscure gem in Usuda/Hidaka vs. Fujita/Honma (I totally expect one of you granddads to tell me how eveerrrryone put that one on their VHS comps back then and talked it up as a **** 3/4 match on random obscure DVDVR offshoot boards). Everything else delivered as you'd expect and I always enjoy checking out a random card like this.

30 minutes of slick polished shootstyle. You could sit back and nit pick around this match, but I think it's safe to say that the whole thing was a success. Tamura came across as a highly methodical, dominanting force, mostly being in a controlling position or preventing Kohsaka from taking a dominant position himself, including defending against all of his takedowns. This lead to Kohsaka fighting from underneath but repeatedly getting the better of him, even while not always forcing a rope break. Kohsaka going 2-0 in points feels significant similiar to a soccer match where the ball is constantly in one team's playing field only for them to break through a handful of times and score. The matwork itself was slow paced but they kept the swank moves coming to keep you interested and the struggle felt significant. Then Tamura knocks Kohsaka over in one of the greatest near KO's ever (due to being extremely well sold) and it feels like the match can end anytime now. It all works really well and despite Tamura feeling invincible you realize Kohsaka maybe better at the mat game and able to beat him in such a way. It is not easy to tell such a story while bringing the action and working such a tricky style in a match stretched to titanic proportions but they did a wonderful job. Finally, here's a Dean Rasmussen quote which always comes to my mind when thinking about matches like this: „In case there are those of you who don't remember scientific wrestling- it was American mat wrestling that Nelson Royal and Danny Hodge did when they wrestled guys who were also faces. It was really interesting and it was ALWAYS a time limit draw and everybody shakes hands at the end and the announcers talk about what a joy it was to watch and how it was what wrestling should be, meanwhile, you're hoping BlackJack Mulligan and Wahoo are gonna kick the shit out of each other pretty soon.“

Sammath is fucking awesome. Also, Alex Jones knows how to cut a promo, PJW to a lesser extent. If I were in charge of a wrestling school I would tell students to study their material. Shitting on Kenny Omega for booking criminals is lame. Talk about him being a lousy booker. If he had booked Dan Maff vs. Trauma II, now that's a woman beater vs. statutory rapist matchup I'd have actually liked to see. EDIT: Also who on earth would object to someone booking Jerry Lawler vs. Steve Austin?

This may be the case of an apuestas not QUITE delivering on the promise of the buildup trios. These two were fighting like mad everytime they squared off, and there are shades of that in this match – Guerrero starts with an awesome punch combo in the corner, and there are scrappy moments throughout the match. In total this was a big match with big moves where both guys worked hard – it didn't quite have the epic transitions or savage feeling I want from a legendary mask match, but rather huge bumps and dives. I'm probably unfairly harsh here because of how annoying bloodless mask matches got in the 2000s, while this was a far better match than any of these.

The first half of this was great action. One of the better „small scale“ Kawada performances of the year and also the first time I've seen Kakihara show some kind of fire in AJPW. Lots of stiff shots and I liked Kawada torturing him with a few basic armlocks. The 2nd half was not as good as the first. I was slightly annoyed with Kawada no-selling the armbar and the UWFi boys being threated like jobbers.

JIP. This was surprisingly one of the stiffer matches I've seen between the GAEA younglings so far. Sato hit some fierce urakens and kicks to the face and Nagashima at one point started throwing shotais from mount. She also nailed Sato with some of the most brutal double stomps I've seen in a while. This was largely Nagashima working as a grappler, busting out her signature slick moves with Sato working as the bigger girl. It works surprisingly well and I thought Sato did a remarkable job putting over the smaller Nagashimas skill. Flash finish that works really well.

JIP. Watching Nagashima will make you realize fast she was one of he more innovative workers around in 1998. This was closer to your typical sprint joshi but paced slow enough and with enough selling to make you appreciate everything. Lots of slick sequences and counters. Uematsu brings a nice vicious edge to this workrate-y match, hitting some brutal knee combos and punching Nagashima square in the jaw at one point. One thing I like is that many of the spots shown here would be near physically impossible to do for most male workers – especially the bridge up spots and Nagashima landing on her feet from the Northern Lights Suplex. Roughly 7 out of 13 minutes shown on both TV and comm tape.

JIP. This was a rockin' little match. I enjoyed the super simple build which was Kato's sleeper hold vs. Sato's dragon screw and Figure 4 leglock. I measure wrestlers by how good they are at selling a sleeper hold and Sato does a nice job here, visibly affected early and close to fading later. They engage in some high end bomb throwing action throwing violent high kicks and backfists and this is really good stuff and another entry to the quality year both these girls were having. NOTE: The G-Panic version shows about 11 minutes out of 17 while the comm. Tape version has only 8 min.

Going I was expecting this to be a light hearted squash, but Sugar actually got to be fairly competitive with Kansai. Match had a little too much crowd brawling and thus felt less compact than it should have been, but Sato trying to cut Kansai down was pretty good. Kansai is far removed from her prime intensity, but still has some brutal kicks and suplexes in store. Dug the Sleeper Hold near KO and Kansai mocking Sato's attempts to attack her. This including absorbing kicks to her face and doing squats when Sato tried to work her leg.

This was, admittedly, fairly brief and felt a bit like a prelude to a conclusion we never got to see. On the other hand, this was also absolutely brutal and classic WAR material. Araya still absolutely hate Tenryu and their interactions are gold as you expect, but you also Koshinaka not giving a damn and treating everyone like garbage. Kikuchi is a schlubby looking barefoot guy with manbreasts and he just gets murdered. Some of the stiffest shots I've seen Tenryu throw in this one and Araya remains the King fo the Moonsault as he connects one to the back of Koshinaka's head in this one. Not a high end WAR tag – it's just a little too short for that – but two crusty vets beating the bricks off of a couple young punks.

I actually dig the hell out of this match. The constant cheapshots from Regal were awesome and the grappling was really cool to watch. With an untrained guy like Goldberg you have to do some legit moves so when Regal goes for stuff like a single leg takedown or headlock takeover he executes them with legitimacy. Goldberg also hits the most awesome arm throw. Corner palm strike + headbutt combo was epic. Best 5 minute TV match of the year?

This was hilarious as it was basically Goldberg launching Saturn (and his friends) about the place with one beastly move after another while Saturn found some believable ways to work over Goldberg. Goldberg actually sold far more than Saturn, as Perry was pretty robotic, came back almost immediately after Goldberg hit him with something and didn't show any fire whatsoever. Goldberg's performance was a textbook example of how an unstoppable wrecking machine should have a semi competitive match against a much lesser opponent and it's no wonder he got so mad over. I mean look at all that! Last counter was insane.

On paper this doesn't look like anything grand and these guys all could easily just go braindead and have a generic trios with some nice moments, but instead we get a STORY~! and a fun unique match layout as Ultimo Guerrero and Mr. Aguila go tooth and nail at eachother whenever they are there together. UG appears to have watched some joshi tapes as he flings Aguila about with some violent hair snapmares before hitting a snug dropkick in the ropes and later a really beautiful judo suplex. Of course everyone in this match is also an athlete in the prime of their career so there are tons of insane armdrags, bumps and dives in the match. Liked the structure a lot with the 2nd fall being especially good avoiding the obvious rudo beatdown. It ends with a huge dive train and UG and Aguila once again squaring off and this is clearly a feud people need to get into. Top tier popcorn wrestling with a brain, why would you watch anything else?

IWA Japan continues to deliver feat. special guest Tomohiro Ishii! IWA Japan 5/18/1998 The Great Takeru vs. Perseus Keisuke Yamada & Takeshi Sato vs. Shoichi Ichinomiya & Tomohiro Ishii The Great Kabuki & Gran Hamada vs. Keizo Matsuda & Takashi Okamura Not as good as the 4/29 card, but still really fun indy action. Takeru/Perseus was the same deal as usual, hit all your big spots for pops and be done with it, but they actually seem to be gaining a bit in polish. The Ishii match was a motherfucking Ishii match, as Tomohiro Ishii – dressed in improbable 90s colors – throws down chucking chairs and kicking the lowly IWA Japan punks in their faces. All the Ishii interactions were gold as he gets the boys to show some piss and vinegar, nasty headbutt exchanges and kicks to the spine ensue. Some gritty legwork is there aswell, with using the old Jumbo kneebreaker over a table/chair and it's all great. Ichinomiya is a future comedy character and you can tell he is not very good at the pro wrestling. Funny moment where Ishii tries the spot from his future Shibata matches where he puffs his chest after getting kicked by Sato and Sato just flattens him. Atta boy! Now I need more 1998 Ishii too, god dammit. The main event was as fun as it sounds on paper, with Hamada working fun sequences and hitting big high spots, and Kabuki again in the sleaze Tenryu role. Matsuda & Okamura are quite suck ass and bland, but they do a decent job ripping up Kabuki's leg and isolating the vets hitting some double teams. Match went quite long and they kept it interesting and I would've liked to see the thing in full. Best moment of the match was easily Kabuki kicking Matsuda in the face and decking him with punches from let and right.

I got the full match in crystal clear quality from Mike L. I think NJPW World may also have the full version. There was some enjoyable work here, particularily Ohtani's aggressively working the arm and his heelish touches. I wasn't a huge fan of the second half which people have liked a lot as there was no big payoff to the armwork and it felt close to satire at times – with Ohtani falling on his head as a „counter“ to the 2nd avalanche brainbuster etc. Folks who liked the JIP version should check out the whole thing.

YAKUSHIJI SHOWCASE MATCH!!! This was a really indy match, like something Homicide and Amazing Red would do on an IWA-MS card. The match had 3 tornado DDT's! And 2 Malenko/Guerrero rollup exchanges! Still, despite the mindless and somewhat heatless nature of the bout it was nice to check out these two stretching out and working around their spots and doing some holds. Yakushiji comfortably outshone the shooter with more spectacular kicks and nastier submissions (dug that Cavernaria). So, lucha > resu, or something? Mighty overkill for this match, but I don't hate it so bad because they built it from the ground up starting with basic armdrags and headlock takeovers.

This was another gem from the lucha trove. This was for the CMLL tag titles, but way scrappier than your average title match. Charles & Wagner Jr. brought the BEEF and immediately began pasting their opponents with stiff looking lariats and chops. The young hotness of Shocker & Niebla had to use their agility and wit to survive which lead to some really good sequences. They were also much sneakier than your typical vanilla technicos, as they ended up doing everything in their power to win the belts, including double teaming their opponents and interfering whenever needed. It lead to a bristling hot 3rd fall in which the crowds favour swung back and forth as the technicos took out Charles Jr. but then Wagner Jr. threw down bringing out the deadly Wagner Driver (which Dr. Morales calls a Martinete). The finish was another crazy move and a great moment. Controversial lucha at it's finest.

The opening of this didn't do a ton for me. It's 4 workers I like a lot, doing a lot of the stuff that really annoys me about joshi tags. Random holds and transitions out the ass, too many cheap shots, pointless crowd brawling etc. After the crowd brawl this got good as they rolled out all their big moves and athletic counters. There was a particularily slick armbar sequence and the thing mentioned above by previous commentators were spectacular. The match ended up being a crowd pleasing spotfest with a vicious edge, but a good showcase for the girls. I liked the kicks from Nagashima and Kato and Uematsu has such vicious stomps and knees. Nagashima received some praise and she is someone who strikes me as being insanely talented while rarely putting it all together in a match.

Another quality workrate trios from the CMLL crew which lacked maybe a slightly more stretched out opening to be be closer to the 4/24 trios. Still, all 3 falls were just excellent pro wrestling and it's really cool to see guys like Niebla and Aguila mix it up with the legends. This was worked technicos vs. Technicos so there is no rudo beatdown, however there is a general semblance of the greenhorns having to fight uphill against the savvy vets. For example Nieblas knee gets attacked in some pretty nasty moments, and Aguila eats a few boots to the face when getting too cute with his flying moves. Both Niebla and Aguila have some truely spectacular moves and Rivera holds up his end in a cool mat section against Santito. Some clever spots, Panther and Santito once again bust out a Doomsday Device variation in the middle of an exchange, I also loved Hijo del Santo's cheap dropkick in the 3rd fall. He also busted out his awesome diving headbutt->tope combo just to show these punks he's still the man. Also got a kick out of Blue Panther's tricky armlock getting a nice response. High quality stuff, the CMLL crew could do no wrong in 1998.

Sneaky BattlARTS guys always sneaking into joshi cards. Obviously there were some jokes in this match with Otsuka having to defend Fukuoka from creepy Ishikawa, but most of this was straight exchanges. Ishikawa/Otsuka is an all time great matchup and every single instance is worth seeking out, this being no exception. They did the bulk of the work and had some high end exchanges. I've been watching these guys for almost 10 years now and they still surprise me with some of the stuff the bust out, for example Ishikawa hits an awesome clean deadlift suplex on Otsuka, there is a nifty judo trip and some cool triangle scissor work. The exchanges between Hyuga and Fukuoka almost felt stale in comparison. Otsuka was a total stooge eating stiff dropkicks and double stomps from Hyuga and even a stiff Rider Kick from Fukuoka in a miscommunication spot. Of course the best moment is when Ishikawa finally gets ahold of Fukuoka and the first thing he does is lock in a chokehold with glee, fuck that's creepy. Hyuga and Fukuoka do the finish and they pick up the action which was good. This was 19 minutes which is pretty long for a novelty match but the whole thing went by in a breeze.

Cool trios match which had some matwork and for once, ended without a gazillion bajillion nearfalls. The highlight was obviously Hase working the mat against he shooter cats. Though, the goal of the match was to put the UWFi crew over strong, I thought that considering AJPW always gets praised for it's psychological brilliance, they could've done a better job. I'm not sure I by Hase easily taking down and dominating Albright on the mat. It made him look like a fat dude with nice suplexes rather than an unstoppable beast. And Kobashi was taking some really stiff knees from Takayama, but was fine a minute later. Johnny Ace was fired up but kind of threated everyone like a jobber. Ah, to nitpick forever! It was a fun match and that's what counts.

The main event was a stupidly good sleazy WAR battle with Arashi basically walloping everyone with stiff lariats all the time and not bumping ever and crusty old Kabuki ruling it doing you know exactly what, hitting the worlds greatest punches and superkicks. Yamada basically gets the shit beaten out of him and eats the fuck out of every lariat and superkick he gets, just drilling himself into the mat with enthusiasm. Okamura is pretty blah but he and Yamada are EAGER and Kabuki is totally carrying this by bumping like a motherfucker and getting chairs chucked in his face and making me give a shit for his nerve hold AGAIN. He teases the fist drop and eats a flying lariat in a sequence that wasn't athletically impressive or anything but awesome in context of the match. I was totally a Kabuki fan before getting into IWA Japan, but seeing him crusty, old and broken down as an improbable but determined company ace who throws fists and gets spin kicked in the face is an enlightenment.

Motokawa/Nakano was a shockingly good match, everything you can hope for from sleaze indy undercard girl wrestling. Nakano is former GAEA and a kickpadded alternate universe Satomura. She almost KO's Motokawa with her opening barrage and from then on it's on. Everything she does is either a nasty kick or a cool shoot submission. She rules, and why have I never heard of her? Motokawa likes to indulge in silly spots but straightens herself out her after getting kicked in the face 3 or 4 times and starts dropping Nakano with suplexes that would do Otsuka proud. They don't indulge in too many nearfalls and I am left thinking the world needs more of this mysterious Chiharu Nakano.

More to come. IWA Japan in 1998 rules. IWA Japan 4/29/1998 Perseus & Hidetomo Egawa vs. The Great Takeru & Akinori Tsukioka (The spot-a-ton!) Emi Motokawa vs. Chiharu Nakano (The girl match!) The Great Kabuki & Arashi vs. Keisuke Yamada & Shigeo Okamura (The crusty main event!) I'm an IWA Japan fan now, because every IWA Japan card is great in it's own unique way which can not be expressed in conventional measures of quality, this being an outdoor show in front of a picturesque setting just being the icing on the cake. This was a nice three-piece, as you had the junior opener, which was basically all these guys throwing a slew of big moves and occasional BattlARTSian intermission touches from Egawa including hitting some huge belly to bellys which you do not expect from a tiny insignificant guy like him. Perseus (a guy the internet knows nothing about), for a guy who is all about Dragon Suplexes and Triple Powerbombs and all that also hits a really great powerslam. It's all pretty senseless and really fun. Motokawa/Nakano was a shockingly good match, everything you can hope for from sleaze indy undercard girl wrestling. Nakano is former GAEA and a kickpadded alternate universe Satomura. She almost KO's Motokawa with her opening barrage and from then on it's on. Everything she does is either a nasty kick or a cool shoot submission. She rules, and why have I never heard of her? Motokawa likes to indulge in silly spots but straightens herself out her after getting kicked in the face 3 or 4 times and starts dropping Nakano with suplexes that would do Otsuka proud. They don't indulge in too many nearfalls and I am left thinking the world needs more of this mysterious Chiharu Nakano. The main event was a stupidly good sleazy WAR battle with Arashi basically walloping everyone with stiff lariats all the time and not bumping ever and crusty old Kabuki ruling it doing you know exactly what, hitting the worlds greatest punches and superkicks. Yamada basically gets the shit beaten out of him and eats the fuck out of every lariat and superkick he gets, just drilling himself into the mat with enthusiasm. Okamura is pretty blah but he and Yamada are EAGER and Kabuki is totally carrying this by bumping like a motherfucker and getting chairs chucked in his face and making me give a shit for his nerve hold AGAIN. He teases the fist drop and eats a flying lariat in a sequence that wasn't athletically impressive or anything but awesome in context of the match. I was totally a Kabuki fan before getting into IWA Japan, but seeing him crusty, old and broken down as an improbable but determined company ace who throws fists and gets spin kicked in the face is an enlightenment.

GAEA runs a lot of sprints, but this was the kind of match that felt like a mix between NWA Studio grappling and BattlARTS with more high flying. Very unique match where both kept stubbornly going for specific moves. Both kept trying for a suplex, Uematsu for the Northern Lights, Kato for the Dragon Suplex, and they had some cool ways to work around these moves. In between that Kato had her kicks and Uematsu a nice shotai, and Kato kept trying to choke her out. You could tell they put thought into every move they tried. That kind of singular focus was really unique and it produced a compelling match. The weak point was the finish which I thought failed to pay off what they had been building up in the previous 10 minutes, but the work was cool and interesting which is what you want from your GAEA.