Jetlag

The crusty main event! Kabuki train 98 continues! Everyone in this match gets WALLOPED and it rules. Yamada & Okumura get all uppity and Nagasaki fucking wastes them both with chairs. Kabuki & Nagasaki turn into the worlds lumpiest Anderson brothers and procure some brutal armwork and stomps, with Nagasaki rocking the shoulder dislocating Armbars. It's improbable and strange and great. Kabuki hits his awesome fist drop and starts working the ARMPIT CLAW and it's fucking gross. Okumura & Yamada are not technically great but they are willing to smack the shit out of the crusty old bastards and in return get punched in the face, elbowed in the chin and kicked in the throat a LOT. Kabuki & Nagasaki actually have enough cardio to keep things moving for 15 minutes and we get a handful of great spots and thrust kicks. FEAR THE GREEN MIST! Also, SICK piledriver finish. I loved this.

The spot-a-ton! Match contains half a dozen leg drop variants and half a dozen tope atomicos! They hit ALL the spots. Match is actually fairly competitive. Palomino, the masked Ikuto Hidaka, looks ultra polished working pseudo lucha exchanges. Tsukioka lands an Asai Moonsault into nowhere! Swank moves and dives are rolled out. An almost unrecognizable Mikami hits the neat-o Victory Roll into Kneebar because that was en vogue in 1998. Tsukioka does another insane thing which the camera misses completely! They go BROADWAY (but we will never get the full experience, because they clipped a few minutes from the bout.) This match was praised in an old DVDVR and is still fun today. Manly and whip ass etc.

IWA Japan 7/20/1998 So IWA Japan continues to be the most watchable non-MUGA promotion in 1998. The awesomeness of IWA Japan is sorely underappreciated, so allow me to breakdown the ingredients that makes a fun indy card! The „who are these guys“ improbable fun opener! Yuji Kito & Yoshiya Yamashita vs. Turtuger & Hiroki Achiiwa. It's 4 rookie nobodies beating the shit out of eachother! Even the turtle guy is laying it in, in between jokes! The ref hits a suicide dive! Brutal elbow drops and kneedrops that land with full weight and bad intentions! Nasty boston crab finish! The tease! Cosmo Soldier vs. Hidetomo Egawa. This was 6 minutes clipped down to 2 and a half. The full match was probably an awkward botch ladden mess, and I wanted to see every second of it! Awkward attempts at shootstyle/lucharesu style experiments and cool suplexes! The utterly bizarre! Freddy Krueger vs. Katsumi Hirano. Freddy Krueger and a blonde japanese guy in a black gi hit the mat! Krueger has a noisy sleazy glamourus valet! Krueger puts the Fujiwara armbar over like a champ, while everyone is eyeballing the whip carrying lady. The spot-a-ton! Asian Cougar & Palomino vs. Akinori Tsukioka & Kyohei Mikami. Match contains half a dozen leg drop variants and half a dozen tope atomicos! They hit ALL the spots. Match is actually fairly competitive. Palomino, the masked Ikuto Hidaka, looks ultra polished working pseudo lucha exchanges. Tsukioka lands an Asai Moonsault into nowhere! Swank moves and dives are rolled out. An almost unrecognizable Mikami hits the neat-o Victory Roll into Kneebar because that was en vogue in 1998. Tsukioka does another insane thing which the camera misses completely! They go BROADWAY (but we will never get the full experience, because they clipped a few minutes from the bout.) This match was praised in an old DVDVR and is still fun today. Manly and whip ass etc. The girl match! Emi Motokawa & Sumie Sakai (Jd') & Sachie Nishibori vs. Momoe Nakanishi & Nanae Takahashi & Miho Wakizawa. It's somewhat light hearted and also mayhem! They do all the moves. The AJW girls don't look good! Neither does Motokawa. Sakai tries a moonsault off the top to the outside and NOBODY catches her at all! The announcer calls it a „Flying Sausage“ everytime a chubby wrestler attempts a flying bodypress. Nishibori hits some nice flying headscissors, but probably isn't polished at anything else. They already had the foxy S&M valet earlier, why have this match be overly cute? Bring back Chiharu Nakano. The sleazeball fest! Keizo Matsuda & The Great Takeru vs. Masao Orihara & Takeshi Ono. The Not So Great Takeru is in his goofy Power Rangers costume! Masao Orihara & Takeshi Ono are the Tonpachi Machine Guns, and they will kick you in the balls a LOT. Takeshi Ono actually works STIFF. Golly gee he is roughing up those IWA Japan dudes. The Machine Guns are slick and sloppy at the same time, if that makes sense. This was mostly an extended squash for the guns, which is a good thing, because Takeru ain't so great, and Matsuda with his wrestling school level leg drops is laughable. Takeru atleast lays in his spin kicks and hits a moonsault kneedrop. Orihara hits the stupidly gorgeous Orihara moonsault to the outside following a spider german suplex to make up for all the horrible moonsault awrygoings of the evening. Likely the classiest thing he's ever done. The crusty main event! Great Kabuki & Kendo Nagasaki vs. Shigeo Okumura & Keisuke Yamada. Kabuki train 98 continues! Everyone in this match gets WALLOPED and it rules. Yamada & Okumura get all uppity and Nagasaki fucking wastes them both with chairs. Kabuki & Nagasaki turn into the worlds lumpiest Anderson brothers and procure some brutal armwork and stomps, with Nagasaki rocking the shoulder dislocating Armbars. It's improbable and strange and great. Kabuki hits his awesome fist drop and starts working the ARMPIT CLAW and it's fucking gross. Okumura & Yamada are not technically great but they are willing to smack the shit out of the crusty old bastards and in return get punched in the face, elbowed in the chin and kicked in the throat a LOT. Kabuki & Nagasaki actually have enough cardio to keep things moving for 15 minutes and we get a handful of great spots and thrust kicks. FEAR THE GREEN MIST! Also, SICK piledriver finish. I loved this.

I am not overly familiar with Cooga's career, but I assume this is likely her career match thanks to Jaguar Yokota. Yokota may be old enough to be Cooga's mother, but totally smoked her during the sprint portion of this match. In a lucky moment Cooga land an abisegiri to Yokota's knee which is a totally stealworthy transition. Cooga proceeds to tear up her leg including ramming her with chairs. Yokota's selling was world class and her knee was even bloodied which is something I've never seen in any other match. Yokota kept stumbling and hobbling even while irish whipped and failed to hit her fisherman buster in another great spot which lead to Cooga planting her with some sick DDTs which Yokota sold by spiking herself on her head. Another great spot saw Cooga catching her with another nasty abisegiri to maintain control. I'm annoyed they clipped 4 minutes from this but the clipping was seamless and the match was a great mini junior epic.

This may take the cake as the most overrated match of 1998, but it's still good enough to make a Top 100. Wagner Jr. utterly dominating Kanemoto was highly entertaining and saved the match from being your typical ridiculous junior affair. He also showed good sense on how to progress the match. I loved how he threw Kanemoto over the top rope like a piece of shit and then chucked a chair in his face. Unfortunately, the transitions and cut offs weren't quite up to snuff. Not much difference between this and joshi, honestly. Both guys were eager to just hit their moves. Thankfully, they remembered how to sell in the last 3rd which saved the finishing run from becoming a complete farce.

The opening matwork may have been filler, but I still prefer these guys working amateur exchanges and fighting for armlocks over the usual sprint opening. This was, once again, a long, solid match, which I easily enjoyed more than any long AJPW match up to this point. The fighting spirit/no selling shit was also less prevalent. Enjoyed how Kobashi controlled early on with nasty neck cranks etc only for Kawada to start slowly getting the better and using him as a kicking bag. Lots of violent neck chops and boots to the face ensue. They dish out some insane punishment, to the point where the finishing run came across as chaotic messy. Once again I thought the match should've ended like 5-10 minutes earlier, but there was nothing egregious about it. Both guys had some crazy selling. Kawada doing his stumbling around then hit a kick to the face is like the only guy who can do that. So yeah, long, excellently worked, crazy crazy match. I don't mind there being not an epic story, but I thought the match inevitably lacked urgency as opposed to Hashimoto/Fujinami.

Not as great as their match earlier in the year, but still a pretty good showing. Some nasty work on Ace's neck early on, with Kawada working some nice snug sleeper holds and what not. Some nice more-pissed-off-than-usual stiff exchanges between Kobashi and Kawada ensue, and they tease a big spot from their previous match. Kobashi using the guardrail to soften up Taue's leg was unexpected and nasty, and Ace brings the US style work with some nice looking elbows to the thigh. Unfortunately, the legwork ends up being meaningless heatless filler (gee what's up with every 98 AJPW match having a pointless Figure 4 spot in the middle of it?). The finishing run was as big and dumb as a finishing run can get, but had plenty of fun moments. I expected Kobashi come out and assert himself because he was facing Kawada for the Triple Crown soon, but instead they just destroyed him and it was awesome. Flawed match, but brownie points for having a 30 minute long All Japan match that didn't bore me to tears.

CM Punk is also a blue belt, supposedly...

Mariko Yoshida vs. Megumi Fujii (ARSION 5/24/2003) It's pro wrestling's female top grappler vs. her MMA equivalent. This was before Fujii made her MMA debut, but she was already a seriously great grappler. And thus a great matchup for Yoshida to test herself against. Yoshida is a worker and thus carried this nicely, and Fujii's grappling was just a trip to watch. For someone who was pushed as the top submission artist in her promotion for years, Yoshida had no qualms about putting her significantly smaller opponent over as an ultra dangerous force. Early on Yoshida was outmatched on the ground, so she quickly went to her feet and landed a big impact move to gain the advantage. Later she tried standing up again, only to be caught in a whacky twisting armbar. Yoshida looked credible grappling with Fujii and dished out some nasty boots to her face for good measure. Fujii had some ultra impressive counters and didn't have any hiccups for someone who's never done fake fighting before. I'm generally a fan of wrestler vs. MMA fighter matches and this went smoother than most. Last sequence was kind of ridiculous and awesome, like one of those Okada/Omega sequences if they knew how to fight.

Interesting thought, but I've seen both Kikuchi and Kikuzawa and they are not the same guy. There are tons of late 90s japanese undercarders no one remembers and a few of them have been subject of theories regarding what happened to them. Takeshi Sato, YUSAKU, Hidetomo Egawa, Basara, Cosmo*Soldier, junji.com, I'm collecting 'em like by Pokemon by now. It probably says a lot about me that I know at one point people theorized Basara may have been Yuichi Taniguchi (I doubt it, by the way). It's a miracle Mochizuki and Ishii ended up becoming big stars given how almost everyone else was lost to time or become some type of gimmick wrestler.

Leave it to a pair of 18 year old girls to have an excellent lengthy match in 1998. The cool thing about the mat stuff they did here was that it wasn't shootstyle stuff, but closer to NWA-ish legbars and kneedrops, executed in really vicious fashion. Sugar doesn't have the high end offense of Satomura, but I thought she did well enough to mix it up and keep the match going. Everything made sense and built really well to their respective finishers (Death Valley Driver vs. Liger Bomb), and while there wasn't any super-focussed extended selling they worked hard to put eachother's offense over as devastating. Plenty of neat spots, including Sato finding ways to counter Satomura's arm attack stuff. Best GAEA match of 1998?

Finally, a bit of a return to form for Misawa. This wasn't a bad match and had plenty of neat exchanges throughout. I really enjoyed Kawada selling the elbows and Misawa did a neat job putting his banged up leg over early in the match (not that it was much of a factor later on... but I liked it!). On the other hand, it was yet another near 30 minute epic that took a long time to get hot. The work was less randomly thrown together than their match earlier in the year, but still left something to be desired. Also, I thought there could have been a better layout. Much of the early part of the match is Kawada trying to hang on and finding a way to isolate Misawa's weaknesses and Misawa cutting him off. Then at the end Kawada gets a sudden run of big moves together to put his rival away. I think the match would've been more effective if it were Kawada working over Misawa and cutting off his comebacks, then putting that brilliant sequence together. Yeah, I can armchair book too! I don't know whether to love or hate Misawa eating a series of armbreakers and then hitting elbows with that exact arm and then having it hang like a limp noodle. Armbreakers were used much better in GAEA and BattlARTS for sure.

I actually thought the opening mat exchanges were the highlight of this match. Akiyama lost his calling as a shootstyle grappler, and it's really nice to see an All Japan match open with guys working leg rides and fighting over single legs and the crowd reacting to the small victories in all that. But after that... man, fuck this match. Anytime someone he gets hit he starts no selling while continueing to block incoming hits with his face. Some long and meaningless legwork ensues, three dozen suplexes are thrown... fuck that suplex exchange. With a VENGEANCE! Man, I hate wrestling.

This is a match that left me really dry. You can only watch so many AJ epics before it gets irritating. The "fast paced opening with surprise big moves" would be a lot more exciting if those big moves didn't get no sold constantly. Then a bunch of filler stuff ensues and Akiyama out of nowhere almost breaks Misawa's face with the reverse calf branding and drops him straight on his head with the GANZO PEDIGREE and you wonder what the hell the point of all this is. The one cool thing in the match was Misawa countering the attempted exploder outside the ring.

Jun Akiyama has a mustache! „Maybe if I grow this beard, I will finally be taken seriously as a main eventer?“ Man, what the FUCK is going on in AJPW with every match going 30 minutes?? Make this a little more compact, and you would've ended up with a serious MOTYC. Peppering things up with some holds and teasing spots rather than hitting them adds a lot to the usual AJ formula. Akiyama going for Dragon Screws after getting punished with crossfaces and boston crabs was so much better than Akiyama hitting a bazillion exploidas and heinys. The same can be said for Kobashi who came back with a big chop that nearly broke Akiyama's face. They miscalculated the match pacing, so they were forced to do a bunch of laying around between nearfalls and the last 10 minutes of this were just really stretched paper thin and somewhat forced. Still, the struggling and teasing over big moves was world class (of course being 1998 they also throw out a little too many big moves. Man, it's weird when the Orange Crush is just another move to throw out for a nearfall). Kobashi had one of his better days, hitting an awesome STO and being on point with his leg selling.

This was like a sleazy little version of Liger/Sano as Gedo immediately pounces on Tajiri's bad arm while every move Tajiri hits is either a kick to the face or some crazy highspots. Really great selling Tajiri performance with the consistent armselling and constantly working to draw the audience in. Gedo's arm work wasn't frantic but he hit some hard dropkicks and stomps and had a few cool holds to torture him. The explosive sequences towards looked great after they had suckered the audience in with a few double counts and I loved that the work on the shoulder would set up the Gedo Clutch as a dangerous move. Smart indy junior match and an early career highlight for Tajiri.

Where is the anywhere version of Bull Nakano? Moreover, can someone please create another Fujiwara in a petri dish?

Solid match with lots of neat exchanges throughout. However, it was reaaaal long and also felt really inconsequential. Kawada opens by hitting a big brainbuster, which allows him to work on Misawa's neck for a little, then Misawa nearly KOs him a couple times, then Kawada works his back some... and so forth. It doesn't feel like it's building anywhere, and there was very little urgency. Really one of the most obvious 30 minute draws I've watched. I enjoyed the finish, which saw them bust out things like a Chaos Theory, big knee drop or neckbreaker drop for nearfalls to keep things a little fresh. I also dug the double Tiger Driver spot, „yeah, it's 28 minutes into the match now, I could go for a pin... but I know you're way tougher than this, so have another you son of a bitch.“

Parts of this came across as an AJPW epic on autopilot, which is, however, still a really good match. Some really good strike exchanges, Akiyama trying his best to stay in control early on, only to eat a nasty Backdrop Suplex which lead to some gritty work on his neck. Akiyama fights back hitting a Dragon Screw which in turn sets up some good legwork (including a killer spot where they struggle over a Sharpshooter) and some excellent selling from Kawada. It's this kind of A leads to B match structure that is really simple and maybe predictable but still ends up producing an enjoyable match. Finish run had some badass strikes such as Kawada hitting an awesome Abisegiri and Akiyama desperately escaping a Powerbomb only to eat a lariat to the back of the head. Some of the obvious „prolonging the match“ stuff such as Kawada locking in another Stretch Plum only to release it and go for a pin (something that about never produces a finish) or Kawada suddenly deciding his leg was hurt again felt pretty dated. The one thing I actively disliked was how everytime Kawada hit a yakuza kick Akiyama would hulk up immediately. Stop hitting that strike then, will you?

Always good to see the UWFi crew kicking ass in AJPW. Akiyama grappling with Kakihara is so much more interesting than the usual opening. Takayama mauling everyone ruled. Unfortunately, I thought Kobashi was kind of lousy here aside from one awesome suplex on Kakihara. He didn't really sell a great deal to get the crowd invested and his choice of comebacks was poor. Akiyama looked excellent, he should have worked shootstylists on a regular basis. Crowd didn't seem to know what to make of Kakihara's submissions which led to some awkward silence despite the work being good.

I'll be disappoitned if all this doesn't lead to PWO doing a HOAT project The individual discussions probably wouldn't be that different from how we evaluate workrate. "I thought Sunny was hot when I was 12, but her post prime material has put a real dent on her. I've grown to value longevity over peak attractiveness." "Sable is canonized as the hottest wrestler of all time, and anyone who thinks she shouldn't be #1 is a COMMIE HIPSTER" "You didn't have any mexican workers in your Top 70? Racist. Is it not obvious that western fans are more looking towards japanese workers because they are insecure about their own masculinity?" "Some may say Harley Race was boring and has aged badly, but I still prefer him over today's hairless skinny boys." "I think Mighty Inoue deserves more discussion." "How come no female workers made the Top 30? Sure an influx of outside voters has something to do with this." Shodate Rule: "but how do they compare too Volk han. his look wa for more realistic which i value more than any1 ehere it seems"

Headcheese

Finlay's last great match was the year he retired against Tajiri (2012). There may have been others that year but that's the Finlay Of the Year IMO. So that makes 30-29 years for him. Not bad.

IWA Japan Battle Station 4/8/98 SPRING BREEZE Tour '98 taped 3/13/98 Tokyo Korakuen Hall Takeshi Sato & Turtuger vs. Cosmo * Soldier & The Great Takero Masao Orihara & Hidetomo Egawa vs. Perseus & Akinori Tsukioka Benkei Daikokubo & Katsumi Hirano vs. Nuruka & Shinigami Sumie Sakai vs. Emi Motokawa Keisuke Yamada & Keizo Matsuda & Shigeo Okumura vs. The Great Kabuki & Ryuma Go & Tarzan Goto Well I'll be damned, because this was a damn cool little card where every match delivered something worthwhile. Well, except that tag with Benkei and Shinigami maybe - aaaahhh let's not talk about it! The opener was a cool little junior's match which they totally should not have clipped. Cosmo Soldier always adds a sense of unpredictability even to standard opening exchanges. He will hit a stiff dropkick and then start working mount and then hit an insane tope con hilo, all in the span of 2 minutes. Same for the 2nd match, which had some nice hate filled exchanges and sleaziness. Never seen Hidetomo Egawa before, but he was working a kickpadded quasi-BattlARTS style, so that's great, and Tsukioka is looking like one of the best undercard workers around. The semi main event was like the perfect 90s match to put on a VHS comp - just one nifty move after another. Also, impeccable fashion sense that both girls displayed! Color combinations like this will never come back. The main event was great too and I wrote up a full review in the match discussion archive. So,this show was a breeze to watch and every match left me wanting to seek out more of the guys involved. Wrestling in 1998 was a blast.

The opening of this match is great – unpredictable, and set the tone for the match. But after Akiyama hits the tombstone on the floor, the whole thing just falls off of a cliff. Akiyama is doing everything he can possibly do to keep control and put Misawa away, but it doesn't work. Misawa kicks out of his own move at 1 and no sells back to offense. By all logic Misawa should have lost this. As a result of the choppy put together structure they keep losing the crowd. In the end Akiyama looks like a wuss because none of his killer moves could get the job done, and Misawa ended up on top through the power of booking. A perfect example of how a match between two great wrestlers can screw itself over through bad layout.