Jetlag

The 2003 Hotta AtoZ match is sick as hell. I'm shocked almost nobody has brought it up in all these years. They do some really cool grappling and then just rain hell on each other like a high end BattlARTS match. At one point Yoshida took her glove off to punch Hotta straight in the face.

EWP has undergone some changes in their management. The promotion has been renamed to "CWP", Catch Wrestling Promotion, and they are back to running shows in a martial arts gym that holds about 100 fans. It's a far cry from their glory days, but at least they are still kicking.

Recently @itako18jp on Twitter started selling videos which really helps the case of guys like Yasushi Sato. I suggest you get a twitter and contact them, it's super chill to buy from them and the footage is well worth the price. We have gotten a few more Yasushi Sato singles matches out of it all of which are great. So far I've watched Sato vs. Konaka, vs. Hideya Iso and vs. GENTARO, all of which are awesome and pretty different. He's also really good in the big Unicorn Road match from 2018. The Konaka match is really unique, I watched it on the same day I re-watched Negro Casas vs. Santo from 1992 and while both are on the same level Konaka/Sato is clearly better. They also got the Yasushi Sato vs. Masamune match which I recommended 2 years ago in case you didn't watch it. GENTARO match is also really unique and great, two guys grappling and trying to score weird pins for 20 minutes, and Sato vs. Iso is completely awesome too. At this point Sato is definitely a lock for my list, the guy can do no wrong. There's a lots of early career Yasushi Sato against awesome looking opponents that we don't have yet, there are more Konaka matches including a 60 minute match, another GENTARO match, a match against Michio Kageyama who was a reckless karate kicker at the time, a match against Kengo Takai which looks insanely stiff from the highlights. If more of that stuff surfaces at some point I could see Yasushi Sato being in my Top 10. They also put this match on YouTube: Sato & Yuiga vs. Taro Yamada and Aki Shizuki . Naturally they go 30 minutes with no ring but it's really good, Yasushi Sato/Taro Yamada stuff is great and maestro-ish, there was also a crazy stiff headbutt exchange at one point. The women are bit wonky, but Sato vs. Shizuki is pretty good also, Shizuki is so big that the intergender factor barely matters and they just have some good exchanges. When you can have a match this good with no ring you are definitely something special

Roy Lucier uploaded a +20 minute Negro Navarro singles match from the 80s Based on this and the Mando match I'd say Negro Navarro is easily an all time level brawler, he looked awesome fucking his opponent up here. He also had some really graceful grappling moves but this is mostly just an awesome bloodbath.

Since I did my best of 1998 project when there was much less lucha libre online, this is very curious to me! I'll definitely be watching the rest of that Top 10. I thought Felino/Santo was by far the greatest match to happen in Mexico that year, so the fact that two matches finished above it is super interesting.

Probably true, though Gernot Freiberger (@catchmuseum on Twitter) has done a good job digging through the history and writing various articles. I think the main reason it's all such a jumbled mess is because of the various promoters all doing their own thing, and foreign fans thinking that all German territory wrestling = CWA which adds to the confusion. Not to mention weird stuff like people thinking that Indio Guajaro was Rene Guajardo.

1. Commercial releases, the CWA stuff would be released on VHS and the CCC stuff too on a smaller scale. I dunno if the Hamburg/Recklinghausen stuff was originally intended for commercial release but it was filmed by professional cameraman with 1 camera from ringside and I know those tapes were sold by the promoter on a very small scale first as VHS and later as Video-CD. 2. German and Austrian fans very much loved lightweight guys like Mile Zrno, Steve Wright or Schumann, and those guys were given big title matches as a showcase fairly regularily, they just weren't made into big drawing acts. Other beloved guys like Franz van Buyten, Axel Dieter or Achim Chall were also not that huge tho they were certainly bigger than the lightweights in the UK and France. Whether or not the crowds here will accept a lightweight as a major star is still subject to debate. 3. The rounds were simply used to make it look more like a real sport and probably to make storytelling and getting heat easier in the matches (a heel could simple get heat by attacking the face during the break and later a face could retaliate). Boxing had rounds, so does amateur wrestling, so why not pro wrestling? There are still some promotions that run rounds matches in this country once in a blue moon but they are getting rare. 6. EWP did pretty well running in the old Hannover territory appealing to the old fans who were still left, drawing 500-700 fans on good days, but in the last few years they pretty much went belly up after the former owner Eckstein stepped back and there was some kind of spat in the management. Jeff Jarrett is still their official world champion since winning the title in 2018 because since then they haven't been able to gather the money to fly him back in from what I heard. They only ran a handful of shows in the last year and haven't run any in 2023 so they might be done. Another promotion, POW split from EWP and they pretty much took over the old EWP location in Hannover. I'm not sure it's an old school promotion but they at least try to appeal to the old fans by using guys like Ulf Hermann (yes, Ulf Hermann is still going and doing hardcore matches in 2023). Another promotion is Catch Factory in Leipzig which is a project of Johnny Rancid who is an ex EWP guy, they still somewhat try to keep up the old school image by using cards and running rounds matches here and there. Other than that there's Karsten Kretschmer, a guy who was brought up in the old Hamburg territory by Lasartesse, tho he hasn't run any shows in years. Austria is a bit luckier as they have EWA, which is run by Michael Kovac. I'm not sure they run round matches still, but Kovac has a decidedly old school attitude (especially towards wrestlers who weigh less than 100 kgs). In total, there's no promotion left who still mainly runs round matches. They are reserved for rare occasions or title matches. It makes sense, since most fans and wrestlers in this country now never had any contact with the old style of wrestling and only know wrestling from what they saw on TV.

In defense (or at least explanation) of German wrestling: 1. most of what we have of it is borderline unwatchable clipped handhelds - from the time period when the territory was already going downhill. We only have 1 full match from before 1980. I'm sure if we had TV quality whole matches from the 70s-80s or even 50s and 60s like with France there'd be a lot more great matches, maybe as many as we have from Britain. Fwiw the few better filmed matches we have (the CWA and CCC comm tapes, the few matches from Hamburg and Recklinghausen that were filmed by a professional) are often good/great. 2. the "big and heavy = money" mindset was strong in Germany, so lightweights weren't put in the focus as much as in the UK or France. 3. because of the endless tournaments and wrestling every day, guys working in Germany had to work a more efficient style and rarely could go all out or beyond their formula. The few matches where guys do go all out are outstanding and up there with best European stuff (Dieter/Morowski, van Buyten/Taylor, Bock/Inoki), and those are just from the very few snippets we have. 4. from what I know, Germany didn't have training camps/gyms dedicated to pro wrestling like the UK did with the Snakepit or other gyms, so the wrestlers here weren't as hyperfocussed on developing their craft to the technical levels of the Brits. From what I know, new wrestlers were only taught how to do a bump and learned the rest as they went along in the ring. Roland Bock and Michael Kovac basically only had one training session in the ring before they started doing matches. Franz Schumann has said he only did back bumps until he couldn't move when he was brought into wrestling by Lasartesse, and he learned the rest watching and being in the ring with other wrestlers, and he turned into a pretty decent wrestler. 5. The "American-friendliness" of the territory is more of an Otto Wanz thing, and it's something he has been criticized for. There's also the fact that he was said to be quite the egoist and didn't like other Germans or Austrians rising to stardom. The non-Otto Wanz/CWA controlled stuff like the footage from Hamburg or the shows that Axel Dieter set up in 1998/1999 feel a lot more "euro" and have produced more good/great matches on average. The music between the rounds.. well, it's just a very German thing, we do love our pop music, and it would occasionally add a humorous note when the DJ would put on a specific song mocking a bald wrestler, to the amusement of the crowd. It's remarkable how long the promoters in the territory held on to ancient traditions like rounds, cards, day-long tournaments... which is something that has been criticized, but I find it quite charming. These days Germany is just another country where you see a bunch of amateur level indy wrestling, none of the wrestlers make a dime and there seem to be way less women at the shows. I prefer the rounds and pop music days over what we have now.

I went through much of her channel So far the best matches Ive seen have been vs. Haruyama, Hanako Nakamori, Kuragaki, Hikari Fukuoka, Arisa Nakajima and Kaori Yoneyama. There's also a bunch of good tags. https://reverseviperhold.blogspot.com/search/label/command bolshoi

The thing with Sarjeant is that while we only have 7 matches of his availaable he had a total of 52 televised contests, with some amazing looking title bouts against the likes of Vic Faulkner, Ken Joyce, Peter Szakacs, Peter Rann, Eddie Capelli and others being there. There's a good chance ITV still has a chunk of those videos laying around, if it wasn't such a pain in the ass to get them. With a little luck that will change at some point in the next years and it would boost the case of someone like Sarjeant greatly.

After recently discovering the epicness of the Robby Lance vs. Damon Scythe 30 minute ironman match from 2002, I think both of them deserve a mention. It seems neither of them has more than a handful of taped appearances besides maybe some shindy VHS stuff that nobody ever bought and is lost footage/stored away in someones garage right now. Lance doesn't even have a profile on the usual wrestling data sites, though he won the world title of a small Portland indy in 2012.

So recently I learned that SPORTIVA (which was the home promotion of Yasushi Sato and a few other guys like Shigehiro Irie) used to livestream matches on a service called USTREAM every wednesday 10 years ago. Unfortunately that streaming service is no more but it's still archived here, sadly the videos don't work anymore but you can still look at the thumbnails and video lengths https://web.archive.org/web/20130925165112/http://www.ustream.tv/channel/sportiva-ch At the very least this confirms some of those matches were filmed and I hope they can surface again. It's too bad nobody including me knew what the fuck SPORTIVA was in 2013 because they ran some absolutely mouth watering match ups like a 60 minute Yasushi Sato vs. Konaka ironman match which is definitely a holy grail for me Couple more Sato matches have surfaced on the internet since that last post vs. Dekai Ichimotsu, ?? 12/15/2013 Satos opponent here isn't even a pro wrestler but it's still a really good match. Feels like a good example of Satos signature match, lots of matwork, nifty spots and suplexes, some great counters etc. Dig the crazy amateur throw he busted out. w Hiroshi Watanabe vs. Manabu Hara & Raito Shimizu, 1/13/2020 Great tag with two wily technicians facing a pair of shooters. Sato vs. Hara is just magical and surprisingly stiff. Again Sato looked like the best guy in a match with a bunch of really good guys in it. vs. Taro Yamada, 10/26/2014 Another great match, Yamada is a pretty game grappler himself. Really good grappling, neat psychology and some amazing counters as always. vs. Shinichiro Wakita, 8/12/2019 Just a short match against a rookie but Sato does pretty well for himself here. The rolling legbar into the figure 4 is nothing short of genius There's also some highlights on the Sportiva channel, like check out the highlights of this match against Konaka, absolutely sick looking stuff. Right now every Yasushi Sato match I came across is a total gem and totally worth seeking out, he's also had some amazing matches against the likes of Hiroyuki Kondo, Hakaru Imai and GENTARO which aren't online at the moment but you should totally purchase if you come across them in somebodies tape listing. If some of those Sportiva archive matches start popping up I could see Yasushi Sato doing insanely well on my list because he's totally my kind of pro wrestler. The guy made me believe in a Russian Leg sweep and if that is not the sign of a great worker then I don't know what is.

His best work is in FUTEN. He really came into his own there and looked like an absolute monster. The Ono match is an amazing crowbar showing but the 2011 Suruga singles is a genuinely really great match that would look amazing on anyones resume. He's solid in the BatlARTS stuff but doesn't stand out as much. I imagine there could be some fun performances in the mid 2000s.

Yuiga is cool, I think she was trained in the WYF dojo or another sleaze indy company which is why she mostly stays around those sort of companies, she also books some awesome matches like GENTARO vs. Yuki Ishikawa, nice to see her brought up. This match against Hikaru Sato was pretty tough:

I've been on a Ran Yu Yu kick lately so I decided to rewatch this match. It was a bit better than I remembered but still not very good. There were a few nice bits, such as the opening open hand strikes and Ran Yu Yu is indeed awesome, but there was still a lot of meandering work especially the stuff on the floor and too many moments where one of them just absorbed moves and then hit one move to go back on offense. I think OJ is right that Yu Yu outclassed her opponent. She's awesome and her elbows were spectacular. Genki has some good power offense but she lacks intensity and who cares really when Ran kicked out of like 3 emerald frosions in this?

I like her, but I never considered her more than "pretty good", so my instinctual answer is no. But on second thought, she has a pretty lengthy career and good matches dating way back to 97/98ish, and knowing that tiny Japanese indies can sometimes deliver stupidly good matches I'd be surprised if she didn't have some hidden gem performances working Ice Ribbon houseshows on a parking lot or something. The most interesting phase of her career is that late 2000s/early 2010s period where she suddenly became a VIP and faced top workers with the shaven head. I also want to know what she was up to in places like NEO or that Gatokunyan project. On the other hand, she is also way into that "clap your hands for half the match to engage the audience" thing which makes her and her ilk hard to watch for me. At the very least, she deserves credit for being a smart enough worker to collect AEW paychecks and make new fans in this day and age.

I always liked her and I thought she had a stupidly good match series with Yoneyama at a time where I stopped giving a fuck about joshi and wrestling in general. Looking forward to dive deeper into her work, although the competition in "gutsy workers with a hard head gimmick" department is fierce.

This is one of the stupidest things I've ever written. I mean, I still stand by much of it, but I've come way around on Hotta. When she's on she's become one of my favourite workers and I don't care anymore how stupid or dangerous she is. I'm not sure if there's enough to justify her on a Top 100 considering she still has some stinkers and from what I've seen her 2000s stuff is atrocious. Still, I love me a good senseless Hotta match.

It's probably Buddy Rose. You might also give outsider consideration to Jackie Sato or Jaguar Yokota if you like their style. The World of Sport situation is a bit frustrating for individual workers, while we have lots of excellent wrestling most guys only show up on TV a handful of times per year, and we don't even have all the TV.

Him having a thread was really unpredictable!