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Jetlag

DVDVR 80s Project
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  1. Jetlag
    Another night, another town, another good match between the BattlARTS crew. These guys had ridiculously high workrate. Even though they didn't go for broke, every exchange delivered, and there were a few great spots. Ishikawa/Ikeda was Ishikawa/Ikeda, but I think I prefer the Ishikawa/Greco matchup on these small shows. Greco is such a killer, always pushing the pace and going for the tapout and suplexing the shit out of everyone. Greco/Otsuka is a matchup that makes you salivate at the mouth thinking of it and it delivers good here. This also had a bit of that tag psychology with Greco & Ikeda using some double teams until it backfires for a great nearfall with the Cobra Twist.
  2. Jetlag
    Ishikawa was on a roll in 1998 and barefoot Greco means business. This was lengthy, and accordingly great. They largely kept it to the mat with the exception of Greco landing a crazy flying kick in the corner and Ishikawa rolling out the big suplexes in the last few minutes. The matwork was just a joy to watch and highly aggressive, athletic and unrelenting stuff. Dug Greco's defense too and watching Ishikawa being put to the test against Greco and coming up with counters to the assault was fascinating to watch. Also, another great Cobra Twist spot here. A great prelude to their masterpiece a decade later.
  3. Jetlag
    The Ishikawa/Usuda matches are not talked about as much as the Ishikawa/Ikeda series, but may be just as violent. I mean, I don't recall Ishikawa bloodying Ikeda's nose with a punch. They have a different dynamic too because Usuda has the vibe of someone who kills fast, both with strikes and submissions. Him mixing up the body shots and palm strikes was dope too. This had lots of super nifty grappling and that trademark BattlARTS grittiness where one guy would eat punishment and then pay it back in kind later. Dig the Inoki tribute spots too. Last few minutes were utterly brutal and world class. Face punches, neck-breaking suplexes, flash submissions, it's all there. BattlARTS guys were work horses in 1998.
  4. Jetlag
    He's just really sensitive about his art form. It all boils down to "Those evil hipster communists are ruining muh pro wrestling/video games/movies" etc.
  5. Jetlag
    Wild wild brawl where plenty of punches are thrown. Hansen tries to hit the lariat any chance he gets. I agree the match could've benefited greatly from some form of extended heat section on Bruno, but as it was it was a wild spectacular fast paced fight, the sort you can back to 40 years later and enjoy.
  6. Jetlag
    May very well be the greatest ECW match ever. Ladders are flung about, dudes tr y to kill eachother and it's all one merry acid fueled carnage. Sandman's drunk selling and stumbling about works way better than your usual wandering crowd „brawling“, I also liked how he would take weapon shots and the simple elbow drop adds a lot to an otherwise wild brawl as an old school move. This feels unpredictable and uncooperative through the reckless use of props and neither guy looking like he was willing to take the punishment. Sabu fighting through the broken jaw was super gritty and didn't detract from the brutal fight going on. Plenty of crazy spots and that classic barfight finish.
  7. Jetlag
    Brazo de Plata, baby. This is not a match people would seek out on paper. Well, if YOU would seek this match out on paper, then I want to shake your hand and call you friend. If YOU, as a wrestling fan, can't get excited about a violent brawl with this many fat guys in it, shame on you. Or shame on me. Porky and Markus Jr. are killing eachother and it's awesome. Steele is a canadian guy with abs who has a solid enough punch and a funny bump over the top rope to entertain, and he gets slapped around plenty by Headhunter. He tries to speak spanish, and just gets walloped in the mouth. Still, you want this for the awesome Markus Jr. punch combos, blood, biting, Plata's fat guy fire and dive and general porky asskicking going on. Shit finish, but they were setting up an apuestas, baby.
  8. Jetlag
    How much STYLE-E is there available though? I think Lynch only has stuff from the later years, which is far less interesting than the early period which had dudes like Crafter M etc. Some of these cards look really interesting: STYLE-E @ Chofu 15. Januar 2005 @ Nishi-Chofu Combat Arena in Chofu, Tokyo (Japan) Kyosuke Sasaki © besiegte Hidehisa Matsuda (22:49 Minuten) [sTYLE-E Openweight Title]
  9. Jetlag
    It was just average. I thought you could've slotted any other old guy in his spot and the match would've been the same. It's not like they did anything huge in the 2nd half here.
  10. Jetlag
    Bruno's commentary was also one of the very few upsides to Herb Abraham's UWF.
  11. Jetlag
    This is another really trippy recommendation as it's a battle of 4 rookies none of which ended up having much of a career. This was typical solid rookie action, some mean stomps and elbows, nasty boston crabs, and Numao running around like a Mini-Chigusa kicking really hard. It really picks up for the last five minutes with Numao brutalizing Sato with kicks, Nakano grabbing awesome legbars for nearfalls, some great nearfalls for basic moves and time limit coming into play. The first half of this was solid but probably a little lacking in structure for me (lots of back and forth this girl eats offense – transition – now the next girl eats offense) but that ending run made this worth checking out. The crowd was hugely into this too and I totally can see why someone would remember this fondly after years.
  12. Jetlag
    Sprint which was largely carried by Meiko's amazing kicks, arm attacks and cradles. I did like Ishii's neck snapping moves too, but most of the stealworthy counters came from Meiko. This had that „joshi pace“ so not a lot of extended selling, but even baby Meiko has really intense presence and there was some good learned psychology and build to the Death Valley Bomb. Man these little GAEA matches had so much cool shit.
  13. Jetlag
    I was surprised by how intense the opening exchanges felt, with Bret easily besting Flair and slapping him like a bitch. The rest of the bout was solidly worked, even if a little bit by the numbers. I disliked Hart kind of no selling his leg.
  14. Jetlag
    Small show BattlARTS tag, but all 4 guys had their working boots on. The Ishikawa/Ikeda exchanges are very good, as you'd expect, but don't take a big focus in the match. Tanaka and Hoshiakwa are two iffy guys at this point, but don't drag the match down. Hoshikawa is a guy who plays shooter in his lucharesu home promotions, but looks really pro style in BattlARTS, so that's always a little weird, but he was pretty good in parts here and didn't look lost wondering what to do. Lots of cool, sometimes slick and always competitive grappling throughout and the finish actually felt like a big moment. Not a huge adrenaline rush like the greatest BattlARTS matches but it delivers everything you want.
  15. Jetlag
    Well, here's a match that people just can't seem to agree on. You see a 20 minute Satanico/Lizmark match pop up on YouTube, from the time when Lizmark could still go, and Satanico is always Satanico, and you hope it's some kind of hidden maestro style classic or something. But this is not that. Lizmark utterly dominates Satanico for the first half, before Satanico hits a low blow that looks like shit. Weak payoff, and the 3rd fall wasn't exactly high end action either. I'm a Lizmark fan and he looked very good here, his wrestling is just poetry, graceful and ultra-tight stuff and he sold as well as humanly possible in the second half, while Satanico was servicable at best. Probably his weakest performance in a singles match that I've seen.
  16. Jetlag
    SPOT and GO! Tajiri is super hyped about getting to show off all the stuff he learned in mexico! Tanaka is worthless at BattlARTS style matwork, but in this kind of mindless match where he can just hit spots and the pace is pushed, he's tolerable. Tajiri's lucha pin combos and submissions were ridiculously smooth and more interesting than the usual impact moves and flying, especially his setups. I guess his thigh slapping was embarassing. Also, because submissions are actually threatening in BattlARTS, the match never got dull. MOVEZ~! match done right.
  17. Jetlag
    See, even back then they had long, slow, overwrought forced epics. This had some nice weapon shots and spots, but structurally this did absolutely nothing for me. Lots of meaningless back and forth, pointless poor man's Shawn/Razor work on the leg, and of course plenty of dancy looking punches and execution. Triple H loved popping back up for no reason – for example, he would take a huge Estrada-esque bump to the outside early, but start going back on offense immediately, the insecure little buffoon. This also had egregious amounts of both guys laying around, and of course the constant slow climb/fall off and repeat. The crowd pop great for a few key spots, however there were also multiple times where the heat noticably died down. I think it's stuff like the quickly forgottten legwork or HHH's meaningless bump that conditioned audiences not to care for those moments between the big spots and this kind of match was something that would go on to plague WWF wrestling for decades to come.
  18. Jetlag
    Heh, remember when Hero was in shape? The first EVOLVE show was main evented by a Davey Richards/Ibushi match which had some of the crassest, dumbest overkill I've ever seen in a wrestling match. Davey who was supposed to be the poster boy of EVOLVE turned his back on Gabe and we get this matchup as a random main event for EVOLVE 2 which was crass in the opposite direction. The first half of this was fantastic and the best US indy match I've ever seen. Just super matwork, hard fought and gritty, with every movement making sense, and every hold having a direction. Hero towers over Hidaka so he gets a chance to work dominant for large portions of the match while Hidaka gives a great underdog performance. Minor details such as Hidaka's leg twist or Hero stomping his arm came across as important and the arm work vs. leg work story was really well executed and added to the match. Hidaka's arm selling was probably close to on par to the greatest selling performances in the japanese wrestling catalogue. Hero was punishing him with his trademark elbows and some mean sentons and dropkicks, while Hidaka was always fighting from underneath with nice looking body shots (while selling his arm!), headbutts and low kicks to chop Hero down. Hero throws a wad of elbows and at this point had figured out a bunch of different variations to clock his opponent. Some may be irked by how many elbows he hit (weird to have a smaller guy like Hidaka absorb a ton of punishment) but I thought it was done in such a way so the match felt like Hero could possibly KO his opponent anytime. Hidaka finally cutting him down with a cool looking combo was impressive too. This could've benefitted from having 1 or 2 pots less in it but it's probably a career performance from either guy and the best indy match a couple years in either direction AFAIC. Should admit that Hero trying to speak japanese was kind of cring though.
  19. Jetlag
    This was a good match that could have been a lot better. First of all, Kuragaki rules on offense. Her flippy shit looks really graceful, and she was just launching Hyuga around with her power moves and lariats. Those back suplexes were all kind of crazy. Hyuga did a really good job working as the ace and preventing Kuragaki from attacking her bandaged leg, including just stomping on her face when she went for a kneebar. I also dig the out of nowhere knee attacks. On the other hand there were some awkward/blown spots and I disliked Hyuga's lazy no selling transitions during the finishing stretch. Kuragaki hit a brutal shoot headbutt, and Hyuga would act unphased and just continue her offense. This had a really good layout opening with some nice matwork and the leg story, so it has that going for it.
  20. Jetlag
    JIP. Only 5 minutes are shown, but there is some awesome shit here. Dean does all sorts of athletic moves. This Dean still has that boyish body, but facially looks the same as Dean always does. Dean is really exaggerated here, flippin' and playing to the crowd. When he goes to the top rope, he poses to pose, then pauses to pose AGAIN, the takes a breath before climbing... he may aswell be carrying a sign that says „I am going to get military pressed off the rope“. The match is a junior's match for sure but they go for pin combos and submissions rather than impact stuff, which I like a lot. Then it really looks like there's no way Fuchi can turn it around and then he pulls out that badass little finish. Great clip.
  21. Jetlag
    JIP into Kikuchi taking an assbeating. So, it's another tuesday for Kikuchi? Kobashi gets the hot tag and the crowd is MAD HOT for him! Jumbo & Fuchi draw MAD HEAT! Kikuchi eats EVEN MORE sickening abuse at the hands of Jumbo! Great finish. Kikuchi > all.
  22. Jetlag
    Austin went for that Ground Octopus Hold though, which I still find a hilarious choice of hold for a southern redneck character. Austin mentioned Al Snow showed him that hold because he didn't have any submissions before the match.
  23. Jetlag
    High end BattlARTS epic. The grappling between these two is always really great – just ridiculously slick, inventive stuff. Otsuka's Jason Nolf/Wade Schalles amateur style where he pulls of insane moves in plausible fashion rules, but you already knew that. Otsuka ducking Ishikawa's punches, throwing sudden fast combos and then nuking him with massive suplexes for comebacks was excellent shootstyle stuff. Match was probably a little excessive near the end but the comebacks were good enough and you'll be too busy yelling at Ishikawa to tuck his head to notice anways. Also, those kimuras were insane. Ultra tight stuff, brutal, great wrestling, just a classic betweeen two all time greats.
  24. Jetlag
    You look at this match up and you go „Well, these are two guys who are not afraid to kick somebody in the face“. And that's what happens in this match. It's also NJPW vs. WAR (or Seishinkaikan vs. WAR?), so it had the kinda heat those matches have. These guys were just crushing eachother, Saito was hitting some really devastating mid kicks aswell as knees to face, and Kitahara in return kicked him in his face and bald head a bunch. Kitahara pouncing on Saito with mount punches, leaving Saito to come out with a big red spot of blood on his bald head is something that only happens in 93. The referee blew the finish a little on this one but for two mean asskickers stepping up and kicking the shit out of eachother this delivered.
  25. Jetlag
    Ahh... junior wrestling! People may say that this flash-over-substance style hasn't aged that well, and it's true. Altough it would be unfair to pin this on Ultimo alone, because Otani was just as guilty of popping up and lazy transitions. Perhaps even more so. Ultimo Dragon looked like you your formidable cool masked wrestler guy – nice sequences, awesome dives, cool lucha submissions, moving fast as a cat when it counted. Still, the best moment was when Otani sold a punch to the jaw like an actual punch to jaw, allowing Dragon to follow up with a stiff kick and look like a badass for a brief moment. Also, Ultimo got people to flip out for his rollups, which has to be smarter wrestling than Otani with his bajillion headdropping suplexes. It's also true that Ohtani's shtick felt like old hat by 1998. Ah well, this was still alright. Not very bright but not a dull moment either. The perfect „brain off“ kind of match.
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