Jetlag
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Jesus christ it's just one man and his opinions. By "phoning in it" he probably meant not doing enough apron moves or some shit.
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I got 3 discs from Quebrada: http://www.quebrada.net/videos/Muga1.html This is fucking awesome stuff. If anyone has more 90s MUGA, contact me because I'll pay you in gold. More reviews will come later. So far I watched 2/3 discs, and every single match has been worthwhile. The main events kick ass.
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See, this is why you get grimy old tapes from forgotten 90s spin off feds: if this were NJPW, these two would get 8 minutes in the opening match and it would be forgettable. Here, they get 18 minutes to stretch out and do their thing. Nishimura continues to rule in 1998, he was a total wrestling machine here, as if to teach 2nd grade shootstylist Fukuda a lesson and prove his Gotch-style can totally fuck with any shooter. Fukuda is a great opponent for Nishimura as he can totally go in this kind of ultra-tight, mostly mat based contest, gives a nice contrast to Nish's old school style with his modern shoot grappling and sells exhaustion very well. I love that even after way more than 10 minutes of exhausting mat struggle, Nish still sprawls when Fukuda goes for a takedown and then proceeds to lay in really stiff Inoki leg kicks. The finishing run was pretty simple but great, Nishimura getting great submission nearfalls for basic Figure 4 and Cobra Twist moves while Fukuda was planting him with suplexes and headbutting while fighting for a top wristlock in frustration. Also loved how Nish just dropkicked Fukuda in the face at one point. The finish itself was a little underwhelming, altough the move itself was great. Everything up to that was a high end intense contest full of awesome NJPW vs. UWFish struggle and intensity.
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You look at this matchup, taking place in MUGA, and you think „this sounds like a lot of matwork“. And you'd be correct. Pretty much a purist's dream match with all four guys hitting the mat hard. Perfect blend of shootstyle, 80s NJPW and MUGA psychology. Ishikawa fits like a glove here and looks great. Aside from all the great arm whips, headscissors and armbars and slick grappling they knew how to make basic holds meaningful and spice things up with struggle. Really liked the young guys getting the advantage and old guy Fujinami busting out a huge kneedrop off the top to break up a submission nearfall. Also Nishimura looks awesome and as good as he was in the 2000s. Match is a little short (17 minutes) but as good as it looks on paper. -
Angry juniors clobbering each other. Takaiwa's a caveman, but his brute style works pretty well in this kind of match. Kanemoto knows how to beat people up in interesting ways. Unfortunately, the match suffered from lack of structure and meaningful transitions. For example, Kanemoto was getting worked over, but made a random comeback with a single slap and was out of trouble. Also, Fukuda hit an amazing looking chokeslam against Takaiwa, but was met with a DVB 3 seconds later. Fukuda was in young lion gear here but fired up to make up for it. Ohtani didn't do much of note beyond his usual program. Decent match.
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Fukuda enters the BOSJ and pushes the legend to the limit! Liger goes out of his way to make this indy nobody look great! It's hard not to love Fukuda here with how he withstands Liger's stiff shotais and busts out a bunch of great throws and holds. Opening matwork was pretty rockin' and better than the usual Liger trademark surfboards. Fukuda's sleeper variations were pretty choice and him getting control over Liger was done nicely. They do a pretty great section where they exchange pitbull headbutts on their knees to mix up the bomb throwing. The crowd gets hugely into the possible upset too. Sweet match.
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Greco and Ikeda looked really good against eachother in the previous tag. So here's them in a singles match! For such a short match, this was GREAT. Ikeda is a guy who is comfortably „very good“ on the match, but Greco just guzzles him here. Greco has ridiculously high end technique. High end slick ground grappling. High end headscissor work. A bloody high end sidewalk slam! Greco really was a master at taking the most simple things and turning them into something amazing. Ikeda is all outmatched bull here and he has some great brief spurts of pissed off bull rushes. This was like the best 9 minute Velocity match ever.
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Carl Greco vs. Daisuke Ikeda (2/20/97) Greco and Ikeda looked really good against eachother in the previous tag. So here's them in a singles match! For such a short match, this was GREAT. Ikeda is a guy who is comfortably „very good“ on the match, but Greco just guzzles him here. Greco has ridiculously high end technique. High end slick ground grappling. High end headscissor work. A bloody high end sidewalk slam! Greco really was a master at taking the most simple things and turning them into something amazing. Ikeda is all outmatched bull here and he has some great brief spurts of pissed off bull rushes. This was like the best 9 minute Velocity match ever.
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I'm with OJ in thinking this match was excellent. Starts solid and gets better and better. I actually felt the more subdued submission work early on helped make the reversals in the second half feel bigger. They do a nice job mixing the BattlARTS style kicks and submissions with junior touches and pinfalls. Hidaka just nukes Usuda with big fat rolling senton, and Usuda brains him with a big kick and spinning backfist in return. The timing and pace were spot on and as result the counters and big spots in the second half feel really spectacular. I dug the selling from both guys too, Usuda is so good at selling near submissions. Clever and efficient match.
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Since I'm a Motegi fan now, I gotta watch this. Motegi may be far from a great worker, but he always works hard. I liked the opening with the stiff shots and I didn't hate the exploder/uranage trading as it didn't come across as no-selling to me. Teioh has some fun ways to work over a leg and I really liked his spinning elbow combination and Motegi's stiff shotais.
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This is just really sad and bizarre.
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I dunno, Azteca has looked decent from what I've seen, and their cards have some interesting matchups, including a Solar vs. Original Tiger Mask tag.
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This is a street fight. So a) Kurisu is in his awesome "looks like your uncle" getup and some real violence is about to take place. Our brave fat sambo hero manages to blindside Kurisu early but is quickly reduced to a smeer by Kurisu. Kurisu puts a gruesome beating on Asako using chairs, a broom, Asako's own belt and his boot. Kurisu is really better at making foreign objects look ultra-nasty and just pounds Asako into the ground. Asako is a bloody mess quickly and more stiff headbutts and biting the cut ensue. Asako sells as good and sympathetic as anyone else you've seen but the match is pretty much a squash and he never gets to do any cool sambo shit. Still, a pretty brutal Kurisu showcase with a very street-fightish finish.
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THIS MATCH WAS AN AMAZING FIND! Sambo Asako is NOT the same guy as the AJPW undercarder Asako. Sambo Asako is a fat japanese elvis looking dude who in fact wrestles like a Sambo guy, and looks like he should be the stuff of legends. Lee Gak Soo is a korean karate guy in a red suit who does amusing high pitched yelling. So this is the most Hong Kong pro wrestling match ever. Asako was a total revelation here. This is a rounds match mostly built around Lee demolishing Asako with kicks and punches. Despite from what you heard about japanese and koreans, the crowd is behind Lee. Asako throws HUGE suplexes and does Volk Han-like leg locks on the ground. But most of the match is Lee Gak Soo kicking Sambo in the head. Sambo is really amazing at eating the fuck out of Lee's kicks, just sticking his face out the whole time, does the "I got caught in the eye" sell, staggering backwards to set himself up for Lee's running dropkicks etc. Sambo works some really good near KO and near submission spots, and earns your respect by blocking Lee's bullshit kicks with his face like only a truely insane brave wrestling hero would. So, surrealism, sleaze, brutality and fat japanese elvis Volk Han-factor combined this match was pretty gold.
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Aaaahh that good ol' iron curtain shootstyle. This at times near indistinguishable from IWRG as they just tied from one crazy hold into another. The throws were awesome too. Todorov looked as good as any other random east european, but Zouev was awesome. Great balance of technique and tenacity. I liked the stomach blows too. Bout could've gone longer easily.
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(ZION Semi-Finals 9/22/01 Tokyo): Azumi Hyuga vs. Mariko Yoshida Another matchup that you look at and go „hm... that should be good.“ But then, it's a semi final of a 1 night tournament, so there is a ceiling to it. This felt kind of like them doing a condensed epic. Yoshida rushes Hyuga early on and works over her a bit with her submissions, which Yoshida naturally does pretty well. Hyuga is a competent pro wrestler, can handle herself on the mat and knows to sell enough so you won't hate her, but her comebacks are weak. I really liked Yoshida's cut-off where she just grinded Hyuga down with a vicious headlock and got right back to the submissions. They bust out the stiff punches and knees for the finish and have some nice well timed moments. So yes, this was a fine match, but I couldn't help but feel I was waching a compressed versiont of a longer, much better match. Mikiko Futagami vs. Mima Shimoda Futagami assaults Shimoda with the dreaded paper fan early. Shimoda steals the fan and hits her back, intead of using her signature chair she brought to the ring. Negative aspects of this match: Shimoda can't be arsed to make her axe kicks look decent. Positive aspect: It was over in 3 minutes. Mikiko Futagami vs. Azumi Hyuga (ZION Tournament '01 FINAL, 9/22/01 Tokyo) For a 9 minute match that was pretty mailed in this was kind of fun. I liked Hyuga planting GAMI with a deadlift german suplex when she tried to block the german series, and there were a few nifty reversals. Still the match was probably too generic and sloppy to be considered good.
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IVP has them. Lynch and Alfredo have a bunch of complete shows too. There's also a lot of W*ING on Youtube.
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This was another piece of fucking great pro wrestling. This was not quite the same chaotic, savage massacre as the previous Goto vs. WDF guys tag, but more of a great southern style tag. Some really fun back and forth wrestling early on which was damn cool to see from such a fat guy as Goto, before Motegi ends up suicide diving right into a Goto chairshot (did I mention Motegi is actually awesome?) which sets up the heat section of Goto again mercilessly fucking up Motegi with various foreign objects, including drilling his face with an umbrella. Motegi screaming for his life while Goto was stubbornly trying to crack a beer bottle over his head before he just breaks it and carves him up gave the whole thing a Hillbilly slasher movie feel. Goto has fucking great punches, too. It all builds very well to Nakano getting the hot tag and in turn messing up everyone with his simple, violent offense. Aside from Goto being awesome you also had the future Kikutaro who at this point was a fun fatboy wrestler that gets messed up by the veterans for being a newbie, at one point Nakano just grabs him and drills his face with knee strikes. Really well worked match that blends southern psychology and japanese hierarchy thinking.
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Gritty, seedy, blood-drenched fight. Umibozu was Aoyagi's face painted buddy and not afraid to potatoe someone with kicks. Rikio Ito is this roided wannabe Roadwarrior and a pretty terrible wrestler, but this kind of match anyone can do. All you need to do is throw stiff potatoe lariats and work the cut. At one point Ito grabbed Umibozu and tried a spinning Powerbomb where I was sure someone was gonna get badly injured. Shinichi Shino, for a W*ING nobody, looked a decent heel, and Aoyagi was more like the Aoyagi you all know. Aoyagi and Umibozu bleed and fight back with stiff kicks and punches, eventually Aoyagi takes off his belt and starts strangling Ito while Umibozu is stabbing Shino in the head while pulling his hair as if he was trying to scalp him. If a karateka vs. Garbage wrestler match that turns into attempted murder sounds good to you this is your match.
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This is an elimination match and the conclusion to the awesome series of matches these two teams had in 1997. It was a little more deliberate and not quite as crazy as the other two matches, but still delivers when it comes to dudes getting spin kicked in the throat. This time the karate guys started some 3 on 1 attacks which is pretty intense when you think of 3 off the chain karate punks launching reckless kicks at the same time at you, and there were a few bits of actual matwork that had KAMIKAZE looking shockingly decent. The weak point of the match was a longer section where Kotsubo was the focus and that dude kind of sucks, he even drew some boos and gave that section of the audience the finger (I assume all the karate fans were sitting there), along with this pouty facial expressions, as if he was thinking „Yeah I know I suck, but I'm fighting for my life here, if doing shitty takedowns prevents me from getting kicked again I'll keep doing them“. The last 1 on 1 section felt suitable great and a worthy ending. These 3 vs. 3 elimination tags work perfectly even with limited wrestlers in them, why is no one doing them anymore?
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Great little match that takes place in a tiny little hall in front what looks like 40 people, filmed with one cam. You know a match is gonna be good when it starts it with them ramming their heads into eachother. Amano had some nice explosive moves early on including a great deadlift back suplex before they slowed the match down with grinding matwork. I thought the JWP ace Hyuga being able to control in parts before Amano slowly got the better of her using her grappling skill was really well done, as Amano has these crazy twisting flash submissions making the moments where she catches Hyuga extra off-guard. Also, Hyuga came into the match with a bandaged knee that was an obvious target for Amano. All the stuff of Hyuga evading Amano's leg attacks was really good, and once Amano closed the distance her legwork was pretty great too. At one point she just rammed into Hyuga's knee with a running boot, and her double stomp right to the joint drew an audible reaction from me. Hyuga aside from one brief fuckup did very well here as her fastness and slickness is entertaining to watch, she did an admirable job selling her knee too altough she Supergirls it a little right before the finish. Really cool match that stayed in the ring and never went into overkill while going well over 20 minutes.
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I dunno, I just watched Tarzan Goto throw some amazing punches filmed by good old high quality Samurai TV standards. He may have been hitting guys for real, but you can never know! It's part of the magic.
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Lioness Asuka/Mariko Yoshida vs. Ayako Hamada/Azumi Hyuga (9/11/01 Tokyo) An all-star match that delivers! Everyone here works hard to have interesting exchanges, but a big part of why this match is good is, surprise, Yoshida. Watch her have really good exchanges with Hamada, put the boxing gloves to use and aswell do a mighty fine job at selling minor things most other wrestlers don't even acknowledge. She and Ayako have such high end chemistry. All their stuff is such a joy to watch, and the hierarchy keeps changing. Last time Yoshida was still a mountain for Hamada to overcome, now they are nearly equal. Hyuga and Lioness were the lesser characters in the match, but I enjoy Lioness working as King Kong, having the smaller wrestlers bounce off of her while she throws kicks at them from all angles. I actually liked Huyga less than Aska~! Altough she was technically a solid Manami Toyota-stand in. But Hyuga def. Does come with Toyota-ish moments of no-selling. Yoshida's excellent near KO selling of a Hyuga knee kept the finishing stretch from getting all too silly, and her comeback I thought was textbook example selling and then turning the tables in believable fashion. Her style helps too, and her cradle submission felt like a classic move from her bag of tricks that we haven't seen in a match this grand in a while. Very good match. ZION Tournament '01 Round 1 (9/22/01 Tokyo): Azumi Hyuga vs. Rie Tamada A first round match that delivers! This was def. Joshi match and had some popping up from german suplexes, but I was still impressed with Hyuga. I thought she did a pretty good job working as the higher ranked woman here. After Hyuga's opening barrage of offense, Tamada catches her in a Figure 4, and Hyuga actually sells her legs a bit allowing Tamada to look quite good and get a competitive match. Not a mindblowing match or something but for a throwawy 8 minute bout it's on the mark. Mikiko Futagami vs. noki-A GAMI... sigh. What happened? GAMI was so uninterested here. Miss nokia kept catching her with armbars, breaking her grip, and she just laid there, as if this was AJPW or some shit. This had 2 or 3 nifty moments of noki-A submission counter works, but was dull and uninspired otherwise. Mima Shimoda vs. Michiko Ohmukai This was Shimoda doing RVD-like chair spots, and Ohmukai waffling her with kicks and punches in return. I liked the Ohmukai kicks and punches, didn't like the Shimoda ECW shit and Mita interfering into the match. Also match had the wrong winner in a bullshit finish, adding to my dislike. Mariko Yoshida vs. Ayako Hamada This felt a little mailed in early on. Mailed in Yoshida is still pretty good, mailed in Hamada can be slightly dull if you've watched a lot of her stuff. However, the match picks up good for the finish. Really liked how Yoshida would get rocked while blocking Hamada's kicks, and her tagging Hamada with punches before finishing with a kick to the face was pretty sweet. Match wasn't bad, heck for most wrestlers this would be a quite good match. I guess it shows what I've grown to expect from this matchup.
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[1999-01-08-GAEA] Chikayo Nagashima vs Meiko Satomura
Jetlag replied to Loss's topic in January 1999
This match was totally rad, stylistically. It reminded me a bit of the late 70s/early 80s AJW matwork and lucha-borrowed moves, mixed with modern spots, so that was of course awesome. I really liked the simple Johnny Valentine-ish spots here especially Satomura's vicious neck crank where she drags Chikayo across the ropes or the legbar and headlock that forced a rope break. People forget how innovative the 90s GAEA crew could be and the counters like DVB into the crucifix armhold along with general stylistic experimenting mixed with the selling were a reminder of that. Pretty boss match between the greenhorns. -
So I want to start this thread by declaring that Wrestle Dream Factory/Yume Factory (the fed of Masashi Aoyagi and Motegi) was fucking awesome. I've watched all the Samurai TV airings from 1997 that I could find and the shows were a blast to watch as a mix of fun, stiff undercard matches that had sleazy dudes potatoeing eachother and about 2 great matches per show. Chaotic karateka vs. wrestler matches, blood, stiffness, hatred and Yoshiaki Fujiwara, this fed had it all. I'm mainly starting this thread to ask about how we can get more Yume Factory because Lynch only has a handful of discs and this stuff is gold. Basically the world's greatest Ersatz-WAR. So that got me thinking about all those forgotten Z-level indies like Yume Factory, W*ING, Kageki, IWA Japan, Capture International etc. I know next to nothing about most of those. I get that back then AJPW and NJPW junior were all the rage so people didn't care as much for these sloppy indy guys. Those feds had interesting guys like Tajiri or Akitoshi Saito kicking around. Also, one thing I noticed is that in current indy wrestling, most wrestlers tend to be skinny and handsome, while then wrestlers usually were tubby and ugly. I wonder how those factors affect working ability. It got me wondering that if even a fed like Yume Factory that barely draws 500 people into Korakuen Hall can produce awesome matches and feuds, there might be other cool stuff that was lost to time. I know there are some old geezers on this board who used to watch that stuff.