Jetlag
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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. -
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.
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Ditch's website has the top two matches for download. The Tarzan Goto vs. Takashi Okamura (reckless karate kicker) match sounds fun too.
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This also delivers the promise of an IWA Japan vs. Yume Factory match. Picture 4 sleazy heavyweights potatoeing the shit out of eachother, add a ton of blood and you have this match. You know it's an awesome match! Tarzan Goto is one of the most mean wreckingball wrestler dudes ever, and this match really showcases him both doing some cool actual wrestling, and fucking dudes up in really graphic ways. Motegi is very lovable as this legendary sad sack who tries really hard, and he takes a monster beating from the IWA guys, getting waffled with chairs, punched and bloodied and he fires right back with full force hits. Miyake is perfectly fine as a disdainful shitbag kneedropping and stomping dudes in their bloody face. Nakano fits perfectly in this kind of savage potatoefest as a hot tag with his eardrum shattering slaps and enzuigiris and awesome powerslam, also he comes in with a bandage over his eye resulting in some gross spots where he gets hit in the eye with chairs and headbutts that would make Terry Funk cringe. Finish was not as epic as the body of the match but kind of worked as a payoff. This pretty much ruled.
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Uuuuhhhhh it's Fujiwara vs. A japanese Fake Undertaker. And they go to the mat! Shinigami counters the Fujiwara armbar by rolling through and locking in the stomach claw! Uh so Fujiwara actually sells a good deal for the living corpse and gives him a lot of offense. So you squash Masashi fucking Aoyagi, but this joker gets an actual match? Fujiwara, you're a mystery sometimes. There are some fun spots here such as Fujiwara countering the BRAIN CLAW~ with an armbar or Shinigami following up the stomach claw by working the stomach. But mostly this is a match of the „what the hell am I watching“ sort.
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It's Karatekas vs. Wrestlers round 2. Another fun little gangfight that was a little shorter and faster paced than the previous match. The match was a little sloppy, but when a bunch of dressed in black karate punks and sleazy indy shooters get into a fight you don't want perfectly executed moves, you want reckless kicks and dudes getting dumped on their necks, and there was plenty of that here. So, the sloppiness added to the match, as you got plenty of crazy moments where a wrestler would go for a dropkick and get kicked in the kidney in mid air etc., also TARU did this crazy Undertaker dive where he falls on his head. The most violent part about the match were the saves as anytime there was a pinfall or submission attempt somebody would get kicked in the back of the head or punched in the ear, at one point Mochizuki unloads with short kicks to Kotsubo's face. Fukuda looked pretty great as he was just hurling around dudes again with suplexes, cranking in submissions and at one point hit a dropkick here basically jumped into the air and landed in the other guys face. This indy feud is a rush, exactly as good as it sounds on paper.
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WOW! First of all: how fucking cool was Toshiyo Yamada in this match? Nobody ever talks about what Toshiyo Yamada was up to in the late 90s. She had a normal haircut here and with her bumblebee outfit looked like a Kill Bill character who prepares lunch for her kids and then goes to kick yakuzas in the eye. She was just a killing machine here as she was braining the other women with kicks to the skull left and right. Her timing was fantastic as you could basically track the crucial moments in the match to Yamada recklessly thrust kicking someone in the throat or the back of the head. Next is Aja Kong. I've said it like 15 times, but it's amazing that she goes in and you think "okay, this is her usual spiel" but still looks like a total force. I didn't like the brawl at the beginning, but for the rest of the match Aja was a wrecking ball. The most spectacular about Aja was how non-chalant she was about it all, casually abusing Meiko or walking up to Yamada and cracking her with a trash can like she goes to grab coffee in the morning. Then, Meiko and Amano. For a pair of relative newbies they got to look great. Just really breathtaking athletic workers with innovative ideas that they pulled off great, and a ton of fire to keep them going. Right at the bell they go at eachother with stiff headbutts like wild animals, fast and crazy exchanges. They both take big beatings and get stretched and fire back as is their role, and Meiko shows a lot of disdain especially when she takes the time to kick the shit out of Carlos before making the hot tag. Carlos was a little subdued in the middle portion but really came unglued during the big stretch run where she busted out all these Mysterio-ish counters, spinning into wild submission counters as if she was weightless. The opening of the bout may have been a little standard, but they kept the match getting better and better, and everyone looked fantastic during the finishing stretch. This was a long match from a smaller show and a pretty much just a damn good take at japanese tag formula wrestling.
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Prepare to have your dreams shattered. Wow did that suck. You see a matchup like Fujiwara vs. Aoyagi, and you think „Why have I never heard of that“ - well the reason is that it was bad. Straight up. The one cool moment comes early on when the are both throwing wild bodyshots at eachother. The rest of the match is Fujiwara just eating Aoyagi up, and not even doing a very entertaining job at it. Aoyagi rushes Fujiwara with a nice kick combo in the corner reminding you who he is, the rest of the match is Fujiwara taking him down over and over again, sitting on him and slowly prying into submissions. You keep waiting for the indy promoter to turn the tables on the legend but it never happens and Aoyagi is forced to tap out at just the 10 minute mark. Don't know what Fujiwara's issue here was, maybe carried over hostility from NJPW or he thought Aoyagi was beneath him because he was shorter. Eitherway this is not the match you fantasy booked, move on with your lives.
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[2017-05-20-WWE-NXT Takeover: Chicago] Tyler Bate vs Pete Dunne
Jetlag replied to SmartMark15's topic in May 2017
Didn't watch it and just got a bunch of DVDs from Lynch so I'll be busy watching indy sleaze and joshi for a while. -
[2017-05-20-WWE-NXT Takeover: Chicago] Tyler Bate vs Pete Dunne
Jetlag replied to SmartMark15's topic in May 2017
This was ultra-generic videogame pro wresting.They tried to include some non-spotty work to balance all the Orange Crush and wristclutch into a tornado DDT moves, but the match never seemed to develop real intensity as they constantly had to move to the next spot. For example, notice how quickly Bate dropped his selling in order to hit his crowd popping dives, before the uninspired finish. While it wasn't terrible I have no interest in seeing more of this stuff. -
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I for one am looking forward to all those 7 hour long ******** 3/4 classics we are no doubt going to see in the near future as wrestlers keep falling over themselves trying to beat the highscore.
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Another forgotten match that is actually some damn good story driven pro wrestling. Well, it may not have enough wrestling for some people's taste, but I give them credit for selling their butts off. The early going was really nice joshi style work: unpredictable exchanges where they didn't do anything stupid, and there was a good amount of struggle. Then, an overconfident Hyuga got caught and crushed by Fukuoka's brutal double stomp finisher. This transitions into second half which is mostly built around Hyuga's pretty epic selling. Fukuoka follows up by working over her stomach area with nasty stiff toe kicks and knees. Pretty brutal and awesome stuff, and we get these almost Hogan/Andre like spots of Hyuga trying to body slam lift Fukuoka into position for her Michinoku Driver II. All the MDII spots where pretty great and the second half of the match felt like classic puro stuff built around simple moves, both wrestlers gutting it out and struggling for control. Really good stuff and another hidden gem.
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Current favorite wrestler to watch: Mariko Yoshida Last fun match you saw: Murahama vs. Hoshikawa from the 2000s project. Wrestler you want to see more of: Carlos Amano Match you're most looking forward to watching: Carlos Amano vs. Aja Kong, Oz Academy 2008 Last interesting thing you read about wrestling: Apparently Mae Young used to rob and beat the shit out of men knowing they wouldn't go to the police Last worthwhile podcast you listened to: I don't listen to podcasts Most fun you've had watching wrestling lately: Watching 2001 JD', weirdly enough Favorite recent post on this board: I don't read much, but probably OJ's thread on Mile Zrno Favorite thing about the wrestling landscape in the past three months (if you live in the past, then go with your past three months of time-traveling): Meltzer rusing everyone with his ludicrous ratings. You go old man