Jetlag
-
Posts
2334 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Blogs
Everything posted by Jetlag
-
Hey look it's Viktor Krueger! For those of you who don't know: Krueger was this big austrian guy who for some reason showed up in BattlARTS and looked like a behemoth next to all those tiny half-juniors. Even more obscure: Krueger got BattlARTS a TV deal in GERMANY!! It was only on mini regional TV, and like a couple minutes of a highlight show once per month or something, but it counts! Maybe it's because I haven't seen this stuff in years, but I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this. Krueger didn't really have a clue, but he was highly efficient as he was willing to get to the mat and clobber it out aswell as bring a little personality. He and Greco made a very good „you're fucked if you have to face these guys“ gaijin team. One is twice your size, and the other is a mat genius, and you really can't beat either of them. Greco was a barefooted fiend here, and when Greco goes barefoot into a match he really is at his best. Lots of top tier mat stuff involving Greco vs. Ishikawa and Greco vs. Otsuka, in which the BattlARTs guys really look better than they have most of the time. The natives were naturally good at „outmatched but fighting like a pitbull regardless“, and you get the sense everyone here gave it their all. -
This is a little more interesting than the previous match (gaijins vs. Ishikawa/Otsuka) for 2 reasons: Ikeda and Ono can strike. Ikeda and Ono aren't afraid to act like total dicks. The result was a super cool little match. Krueger was smart enough to leave the juicy part of the bout to Greco, who once again was a whirlwind of swank and unpredictable matwork. I love that the Ikeda/Greco sections are just as good as the Ishikawa/Greco sections from before, but because Ikeda and Ono aren't afraid to cheat they actually end up coming out on top (for a moment). I also loved Ono trying his hardest to embarass Krueger. Thankfully Krueger was able to defend himself using his shoot knowledge of BACK CLUBS~! He has good clubbing blows so I'm not crapping on him. An enraged Krueger crawling towards Ikeda while Ono was still climbing around on his back was pretty great. But yeah watch this for the Greco twisting.
-
THE QUEST FOR THE CARL GRECO OF THE YEAR: 1996 Carl Greco & Viktor Krueger vs. Yuki Ishikawa & Alexander Otsuka (BattlARTS 12/4) Hey look it's Viktor Krueger! For those of you who don't know: Krueger was this big austrian guy who for some reason showed up in BattlARTS and looked like a behemoth next to all those tiny half-juniors. Even more obscure: Krueger got BattlARTS a TV deal in GERMANY!! It was only on mini regional TV, and like a couple minutes of a highlight show once per month or something, but it counts! Maybe it's because I haven't seen this stuff in years, but I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this. Krueger didn't really have a clue, but he was highly efficient as he was willing to get to the mat and clobber it out aswell as bring a little personality. He and Greco made a very good „you're fucked if you have to face these guys“ gaijin team. One is twice your size, and the other is a mat genius, and you really can't beat either of them. Greco was a barefooted fiend here, and when Greco goes barefoot into a match he really is at his best. Lots of top tier mat stuff involving Greco vs. Ishikawa and Greco vs. Otsuka, in which the BattlARTs guys really look better than they have most of the time. The natives were naturally good at „outmatched but fighting like a pitbull regardless“, and you get the sense everyone here gave it their all. Carl Greco & Viktor Krueger vs. Daisuke Ikeda & Takeshi Ono (BattlARTS 12/4) This is a little more interesting than the previous match for 2 reasons: Ikeda and Ono can strike. Ikeda and Ono aren't afraid to act like total dicks. The result was a super cool little match. Krueger was smart enough to leave the juicy part of the bout to Greco, who once again was a whirlwind of swank and unpredictable matwork. I love that the Ikeda/Greco sections are just as good as the Ishikawa/Greco sections from before, but because Ikeda and Ono aren't afraid to cheat they actually end up coming out on top (for a moment). I also loved Ono trying his hardest to embarass Krueger. Thankfully Krueger was able to defend himself using his shoot knowledge of BACK CLUBS~! He has good clubbing blows so I'm not crapping on him. An enraged Krueger crawling towards Ikeda while Ono was still climbing around on his back was pretty great. But yeah watch this for the Greco twisting.
-
I am pretty sure Michiko Ohmukai is in this match, not Etsuko Mita. Unless you got the date wrong.
-
Wrestling pirates invade BattlARTS! Yes Gulliver X and Gulliver XX are indeed wrestling pirates. They come in wearing bright neon outfits, hockey masks and carrying big goofy weapons. They have a manager with them who is dressed in hat, coat and eye patch. He also has a rifle that he likes to bash people with. I won't bore you with in-depth analysis of this spectacle so let me give you the highlights. Ishikawa goes all shoot matwork on the buccaneers asses! Sasuke busts out an insanely stiff spin kick & jumping headbutts! Pirates love announce table spots! Their manager loves to bear hug! Ishikawa literally kicks ass before stuffing the smaller pirates corpse under the ring (What?)! Larger Pirate acts like Brody! Great Sasuke is INSANE! Ishikawa busts out a flip dive! Smaller Gulliver takes a huge corner bump! All in a days work. I will say I appreciate that they didn't run this joke into the ground. If the Gullivers were to debut today they'd probably become a running joke for months/years. Gullivers getting lengthy programs with Danshoku Dino. One Gulliver getting an appearance in the BOSJ before becoming a serious wrestler and challenging Okada in Tokyo Dome. And so on, South of Heaven, etc. But no, they had one bizarre, funny and highly entertaining Christmas time match and left it at that. Pirates were fun competent pro wrestlers and Sasuke and Ishikawa were a blast in this. I have no idea why this match isn't famous.
-
Man I forgot how good this match was. DAMN. The first 30 seconds alone are utter brutality. This was a total shootstyle gangwar, which plays to their strengths. Lots of guys piling up and kicking and stomping the crap out of someone 2 on 1. If you know anything about BattlARTS or these guys you will know those kicks and stomps were no joke. Between the hitting and getting hit there were a bunch of fun, slick as ice mat scrambles. Hell, even Minoru Tanaka's shit looked good! Even Yone's shit looked good!! My only problem was the slight clipping, robbing us of 2 or 3 minutes of BattlARTS goodness. Still, the rest of this was great trademark BattlARTS violence & grappling at an awesome pace with a killer finish on top of it. Great sprint.
-
Team Taco once again are total bastards stretching and smacking the shit out of the M-Pro guys. So, just doing what they do really well. Ikeda of all people ends up being in peril, which makes no sense from a US psych standpoint but perfect sense from a japanese quasi shootstyle indy standpoint. The legwork from TAKA/Sho was a little lacking but other than that they did fine and didn't infuse their pro style too much (altough this is def. a hybrid match). Super enjoyable match due to all the guys sticking to their roles and what works for them.
-
Man, BattlARTS wasn't afraid to bring the badass shootstyle in 1996. The rhythm of this wasn't exactly great, but the pace was frantic and the match felt like it could end at any moment, which is exactly what you want from a shootstyle brawl. The Ono/Usuda team constantly going back to heel moves despite being able to hold their own doing pure wrestling was a nice touch, as was Team Taco EXPLODING and the AJPW flavour that some of the interference/double teams had. The first half had lot of great mat moves, while second half was intense as hell with stiff shots raining down. Everything after Ono tanged Otsuka up in the ropes was just fantastic, intensely violent pro wrestling and the finish was a finish. Easily one of the better 90s BattlARTS tags.
-
Mari's outfit here was the stuff of nightmares. So many tassles. This was another match that was all chopped up. Wish they had shown us more of the matwork. Mari continues to look really damn good: forceful on the mat, cool power spots, generally great on offense with her chunky flying moves and lariats. She is quickly becoming my most wanted wrestler to see in a real match. There wasn't a ton of selling her but for a 6 minute clip this was fun.
-
Oh look it's another LCO tag to add to the last dozen we had. The first half was the typical LCO action, but finally, Ohmukai and Fukawa remembered they were in ARSION and salvaged things with a great finishing run full of slick submission counters, deathly suplexes and stiff soccer kicks. It won't blow your mind if you've watched BattlARTS and seen those punches to the face before, but it was nice to see that after so many skippable matches the real ARSION was still left in there somewhere.
-
[2000-02-18-ARSION] Aja Kong & Mariko Yoshida vs Ayaka Hamada & Mika Akino
Jetlag replied to soup23's topic in February 2000
Speaking of the real ARSION: These 4. Total corker of a match, easily one of the best tags ARSION has ever done. It was kind of their „roll out of the bed match“ as no one did anything extraordinary here, but they put their stuff together beautifully. Hamada and AKINO faced their biggest test against the top 2 ladies in the promotion, so aside from the numerous cool exchanges and nifty reversals, you also had a story and a game plan going on here. Akino and Hamada had to work together aswell as target Aja's arm and use their quickness to avoid both the deadly bombs from Aja aswell as Yoshida's submissions. Akino may have had her finest performance so far as she matched up great against the veterans, holding her own with a few shooty submissions of her own, while Ayako once again relied on blinding athleticism. Aja worked stiff and Yoshida was demonstrating the top of her submission game, and the counter-and-avoid nature of the match kept it from drifting into overkill. I also really liked how they saved up the big dives for near the end of the match. Great stuff, the first really good ARSION match of the 2000s. -
Mima Shimoda/Michiko Ohmukai vs. Etsuko Mita/Yumi Fukawa (2/18) Oh look it's another LCO tag to add to the last dozen we had. The first half was the typical LCO action, but finally, Ohmukai and Fukawa remembered they were in ARSION and salvaged things with a great finishing run full of slick submission counters, deathly suplexes and stiff soccer kicks. It won't blow your mind if you've watched BattlARTS and seen those punches to the face before, but it was nice to see that after so many skippable matches the real ARSION was still left in there somewhere. Ayako Hamada/Mika Akino vs. Aja Kong/Mariko Yoshida (2/18) Speaking of the real ARSION: These 4. Total corker of a match, easily one of the best tags ARSION has ever done. It was kind of their „roll out of the bed match“ as no one did anything extraordinary here, but they put their stuff together beautifully. Hamada and AKINO faced their biggest test against the top 2 ladies in the promotion, so aside from the numerous cool exchanges and nifty reversals, you also had a story and a game plan going on here. Akino and Hamada had to work together aswell as target Aja's arm and use their quickness to avoid both the deadly bombs from Aja aswell as Yoshida's submissions. Akino may have had her finest performance so far as she matched up great against the veterans, holding her own with a few shooty submissions of her own, while Ayako once again relied on blinding athleticism. Aja worked stiff and Yoshida was demonstrating the top of her submission game, and the counter-and-avoid nature of the match kept it from drifting into overkill. I also really liked how they saved up the big dives for near the end of the match. Great stuff, the first really good ARSION match of the 2000s. Chapparita Asari vs. Mari Apache (3/15) Mari's outfit here was the stuff of nightmares. So many tassles. This was another match that was all chopped up. Wish they had shown us more of the matwork. Mari continues to look really damn good: forceful on the mat, cool power spots, generally great on offense with her chunky flying moves and lariats. She is quickly becoming my most wanted wrestler to see in a real match. There wasn't a ton of selling her but for a 6 minute clip this was fun.
-
This was one of the more interesting matches I've seen in a while. This match was different from the Sakai/Yabushita match they had in March of 2001 as this was a grudge match. Yabushita comes in wearing street clothes and this is a fight from the get-go. However, due to their unique styles, this ends up being far weirder than your typical joshi brawl. The pace is very good as they avoid overly long wandering brawling and instead go back to the wrestling while keeping the story in tact. Also, even though Yabushita's heel faction was at ringside, there were no intereferences, which was a nice change of pace from what I'm used to in joshi. It was really neat to watch Yabushita going back and forth from busting out flash submissions to going for weapons and illegal chokes. It sounds like a mess, but you gotta trust me when I say this actually works because the timing and pacing is on point. The wrestling exchanges here were super nifty and almost lucha-esque in their rhythm at times. Stuff like Yabushita reversing a pin attempt by sweeping on top of Sakai, the ultra-quick springboard moves or a few extremely well timed transitions made me think these two are far above your average worker. Execution-wise they weren't quite as sharp as I like, for example Yabushita has a weak chain punch and Sakai kind of blows a missed punch, but there was nothing that hurt the match too bad, and both girls also have good offense, Yabushita especially rocks her flash armbars and there were a few very cool, believably used suplex variations. Most importantly Sakai was a very good babyface here adding a lot to the match with her charisma and timing. There was one spot where Yabushita is fed up and attacks her arm with a series of nasty chairshots, leading to Sakai making a desperation comeback by giving Yabushita a fisherman buster on the chair, but the referee refuses to count because she used to chair. I have no idea if the referee was a heel or just trying to do her job, but I thought that was a seriously great moment. Her selling of the arm was again pretty much impeccable and I thought they did a good job with the long, dramatic finishing run that could have easily killed the match but didn't. Very good, unique match. Fucking joshi of all things keeps surprising me with shit like this.
-
[1999-04-04-AJPW-Championship Carnival] Kenta Kobashi vs Jun Akiyama
Jetlag replied to Loss's topic in April 1999
This was fun. I really liked how Kobashi was all "You're not working over my arm, dammit!" so Jun goes "Fine" and works over his leg instead. Akiyama had a great gameplan and may have in fact carried this. Of course, Kobashi came back at him like Kobashi always does, so in the end it didn't really resonate with me as much more than a solid AJPW style match, but yeah. Akiyama, you tried. -
This was your fairly typical Aja rookie squash that ends up being really good due to Satomura being Satomura. Aja absolutely picks her apart for an eternity, while Satomura hangs on with all her willpower and keeps on chipping away at the veteran. There is so little heat in the early going that it feels like Meiko is getting the hell beaten out of her in a basement or some other remote place, and if this were IWA:MS I imagine the crowd would have begun chanting "It's not worth it" by the time Aja drilled her with the Package Piledriver. Meiko already had her awesome fire and determination to keep the match believable though, and while not all her comebacks were great, her focus on toppling Aja while having a limited moveset built around kicks, arm attacks, a big strike and a big bomb move at hand was fascinating. Aja gave her usual performance that I've seen in a dozen other matches but works everytime anyways and carried Satomura over the 25 minute length with ease. Highly remarkable match that would be a slam dunk joshi MOTY if it weren't for ARSION that year. Still, outside of that this has to be the best womens match in half a decade.
-
It's been said before, but parts of AJPW felt pretty old hat by 1999. Case in point: matches like this. Misawa no sells a few moves, parts of the Kawada/Misawa sections came dangerously close to current NJPW elbowfests, and the build and sense of escalation seemed to be lacking overall. It picks up here or there, but it speak volumes to me that 2 minutes before the finish in this match Misawa and Kawada were still working fairly standard exchanges that didn't feel like they were preceded by a 20 minute match at all. It was a pretty stiff match, so even if it wasn't exciting, it was atleast painful. Shinzaki didn't really add much besides a few different moves. He threw a few uppercuts, so I guess that makes him the stand-in for Great Kabuki.
-
Impossibly gritty, underrated, blood-drenched classic. Saito bloodying Fuchi's ear in the opening and contstantly attacking it with nasty punches was some amazing violent pro wrestling. Fuchi throwing wild punches and fist drops like Jerry Lawler was great, and his dropkick was such a fantastic, simple spot. The finishing stretch of the match was really well worked and felt equal to a high end lucha brawl. Loved Fuchi leaving a bloody imprint of his ear on Saito's side while applying the back suplex. I wouldn't be surprised if this ended up in my Top 3-5 80s AJPW singles matches. After watching this I was wondering if Fuchi ever had a hair match in Tijuana, and thinking I should really watch more Hiro Saito.
-
BLUE WOLF. I find mongolian pro wrestlers to be sorely unheralded on the internet. This was a really good match built around power vs. skill. Most wrestlers when matched up with a guy like Suzuki pretend to be helpless on the mat and go for the ropes, but Blue Wolf wasn't one of those guys. He brought the fight right to Suzuki and wouldn't let Suzuki get away with his usual bullshit. Man, Wolf was a fucking great babyface, and thus Suzuki's uncooperativeness actually added to the match. It lead to some damn good exchanges on the mat and a few really interesting bits as Suzuki was forced to try different approachs than his usual spiel. It leads to a unique and brilliant finish. Blue Wolf, a fighter till the very end.
-
[2004-02-22-AJPW-Excite Series] Toshiaki Kawada vs Shinya Hashimoto
Jetlag replied to Loss's topic in February 2004
Even for two beaten up old guys past their primes, I thought this was a world class pro wrestling match. They stuck to a more methodical pace in a match built around selling and limb damaging, which worked really well and built to an incredibly tense 2nd half. Hashimoto may be the greatest ever at selling wounded but dangerous, and here we also got him working as a beast next to the smaller Kawada. Early on, Kawada was just overwhelmed by Hashimoto. I don't know if Kawada being unable to throw Hash properly was intentional or not, but it worked great in the context of the match. So we get Hashimoto as One Man Gang, working like an invincible wall of doom that Kawada has to figure how to topple. Hashimoto's facial expressions were absolute top tier acting and some of the best shit I've ever seen in a wrestling match. Then of course you get two of the baddest dudes ever standing face to face and dishing out punishment to eachother. The dueling limbwork was a great way to avoid the trite "stand there and wait to get hit" crap japanese matches sometimes have. Instead, you had two angry bears, one on one leg, the other with one arm, hacking away at eachoter's weakpoints. Just an epic battle. For the record, I thought Kawada's selling was near perfect. But Hashimoto's performance, all leading up to his eventual downfall, is the real integral part to the match. Just incredible stuff. -
The previous match was a chaotic, violent eruption. Here, Chavo had sat Lothario down and they shook hands before the match. So, this starts out with Jose and Hector wrestling with all good clean wrestling exchanges while Paul Boesch puts over Chavo's hot sauce. That weird beginning aside, this soon gets surely when Hector gets frustrated by Jose one-upping him. Hector starts the fun attacking Jose with some nasty side headbutts before quickly drawing blood with the steel ringpost and it's ON. The match quickly turns into the kind of gritty double juice massacre you want. It's pretty much impossible to have a bad match with even old flabby Jose Lothario in that situation. Jose was pretty great here as a tank with nothing but punches as offense, giving this the flair of a gritty seeding boxing match, while Hector used more standard wrestling offense that still looked good. Probably had a bit too many falls and was not quite the wild brawl I expected, but this was psychologically very sharp justifying the methodic nature of the match and let to a cool/silly finish (nice foreshadowing there Boesch) that got awesome reactions. Great little bloodbath.
-
A Parejas Increibles Match! More disjointed pretty girl action! To make this even more disjointed, they clipped a 20 minute match down to about 6. I don't really bemourn this being clipped as it looked like their typical affairs that I wasn't in love with from 1999, plus they didn't really play up the Parejas Increibles aspect. To be fair, some of the exchanges here were kind of fun.
-
Another clipped match. Hamada and Akino still seem to be working as plucky underdogs. What they show of this was mostly spots and double teams. The stuff looked good and Futagami is really fun in this type of match as she has nice unpredictable submissions and cradles. Still, I'm waiting for something complete.
-
Hey look, it's Candy! Haven't seen her in a while. She looked skinnier than before. This was also clipped, but seemed somewhat complete. Another forgettable match where Candy dominated a lot then falls to the usual Aja trademarks. Okay but really nothing to write home about. Candy sold about that she was exerting herself to throw Aja around which was a nice touch, but her dominating so much of the match was kind of stupid.
-
Into 2000 we go. Michiko Ohmukai/Etsuko Mita vs. Mima Shimoda/Yumi Fukawa (1/30) A Parejas Increibles Match! More disjointed pretty girl action! To make this even more disjointed, they clipped a 20 minute match down to about 6. I don't really bemourn this being clipped as it looked like their typical affairs that I wasn't in love with from 1999, plus they didn't really play up the Parejas Increibles aspect. To be fair, some of the exchanges here were kind of fun. Ayako Hamada/Mika Akino vs. Rie Tamada/Mikiko Futagami (1/30) Another clipped match. Hamada and Akino still seem to be working as plucky underdogs. What they show of this was mostly spots and double teams. The stuff looked good and Futagami is really fun in this type of match as she has nice unpredictable submissions and cradles. Still, I'm waiting for something complete. Aja Kong vs. Candy Okutsu (1/30) Hey look, it's Candy! Haven't seen her in a while. She looked skinnier than before. This was also clipped, but seemed somewhat complete. Another forgettable match where Candy dominated a lot then falls to the usual Aja trademarks. Okay but really nothing to write home about. Candy sold about that she was exerting herself to throw Aja around which was a nice touch, but her dominating so much of the match was kind of stupid.
-
This was a good trios match. The highlights were the opening Genki/Saito matwork, Shisa's highspots and all things Kenichiro Arai who is such a cool character. The Toryumon crew couldn't touch the 90s M-Pro guys and you could tell that they were more interested in putting together finishing stretches than the body of the mat (the rudo work in this match was pretty average), but this was in the 90s M-Pro style and a very fun, fresh take at it.