Jetlag

You disagree that Karl Gotch was THE major influence on the early practitioners of Shoot Style? That doesn't help your argument. I absolutely agree that the intent was to distance themselves from the fake aspects of wrestling (specifically, Inoki's "Fake" Strong Style), but the UWF was still way closer to pro wrestling in presentation and style than it was to any of the traditional Japanese Martial Arts. So were RINGS, PWFG, and so on. You'd be better off trying to argue that Shoot Style was European Cultural Imperialism, frankly. Ya'll are forgetting that Karl Gotch was a jew whose goal it was to promote martial arts mixing in order to genocide the pure japanese wrestling style and replace it with inferior, unpure mudwrestling. All in order to fulfill his vile ZOG (Zionist Occupied Grappling) vision. If anything UWF was indeed USraelic imperialism. He almost succeeded along with his comrade, the dirty north korean communist Antonio Inoki. Oy vey Gevalt! That is importing cultural hegemonial marxism at it's finest. All joking aside, the idea of UWF as a distancing itself from american wrestling is interesting. Just a few days ago I read somewhere that japanese comedy wrestling originated from people laughing at how fake other wrestling styles look. Which seems nonsensical to me but it's food for thought.

That last statement is just weird. You are supposed to watch wrestling because you like it and not because of some obligation. It's just an entertainment product I don't watch DG (for longer than 5 minutes at a time) because DG is fucking boring and not to spite people that don't watch Katsumi Usuda matches. Unless you watch wrestling for cred and not for enjoyment in that case Parv's hipster idea is true. I will never understand how after years of internet age people get so offended because others don't like their stuff. It's not a personal insult. People not liking lucha is their own problem not mine. The only people who should worry about people liking a wrestling product are promoters.

I'm starting to wonder how these two workers ever got a dubious rep. I've myself dismissed Hotta during the GWE discussion but I will say she is pretty good when not compared to the Top 100 workers ever. Both workers stuck to their strengths here so naturally it was good. It was a slow paced bout, but in my opinion the good kind of slow pace for this type of simple, brutally violent battle.They were wise enough not to go outside the ring or do extended holds. Instead, Kandori brings the flash submissions and takedowns which are over, while Hotta brings the face shattering stiff kicks. I think Hotta was way lower on the totem pole here than Kandori, so she makes up for it by absolutely abusing her with painful kicks. Goodness gracious what a beating. At one point, she did the spot where she ties Kandori into a tree of woe so she can soccer kick her more easily. Kandori tries to climb out of the position and Kandori gets onto the ropes to kick her in the eye again. Kandori tried a lot of different stuff and Hotta came across as a fighter with a very limited, but extremely devastating arsenal. Kandori eventually responds by ripping a bandage off of Hotta's face and repeatedly taped fist punching and toe kicking her in the bloody eye and this match is ON. They do a ton of bomb throwing for the finish like they always do in these japanese girl wrestling matches, but these two have pretty brutal bombs and there were enough interesting touches to keep me interested. Altough there were definitely a few moves that felt forced in. But nevermind that you will want to watch this for the WAR like brutality.

Who in lucha should have won MOTY/WOTY/Most Oustanding Wrestler but didn't? Casas or Virus would've been a really good choice the last couple years. El Dandy in 1990. I think deciding these things is mostly a coin toss, though. I guess you can consider me a hardcore WoS / euro fan considering I own more discs of that stuff than of anything else and I don't really look down on anyone except maybe Parv if he keeps making stupid posts like that.

This is something that I think would only apply to a special segment of hardcore fans. It's also funny that you mention these universes having no crossover appeal considering there are a ton of US/japanese workers that worked mexico/britain/europe. Yes, they may be slightly different from how they worked on their home planets, but I can't see that if you are a fan of Chris Jericho or Sayama or Vader or whoever, why not check out what they did in a different country. Hell, Wanz' universe reads like a Best Of of the world wide wrestling scene (minus Mexico, funnily enough). And it was in fact a criticism of him that he brought in and protected too many US guys. If you are a fan of US or japanese heavyweight or junior wrestling in anyway, there is a ton of stuff to check out on CWA cards. You like Dick Murdoch trolling rubes and bloodying the local babyface up, go watch him do that in germany. Even if you don't like the eurostyle or european guys you could check out something like the Vader vs. Fujinami match from Bremen which is like a New Japan style match that has rounds and KOs. I still maintain that production and availableness is really important. There is a reason people talk about the pro-shot Wanz vs. Vader matches but not about the shitty handheld stuff. IWRG, Monterrey and those indies have almost unwatchably bad sound and camera work. CMLL also has shitty mics, clipping, dozens of replays and other annoying things. That there is a flood of CMLL footage online doesn't actually help things either (I'm just observing my own frustrations here, I'm a fan of mexican wrestling myself). During the GWE project I found a Hamada vs. Panther handheld from japan that I've never seen mentioned anywhere ever. Because people just don't seek out grainy dark footage with bad sound. That Vader/Fujinami match I mentioned above would probably be a slam dunk in people's MOTY lists if it were filmed properly in japan. Eventually a completist may come along and mercifully put it on a comp or YouTube where it gets on people's radars. Look how much the DVDVR 80s projects did for the discussion, and not just for lucha. Meanwhile japanese wrestling is uploaded in picture perfect quality and even the low level indies have good camera work and sound.

The same applies to european wrestling. European wrestling never received any of the awards you are talking about there. I also just looked over the last 2 pages of the ***** / **** 3/4 matches thread and there were only 2 or 3 matches from europe there compared to almost everyone having matches from mexico in their list. In fact, lucha is much better represented than WoS or CWA. On the 90s yearbooks, there were only a handful of european matches but dozens of mexican ones. Actually there is near zero discussion on 90s european wrestling. Jim Breaks, probably the most beloved WoS worker, didn't even make the Top 50 in the GWE, while the two top rated brit guys all worked extensively in the US and japan. OJ has written a lot about it on this site but there's not much more discussion than that compared to the endless talking about lucha. Otto Wanz vs. Vader is almost never mentioned as one of the best feuds of the 80s. Wanz and many other deserving euro workers still are' in the WON Hall of Fame. Could it be? Are people not giving european wresting a fair shake? Is there something going on? Do I need to ignore people who praise 90s AJPW and El Dandy but don't even know the likes of Mile Zrno or Alan Kilby? Did the british not import enough US cultural hegemony? Is Meltz a US imperialist? Or could it be that people largely just don't like it/don't feel inspired to get really into it?

It's called mass appeal. Believe me a lot of people do try lucha once in a while, especially when something big e.g. CMLL anniversary show is coming up. They just don't get stuck. Blame the shitty production, blame the fact that they like the idea of mexican wrestling more than actual mexican wrestling (see: people saying they prefer Chikara, LU, luchadores in japan etc. to mexican wrestling). Similiarily you can see that most people listen to pop/rock music or a variation of it. They don't listen to 70s prog rock or free jazz or death metal. You can play them something like this, and they most likely won't find it appealing. It's not what they are used to so it's hard to discern what's going on, and that goes for a lot of people who say they like heavy music (=thick guitar production) aswell. Most of them will say it's just a bunch of noise just like people say lucha has no psychology and is just pretty moves. Japanese wrestling is appealing to the niche audience of internet fans who grew up with american wrestling. Better production, more big events and feuds to get into, similiar 2.99999 layout that they are familiar with from american wrestling, no confusing rules or heel ref bullshit. Plus hearing the impact of the chops and bumps makes a huge difference. I started watching lucha with BTJr. handhelds and it was a lot easier to get into than CMLL TV.

That is actually something you see in lucha too and almost anyone can understand the machismo behind this motive. Also, technically this is not an integral part of japanese wrestling because it only came up in about 2005.

This feels like it has been discussed hundreds of times. The things are: - alien style and presentation, hard to understand - distribution format not meant to be actually watched, TV shows are essentially filmed houseshows, shitty production - lack of proper coverage - much of lucha is forgettable/lousily booked + lack of footage means low motivation to follow - CMLL is meant to appeal to low income mexicans and not dorky foreigners (harder to appeal to comic/anime fans) I'd say coverage is very important. The other day I was going through YouTube and saw a bunch of videos titled "Why japanese wrestling is better" in recommendations, tons of highlight videos made showcasing various japanese wrestlers/feuds etc. Another thing is smark sites reporting on lucha. I remember one time a promoter ran a lucha show headlined by Hijo del Santo and Parka in LA that drew about 4000+. No reports on that show whatsover. The same night there was a DGUSA show just a few streets away that drew 200 people and got a lot of coverage. This distorted view generally goes with smark oriented and non-smark oriented feds. Compare coverage of ASW in UK to coverage of FWA. Or coverage of smark oriented wXw in germany to traditionally oriented promotions like EWP. If somebody wants to get into japanese wrestling, he has a ton of entry points to get info and recs. Just look at Meltzer's 5 star list, something that was shaped by personal taste, but is considered canon by many. EDIT: I think something like the GWE is not a good measuring stick. If you compare wrestler under those specific criteria some will always have an advantage or disadvantage due to booking. Non-mexican fans are used to wrestling shows being centered around a single or tag match as a main event which is supposed to be "good". Lucha shows are mostly a bunch of trios matches with the occasional short singles match sprint between. Obviously someone like Kobashi, who at points had big matches on a monthly basis will look better than Negro Casas who has a big singles match once in a blue moon. You can argue that based on stiffness, technical ability, endurance, psychological match layout Casas at his best was equal or better to Kobashi, but Kobashi can easily stump him with sheer volume.

Random as hell match that I saw at the RealHero Google Drive. Ikeda and Ono come in and get a really nice reaction, then Kikuchi and Ogawa kind of eat their lunch. Kikuchi was uncooperative to the max and didn't sell a thing. Ogawa just did his usual spiel. There were some stiff as hell moves here, including Ikeda dishing out some of his stiffest shots I've ever seen on Kikuchi, Kikuchi firing back like a madman and Ono responding to Ogawa's pro style punches with shoot strikes, aswell as a brutal series of german suplexes to Ono. Fun match, but I would've liked a real match and not something borderline unprofessional. This was about the only match of Ikeda in AJPW where he was treated as anything special. I wonder if this was some sort of test as lot of AJPW guys were watching from the side.

Carl Greco vs. Yuki Ishikawa (8/25/1996) Carl Greco vs. Yuki Ishikawa (8/29/1999) People have talked about their 1998 and 2008 matches. It makes sense considering 1998 and 2008 are complete matches at main event length while there's barely 10 minute of these two matches here put together. Still, let's compare. The 1996 match is from the 1st year of BattlARTs and pretty much Greco destroying Ishikawa left and right before getting caught in a lucky submission. By 1999 Ishikawa is much ahead of the curve. It is about Ishikawa the mat superstar while Greco has to resort to striking (and he did blast Ishikawa with shots like they were in BattlARTS or something). It feels bitchy to complain about some random 9 minute match from a 1999 indy undercard not being shown in full but still, that 1999 match looked like an awesome 9 minutes. They do some pretty high end countering and it's hard not to compare what they are doing on the mat to lucha matwork. Ishikawa would take Greco down and go into three different submissions at the same time before finally catching something and holding on to it. iGreco did a lot of selling making this a shockingly epic 5 minute clip. Knowing Ishikawa had a MOTYC against Ikeda the same day it's difficult to think BattlARTS wasn't the best promotion in the world in 1999.

Show 2 - BML "Illusion 2" 12/29/2005 Don Arakawa vs. Osamu Kido BML opening veteran's match series continues! Well, Arakawa is a hell of a step down from Fujiwara, altough I really like the guy. I'd really love to read an interview of him. For a guy who comes out of the woodwork to work his comedy bits in random indy undercards he is pretty rad. Can go on the mat and has hurty looking low end offense. This was mostly a Kido squash which is fine. BML doesn't have their own black tights and boots rookies to do basic spots so they let the old guys do these basic spots in the opener. So you see really great wristlock, side headlock, back elbow and small package in this opening match but no dropkick or Boston Crab. Also the Kido Clutch is such a great move. I enjoyed these 4 minutes. Munenori Sawa vs. Manabu Hara Hey look, it's Sawa when he wasn't annoying! Hey look it's Hara actually making tape!! This kind of match is interesting to watch 9 years later and knowing what happened. I could imagine watching this in 2006 and getting pretty excited for the future of japanese quasi shootstyle wrestling. Really, really fun young guys BattlARTS style match. Hara is the superior wrestler, while Sawa is just really aggressive. They move back and forth between grappling and just straight up kicking the shit out of eachother, both standing and on the ground. Some of the scenes here resembled a version of PRIDE here without the face stomping. Sawa couldn't hang much with Hara on the mat so he just clobbered away at his face however he could. Hara is really polished and does some neat wrestling and throws and did he mention he also kicks the shit out of Sawa? Those U-Style guys weren't afraid to lay in brutal slaps. I really dug the build to the finish here with Sawa selling that he's slowly tanking and fading away but still getting shots in with Hara trying to catch him. Match ended when it should. This match hit all the spots. Katsumi Usuda vs. Masanobu Kurisu Kurisu looks the same as he does in 1990. Fun match but weird layout. Essentially Kurisu eats Usuda up for few minutes like this was a rookie vs. veteran match except Usuda is a veteran himself. Then Usuda gets busted open, spilling a fountain of blood from his forehead and then chokes Kurisu out. It even took him quit a while to choke Kurisu out. Like I said, fun match due to Kurisu-ishness (stiff headbutts and chairshots) and the Usuda bladejob as a great visual but they're not doing Usuda favours with this booking. Yuki Ishikawa & Hiroyuki Ito vs. Kengo Mashimo & KAZMA Hey, one of these guys would go on to be in WWE, can you guess which one??? Kazma was seriously terrible here. Picture the most generic, lame japanese indy heavyweight that doesn't sell. It didn't really matter because Ishikawa can carry a stiff like this no problem. Seriously, Ishikawa was magic anytime he was in the ring here. At this point he was like Casas or Regal. He could just do whatever he liked and it would be enjoyable, working interesting exchanges with a guy as dull as KAZMA like it was nothing. Ito didn't feel to be 100 % at home in this pro style environment, but he did at one point punch Kazma in the throat. After a fun body of the match the finish was between Ito and Mashimo, two iffy guys (for this environment) at this point, but they delivered something good. I don't know if there was a serious miscommunication or something but Mashimo just escalated the violence out of nowhere and attempted to cave Ito's face in. Then he essentially finished Ito off like a bitch which was a change of pace from previous, mostly even finishes. Pretty intense stuff, the kind you watch these obscure indy cards for. Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs. Akitoshi Saito Saito hands Fujiwara a bottle of alc before the match. Fujiwara accepts it without reacting much then proceeds to beat the snot of Saito. What on earth was this match supposed to be? They didn't seem to know themselves. On the debut show, Fujiwara was respectful towards his opponent, this was the complete opposite. He came across as this mad bugger who wouldn't stop unless killed. Match was violent and had it's moments, such as neat Fujiwara counters or Saito dumping the old bastard on his head with a great deadlift throw, but there were also weird pauses and restarts and comedic bits. Then Saito busts out the fucking BLACK MIST and things go... well, they don't go haywire, but let's just say this was a damn weird match which had it's moments. Petey Williams vs. AJ Styles HEY LOOK ITS A BLOODY X-DIVISION MATCH!!! BML for stylistic diversity! I will go out and say that this type of match is not for me. Technically there is nothing wrong here, but the execution left something to be desired, to put it mildly. I'm sure there are a lot of people who will be totally into this match. I am not familiar with the history of AJ Styles and Petey Williams so can't comment on how this ranks compared to the baseline of their usual work together. I can see somebody who put AJ in his Top 30 during the GOAT project watching this and thinking it's really rad that AJ did stuff like this on random japanese shoot indy cards. They opened with some fast wristlock exchanges before going through a series of mirror sequences where guys would drop down, kick, shoot at the same time etc. establishing that these two men are equal. Then they took turns running through their signature spots and offense. They made sure to do a lot of elaborate reversal sequences and quirky move combos, e.g. backslide into northern lights suplex, suplex dropped into a neckbreaker, tilt a whirl into a suplex into a swinging neckbreaker into a russian legsweep and so forth. At one point, Petey decided to step on AJ's balls which AJ counters by a german suplex. I have never had my balls stepped on or been nearby such a situation as that is not my fetish so can't comment on how natural this type of counter is. Petey sells a springboard elbow by doing a Billy Gunn style flip bump. Then later Petey hits his finisher but can't pin AJ because AJ is in the ropes. Petey was very shocked at this and even had to readjust his hair. Maybe he was unsettled as he was normally used to hearing fans chant "This is wrestling" at this point of the match. Again nothing wrong with this match, I liked some bits here and there such as the AJ knee drops and modified Fuerza bump, aside from that I felt my soul fossilizing while I watched this. Kazunari Murakami vs. Enson Inoue Okay, after watching this, my soul feels fine again. Enson scores a takedown and Murakami slips outside the ring, then Enson goes crazy drags Murakami across the arena and bloodies him up. We don't get to see what exactly happens because photographers are blocking the camera. This whole match felt like it was worked for the cameras. Lots of pauses where we get to look at Murakami bleeding on the floor, Murakami covered in blood giving Enson the death stare, crazy looking tattood Enson covered in Murakami's blood, Murakami looking bemused and taking off his gloves etc. There was fuck all workrate here, which is not to berate this match because I'm sure if this happened on a WWE PPV with Brock slotted into Enson's place people would be praising him as a wrestling genius and saying how he's Top 5 all time. The theatrics worked and Enson, while sloppy, looked like he was out to kill Murakami (who made for a surprisingly good babyface) and took a reckless spill to the outside. Murakami without the gloves wasn't what I expected but what they were going for made sense and absolutely worked. Give this a shot if you like a crazy fight. Katsuyori Shibata vs. Satoshi Kojima Man, there are worlds between this and the main event of the first show. These shows are such mixed bag in terms of style. This was worked like one of these "indy heavyweight main events" with Kojima doing some AJPW spots. That means this was much less chaotic and had "no selling" and "strike exchange" spots etc. Given that I'm not a big fan of these matches or Kojima this was pretty good. The most glaring thing about BML is what a loss Shibata was for NJPW. He pretty much carried this match with his simple, varied, and utterly painful looking offense, submissions and selling. I can't take guys like Kojima seriously: he would get the shit kicked out of him by Shibata and respond with this really lame generic japanese heavyweight shit. Whenever things went to the mat Kojima fell asleep, seemingly not knowing what to do at all. They were smart enough not to go for a complete faux AJPW style match and instead the story of the match was Shibata's struggle, something that he portrayed very well and you could smell the Hashimoto influence in the last couple minutes. Another strong main event. Another really fun show that was a breeze to watch despite being longer than the first one. I have to say that the booking is all over the place though. E.g. Enson was the face against heel Gerard previously, in his match here he was getting heel reactions and Murakami of all people was the good guy. Random insertion of a workrate gaijin match, I guess to make the japanese guys less spotty. I'm not gonna scratch my head at these things though.

BE MAD WITH ATTACK!!! BML was a japanese indy from a time when there were a fuckload of japanese indies. The guy behind it was former NJPW Fumihiko Uwai and the point of BML was to be some sort of Neo NJPW and keep it's spirit while Actual NJPW was drifting away into La La Land under Tanahashi. For a promotion with so many awesome guys (Fujiwara! Kurisu! BattlARTS dudes! Random MMA stiffs! Murakami!) BML gets kind of slept on. A guy on YouTube was nice enough to upload all of it, so time to give it a look. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNOfKmK5nZIurQ8fUk26GcA/videos Show 1 - BML "Illusion" 9/11/2005 Osamu Kido vs. Yoshiaki Fujiwara I love a fed that begins with two old guys doing essentially a maestro match. It was a little weird that while Kido was much smaller than Fujiwara here they didn't play the size difference up much, but what do ya want. Also, I can't recall the last time I saw a Fujiwara match where he was this respectful to an opponent and never came across as eating the other guy up. They actually start this working in the extinct early 80s NJPW native vs. native junior style with monkey flips and stuff and it's all fun, until a few minutes in they get into what you expect these two to get into and start fighting over armbars on the ground. Kido is such an underrated guy, actually may have outworked Fujiwara as he moved swiftly and gracefully and just had so many awesome defensive spots. Fujiwara would sink into his signature Armbar, but couldn't actually get a submission because of Kido's resistance, so had to continue working. This style is much less fancy than Johnny Saint or Navarro/Solar maestro matches, but really hard fought. Kido also had these nifty knee lifts to the face. Kido pretty much ruled. Embarassing finish where the timekeeper guy forgets there is a timelimit and Fujiwara has to explain to him the match is over. Still, what a trip to watch. Daisuke Ikeda vs. Katsumi Usuda I love a fed that follows a technical match with something really violent. This was pretty much high end BattlARTS violence in a 5 minute Velocity match form. Usuda did a slick submission counter at one point, but the rest of the match was just these two killing eachother. To be honest, the match was kind of stupid as they busted out all these stiff shots and neither the lightning fast spinning backfist to the face nor the absolutely terrifying running square hook to the jaw followed by brutal lariat combo ended the match nor did any of the brutal kicks they threw. I don't expect a random undercard match from a defunct vanity indy fed to have some sense though. If this happened on some WCW syndie show it would be legendary. They killed eachother, and it was good. Tomohiro Ishii vs. Hiroyuki Ito See, this is what I'm missing from current puro. A martial artist vs. barrel chested powerhouse match that has some sense. No cute signature moves or 2.9999 forced epic bullshit, just two guys with a lot of anger going at eachother. The key here was the pacing as they moved back and forth from doing mat stuff to knocking the piss out of eachother very nicely. Honestly, Ishii was kind of poor in this match and I think Ito may have carried it. Ishii did a bunch of his "Here is my chest, please hit it so people will see I am very tough" shit and for a guy who's a Choshu kid he doesn't really know how to be very charismatic. Ito did a bunch of nifty dodging and acting like a dipshit (especially loved him pussying out of an Ishii headbutt and just waffling him in the face). His knees and slaps were also brutal. I also liked his selling towards the end where he keeps trying to withstand Ishii's force only for Ishii to hit him with nastier and nastier shots until his body went completly limp. Riki Choshu & Takashi Uwano vs. Buck Quatermain & Steve Madison Okay, now these are some name gaijins! To his credit, Madison was pretty solid, doing some nice wrestling, mocking Choshu and clubbering his boy in the face at one point. Quatermain on the other hand was pretty worthless. It didn't really matter as this was a Choshu style tag where guys just run in and hit their stuff. Uwano's stuff looked really nice, as he can stomp and kick and throw a bodyslam, and Choshu can do whatever he wants anyways. Enson Inoue vs. Gerard Gordeau Okay, now for the really amazing stuff. This was shockingly fun. Gordeau as a tattooed bum who will rip your eye out wouldn't look out of place in a Tarantino movie and Enson gets to be hero, withstanding the eyepokes and taking him down a bunch. Shockingly entertaining 3 minute bout. Alexander Otsuka vs. Yuki Ishikawa A really great match. If you haven't seen it go watch it. It's pretty much a distillate of what these two were doing in BattlARTS over the years packaged into a neat sub 15 minute highlight. Some beautiful, unorthodox grappling on the mat leading to brutal headbutts and punch and then a bunch of spine compressing suplexes before a great finish with an excellent build to it. Usuda/Ikeda in the undercard was the awesome 5 minute Velocity match, this is the awesome 12 minute Regal/Benoit main event. Except it's better. Katsuyori Shibata vs. Kazunari Murakami The big main event with a lot of prominent guys in the audience watching! Young Shibata obviously had a big weight on his shoulders going into this match, but they got up gave a spirited performance. Murakami is a great guy, but didn't act as crazy as I expected him to. They just collided into eachother throwing everything they had, spin kicks, punches and frantic mat scrambles. It wasn't anything truely elite and the finish could have used a little more pomp, but they never lost the crowd and gave them the reckless spin kicks and epic staredowns a good main event needs. Not on the level of the semi main when it comes to skill, but I prefer this stuff over whatever Shibata is doing in Actual NJPW these days.

Carl Greco vs. Shoichi Funaki (PWFG 8/13/94) Another 5 minute contest. A breeze to watch, as you may guess. Even then Carl had some nasty, neck-cranking signature moves. This was all about slick transitions and counters, and damn they did some spectacular stuff. They even worked a mini story into the contest with Funaki getting frustrated and trying to learn Carl's moves. Heck, Funaki looked really good in this! I think this PWFG crew (which moved on to BattlARTS) might be last really talented group of wrestlers to debut in the same promotion. They just got both technique and instincts right. Not to mistake this bout for anything truely grand, but it's just my idea of the perfect 6 minute Nitro match. Carl Greco/Alexander Otsuka vs. Yuki Ishikawa/Mohammed Yone (BattlARTS 1/30/2000) How many times can you run a permutation of the same match and get something good? Well, I'd assume many many times, as long as you stick to what works for you, but that wasn't the case here. Yone took up a portion of the match, and that guy is so hit and miss. He can be pretty enjoyable when he sticks to reckless kicks and lariats, but his other signature moves kind of stink and he also likes to do irritating no selling. There was also barely any matwork, so Greco didn't really get to do what he does best. There was some stiffness and clubbering, but the match had that weird semi-comedic feel undercard BattlARTS matches sometimes have. Geco even did a Fargo Strut at one point. You had the stiffness and clubbering and neck-crushing suplex moves aswell as a particularily twisty submission to keep you entertained throughout, but I was hoping for a few more "pure" bits.

Carl Greco/Yuki Ishikawa vs. Alexander Otsuka/Mohammed Yone (3.12.1999) Random BattlARTS match constellations continue to deliver. Man, has there ever been another indy promotion with this much enthusiasm and creativity in throwaway encounters? This was one of these "typical" small show matches. With a little novelty added, as Otsuka and Yone were dressed in weird matching outfits and doing an unusal amount of double team moves (I'm sure it was meant to be a riff on some more popular wrestling tag team or anime or whatever). Granted, you had 3 world class workers + 1 capable worker here, so the ceiling is a little higher than it is for any other constellation of indy schmucks... still, I'd like those lesser indy schmucks to atleast try to match the level of execution and enthusiasm on display here. There is just something about the small things, such as a frustrated Ishikawa leaping in on a single leg to Otsuka only to be caught in some sort of spinning triangle choke that is infinitely more interesting and enjoyable to watch than the lazy stomp+restholds approach in other styles. This match was worked like a sprint, so Greco didn't have to change his usual style, as he always goes into wrestling exchanges with guns blazing. Here it was clear that Greco is so dangerous even countering his moves leads to getting caught again. The difference between Greco and Ishikawa is Greco always tries to sink into a finish. Ishikawa will use an Achilles hold to set up a heel hook, Greco doesn't do that, he can finish with the Achilles Hold. The match was pretty much the 3 maestros hitting the mat and just doing bits of neat wrestling, while Yone was hidden away safely throughout the body of the match. Then they move into a finishing stretch that was way too grand for a dingy little hall like this with lots of dramatic submission teases and counters, safes, double team moves and Ishikawa getting kicked in the face while Yone gets his lip bloodied from a Greco crossface. Not something that will top a lot of MOTY lists, but you have to wonder what the fuck was going on in the heads of these indy schmucks to work their butts off like this in front of an audience of crickets.

I've threatened to do this before, so here it is. A thread dedicated to the stepbrother of Joe and Dean Malenko, the man who came from the street and became someone who made his living hitting the mat hard and tossing the fuck out of japanese guys. I like any guy who wrestles like that and Greco is such a fascinating worker by being both extremely polished and some kind of measuring stick for his opponents too. He has thrived in obscurity, so his career merits studying. Note: this thread will not be about discovering 5* classics or psychological masterpieces. That is for other, lesser wrestlers. Carl Greco vs. Super Rider (BattlARTS 4/17/2001) This is a B-Rules match, which means a max of 5 rope breaks allowed and no strikes. Tailor made match for Greco, and this is a really good showcase for what he was doing around this time period: essentially being a terrifying opponent for the hopeless undercarders BattlARTS was using then. Rider (a Sayama trained indy guy) is a good opponent for Greco: he is competent, agile and not afraid, thus this is loaded with the kind of fast, tight, twist-you-to-a-pretzel-style shootstyle matwork I've come to enjoy so much. Very brief match, but they get in and out of some positions and holds I've never seen in any other match. The result is never in doubt, but Super Rider manages to improve himself here as he graduates from Opening Match Guy to Guy who passed the Greco Test. Smokes a lot of 20 minute epics for me. Carl Greco & Katsumi Usuda vs. Yuki Ishikawa & Masaaki Mochizuki (BattlARTS 12/5/1999) This is a finale of some tag tournament. This had the typical BattlARTS tag formula, meaning a messy mix of matwork, suplexes and face-shattering stiff blows building to an increasingly dramatic finish. Of all 4 guys, it is Greco who adds a bit of more typical tag psychology to the bout: coming with a bandaged leg, being the weak link in his team. This isn't melodramatic like that 1993 tag, but his performance was a nice blend of being both weakened and very dangerous. It was different from his usual straight-up wrestling approach and produced some excellent exchanges with Ishikawa. At one point, Greco even did a rolling tag after a miscommunication between Ishikawa and Mochi. Another moment was Carl flying into the scene with a reckless Kung Fu-esque kick to save his partner. Greco was not the star of the match, as they cleared the stage for Usuda and Mochizuki to run through a series of spectacular (and sometimes contrived) shootstyle/lucharesu counters. I didn't care much for Mochizuki and his get-this-shit-in approach, but I felt Usuda carried him nicely enough to make this another addition to the cannon of great BattlARTS tags. Call me anti-workrate or whatever, but I preferred the tight and hard fought nature of what Ishikawa and Greco were doing to Mochizuki's spottiness.

This is for the European Middleweight title and something I've had for years, but never actually watched. Foolish me, because this is an utterly fantastic match, maybe the best match I've seen for either guy. Mile did some brilliant stuff here, some of which I haven't seen in any other match. Which is crazy considering he would hang up his boots soon after this - I guess all these maestro type guys all get better with age. He may be one of the most underrated bridge users. Seriously his neck bridges and maneuvering around on the mat in and out of pin positions were amazing. If you like awesome wrist lock and neck chancery work, painful leg snapping techniques aswell as a variety of bridge spots this is your match. Collins at this point was an experienced pro and game for this kind of contest. He did some good stuff, unique stuff (dug his falling headbutt) but Mile was the king of the mat here. Of course both guys like to get aggressive too and weren't afraid to lay in the european uppercuts, and they moved back and forth from holds and matwork to beating the piss out of eachother nicely. The weak point of the match is the finish, as Collins blew a couple rope running sequences and they just ended the match. Still, totally kickass bout, the best from these VDB discs and a hidden gem.

Nominate: Terry Rudge vs. Franz van Buyten, Hamburg 10/1/1987 I re-watched this classic. Still a kickass match. These Hamburg shows were much more rowdier than the tame british TV wrestling, so Rudge was allowed to go all out. Of course the main selling point is that this is a match to see Rudge at his most aggressive and violent in an important match against the top babyface. But this match also has a simple, effective structure going for it, where they make the most out of using the round system. The first round is the feeling out and establishing of the characters. In the second round, they do some really slick wrestling about arm whips and a headscissor. Simple stuff executed great and done neatly. The third round Rudge is finally fed up with Van Buyten and so begins one of the baddest ass stompings I've ever seen in a wrestling ring. The following rounds eventually have the big, slowly built up Van Buyten come back and several nearfall attempts and back and forth in the last round. After the last round, they do an extra, 10-minute tie breaker section (because this is some kind of decision match) which is a fractal of the whole match. Like I said, the aggression and sheer fury Rudge shows here is off the charts. He looked like the single baddest dude on the planet and was attacking Franz like a machine. Even during the early feeling out and wrestling sections, he is constantly aggressivly shoving his opponent in the face, manipulating the fingers or bending the wrist in really painful ways like he was Gene Lebell. The heat section is off course utter pain, with the highlight being the hammerlock/head shove to face combo. You can totally see Fit Finlay being inspired by Rudge. Franz, on the other hand, is a guy with really great selling (especially love his shoulder bumps which make it look like he was being launched back with a ton of force), takes a reckless bump at one point and gives Rudge back as good as he can. That rope tie up/crossbody spot is something a lot of babyfaces in germany and austria did, but nobody made it look as good as Franz as he just rams into his opponent with his entire weight. So there you have it, a simple match built around a great face vs. a great heel to give the 2000 folks at the Heiliggeistfeld a good night.

i was actually going to ask about this on another board And yes, these 3 matches from 1998 I upped above were from the VDB shows. I think Peter William was the announcer and maybe promoter too. They were released on VHS (thus the clipping) and I bought them yeeeears ago as DVDs from a tape trader. I could only find Vol. 3, 4, 5 and 8, so there are atleast 4 missing. Would be worth seeking out, as these shows had some interesting guys, like late Marty Jones, Pat Roach, Cannonball Grizzly working hold for hold matches etc.

I haven't watched this one in years, and since OJ relieved my nostalgia for middle european pro wrestling, I gave it another spin. The first trivial observation is how much more play matches like this would get had they been filmed professionally. After watching so much different wrestling over the years I can say that the quality of these vienna handhelds is the dirt worst. Bad camera angle, unnatural colors, clips, crowd noise eating up most of the sound, you may see footage like this as an experimental foreign arthouse film. That aside, this being a rare 30 minute middleweight title match from austria with absolutely no shenanigans is worth powering through the video quality. And let me tell you, there is some quite fantastic stuff here. You didn't see these kind of faster paced lightweight matches much in germany/austria, and clearly they were going out of their way to make this special. People have their issues with Steve Wright, but I felt his flashiness was well integrated here as the much more down to earth Zrno is a great counterpart to him. These matches were worked much rougher in germany than in the UK. No cute stuff, just fierce takedowns, twisting on the mat and constant trading of stiff as hell european uppercuts and headbutts. They really go hard at it and just back and forth with mat stuff, rope running and laying into eachother with shots. It almost feels like a workrate match at times, but the constant stiff shots and battling over basic throws make it quite the engrossing, gruelling battle. Highlights include Steve countering a takedown attempt by turning Mile inside out, aswell as both of them turning seemlessly into an amateur sequence after a missed pin attempt. Steve really shows his wares in this match and seems to be constantly advancing. You won't be blown away by this if you've watched a ton of euro stuff, but for the time (late 80s when brit wrestling was winding down) this is really good stuff that exudes charm especially with the fans being behind their respective favourite all the way and yelling Bravo! in genuine amazement at every throw. The finish feels like a triumphant victory appropriate for a classic wrestling bout, along with the tremendous endurance displayed by both contenders adding greatly to the match.

OJ, you always do the best projects. Some facts (maybe myths) about Zrno: - he was a former Yugoslavian amateur wrestling champion - he made his debut in 1973 - he was trained by Rene Lasartesse, Charly Verhulst (Johnny Londos) and Michael Ujevic - he was a rival of Ashura Hara when Hara was the junior ace of IWE in 1979, he also fought in the NJPW junior scene - he was said to be the last classical middle european pro wrestler - he is still fit, not drinking or smoking, and operating a metal company together with his brother in germany EDIT: I just did a search and apparently, there is footage of Mile Zrno vs. Ashura Hara on IWE 1974 - 1981 Vol. 4 Never noticed that. Should be worth getting, even if it's only a 2 minute clip. Some more matches from Berlin - these are from the very end of his career, and also the very end of traditional german wrestling: https://youtu.be/Iwe_nzUT2HU https://youtu.be/bklgH_viDVM https://youtu.be/5_ybaRLrodk

Bock is such a fascinating character. He was an olympic level wrestler who lost his spot on the olympic team (to none other than Wilfried Dietrich) and turned pro. He promoted his own events where the main event was him vs. an actual bear. He didn't care much for pro wrestling and it showed. I appreciated the match. I watched it years ago and was puzzled, but knowing what I was getting into, I could enjoy it for what it was. Funny how Bock became a legend to the japanese due to his lethargic behaviour and uncaring attitude. You can tell he influenced guys like Takayama, Suzuki etc. I think I remember reading Yuki Ishikawa was a fan of his too. From the looks of it wrestling him must have absolutely sucked as he was fucking up Inoki like you expect an olympic level amateur to fuck somebody up. God can you imagine being Inoki and wrestling Bock for several times on this tour? By the end he looked like some kind of satanic undead with the blood mark on his forehead and utter disregard for everything Inoki did. My favourite moment was Inoki doing the Robinson belly to belly suplex to the ring apron, where Bock just lands on his feet, goes straight back into the ring and dumps Inoki on his head with the scariest belly to belly suplex I've ever seen. And yeah, even with all the no selling, things get really intense towards the end here. When Bock started busting out the headbutts I was feeling like I was watching a real sport. I wish the japanese crew had filmed the whole tour so we could know wether all 70s german wrestling was this intense. I imagine Bock vs. Andre or Pete Roberts being spectacular.

I'd watch stuff that wasn't taped, I guess. Pre-2010 Futen, old european tournaments, untaped/clippeded BattlARTS, 70s joshi, UWA and indy lucha. Territory-wise basically anything that was hyped with a picture of a bloodbath in the mags.

Interesting subject. Sergje1 has uploaded a Battle Royal from hungary from the late 70s or early 80s to YouTube. Thats about the only wrestling footage from that region that I know of. As you may know, Mile Zrno is a well known croatian wrestler who worked in germany and austria a lot and has a reputation. Maybe you can contact him through facebook or something, I don't think he's ever been interviewed by an internet fan. There are also some videos of greek pro wrestling in creepy looking locations. It seems a little weird pro wrestling seemingly never boomed in south eastern europe and eastern europe. Given that these countries have a great wrestling tradition, and all things fighting, grappling and wrestling related are popular there, I'd say there's untapped potential. I know there is a ZERO1-offshoot promotion in Belarus or somewhere which is just bizarre.

My top four: 1-Sano 2-Vader 3-Finlay 4-Fujiwara Honorable mention: Tajiri For those interested, Alexander Otsuka has a match in Puerto Rico where he plays a somewhat chicken heel with Otani-ish facial expressions.