Jetlag

There is absolutely nothing wrong with these things. I was just pointing out those are the ingredients that the touted puroresu classics have. Almost all wrestling has nearfalls. It is true that japanese wrestling is very varied, but it's also true that the further they stray from the formula, the more niche they become. 90s AJPW and NJPW and to a lesser degree joshi (mosty AJW) are still the most widely known and pimped forms of older japanese wrestling, and they have all that. For the other feds you have to go to a place like this to get in-depth discussion (hell, and even here folks haven't exactly analyzed it to death like AJPW).

Are you serious ? People were criticizing headdropping *as it was happening*. It sure didn't stop them from watching japanese wrestling I wasn't around then, but it's clear as a day that a ton of japanese matches in the style I described get praised (maybe not on this board, but in general). People watched japanese wrestling because it gave them something they wanted. Headdrops may have been only small part of that, but I've noticed that nearly all praised/"legendary" japan matches of the 90s have nearfalls, brutality and clean endings I think this may be my favourite post in this thread because it just blatantly insinuates people watch japanese wrestling because they are insecure. And then namedrops Tanahashi, the most hypermasculine of japanese wrestlers!!! I'm starting to think this idea that people like certain wrestling because of some underlying neurosis or insecurity is fast bordering on Wild Pegasus levels of insanity. I thought Trauma/Canis Lupus was a pretty mediocre match and this insistence that it be Lucha MOTY is annoying me.

What I wrote a few weeks ago in OJ's thread on Zrno: Well, I was wrong. This was not a 2 minute clip. It was 22 minutes, unedited, pro-shot, 2/3 falls clean title match with 3 clean finishes. What a time to be alive and get to see wrestling matches like this. The first amazing thing is getting to see Mile in 1979. God damn what a talent, and in what shape he was. I can't think of 5 guys from british TVs in top form like him. The yugoslavic flag with the big red star is hanging over the ring next to the japanese one, making this feel like the most surreal prelude to the russians in RINGS a decade later. Sure, Zrno is western european trained and Charley Verhulst is his second, but this feels like the home talent taking on a yugoslavian champion and not just any european technician. The wrestling here feels closer to amateur style (albeit very fast paced) than the stuff you'd see in britain, france or german. Maybe all 70s middle european wrestling was like this, but we'll never find out. Needless to say I loved the bridging work, rolling around and resistance to basic holds here. It wasn't the long brainy headlocks of 70s japanese wrestling or the fancy escapes that the brits did, but I loved it. Then you also get to see Ashura Hara, a guy I loved for being a rugged tough dude in WAR slugfests, as junior ace. He wore this absurd silver sparkling jacket and headband, and he was beloved by the crowdn a way I can't recall seeing with many other japanese wrestlers from the 70s. I have never seen anyone talk about his junior work, but this Ashura Hara feels worth discovering. His technique and form wasn't on the level of Zrno, but he was game to have a contest and totally held up his end. The air was bristling with excitement for this match and Zrno was selling this match like it was a sports contest the whole world was looking at. The crowd was willing Ashura forward to take the title off of Zrno no matter what and both athletes succeeded in giving them their moneys worth. The finish feels like a gigantic moment and the fans react accordingly My only complaint with the match is that it's too short. If there's ever a match that should've gone 60 it's this one. Just so many fascinating aspects to it. It's just the combination of having a Mile Zrno match (rare), a junior Ashura Hara match (rare), an IWE junior's match (bloody rare), an IWE match that is all clean with no bullshit (rare), and then it's something that was buried in complete obscurity for so long. Regardless of whether you care about Mile, Hara or IWE, this a nice fast paced 70s junior match worked in a way that nobody really does anymore in front of a hot crowd that feels fresh and interesting all the way to the end.

I just checked and that Casas/Fiera match that was sort of "rediscovered" last year got a **** 1/4 from the WON. Dandy/Casas also got a +**** rating from someone important. That's hardly a burial. If anything "the damage" (what?) was also done by the hardcore fans of the time not just Dave. People just weren't into mexican wrestling (or CMLL specifically) enough at the time. Hardcore fans like the DVDVR guys that watched all kinds of random tapes not knowing what they would get were the minority (still are). People got japanese wrestling tapes because it was what they wanted to see. I want to mention that death/black metal music from Mexico and south america was traded around the world in the 80s and 90s. Look at a band like Sepultura that got world famous with a demo tape that had terrible production. Simply because people wanted dark, fast and heavy stuff, and if it sounded rough and the lyrics were demented as if written by a teenager with a poor grasp of english, then even better. Wrestling fans in the 90s didn't want matwork or bloody brawls or trios built around graceful wrestling exchanges that lead to a DQ finish. They wanted headdrops and 2.9999999999 finishing runs and clean endings and production where they could hear the impact of all the strikes. And it makes sense when you look at the product of WWF and WCW at the time.

Let's look at it this way: - show in Belgium main evented by Hijo del Santo -> draws ~1000 fans - show in Germany main evented by Kenta Kobashi/Mitsuharu Misawa -> draws ~500 fans - show main event by Otto Wanz in austria -> draws ~6500 fans Now which of those three gets the least coverage on the internet & how unfair is that? (I have no records of how many white guys or non-white guys were at any of these shows) I think somebody is getting way too riled up by internet fans here, thinking lucha gets held down when lucha easily outdraws all other types of wrestling. Maybe you are the one who is giving the WON awards etc. too much weight.

Whole show is here -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaGAfKPerZQ (I think this is filmed a little differently than the version that is on the Best Of set) This was some truely high end BattlARTS tag team action. The first thing you notice is how on point all 4 guys on the mat were. The opening exchanges felt slick like U-Style matwork and always highly competitive, with the violence upgraded to BattlARTS standards. The brutality was of the charts here. The "tag team partners running in to make the save from a submission" where some of the must vicious I've seen and felt like PRIDE ground stomping, Ikeda at one point started throwing mule kicks on the ground, and Usuda and Ono threw some kicks that looked like nobody would get up from them. Man I don't even care whether there was a story or anything this match because the work was so frantic, hard fought and believable and sold so, so well I was 100% engrossed the entire time. The match also felt like it could end at anytime: at one point, Ikeda got his leg worked over with a few kicks from Ono and nice holds by Ishikawa (note the teamwork there), then Ono landed a series of skull crushing kicks on him. Ikeda believably beat the count, but his entire body language was such that you could see he was moments away from being finished, so he did the only reasonable thing and quietly slipped to his corner to tag out before collapsing like a broken man. That may have been my favourite moment of the match and it made the finish feel even sweeter where it feels like Ishikawa and Ono have the match in the bag and Ikeda just comes in and turns Ono's lights out to set up the finish. All 4 guys had career highlight performances, Ono did some stuff on the mat only he could do, Usuda stepped up big time and Ishikawa and Ikeda had some incredible exchanges together. Great, great match and a really compelling fusion of top notch shootstyle matwork, brawling and top level stiffness.

This was a deecent match. The opening matwork didn't blow me away, but it was nice and tight enough and it was cool to see two workers with a "technician" reputation actually hitting the mat. I felt the chinlock work was kind of poor. They made clever use of it and Tiger did a nice job selling the dizziness later on, but ultimately it felt like a clever way to kill time to me. Tiger would get out of it and hit his explosive moves and then just get caught again. So, Tiger was explosive, but not explosive enough to evade Benoit's dreaded chinlock, and Benoit's chinlock didn't slow down the Tiger enough to stop him from hitting his explosive moves. The best spot of the match was the guardrail toss to set up Benoit's dive. That whole segment had "clever" written all over it, almost to the point where my old "wrestling match written by a computer" criticism of 90s Benoit came to my mind again, but that would be unfair. Then they move into the part where they hit all their big spots. It was all done in such a way that I felt the match deserved it's status as a classic, but I couldn't help but feel that modern workers would get grilled over some of the transitions here. The finish could have used a dramatic turn or something a little more grand but atleast they were wise enough to end it believably, with the biggest spot.

Show 3 - BML "Reallusion" 3/4/2006 The guy who is uploading all the BML stuff hasn't uploaded this show in full, but claims that he will put up the rest of it in 2017 (talk about someone who knows how to get people invested in his channel). To avoid delays and to follow the stories of Shibata/Murakami/Usuda, I will simply add the random thrown together undercards later and continue watching what is uploaded so far. Katsumi Usuda vs. Hiroyuki Ito The first thing that stands out is that this show took place in a big building and they had a gigantic banner with the BML logo on it hanging out, with the two wrestlers being eyed by that wrathful wolf. How cool is that? I assume buying such a large banner is kind of pointless because you can almost never use it, but whatever. It looked badass. And this match was fine. It was pretty much shootstyle with Usuda doing some Fujiwara headbutts and counters. Ito seemed better on the mat and on standup, so those counters were pretty much Usuda's only chance to get by in this match. Ito continues to look really good as he understands the balance between aggression and selling perfectly, but he kind of ate Usuda up. I am really starting to wonder what Usuda's story in this company is supposed to be as he just constantly gets the worst end. I guess he is just the jobber of the BML trio. Kazunari Murakami & Egan Inoue vs. Yuji Nagata & Takashi Iizuka This one of those matchups you just can't wrap your brain around. Nagata and Murakami had a really good singles match together at some point. Iizuka hasn't turned into Tiger Jeet Singh at this point. Inoue is just reckless. This match was a trainwreck and an enjoyable one at that. Murakami was at his best here punching dudes in the face and in the balls. His exchanges with Nagata were the highlight of the match and came across as second rate Ishikawa/Ikeda, which I mean as a positive. They did this exhausted Lawler/Mantell exchange on their knees that was so good. And the rest of the match had some nice moments with nifty counters and Murakami getting dumped on his head at one point. I'm not going to pretend Inoue's sections were good but they weren't dull either. Match devolves into chaos and that seemed like the logical conclusion, even if things were bordering on silly as you had two clownfaces in Murakami and Nagata in there. Katsuyori Shibata vs. Alan Karaev Karaev is this giant russian blob-like dude who uses an iron claw for a finisher. No idea where they found this guy, but he feels like he should be in a different dimension. Fighting Big Show or Otto Wanz or Tenryu in WAR or something. This was mostly Karaev manhandling tiny Shibata around which was amusing enough, but I felt he looked like a giant baby with his "swatting at flies" style palm strikes. The crowd were postively into this and Shibata however, who had no chance but to go for a flash submission against the giant. And he succeeded in that in less than 4 minutes. I'd say this match achieved what they were going for, but can't help but feel feel that the full potential of Alan Karaev was squandered.

Kind of a formative match for these two. The story is that Bull shocked the world and took the title off of Wanz, now the question is can the old champ withstand the beast and take his title back? Wanz was already pretty slow and couldn't do much anymore, and this wasn't as violent as some of their matches, but it was a fight like all their matches are. You could argue that there were a lot of restholds, but they always moved right back to beating the snot out of eachother. Vader was mostly interested in bashing Wanz's skull in, while Wanz for some reason did a lot of knee strikes and european uppercuts. These super minimalist, long Wanz matches really make you appreciate the most basic spots, such as getting the boots up in the corner or catching a charging opponent with a clothesline. And the crowd really loved every single thing Wanz did. I can't think of 5 more beloved babyfaces of the top of my head. Folks were jumping up and down and waving the austrian flag at the most simple things. The recurring theme of the match was a) things kept spilling to the outside (something that seemed to happen a lot more often in the brightly lit Graz Ice Skating Hall) and guys kept getting safed by the bell. I think both themes were solved nicely in the finish, altough it would have looked dated even in the 70s. Still, Otto Wanz vs. Bull Power is always a special match.

Carl Greco vs. Takeshi Ono (7/29/1999) Carl Greco vs. Mohammed Yone (8/29/1999) Another two JIP undercard matches maxing out at about 5 minutes each. These really weren't shootstyle at all. Yone is a guy who liked to play powerhouse and had a few silly signature moves, and Ono at this point was less interested in punching his opponent in the face and more into flying around and the occasional kick to the balls. I am actually wondering whether the BattlARTs guys changed their style at this time to appeal to the more casual Samurai TV audience, creating the infamous BattlARTS "post modernist" style, or if they were just getting lazy. Everyone had their signature moves and guys did rope running and dives. Greco even flew off the 2nd rope at one point. Anyways these two contests were solid. Yone was kind of shitty, on the other hand I know the guy would really look good in some matches, so I will say that Mohammed Yone was always simply a lazy bastard. Other than Yone being an embarassment and Ono playing indy sleaze superstar, these matches were worked tight enough and had enough unique counters/transitions to stay interesting for the duration. Carl Greco vs. Katsumi Usuda (7/20/1999) Carl Greco vs. Katsumi Usuda (8/5/1996) Let's do another time comparison for the fun of it. Comparing these two really illustrates the change in BattlARTS over the 3 years. The 1999 bout was worked closer to the previously discussed matches. It was a lot better though. Usuda was aggressive and clearly on another level, and the match had the stiff blows and cool submission work and counters you want from an 8 minute undercard match. The 1996 match was pure shootstyle. It was starkly minimalist compared to the showy-ness of these TV matches above. Usuda was booked pretty strong in 1996 - maybe stronger than Ishikawa - and he gave Greco a heck of a fight. He was less flashy but could smother an opponent on the mat. I guess some might call Usuda dull, but I thought he was effective enough and he did give Greco - who was decked out in wrestling shoes and ready to hit the mat - the opportunity to have a hard fought match. The bout had a nice arc to it with Greco really getting into it and finding different ways to crack Usuda. It wasn't flashy like a RINGS or UWFi match, but the resistance to basic holds and transitions made it quite the engrossing contest and Carl's technique was high end.

I think with Black Terry you kind of had to have been there to understand what makes him special. It was that period in 2010-2011 when Black Terry Jr. was uploading awesome fancam matches every week. It really cemented Terry and Navarro (and a few other guys) into my mind as all time greats. Of course, you can still watch all that if you contact BT Jr., but it'll cost you. Maybe that ominous powerbomb.tv service will make the entire library available sometime and we can all rewatch that stuff then. But really, Terry Jr. deserves some kind of wrestling journalism award for giving a glance at the mexican indy scene that was so different from the shitty lucha TV shows. Those matches you posted there are solid, but don't touch Terry's better stuff. Admittedly Terry didn't strike me as a superworker either on first glance but following BTJr's channel for a while made me get it. Terry and Navarro are kind of complementary, as Terry is the great brawler, and Navarro is the great matworker. They will sometimes take a backseat to eachother and they are two workers where you have to see their "small" performances too. They are mostly awesome characters and I got a lot of enjoyment from seeing them turn up in different situations. I've noticed before that some people really can't get into Black Terry/Negro Navarro matches. And mostly they just stay quiet, which makes me think they are trying to be polite and not shit on other people's fun. I remember one guy on another message board seemed to get genuinely angry at me for "liking those 60 year old lucha wet tissues so much" (I was pimping Charles Lucero at the time while making disparaging comments about Hiroshi Tanahashi). I also recall Daniel (kanji) causing a stir on DVDVR when he dismissed that Navarro/Solar match from that Ultimo Dragon show. If that is the case for you I want to ask if you can point to matches that do what these old man luchagrapplers are going for better. Because I'm wondering if people are having problems with matwork and lack of high impact moves in general.

Ah, that old 60s/70s style of matwork. I remember years ago when I was obsessed with this stuff and downloading everything from Ditch I could find. If you've seen lucha title matches, british matwork or really anything modern this stuff will seem rather prehistoric to you, but there's lots of good stuff here. The star of the bout was Gene Kiniski as he has such a simple, yet cool style. He did a number of nifty holds and all of his offense was extremely painful looking. It was almost like incubatory ground and pound, as he would get Baba on the mat and then just stomp and knee drop him into oblivion. He does have really great stomps and knee drops and he was constantly attacking Baba's throat. His selling for Baba was also off the charts. Baba - well, I am not the biggest fan of this guy. He is a good wrestler - much better than you expect a weird giant with matchsticks arms to be, but watching him against these legendary guys I always wonder what they could do against someone a little more gifted. Also, no matter what they do on the mat, his matches always turn into Baba throwing a guy around with his signature offense and chops. To his credit, I liked his use of his freaky long legs to reverse Kiniski's holds, busting out the flying headscissor which is a pretty crazy spot for him. The famous "Smart Baba" was also present as this 2/3 falls match had 3 very good, genuinely surprising finishes and some dramatic selling in the last 3rd. Very fun contest if you can stomach watching something slow.

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.