Jetlag

The event was organized by an outlaw group, meaning it's not CWA. Appears to be the finale of some tournament. The date is 1985. That's all I know.

Takayama was mostly jobbing in All Japan early on. There are some goodies though, just not the epics you want. There is a longish match against Misawa from 99 though which is a damn great one and he looks like the Takayama we all know in it.

I consider Yatsu vs. Tenryu in SWS and to a lesser degree the mid 90s Yatsu vs. Fujiwara singles to be very notable singles bouts. I also heard he was good in Choshu's promotion in the early 2000s but there's not footage online. EDIT: I just checked and he also had good singles matches against Choshu and Hara.

I watched this match and I was blown away by how good the psychology in this bout was. It felt like an AJPW heavyweight bout structure in a violent 70s style revenge massacre. That and the fact that they kept this interesting and high in intensity over 25 minutes was damn impressive. The announcer points out Gino gets pins in order to improve his confidence and that is a neat story. Gino looks like he's really losing his cool being locked in a cage and you buy it when he panics and tries escaping the cage after Lothario attempts to rip his guts out. Gino's positioning and tactics were damn great. Lothario is great as a tough bastard with nasty punches and holds that just look excrutiating. Everytime he gets ahold of Gino he looks like he is just going to rip him in half. Selling in between the falls was incredibly well done and kept you buying into the gimmick despite them having 60 seconds of rest before the count. We even get an AJPW style big match finisher to top it all off. Great great match.

Great Sasuke is awesome. And someone whose variety is undersold, I feel. He brings that Sabu-like car crash feel to junior matches that desperately need it. You never know he might crack his own skull or unexpectedly lay in an ultra stiff spin kick. Underrated matworker. Looks good in a number of different roles, working as top face in his own company, as indy sensation going at it with the big stars in the big league, as established star against lesser guys, and as a hardened, possibly insane veteran politician wrestler. One of the few juniors to look really good throughout the 90s and 2000s. Plenty of strong singles bouts under his belt including matches against guys like Magnum Tokyo, Kenou or Samurai, and then a bunch of multiman tags including spotfests, brawls and stiff wars like the Shinzaki tag mentioned above. Are you sure there's 5 japanese juniors clearly better than him?

I don't know how much actual comedy I've seen him do, but his veteran heel shtick (which he seemed to be doing mostly in BattlARTS matches) where he was doing eye gouges and shoving his thumb up his opponents arse etc. was pretty great. Like the world's most violent Masao Inoue.

Gernot Freiberger runs that channel. He is a great historian and has posted lots of great history and anecdotes online. I don't know how much of it is in english though. You may try contacting him on YouTube. Indikator (who posts here or used to, atleast) is also very knowledgable. Axel Dieter recently passed away which is why I guess those matches were posted just today. Maybe Dieter vs. Moose Morowski will be uploaded too. If you ask me, the best matches from germany we have on tape are a couple Wanz/Vader brawls, Dieter vs. Morowski No DQ 1980, Franz van Buyten vs. Dave Taylor in a chain match 1985, and Van Buyten vs. Terry Rudge in a tournament finale 1987. The last two can be found on Youtube aswell as many Wanz/Vader matches. Franz van Buyten was a worker from Belgium but he was the babyface in Hamburg and did great work there. Germany was a weird wrestling marketplace of all sorts where all kinds of workers went there to earn money or gather experience. Workers who spent time in germany include Bret Hart, Atsushi Onita, Chris Benoit, Chris Jericho, Masakatsu Funaki, Shinya Hashimoto, Hector Garza and others. Shows were usually organized as tournaments that ran for weeks at times in the same place. Otto Wanz (an austrian) was the big popular heavyweight face of the territory and also promoter.

Beginning with Ricky Morton as a base is a great start. Rey's fireworks are well-executed, timed on point, make sense and are something he needed to stay over and credible with his size an frame. Don't tell me he would've been better if he used Flair's offense being a 1,60 tall cruiserweight... so I'm not sure what is there to sell. If you hate fireworks in general there is no selling him to you. As for Rey's best, I think the two Eddie matches (1997 and 2005) are up there with Liger's best. I may be a little biased towards the 05 match though because that feud was one of the first things I saw when I started watching wrestling. I'm also a big fan of the entire series with Psicosis, especially their title match in AAA. He doesn't have the hate-filled, intense wars like Liger but that stuff is here and there, like a pretty brutal match against JBL or a smugly worked sprint against Drew Mac And like said earlier he has a number of great performances, like making an Elimination Chamber match watchable by bumping himself to pieces, or having a legit great, elevating series with CM Punk.

Wrong thread, ignoire this post While I'm in this thread, I should mention I got the service and while I only watched 3 matches so far I'm really digging it. Great work.

Voted Rey. I prefer the structure and smarts of his TV bouts over Liger's bomb dropping and repititive matwork. It's close though.Their best matches are close but Liger has more. Rey wins based on "average" matches though as he has ton of great average matches and Liger's best run (probably the NOAH tags) doesn't touch that.

This was really good and a testament to Andre's greatness as he works ~25 minutes, makes his opponent look believable hanging with a 7 ft behemoth without losing his aura. He pretty much dominates the first fall locking in a variety of holds with his gigantic hands. I dug the spot where Harley knocks himself out with a diving headbutt as it further emphasized Andre's invincibleness. Andre is determined to work this like a title match, exemplified by him signaling to Harley that's it not a good idea for him to go "there" when Harley tries grabbing his hair from a bearhug. Harley mostly works this in desperation mode, going for weapons, distractions and attacking on the outside. Andre shows his sensibleness by concluding his series of arm/shoulder holds with a butterfly suplex to set up the finish. Nice symmetry with each fall escalating and finishing with a sequence on the outside. Body slam over the 3rd rope was crazy. 2nd and 3rd falls are really hard fought, showing some great toe to toe fighting and a great Andre comeback.

Kawada also has a shootstyle bout in U-Style, against Illioukhine if I remember correctly. Don't you forget it! Actually I just looked it up and it was only 4 minutes. I remember it being pretty good though.

This is a textbook example of how to create an exciting long match with very basic striking offense. The kind of stuff you'd also see in Kawada or Tenryu matches 15 years later. There is NO striking exchange or combo that you see twice. Wahoo uses a few different chops and lands those on chest, head, nose, shoulder, neck etc. Spoiler has great bionic elbows. The key is the pacing and timing. They are fighting on a very close space, just tearing eachother up with blows, then suddenly there will be a big chop or elbow drop that makes you jump. Just great pacing. The rest of this has been covered thoroughly. Just a great violent battle where the first fall is already battled out intensely.

Another fun match from this tournament. Futagami looks and wrestles exactly a gender swapped Katsumi Usuda plugged into a joshi fed, submissions and everything down to a pat. ARSION is awesome like that. Omukai looks girlier but holds her own with a few submissions and pretty devastating suplex moves. Finish is ungodly as Omukia brings out her inner Daisuke Ikeda and finishes her opponent with a combo of high kicks, solebutt to the face and a straight punch. Not a flawless bout but a fun way to spend 6 minutes.

This was another damn good match. Yoshida comes into this match with damaged arms and Yagi has only one goal. Yoshida does some really great selling and strategic adjustments when she realizes she is too damaged to do her signatures properly, so modifies a few leg submissions so she can do them without using her arms. Pretty great stuff and shows she could do more than just lock in spectacular submissions. Last two holds were really intense.

Damn good finishing run here. So many great spots. Bossman goes at it with Misawa like no other, having no problem going "epic" while in his cartoonish police outfit. Loved him catching a flying Misawa with a punch, getting absolutely nailed by an elbow to the back of the head when Misawa counters the enzuigiri, and that assisted Oklahoma Stampede was one of the cooler double team stops I've seen in a while. Good lord that looked nasty. Williams and Bossman make a great team and Misawa/Bossman is an awesome weird matchup. I also really liked Misawa selling Bossmans punches.

Finlay also has an awesome PPV match against a bigger heel vs. Mark Henry. He also does an excellent job carrying indy big guy Jon Davis through a long mat based contest during his indy tour.

If BattlARTS had gone a little longer and he had a dozen or half more matches there I think he'd be a lock. I don't know when or how he first showed up, he is an eternal favourite for me as ideal heel shooter invader, all time great mugging, blood licking freak and somebody I always want to check out. Unless it's an Inoki-booked empty arena cage match, that is.

This dude is a dumb as fuck worker. I recall a long singles match against KENTA being a total abomination. Don't let the fancy kicks fool you.

I've seen very little of him but when he has his working boots on, I think he's a legit great worker when he's doing those weird BattlARTsian mat brawls. He understands exactly what he's doing and created a style that works perfect for him, that he can slot many different workers into. There's a match vs. Chris Hero where he sells dislocated shoulder (or was it knee, can't remember) and it's seriously some of the best stuff I've seen, including a great post match where they pop it back in. As for his deathmatches again I haven't seen much but from what I can tell he is a smart worker who can tell a story even when he's literally just swinging garbage and get watchable matches out of skinny and morbidly obese near backyarders. There is a match vs a morbidly obese guy called Dixieland Destroyer which is a herculean carryjob from Ian. Watch that and check out how Ian is selling getting choked out and tell me he's not great.

I can say Takada is sleeping because I see it in his matches and I can point to examples. Which I did in my post. If you had an argument to why you think he's a decent matworker and why he ranks above, say, Daisuke Ikeda, with examples to point to, or if there was some Takada stuff to fill out his resume, like something against a lesser opponent or an example of Takada carrying somebody, I might consider ranking him. (i.e. not a "big Match") I don't see how sprawling for takedowns and fighting for escapes from submissions is comparable to avoid getting tossed into explosive garbage in any way. These matches are laid out in completely different ways... the comparison goes way over my head.

They are U-Style guys. Sakata was in RINGS too... I don't see why it's pointless to compare shoot stylists when you are trying to figure out who is the best of them. If you think he has a pro style mind, how does he compare to someone like Alexander Otsuka or other BattlARTS guy? And yes, being good at matwork is important, when you are trying to do matwork. You can't work a 20 minute match that is all dramatic ropebreaks and aggressive striking the entire time. So Takada fills the time in between by lying around. You don't get great matwork from Lawler matches simply because there's no matwork in them... there's a long Lawler/Race title match which has some great matwork, by the way. Takada matches have necessary matwork in them (winning chance being by matwork-related submissions or matwork-related rope breaks) and he's an embarassment at it. Even the Vader matches have their dull bits. About the Onita comparison: is that a reference to him fighting dudes like Albright and Vader? Otherwise I'd like to know a match where Takada's clearly driving things with his Onita-like charisma, preferably a match where's not facing a superworker like Sano or Tamura.

OJ, you should check out: Tenryu vs. Isao Takagi and Tenryu/Kawada vs. Kabuki/Mighty Inoue. He doesn't have the punches and toe kicks at all in AJPW but these are probably his most WAR-like performances in AJ. In fact, I have the theory he took that style from Kabuki.

I was entirely referring to his matwork there. I pay attention whenever I'm watching shootstyle. When you're dull that is not going to last long... the last Takada match I watched was vs. Sano and I remember Takada pretty blatantly being a stiff during the grappling sections and Sano literally dragging him through the match. Heck, the finish to the Fujiwara/Takada match in 1990 is Fujiwara being unconscious, waking up and then submitting Takada because Takada was apparently too dumb to lock in a proper submission on a knocked out veteran... which makes me wonder is Takada a buffoon when it comes to the mat, or is it his gimmick that he's a buffon? Eitherways if you are shootstylist and you want to qualify for a top 100 all time in my eyes you should be good at matwork as it makes up most shootstyle matches. I get what you are saying about his strikes, I like the Vader matches, but if we are going by a) aggressive striking and ability to create drama in a shootstyle match what does Takada have that ranks him above guys like Wataru Sakata, Hiroyuki Ito, Ryuki Ueyama? Speaking about pure ability there.

I'm neutral to the Finlay late WoS and NJPW stuff. I really like his work in germany and austria which sets the tone for the Regal feud. There is a match against Schumann from the EWF french TV show that is really stiff and completely outstanding from anything else on that show. Some of his stuff there is fairly junior-ish, so I guess people here won't like it as much, but I also like him vs. 2 Cold Scorpio, vs. Liger and vs. El Samurai in NJPW.