Jetlag

He reminds me a bit of the BattlARTS guys. Mostly indy career with not a lot footage available, cool innovative-uncooperative hybrid style mixing lucha and shootstyle matwork with stiffer than hell brawling. Doesn't show up on a regular basis anywhere, aside from the golden BTJr handheld run in 2010, but always pops up and wows you by turning someone's ankles inside out. Got insanely good in 2009, having one of the best IWRG singles matches ever against Zatura. His 2010 interactions with Black Terry may be among my favourite things Terry has done that definitely wasn't all Terry. That he is able to be among the best workers in the world in years where only a handful of handhelds are availalbe speaks volumes. I imagine if he joined CMLL his stock would skyrocket much like Hechicero's did.

This deserves some comments. These two had a studio TV match the year before that was really solid. But this is a different story. Bolshoi has evolved from Kid into Commando and added a bunch of flash submissions to her arsenal. The last match saw Plum putting Bolshoi away with a bunch of flash suplex moves, Plum deserves a ton of credit here for making Bolshoi look like the real deal. She ties her leg up in a nasty fashion on the buckle and can't do much in the match after that but is able to reverse some of Bolshoi's submission attempts. Most of the match is about tight submissions, knees and stomps. Really good finish in this match, both girls seem really underrated.

This was a hell of a little match. Duane is a beast and the story of the match is Ishikawa coming into his own and really stepping up the fight. Big crowd reactions to basic spots and they really emphasize the struggling over the basic holds and throws. Ishikawa really wants the win here. Killer finish.

He always had a great punch, great matwork and a brutal tope, so I'd say he was very good before peak IWRG. There's his stuff with Hijo del Santo and he consistently looks good to very good in the limited pre-2009 IWRG that I've seen, getting the most out of guys like Gigolo Americano, so he is more consistent than Freelance (disappointing matches) and has more stuff and more variety than Chico Che. There's a tag with Cerebro Negro against Virus and Suicida I've uploaded that is very much worth a look if you want to see what he could do. 2009-2011 he's off the charts for sure, benefitting from being around talented dudes but also carrying scrubs into high end matches.. Also, he is talked about in old DVDVRs as the craziest matworker around.

Him vs. Honda, Kobashi and Marufuji are among my favourite NOAH singles matches. Great tag worker with a nice unique dynamic to Akiyama and Inoue. I'd actually be interested in going back and checking out his 90s work. There's a super intense rookie match vs. Orihara somewhere, and I also remember a good outting from him against Koichiro Kimura in W*ING of all feds during his rookie year.

Nominating Otto Wanz via OJ's european wrestling list Takashi Ishikawa via 90s forum and SC WAR reviews http://segundacaida.blogspot.de/2010/08/segunda-caida-declares-war.html Ashura Hara via AJPW 80s and the above SC Dr Cerebro and Trauma II http://segundacaida.blogspot.de/2010/06/complete-and-accurate-black-terry.html

Underrated dude. His Terry Funk tribute is spot on and his technical stuff he can do very well. If you look at him vs. Shinzaki you'll notice he was really good in his second year of wrestling already. Problem is he was lost in the shuffle in the 2000s due to being forever undercard in lousy Big Japan. I remember him trying his damndest to get a good match out of Sekimoto in front of a dead crowd, also had a few fun lucharesu outtings with his stable of spotty service boys and arguably the best BJW tag with Mashimo et al. What he needs is a Togo-like run of indy veteran goodness and it just didn't happen in that volume. A shame because he's a secret fave of mine.

Great thread. Guaranteed to make my top 100: 1. Terry Funk 2. Stan Hansen 3. Dick Murdoch 4. Barry Windham 5. Tully Blanchard On the edge 6. Steve Austin 7. Kerry von Erich 8. Dusty Rhodes Probably won't/need to rewatch 9. Mark Henry 10. Dory Funk Jr. 11. Dusty Rhodes 12. Cowboy Bob Orton 13. Bruiser Brody Guys I need to see more of before I can rank them - Dutch Mantell - James Storm - Ted DiBiase - Tito Santana - Kevin von Erich

Fujiwara it is

Damn this was good. Hansen firing up and slapping the fuck out of people and forcing everyone around him to match his rage is a well beloved formula and Hansen as an old guy adds a nice different angle to it. Parts of this felt like the Baba/Rusher tag from 10 years earlier. It's trite to talk about Hansens selling and charisma but him putting over his opponent's strikes (to the point where he had people believe he was knocked out by a random Kobashi chop) and gathering considerable response for basic moves was a thing of beauty. By the end the whole crowd was dying to see the lariat and the eventual payoff gets a crazy response. Also I've never ever heard Kobashi getting heel responses like he did here. THAT is how good Hansen was. I also dug Taue as an understated second man on the Hansen team working deliberately heelish. Insane last minute with Akiyama once again bringing it all out for a lightning fast victory.

I really dig Meiko and I thought she had been nominated before. She's not flawless but for me is kind of like Ikeda as someone working mostly in their own niche, having a great series of matches with a specific dance partner (Kong in this case) under her belt and plucking away throughout various time periods and promotions, except she's still going really strong. Great moveset and she has that rare intensity that makes you buy her character and what she does. At her best she's about on the same level as Hokuto and Kong.

Fiera vs. Negro Casas Lucha meets WAR. This was about as stiff as any mexican match I can remember. Both guys were trading kicks square in the face and it was great. Casas' selling was pretty spectacular but I especially loved Fiera finding different ways to crack Casas' skull with nasty spin kicks. Watching his performance here reminded me a lot of an elbow-less Misawa. Both guys faceplant horrifically on missed dives. Nothing like a super simple, gritty lucha brawl.

Apparently two other workers on the show were injured before and it took the doctors a while to get to Perro because they were still busy with these. This is also the reason they had to improvise a table as stretcher to carry him away. The box/lucha comission is usually extra strict about lucha shows in Tijuana, so normally they would've been able to handle this. Terrible series of coincidences.

One of the best 70s workers, really fun as a proto-high flyer who can throw a punch, and criminally underrated as old guy in AJPW tags who gets the shit kicked out of him and wins by a flash roll up. Right now I can't come up with 100 workers I like more than him.

Seems like a really underrated worker to me. You could argue Tenryu took his trademark style from Kabuki - as you can find the nasty kicks to the face, stiff punches and general recklessness in his matches before. Looked great in a 70s style tag in IWE and is really good as tough old tank in AJPW and WAR tag up until 1993, so ideally he has about 15 years of being really good. I need to take a closer look at his career but right now he's already above Mutoh for me.

I'd like to nominate Mighty Inoue and Great Kabuki via 80s set

If you haven't seen any Breaks, go and use OJ's list as a starting point, eg: Jim Breaks vs. Adrian Street Jim Breaks vs. Johnny Saint Jim Breaks vs. Vic Faulkner Jim Breaks vs. Young David (Davey Boy Smith) Are all online. If you have seen everything OJ listed, go and watch everything else you can find (like with any other worker, really).

El Dandy vs. Pirata Morgan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WIc62hVvGw vs Angel Azteca https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0fLKAa3QFU vs Satanico https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMpe0N7GRvg vs Negro Casas https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2HM7e2I-hs vs Negro Casas vs El Hijo del Santo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ga7GQP0R8U0 Yoji Anjo vs Norman Smiley https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YZ_ZvmEt5s vs Masakatsu Funaki https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZSABUJNAjA vs Tamura https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkMf0YTDowY vs Sano http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?9tlioo64yhjd511 (thanks Ditch) vs Tenryu (thanks Ditch) http://theditch.us/TenryuVsAnjoh7-21-96.avi Alexander Otsuka vs. Daisuke Ikeda (thanks Ditch) http://theditch.us/OtsukavsIkeda11-5-97.avi vs. Sugiura https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Dc6h-zIXmw vs. Yuki Ishikawa (thanks Ditch) http://theditch.us/IshikawaVsOtsuka9-11-05.avi vs. Yujiro Yamamoto http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xa4wjb_alexander-otsuka-vs-yujiro-yamamoto_sport vs. Hikaru Sato http://lenny.theditch.biz/20100318-RJPW_AlexanderOtsuka-vs-HikaruSato.wmv Marty Jones vs. Terry Rudge https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6YW9Xcp07s vs Dynamite Kid https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLyO790es-I vs Mark Rocco https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZbSfSe5NUw vs Finlay http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x9bzuq_fit-finlay-vs-marty-jones-england-4_sport vs Johnny South https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tj72Fh0zSVE La Fiera vs. Babe Face https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXH2Dt0bj30 vs. Tiger Mask II https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMLArroZpxU vs. Jerry Estrada https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVvPiNvOEyM vs Atlantis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxSfUcExs0E vs. El Dandy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91lNwe06y8I

This definitely exceeded expectations. Joshi is this weird style where two no-name workers can have a kickass match out of nowhere and rookie/vet matches tend to be better because of the difference in ranking, and that was the case here. Kagetsu is a butch looking rookie* in the vein of Toshiyo Yamada while Kuragaki is a powerhouse, with a cool moveset who throws these nasty Tenryu-ish "Fuck you, punk" lariats. This does a tremendous job avoiding all the usual pitfalls of joshi while building a match that gets better and better and leads to some real dramatic selling. Even the usual pesky little brawl on the outside wound up leading to a meaningful transition and set up some great (and neatly sold) armwork. Loved Kagetsu bouncing off the mat after taking the Yokota/Asuka superplex bump off the top, loved the reckless flying over the guardrail armbreaker, loved Kagetsu attempting to murder her opponent by landing repeated BattlARTSian rotten melon kicks to her head. Also worth pointing out that while Kagetsu got in a lot of offense on Kuragaki, it always felt like an uphill battle for her. This on first watch feels like a slam-dunk MOTY for japanese wrestling. *actually, she made her debut in 2008 but is 22.

I watched the full match. Haven't seen the previous match in a while, but while this didn't have the blood it felt shockingly great. Izumida looked great as a tough bruiser cutting off the flying team. Him and Honda trying to crack Shinzaki's skull throughout the first half of the match was great, loved his ultra stiff bicycle kick and diving headbutt. Builds to a really great finishing stretch with some extremely well timed spots and a slightly different structure than tag matches usually have, Honda's selling was just amazing and his suplexes were killer, but that's not news. Hayabusa was a little annoying but mostly relegated to hitting high spots which he does well. That Shinzaki feint leading to Hayabusa hitting a springboard moonsault across the ring was one of the best I've ever seen. Nice symmetry finish to conclude their feud.

Great little 6 man with lots of hatred going on here. Asako and Ogawa had some sort of feud going on and the match begins in a chaotic fashion with Team Misawa even triple teaming their opponents. Kawada ends up getting shafted by Akiyama and eats a super nasty exploder, but Akiyama is quickly isolated and made to pay dearly. Tons of nasty shots in that section, and Kawada does this awesome heel spot where he steps on Akiyama's head as he reenters the ring, such a simple but effective dick move. Ogawa continues to be really aggressive by working over Akiyama's mid section in really violent fashion, then later on turns into Mini-Kabuki and decks Asako with a wad of stiff looking punches to the face. Aggressive bully Ogawa is weird to watch. This was a good way to spend 20 minutes.

This was Kawada as Kyle Reese and Misawa as terminator. Or just their usual beef. Misawa somehow keeping the selling while walking straight back into a match may be the main reason why he looks like the baddest dude on the planet. Pretending to not be hurt while looking like you're not hurt is stupid, Misawa pretending to not be hurt while walking like a beaten dog is an entirely different thing. Anyways, this feels almost one sided with how Kawada seals the deal on this match by taking out the legs. Actually liked the Ganso Bomb thing as it looked like Misawa fucked himself there with no comeback possible after that, and it wasn't one of those stupid deals where they do a shocking kickout of a deadly move and end it immediately after.

I remember Alex Wright mentioning that his dad taught him some catch techniques so he would be able to hold his own in NJPW. I'm still curious about what exactly he did there given that Steve is all about cartwheels and stuff. I like Steve as a worker though. He helps out at Alex's wrestling school these days, wonder if he could do catch wrestling seminars ala Billy Robinson?

I watched a bunch of 70s AJPW years ago and after being done with it I never wanted to see Dory again. I wouldn't say he's awful, at his best he's solid and rarely a detriment to any match as he usually plays the right notes, at his worst he's every bad cliche about "technical wrestlers" in one and grinds a match to a halt. Of course he works well teaming with Terry as the Anti-Terry, but it exposes his lack of selling, emoting and context. Terry will make you give a shit about throwaway opening hold exchanges, makes you believe he is trying to finish the match, basically everything he does establishes an arc to a match. With what Dory is doing, there's no way to tell whether you are 5 minutes or 35 minutes into a match and your only indicator to what is happening is his opponent's ability to tell you that. I also think his technical ability isn't sufficient. He is compared to a chess master, but to me he seems to be solving his own conflicts when in a hold. He will wait in a hold for 20 seconds, then change position, wait another 20 seconds, etc. All that without any selling or emoting that would make you give a shit about the position change. I would say it's more like he was doing a mathematical proof, except without the inventiveness. In the end you are told something you already know, which isn't necessarily a problem as lots of 70s sequences are "basic", but Dory doesn't exhibit any high end technical chops doing so. Something like Destroyer vs. Mascaras or a Jack Briscoe match will give you neat uncooperative amateur stuff you don't see anymore. Dory doesn't really give you anything. Also, I think OJ once commented NWA style title matches were a bunch of filler leverage holds leading nowhere until a flick is switched and they move to the finish, and I think this problem is really evident in Dory matches. Again, I think Dory is solid. Problem is it takes a little more than solid to stand out among all the really talented workers that were around then and I think there's a lot of workers you could've slotted into Dory's place in those Funk tags and they would've done just as good or better. With all the long epics Dory has on tape he has a huge advantage, but even with all that stuff he never once truely stands out the way random british technicians would do in single TV bouts.

Really good match but not as good as the hype promises, I thought. Opening technical work was solid but not really next-level stuff. For example, I thought Chono could've done more to struggle against Mutoh's holds. Mutoh appears to work on the arm a little which makes sense considering it's taped and Chono uses moves like a powerbomb and an STF, but it's not really a factor afterwards. It wasn't blatantly no sold but I thought they could've done more. The finishing stretch was big and well done, Mutoh evading the counter dropkick was really cool, but I think I prefer the more intense, uncooperative NJPW matches, like Liger/Aoyagi. Maybe I'm just jaded and fed up with japanese matches that have a lot of nearfalls. Top 20 match for 1991.