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So I noticed Ikeda/Kikuchi from the next month's Budokan pop up in my Youtube feed and had to watch it. I'm not gonna start a thread for it as it's just a 3 minute clip but it's a real joy to watch one of the all-time great ass kickers beat up one of the all-time greats at eating a beating. I was pretty sad that the full match didn't seem to air until I noticed this tag did and had to watch it too. There's a sentiment throughout the main yearbook threads that AJPW in 1997 was this stale promotion in a state of rapid decay, but this match paints a very different picture of them from the Misawa main events as one that, at least for this night, wasn't afraid to bring in unconventional workers and give them legroom to experiment with creating totally new styles. Here we have a BattlArts vs. AJPW interpromotional match in front of a hot Korakuen crowd that's presented as a big deal with the AJPW wrestlers watching in the back. The result is neither fully a BattlArts or AJPW match, combining the legendary BattlArts stiffness and uncooperative feel with the AJPW tag structure and fighting spirit. I actually thought Kikuchi put in a really memorable performance and seemed to be dipping his toes in the grumpy persona that he wold more fully explore in NOAH. Ikeda and Ono were basically their BattlArts selfs here and Ogawa was serviceable, though forgettable on his own. Match ends quick enough that you think they might be saving something for a greater interpromotional feud, but sadly this and the Ikeda/Kikuchi clip seem to be as far they went down this route. A sad missed opportunity but a pretty sweet hidden gem that shows this period in a different light. I think bringing in Ikeda as a regular so quickly was a big mistake and probably the main reason his AJPW/NOAH run ended up as one of wrestling's greatest disappointments. They really could have had something special on their hands if they slowly ran a few more interpromotional tags like these with BattlArts guys over the coming months, but instead they destroyed Ikeda's aura by going straight to him jobbing to Kikuchi the next month in a match that barely aired. Baba gonna Baba I guess.

Been wanting to watch this for a while. I'm a sucker for old gunslingers nearing the end of the road trying to dig for one last drop out of the well, and that's exactly the role Maeda played in this match. This was his retirement match and, based on the shape he was in, I don't think anyone thought it came too early. As mentioned, he was fat, slow, and seemed to gas pretty quickly. Yet, in spite of all that, here he insists on going to war with a young guy who has him outclassed in nearly every aspect. The one thing he had over his younger opponent was size, and he tried to use that advantage as much as possible. He's big enough that he's able to takedown Yamamoto at will to shut him down whenever he gains some momentum standing, but that's about it. He does do a few things on the ground, but, for the most part, he struggles when it comes to getting past Yamamoto's guard and actually doing damage. Rather than the flash you'd get out of a Tamura or Han match, Maeda plays a slow game of just trying to survive and capitalize off whatever opening he can find. Yamamoto, for his part, seems oddly passive on the mat and I got the sense that he was simply being respectful by letting Maeda have his way rather than making a serious run towards submitting him. Towards the end, there's several times Maeda ends up defenseless on his hands and knees, and Yamamoto just walks away as if to say that he wants to give him the opportunity to go out on his feet like a true warrior. When they're not on the mat, Yamamoto gives Maeda a pretty rough beating, unloading on him with some hard barrages in second half of the match. At points, I was reminded of those boxing or MMA fights where you have an aging legend getting dominated by a hot young prospect. Still, this is pro wrestling and they do work in some good drama in the form of a few nice submission attempts on the ground and giving Maeda a pretty hot standing rally in the last few minutes so it's not a complete squash. I have to admit that this match was completely from the striking war I expected it to be based on the comments I'd read about it, but what I watched is still a great usage of a 20 minute time limit and a compelling example of storytelling within shoot-style. ****

A bit disappointed by this. It's a good match and I was entertaind, but I was expecting this great piece of violence and this wasn't that. The strikes in the first fall looked like garbage, especially Escorpion's, and that continued to be a problem throughout the match. I also didn't like how easily Rey got the chokehold on Porky. Thought they could have done a lot more to play up his size. Second fall with Porky's comeback was a bit better, and I guess it is believable for him to just casually sink in the armbar given his size and that he had Rey loopy. Third fall started off with some cool bits of fat man offense, though I still wasn't seeing much of the promised struggle with them easily getting both of the holds that won their respective falls. Actually thought it was building pretty well until the abrupt finish. I will say that I hate the idea of someone else throwing the match for a face on principal, but I think they could have done more to build up the idea that Porky had nothing left as I wasn't ready to buy into it at that point, and I should also mention that some of Rey's strikes were also pretty clearly pulled, which took me out a bit. It was cool just to see Porky trying to work shoot style, but I was left wanting more classic pro wrestling and fat man offense. ***

Don't really have anything to add but just want to say great work here. Really looking forward to the Chicago list.

I lived in Japan for a few months in 2015 and had basically the same feelings while I was there. I saw nearly all the big AJPW matches from that period live and had a fantastic time every show I attended, but when it came to watching stuff alone on a computer the magic just wasn't there. It really opened my eyes when I saw the crowds attending the shows weren't the businessmen intently watching that I imagined, but just guys in casual wear cracking open beers and having fun with their friends. I didn't have the fortune of making friends with the boys like you did, nor did I even have anybody to attend the shows with, but I did still start to appreciate wrestling predominately as a live experience. Now that I'm back to living without any great live wrestling nearby, though, I'm pretty much back to where I was before in terms of tastes. Just as I have for many years now, I mostly watch pre-split AJPW and its influences and derivatives with some shoot-style on the side. It would be nice if I could talk about going through this period of discovering a completely different style, but that just hasn't happened, and the explosion in AJPW footage appearing online hasn't really helped matters.

Not quite the epic story others here have but I tried my hand at BJJ and weight lifting for a few months in 2016. Felt like I was coming home banged up with some aches and pains in new places every time and eventually had to stop when I fractured my knee. It did help me learn to appreciate MMA and shoot-style matwork more, but it also made me adverse for a long time to watching guys doing dangerous spots and stiffing each other as I realized getting hurt in a fight really isn't as glamorous as I imagined.

Here's a match I've seen quite a few times over the years and haven't really got it until today. I was always looking for a heavyweight slugfest and was always left disappointed with a match where it seems Misawa wasn't quite yet comfortable working heavyweight offense and where Jumbo took too much. People always focus on Jumbo's story coming into this match as the ace trying to fend off the younger challenger, but order to understand things I found I had to dial things back a little bit and also try to look at where Misawa was at coming into this match. Though he did have his first TC shot against Hansen in July, we're still just a few short months out from when scored his big win over Jumbo while wrestling as a blown-up cruiserweight. As much as this match is emphasizes Jumbo's concern with extinguishing the fire of Misawa's rising star, it's also about Misawa finding his footing as a big match heavyweight and trying out new things, many of which would become trademarks for him later on like the elbows, the stoic persona, and the late-match comeback. The first 15 minutes of this are basically an extended Jumbo squash. He just batters Misawa. Jumbo wants to leave no doubt this time that he's above Misawa in the pecking order and he demonstrates this by having everything Misawa attempts scouted already and giving him almost no room to gain any momentum. Misawa tries to sneak in an elbow and Jumbo blocks it to sneak in one of his own. Misawa attempts a flying headbutt and Jumbo steps out of the way. Misawa tries to reverse a backdrop and Jumbo responds with a receipt for the finish of their prior match. Misawa's longest segment of control in the initial part of the match comes when he manages to lock in a reverse triangle choke. In my initial viewings, I took this as Misawa not really knowing how to string together a good offensive control segment yet, but on this viewing it came across more as the prospect in over his head just trying whatever he can to control the match for longer than a few precious seconds. You can see a look of desperation on his face that stands in contrast to the stoicism he was already display earlier in this match. But, as should be expected, Jumbo finds a way to slip out and just continues his beating. The segment went from one of my least favorite parts of the match to one of my favorite on this viewing. I'd argue there are no transitions in the first 15 minutes in the traditional sense, only hope spots. Sure, Misawa sometimes finds an opening to string a few moves together, but it never feels like he has Jumbo in any real danger, and Jumbo is never far from regaining the upper hand. What Misawa does when he tries to attack doesn't amount to controlling the match but, rather, simply reminding Jumbo that he's still alive despite his best efforts to keep him down. Soon, Jumbo lets his emotions get the better of him and just rages out on Misawa. Aside from being a great spectacle, it also leads to the big transition of match as Jumbo starts to seem to start to tire out and Misawa displays the late-match resiliency that would become a key part of his later matches. This is when the match really starts to get dramatic as it finally looks like the old lion might be in danger. I love how you can sense the growing desperation from Jumbo to put Misawa away as he suddenly starts going for all his moves. Though, like Icarus flying too close to the sun, Misawa takes an unnecessary risk and pays for it when he goes to the top rope only to end up getting thrown off by Jumbo and hit with a backdrop driver. He gets in some offense after that, but his fate is pretty much sealed as Jumbo is soon able to hit another for the win. The match definitely has quite a bit more to it than I gave credit to it when I watched it in the past, but the match doesn't quite have the magic of the June match or the drama of the TC match from the next year. Still, this is a beautiful match to see Jumbo at the peak of his powers and Misawa on the cusp on the greatest ace run in history.

Bryan Alvarez has rated a ton of US matches in his newsletter and there's also some 411 guys who are pretty prolific, but they all strike me as second-rate Meltzers with play-by-play "reviews" and jizzing for movez. PUNQ has kind of a weird rating system but he's rated a ton of puro, including literally every show available from 2006-2010

Is anybody saving all these matches? Would be a real shame to lose all this.

Full match is available on the 2000 Excite Series commercial tape. It was several years ago, but I remember watching it on YouTube once and being pretty disappointed by their work before the last few minutes.

Also no Hogan/Jake and Bret/Magee. Hope they're holding out for future network collections or DVD releases.

I remember watching the EC 2013 6-man when it was getting shitloads of hype, wondered what the big deal was, and went straight back to ignoring WWE as it just didn't seem that great compared to the other wrestling happening in the world at the time.

Didn't Meltzer give ****** to a 1989 Flair/Steamboat handheld at a random house show? He also rated Toyota/Inoue 1992 "*****+++" based off a clipped version.

I love using Twitter, but it's a terrible medium for discussing wrestling and I generally avoid getting involved in that section. Seems pretty dense to wonder why you're seeing so many "hot takes" while focusing on a medium that limits you to 140 characters. If anything, I see the opposite from this supposed unbridled positivity. Yes, people do tend to praise NJPW and indy (which shouldn't be much of a surprise since people going out of their way to seek something out do tend to be fans of it), but with WWE people are as stubbornly negative as ever. I don't think it would be that contentious to say it's the best it's ever been in terms of sheer quantity of good matches and angles delivered regularly, yet people still find bizarre shit to complain about as if they've gotten so used to bashing it they've forgotten how to analyze something positively. This topic is an example of that. Smackdown is fucking killing it every week with characters like The Miz who are infinitely deeper and more complex than anything from the territory era, and even Raw delivers some good angles relatively often. But, nope, it was better in the 80's because there's too many good matches and wrestling is apparently about the shit you can see on soap operas instead of actual wrestling.

Not to take anything away from the interesting points raised by Loss's review, but I thinks it's worth noting that Vader, not Misawa, was the champ at the time this took place.

Believe me, I have an emotional connection with this match. I've been following Trauma I and IWRG since the promotion's 2009-2011 heyday, and I would love to see the promotion return to putting out greatness with a ***** match. That's just not what I see here. I still enjoyed it and would rate it in the neighborhood of ***3/4 largely because of that connection, and because they did give a valiant effort to try some pretty ambitious things even if the execution was lacking. But a match needs a lot more than that to be this slam dunk MOTDC that's getting unfairly overlooked as has been claimed.

Never heard anyone describe the match that way, that's a very interesting take. I completely disagree with it, but interesting.I really don't get that either. I'd love to hear more. I didn't see the turn-taking or forced epic stuff. The slaps and chops really weren't that good for the type of match they were going for, and the chair shot spot with one guy hunching over after a chop to let the other guy hit him looked contrived as fuck. The finish run just looked like them trading big moves without much in the way of the struggle or dramatic counters that made the Atlantis anniversary matches work, hence why I see it as turn-taking They did a lot of playing to the crowd and spent long periods lying around to sell, but most of it didn't really feel warranted by the work they were doing. LA Park/Mesias was pretty much what this match should have been but wasn't.

So, basically, here's this match built around shitty your-turn-my-turn exchanges and forced epic spots like we shit on modern puro for, but it's cool because it's a mask match.

I've always scoffed at topics like these, because it seems to be an open-and-shut case that value judgments, such as whether a match or style is good or bad, are subjective by nature. In wake of seeing how the GWE and the Cageside Seats tournament played out, though, I have adopted a more nuanced stance. It's entirely possible to talk about a match objectively. There are things that can be empirically observed by watching a match on video that one is entirely open to debate without appealing to value judgments. These would be things like offense, selling, athleticism, crowd reaction, how they filled time, etc. Trying to tell someone that a match doing one of those things well means it's good is where you run into something akin to the classic is-ought dilemma. It's impossible to tell someone they should like a match based on what's there (or that such things make it good) without appealing to their subjective idea of what makes a match good in the first place. For example, who's to say whether you should value athleticism or selling more? None of this is to say you can't have debate about wrestling without playing the opinion card. Barring things like nostalgia, the things make a match appeal to our subjective preferences generally correspond with things that can be empirically observed in the match and debated. This is why I've always been more interested in reading match reviews and trying to gain a new perspective or pick up on details I missed, rather than debating what wrestlers are the best. When you move away from discussing matches to ranking wrestlers, you move away from discussing the objective elements to simply ranking the subjectively most popular styles, as happened with the GWE.

Interesting points by Loss. Have we crossed the point where fans have become so used to regularly seeing greatness it's become detrimental to their perception? As an occasional WWE viewer I would have to say yes. When I watch one of their shows I can't help but be blown away by the level of talent on the display and the creativity involved in the storylines. Big guys are moving around like cruiserweights and there's a level of complexity in the angles that would have been unheard of back in the day. Yet, when I check the reactions online, instead of appreciating what they're seeing, fans latch onto whatever minor thing they can find to complain about. Modern WWE fans are some of the most spoiled and overly critical fans in all of entertainment, at least in regards to the current product. 80's JCP is frequently held up as a paragon of US wrestling TV done right despite being little more than squash matches, repetitive promos, and basic angles. Fans of indies are less cynical, but that also gives way to seemingly every show getting praised as having one or more ****3/4 barn burners while only the consensus ***** matches get remembered for year end voting. I'm less familiar with the indies, but from what I've seen, a lot of those ratings might not even be hyperbole. I watched Lee/Everett from June after shoe pimped it and was blown away by these guys I had never heard of having a match on par with the best of 90's AJPW, yet it's already been forgotten by this point.

Consider the career of Jumbo Tsuruta. All-time great young star in the 70's, cemented himself as ace with several classic matches in the 80's, then stepped away in the early 90's in the midst of the best run of his career. That sort of storybook career arc seems to have contributed to people becoming even more tired of discussing him than Flair. I could argue Flair sticking around as long as he did actually helped him by making him stay relevant to fans well into his 60's.

As far as far Flair being overrated goes, my view is that 80's US stuff is overrated all the way down. It's not hard to see why. It was part of the cultural zeitgeist, it's easy to find footage from it, and a lot of the people currently in the business were getting their first exposure to wrestling. Between those things and the shit that came in the early 90's, it's no wonder that fans have come to view Flair's work and 80's JCP as some sort of promised land for US in-ring wrestling. 80's style was the perfect fit both for wrestling's kayfabe era and the overall cultural climate idealizing action heroes. Long matwork was traded for workrate, heels became cartoon characters when it was time to sell, and matches were built around the wholesome all-American good guy trying to overcome dastardly cheaters. But I don't think it holds up that well if you weren't around for it, and that's part of why there's more demand now for wrestling that's more clean and subdued.