superkix

Antonio Honda

Jushin "Thunder" Liger 1992 Joeg is up!

Akira Maeda 1990

1992 Big Van Vader

Earth to bleh?

Really hope Maximillian Moon is the ace of the promotion.

Sorry for the delay. I'll go with Tokyo for the city.

I think it should be open to workers outside of the US.

I'm down for this.

Episode 4 is now available. https://fightingnetworkfriends.podiant.co/ to stream or subscribe to the RSS feed. You can also search us on Apple Podcasts. FNF #004: RINGS in '91 Topics discussed: - Twin Peaks - Weddings - Basketball - Favorite shoot promotion? (via Twitter) - RINGS RINGS RINGS - Willie Peeters, Akira Maeda, Dick Leon-Vrij and VOLK HAN - Minoru Tanaka, Taka Michinoku, Aja Kong, TATSUHITO TAKAIWA & More Matches: We dive deep into all 4 shows RINGS put on in 1991, and highlight our favorites. Lots of Peeters, Vrij and Maeda. Oh and special shout out to Bert Kops Jr. 5/19/95 - PWFG - Minoru Tanaka vs. Taka Michinoku 5/7/00 - ARSION - Aja Kong vs. Mariko Yoshida 6/4/03 - U-Style - Kiyoshi Tamura vs. Dokojonosuke Mishima 10/19/01 - NOAH - Tatsuhito Takaiwa vs. Yoshinobu Kanemaru (BOMB FEST) Youtube Playlist: http://tinyurl.com/fnf003 Follow us on Twitter: @fightfriends @trillyrobinson @bren_patrick Email at: [email protected] Youtube at: http://tinyurl.com/FightFriends

This was a hell of an opener, and what I'd consider to be one of Daichi Hashimoto's best performances to date in Big Japan. You had the young team showing a ton of fire at the outset, prematurely attacking Sekimoto and Sato before the bell, and putting Sekimoto on the rocks early on before the hardened vets take over on offense. Daisuke is so good at playing the heel-ish taunting bully and of course, Sato's just plain nasty in there against Daichi, elbowing the snot out of him. Daichi's full of fighting spirit and won't back down, despite getting his clock continually cleaned by Sato -- just terrific selling on Daichi's part as he takes a beating. Kamitani does a good job of throwing his weight around in there and gets a taste of Sato's punishment, taking some brutal kicks to the chest and a big headbutt. But he's able to clobber Sato down with a lariat, tagging in Hashimoto to conclude his story. Loved the visual of Sato and Sekimoto standing over Daichi like schoolyard thugs as he futilely tries to fight off both. That heart and determination pays off for him in the end, and after blasting Sekimoto with a Shining Wizard, Daichi's able to put him away with a big brainbuster DDT.

A terrific little match-up, with Mishima showing off his quasi-capoeira style and judo takedowns against Tamura's slick-as-catshit counter and matwork. Mishima manages some hard slams and I really liked his takedown into the headscissors, transitioning into the jujigatame. Of course, Tamura's great here as the experienced veteran, tip-toeing out of trap attempts and scoring takedowns>submission holds. The struggle on the ground was conveyed well, although Tamura's king and at times, he looks bored at Mishima smothering his leg. Heading into the finish, Mishima comes at him with a palm thrust but Tamura is able to take him down into a necklock, flipping him over into the armbar and cranking for the submission win.

This is my kind of junior heavyweight wrestling. It’s heated right out of the gate as Minoru immediately starts slapping at TAKA, and then they scramble fiercely around the mat, fighting over a leglock, getting pissy in front mounts with their strikes, including some well-placed palm thrusts from Minoru. Minoru delivers an awesome shoot package Gotch-style piledriver…I don’t even know how else to describe it…then transitions into the single leg. He may be without his glorious locks here but Minoru’s still swanky as all get out, with his smooth leg-trap counter into the kneebar. He’s either taking TAKA to the bottom rope or he’s stuffing him with kicks. They trade suplexes (love TAKA’s snap belly-to-belly) but when TAKA tries for the German, Minoru answers with the wakigatame takedown and when that doesn’t do the trick, he just stomps the back of TAKA's head. Loved this.

Fujiwara ain't got time for TAKA's shit but who does? I loved that no matter what TAKA tries to do on the mat, Fujiwara finds a way of countering and schooling TAKA in the art of old man grappling. When he’s not forcing TAKA to the ropes with a leglock, he’s smacking or headbutting him, naturally. At one point, TAKA sends him headfirst into the corner, but of course, Fujiwara no sells it to re-adjust his socks because...well, it's Fujiwara. But bless TAKA, he keeps trying. When he attempts to boot out of a hold, Fujiwara snags the boot and screws the ankle, and when he’s had enough, Fujiwara cranks him into submission and doesn’t let go.

These two have good matches together, sometimes great matches, and this was no exception -- however, it's getting harder for me to distinguish the matches as they follow a similar blueprint. Naito coolly works the leg, Ishii sells and bumps well, Naito goes back to the leg to escape shitty situations, and Ishii fights through to pain to punish Naito. This time, however, Ishii says "okay, lemme work that leg" and cuts off Naito with a big dropkick to the knee. He doesn't put in a whole lot of work but Naito's selling is terrific throughout, including his knee buckling on a German suplex hold. Even though I knew Naito had about a 0.00001% chance of losing, I still bit on the brainbuster counter to the Tranquilo attempt. Some of the transition work to set up the finish looked sloppy but this was a good match, the best of the show, and had some neat new moments.

Awesome matwork.

Lance Storm duh

Thanks for the kind words! We've got some cool stuff planned that I'm excited about.

Awesome, glad you've enjoyed them. Thanks for the feedback!

Episode 3 is available, friends. https://fightingnetworkfriends.podiant.co/ to stream or subscribe to the RSS feed. You can also search us on Apple Podcasts. FNF #003: Tetsujin! Topics discussed: - Portland wildfires - Portland indie wrestling - Dan Severn - Every Time I Die - Josh Barnett - Hausu - Tetsujin - Jack Gallagher and small wrestling rings - Jun Akiyama and Tamon Honda (COMPLETE!!) - Gene Lydick - HIDEKI SUZUKI & More Matches: 11/20/15 - Tetsujin "Beauty in Combat" complete show 8/13/93 - Gene Lydick vs. Yoshihiro Takayama 9/5/01 - Jun Akiyama vs. Tamon Honda 7/17/17 - Hideki Suzuki Vs. Ryuichi Kawakami 5/1/15 - Masashi Takeda Vs. Gentaro (Strong Style Fusion / Leftover Weapons match) Youtube Playlist: http://tinyurl.com/fnf003 Follow us on Twitter: @fightfriends @trillyrobinson @bren_patrick Email at: [email protected] Youtube at: http://tinyurl.com/FightFriends

Another great Tamon Honda underdog tale. I’d previously only seen the last seven minutes of this match before but seeing it in its entirety really fleshes it out. Here, Honda’s the dopey but mat dangerous Deputy Dawg. They work the opening few minutes to a stalemate, before Akiyama DDTs Honda on the rampway and continues working the neck, using his knees, legscissors, and at one point, slapping on a rear headlock and cranking Honda around into a modified front facelock. Akiyama is able to keep cutting off Honda's momentum – hitting an Exploder in response to Honda’s backdrop and then putting him in a crossface hold – but eventually, Honda breaks out, delivering a couple of awesome slow German suplexes, yanking Akiyama off the ropes, then he goes to the ground with the STF and anaconda vise. Alas, Akiyama’s the man, and he goes back to that neckwork he established so well, utilizing the front necklock, dropping Honda with Exploders to break him down even further before finishing him off with that necklock.

I love this match. Yoshinari Ogawa is the perfect grimy ring tech, who plays the sneaky pants David to Takayama’s blonde Goliath, and Takayama’s Goliath is a real brute, body pressing Ogawa off the pin attempt, punishing him with kicks and knees, ragdolling him with suplexes, grinding his boot into Ogawa’s face. When Takayama gets hung up on the ropes, Ogawa puts him in the tree of woe and pummels the hell out of him with punches and stomps before going to work full-time on the arm. Takayama powers Ogawa up out of an armbar and sets him up top…but Ogawa’s able to take him back down to the mat with the arm in tow. Ogawa’s a jerk to Takayama on the ropes with his stomps and Takayama can’t seem to catch a break. After he hits four consecutive backdrops, Ogawa goes right back into the armbar, kicking Tayama’s hand away to cinch it in. As Takayama starts powering up near the end, I love Ogawa’s final desperate flash pin attempts at hanging onto his title with Takayama countering the last small package, brutalizing Ogawa with the knee strike and putting him away with the big German to capture the title.

No surprises here…you know what you’re getting with these four. A big ole beefcake spectacle of modern strong style. Tons of bomb throwing and clobbering and sweat flying – the crowd was super into it. I thought Shingo and Yuji make a really fun team, Yuji seems to be having fun with it. As always, Sato was stiff as fuck but I thought Shingo actually threw some pretty great elbows, which I’ve never noticed before, and I really like how he hits the enziguri kick. That deadlift Made in Japan on Sekimoto was also really impressive. Probably my favorite part of the match was when Yuji and Sekimoto just start clubbing each other in the chest. Obviously, because this a 30 minute draw, the length is going to hurt it but aside from a few pacing hiccups, there was little downtime and they did a good job of keeping the crowd invested up until the very end.

I was kind of hoping Suzuki and Ishikawa would have a title match at Death Vegas.

There was more heat here between Suzuki and Hashimoto then there was in their title match. Those two interacting was the obvious highlight for me here – I thought Hashimoto’s selling was fantastic after Suzuki uppercuts his knee out from him and then just leaves him on the outside like a chump. Good, sustained selling throughout the match and even post-match. Both Shogun and Kamitani were the big boy brutes throwing their body weight around – Kamitani looked good, he hit that brutal backdrop finish, but Shogun wasn’t bad. I really like his machine gun sumo slaps in the corner. You know, after this match, I’d love to see a rematch between Daichi and Hideki but it looks like we’re getting a Kamitani rematch first.