William Bologna

Tatsumi Fujinami & Riki Choshu & Osamu Kido & Hiroshi Hase & Takayuki Iizuka vs Genichiro Tenryu and Ashura Hara & Takashishi Ishikawa & Hiromichi Fuyuki & Koki Kitahara 2/16/1993 It's all hands on deck in this installment of the NJPW vs. WAR feud. Fujinami gets top billing for the home team, while Tenryu gets a bigger pop than anyone during the introductions. The crowd is beyond excited for this; they roar every time a new contestant enters. Even Fuyuki. Even Iizuka! Inevitably, Tenryu is the MVP here. He's menacing, well-permed, and hitting people just as hard as he possibly can. But it's Choshu who wins the glory: We get our first fall when Fujinami hits Ishikawa with a couple enzuigiris and tags in Choshu, who lariats him for the pin. The second fall sees Kido (who's just great in this, as is almost everyone else) (not Hara, whom we haven't seen since 1980 and who got old in the interim) as the surprise hero for New Japan. He's been pulling out these super nifty armbars all over the place, and one of them takes Tenryu out of commission for a while. Kitahara eats a uranage from Hase and then a lariat and deathlock from Choshu. New Japan presses their power play advantage and wins in two straight falls. This was great. Everyone got to shine, even the pack of nobodies backing up Tenryu. The New Japan guys were surprisingly generous with their opponents, although I guess it's easier to be magnanimous when you're winning in two. Iizuka and Hase did a lot of the actual wrestling for their team, and they were certainly up to the task. Fujinami once again doesn't get treated as a legendary main eventer - he got beat on as much as anyone. But this was about building Choshu back up, and it did that. It looks like we only get one more match in this WAR feud. I'm going to miss it. Programming notes: During my post-G1 wrestling fatigue, it appears that Gedo sneaked in and added a bunch of matches to the Fujinami categories. The good news is that we get some Dick Murdoch. The bad news is that this is never, ever going to end. The damn thread turned a year old on Thursday.

Just trying to figure out why you think you know so much about everyone's business that you can summarily dismiss the idea of strategic leaks to Dave. Is fantasy booking contract negotiations a thing? Is that what you're doing?

You just restated my premise there, so the answer is yes: They couldn't have leaked that information because that's not how you would have handled their contract negotiations.

Is your argument that they couldn't have leaked this info because that's not how you would have handled their contract negotiations?

This was exactly my experience with this match. I don't like Kenny Omega. He embodies a strain of pro wrestling I don't enjoy, and frankly I find him odd and creepy. But damned if I wasn't completely enthralled by the end of this.

I lean more towards the "New Japan is really good" camp rather than the "We're all obsessed with Japanese girls vis a vis our dicks" school.

Page is one of the guys in this thing I hadn't already made my mind up about, so I've been watching him pretty closely. He's a really appealing natural babyface, but I agree that his moveset is pretty goofy. He'd be more effective if he stuck to basics. Which I think also applies to Jay White. He's been great, but he could get all his heeling done without throwing half a dozen suplexes per match.

It's not just Omega's work either. It's not my cup of tea, but I can understand why people like. He's very good at that sort of thing if you like that sort of thing. But Meltzer's over the moon about everything else too. He loves Omega's promos. He breathlessly recaps his YouTube videos. He's a complete mark for the guy, and I just don't get it. I like Meltzer a lot - I think he's a pretty straight shooter, and he knows everything. But I find his preferences regarding modern wrestling to be pretty goofy.

Can we default them to newest first? I spent the week thinking there was nothing new for this month because it was all on the second page.

I guess I like Jay White now. This was not as good as either man's previous match, but I'm still not tired of White being sadistic. It was too long, and White going and getting a chair made absolutely no sense. He had Tanahashi down and ready for the finish, so he gets himself a weapon that will disqualify him if he uses it. It seemed perfunctory - "I use chairs now, so I'd better get one before the match is over."

Tatsumi Fujinami VS The Great Kabuki 2/5/1993 We again run into the thinness of the WAR roster, as this match is all about convincing us that the Great Kabuki has a chance against Fujinami. Fujinami has a young Yuji Nagata and Hiroyoshi Tenzan in his corner, as well as a middle-aged Riki Choshu. I never accepted those two working together after wrestling each other three hundred and twenty-four times in 1983, but I kind of buy it now that there's an external threat. The story here - and I liked it - was that Kabuki's cornermen kept distracting Fujinami and/or the ref long enough for Kabuki to do something dastardly, which is his specialty. It worked quite a few times, but I'm unhappy to report that in most of these cases Kabuki didn't do any more than put Fujinami in an armbar. The other story is that Kabuki wants the match to take place outside the ring, where he has help. We're used to Fujinami bleeding all over the place when he goes out there, so it makes sense when Choshu takes it upon himself to roll his compatriot back inside when the WAR guys are threatening him. Business picks up when Kabuki takes advantage of the referee's inattention to spit mist in Fujinami's face. Our hero looks like he's covered in pesto and in real danger. He kicks out of Kabuki's attempts to pin him and tries a dragon suplex. Kabuki pops him pretty hard to get out of it. Fujinami tries a rollup off the ropes, which doesn't work, and a rollup off the shoulders, which does. This was almost really good. I liked Kabuki's presence. You could tell the dude was a cheater, and it brought an interesting dynamic. But other than the cheating and the finishing sequence (which was a lot of fun), this wasn't much of a match.

I really enjoyed this. It had good character work and violence, which are the things I want out of a pro wrestling match. Jay White did a whole bunch of little things that I popped for (replacing the ring apron, for instance). Did you ever see the Tanahashi vs Taiyo Kea match from 2007? I watched it a year or so ago, and there was something about Kea's offense. He wasn't doing anything fancy, but all the stuff he did do just kind of looked like it stung. He was quietly cruel. It wasn't the outre, supervillanous sadism of Minoru Suzuki, but he was hurting someone and taking pride in his work. Jay White had that going on - everything he did looked like it hurt just a bit more than I thought it would. My only complaint is that Okada couldn't muster enough violence. White was being such a bastard, and I wanted to see him punished. I thought I would when Okada started laying into him with elbows, but after a couple of those he awkardly called a spot and they started running. I liked this Okada better than the titleholding version, but I wanted more viciousness than he brought.

Elgin is terrible at every single aspect of pro wrestling other than being strong (and look, he's got barbells on his gear!). I sincerely believe that he is the worst guy on the NJPW roster.

I tracked this down because I wanted to see Tenryu pin Baba, and I'm glad I did. This was a masterclass in working with limited opponents. What do you do when half the participants in a match are old men who can't do anything convincingly? You stiff the hell out of them. You get blood on the face in peril. You bump like crazy during the comebacks. Great, intense match.

Tatsumi Fujinami vs Takahashi Ishikawa 1/4/1993 After one whole match, we set aside the feud with the fake outsiders for a feud with real ones: This year's January 4th Tokyo Dome show is headlined by back-to-back NJPW vs. WAR clashes! (Heisei Ishingun is all the way down in the second match, behind a bunch of WCW guys.) A rivalry with WAR is a difficult thing to book. At the top, you have Genichiro Tenryu. He's won the triple crown. He's pinned Baba. He's got a pedigree, credibility. So you match him up with Riki Choshu at the top of the card (it wasn't any good, but that's not the point). If Choshu's #1, then Fujinami's #2, and he gets . . . Takahashi Ishikawa. That's the problem when you're dealing with Tenryu's vanity promotion. The talent thins out real fast after you get past Tenryu. I knew nothing about Ishikawa, but he looks like Tenryu and Arashi had a kid. Hell, I read his Wikipedia article and I still don't know much about him, which makes me think that there's just not that much to know. But here he is the semi-main of a sold out Tokyo Dome show, so let's see what happens. Fujinami comes out hot with the boxing. A dropkick sends Ishikawa outside, and he follows up with a tope. At this point the crowd is going apeshit. Then Ishikawa takes over, and we sit in a headlock for most of the rest of the match. Whew! I was getting a little overexcited there. Eventually Ishikawa escapes two dragon sleeper attempts by kicking Fujinami in the face (that was cool). He hits two powerbombs and goes to the top after Fujinami kicks out, but our hero follows him and suplexes him. He hits three Inoki-style enzuigiris and locks in the dragon sleeper for the win. This was OK. The body of the match was dull, but not so dull that I'm mad or anything. Ishikawa did not appear to be on Fujinami's level, either as a worker or as a believable competitor. I think some of the subtext of the work was lost on me - in addition to Fujinami's alluding to Inoki with the kicks, Ishikawa tried a dragon sleeper of his own and a scorpion deathlock. I guess they were doing a thing?

Tatsumi Fujinami & Riki Choshu & Osamu Kido vs Kengo Kimura & Shiro Koshinaka & Masashi Aoyagi 8/15/1992 Here we have the debut of Heisei Ishingun, a faux outsider faction that kicked around for most of the 90s and never accomplished much. You've got Kimura trying to get out from under Fujinami's modest shadow; Koshinaka (now in black pants!) using his ass attacks for evil; and Aoyagi, who likes to kick it. He's a karate guy. It's funny Aoyagi showed up here - I just started listening to Bahu's magisterial history of FMW, the early part of which is all Onita vs. Aoyagi and various other karate guys. Never heard of the guy in my life, and here is showing up twice in a week. The idea here is to get the HI faction over as a threat even though no one in it was previously perceived as such, so everyone's selling like crazy for these guys. In particular, Kimura's spamming these leg lariats and the boys in black trunks are acting like they're devastating. There's some good heat here. Before the match begins, Fujinami strolls over to have a word with Kimura, but Koshinaka steps in and slaps him across the face. There's also a yelling match with one of HI's corner men (I think it's Akitoshi Saito, but he doesn't have completely terrible hair so I can't be sure). After ten minutes or so of fast-paced action, Kimura pins Fujinami after one of those leg lariats. Then everyone runs in and we have a brawl. This was cool. I went back and looked up the Heisei Ishingun stuff after the match - while I was watching it, I had no idea why these people were teaming or what, in general, was the beef, but I liked it anyway.

The interview with Juice was fun. He just seems like a good dude. Jay White was dull. Cody was a pretty interesting overview of the business and WWE's writer problems. The Tanahashi one was a little painful since the guy doesn't speak English and Dave absolutely refuses to stop asking paragraph-long multi-part questions in those situations. He confirmed that Kenta Kobashi is a nice guy. It was interesting that both Juice and Tanahashi expressed some reservations about the current style ("Too much moves"), and then Takahashi goes out and breaks his neck the next day.

The two best heavyweights in New Japan having a title match in England. Not only a fascinating example of professional wrestling in our time, but also evidence that Rev Pro's booking is better than New Japan's.

I had a blast at the ROH show last night, and there weren't any pederasts in the ring as far as I could tell.

"TATSUNJI FUJINAMI" TATSUJIFUJINAMI & POETRY ECHANAKA VS YOSHIHIRO & MUTO KEIJI 2/8/1992 I copy and paste the titles of these matches straight from NJPW World, and sometimes it goes crazy. I don't know if it's the site or my browser, but this is Fujinami and Shiro Koshinaka vs. Keiji Muto and Hiroshi Hase. I was really looking forward to this match, and it was a letdown. A letdown big enough that it threw the future of this Fujinami Project into question. More on that later. Interesting lineup here. Koshinaka and Hase helped me get past judging workers by their movesets. When I first got into Japanese wrestling, I was in awe of all the hot moves. Obviously a match with a half nelson suplex is better than one without, right? But that kind of thinking leads to enjoying Michael Elgin matches (and putting out a widely-read wrestling newsletter) (and being a dick on Twitter all the time for no reason), so I'm glad Hiroshi Hase came along. He's got his giant swing and his corny pro wrestling submissions, but I've never seen a Hase match I didn't like. Koshinaka's no Hase, but he looks like a chimp and has good enough matches built around hitting people with his ass. Same lesson. Muto's OK in small doses as long as he's wearing trunks and not running the promotion. So this should be pretty good! It's not. They do some matwork, and then there's a lot of rope-running. There's no story, no structure. Everyone takes turns being the face in peril, and none of the tags are hot. The high spots are all boring pro wrestling submissions (dragon sleeper, scorpion deathlock). Finally Hase hits Koshinaka with a Northern Lights suplex holdo and Muto stands in front of Fujinami long enough for a three count. I'm shocked that this wasn't better. We know Fujinami can go. Hase's one of my favorite wrestlers, and Koshinaka and Muto are fine too. Put the four of them together, and you get this dispirited mess. I wondered what All Japan was doing at the same time. Thanks to this very site's match discussion archive, I found a match from February of 1992: Furnas & Kroffat vs. Kawada & Kikuchi. Not only did I enjoy this match more than Fujinami & Koshinaka vs. Muto & Hase, I enjoyed it more than any Fujinami match I've reviewed. It was, in fact, better than anything I've seen in the year-plus I've subscribed to New Japan World. This led to some soul-searching. Why am I watching Fujinami decay year by year when 1990s All Japan deep cuts are so much more fun? There are Furnas & Kroffat matches I've never seen - how do I justify sitting through the annual "just get him on the card" old man Fujinami tag match at the Tokyo Dome? I don't know what star rating you should give a match so bad that it makes you want to give up on a wrestler and just watch Doug Furnas forever.

Watching the Fujinami matches, it really struck how fast he got good. He wasn't terrible when he showed up in New Japan in 1987, but he was obviously green. By the time he won the IWGP belt in the tournament in 1989, though, he was damn good, and he'd only started in 85. He was still effective, diminished but dangerous, in his All Japan run, and that gives him 20 years of solid work. Remarkable longevity for a man that size working a rough style. Update: I'm so stricken by grief that I got mixed up about the difference between 10 and 20. Let's just all pretend it was 20 years.

IWGP Heavy & Gray test 18 club certification both championship game Tatsumi Fujinami vs Riki Choshu 1/4/1992 It's a special occasion here in the Tokyo Dome. The announcers are wearing tuxedos, and the capacity crowd is electric for this, the last Fujinami vs. Choshu singles match I have to review! It's a big one, as Fujinami's putting his IWGP heavyweight championship on the line, while Choshu is risking his bullshit, made-up-ass Greatest 18 Club title. They pick up where they left off in the 80s with some deliberate matwork. Too much for a twelve minute match. Fujinami tries to get things heated up with an unsportsmanlike slap off a rope break, but Choshu's not quite ready, so we do some more matwork. And even though I was a little bored, it seems that Riki was correct. Based on the reaction of the crowd, the pacing here cannot be faulted. The spectators were never uninterested and became downright ecstatic as things reached their end. That end comes when Choshu hits three consecutive lariats - two to the front of Fujinami and one to the back - to win one title and retain another. If it weren't for the finish, which was not only clean and definitive but also an example of the escalation of punishment required to win a match, this could have come right out of 1983.

There was a Three Stooges where Curly had to replace a wrestler who looked like Action Bronson. I don't know if it was good, but it was something.

When you hear him talk about good matches - "Well, they'll have a good match" - it's almost a mechanical thing. Number of hot moves plus number of nearfalls equals good match. Serious question: Has there ever been a PWG-style Meltzerbait match that he didn't fall for? Has he ever been bored by lots of moves and nearfalls?

I saw that Always Sunny episode three or four times before I realized that the guy Da Maniac is wrestling at the beginning is Don Frye.