Ma Stump Puller

This is during Suwama very mixed first reign with the Triple Crown, but I felt like this was one of his better bouts: it was clear the intent with this match was to get him over, and Nishimura is obviously the perfect man for the job there. First 10 minutes are basically just rest holds and grappling, with Suwama not being able to really do much against the far more accomplished technical worker, through he's able to transition out of Nishimura's holds rather well and is shown at least to be able to hold his own defensively, with some ring work in using his elbows and knees to dig in to Nishimura's joints during sequences, alongside his size to really keep things from getting too hairy. Suwama throws some strikes, but Nishimura answers with some great Euro uppercuts, but ends up flying to the corner after a big double chop and a big sell. Suwama tries for a top rope splash but Nishimura nails him with a flying kick, then plays dirty by smacking him with his own title belt on the leg and stomping on it. There's a solid figure four spot where both men battle for control, with Suwama having to reach the ropes through this doesn't stop Nishimura from grabbing on the hold as much as possible. I'll bring this up now, but I particularly love Nishimura's uncharacteristic heel work: he's not overtly going over the edge, but like a Bret-style performance, you can tell he's desperate to get the win and will most definitely bend the rules to do so. He failed once against Kawada four years ago, and that frustration at never getting the big one in all of his prior title matches is very much felt here. Suwama starts to use more of his bombs to get past his bad leg, nailing a great delayed backdrop by carrying his opponent from the ropes to the ring, as well as targeting the leg to even the score. There's great selling from Nishimura throughout as he braves the pain and barely is able to stay standing after a huge lariat, stumbling over himself. He teases pinning Suwama in the same way he did a few weeks back via a backslide counter but gets a big near fall, and a O'Connor roll gets the same result. He manages to grab on a Cobra Twist but Suwama powers out to the ropes. Nishimura plays to the crowd for a second one and they pop big, but Suwama gets another backdrop out. Nishimura counters a brainbuster into a small package for another near fall and then grabs on a sleeper after jumping like mad for Suwama's big bombs. Nishimura gets a final Cobra Twist on but Suwama counters it by rolling down into a front toe hold into ankle lock, then converting it to a big German suplex in a awesome transition. Suwama hits another backdrop into a Last Ride for the pin. Nishimura doesn't necessary "carry" Suwama into a great match (namely because Suwama was honestly already pretty good, just not being booked great with long matches, something he always struggled doing) but he definitely adds the suspense here in comparison to his opponent, selling for his stuff hard and making Suwama look like a unstoppable force when he's struggling through his submission attempts and leading into his bombs. I was a bit bugged by Suwama not selling the leg after the belt shot and latter limb work but I felt like he didn't make such a thing too obvious. This definitely felt like a match where Nishimura went out of his way to make the new champ look legitimate rather than a back and forth thing, and I would say that was accomplished here, at least for the moment. Solid stuff, one of Nishimura's all-out stronger main event showings, namely because it's a 35+ minute match that feels like 20 at best.

Classic Kid/Craig Classic is a nothing Gaijin act that basically showed up for virtually every Japanese company in service as a reliable but mostly undercard jobber act, nothing particularly interesting comes up in his career but he seems solid. KEITA I guess sees this as a challenge so he pushes the guy to a near 20 minute mat-wrestling clinic while having no ring, a super quiet crowd, and nothing more but some random Yoga mats to work with, all while still doing his weird TDK Joker act. KEITA for the first half mostly focused on trying to get to the arms, using a massive assortment of typically tricky technical displays while Kid uses mostly conventional stuff to handle the guy, holding his own for a while while doing so. KEITA cheats when Kid is in the lead before defaulting back to pulling out more insanely innovative showcases to show off. At one point he does like a literal cross-arm cross armbreaker and while it looks weird as anything it's also pretty awesome. His heel work is mostly focused around, interestingly, the eyes of Kid: raking at them, scrubbing his foot on them, punching them with knuckle-first strikes, or generally finding any opening to do more stuff involving targeting the eyes. It's almost like he was just trying to find as many ways humanly possible to do eye-work effectively as there was just so much on display here, way too many to go though individually. Kid sells for ages as he gets small pockets of offence to get his stuff in, but said stuff is mostly just aping Dynamite Kid/Benoit spots so I was glad of that, no thanks. KEITA pulls out all of the stops to try to get the win, including a dumb ref bump by using the ref to defend himself from a diving headbutt (which I'm 100% sure he just stole off Kendo Kashin) him doing a weird cartwheel senton off a chair (because again....no ring) and long drawn out attempts to finish the match with submissions into roll-ups and vice versa, just mangling the guy with weird ye-oldie Catch technique. The lead to the finish has Kid dominate at last as he is able to counter a Scorpion Death Lock into a Crossface, lands a chair-assisted diving headbutt, and is then able to win after landing a limp Tombstone and grabbing a Fujiwara armbar into Crossface transition out of KEITA's kick out, keeping it applied even when he tries to roll out of the hold into a cradle pin. Kid asks for their rematch to be a two out of three falls match, which KEITA agrees. This match would ALSO be recorded on Keita's other YT channel and it's a fucking bonkers crazy length as it clocks as a full 60 minute match, so I'm definitely going to check that out when I can spare a whole hour. Anyway, this is a great match: probably Kid's best outing ever as he sells strongly and gets good enough reactions for his ability to hold out against the onslaught of moves, for KEITA it's just another day rolling on sleazy mats in front of at best 25 people. Such is life.

It's a massive struggle between those two always lol. It typically comes down to A. How long is their longevity (is it a reduced workrate over time or the same, do they improve over time with experience and learn new things, their consistency with different opponents and matches) B. How great is the peak (is it really that great or is it more spread out, how much of a distance is it between that peak and everything else, how much is it down to choice of opponents, pacing and crowd reaction etc) Typically the greatest wrestlers as you say are nearly always present in their matches and balance the two effectively enough to keep audiences interested. Someone like Tenryu, for instance, is brilliant at both.

The people (oh god this just sounds like a "you people" promo now) who ranked the event on Cagematch typically averaged this out at nearly one star on the scale which I found to be just complete bullshit: this was a tremendous love-letter to classic British Catch wrestling, and unlike many matches where the guys involved are too scared to keep that going for the whole match and just default into regular stuff usually after a while, these madmen kept this theme going for the whole duration pretty much. Williams focuses in on the arm until trying for a fancy top rope moonsault in the corner, with Ogawa stomping his leg and causing the lad to crumple. What I loved about this was how they'd be consistently trying to get to their respective limb to work on, so you had moments when Williams would try for the arm using the ropes and turnbuckle and Ogawa would roll out of the ring and trap his leg in the ropes instead while he was arguing with the ref. Lots of great little smart moments like that where it felt like limb targeting was actually important and meant something as opposed to padding instead, so they wrestled like those mattered and as a result the crowd in turn was, shockingly, invested in the outcome. Like you can imagine these two have a excellent chemistry where they keep finding clever ways to outsmart the other on the mat or use their respective limb target as leverage, so Ogawa would strain the leg of Williams to get him down easier and Williams in turn could use the arm to neutralise Ogawa's usual tricky transitions and keep things under control. Near the end of the middle you have this terrific sequence where Ogawa kept pulling out these transitions to get out of a arm wrench, but Williams was such a dog that he kept just driving leverage because of how effective his arm work had gotten by this point, which felt right out of a WoS-era outing. Of course these two always pull out their usual signature spots, but they are in purpose to be used to keep driving home the limbwork advantage, never straying too far away from it. The last few minutes build on the two trying to bomb the other out, but Williams is always one step ahead and eventually snaps a cradle out of a hammerlock to steal the upset win when Ogawa lowers his guard when reaching for the ropes. Sure, was the crowd not super loud for this? Definitely: they cool down after a while given Williams and Ogawa aren't exactly crazy fan favourites and this had no crazy dives or spots/head-bumps to keep them occupied, instead being lots of slick technical wrestling worked at a realistic pace that respected fatigue, even if they pick up at certain dramatic moments and give a good response by the end. Doug Williams has historically loved working with Ogawa: it's the reason why he picked the guy out of everyone possible for his 2017 retirement match, after all: and it's not hard to see why as he can just nerd out with the technical work here and have someone who's also slick enough to make that work for a match. It's crazy to see just how this old-school side of Ogawa emerges here as opposed to his usual fun Rat Boy cheating antics, but it's fresh enough to keep interest and amaze given this typically never gets a chance to fully emerge. Honestly fantastic and a joy to watch, a great little gem.

Nigel is never wrestling in a million years lol. Love the guy but he made his peace with wrestling more than a decade ago, not to mention I wouldn't be comfortable seeing it in the first place

If it's like prior All Together shows, expect at best a six-man tag that goes 20/25 mins.

I didn't think it was bad per-se, I just hated the pretentious film-school lite narratives about "oh Go is in the middle of the ring and Fujita is the outsider so he's not in the centre, it's a metaphysical battle between Inoki-Ism and Kings Road!!!" when people who actually watched NOAH regularly knew it was a regular occurrence in Fujita matches at the time that he just did for shits and giggles. It wasn't anything special, but because a lot of people who didn't see NOAH watched that match and tried to make something out of a 30 minute staring contest it got fairly popular as a result. It's more of a wrestling equivalent to a Rorschach test: it doesn't actually mean anything, therefore anyone could walk in and try to make sense of it. I'm not opposed to those interpretations but it was head-scratching. IIRC he started doing it way back in PRIDE, he did it in NOAH as apart of the Taniguchi feud, which included a honestly way better match/feud than Go/Fujita I'd heavily recommend that over it. The staring there actually means something. As for Fujita in general in NOAH, his stuff is more or less the same but noticeably more refined, and he excels in tournaments as the supreme spoiler who could beat anyone he's paired up with. His Hideki Suzuki match is controversial for being a big technical wrestling fest, definitely enjoyable for me though.

Nigel was a heel during this run (this was just after his Tyler Black match where he was shit-talking the guy and playing the heel about a week or so prior) but he's a face here, basically demanding that Sweeney just get in the ring and fight him for his RoH World title, and of course Sweeney is a cowardly shit so he's going to stall, stall, stall. Now the good news is that Sweeney is a solid heel and so these stalling segments are quite entertaining: he won't even share a ring with his opponent for the introductions and he spends a good few minutes trying his hardest to not get his ass kicked, but he gets caught a few times when he's too busy taunting fans instead of watching his back. Nigel wrestles like a 80's Southern babyface, throwing clean strikes but also getting in some scrappy hair pulling and getting hi-fives from kids while bashing Sweeney all over the place, it's great. It's still stalling but functional, and it easily showcases the dynamic of the match while letting the crowd get more heated in the process. I also loved that these two actually incorporated that earlier dynamic into some actual wrestling sequences, namely Sweeney getting consistently outsmarted by McGuiness's goofy British WoS spots and selling like mad for when he had to get over frustration, bumping big, or both. Of course you can't have a entire title match be a one-sided beatdown, and eventually Sweeney gets the advantage when his opponent gets sloppy and goes arm-first into the turnbuckle, allowing him to work on the arms of McGuinness. Nigel around this time had already been known for his extensive damage to them: he'd almost been stripped of his title in reality due to a torn bicep: would never be fixed completely for years and would actually only get worse as he ended up tearing both soon enough. You can therefore buy Sweeney using this to get some sleazy work of his own at last, and his stuff is pretty by the numbers but solid enough. Nigel sells really well and despite this crowd being majority kids and casual fans, they don't get bored of the hammerlocks and slower paced arm work, namely because of said selling, which is dynamic and pretty self-aware of the match itself, so you never really feel that Sweeney is in full control, any random strike that lands flush is a dangerous thing. Nigel also gets over his initiative, never just laying down and eating stuff but always trying to either hide his bad arm, crawling to the ropes before Sweeney even tries anything or throwing shots, poking at eyes, anything to try to survive. It's fascinating seeing what he used as a heel routine being used for the opposite instead, and it works pretty well I'd say. Comeback is good (despite more or less no real attempt to sell the arm) and they even get in some near falls as Sweeney just defaults to bomb-throwing to finish the job but eventually falls to a Tower of London and a lariat for the pin. This had some great shtick: Sweeney is no Cornette or Heenan but he clearly works off guys like them here as a sort of more competent version of their in-ring work as managers, playing the coward and only getting the advantage with cheap shots and the like. This wasn't a crazy workrate outing for McGuinness (and honestly, he needed something like this given the state of his body at this point and time) but as a throwback 80's style heel/babyface dynamic? Yeah, he was great. Not the most conventional but good for its own reasons, even if no one on this Earth actually thought Nigel was losing the belt here apart from maybe the nine year old fan in the crowd.

Idk I remember Fujita v Go being firmly all Fujita-based in terms of actually being anything worth watching. Not to say that being more interesting than Go is a GWE achievement, but still, something at least.

Yeah no the Bob Sapp match Sasaki has is probably one of my favourite low-key showings I've seen when I was interested in Sapp's stuff. The belt-hung lariat spot single-handily makes it one of the crazier displays he's had, including the fact he actually, like, sells and bumps great for Sapp to boot. He'd probably get on a top 100 just for that.

Dissing Hansen seems dirty, but given the complaint is more or less about his general match structure and not just about him in particular, I feel like there's something to it. When I was deep diving 1995/2000 AJPW, the main negative thing that stuck out about Hansen was that a LOT of his matches ran around the same dance of some brawling, but also lots of boring, aimless arm work; this was mentioned last page but it shone out for me when actually going though it because it was so prevalent. I totally get why it's there and it makes perfect sense psychology-wise, it's just that every second match just devolves into "let's work the arm" and then it mostly doesn't even get brought up in the finish bar maybe some small hints of selling, and it gets especially shitty when the UWFI guys come in and we get the suggestion of submissions being more dangerous: cross armbreakers are instant-death holds if applied fully, double wrist locks and other stuff are now enough to even threaten the top top guys on the card. Hansen does not play ball with any of this. There's a match he has with Tamon Honda around about 1996 where Honda works the arm for basically the entire match, Hansen sells great for all of it: probably one of the few times Honda seemed motivated as well: but then he just wins with the Lariat at the end. No drama, no nothing, it's just completely ignored. Even the cross armbreaker gets a flash of selling but it doesn't go anywhere. Honda just eats shit. It's not always the case (there's some good drama built off it in the later years, especially when Hansen doesn't have that big megastar booking anymore) but there's a good few times where this same formula emerges, and it's almost always boring because it never leads anywhere. Like a Hansen/Honda match "should" logically rule, but because of that formula it drags it down to a boring slog.

Naturally this is a squash, but Hansen is good enough that he is able to get the crowd properly into this with Honda's few big pushes and makes this into probably the best rookie vs vet showings of this entire card, because the gimmick was essentially just that bar the main event. Honda is SUPER green and you can tell that just by seeing the generic rookie offence moves they teach: the top rope knee drop, the body press from the turnbuckle, crappy chest forearms, scoop slam, you name it. Hansen does well at selling Honda's offence not by flipping all over or flailing, but solid match details, like him having to rope break off a tight headlock instead of powering out, which later gets him annoyed enough to start throwing strikes when Honda is able to catch him again in a headlock and by extension conceding the technical stuff, or Honda legitimately getting the best of Hansen in a brawl which annoys him so much that he smacks Honda with a row of chairs: all of these are neatly packed here alongside Hansen beating him down a lot, but it never feels contrived or hasty, which is always a positive of his matches. There's never a feeling that Hansen is "giving" Honda space to actually do stuff. There's some great strength spots as well for Honda as he gets a backdrop and some scoop slams on his far larger opponent, which impresses the crowd a lot. He misses the top rope knee drop, Hansen works on the leg until the ref gets in the way, leading for one last big bit of offence from Honda: namely, a DDT. There's a great sell at the end where Hansen counters the backdrop attempt right after this and hits his own. Afterwards, he sits there acting dazed and you almost think he was thankful he countered that: Honda the rookie managed to put Hansen in a little bit of danger, even despite his immense inexperience. He realises what he needs to do, and sets up a Western Lariat; game over. This is a short but very well put together match that makes Honda look great, even despite his near complete lack of moves beyond some basic stuff. Hansen naturally carries Honda to this bygone conclusion, but for what it's worth, Honda looks sharp and motivated, a far cry from his very dire AJPW stuff afterwards. Definitely worth seeing even as a oddity outing, but it's also a solid example of Hansen getting probably Honda's best outing in his early career (that was actually up to Honda, not just him being the pin eater in a six-man).

To be fair the Suzuki Hirohito gimmick got like, a minute of stock footage and quickly dropped afterwards. The goofy Heidenreich "frozen Nazi" gimmick was a idea a writer had at the time that even Vince (apparently) thought was too much and abruptly left when it was brought up This was the 2003/2004 era as well where they just went for maximum shock factor shtick as well, so shit like this was never surprising

Not as good as their 2021 classic, but this was still really quite something to behold. A 40 minute match for 98% of wrestlers over 50 would be a very daunting task, but Ogawa just casually does it on a random B-tier show. he's been a pain in Kiyomiya's ass since he lost to the guy last year, being one of the few guys who can reliably stop him in his tracks, including a time limit draw last year. This defines Kaito as learning from those mistakes and adapting through given he easily sends Ogawa flying with a bunch of high-speed offence early on and quickly shows off his improved ring skills. Ogawa has to play every trick in the book to survive, pulling out some remarkable spots for his age and showing some insane cardio by keeping up with the young lad for the whole duration of this match; he could've easily pulled a NOSAWA or Muto and sat on the mat for most of it with super slow paced stuff, but they didn't do that here. Ogawa is also a master of working holds and counters, always making sense from a in-ring perspective but maintaining a good rhythm throughout that keeps the crowd engaged in the action. Seeing him somehow get a ref bump from a arm wrench on the ground by pulling him into the hold, or making multiple headlock takeovers fresh and exciting by engaging them in different sequences of counters when Kiyomiya tries to escape in a multitude of ways, either with eye pokes or big leaping headscissors is just genius pacing and a lot different from simply sitting in a hold for minutes on end; despite the start being mostly holds, it goes by incredibly easily. There's also some great fire from Kiyomiya in the later halves as he endures Ogawa's tricks and manages to not just overpower him with his explosive strikes and offence, but he manages to finally outsmart the crafty vet at his own game, frustrating him to the point where Ogawa just openly kicks the dude in the groin out of frustration. While there's no real narrative for the start beyond Kaito being way too fast to handle, Ogawa eventually hones in on Kiyomiya's arm for leverage and works over it for a good duration here, with some pretty brutal work done throughout. As Kaito gets more and more fired up throughout this, enduring the submissions and firing back big elbows despite having one arm to work with, Ogawa has to pull out bigger and bigger moves to keep on top: hurling him out of the ring violently with a arm wrench toss, or slamming his groin into the ring post for a near count-out victory. Kaito eventually gets on top and Ogawa has to pull out some tricky counters to simply stay in the game, even calling back to his famous Akiyama 1998 sprint in places with spots taken directly from there in how he tries to creep some roll-up attempts: it all feels desperate, and the longer it goes on the more you can tell Ogawa is losing all control here and just resorting to anything and everything to keep a hold of things. Eventually Kiyomiya has to go to new lengths to obtain the win, focusing on brutal Tsuruta-style jumping knees and most remarkably, using a Cattle Mutilation as the finish. Fantastic babyface work from Kiyomiya throughout as he balances vulnerability with pure Kobashi-lite fire when Ogawa is tormenting him, as well as some great mat-work and agility. I would probably grade their first encounter slightly higher, but this is still really well paced and worked throughout, felt nothing like 40 minutes. Gritty, nasty technical masterclass that perfectly showcases why both men are so well regarded, even if there's no big "spot" to really go crazy about. It's just a very lean match that manages to pace itself perfectly, which in the age of 30+ "epics" that slog along is a godsend. Really stellar stuff.

I'm betting 20 bucks that Sanada wrestles the exact same as before but with a few new moves lol. People thought he'd be a different man when he left AJPW/W-1 and became the Cold Skeleton.....and he was, just with a few new moves, same boring wrestling though. Great look, great potential, utterly dire at being interesting though. Maybe Okada like Suwama before him can drag this guy to something special again. I'd like Okada to lose just for the chaos afterwards, but it isn't happening.

All the boys are here! The Super Generation Army is in full force! The Holy Demon Army has emerged! Baba.....idk why Baba is here but he's here anyway. The starting sequences establish the scene: Taue is a very mean bully, Baba is here to hit limp strikes, and Misawa and co have to struggle to succeed. To be fair this is one of the stronger Baba performances of the 90's: he actually takes big bumps and doesn't look completely done in-ring like he did in 1998/1999. Limited? For sure, I would say he can still "go" in the way you'd expect. Misawa/Kawada are of course great together and so on point with their sequences that it never looks contrived or anything like that, everything comes naturally with them. It was also cool that Kawada was the guy in danger in places here than the usual "Kobashi in danger" formula that was abused so much even by this time. Of course we still get them, but they aren't the main theme of the entire match, which was seriously refreshing. I will say that while the usual Pillar interactions are solid, this did lack any underlining story to it bar some small stuff like Kikuchi just being useless at maintaining any momentum and Baba being really quite petty here with his antics. There wasn't really any big heat segment until way into the middle half as Kikuchi spends a good few minutes doing what he does best: selling and bumping big. This was fun with Kawada as he threw nasty kicks and chops, it was great with Taue just endlessly scoop slamming Kikuchi and dropping him endlessly.....the match definitely downgrades when Baba is doing his slow chop routine. Kikuchi actually making him take a bump was a epic spot, but to lead up to it we had to go though some fairly slow stuff. Taue holds on to Kikuchi in the corner to do some dirty strikes, Baba just lets him go anyway to tag in Misawa as he doesn't want to get involved in their heelish antics, which does get a nice lead-up near the end when he relents and works off a Kawada distraction to land a big back suplex off the top rope. The last 10 is namely focused around Baba, so erm, it wasn't great, it's about as good as 90's Baba can go at this point; him and Kobashi have a undeniable chemistry that gets this way more solid than it should have been as they went back and forth with surprisingly fluidity: it's a bit sad that we never could've got a proper match between the two bar this and the Baba 1998 birthday bash. Road to the finish is typical AJPW bomb-spamming and it's still great, just kind of flavourless for the most part as there wasn't really any main story for the crowd to work with. Finish comes with Kikuchi trying (and failing) to handle Taue and Baba one final time, who wreck him with some great spots until he finally falls to a chokeslam. Listen, I'm a big fan of these, this felt more like a "here's stuff you've already seen" match without much original to follow up on, so it was lots of solid work you've probably already seen with bigger crowds and better intensity. Baba being here and game to work is great, but he still slows things way down and Taue by this point was a way better giant who does his job a considerable amount more competently. Pillars and co are on good form, however bar some cool moments this didn't have much of a spark to it to really set it off proper. That said, it's still a pretty good showing, just with obvious flaws that come with this being a B-show.

Yeah vice versa about Muto post knee destruction funnily enough. You get more of a focus on less workratey stuff, but far more engaging matches as a result because they have to focus on making the smaller stuff count. Their 2001 match together was basically that philosophy coming to a head, and as a result it's one of their better (if not the best) outing between the two as a result, despite it not having any crazy spots.

He had multiple stinkers with Nishimura during G1 stints so that's him mostly disqualified for me lol. Always felt better as a tag worker than a singles, especially post neck-explosion. Him alongside Hashimoto and Muto? No contest as to who is where on my list, Chono is definitely not getting far compared to those two.

For obvious reasons, I can't go over a 60 minute match bit by bit so I'm just going to have to mention the highlights and elements of this match. Obviously most of the people involved can't really do the big epics to the quality of their early 90's six man shows anymore (especially Misawa, whom while still obviously very good, was noticeably starting to pace himself far slower) but this was VERY good, as you'd imagine. Hase being here really shakes things up in terms of interactions: he's a solid hand as well so it helps to have someone who's not as fatigued throw down with everyone else; seeing him swing Taue like he's nothing is pretty nuts, and having the guy be so dazed afterwards that he goes to the wrong tag corner and gets socked by Kawada is a awesome little spot: him and Kobashi have some really solid exchanges as well, with him selling top notch for his offence. Hase isn't the MOTY performer or anything, but he is a solid hand that seems to be relieved that he's actually working a big match as opposed to jobbing out Johnny Smith or Shiga. Akiyama is also quite good, being nearly there in terms of hanging with the main guys but not quite hitting the mark: he can go toe to toe with them but he can't properly reel his opponents enough that he can get any proper advantage, namely only getting big shots when his opponent is softened up by someone else, or he's stealing their offence. Taue positions himself as the big bully as per usual but he gets his ass kicked a lot here when he tries to push his luck, especially against Kawada and Misawa whom are able to get past his offence and really beat him down despite throwing virtually everything at them. There's a bit maybe 20 minutes in where I think Kawada was legitimately KO'd after a very stiff brainbuster: the guy goes completely limp and everyone else has to cover hard for him, delaying everything. Even when Kobashi tries to throw him in the railing outside to stall for time the guy can't even move any, he just falls over. Maybe that's just him selling amazingly well but it was pretty scary to see regardless, even if they do make it into a great angle by having him try to survive everyone's attempts to finish him off and him doing anything he can to stop such a thing happening despite having little life in his body. Oh yeah, Kobashi is really great here, either being the big leader and heading up the heavyweights in big strike exchanges, or saving guys like Akiyama from Kawada and the rest of his team by himself. You really get the impression that he's the really big deal here with how much he's able to pull out: him and Taue doing a Doomsday Device-lite assisted top rope chokeslam? Throwing Misawa around for a huge Orange Crush? Fantastic shit in general. When the second half gets into gear with everyone hitting double team moves was also pretty awesome to see, albeit it does turn into a bit of a finish-spamming sequence with everyone hitting big moves over and over until the time limit. In short, don't go into this expecting a perfect match: while this is still extremely solid, it lulls in places and definitely suffers from the length being disproportionate to the heat as the crowd never truly bites and goes nuclear: you'd expect a classic Kings Road amping of escalation, that next level just never comes for them where anything could finish the match off. Perhaps that says more about how fan expectations for bigger and more dangerous matches were starting to show than it does about the match itself as a fault, nevertheless it does start to hurt the quality. Even then it's 60 minutes with some of the best workers of the 90's, it was never going to be terrible.

Just stumbled on this, time to throw out some recommendations Izumida/Kawada 21.03.1998 Kashin/Greco 12.04.2003 Nakanishi/Bas 02.05.2002 Yasuda/Fujinami 19.07.2002 Otsuka/Tiger Mask 30.12.1998 Asian Cougar, Kamen Shooter Super Rider & Tanomusaku Toba/Daisaku, Yuki Nishino & Yusaku (especially based) 20.11.1999 junji.com./Super Rider 01.03.2001 Tenta/Warlord 15.12.1993 Takayama/Matsui 02.12.1997 Funaki/Suwama 08.04.2011 Sawada/Fujita 29.08.2015 Oba/Honda 24.04.2010 Akiyama/Funaki 27.04.2013

He can be quite good and his undercard WAR association material is super high-end, but at the same time this guy just stinks cards out sometimes. I swear, almost every AJPW match I seen of this guy sucked. Johnny Smith and him stunk the joint out with a uber boring mat-work oriented match, him and Kawada can't get a good grove on for their showing and it feels really awkward, it's just a messy affair. That soured me on him a fair bit as I'd much rather put on someone who was consistently entertaining (Don Arakawa, for instance, never had a truly five-star match but he was always on the ball in everything I seen of him) than someone who could be very hit/miss.

I wouldn't stick him on a top 100 but I can totally see why people would given his longevity and entertainment factor: he's one of those guys you could pick out nearly any random match of his and you'd find something fun and/or good about it. Like even right now he'd had some pretty decent outings in random E-tier indies like Kyushu Pro or whatnot. His shit in SMASH and other money-mark promotions also showcase his ability to get people you've never heard of over and how he could work anywhere on the card, at first working mostly the opening match and then later on the main event when they needed a good draw. It always helps that him and Nishimura (another guy with that ability to make nearly anything look great) have a pretty stellar series of matches.

For the record this is a worked shoot: every major MMA site does not list this as a legitimate contest, which is a good thing because this like Takayama/Takahashi 2011 match (which is somehow on their records???) isn't trying to be one. It's instead a pretty robust 5-minute sprint in a cage at some random indie, starting off with a few minutes of the two wangling between side and full mount respectfully between the other. Nothing special here (especially given Ikemoto is a kickboxer, not a grappler at all) but Ike keeps his defence solid despite Funaki being a fiend with some of his snappy transitions. Funaki pulls guard and uses it as a way to try to wangle his opponent into some sort of arm submission, but Ike rolls out and throws out some slaps to escape. It's there that we get the better parts of the match as the two have some good back and forth striking exchanges: Ikemoto being the more eager guy to throw while Funaki bides his time for counter-strikes, landing flush with a good few shots to the face. Funaki beats his ass with some hard leg shots before landing some knees to the head in a clinch and kicking him for a knockdown. Funaki runs in to try to finish his opponent off as soon as possible, but Ike responds with a palm shot to the side of the head and some of his own strikes before doing one of the sickest cage-spots I've ever seen as he springs off the cage itself for a spinning spike-DDT into Guillotine. This spot alone is worth checking out, it's amazing. He cranks the submission as much as possible until Funaki wiggles out and slaps the guy in the face and eggs him on. Ironically Ikemoto is a lot more inclined to rein back his shots compared to his opponent, who just whacks him hard, and the finish comes fairly quick as Funaki lands a surprise rolling wheel kick to KO his opponent. It's definitely not a high-end for either man, but for a super quick pseudo-UFC outing, I thought it worked fairly solid. Outside of the incredible cage assisted DDT bit there's never anything truly great, albeit the match itself is still paced out super strongly and Funaki brings some good fire to this alongside Ikemoto, who is definitely one of those guys who really should have more footage on him because he's a immensely talented guy. Fun match all in all.

IIRC the reason why Muto trimmed down and was going for the Jr heavyweight title was due to him having another knee surgery which put him on the shelf for a good long while, so he naturally wasn't as bulky when he got back into things (and probably to help his knees as well, him as a heavyweight doing moonsaults 24/7 was half the reason why they got busted in the first place) The kayfabe reason was that Muto wanted to get the one title in AJPW that he hadn't won yet so there's a extra bit of drama to things than just a regular title match. Solid post: definitely dig out more Jamal matches though, dude is a beast. He's got his Umaga-intimidation shtick pretty well defined even this early in his career but unlike Umaga he's more varied and can do some really cool big-man spots and top rope stuff like moonsaults and whatnot. His Kawada (2004) and Sasaki (2005) matches are worth searching out.

When he's on the ball and motivated his work there can be really quite solid, which only makes his tremendously bad W-1 stint even worse by comparison because it's so obvious he just doesn't care.