Ma Stump Puller

During my Mariko Yoshida project she stood out VERY well, probably one of her best dance partners she had all things considered when it came to rivalling Yoshida's performances on the mat and whatnot, which is really saying something. Absolutely amazing at doing emotive brawls with the best of them be it female or otherwise, even if her later Stardom stuff wasn't really anything to be amazed at by comparison as it trails more into shtick. I guess she's mostly hurt by most of her best years being during the Dark Age where footage is (still) really scant, but I think with recent discoveries and explosion of wrestling content there is plenty of gems to be probably dug up along the recommended. Speaking of, I'd also recommend watching her IBUKI Yoshida match (07.16.2006) and the Yuko Miyamoto deathmatch (05.04.2008). Top 100? I'd have to think about that a bit further.

part the second ============== Ryuji Hijikata v Sabu (25.08.2000) Actually a half decent match. Sabu isn't exactly amazing without hardcore stipulations but he does the technical work fine and keeps focusing on Hijikata's leg, and he still does get a few good spots in without botching/adding tension by pretending to botch. He mostly dominates the match outside of a small comeback from Hijikata where he awesomely kicks a chair into Sabu's face. Otherwise it's all him, and he quickly puts him away with a chair-assisted moonsault. Fun showcase and the crowd were into Sabu from the start from what footage was intact. RANK: Decent Johnny Smith v The Cedman (same day) Wanna see Johnny Smith carry a rubbish Steve Williams-scouting hire? No? I mean....I don't blame you. As much as I can hate on some of the lesser guys in AJPW during the Pillars era of the 90's (and especially the one-time hires that they were bringing in the downturn years) this is a far, far cry from any of that. Ced is in decent shape but he's about as useful as the lumps Michinoku Pro used to randomly hire to job for them, just green, basic, botches every third move, ugh. Smith is here to work a house-show match so he's doing the basics, and even then Ced is not in time to Smith's usual big sequences so even those are awkward. Match mostly just happens, moves are done sloppily. Smith finishes things with a good German suplex followed by a sloppy British Fall for the finish as fans laugh and enjoy themselves watching this big lump finally stop wrestling. Simply bad, Smith isn't really in much of a mood to do a whole lot aside from the basics of his routine and Ced is pretty unseasoned. He has some atheticism but he needed at least 2 years of extra experience before even getting a look in. RANK: Forgettable Genichiro Tenryu, Jinsei Shinzaki & Stan Hansen v Taiyo Kea, Toshiaki Kawada & Yoshiaki Fujiwara (same day) We get 7 minutes of this on the clock and yeah, it's pretty good; you can just look at the two teams here and judge that as such for yourself without anything else said by me. The Kawada/Tenryu build is mounting incredibly well with the two beating the shit out of each other with chops and boots with some strong exchanges. Tenryu's punches even don't get much use as Kawada is still able to truck along and hurl his own signature spots right back. Fujiwara/Hansen is incredible; just the way Hansen sells the Fuji headbutts by just slumping over and not even trying to back-bump, seeing the two scrap and brawl for every inch of advantage possible is great. Hansen sells everything as laboured and earned, probably because it was very laboured and very earned due to his back injuries making him almost incapable of doing much of anything. Shinzaki's ok. I'm never a huge fan of the guy and his role here seemed to be mostly the fall guy given Hansen and Tenryu DEFINITELY aren't taking a fall here, so he has to endure a beating from Kea, then Kawada, then a few kicks and powerbomb later and the match is all up and done. This match never broke any ground for me, but it's full of some top-notch action and everyone being at the top of their game....well Hansen wasn't, but even a no-back 50+ Hansen delivers well for what this needed. Kea looked smooth as butter and really seems to be getting up there in stature and popularity as his push and name-change are all in near full force. All in all, a solid enough showing. RANK: Good Masanobu Fuchi v Nobutaka Araya (26.08.2000) Fuchi is the undercarder from hell and he definitely wants you to know it given this current streak of matches where he's dominating and getting win streaks. I would've actually liked to have seen this match in full given this is Araya's first appearance on-camera and he's a reasonably sound worker, sadly we get yet another highlight reel of Fuchi jobbing out the WAR dude with his signature spots and big meaty backdrop. It is what it is, I suppose. RANK: Forgettable Damien 666, Halloween & Super Parka v Masaaki Mochizuki, Susumu Mochizuki & Yasushi Kanda (same day) Super short match that's also cut up into a few minutes of footage. The M2K guys come down on their very menacing scooters and seem to work the traditional rudo style of the time, lots of double/triple team antics and dirty tactics to keep control. Even when 666 tries to do stuff the trio are just way too organised and brutal for any momentum to be built up for the lucha lads so they mostly get isolated and controlled. The finish is a bit wonky as Damien is pinned off a clearly sandbagged brainbuster (he provides zero give for the move and as such, it purposely looks like shit) while Parka just stands in the background doing absolutely fuck-all to break the pin apart from a half hearted leap to the apron. Not much to judge this on, but it seemed to be pretty by the numbers all things considered. RANK: Decent Shigeo Okumura & The Cedman v Taiyo Kea & Yuto Aijima (same day) Nothing says great booking like getting over your next potential big main eventer by pairing him up with your opener punching bag, Cedman, and the second worst wrestler of the roster. Thankfully the gods smiled because this was NOT shown in full, far from it, they just show some of the highlights from the match like Kea getting in a strike exchange with Okumura and kicking Ced's ass around the block. We finish up with a typical Kea Hawaiian Crusher for the pin and it's all over. RANK: ??? Johnny Smith v Toshiaki Kawada (same day) This was seemingly unfilmed despite being a Korakuen Hall show, so all we get are scant highlights from a ringside camera; a shame because a match between these two could've been pretty good all things considered had they went all out like Smith did with the Kobashi match. All we really get ultimately is Smith kicking out of a big Kawada powerbomb for no real reason before Smith taps out to what is pretty much just a meaner-looking Misawa face-crank (but noticeably not his Stretch Plum?) probably innovated from Fujiwara given he would snap this one up for matches and training videos. A shame it's cut but hey, what can you do? RANK: ??? Genichiro Tenryu & Stan Hansen v Mike Barton & Steve Williams (same day) This also got scant footage with about a few instances left for the end and some struggling, ultimately having Barton job out to not even a definitive big finish, but instead a regular Tenryu lariat. I know, a Tenryu lariat is hardly "regular" but still this was pretty extreme lol. Poor guy. RANK: ??? Damien 666, Halloween & Super Calo v Masaaki Mochizuki, Susumu Mochizuki & Yasushi Kanda (29.08.2000) Yet another match between these six and it's basically a house show anyway so this was half-assed to hell and back. The start is cool with M2K's scooters getting stolen and used by the lucha guys (well "used" is a nice term because man did they struggle). We cut to Calo doing a fancy top rope scissor takedown that almost takes Suzumu's head off because he rolls for it incorrectly before we get a cool spot where Calo teases a dive, opponent moves away, and then Calo hits them from the apron instead lol. Damien hits a nice Kinniku Buster and attempts a pin, but everyone gets inside the ring for a huge brawl to break that up. M2K take over with some heel antics by having the ref distracted to bonk 666 with a chair, stunning him for a M Mochizuki running Pele kick off the ropes and a diving elbow by Kanda to steal yet another win. This seemed solid enough for a match despite the obvious conditions making it hard to judge, I think I'll say it's still pretty average for a spotshow though. RANK: Decent Genichiro Tenryu, Jinsei Shinzaki & Toshiaki Kawada v Johnny Smith, Stan Hansen & Taiyo Kea (same day) This was cut to around about a few instances of definitive footage, mostly highlights and whatever. This is intended to build up Kawada/Williams against Hansen/Tenryu for the impending main event showing, so what is left is more or less Hansen battling against the two and their stiff strikes, Kea also getting some action in against Kawada, and Shinzaki doing a amazing flip-bump for a Hansen Western Lariat, easily the best I've seen all year out of the guy so far. It's a shame that Shinzaki is once again drawn up to job for the natives but hey, I'd take this over 20 minute Cedman/Barton showings. RANK: ??? Masanobu Fuchi vs. Shigeo Okumura III (01.09.2000) A rematch between these two could've been cool, but it's cut up again into a few bits that sadly just isn't enough to put any sort of rating on it. It was cool to see some brawling on the outside as Fuchi brought the aggression by throwing Okumura out of the ring, with the opponent bumping pretty well all things considered. Fuchi catches the guy with a backdrop, and it's all over before you can blink. RANK: ??? Damien 666, Halloween & Super Parka v Masaaki Mochizuki, Susumu Mochizuki & Yasushi Kanda II (same day) Another six-man? Yep, this feud keeps on trucking. It's fun enough to have just a small tiny bit of footage committed to it in the first place. Susumu does some cool stuff on Damien before we get the combined M2K and finish out of Kanda via the elbow drop, not very original compared to the last match shown smh. Still, it's a match, it's apart of the build, so you can't really diss it. RANK: Forgettable Genichiro Tenryu & Stan Hansen v Johnny Smith & Nobutaka Araya (same day) As a final build for the impending Kawada/Williams vs Tenryu/Hansen match, we get the older pair jobbing out some fairly hapless victims for a fairly short semi-main match all things considered, only clocking in at around about 10 minutes. The match is cut much less than that, so you can imagine this isn't much worth discussing. Araya is a great bumper and seller so he gets the blunt of the beatings to the powerhouse duo, ending after Hansen hits a uncharacteristically weak Western Lariat to finish. Not much to judge, but seemed to be pretty by the numbers by the reactions. It's a house-show, so this is very much expected. RANK: Forgettable Jinsei Shinzaki, Taiyo Kea & Toshiaki Kawada vs. Mike Barton, Steve Williams & The Cedman (same day) Oh god Cedman for 20 minutes lol, thank the lord this is 99% cut down to mostly Kawada/Williams highlights to build to the big main event. Poor Barton does more bumping around with Kawada kicks (don't they know he's going to be in the finals of a Champion Carnival with Muto in the next year and a half???) and then Kea takes his sweet time setting up a Hawaiian Crusher to job the dude out. I mean comparing the two matches, I think beating Barton is a tad more impressive than a random WAR indie guy, but sure I guess. RANK: ??? Halloween v Super Calo v Super Parka (02.09.2000) All Japan's flirtation with lucha stuff continues with a fairly enjoyable if hollow showing. The crowd was into it though, so I guess that's at least something done. Halloween and Parka teamed up for a good portion before Hallo tried to sneak a win with a small package, and then it was a free for all basically. Super Parka was quite old here, but he held up well despite some slip-ups. For a nothing lucha spot-show with zero real work it was decent, with the three keeping a good pace as they all worked together on spots happily and/or stood around until the next bit to happen. The only real spots that got me was OG Parka doing a dive to the outside near 50 years old, and the finish, which had Calo's top rope frankensteiner get turned into a powerbomb mid-air by Halloween for the pin. If you like these kind of spotshows, great! I don't really care for them though, so bar the spots mentioned this was just something to turn your brain off at. RANK: Decent Damien 666 v Sabu (same day) This was pretty bleh. In all fairness the two have a fun Sabu-paced match, with Damien trying to do his copying shtick and getting wrecked for it. Sabu does a cool jumping Frankensteiner off the top ropes, but bar that you could tell he was hurt here: he had tape around his jawline (like his entire jaw, not sure what happened there) and he seemingly hurts his arm (or hurt it pre-match) as he neglects to use it for most of the duration and seems to have issues with it. There's zero psychology: Damien takes a tornado DDT into a pair of chairs and not only kicks out sharp at the count of one but then almost immediately beats up Sabu with forearms seconds later: so this was another spotshow basically. Sabu seemed grumpy and he didn't really think much of Damien as he barely sold for the guy, him botching a Muto-style moonsault by smashing into his back probably definitely didn't help either. The finish seems to be improvised as Sabu does a regular Triple Jump into leg-drop, but then complains about his back hurting and then quickly pins Damien to end things quick. All in all a pretty nothing match, if you like Damien's shtick then this might be worth watching for the sheer novelty value. RANK: Decent CIMA, Sumo Dandy Fuji & SUWA v Masaaki Mochizuki, Susumu Mochizuki & Yasushi Kanda (same day) This is a typical crazy Toryumon trios pace, so a ton of spots at a fast pace. Don Fuji doing his silly sumo shtick was pretty funny though, easily one of the highlights of this entire thing. But yeah, lots of spots and....lots of spots indeed. Describing it in detail would've taken ten years given there's so much shit flying by there's really no time to describe it before there's at least been five more sequences done, so that's a losing battle. M2K were established as being heels and not as impressive as the other trio, having to use cheating antics to get their way more often than not. It's quite funny though because despite them being heels we've also got SUWA just being a huge scumbag despite being paired with the babyfaces, so it's super jarring. Some stuff is a little bit too contrived for my liking where it's basically just in your face spot set-up without even trying to disguise that fact, however for the most part they managed to pace this well and most of what we ended up seeing was executed to near perfection once they managed to set it up. The finish with Fuji going nuts with his Jr-Sumo spots was great and put him over really well before M2K bonk him with the infamous scooter and he gets dropped with a slick axe kick and Dragon Suplex by Mas Mochizuki for the pin. Probably the best match of the night action-wise, you really couldn't top this if you tried. Pure fun. RANK: Good Jinsei Shinzaki, Mohammed Yone & Taiyo Kea v Johnny Smith, Mike Barton & The Cedman (same day) Yep, this is just bleh. The only big pointers were Yone showing up (which is weird because he'd be a NOAH guy very soon) and Cedman stinking stuff up some more. He looks like Yoshinari Ogawa but taller and on roids, sadly without much of the talent though and you quickly realise he's pretty hopeless here. This felt average for the most part bar a fun Smith/Shinzaki exchange: Kea with his new moniker looked real sharp and worked smoothly in the ring; he is able to weather the storm that Barton and co put him under with a good few near falls, and gets a fiery chop exchange over with the crowd, being a sturdy piece of the match. Yone comes in to essentially job, but lands some good knee drops and a top rope leg drop for a near fall before Barton catches one of his kicks, answers with a gut punch, and finishes with his powerbomb. All in all, a fairly average six-man with the only highlights being Shinzaki, Smith, and Kea. Everyone else is on the side and not really doing a whole lot as a result, so what we get is a fairly so-so showing with occasional good bits, but mostly drifting away into mediocrity. RANK: Forgettable Masahiro Chono v Masanobu Fuchi (same day) Chono coming in to wrestle this in casual shirt and clothes might bug some out, but I liked the touch: he's has been looking down at Fuchi all this time with this little NJPW/AJPW feud, you really think he's coming in here to wrestle seriously by going down to Fuchi's level? Dude is here to disrespect this old timer first and foremost, and that's how he gets caught with a early backdrop and very big cheers as he tries to rake the eyes and pays for it with a Misawa-style headcrank to torment the guy further. Now, that's a great start, yet sadly the match suffers from a few issues, namely that Chono wrestling-wise is shoddy and so they keep away from that as much as possible with a 4-minute (yes, 4 whole minutes and all) stalling sequence of him teasing leaving the match altogether before then returning and throwing cheap shots; this already deflates the crowd slightly. This then leads to a long and boring punch/kick control segment where they brawl, the ref moans at the rule bending, Chono gets in his face and cheats more, repeat etc. It was rather dull and not really much happens to warrant this going as long as it does. The crowd does get loud for the occasional Fuchi strike or comeback, but then Chono just takes back control and it's back to the boring pace again. The occasional big moment when Fuchi got stuff in was fun, and seeing Chono in danger was definitely something that the match needed to be done to work, everything still feels like it's moving fairly slow. There's no real moment where you feel like the guy will tangibly lose the match and as a result Fuchi's work seems more or less supercilious. It's cool to see Fuchi work as a underdog babyface; he does a fairly solid job at it as well, rather surprisingly given his prior decade of not really doing so. The finish has Chono inevitably go over with a low blow and despite two STF attempts he can't make Fuchi submit and so has to break him down with Kenka Kicks instead until he finally gets the pin. This could've been a great sub-10 scrap, but sadly I had to instead endure a boring Chono control sequence where nothing of worth happened in-between the good Fuchi bursts of action. Way, way too long, which combined with the inevitability of the winner just drags this way down for me. I don't think it's a issue of Fuchi doing any aspect of this wrong, it's more an issue of not being able to build proper off the mountain these two dug up; maybe that's just Chono being his usual lazy self. I do also feel like this and the Kawada match do show that while Fuchi is a solid workhouse, there is a.....limit to how good he can be, especially when trying to step to levels of big star charisma lads. This seemed a tad out of his ballpark. RANK: Decent Genichiro Tenryu & Stan Hansen v Steve Williams & Toshiaki Kawada (same day) Stan's final main event outing is a symbolic outing with his old pal Tenryu against their new incarnations in Steve Williams (the man who took over for Hansen) and Kawada (who took over stylistically for Tenryu). The first half has some spirited moments, but veers too much into aimless Hansen "work the lariat arm" filler and rest holds, though Tenryu and Kawada especially try to make these seem as epic as possible as a task. Williams bumps like a trooper for Hansen starting off, but Hansen himself spends most of this on the backend to then put over Kawada. Hansen is pretty much done at this point physically; even his usual limited routine from the late 90's is something he clearly struggles to do due to the discomfort his back issues were giving him by this point, so Tenryu has to carry the workrate for the pair in terms of actual moves and whatnot. Him and Kawada have a predictably fun routine as they hit each other hard, battle over who can throw bombs, and generally have a good pace between the two. Tenryu does a apron brainbuster that was messy as shit. Williams butts in to let Kawada take back control, as well as landing a smooth Doctor Bomb of his own. Kawada felt super confident as he ran over Tenryu with his usual assortment of bombs, even being able to brave though his punches to get in more kicks. Hansen starts to sneak in when Williams is trying to finish the job, eating up strikes to allow Tenryu time to recover. We also get probably the worst lariat in All-Japan history as Williams (THE Steve Williams in case you've forgot) meekly runs to Tenryu and basically taps him with his arm to knock him down. Dead serious, this looked terrible lol. They then repeat this shortly after with Tenryu somehow winning out with a equally shitty one? Wtf? How are these two sucking so badly at this? Something was definitely in the water there. Hansen primes the arm for the Western Lariat but the two do sloppy strikes until Williams summons the last of his energy to do a huge Doctor Bomb on his opponent. Tenryu does his classic sumo-slaps to get him out of the ring so him and Hansen can double team and take out Kawada, namely with a lethargic Western Lariat. Williams gets bullied with a good few signature spots (including a second-rope elbow and a crappy Hansen powerbomb) before a combo of the Tenryu Enzuigiri and another Western Lariat get the win. Here's the main issue: Williams and Hansen gas out hard by the halfway mark (Hansen so badly he was still huffing and puffing post-match to the point that he couldn't even make words) and so the two get super sloppy because, well, they just aren't really built for these kind of long-style bouts All Japan were known for. Hansen can't do a whole lot anyway and him being pushed here to the forefront means he just didn't look good most of the time despite his selling and general experience aiding him massively. Kawada and Tenryu do better, but we don't get anything remarkably unique that you can't see in more detail and frankly miles better elsewhere. While this does have some enjoyable moments (alongside the general coolness factor of the four of them just slugging it out) there's also a lot of frankly sub-par stuff that dragged this down, mostly due to poor conditioning. This drew big numbers as a event; it, however, was easy to see that the AJPW crew were hurting, and this was merely the beginning of a downturn they'd never truly recover from. RANK: Decent Giant Kimala, Gran Naniwa & TARU v Masaaki Mochizuki, Susumu Mochizuki & Yasushi Kanda (14.10.2000) This has to be the most 2000's AJPW 6-man I've ever seen lol. TARU, Kimala, Naniwa, and a bunch of Toryumon lads all just thrown into a pot in Korakuen and made to wrestle. Kimala is wearing his singlet he used with Gary Albright back in 98 so you know he means business, throwing on headbutts, chops, and a Dragon Sleeper? Fu-Ten Kimala when? Sadly never. TARU has looked and worked the same since forever, though he's a bit more agile than usual. This was a weird one because whenever TARU or Naniwa were in this was basically just business as usual where everyone just went from sequence to sequence with no real attempt to articulate any sort of psychology or selling beyond rudos and good guys, but then Kimala would enter and then this would just change pace into him doing 80's nerve pinches and throwing around everyone. To be fair to the guy he still landed his signature spots well and did his job pretty well, so you can't truly complain a whole lot about him just chilling here. All in all a decent showing; nothing really that interesting match-wise beyond a big old spotfest, but it's a fucking Giant Kimala/Toryumon crossover, logic isn't on the table here. RANK: Good Johnny Smith v Shiro Koshinaka (same day) Contender for the worst match out of this entire Deep Dive? I'd sure say so. We're now at the point where I have to talk about Shiro Koshinaka's All-Japan run, and this is the point where I also have to warn you to not do what I did because all of his matches suck ass. I'm not sure how given Koshi will do just fine afterwards, it's just for some strange reason he just had zero effort in the tank for anything to do with AJPW in the slightest. Perhaps he thought the promotion was going to die anyway and just wanted to get it over with. These two are also contending for the chance to get the Triple Crown, which has been vacated since Kobashi left the company; yep, Johnny Smith was a contender for a Triple Crown once against a guy who hadn't even wrestled in the company since the mid 80's. Rough times. The other matches included around this time will mostly be of this same tournament as well. Both men exchange a lot of rest holds and basically wrestle like they'd do in the 70's for the most part, only this isn't the good 70's stuff where it seems like there's a tangible struggle or a pace made with these, it just feels like they have absolutely zero ideas and just want to hang around on the mat. This only changes right at the end with a elbow drop by Smith and a diving hip attack by Koshinaka, followed up by a another hip attack and a powerbomb for the three. Painfully boring and slow: I'd give the technical work a pass if it meant anything or went anywhere but it didn't, it's just all rest holds to follow rest holds. Maybe there's a dramatic plot I didn't see in the clipped 3 or 4 minutes missing, but this was rough to get through in the first place. Koshinaka looks terrible, Smith wasn't exactly doing much to aid with that given he basically just acted like a complete ragdoll for Koshi to bang his ass into until he lost. I mean I wouldn't be happy jobbing after a decade+ of loyalty while some random Jr gets to beat me purely off his name-value alone, but still..... RANK: Forgettable Steve Williams v Toshiaki Kawada (same day) Five or so years ago this would've been a wonder of a match. Things have changed, however, and these two simply aren't the same as they once were. These two have some good intensity from the start: Williams slaps Kawada very early on and they stare daggers into each other before going into a slap fight which Kawada edges out thanks to his kicks. Williams recognises the threat and immediately starts to work over said legs to take away his advantage. When Kawada tries to get up, he gets blasted with closed fist strikes and chops to cut him down. The gameplan is to obviously keep Kawada down and work him on the mat not allowing him to pull out any of his signature bombastic offence, something Williams sticks to until he's confident he can hit his big plays. This is remarkably smart from a guy who's best matches were known for just being him steamrolling people and dropping them on his head, and it does show; ever so slightly; that he's threatened by Kawada's reputation. There's a great selling bit as per standard by Kawada that has him just crumble to the mat after getting socked in the face: looked brutal. He also gets over the danger of the Backdrop Driver by doing anything to get out of it, trying rope breaks and back-elbows as soon as it gets attempted and refusing to give him any headroom to measure it up. Eventually Kawada escapes out of one too many of these attempts and lands multiple Gamengiri shots to take him out of the tournament with a three count, not even needing a powerbomb to finish the job. By far not the best match these two have had together: it was obvious that both men had gone down a couple of levels since they last met: but it's a intense affair that has some close calls and some great strikes and played perfectly with the fact that these two knew the other so very well. Kawada really gets over some close calls and is in general a super solid talent here with his strikes. Williams is a lot slower now and can't really do a ton beyond strikes and his big power moves, as I've said before that's not really a bad thing given it just makes his more lumbering presence something to really pay attention to as opposed to him flinging himself all over the place. RANK: Good Jinsei Shinzaki v Stan Hansen (16.10.2000) Clipped a decent chunk: this shows maybe 3 minutes of the original 14 minute bout. Hansen gets his lariat arm worked over (because EVERY Hansen match is paced around this since the 70's) and while Hansen tries to get one of those off at points, Shinzaki is determined to keep him from landing it as he knows it'll end the match and keeps throwing him in armbars. As you can imagine, this is not exactly the most engaging format for a match and certainly wasn't very good either. Finish has Hansen block a Pele kick by Shinzaki and hit a surprise lariat for the three count. Barely a match to talk about here, and Hansen as we'd see in the Tenryu bout was struggling to do a lot in the ring by this point (even more so than the Baba/Tsuruta nostalgia tag Hansen of the late 90's) so I'm not really annoyed about not seeing the rest of the match as it was probably a lot of rest holds and heatless arm work. Not very good beyond the lariat at the end. RANK: Forgettable Genichiro Tenryu vs. Mike Barton (18.10.2000) Clipped drastically. Barton scores a gut punch and goes for a weird knee drop, but he lands on Tenryu like a regular splash? Idk. Tenryu would eventually score the win with a lariat to next to zero heat, basically just silence. Maybe it's better that this wasn't shown as the crowd were super not into it, even for the finish, probably because they clearly know that Mike Barton vs Genichiro Tenryu is not as interesting as Tenryu vs Kawada, making the winner painfully obvious. Maybe just a hunch. RANK: ??? ========== end of part 2 It probably wasn't, but those two minutes were so epic that I had to give Smith his due, especially given he wasn't exactly doing a whole lot else in 2000 that was that outstanding. Tag League stuff from my first watch was mostly clipped bad, but there's some real entertaining gems in there including some amazing Tenryu/Fujiwara antics alongside Araya getting his first big moments in the company, so it's definitely worth the trouble

Other Deep Dive stuff Introduction This is a kinda/sorta continuation of my AJPW series from 1995 all the way to the start of 2000, mostly covering the weird/interesting matches that others may have overlooked or simply not known about from surface viewing. I was comfortable with ranking that stuff because I had pretty good experience watching and grading that material, but AJPW in 2000 was WAY different in scope so I really wanted to just watch every single thing possible from those extremely rough 6 months when nearly all of the roster had left and guys like Wolf Hawkfield and Giant Kimala were left to keep the boat floating. This is a era that historically has been spoken of as the company's lowest ever point and one which almost killed it stone dead. Money-wise this is true, but was it really THAT bad in terms of match quality? I'm going to try to find out the answer. This will involve reviews for pretty much every All-Japan match between the first event (the first Super Power Series, which took place on the first of July) to the end of the year. Some have so little footage on them (like legit sub-30 seconds) that reviewing them would be a waste of time, but I'll try to fit in as much as humanly possible regardless. I'll be generally ranking them like this: 1. Great (MOTYC/highlight of project) 2. Good (worth watching) 3. Decent (average quality generally, not a must-watch) 4. Forgettable (don't watch) This is more of a formality so anyone who's skimming these can get a quick synopsis of what to watch and not to watch without having to read through paragraphs. Like with any ranking system this isn't really anything refined, so always try to make your own mind up on a match if you are really that curious about it. ======================= Giant Kimala v Scorpio (01.07.2000) At least 2 Cold Scorpio is still getting paychecks while AJPW burns, lol. This match really isn't that interesting for what's left of it, which is only a couple of minutes. It's a bit of a shame given Kimala did have a legitimately really fun match with Rob Van Dam a couple of years back and this could've been close to that had this been given more attention. It didn't, so erm, this is what it is. Scorpio hits the moonsault but Kimala gets out of the way and hits a running splash for the three count. Impossible to tell if this was good or not, so I'm just going to leave it as inconclusive. RANK: ??? Maunakea Mossman v Yuto Aijima (same day) Kea is the real winner out of everyone on this first event. He's the only fairly big name alongside Kawada/Fuchi to stay loyal and as such he's gonna be rewarded with a huge push moving forward. This match really isn't a indicator of that though as it's against Yuto Aijima, a really quite crappy worker who inexplicably will end up working pretty much everywhere until getting a retirement match against the likes of Jun Akiyama, Akitoshi Saito, etc. I don't know how he got to that from this, credit to him for grinding out a career from pretty much zero natural talent. This was essentially a semi-squash as it went three minutes and Yuto more or less got some weak offence in before Mossman ate his lariat and finished him with some kicks + Hawaiian Crunch. Pretty nothing match. RANK: Forgettable Jinsei Shinzaki & Johnny Smith v Shigeo Okumura & Yoshiaki Fujiwara (same day) Oof the growing pains hurt in this one. This is one of the first shows without the Pillars or basically 98% of the roster, so erm, these are who's left; a bunch of freelancers and some occasional AJPW guys. We only get around about four to five minutes of this on tape and what we do end up seeing is pretty standard. Shinzaki still does all of his spots bit for bit like you'd expect as Okumura jobs his heart out for everyone, eventually falling to the Gokuraku-Gatame submission after two powerbombs off Shinzaki to boot. Nothing to really rank here beyond the footage left over, not enough for a proper rating sadly. Smith and Fujiwara not even getting a look-in bar some occasional brawling is rather unfortunate. RANK: ??? Masanobu Fuchi v Toshiaki Kawada (same day) Kawada comes into this one with a "Fight for Tomorrow" shirt on, so you know shit is real. I always seen this as a middle finger to what NOAH were promising. NOAH was offering this huge, high-budget high-production wrestling, a continuation of the excesses of Kings Road that Misawa had spearheaded during the 90's. In response, these two went out and wrestled a minimalistic, hard-hitting yet simple wrestling match all about Fuchi as the only remaining core from the Baba-era 70's against the next generation. Fuchi is obviously never going to win this and I think he knows he can't so he drags this down to the only place where that might change: the mat. In a way this is them showing that the days of old (Fuchi's 70's style mat-wangling) simply will not cut it anymore in this new AJPW: they've moved on from the past, they don't need what the Pillars were building at this point. Fuchi tries to invoke the past further more by throwing cheap shots and trying to bully the guy like in those early 90's Tsuruta tags; Kawada's not that guy anymore though. He's not the punching bag that had to struggle in New Gen tags, he's THE guy now and he's not taking any shit from this asshole, so any attempt to skirt the rules gets answered with some pretty good aggression by Kawada. You really feel like Fuchi's whole gameplan has been utterly exposed in the first five minutes and now all he can really do is take the beating that he's had coming to him for a good while. Now as much as I like Fuchi, he never quite is able to get those peak reactions: maybe that's to do with the crowd, overexposed to him mostly though his status as a undercarder/Baba six-man tag guy in the mid to late 90's, maybe that's just Fuchi's relatively "safe" ring work that doesn't really include any explosiveness to it. Either way, he's not quite got the chops to get this to a fever pitch which is something the match really needed. Both men are still great; but there's that missing X-factor to this that just bugs me out when I'm trying to get into it. Kawada's shoot-style flirtations continue with lots of cross-armbreakers, rear naked chokes, etc. It makes for a more fleshed out Dangerous K as opposed to the more generic kick-happy version he can at times snooze into being. The two wanted to show that AJPW's hierarchy of talent was still a thing post-Pillar era and well they accomplished that pretty conclusively I'd say. Wild Kawada is put over THIS much yet will only hold the Triple Crown once proper three years later. This is by far one of the better matches of the year and pretty much a must-watch for the era despite lacking that crowd heat to really make it special. Regardless of how weird it seems, this match was essential to establish Dangerous K as the ace and to redefine Fuchi from his earlier work and into his next role as the elder statesmen of the company. RANK: Good Masanobu Fuchi v Shigeo Okumura (02.07.2000) Shigeo Okumura! More known for his insane politicking in CMLL as a agent and talent these days, back here Okumura's just a undercarder that'll do not a whole lot bar job in his years in AJPW. Fuchi's chest is still red raw from the beating yesterday by Mr K yet he's all up to get the new guys over anyway, what a nice chap. We only get a few minutes of this though so it's mostly Okumura in control until Fuchi manages to impressively counter the guy by catching his arm for a inverted double wrist lock, making him tap-out pretty easily. Not much to say about this bar it being a enjoyable Fuchi opener. RANK: Decent Giant Kimala v Wolf Hawkfield (same day) Clipped slightly: we only see five minutes of this bout in action. Hawkfield scores a top rope shoulder press and works over Kimala until he counters with a running neckbreaker and a rolling senton. He tries to go for the three but Hawkfield is able to kick out and then counters him when he tries to go to the top rope for some reason. Another top rope move in the form of a generic splash finishes things off. Not the most eventful and barely a match in of itself, complete filler. Kimala's just not cooking with much by this point. RANK: Forgettable Jinsei Shinzaki v Scorpio (same day) Now HERE'S a match at least worth talking about, and we thankfully get a few minutes to showcase the two. Scorpio looks pretty damn young when you consider what he'll look like in just a few years but his apparent biggest vice (crack cocaine!) probably had something to do with that. As much as you might want to see a Shinzaki/Scorpio matchup as this really cool matchup between two guys with very innovative high-spots and tricks, sadly this was not it. Scorpio was overshooting on his big spots and Shinzaki was making him look like shit by kicking out of his moonsault at 1 and generally not being very cooperative. Scorpio immediately makes him take a proper 2-count right after for that as a dig. They also botched what I think was supposed to be a Frankensteiner counter to Scorpio's own powerbomb as Shinzaki shifts his weight wrong and they end up badly crumpling as a result. Shinzaki basically just says "fuck that" and rather than repeating the spot he just does his finish for the win. This was....pretty bad, which is crazy to say when you have two typically really reliable workers going at it. Maybe it was the fact they'd never faced off before, maybe it's a language barrier, maybe it was just bad luck. Either way this wasn't good sadly. RANK: Forgettable Johnny Smith v Steve Williams (same day) Clipped to be about nine minutes long. Smith has always been known as a fairly mediocre to decent worker as a guy trying to cash in on the British boom in Japan with Davey Boy and Dynamite Kid: he's not exactly amazing, especially now that he's getting on a bit and isn't far from retirement, even if he is fairly reliable in his role as a forever midcarder. Williams is a few steps (those steps are quite large though regardless) from what he was at the start of the 90's and with Gordy. Smith does turn on the gas a bit with a top rope dropkick and a tornado DDT but a sloppy neckbreaker botch doesn't help any. Williams takes over and does a bunch of power moves that look fairly fine. Smith blocks the big Oklahoma Stampede and smartly holds on to his opponent's leg to evade the Doctor Bomb, Williams just smacks him across the head and smashes him with a backdrop driver anyway for the three. These guys don't work the best together and there are some noticeable botches but this was perfectly suitable for a regular bout, no real complaints. RANK: Decent George Hines & Mike Barton v Maunakea Mossman & Toshiaki Kawada (same day) Cut to around about 6 minutes. Tenryu has been allowed back into All Japan after more than a decade of Baba-induced exile. The seal has been opened, the curse has been lifted. Sadly the negative Karma for this is massive: having George Hines and Mike Barton be a threat to the ace of the company. This is also cursed in other ways that we'll talk about very soon here. The action for this was mostly by the numbers, with Kawada being the big dog that Hines and co have to double team to put down, namely with fairly decent work on their part as a powerhouse duo with some tricks in their bag, Hines is quick on his feet and all that. Anyway, the pace is solid, everyone is moving around well, Mossman is slowly getting better and better with every match....and then the finish goes wrong. Kawada goes for his typical Gamengiri to the back of the head and this gets the three count on Hines: it's a bit stiff but hey, that's generally how he does it. Kawada seems a bit surprised by the fact that this is a three count, and even slaps him on the chest afterwards, almost to see if he's awake or not. He's not. Kawada immediately knows Hines is out and the guys come in to make sure he's ok. Kawada even stays long after until Hines gets dragged out by about three guys holding him. So yeah, AJPW is in the pits AND they keep messing up matches! Not a great start. Anyway, from what I seen this was relatively solid for a main event, even if Hines and Barton being at this level is very forced and not at all natural. It's the best they can do without guys like Tenryu, and yeah, they REALLY needed that to change because this was not gonna be enough. RANK: Decent Scorpio v SHINOBI (09.07.2000) Scorpio fights SHINOBI, known for..... well nothing really, he's basically just a indie/lucha undercarder with some random appearances here and there. His match is so forgettable that we skip everything up to the end, which is Scorpio hitting a nice moonsault and 450 splash combo for the win. Nothing to say about this one: too short to judge, especially with only a minute of footage. RANK: ??? Jinsei Shinzaki v Yuto Aijima (same day) Shinzaki goes up against Yuto Aijima, who was hyped up in prior showcases as a big deal. I think management legitimately did think he'd be a get for them in the long-run with his unique rugged appearance and admittedly decent lariat, but he just seems like a bit of a bad prospect here despite his relative greenness on a big stage. Shinzaki dominates Aijima for the most part, gives him no room to do anything, gets all of his spots in, and then makes him tap out with a modified Red Ink submission. Basically just a squash match but Shinzaki looked great here so I'll give it a considerable bonus based on that alone. RANK: Decent Johnny Smith & Yuki Ishikawa v Masanobu Fuchi & Shigeo Okumura (same day) We miss out on nearly 15 minutes of potential awesome Ishikawa/Fuchi action due to clipping, ugh. We still get a fragment of that in what's left though, with the two battling on the mat as Fuchi mostly can't handle the snappiness and speed of his younger opponent. Johnny Smith does his typical dropkick/kip-up/lariat, but gets caught with a back suplex by Fuchi in a fun alternation of his usual routine. It was cool that they were trying to at least semi-push Okumura as he beat up on Smith for a minute or so with some generic albeit completely competent offence. He tries for his own top rope dropkick however sadly Smith's been spamming that move for 10+ years now so he definitely knows how to dodge it as well. He beats on Oku with a impressive piledriver into his typically weird bad British Fall: takes way, way too long to do and generally doesn't look that impressive (especially when guys like CM Punk were doing it where it looked even worse somehow) but that's the finish, amazingly? This seemed to be solid but with so much cut, it's hard to judge as anything more than average despite having some pretty nice changes in the formula for these kind of undercard matchups. RANK: Decent Maunakea Mossman & Toshiaki Kawada v Mohammed Yone & Yoshiaki Fujiwara (same day) PWFG vs AJPW? Sort of? It's a bit late for that. We got about 10 minutes of this left and hey, it's actually pretty good! Fujiwara and Kawada do some pseudo-shoot style grappling (alongside Fuji just laughing off K's kicks while sticking on a double wrist lock and socking him in the face with a punch, which was funny) we get some good heat between the two as well that's pretty solid, with Fuji managing to pull Kawada from his usual comfort zone in places. Yone is mostly the whipping boy as the AJPW faithful focus on him and.....yeah it's pretty much just that with some minor Fujiwara interactions as Mossman just goes though all of his spots, hits the Hawaiian Crusher and wins, basically. It's a clear and focused attempt to get Mossman as over as humanly possible as a new star going forward, something that will become very obvious as the year goes forward. Again, the clipping is pretty harsh here and we do miss out on a lot of the interactions that I think would've made this a little bit better than what we seen. I mean even Yone, who I historically just super dislike looked fine here with his leaner look and focus on varied strikes instead of mindless lariats and bad heavyweight shtick. It's a knowing look into AJPW barely staying afloat and what they were trying to do to fix that; even if it wasn't perfect, these sort of slapdash matches could at times be real solid when you had the proper pieces in place. RANK: Good Ryuji Hijikata v Shigeo Okumura (11.07.2000) Cut down massively to a few minutes! What we see isn't that interesting; just pretty generic opener-level stuff between the two until Okumura slaps on a Octopus Stretch and finishes things off. Man, Ryuji has fell off a fair bit from his Battlarts days if this is anything to go by lol. Not much to say. RANK: Forgettable Giant Kimala & Scorpio v Mike Barton & Wolf Hawkfield (same day) 20 minutes of these four in action? Hmm. Thankfully we only get a couple of minutes left over from the official VHS copy. Kimala is no longer wearing his tribal gear, instead having a pair of shorts that say "K" on them. What could this mean? Dangerous K? Is that what the K means there after all these years? Anyway this is just here to get over the impending Barton/Steele duo that'll have some pretty good matches in the future. Now? Not so much. Scorpio bumps like a trooper for the two as they throw in some double team offence; Barton finishes things solo with sloppy stuff, Scorpio flopping after a right hand, few quick Scorpio counters until Barton throws the dude in the air for a big Ace Crusher for the pin. This wasn't really anything super remarkable (especially with the fact that this went on for 20 MINUTES and 80% of that got chopped) but it was fairly enjoyable for what it was and Scorpio is always a treat, even when he's stuck with all of these lumpy heavyweights. RANK: Decent Masanobu Fuchi v Yoshiaki Fujiwara (same day) This was aired with a couple of minutes, was caught in full via camcorder so we're be looking at that here. Fuchi and Fujiwara for 30 minutes of technical work.... in the 2000's doesn't sound like the GOAT match of all time, but this wasn't actually bad at all, outside of some stalling at the start and unnecessary ring work. I love the intensity that goes on here: Fuchi tries to play it cheeky with some toying around but Fujiwara immediately grabs on multiple armbars despite Fuchi's best technical attempts to escape and this plays into the rest of the match, as Fuchi now has to wrestle with one good arm while Fujiwara does some vicious limb work to it. Fujiwara is pretty brutal as well during this, wrapping Fuchi's arm up in the ropes and just not letting go, stomping on it, kicking it, basically anytime he can get his hands on Fuchi, he's working the arm in some manner with some cool stuff. Fujiwara's aggression allows Fuchi to get openings as well: both men struggle with a cross armbreaker but Fuchi is able to roll him up and get some stiff slaps in with his other arm, and manages to get a free leg to grind his face in as well. Not withstanding later when Fuchi's just booting the dude in the face multiple times for the sake of it. Second half has Fuchi slap on a very long STF/leg vine submission, as well as using his free arm to also make sure Fujiwara can't get to the ropes and when he inevitably does anyway he manages to escape a second attempt with a very good ground to standing transition via a monkey flip as per Fujiwara spots tend to include. Not to be outdone, Fuchi focuses in on Fujiwara's leg, using the ring post multiple times to damage it further. From then on in, Fujiwara limps through proceedings, respecting the limb work even after the bell rings. Latter half has Fuchi and Fujiwara exchange leg and arm holds with Fuchi getting a really good Achilles Tendon wrapped in, even arching a little for dramatic effect. Fuchi has his opponent on the ropes a few times but Fujiwara uses closed fists to take back any lost ground as well as choking the life out of him. Dude nails him with like at least 10 headbutts in a row yet Fuchi won't quit and nails some big slaps of his own. He pulls through a few attempts to make him tap as well as expertly reversing a Fujiwara Armbar into a sleeper hold until the bell sounds for the time limit draw before he could've potentially got the win. This is a pretty well hidden gem: it's not just two old guys beating the crap out of each other, it's also a super basic, albeit very well done technical showcase by two masters of the game really grinding things down into a simplistic rhythm. Solid showcase that you could only really get out of this weird age of All Japan. I only wish we'd got it sooner when these two were more much mobile, especially Fujiwara. RANK: Good Steve Williams v Mohammed Yone (same day) Steve Williams could still bring the goods and this further shows that as the case despite no longer being the more workrate/smark favourite from the 90's. Yone still bumps big for the guy anyway but Steve's got a good niche as being a slower heavyweight that just throws people around, even if it means he has to eat a few shots in return to get his hands on someone, making for a dynamic that works regardless of a helpful opponent or not. Him hitting Yone with a Dangerous Backdrop right smack on top the turnbuckle was a surprisingly safe spot for how impactful it looked especially with Yone selling it like he just lost consciousness right afterwards with a Battlarts-lite flavour to it. There's some good struggle between the two as Yone tries using a lot of speed to counter and escape yet he's still pretty much helpless to deal with Williams just running him over until he can finally put the spirited lad down. Good sprint of a match; you have to wonder what Yone would've looked like if he hadn't went to NOAH and instead stayed here. Would he have been a bigger deal? I'm not sure, but these sort of matches were way more engaging than what they had him doing over there by a mile and a half. RANK: Decent Jinsei Shinzaki & Yuki Ishikawa vs Maunakea Mossman & Toshiaki Kawada (same day) Reviewed this already. RANK: Good Masanobu Fuchi v Shigeo Okumura II (23.07.2000) Few minutes left on this (namely the beginning and most of the middle) but for what it's worth I thought it was better than expected. Mileage for Fuchi can vary but I thought he did a decent job working the opener as a experienced and confident vet, easily countering a German suplex into a double wrist lock transition and generally keeping control over the match. Despite Okumura getting over with some spirited resistance he's eventually put out with a limp flying kick and big backdrop.....or so you think, but nope! He kicks out of that as well. Few limp dropkicks into a second huge backdrop finally finishes things off proper. Real nothing match that was mostly a Fuchi squash, hey Fuchi's pretty good at those after about two decades or so anyway, who knew? Okumura bumps super well for the guy and it gets to the point where even Fuchi was checking up on him post-match to see if he was alright which says a lot all things considered. RANK: Decent SHIIBA v SHINOBI (same day) Clipped to about 2 or so minutes. I'm gonna be honest I have no fucking idea what was going on here, it's just a cut into SHIIBA doing a big elaborate drum routine while SHINOBI looks at him and kicks the drum over like a uber heel. It felt like a weird DDT skit where you just have to go with it because it's all meta-jokes that you'd only know if you were Japanese, it's silly. Cut to SHI doing a weird leaping headbutt off the top rope and things seem interesting...but then the two just have really sloppy exchanges that pull you right out again. Things finish quick with a snappy SHI modified German suplex, pin-fall and we're done. This would be SHINOBI's last proper All Japan match as this German suplex was seemingly botched/he got injured earlier, suffering from what appears to be a shoulder injury which pretty much ended his career bar a final battle royal appearance he'd do next year alongside two self-produced indie shows before vanishing into the mist. I'm not going to pretend like he was any good but no one likes to see that in a wrestling ring. Pretty sad and weird end to All Japan's original experimentation with lucharesu (though Ryota Chikuzen will do a 2001 tour of the company with the SHIIBA gimmick, it's the last we'll see of it). Can't really rate this knowing what was going on here. RANK: ??? Giant Kimala v Yuto Aijima (same day) Yeah this stunk. I'm not going to pretend like these two actually had a five star classic, that's just insulting your intelligence. They still showed about 4 or so minutes of it though for some reason. Kimala is gassed up but still bumps and jumps for Aijima's stuff fairly reliably until he lands a flying clothesline. Kimala lets loose with shitty forearms before hitting a splash into his signature rolling senton. Also not enough, he then gets the crowd hyped for a classic Kimala splash that gets the fall and the match. I mean it wasn't terrible or anything but good lord it's sad seeing what used to be one of the most acclaimed companies in the world stick matches like this up for paying crowds, rough times. RANK: Forgettable George Hines & Scorpio v Mike Barton & Wolf Hawkfield (same day) 5 minutes left on this one and it's the first actual decent outing of this entire card, who knew? Scorpio is doing sick spots as per standard and the beefy Barton/Wolf pair are starting to get a grove on together as a unit with some custom double-team moves for the occasion. Hines almost fucks up bumping for a double flapjack as he doesn't keep his back straight, almost going headfirst into the mat, yikes! Nice double top rope move as we get a Wolf splash into Barton elbow for another broken up near fall. Hines and co decide "nah we can do a cooler version" and we then get a Hines diving headbutt into a Scorpio 450, which was pretty damn flush and way too cool for a All-Japan undercard. Finish is amazing: Scorpio is out on the apron, Bart misses a lariat and gets hit with a forearm to the back of the head. Scorpio flings himself off and gets hit with a Barton Ace Cutter out of nowhere! Actually amazing to see a Orton-tier spot involving a cutter before he was even a wrestler lol. That's the finish of course, and wow, this was quite good. Granted there's next to no selling and it's almost all spots, but shit I would've liked to have seen a bit more of this given how well everything was going here. Solid stuff. RANK: Good Johnny Smith v Yoshiaki Fujiwara (same day) We only get a few minutes of this and my god it was probably the best Johnny Smith has looked in years if ever. I mean it's Fujiwara, expected, but these two just clicked in the footage I seen of this, it was unreal. Smith struggling for the back to snap on some brutal German suplexes, Fuji furiously trying to get on a submission or even to slip away onto the ropes....like it was super well done just to build up a simple move, the levels of struggle involved were really well produced. Fuji had zero escape as Smith shifted weight and used his legs to make sure the leverage never went Fuji's way, so he was kinda stuck and had to turtle for his life. It's understandable why Smith would be so relentless given his opponent could snap him in any other angle, just wish we got the build-up for this so it would mean more. Smith hits a second German and shoves his forearm in the face of Fuji for the near fall. He tries for a top rope dropkick and hits it for the usual kip-up, but Smith's a dummy so instead of going right into more suplexes he tries for a lariat, because that's how his routine usually goes, right? Big mistake. Fuji grabs his swinging arm for a easy namesake armbar and a equally easy tapout. Fujiwara is such a dick post match, smiling like he was never in any trouble. Anyway this was a few minutes of some solid wrestling. Do you know these two ALSO had a 30 minute time-limit draw next year....and that it wasn't filmed at all? Sigh. If Smith had these matches properly recorded by anyone he'd probably be a top 200 wrestler by now. RANK: Good Jinsei Shinzaki v Steve Williams (same day) Super rare match here, and it shows: this is just seven minutes of what was a 15+ minute bout, pretty severe clipping there. Both guys start with stiffing each other with some pretty hard strikes, and then Williams dumps Shinzaki outside with a gorilla press, which looked pretty nasty as he'd slam on his side on a nearby table. Match later picks up with Shinzaki knocking Williams down with a few Enzuigiri attempts. He tries to fall up with a shoulder press from the top rope but it's pretty obvious that Williams isn't going to be tagged by it by how long it takes for the setup lol, and he dodges and gets a Doctor Bomb off for a close two. A powerslam doesn't get the job done either. Shinzaki reverses a Backdrop attempt into a close pin, but Williams overpowers and goes for another: Shinzaki gets up almost at once afterwards but flops to the ground, which looked pretty silly. I get this spot is supposed to be dramatic and one based on someone essentially pushing their body with raw fighting spirit, it's just that the actual application of the spot has almost always looked really stupid, and Shinzaki doing it here was pretty much just as if not worse given how he was doing it. A last Backdrop and a scary looking bump into Shinzaki's neck ends the match. From what I've seen, both guys were pretty gassed throughout the match that was shown, which seems to imply that the cut footage was probably a lot of downtime and rest spots. Either way, it's near impossible to grade this with how little we do see, but the action of what was shown was fine, so I can't really grade it beyond a average rating. Table spot was crazy though. RANK: Decent Genichiro Tenryu & Toshiaki Kawada v Maunakea Mossman & Stan Hansen (same day) Mossman still comes out to his old theme but with a new hairdo and all black gear it's clear his impending push is coming in more than one way. The people want to see Tenryu...so we get Kawada and Mossman doing amateur wrestling for a few minutes, of course. It's not bad actually but definitely not what the fans want, though a fairly fiery striking exchange gets the crowd a bit more interested. Hansen even at this point has these great little tendencies: when Tenryu matches in and starts throwing shots to him on the apron he doesn't just sell a bit and then reset, he gets in there and starts just throwing hands back like you would in a actual fight. We even get Hansen headbutting, which he sells wonderfully afterwards because, you know, headbutts hurt on both sides in a actual fight. As I said, Hansen's just a supreme little things worker, even with his back wrecked beyond belief and a near incapable ability to bump he's still able to play with the crowd here as both a hard-hitter but also a old cowboy riding with little left in the tank, spending most of this on the backend of beatings and having to use every little scrappy trick, dirty or otherwise, to survive. Tenryu comes in to beat up Mossman during a fairly awkward sequence with Kawada and they do quite well; Kea has talked about how Tenryu was one of his best opponents and teachers, showing him about how to pace himself during wrestling matches, intensity, etc. You really get that from here as Tenryu eats lots of hard shots from the younger opponent but always answers back with his own, really dragging any advantage out and hooking the crowd big when it does happen, rather than just going tit for tat over and over ad nauseam while the crowd just sits and watches. Hansen gets his signature outside brawl and throws sick punches, always a treat. The middle is mostly a control segment with Kawada doing all of the selling, so as you can imagine this was quite solid! Mossman even gets some good fire scrapping with him on the mat, though can't get a win despite even hitting his greatest hits. Tenryu runs in for some nasty shots, Mossman does the spit sell for some chops in particular that just look rough as anything. Brutal German suplex from him thanks to some Hansen assistance, he teases another Smasher on Tenryu before getting double-teamed. Road to finish has Hansen interrupt a 53-Sai but get wrecked off a great double team kick combo but just manages to recover to tag Tenryu off a Western Lariat, which balances the books and more or less leaves Mossman by himself. A fresh Kawada comes in to pick off Mossman and despite some spirited exchanges the latter is just way too fatigued to do much about it; he has no strength left bar kicking out and no selling a few times before a powerbomb firmly stops him for the pin. This is a great tag match that firmly puts over Mossman as a rising star, but also showcases everyone else in their respective roles, with Hansen still being a threat alongside Kawada as ace and Tenryu as his biggest challenge to date. The pace is kept strong despite some messy moments and all in all it works for what it tries to do. It's not a match you could stick tons of GIF's on, but it is one that you can watch a few times over and appreciate the amount of detail that the four try to work in. RANK: Good Masanobu Fuchi v Yuto Aijima (20.08.2000) Oh boy my favourite, Aijima matches. Sigh. This was Fuchi trying to carry this lump to something and succeeding somewhat, even if that something was rather boring. Fuchi dominates with basic unimpactful work (AKA stuff this guy can't botch or muck up) Aijima gets up to do a powerslam and a lariat before Fuchi slams some great backdrops to make the dude look like ass before tapping him out with the vintage rookie-killer, AKA the single leg Boston Crab. Nothing opener that was mostly there to showcase Fuchi in his new role as rookie stretcher. RANK: Forgettable Damien 666 & Halloween v Super Calo & Super Parka (same day) This is shown in a dramatic and super edited way, so the amount of actual match we get out of the whole slice is pretty small; just a few cool spots and that's around about it for anything worth mentioning from myself. 666 does a cool double springboard arm drag, Halloween lands a big double dropkick, but Calo is able to steal a win with a top rope Frankensteiner on Hallo to get the fall. Post-match has M2K show up to talk trash to build for their mini-feud to come, thus starting the beginning of more lucha stuff being involved with All-Japan cards. Nothing much else to add, it's more or less a competent lucha spotfest for what was shown. RANK: Forgettable Sabu v Shigeo Okumura (same day) Basically a typical Sabu match, so tolerance varies depending on how much you like watching those. Sabu was also working this at half-speed as well, kinda just waiting to do his spots. He smashes his neck off the guardrail when he misses a chair-assisted plancha to the outside and Okumura takes over with headlocks and lumpy WAR-style offence, so forearms and slams mostly. There's a cool (ish) spot where Sabu dodges a chair swing by sliding his legs between Okumura to trip him up before then doing a shitty Arabian Skullcrusher that he fell basically ass first on; you can hear him groan afterwards if you don't believe me. Good Triple Jump Moonsault gets a near fall, Sabu is too occupied with chair arrangement to notice Okumura recovering and trying for a superplex, but failing. Sabu grabs the chair for a fucking vicious shot to the back of Okumura's head before finishing things with a Arabian Facebuster for the finish. As I said, if you love Sabu shit then this'll work, but even then it's a fairly low-end Sabu performance with a generic baby-blue Okumura, so you know he's getting jobbed out and...yep, he does. RANK: Decent Genichiro Tenryu, Nobutaka Araya & Toshiaki Kawada v Johnny Smith, Mike Barton & Stan Hansen (same day) This almost felt like a cool 90's All Japan main event bar Araya and Tenryu being here. Also cool to see more of Hansen's last months working, even if he doesn't do a whole lot. Araya is cool with his moonsaults and fat-guy work, even if he's by far the weakest link here. I don't get Smith no-selling a full on lariat to do a German suplex though, seemed awkward looking back at it. Hansen can't work for longer than maybe two minutes or so by this point and most assuredly can't bump big, but he uses that smartly to lead into the other big guys as this huge old vet that can knock people around and takes a lot to properly put down. Him and Tenryu bring the hate with scrappy stuff, but it's arguably Barton with his sharp strikes that gets more out of the same exchange, putting him over by having Kawada need to assist to allow Tenryu to get the advantage against the big puncher. Him and Kawada do this awesome double Enzuigiri and Kawada leads with his usual mannerisms, inevitably having to eat the bumps when Barton digs out of the hole with a cutter and forcing everyone to get in as a result. Hansen strolls in to deliver a sneaky Western Lariat to Kawada during the commotion, allowing Barton the upset with his gut punch and powerbomb to steal the win over the guy in one of his first big victories. Not bad! Everyone here mostly is on B-show mode, so we got sneak peaks at feuds and matches but not a lot of substance, especially with Kawada barely showing up until the very end. I definitely think this is one of the weaker main events at the time, namely because of how many people are here who are either limited, out of their prime, or just not capable of a great showing at this point and time. Heat was definitely solid, it just didn't translate into much worth talking about. RANK: Decent ========== end of part 1

Hijikata has always been kinda of a mid-card act: technically competent, a Battlarts vet with tons of experience; yet always struggling to engage with his bland charisma and look and generally held back by his lack of depth as a worker in regard to that. This jr heavyweight title shot is one of his bigger accomplishments all things considered, and it's a match that I generally quite enjoyed for what it was trying to do. I liked Kashin trying to mess with him early on with goofy antics and just getting his ass kicked afterwards for his troubles after underestimating his striking advantage. Kashin takes the advantage in the mat-work; I love how much he makes his opponent uncomfortable here: knees in the neck, raking the eyes, pulling the hair, shoving his hand into his neck and squeezing: all designed to disorientate and get out of his more straight-laced submission attempts, turning the match into more of a fight than a pure-grappling affair. There's a roughness to this that I actually somewhat appreciate at times as Kashin can't always get his usual routine in and has to struggle around some fairly decent roundhouse kicks and mat work and while the two don't work really smoothly with each other, that actually tends to benefit more than harm the sequences here as they feel more gritty and well-earned as opposed to just going from a to b with no struggle. There's a great bit where Kashin tries for his top rope cross armbreaker and Hijikata just takes his head off with a meaty stiff flying kick and a good looking Fisherman Buster that the audience bit for with the near fall. A few bombs later and Kashin eventually takes the win after countering a second attempted Fish Buster into a small package transition before stepping into the armbreaker which nabs him the win. For something that wasn't really anything spot-heavy, I surprisingly enjoyed this a fair deal: Kashin sells and bumps hard for his far less popular opponent, gets the audience pumped up for his near falls and manages to work a logical heel approach, even going out of his comfort zone a few times, and in doing so it's by far one of Hijikata's better non-Battlarts showings given that fact. It's short as well, which for me always tends to make a match better than worse. Solid defence, pretty sturdy Kashin-style performance.

Not shockingly, this kicked ass for what was trying to do. Funaki dominates at the start with some nifty mat-work. Omori isn't much of a grappler so he has to mostly use his strength to power though but that obviously doesn't work as Funaki pulls guard and wangles his way into stuff: there's a great bit where he goes from being in full guard and somehow manages to use the leverage from hooking Omori's arms to then pull him down and into a cross armbreaker out of what was seemingly a safe position. Omori's best shot is to shove his foot into his face and try to escape, which works if only because Funaki gets pissed and starts throwing hard slaps. Omori hits harder, Funaki is more measured, finding ways to get around the striking with submission counters and whatnot so it's not just mindless striking exchanges for once. We also get to see some pretty out there spots with Funaki actually doing dives to the outside. They tease a apron spot as Funaki throws more kicks and Omori tries to set up his Guillotine Driver for big cheers, Funaki flips over his back and tries for a sunset-powerbomb until they end up both going to the outside and Omori landing his Axe Bomber lariat out of the blue. He follows up with two pretty brutal Dragon Suplexes for a near fall in a good sequence. Funaki eventually recovers, landing some more strikes and a random top rope crossbody for his own. Omori takes over again with even more wacky bombs; despite Funaki's best efforts he's not getting anywhere, with Omori even landing another Axe Bomber. The finish was pretty dynamic and fitting given what the two were working with: Omori tries to set up another Bomber, but Funaki is able to dodge and go for a convincingly sound roundhouse to the head out of the blue which ends the match in a flash KO victory. This was pretty solid, and I actually liked that they showcased Omori as not being the underdog yet again (which let's just face it, a lot of his big mainline matches end up being, poor lad just can't help it) instead being confidently ahead with his range of big bombs and stiff strikes outclassing the less seasoned opponent. Funaki despite pulling out the wacky flips and spots couldn't get the job done, forcing him to instead rely on his shoot-style counters to get him the win. Never got particularly "great" for a Carny showing, still fairly solid for a Omori showing post-NOAH and especially so knowing these two will have a drastically less impressive title match next year.

The Mega Powers collide! Both members of SMOP fight for relevance as Hama just came off his Triple Crown upset (and subsequent loss to Minoru Suzuki) and Ake's still stalking around as a former tag champ with Hama. Having lost both of their belts recently they're doing the classic tag-team dissension stuff as the pair have joined separate groups and whatnot. Even with the immense amounts of beef on display, the two do a good job distinguishing their strengths and weaknesses: Hama is smaller and more nimble (well "nimble" wouldn't exactly describe him much at all given his size, but he can do cool small tubby guy stuff like a baseball slide to the outside and whatnot) while Ake is bigger and stronger, generally leading the match when things slow down. You get a lot of the usual sumo spots between the two as they exchange charges, slams, and some surprisingly good exchanges. Hama generally has to sneak in offence by dodging or intercepting Ake's big charges with his own. His usual plan of just taking tons of punishment a-la his Kojima title match doesn't work with a guy like Akebono who can end matches fast, so he has to be a bit more proactive and try to lead with whatever we can. Hama has a good few bits like a running Sliding D on Ake after he dodges a splash, or eating some nasty Ake sumo-chops to the face to then answer with Vader-lite hammer blows and a running DDT. It's about as fast of a sprint as you can get with these two, but they do a good job of working in the sheer impact of their immense size, with every move feeling like a potential big swing in momentum to end the match pretty much on the dot with how much sheer mass is being thrown and slammed around. Nothing feels easily earned, everything laboured. The ending especially with the absolutely insane top rope splash from Akebono for the finish was brutal as anything, Hama's big main event dreams getting literally squished by the far more imposing force. Akebono's never been particularly great at wrestling, but his appeal as a sub-10 to 15 freakshow performer is undeniable and he's a pretty good giant for this kind of match. Hama hadn't completely ballooned in size either and could actually still put on a solid match here and there despite mostly being known for his tag stuff.

Saito as a bald uncooperative karateka is probably his greatest work despite his relative green nature. Hase is his usual awesome self and really gives Saito a lot here despite the fact that he's already worked a match on the same night and could've easily just ran over the guy in a few minutes; he's a unproven WAR guy with barely any rep to speak of, this should've been a squash, but Hase's a nice guy so he wanted to give the guy a fairly strong showing despite the obvious loss. He lets Saito get in his sharp strikes and suplexes and gives that back with his own surprisingly good work around pseudo-shoot style stuff, namely lots of leg submissions or takedowns directed towards grounding Saito away from his best weapons. There are one or two fairly big botches (Saito fucks up going up for a suplex, for example, so they have to awkwardly reset) but honestly the roughness of the match as a whole really adds to what the two were trying to go for here in terms of this being more of a improv scrap than a wrestling match. Saito has great facials as he just pushes through Hase's punishing blows with sheer anger despite obviously being outclassed by the vet. Hase's piledriver into rear naked choke spot definitely rules as does Saito countering the eventual backdrop and going into more sick kicks to the body. Hase's big push at the end as he just easily escapes the single-leg Boston Crab and runs into a sequence of fast slaps might bug some as being a bit too goofy but it works for the frantic nature of the match; Saito's amateur instincts make him commit to a bad submission game rather than strikes, and he's massively punished for that mistake. Hase finishes off with a smooth German suplex + Uranage for the win. Frantic sprint that really got some solid violence out of the usually pretty cool and collected Hase who mostly kept this under control with his assortment of holds and whatnot. Definitely not the cleanest match one could see between the two, but I'd much rather have this intense Saito than the later one that got content working the undercards with a really tiresome formula when he's not in a good spot on the card. This angry Saito that just wants to blast whoever is in front of him with fire and fury is so much more compelling and this match is pretty much perfect proof of that concept in practise kicking ass.

There's also GAORA's defunct AJPW channel which has a massive archive of late Muto-era raw matches and footage. Considering how rare anything from this era is, it's pretty great.

I watched a bit in the past (mostly out of curiosity/friends recommending it) some good showings here and there but overall the style just wasn't for me. Didn't help you had Quack go through his WoS phase and start pretending like he was some godlike grappler. Will give small credit for them hiring Keita Yano for no real reason to do some jobs.....about it for positive stuff I can rattle off.

I found this on AJPW's old Gaora channel on YT (which is long since been defunct) alongside a bunch of gems during a period of time that is infamously hard to get footage from in the first place. This is from their taping of a Taiwan house-show in the finals of a one night tournament; Nishimura got by easily with two fairly short matches while Suwama grinded out two long matches in which he seemingly injured his leg on the second round. I was happily surprised that these two went as hard as they did for a worthless tournament that didn't even matter much. They could've easily stuck on the brakes and coasted, but thankfully this was not the case and we got yet another really good outing from the two. The starting sequences established Nishimura's technical advantages over Suwama who despite his amateur credentials could only sprawl and defend, while Suwama was the stronger of the two that could hit much harder. Nishimura tries to strike exchange with him, inevitably has to go for Suwama's taped up leg with kicks. The spot right after with Nishimura struggling over said leg to try to grab on a flash Cobra Twist was surprisingly compelling as Suwama had to drop to one knee and was subsequently punished with some really mean Dory-style Catch mangling as he struggled to escape. Dude stuck Suwama in a double-wrist toe-hold, how can you not love that? Nishimura kept chaining submissions whenever Suwama would get close to the ropes, eventually one becomes too many and he fails applying his figure four so said ropes are reached. Good starting stuff that established the stakes of the match from the get-go. Good control segment of Suwama trying for strikes while standing up only for his opponent to hammer on his legs with unclean work, dirty breaks, and consistent focus on messing up Suwama's injury for good heat when he couldn't win with shots alone. Nishimura doing the Inoki crab kicks will never not be a awesome spot and Suwama sells it great by just crumbling to pieces as soon as it happens. We get some count out teases as Suwama keeps getting messed up on the apron and struggling to walk around, followed by big top rope knee drops. Second figure four alongside some compelling emotive work as Suwama's buddies and the ref tease calling off the match by throwing in the towel while he just begs them not to do so, cool babyface energy that got a BIG reaction from the crowd, as did him eventually reversing and escaping from the move. The way that they afterwards expertly work up the tension of Suwama trying for a suplex with his busted leg is just masterful, and it pays off as he's finally able to get a lead in this match. Last five minutes were super fun as the two exchanged holds and counters; the ankle lock counter to the spinning toe hold, Nishimura trying to spring back up with one leg to then be answered with a vicious German suplex, etc etc. Suwama finishes the job with a furry of lariats, Nishimura gets one or two near falls with roll-ups before finally being put down with a Last Ride. Again, this was seriously high quality for a random B-show and really showcases why Nishimura even at this point could be a insanely good worker when allowed to actually cook. Suwama spends most of this selling and bumping for control segments and it never feels dull while Nishimura's limb work is super varied and gets over his desperate need to keep the big guy grounded by any means, even if it means bending the rules to do so. I think they did a solid job at working around the story of Suwama's leg injury given he didn't actually do a whole lot here bar sell for a good long while, meaning we really get to see how he handles emoting and getting over the stakes to a mostly unfamiliar crowd. I'd say mission accomplished in that regard considering the great responses they were getting here. Another great showing to add to the list of matches between these two.

I'm fine with this and the inevitably disappointing result of trying to work that kind of style with today's talent if it means we get a mini Hiromi Yagi comeback match alongside it

I love how Yoshinari Ogawa is now in the old-man lucha role of getting to fuck around in tags and trios for 90% of the year, but he gets to then commit to matches with guys he really likes; guys like Ridgeway, HAYATA, etc, and now this. In a way, he's become what Misawa was in the 2000's with his consistent focus on training and working with his own projects to get them over. It was really cool to see him paired back up with Zack; I thought they were one of the cooler tag duos of the time (I actually covered that recently, not finished sadly) and him getting to cook with game opponents made this a easy great watch. Pre-match has Ogawa be a prick and yank Kaito down during his introduction for no real reason, he's just built that way. Starting sequences with Zack/Kaito were pretty much flawlessly smooth, maybe a bit too smooth but I still quite enjoyed how they played around with some WoS bits here and there between the usual handsprings and takedowns. Ogawa/Oiwa was all built on basic wrestling fundamentals; Ogawa would bully with extended holds, Oiwa would have to rely on his atheticism to find ways to escape or counter. Simple stuff: seeing how Ogawa would add in little flairs here and there to really grind the moves out with consistent cheap shots, taunting, and some genius transitions reminds you why he's so brilliant at structuring a match, making a crowd ooo and ahh at shit like headlock takeovers. I was surprised at how much he gave Kaito in terms of selling and bumping, even for stuff that I wasn't really that hot for like his dodgy elbows. The good news; that doesn't last for long! Kaito actually spends the whole middle half selling for the technical lads as they do their old tag-team routines and hone-in on torturing the guy with submissions and whatnot. Kaito's selling for this was fine, but him screaming for what was most of the duration was unneeded and kinda distracting: I'm fine with screaming during the worst moments, consistent screaming for every little thing? Yeah no thanks. I don't know why they went from the arm to the leg and then back again as well and it did feel like overkill, especially when Kaito's attempted hot tag almost right after was him running around the place over and over. There were some funny Rat Boy moments with Ogawa baiting out the ref to try to kick his arm away during a sunset-press before pulling back and making him fall so he could get away with punching Kaito in the face to escape lol. This leads to a strong sequence of the two using the apron to attack Kaito's head while he's draped over alongside Zack throwing on a really cool inverted headscissors to try to knock him out afterwards, leading Kaito to dramatically act like he's dead for a minute. The control work was generally pretty robust and kept a strong pace despite it being led by two technical guys. Looking at this and then the recent Bryan match, I felt like Zack's stuff while still smooth had a bit more.....struggle? I mean he's still mostly the same, more so his work seems more laboured here than it did there. Maybe that's the difference in crowd expectation: he can go at a more slower pace and not have to worry about losing interest: who knows. Last third was enjoyable enough with Oiwa's decent hot tag and some fairly good work with Sabre. He does like a big wrestling takedown after catching one of his kicks to go into a cross armbreaker and does a few gutwrench suplexes that looked very flush. Kaito's work was actually less impressive as he focuses on doing his strikes, which are pretty awful. Ogawa and Kaito finish up and as per expected from their prior work from the 2021 series, it's quite enjoyable, with Kaito pulling all of his wacky Muto-isms with Dragon Screws and crazy facial expressions in submissions. The roll-up sequences were legit entertaining given Ogawa's dragging himself along at such a old age yet still surprising the crowd with some of the stuff he was trying. Eventually Kaito just does the classic Muto-style Shining Wizard spam and after three (!!!) he manages to get the clean pin. All things considered, I think this could've helped with some more rowdy brawling in places. Apart from Zack near the start going to the outside for about a minute, they never really get to those levels of chaos that could've been accomplished. As per a Ogawa-match the technical aspects are all really solid and well thought out in terms of a basic "heel team in control" routine as per what the duo usually done. Sabre and Ogawa work that dynamic naturally really well, even if Ogawa is starting to get effected a bit by Father Time; he's a bit off with some of the faster counters here, but given he's nearly 60 years old at this point you gotta kinda let that slide all things considered. I think what actually does tangibly drag the match down are the other wrestlers involved here. I mean listen, I really like Kaito Kiyomiya, guy is quite talented, he just never really seemed properly on in this match with a lot of his stuff lacking intensity and, you know, looking good. Oiwa while also somewhat having issues with that had some strong powerhouse moments of just throwing weight around, so at least he has that coolness factor to rely on. Kaito parroting Muto-spots with none of the unique flash doesn't match that at all. I'd say the match is still a really solid watch, it's just that there were obvious weak links that could've been worked on.

I don't generally care a whole lot about modern DDT, but the implication of HARASHIMA/Funaki as a matchup (and to my knowledge their only encounter) was way too curious to ignore. They start off, and it's a lot of tentative grappling as HARA pulls guard and sits on his back most of the time, with Funaki slowly trying to grab something. It's not particularly good, and it felt like just being there for the sake of it to get a slow start. The Sakaguchi/Akito bits ruled though, Saka threw these really nasty sharp kicks until he tried going for one on the apron and Akito caught his legs and basically slammed them knee-first as a sort of modified shin-breaker on there instead to work them over, which went into the main chunk of the control segment. HARA got to be a prick by stomping and standing on his busted leg, and Akito took the time to take his kickpad and guard off so they could get maximum discomfort. Typically long limb targeting sections can be hit and miss, however I think these two got into a great grove and got some actual fun out of destroying the leg: Akito at one point gets Saka into a Death Valley Driver set-up before then throws him knee-first onto the mat, another spot had him dodge a roundhouse from Saka to slap on a absolutely hellish-looking calf crusher after trying for a School Boy to get him down to the ground. Sick little spots like that really helped get this over with the crowd and myself and they were absolutely invested. The eventual hot tag by Funaki was really standard though; lots of kicks and a PK before he got caught with a low dropkick and gutwrench suplex by Akito to balance the books. The HARASHIMA/Funaki exchanges were quite cool! We got a superplex and some hard strikes exchanged before Funaki won out with a slap and rolling wheel kick, usual stuff. The last few minutes was impressively done as Saka balanced his bad leg selling with doing moves, generally being undone due to his tendency to try to use the leg for striking offence and getting countered for his troubles like a typical dumb babyface. Akito rules with his wide range of knee-focused bombs and strikes while also realistically getting caught off-guard when he gets way too cocky for his own good and ends up overextending, so we get a nice cat/mouse tempo between the two as they try to get that one magic hold to win. The finishing stretch is messy in places but it just works wonders for the chaotic counter-heavy submission sequences the two end up having; Saka throwing gut punches to escape a figure-four setup to roll into a front guillotine rules. If wrestlers focused as much on working punches as they would anything else I'd say matches in general would be way better. Anyway, this was great! Reminded me of the old DDT tapes I watched a while back, full of violence and lots of pretty smooth wrestling that focused more on grounded technique rather than the usual DDT flash you'd see. Even Funaki and his fairly minimalistic wrestling got a pass because he still looked pretty damn good trying to slap HARA's face off and was game to work his role in making the younger guys look cool. Pretty underrated scrap and absolutely worth checking out.

I was dreading this: Funaki's last few shoot-style matches with Suzuki and Sakuraba haven't been much good, with his Aoki match being a decent but middling performance. Barnett is also a bit of a loose cannon when it comes to his consistency so yeah this was a risky match all things considered. Starting sequences had the classic slow grappling as Barnett got a takedown, but he couldn't really translate it to much as Funaki kept moving his legs around to prevent any proper leverage on toe-hold attempts. I guess it's funny to see the Achilles Tendon being treated as a scary move when it's been pretty much exposed for decades as uncomfortable but not something to tap out over. Barnett tried to escape, but ended up feeding his foot over in the process and had to quickly rope escape. I thought the spot with Barnett hooking the arm in stand-up for a potential legit arm drag and almost getting choked out when Funaki counters was a nifty bit that got the tension going quite early and had a good counter with a kneebar a little bit afterwards. Stand-up was crappy; Barnett's never exactly been great at pulling his strikes and this was especially true here as he threw these really goofy light slaps that typically were a mile away from hitting anything while Funaki kept to landing low kicks that looked quite sloppy at times. It felt more of a formality than anything else to pad for the matwork. They do some more stuff and it's ok, Barnett using his wrestling to get into full mount after some guard passes was cool, him fumbling a cross armbreaker and them having to awkwardly shuffle around as Funaki kept his arms together really wasn't. Was cool seeing the Billy Robertson headscissors counter but it lasted for maybe two seconds before being dropped Barnett stupidly tries to go into a side headlock for maybe a head/arm choke, Funaki catches him in his own headscissors that forces another escape for the lad. Third half of this was really great, however, as the two start just doing dangerous stuff to the other. It starts with Barnett going for a Grovit before trying for a takeover, but Funaki kinda undershoots for it and he ends up almost legit DDT'd on the floor. The two go for a really cheesy double toe-hold as Barnett grabs one before his opponent shuffles over on the mat to copy him. Stand-up time as Barnett gets flustered with shots and tries for a German, only for Funaki to employ a cool Sakuraba-lite double wrist lock from the back before trying for a Fujiwara armbar. Barnett won't go down and lands a pretty great overhand slap to the face for the first knockdown of the match. They do the classic "takedown counter is a knee to the face" bit, only Funaki ends up legit busting his nose in the process. It's cool that he was still able to do the front-face guillotine spot regardless alongside the absolutely awesome finishing bit where Barnett's solution to the submission is just to pick Funaki up and dump his ass with a brainbuster for the KO victory. I think the main issue with this is that it struggles to really pick up any: Funaki even in his prime has always been this super cerebral worker, but that doesn't really translate to quality when it comes to actual engagement with the match as it just looks like he's checked out for the most part. Barnett is a bit more eager to get moving and that, I would say, is how most of this trucks forward quality-wise. Dude is 45 yet can still make grappling look so much more refined and struggle-heavy than many of the so-called greats you'd usually hear about. His selling was mostly solid as well as he realistically paced out the leg-work by Funaki's kicks: he starts off taking them with a slight pause and by the near end he's shuffling around and struggling hard. I'd not say this was exactly amazing for what shoot-style as a whole is able to do, but as a functional throwback it works just fine and even gets quite decent in places, which is a fair shock.

This was good. I think what's spoiled me on Zack matches is the fact that after watching so much of 80's UWF where the grappling is prolonged and focused around fairly basic holds and transitions, having these two breeze through whole sequences with next to no struggle is incredibly jarring to the point of distraction. There's one bit early where Zack has a double wrist lock in Bryan's half-guard and he just....lets it go after a few seconds as soon as Bryan applies the lightest of pressure to moving his leg. It's just really weird and doesn't really create much threat in the holds being placed, which is a tricky one for a match like this that was really honing around that factor. People kept saying this was the modern-day "Inoki vs Robinson" (including the commentary) despite that match being a 60-minute prolonged semi-legit/shoot struggle with tons of gritty moments. This had lots of that technical detail sprinkled in by comparison, but the pacing was very much aware of the fact that they couldn't drag this out too much lest the crowd lose interest, which you could notice from certain moments was starting to appear as the case whenever they slowed down. It also didn't really have those "oh shit" moments on the mat where someone would get a breakthrough and potentially maybe even snap or break whatever they were working, it was just kinda dragging itself along at a reasonable tempo; there are uncomfortable moments, but never a true match changing momentum switch. The comparison bar the obvious Inoki connotations doesn't really ring much true tbf, I could honestly see any big Inoki sell after a exhaustive back and forth as much, MUCH more cathartic than this. When I went back to the 2015 NOAH Zack/Ogawa match for reference (which is a very similar match to this one bar the finish as it consists of two well-oiled technical guys trying to figure out who is superior) I immediately seen more flush performances and a really great sell-job by Ogawa when his arm is being torn apart, which this didn't quite manage to muster despite the match functioning around respective bad limbs. Bryan felt more annoyed than actually to the point of tears and unmanly screams like Ogawa was, while Zack pretty much undersold for most of this despite generally being solid with specific leg spots. I still quite liked this through: Bryan is nifty on all ends and Zack while a bit too excited to run through sequences (can't blame the guy though, this is probably one of the biggest matches in his career) is still very crafty in how he presents himself as the inferior all-rounder in terms of wrestling ability, but a incredibly resourceful guy who knows how to get under someone's skin and make them commit to mistakes; the bit where he eggs Dragon on to throw with his shitty right arm and eats a few shots before firing a elbow right into the arm mid-shot was a fantastic spot that really reflected the duo's dynamic in a nutshell; Bryan's willing to commit everything to win regardless of how smart it is while Zack is equally willing to find any opportunity to sneak a victory out, even if that means being a huge dickhead in the process. His control spots were solid and he generally had a solid understanding of his role in the match here, which is always appreciated. The Dragon Screw spot (you know the one if you've watched the match) I think was a Ogawa spot he had actually done once or twice back when I was binging his NOAH material, so that was cool to see. Dude also stole the finish to the Kendo Kashin/Sakuraba match with the top rope double wrist lock counter (even up to Saku cranking the hold in by bringing the arm up!!!) crazy stuff. The top top Butterfly Suplex into Lebell Lock could've been a epic spot alongside Bryan rolling into it in response to the attempted counter, but the fact that the attempted hold lasted about a few seconds before they were off doing other stuff meant there was no real chance to process it much. The crowd were big for the actual spot, but the submission afterwards didn't really get much interest; quite telling. Bryan's kicks were cool. His weird elbows to the chest through? No thanks. Them doing some goofy ahh slaps in a figure-four? Ehhh maybe not that either. Honestly if this had more of that stand-up stuff where Bryan was just hammering the leg with straight kicks I feel that would've got a much more visceral reaction, especially if it was hammered in more that Zack couldn't do a whole lot about it bar eat shots and hope for the best, instead they did commit to some ho-hum generic strike exchanges that while entertaining didn't feel appropriate for the level of pain the two were apparently in. Apart from that the last third was probably when the match started to get really solid because the two respected fatigue and the motions felt more laboured and desperate. Had that been the pacing for this bar a quick start I'd be way more interested in a match like this all things considered. If this match had half of the reversals and doubled the length of the ones you'd have left over, I'd say this could've been really good. Alas what we did get felt like a limited version of what these two could really do with no real expectations behind them, and the grappling of the match felt less of the critical part moving things forward and more of a formality that never really took centre stage. This needed that moment of pure grit to make it really legit at least and I felt like that never truly happened here. Having a potential rematch in Japan with the implication of Bryan truly beating Zack on the mat is definitely something I'm very looking forward to seeing, however, because I think the two can really have a fantastic outing if they committed to it.

Is Fujiwara going to UWF one of the greatest acquisitions of wrestling talent in history? I'd say so. This debut match was something that the company badly needed; it's all good having Maeda on board, but if he's just going to spend every main event squashing foreign talent that NJPW/AJPW hadn't locked in (and believe me the ones remaining after that aren't worth the trouble for the most part) then that's a bit of a waste all things considered. Fujiwara is not only fresh, he also has that inherent heat from being a outsider native with a fearsome reputation. I thought what worked about this match was that the two were not only working to get over the dynamic of the match; that is to say, Fujiwara showing up in UWF and just how dangerous he is as a wrestler while also really making something out of the natural heat that springs from such a thing. Maeda is the de-facto ace of the UWF, Fujiwara is to record his first true threat as a tricky defector, and that's very clear from the get-go given how tentative the two are with each other. Match keeps a good pace throughout as the two combine a lot of the proto-shoot style elements that will be refined as time goes on alongside just being really petty with each other. The grappling is nothing special even by the standards of then, but there's a great undercurrent of tension to everything done; Fujiwara is such a danger on the mat, everything Maeda does has a counter of which he doesn't always have a reliable answer against and for the first time he seems in tangible danger at moments here. Fuji of course is absolutely fantastic with his hair pulling and just full on punching dudes in the head when he can't break Maeda on the mat properly, and he keeps the tempo up with some really awesome roughhousing. Maeda as expected in turn keeps up with the tempo of violence, at one point just hammering Fuji with some sick punches of his own when he tried cheap-shotting him again. I do think there is a required taste in the kind of chaotic style that these two dig into at the latter end of this, especially with the always weird DQ false finish and then subsequent restart that always tends to be a hit/miss factor given it basically turns this into more of a example of politicking than anything else. Maeda wasn't going to lose (not at this point, anyway) and neither was Fujiwara for his debut, so what we end up getting is a messy Southern brawl rather than a UWF match to muddy the waters and to get the crowd going. It's still really solid, mind you, and Maeda gives Fuji a lot of leeway to do his thing in front of a very happy crowd. The double KO finish is expected shit from a 80's main event between two main guys, though I will say it's a LOT better done here than in NJPW or someplace like that and feels at least earned given the beatings these two gave each other. It's a solid match no doubt, however. It's nothing like what UWF will become, yet at the same time you see a lot of the elements that will make it such a powerhouse in later years.

Other Deep Dive stuff Introduction How do you go crazier than deathmatches and gory blood? You join up with Inoki and fight a bunch of green Japanese MMA dudes! This will chronicle all of Necro's matches in IGF (minus one house show that was never filmed...ignore that through) and we'll see if they're anything worth watching. Vs The Predator (IGF Genome5 06.23.2008) Predator/Terkay is doing his Brody impression against a debuting Necro, so of course these two just work it as a brawl. He's throwing big kicks to the torso, Necro's just throwing punches and everything to survive against this giant dude, including some of the best gut punches I've seen in a long while. He blades after the two go to the outside, bumping his head off the turnbuckle pole. This leads to Pred getting out the chain and doing the usual spots with it, including a cool bit where he hangs Necro off the apron. They brawl in the crowd as Necro sells for this dude for what seems like forever until they get back in the ring. Necro finally springs to life after dodging a dodgy rope leg drop and does a mini Hogan-homage as he gestures to the crowd and gets a surprisingly good pop as he smacks Pred's back with the chair before scoop slamming him while still holding on to said chair for more damage in a fun little spot. Necro does a solid job getting over his desperation to get this over and done as he rakes the eyes to keep Pred steady for a powerbomb; still fails though. Predator is shaken and pulls from the GOAT Tadao Yasuda with a standing forearm choke that he leans off the ropes for before just blasting the dude with some stiff double chops. He focuses on the head until missing a lariat and letting Necro grab him and throw the dude on the ropes groin first, always a classic. More brawling outside; this had a pretty great bit where Necro just dragged a bunch of chair-rows onto Predator's prone body and tried to bury him in them: which goes well, mind you, but then Necro makes the mistake of hurling a individual chair at Predator and he just goes ape-shit, no sells and double stomps him on top of a chair that had next to no give lol. Third half kinda deflated as not a whole lot happens, Necro gets his Tenryu punch/chops, inevitably can't get much going as Predator overpowers him with suplexes and a cool modified STF. The two have a enjoyable hick fight as the pair throw wild punches, but Predator's knees win out and he finishes up with a leaping Brody knee drop for the win. I mean listen Necro matches are always messes, I'd say for this the appeal comes from this just being a freakshow match; Terkay's this giant MMA dude, Necro is basically just all-round crazy. The quality comes from Necro being a great seller and making Predator look great while also structuring this out to hide his more obvious shortcomings. It's surprisingly brutal in places and manages to maintain a chaotic feel despite the crowd being quite dead in places. Maybe cut this down a few minutes (especially near the end where the match starts to dull a bit) and I'd say this could've been a perfectly acceptable match for these sort of cards. Not great and certainly not one of Necro's must-watch from the time, but if you want something that's just easy viewing then this is a easy suggestion. Vs Kendo Kashin vs. Rob Van Dam (IGF Genome6 08.15.2008) This is probably Necro's best known match as it's just a complete mess of a triple threat. I can at least say the lads tried (read: tried) to make this enjoyable. This plays off more-so as a comedy bout than anything else, with everyone scrambling to steal pins and forgoing the natural awkwardness of a triple man match by having the odd guy leave the ring or team up. Necro and RVD have some fun comedy bits with him stomping Necro's bare feet for a advantage, or getting Necro to set up a Poetry in Motion to seemingly land it on Kashin before just dropkicking him in the face instead. Kashin does his usual nonsense but does have decent chemistry with RVD, albeit nothing special. Necro blades after a belt shot to the face, giving RVD the excuse to hit a big dumb dive to the outside while the other two are brawling. RVD also takes a suplex on the ramp, which sounded painful as anything. We also get Kashin bashing Necro with fake plants (like actual plants? It's pretty dumb) but he gets taken down after Necro uses the barricade to counter the...plants. RVD lands a actually awesome crossbody to them from the stage, which was fairly high up and got a good pop. This is shortly followed up by a nice spinning kick from the apron after Kashin was dumped there by Necro. Last few minutes have them do a tower of doom spot after Kashin interrupts a superplex attempt by RVD, which was also decent enough if a bit contrived. Necro lands a great Tiger Driver, Kashin lands a German suplex to interrupt his pin before rolling Necro into a successful pin attempt after getting his feet on the ropes. RVD basically squashes Kashin despite him interrupting a Five Star by kicking the ref into the ropes, but his successful top rope cross armbreaker is foiled as someone (I think it's Simon Inoki?) distracts the ref from seeing the tap out, leading RVD to nail a really lazy Van Daminator (like seriously, this was just zero effort, probably the worst one he's landed ever) misses the Five Star. Kashin does his usual cool headscissors choke into roll up and his opponent manages to kick out. RVD hits a really bad kick counter to Kashin after he catches the other one and hits a stiff back-first Rolling Thunder for the win. Decent work, pretty messy overall. RVD is the best in these kind of disorganised matches given he can just not worry about psychology and hit cool moves, which he does anyway, this is just a excuse to not care even moreso than usual: I'm not complaining because RVD never needed psychology to be good in the first place. Necro and Kashin do their usual business and it's fine, but I wouldn't say they were particularly great anywhere. Fine as a messy brawl with some decent spots, hollow as anything at the end of the day. I really would've wanted to see Necro/Van Dam as a singles given they'd both find excuses to do crazy stuff to each other and at the end of the day that's what you want to see, right? I guess Kashin is Inoki's kid so he wanted in here as well. Vs The Predator II (IGF Genome7 11.24.2008) This is similar to their last match, but also quite different in some marked ways. It follows the same formula of Necro against someone way more athletic and powerful, but is a lot more condensed to in-ring interactions and doesn't have any blood this time bar a tiny bit from a hardway Necro headbutt. Terkay's sloppiness does appear a few times here as well (early on he does this weird flapjack variation that ends with Necro falling right on his face with no protection, that's no fun) mainly with a corner splash where he goes over the top rope....and most of his body is squished on Necro's head during the spot, which is rough. Necro throws a nice stiff headbutt into a sloppy dropkick, but his apron move is countered as Pred just picks him up and squishes him on the floor with a fireman's carry drop. Apart from that we get more control spots where Necro's taking damage, selling dramatically (good selling mind you, but still) and fighting the knockdown counts as he tries to drag himself up for another scrap. Pred gets a bit too comfortable in control however as Necro escapes a second fireman's carry and then manages to bash Pred's arm off the turnbuckle pole after he gets thrown into it. This allows the guy to go into full on Methhead South as Necro starts working the arm with fancy kneedrops and just wrapping that shit tight around the ropes. This leads to a attempted powerbomb spot which like the last time ends with Necro getting slammed around more. The two go flying out of the ring after a cool over the rope lariat from Predator and then a back suplex, which honestly looked like it hurt the person doing it more than the guy who's actually supposed to be hurt lol. They milk a potential count-out for Necro before he gets in obviously. Predator randomly does this super slow scoop slam into suplex/sit-out Michinoku Driver thing that looks like a Create A Finisher from WWE 2K13. I dig it, I just don't get why he did it for no pop? The thrill? Who knows. Necro does a fantastic crumple-sell for a punch to the head. Predator loses patience and starts just doing lots of dirty stuff to Necro's face; this leads to a second rope leg drop tease like last time, but Necro is ready! He throws his punches and hits a tremendously crappy Frankensteiner, following up with a super slow top rope crossbody for a near fall. He decides that this is IGF, so snaps on a cross armbreaker. Amazingly the two actually know how to do a spot like this properly, with Predator keeping his arms together to stop the move being fully applied, leading to a neat little struggle until he can hit the ropes. Necro throws punches and headbutts, doing this great bit where he's just so fatigued that punching Predator is not only not doing a whole lot, he's actively just hurting his hand in the process because there's no real force to his shots anymore, so he kinda has this moment where he's like "shit this ain't workin" and has to go for big lariats instead. Two land, the third is countered with a boot and belly to belly suplex. Predator finishes the match with a amazing Carl Greco-lite rolling front Grovit to get the tapout win. So this is probably better than the last match? Less walk and brawl, more action. Terkay is still quite sloppy, but he's that good kind of sloppy that matches well with Necro's more wacky and unconventional style despite some slipups, he's more of a crowbar with the occasional great move or bit that suggests he could've been a lot better. Necro's so great here for all of those little moments where he's conveying pain or desperation or both, it's such a treat to see him work this big man/little man dynamic in ways that others usually can't, namely in his continuous attempts to struggle, his little comebacks that always get him a bit closer to winning, all great stuff. This is the kind of work that made Necro a must-watch during the time, dude could make gold out of anything. Vs Atsushi Sawada (IGF Genome8 03.15.2009) Necro's run in IGF continues with a pretty decent showing. He really carries the (mostly) useless Sawada to something decent with a starting brawl outside (including a real nasty scoop slam onto the concrete) and even does the courtesy of blading him to get blood given the lad doesn't probably know how to do it bar doing headbutts. Sawada is a big geek, but he can hit hard and even manages some of his really dumb CTE-inducing headbutts where he just throws his whole face into you and calls it a day. Necro works his usual gross offence that is super safe but looks, well, gross. He rips at the cut, bites it, spits out blood, all the good stuff. Sawada in response can only do a wonky dropkick and judo throw. The commentary name-drops Tenryu as Necro steals his chops and punches shtick. Oh yeah, that throw/dropkick combo is ALL Sawada can do outside of strikes lol. They work well with it though, Necro gets the interest of the crowd with blood-work with the consistent biting and stiff shots to drag out the heat. Sawada plays a decent enough babyface: can't really wrestle mind you, gets the crowd on his side fairly easily given his rep and sympathetic stance here with Necro beating him up. Finish is simple as Necro throws all of his usual bombs (including a sick backdrop) before Sawada slips out of the powerbomb and wins off a German suplex and a weird leg-hook side suplex. Necro puts over Sawada post-match with a handshake and Triple H point. This was fine for a regular card but for IGF, you might as well say this was good to solid. Necro carries a green Inoki-Ism lad to something resembling a match, it rules for that standard. Sawada is fun and a easy babyface to root for, even if he's super limited. Vs Taka Kunou (IGF Genome9 08.09.2009) Much like all of Butcher's IGF showings, this isn't much of a actual house-style match, but leaning to Necro being well, not a shoot-style guy lol. Kunou is mostly known for being a failed MMA guy who transitioned to shoot-style: he's nothing particularly special yet is one of the more entertaining Inoki-subjects due to his willingness to commit to wrestling proper. Necro does a lot of cheating with closed fists and biting to escape being taken down by Kunou. In all fairness, he's fairly decent on the mat and does at times show off that he can actually wrestle (like Kunou takes him down for a Fujiwara-lite armbar and he intuitively rolls on his front to escape before it is even applied, as well as escaping a cross armbreaker clean) but this is mostly him working like he can't: using a lot of dirty antics combined with brawling. The fight goes outside and Kunou gets thrown around, even getting hit with a extra set of ring steps lol. This is Kunou's cue to blade, with him getting worked over for a bit. Necro goes omega nasty with him licking and getting his face right in his cut, even blowing his nose on one of the cameras. Kunou recovers after he tries for a top rope move and gets countered, the guy can't really brawl and instead goes for a armbar transition into cross armbreaker, which gets a rope break. He hits some dodgy headbutts before hitting a stand-up transition to a second armbreaker, Necro just manages to wiggle to the ropes again. Necro hits some Abdullah-lite throat thrusts before hitting a big powerbomb and a bunch of okish signature moves to build up his comeback despite some shaky moments. Necro tries for a second powerbomb but Kunou then rolls him up for the three randomly. Not a bad match, amazingly! Necro works around Kunou like a professional, doing a lot of stuff that looks nasty but really isn't: he's light on offence and uses a mix of his hair hiding said offence combined with his exaggerated motions to make it look worse than it actually is, being a consistent professional in that regard. He builds well to Kunou's comebacks, which aren't really sold as exhausting last dish methods to win like they should, however all things considered they still look impressive. The crowd weren't initially that bothered with this but did actually get drawn in over time, leading to a big underdog win that they were actually surprised by, giving the finish a huge pop in response. It's a match that for viewers also does take a bit to settle in proper. Once it does it's a quite good outing that has Necro really get the investment proper with just how mean and gross he is here, garnering all of the heat and paving the way for Kunou to do his thing. For what it's worth, Kunou could at least work his spots in mostly organically, and as said he's one of the better Inoki guys here given he's actually trying to wrestle and sell. Once again we get a solid Necro carry-match all things considered. Vs Minowaman (IGF Genome11 02.22.2010) Probably the best Necro match out of this entire set of matches he did. Minowaman wants to shoot, Necro wants to brawl. The result is a pretty messy affair that has Necro quickly lose patience with Minowa's fancy offence and resorts to headbutts and biting, eventually dragging the guy outside and blading early after getting hit on the ring post. Minowa dominates with some sprawling and solid strikes before Necro gets control with some low blows and hits a nasty headbutt that covers Minowa in blood and ups the intensity immediately. He hits a airplane spin of all things but loses control like a goof and gets wrapped up in a leg vice, barely able to reach the ropes. Minowa hits some basic wrestling offence along with some punches and slaps before Necro hits another stiff ass headbutt and capitalises with a big lariat and some huge chops in the corner. Both men just end up throwing hands until Minowa takes advantage with a elbow shot and grabs on a kneebar for the tap out. This isn't a masterpiece or anything but as a short match, this turned out WAY better than expected, especially with the clash of styles. Minowa is still fairly green (this was his first year of wrestling, after all) yet he shows some good spirit and Necro is a great sport here, really getting over how tough this guy is and selling a ton in what felt like the closest to Necro doing a Batibati-style match in terms of physicality and it rules so much more once that's realised. Not a big workrate match but as a gritty throwback to the Mixed Rules Matches of old? Yeah sure, I can get behind that. Really a must-watch all things considered. Vs Bob Sapp (IGF Genome12 05.09.2010) "If IGF is the home of the freakshow " this was a thing? " matchups, then this has to be the peak of that given these two and their infamy. Sapp works this like a regular Sapp match, lots of screaming, weird athletic spots that wiff plenty, and his opponent selling a ton. Necro oversells for a bearhug so much that the crowd starts laughing in response, so you get a good idea of what this is going to be like before it even gets properly started. Necro escapes by biting Sapp's head and throwing knees to get him to the outside for a crappy apron cannonball. He tries to slam Sapp, he responds with probably the slowest powerslam in history as he spends like 15 seconds picking the guy up and slowly ramming him into the turnbuckle post. Necro blades, though given his forehead was already cut up from a BJW show a few days ago it didn't really seem like a whole lot of effort was needed. Sapp continues with some more awkward stuff, including the worst ground and pound I've ever seen. Sapp's always been terrible at throwing strikes (probably because the dude is so freakishly strong yet has zero technique in the first place, so asking him to pull his already crappy strikes while making it convincing is a step too far for that lad) but this was especially bad. Necro lands a lariat and works the throat with a rope lean and chop off the apron. Necro getting a plastic bag and trying to legit choke the shit out of Sapp with it was a surprisingly brutal spot for a fairly pedestrian showing. Necro being Necro follows that up with a generic lucha roll-up, rakes to the face, then invokes the spirit of Giant Baba with a Russian Leg Sweep, but nothing puts the big man down. Necro then invokes the spirit of Stone Cold with a crappy kick into cutter, but Sapp is so powerful that even this doesn't work. Finish was really poor as Sapp just wins off throwing Necro from the top rope and then doing a limp powerslam for the three count. I'm a Bob Sapp apologist for the most part; I think he was a amazing draw in his prime, his wrestling honestly wasn't that bad for the most part (I will get to that at some point, it's really unfair how maligned he gets for knowing psychology a lot more than even some current guys) and he gets how to play a monster pretty reliably. This is, however, definitely not one of his bright spots. I have to blame that on him being a lot older and less explosive; this was around about the time he started doing dives in all of his MMA matches proper; so he wasn't really as motivated now as he was then and I imagine this translated into his wrestling work. Necro's a lot of fun in these anyway but there wasn't really a whole lot he could do with Sapp given he doesn't exactly have the atheticism or the pacing to really get much out of the guy. Sapp's best matches are with people who can bounce around him and get the most out of his offence, and that's just a tall order for him here. All in all, the weakest Necro IGF match by a fair degree and probably the only one not worth watching. Conclusion In calling Necro a potential GWE case, most of it does come with more acclaimed, more spectacular showings around about the same time. For me, however, I see Necro's case far stronger with runs like these; wrestling a series of quirky matches with guys next to no one has watched in any sort of dedicated detail and actually having really solid matches in the process is one of the strongest qualities you can have as a wrestler in the form of strong consistency. IGF's a goofy mess, but it at least shows who has the adaptation to crawl out of the mess of weird Inoki-Ism matchups and look good in the process. There are probably better runs (Otsuka's stuff looked real fun from what little I watched, might need to check that out) I've yet to see them though. Other Deep Dive stuff

Highest floor refers to range of consistency; not having great matches all the time per-se, but having consistently decent to quite good matches over a long period of time, being able to carry a wide range of wrestlers to a reasonable level of quality. Having a low floor would mean consistently not performing well. Highest ceiling relates to peak performance/potential: having a high ceiling would mean having really great matches, but maybe that's a peak they've only managed to reach one or two times and they've otherwise been pretty below that. Random examples off the top of my head Misawa, for example, would have a tremendously high ceiling, but questionable floor given his pre/post-prime work. Undertaker I guess would count here as well. Osamu Kido would have a great floor given his decades of reliable mid-card work and as a tag guy with whoever NJPW fed to him, but his peak matches are more or less a dozen at best, so not that high of a ceiling. etc etc

This was a real Monkey-Paw issue right here. We get Barry Windham back in AJPW, fantastic, but he's tagging with his brother who barely had any decent matches, let alone good ones. Thankfully Tenryu and Araya as Team WAR are here to make this at LEAST somewhat worth watching. Tenryu and Kendall get some good action out of a chop exchange as Tenryu can't match the guy in terms of hard-hitting shots, so has to cheat with punches and a stiff lariat, usual business out of him. If you like a slower 80's style match then this is probably more up your alley as a lot of this was just real protracted holds, basic slams and strikes. Nothing really that interesting and there's a couple of noticeable fuck-ups, nothing terrible; this feels like a early WAR match you'd see, full of stiff shots and plenty of non-cooperation. Tenryu was the best here by far, selling real good in places, getting over the pair and generally making things a lot more interesting with his usual rough and tumble style to drive in the intensity and make the match feel a lot more important than it actually was. The finish was fine: Araya lands his cool moonsault, eats a nasty top rope back suplex, Tenryu is taken out with a beatdown and the two get the win over Araya with a back suplex/neckbreaker combination a-la Kobashi/Ace or Movement. Not great, but I didn't think this was bad at all. The four knew what this was going to look like from the get-go and worked stiff and rough with everyone else: combined with Tenryu's experience and quality alongside Araya as some dynamic new-blood with some quality bumping cards drawn up here, this was honestly one of the better showings of the night. Slow but measured, a fun watch if you like weird pairings that you thought never happened.

While this matchup is pretty random it's actually super important as this is during Mossman's impending main event push. He's been loyal to the company post-NOAH (a crazy outlier given nearly everyone else left, apparently Kea's loyalty to Baba taking him in when he wasn't even trained to wrestle was enough) so he's going to get rewarded with a pretty strong shove forward all things considered. We get six minutes on tape, if you dig around a bit you can find a fancam version that keeps in about 90% of the actual match. Thanks, random guy. The match is fairly slow to start, but noticeably focuses around Mossman showing off a bit more. He shows up Shinzaki in the starting sequences and gets into a vicious exchange with Ishikawa. Ishikawa is so good in this match, shocker. To shoot-style/Bati-Bati fans he's this great icon of the scene and a trailblazer for all of the misfit indie crowd to follow but here in the conservative All-Japan world he's just some little shit who keeps fucking headbutting and hitting stiff forearms to anyone in striking distance. No one likes him here; he's a outsider who won't fall in line with the usual hierarchy-based tags; they definitely also don't like his style, so Kawada and co lay it in real solid here to try to get him back into line. Middle half is mostly solid leg work on Mossman by the duo as they ground him down as the weak link of the two. Mossman also gets in a unbelievably cool Russian Leg Sweep into kneebar, which, like, that's way too awesome a spot for him lol Ishikawa had to have thrown that in for the guy. While Kawada and Ishikawa get some great tension, this just never reaches that epic peak that I think this could've reached with some more chaos. Everything feels heated in places, but there's never that eventual explosion that you would come to expect, instead just settling for a more tame outing. Mossman also seems to be getting better, however I'd say there's a noticeable amount of standing around out of him (he doesn't really "get" how to communicate or emote well) and he doesn't seem fully freshed out yet, like he's still pulling a good bit from his old playbook rather than reinventing the wheel. Ishikawa snaps on some decent arm work until Kawada walks in to knee drop the shit out of him and balance is finally restored. Mossman throws in some knees and a botched Frankensteiner before doing his usual slick kick combo, following up with a Hawaiian Smasher for a near fall that Shinzaki has to break up. Mossman gets to lay him out as well with a big dropkick, albeit Shinzaki just rolls out and no sells for no reason. We do also get lots of Ishikawa/Kawada interactions for the second half and they are REALLY good with Kawada having his legs attacked with stiff Inoki crab-kicks before the two trade flying kicks! Man a full match between these two would've ruled, even this late in the game. Last two minutes are almost all Kawada as he beats up the two and establishes himself on top. Shinzaki can't really do a whole lot bar his usual spots, though they do work in them in fairly clever ways, like having Kawada predict his usual Pele kick mid-run and stop in the ropes to hit him with a flush lariat instead. Shinzaki does the Terry Funk selling for the Gamengiri kicks as he kicks out, but it's more or less just him acting on instinct at that point; his body merely stumbles around in a weird state without much thought to it, he's already done. Kawada gives him a shitty powerbomb before he finishes things off with his knee drop (!!!) of all things. As stated this is still solid, however I feel like Shinzaki and Mossman were weak links in their own ways. Mossman as mentioned wasn't up to the mark to raise the heat with his mediocre selling and Shinzaki is as plain as white bread, not a solid fit here at all. Kinda a shame given we've got two of arguably the best tag guys just chilling and doing their thing and that's miles beyond anything else here. Obviously built to make Kea look strong and it's all the worst for it.

I don't think it's that weird when you consider the drama surrounding his allegations probably makes him near impossible to book anywhere worth a damn lol. He's in his late 40's as well and pretty banged up, apparently.

I'd say this was a sad occasion to see someone like Quack so hyped up a couple of years back to now be doing matches in a z-tier promotion in what looked to be a British social club which had probably been last refurnished in the early 90's, but that would imply that he's a good guy that deserves that kind of pity lol. Anyway, the match is basically the 69 year old Kidd pulling off a good performance while Quack kinda dragged his feet along and did some really stupid mannerisms, all in round format! Round 1 has them do a few decent back and forth starting sequences, with Quack getting a bit overconfident before getting his legs worked over until the end; despite selling them a bit afterwards, it never becomes an actual thing. Round 2 had Quack do some half-speed escapes from Kidd (including a monkey flip out of a arm wrench, which was a cool bump for the oldie) before they do some surfboard transitions. It goes to the ground and he escapes using his legs to knock away Kidd's arms before rolling out. I do have to generally praise Kidd in this match; the guy is basically 70 but he's still pretty slick when it comes to sticking on the usual holds and he still knows how to get around the ring pretty damn well for his age, probably in part due to the low-impact style that he's still working. Round 3 continues the arm work with some pretty goofy Quack-isms as he lands slow and convolved counters to Kidd just sticking on robust arm work. Eventually the first fall comes as Kidd does a cool old-man cartwheel before catching the legs of a attempted sunset flip to take the first fall. Round 4 starts with Quack doing weird stuff with his arms before the two go over more fairly basic WoS sequences, with some being a bit more awkward than others. Quack gets a fall by coming off the corner and doing this really goofy 10-second long transition fest into a leg-capture STF. Sure it was a cool move, way better ways of applying it than this though. Round 5 has the two be a lot more tentative, with both using extended holds to drag this along, Kidd with a headlock and Quack with a leg-vice. Quack's still doing weird stuff with his arms so that's something. Really awesome bit where Kidd has a modified Cobra Twist applied, then springs off the ropes into a sunset when threatened with a rope break, thought that was really clever and could've easily been a spot people would gush over if done today. The rest of the round is him dominating with slick arm work until the end. Round 6 is mostly establishing Full Nelson transitions (!!!) and them pacing with each other in-between these Quack does a flip near the end and hits a monkey flip transition, forcing the two to go back and forth until Quack countered the sunset back to get the conclusive pinfall, so there's a bit of storytelling from the first fall to here. This was perfectly fine for what a WoS match would look like in 2023 if done by a 69 year old and a guy who isn't really that amazing at the style. Quack's a bit stiff (natural given this is his first publicly worked match for about 3/4 years, give or take) and his stuff is nowhere near as refined as Kidd, who mostly kept this going with some solid bumps and focus on limb work and tricky old-guy transitions to carry this along. It's definitely a great showing for him, I don't see how this does anything for Quack though. Someone should do what Quack did and take Johnny Kidd to Japan instead of America so he can work sick Mutoha matches before he retires, I'd really appreciate that.

I think Meltzer giving this a pretty high rating for the time (****, for reference) is telling of what interested him more back then compared to now. And oh boy, is it rough to get into. This match doesn't try to make itself any less hard to swallow, it's just right into slow grindy Catch work and British-style lads stretching each other at a pace many would consider as glacial. Let's be honest though; this match is pretty awesome. There's a real feeling of struggle to every sequence, every counter feeling earned and strained out as everyone here is pretty comfortable on the mat and can more than handle themselves. Pete Roberts was great when I was watching him vs Tiger Mask and he's just as good if not greater here, really holding down the fort for the first half as Kido and co grapple and test his limits regularly. Maeda isn't quite as snappy as the British lads are, operating as the more dynamic younger talent who is eager to throw weight around and try for more shoot-styleish stuff, though of course it hasn't quite gained any grounding yet as a strict method of sorts. They use a cross armbreaker for a casual hold rather than as a dangerous match-ender, for example, so that does age this to a degree. I really liked the interactions that he had with Kido, traditionally the more pragmatic grappler. Maeda would push for action and Kido would take advantage of that to wangle in double wrist locks and other submissions, forcing Maeda to struggle to either counter or escape, forcing him to waste his energy on that more than mounting a proper attack. Best parts of this were probably whenever Roberts/Haward were in and doing slick WoS stuff which the crowd seemed to love given they would clap enthusiastically after every extended sequence. It's a shame that they'd be historically used in this promotion as stepping stones. The last 10 minutes or so majorly step up in tempo as Maeda is fed the fuck up with all of these dudes slow dancing with each other and starts kicking Haward around and doing awesome big power moves on him. This energy kept up well despite Maeda sitting in a side headlock for a bit as we get faster and faster spots as the others start to throw strikes and get fired up. Last five minutes are solid as we get a steady increase in violence and a perfect build for the impending draw as the crowd start to realise that time is running out alongside the wrestlers themselves, leading to more risky attempts to take a win. Truth be told, the only thing they royally messed up was the finish. Kido and Maeda were working, crowd was paying attention and reacting well....then Kido tags out and Haward and him basically circle around for the last 15 seconds left: this felt less like a tense standoff and more of the two realising they needed to stall but had nothing in the bag to convey that apart from just moving around. Naturally the draw verdict is going to rub some people the wrong way but I get it, no one wanted to lose face. Crowd chants "Kido" loudly to finish. This is a great example of a Marmite match; for some this is going to be a amazing 30 minutes of well-paced grappling, a slow descent into more modern flashiness and showmanship, and a standout performance by Kido as he battles the odds and manages to mangle Maeda despite only gaining a moral victory by the end. Others are going to see this as a start/stop rest-hold ridden match that fails to keep interest and ultimately drags out to a draw that didn't really feel deserved or really built up any. I get both of these opinions, I really do, but for me this was a brilliant example of how simple matches can be and how much you can draw from pure groundwork alone when you have enough talent. Solid stuff, I'd say beware though. This match really doesn't care about appealing to people who "don't get" grappling matches like these. It honestly feels like it just wants to kick them out as soon as possible lol.

This was alright. I think the most intriguing factor was Maru basically playing the wiry vet role and how much he learnt off wrestling Misawa when they were in this same situation back in the mid 2000's. The match started off with typical tentative grappling and "big-time" shoulder charges alongside some ok back and forth action. Maru worked the arm for a bit then dropped it while Ospreay kinda just did whatever in terms of setting stuff up limb-work wise with barely a care in the world. The strikes were predictively pretty bad across the board; Maru has his usual wiffy kicks and Ospreay mostly kept to landing very light forearms (to be fair he does land a good rolling elbow near the end, so that's something) or his own kicks, mostly because that's not what matters here. What matters for these two is the spots and how those spots interact with each other, so you have Ospreay's usual big fancy sequences paired up against Maru having to rely on landing his shit through openings or counters given he just can't keep up with that pace anymore. That's great, because Maru is at his best when he's allowed to live up to his "Genius of the Ark" moniker as opposed to just running through spots with no real attention to detail. His comebacks feel laboured and desperate, especially around about the last 10 minutes where Ospreay is just overwhelming him with anything he can think of in the moment, so his more clunky execution does, I feel, make sense with the context of the match. I think the selling in that regard is fairly effective, even if it's predictively not that amazing for two guys who aren't really known for their outstanding work in that regard, it's mostly just sitting around after big stuff or doing facial expressions that might suggest they're hurt. Fatigue builds quickly between the two and there's a real sense that any truly big move could potentially finish things up real fast. Ok, enough positives? Cool: this had some stinky stuff in it as well. The dreaded mandatory strike exchange that everyone wants to do these days was alright, but I don't think it was needed given it just led into the two doing more convoluted stuff rather than build to a proper crescendo. The other really bad trend of "x does finisher close to y's heart in some way and they kick out at 0.5" is peak melodrama bullocks, and it didn't help that the last 5 or so minutes is just finisher spam between the two, so it's not something that really feels earned bar the significance of the move itself. You get what it's trying to go for with said spam....but it's still spam, so if that irks you it definitely won't be a fun sequence. I was amazed at how simple the finish was as Ospreay just ignores a knee strike to the face/superkick to hit two Hidden Blades and the Stormbreaker for the clean 3. While it fit the idea that Maru was on basically borrowed time in this match, it did feel a bit....weak, especially after all of the crazy stuff before. You're telling me a apron Shiranui and a rope-hung Shooting Star Press doesn't hit the mark as much as two running back elbows and a elevated cutter? Ehh not believing that. Anyway, the match isn't going to convince anyone who's sceptical of the pair into believing the hype, but for those who do like this callback-heavy focus on spots and big action it definitely hits the mark. It was clearly set up in a way to make Maru seem like he could still go hard even if he really can't bar a couple of his usual big main-event spots, with a lot of smoke and mirrors used alongside tons of dub spots to The guy isn't "cooked" per-se, just felt like Ospreay carried a lot of the raw atheticism. I think what it's lacking was some sort of....thing to go along with it. Usually with matches like these they start friendly and get more and more disrespectful as time goes on, building on the natural heat to really drag a match into the next level. Bar Ospreay doing Misawa-moves, nothing of the sort pops up here. It's just two guys doing spots and sequences well, just not building on much beyond that.

This is a early house-show test of the December Korakuen and it shares a lot of the characteristics of it in particular; very long, focus on prototype shoot-styleisms to come, and arguably a bit boring in places. The first five minutes are virtually nothing but prancing around, occasional wiffed kicks and maybe one or two grappling bits that end in the ropes. Takada then dominates as he mostly takes control when on the ground. Yamazaki gets to the ropes and they reset. And....yeah nothing much happens for a bit after as well, it's mostly just them trading submission attempts at a fairly slow pace. I will say it's not even half-bad wrestling in that regard, it's just something that seems lost on this crowd bar the occasional fairly small chant. Like at one point they were trading shoulders on a small package application, which, like, would've been a spot that wrestling nerds on X would've gushed over in 2023; here it's just seen as a bit weird and not really given much of a reaction. The crowd do eventually start to pick up when the two go for strike exchanges, though unlike their December match they don't go into bombs, Yama just kicks Takada around a bit until he recovers and flops on top of him in full mount while trying for a double wrist lock. He escapes and keeps throwing forearms and kicks until being tackled down. This formula is basically what they stick to for most of the middle half, bar Yamazaki occasionally throwing a slap or errant strike when escaping holds or positions. Takada is firmly established as the guy who just wants to drag this down with holds to avoid the risk of getting blasted with kicks, which does lead to some particularly dull moments where he's just hanging around and not doing a whole lot in classic Takada fashion. Yamazaki by comparison is a bit more dynamic in approach; even when he's trying for holds he isn't as complacent to wait on them so much, opting more to get the struggle when applied rather than to wait and then struggle. At some point Takada wants to do a top rope move (for some reason? ) and he gets thrown off as per standard. Despite Yama trying for a double wrist/Gotch side mount headscissors gambit, eventually Takada throws some kicks and gets in his reverse piledriver, so now we're getting a bit closer to what their taped match will look like. Despite Takada's floaty kicks, the selling for when Yamazaki foils the back suplex by hooking his leg and making Takada fall is really well done; Takada gets knocked down and really seems off-base as he keeps getting knocked around with suplexes and dropkicks. Even when he gets the shoulder off the mat during the false-finish German suplex you can tell he's groggy off the impact, throwing these half-strict, half-sloppy slaps to the body and head while not even being able to stand up proper. I thought that their attempt at what a "shoot-style powerbomb" would look like; basically Yama forcing the movement, bringing it right down on Takada's side in a jerky kind of fashion; was incredibly experimental for the time and didn't look half bad. The finish was rather poor as Takada was stuck in the double wrist lock movement, but was able to roll into full mount and apply the move himself out of nowhere for the submission win. One thinks maybe that was done to protect Yamazaki/the sanctity of the matchup, which is understandable. Still sucked though. With that being said, how good was this? It's hard to say, really. I felt like this did have some moments of greatness yet also had a lot of points (especially at the start! ) where you just could not get into the match. It was so ice-cold and the lack of real reactions from the crowd hurt especially. Will say that the mat-work while obviously dated does hold up mostly, bar Takada just dulling the match with long attempts at stuff that no one was really hard-biting onto as a potential matchender. If I can say one thing that was really positive: Yamazaki looked super solid with his sharp kicks and huge suplexes. He hasn't got that intensity yet (which is natural, he's essentially a kid here) but it's a good foundation, no shock given it's from the same guy who trained Super Tiger/Naoya Ogawa/Sad Genius, the Triforce of goofy wrestlers. I wouldn't say this is essential by any means of the imagination (especially with the crowd and smarky Japanese commentary) if you want a raw unfiltered taste of the experimental spirit that UWF Original was all about, I'd say this is a good shot at it.