KB8

I can't say anything about Dump because I haven't watched the Chigusa match in about 15 years and I don't think I've even seen any of the other stuff, but last year I watched basically all the Fujiwara we have available for '86 and he was absolutely sensational the whole year. If I go through that AJW stuff and come out the other end of it thinking Dump is the clear #1 for the year then I guess I'd be in agreement with it being the highest peak of anyone ever, because Fujiwara's '86 is one of the absolute best years I've seen from a wrestler. Morton is a good pick as well. Maybe not for the top spot, but top 3 in a great year for wrestling is hardly an insult.

I'll co-sign that tag. Really an out of nowhere awesome match, with a great Hogan performance and Orton using the cast for one of the best transition spots of the decade.

I need to re-watch stuff, but he's on my maybe pile this time. Really an awesome base and the Mascarita Sagrada match was still amazing when I last watched it (that was not exactly yesterday, however).

Gibson v Flair from the a June '86 episode of World Pro is really great. Obviously Flair/Morton was the money pairing with Flair v the Rock n Rolls, but Gibson sure wasn't in there just getting by on a bargain bin Ricky Morton impression.

The Zbyszko match from Philly (8/23/80) is another one for those considering Putski. He just wallops Zbyszko all over the place and people are going nuts. To be honest it's more of a Zbyszko case-builder because he's amazing in it getting his clock cleaned and selling and punching Putski in the nuts, but Putski's there and he does his thing and his charisma and overness are certainly factors in the match working so well.

Took a break for a minute. Turned into 14 months. It happens. A Mad Dog in Georgia (1981-1984) (cont) Buzz Sawyer & Ole Anderson v El Gran Apollo & Archie Williams (GCW, 1/9/82) - 5-minute semi-squash. I guess Ole was impressed enough with Sawyer to draft him in as a tag partner and they both stomp a pair of lower card fellas. Buzz Sawyer v Tommy Rich (GCW, 1/28/82) - Pretty damn awesome studio match. It's supposed to be Rich against a ham n egger but Sawyer muscles his way in and Rich accepts the challenge. Flair - a few months into his first world title reign - is on commentary and says he's proud of Rich for actually accepting, but in a way where he's being fully condescending about it. Solie makes a comparison between Flair and Rich and Flair says "being not quite as good as the best of all time is no insult," but really it was an insult. Sawyer hits a scoop slam and an armdrag to start and really revels in it, self-congratulatory like he's actually done something. Rich comes back with a scoop slam and armdrag of his own, in much quicker succession than Sawyer hit his, then hits a second armdrag as Sawyer has to bail. Just good, simple, tried and true match-building. Rich works a headlock for most of this and it's a really strong headlock segment. Sawyer rolls out the ring and Rich keeps the headlock applied as he rolls out with him, drags him back in with headlock still applied, Sawyer then jumps over the top rope, but Rich maintains that headlock and yanks him back in over the rope. When Sawyer finally comes back he does it with a big hip/butt attack that catches Rich in the face, and as Rich flies backwards out to the floor Sawyer takes the time to sell his own butt! The running KO spot at the end looked killer and I thought for sure it was going to result in a double knockout, but they both get back up and this really just felt like the opening stretch of what probably would've been an amazing arena match. One without a cage anyway. Buzz Sawyer v Tommy Rich (GCW, 2/6/82) - This is just the same match as above (not as in "they work the same match move for move" but actually the same match under two different dates). Buzz Sawyer v Rusty Roberts (GCW, 2/13/82) - A merciless 4-minute mauling of our good man Rusty Roberts. Sawyer is just an awesome bully, cackling every time he inflicts some horrendousness on this gentleman. Hits an AMAZING powerslam and an AMAZING dropkick and crushes Roberts with a top rope kneedrop/headbutt thing. Roberts was lying stiff as a board before it so I imagine he thought Sawyer was legitimately going to try and kill him. Piper is on commentary here and now I'm very sad that we'll never see that Piper/Sawyer dog collar match from the Omni. The Mad Dog in Mid-South/Houston (1985-1986) Buzz Sawyer & Dick Slater v The Fantastics (Mid-South 10/26/85) - This looks like the first competitive match Sawyer had since arriving in Mid-South. Nice 7-minute TV tag. If nothing else it convinced me that a Sawyer/Tommy Rogers singles match would rule. Buzz slaps him a couple times and Tommy pops him in the mouth so Buzz goes flying through the ropes with that amazing signature bump. They do two rope running sequences here that were perfect, particularly the one at the end culminating with Buzz absolutely drilling Rogers with a flying forearm that would bring a tear to Tito Santana's eye. Dark Journey has a kick at Bobby Fulton on the floor and Watts says "I'm sorry, I may sound like a chauvinist but I think a woman should be pretty and in the home" and at least he apologised ahead of time, I guess. Buzz Sawyer & Dick Slater v The Fantastics (Mid-South, 10/27/85) - On paper there's very little chance of this not being good and sure enough it fucking ruled. I think Sawyer and Slater were only together as a team for a short while, which is pretty unfortunate because they were an awesome pair of bruisers here. Buzz was having one of those nights where you bought him flying off the rails any minute. During the Fantastics' entrance he was covering his ears and rocking back and forth, the shrieks from the audience's female population and the droning of ZZ Top's 'Sharp Dressed Man' clearly setting him on edge. The early shine segment was strong as you'd expect, but things got really good when Buzz and Slater took over. The transition was great, with Rogers going for a sunset flip on Slater, Slater countering by just dropping on top of Rogers and drilling him in the mouth. Sawyer works a great side headlock, grinding his chin across the neck and head of Rogers, really cranking back and forth on the hold, then we get an incredible rope running sequence where Tommy crashes and dies off a missed crossbody. The surlier Sawyer and Slater get the more agitated Fulton becomes, the easier it is to then goad him into the ring, to draw the attention of the referee, so the more opportunities arise for Sawyer, Slater and even Dark Journey to pile in on Rogers. Slater really squeezed as much heat out of that hot tag as he could, waiting until Rogers was just about able to reach Fulton only to drag him back by the trunks, then a second time, then a third, so when Fulton actually got the tag the crowd was set to blow the roof off (we assume anyway. This was one of those matches where we had no crowd audio and instead it was Joel Watts doing commentary from his bedroom or whatever). Rogers fucking wastes Slater with an amazing dropkick during the scramble at the end, and then the finish with Sawyer and Slater hitting a Hart Attack was great. A very badass tag, in a great year for tag wrestling in the US. Buzz Sawyer v Hacksaw Duggan (Mid-South, 11/11/85) - What a grimy, blood-soaked masterpiece. It's the first time I've watched this in about 13 years, a match I've pretty much set as my own personal gold standard for out of control brawling, and by christ does it hold up. I'm not really arsed about comparing it to the DiBiase cage match because both are incredible and different enough that the comparison is maybe a little pointless, but either way our man Hacksaw is involved in two of the greatest brawls in all of history not but eight months apart. He was an ungodly walking tall maniac and spends a fair amount of the match cussing out Sawyer and the ref'. Carl Fergie tries to talk him down so Duggan cocks his fist and shouts "You get the fuck away from me!" and you better believe Fergie gets the fuck away from him. "Come on Sawyer, you son of a bitch!" he shouts as Sawyer feebly tries to crawl away from the inevitable. Sawyer is a complete mess after two minutes and Duggan is punching and biting the cut and throwing him into barricades while people are going ballistic. These are some of the best barricade shots ever and Sawyer takes them full on right in the face. Sawyer taking over firstly by trying to tear Duggan's eyes out was amazing, then cementing the transition by mule kicking him in the balls was doubly so. Of course Sawyer gets his revenge with the barricade shots and now the people front row are going ballistic for another reason. There was one point where Sawyer chucked Duggan over the barricade and hopped over after him, then hopped straight back because I assume he figured someone would stab him in the kidneys. Think about how real a threat must be for fucking Buzz Sawyer to go "wait a minute now maybe I won't actually antagonise these folk any further." He picks up a big wooden table, throws it at Duggan's head, rams his face into it, then tries to crush Duggan's skull with it like the table is some giant piece of machinery only for Duggan to move at the last second lest he is killed dead. Sawyer biting the cut and spitting the blood in the air Pirata Morgan style was...I had to step out the room for a second lest *I* break down in tears of jubilance. Duggan then outright punches Sawyer in the dick and there is your greatest revenge spot in the history of our great sport. The finish initially feels like a bit of a cop out, but I like the idea of Sawyer taking the count out just so he can blindside Duggan. Besides, the post-match makes up for it and some of the brawling there is even better than in the match itself. One of the all-time pull-aparts and pretty much what all hate feuds should aspire to. Duggan being dragged away by half a dozen grown men while shouting "kiss my fuckin ass!" is truly - truly - biblical. Honestly this might be one of the 30 or 40 greatest matches ever. Buzz Sawyer v Hacksaw Duggan (Mid-South, 11/24/85) - We're JIP five minutes in here, which is quite frankly a travesty because this was another awesome Sawyer/Duggan brawl. When we join the action Duggan is lying on the floor with a freshly opened wound. Sawyer bites him in the forehead, spits what looks like a chunk of flesh in the air, then CATCHES IT AGAIN IN HIS MOUTH! Truly gross. Sawyer applies a headlock at one point that's about as loose as a headlock could be, which is strange because Sawyer will usually work a really good headlock. You could've fit two heads in there on this one. But fuck all that because Duggan's eventual comeback is of course phenomenal and I love how him biting Sawyer in the head is what leads to Buzz bleeding. This wasn't Duggan biting an already-opened cut, it was the biting that drew the blood, which is appropriately grizzly for these two. A whole bunch of incredible Duggan punches and more cussing as Sawyer crawls around with blood in his eyes. "Come on, you son of a bitch!" At one point Sawyer tried to leap on Duggan and bite him in the face and Duggan caught him in a bearhug. Things break down eventually like you knew they would and the post-match pull-apart is one of the best ever, with one Duggan punch flurry that was legitimately up there with any Lawler/Dundee combo you'll ever see. They roll around pulling hair and digging fingers in eyes and punching each other in the ear while half-dressed jabronis futilely try and separate them, three, four, five times to no avail. Just when it looks like they've managed it...Duggan leaps out the ring and they're back at it again. This is a perfect pro wrestling match up. Buzz Sawyer v Nick Patrick (Mid-South, 12/14/84) - More of an angle than a match, but Buzz Sawyer v future WCW/nWo referee Nick Patrick is a cool piece of history. Probably. Sawyer is pacing around like a nutjob pre-match, swinging a dog collar chain around, and I love how Boyd Pierce introduces him by saying, "SUPPOSED to be in the red corner, Mad Dog buzz Sawyer." There was a Slater/Reed confrontation at the desk that bled into another Sawyer/Duggan brawl, though Sawyer was able to first eek out a win by hitting the powerslam on Patrick. Buzz Sawyer v Jake Roberts (Mid-South, 1/4/86) - Badass TV match. Sawyer was great here, really coming across as a vicious wee bastard. He backs Jake into the corner early and starts biting his midsection, then goes hurling into the ring post off a missed shoulder tackle in the corner. That sets up a nice run of Jake working the arm and Buzz is quick as always getting yanked into armdrags. When Buzz takes over he works the chinlock and uses the ropes for leverage, and I like how after he's caught and the ref' puts the count on him he uses that five count to PROPERLY lean into it, just to eek out that little extra juice before letting go. DQ finish might be somewhat unfortunate, but this was part of a TV title tournament - on TV, of course - so it's hardly unexpected. Really good stuff and a super fun Sawyer performance. The Mad Dog in New Japan (1987-1989) Buzz & Brett Sawyer v Yoshiaki Fujiwara & Osamu Kido (New Japan, 1/2/87) - This is JIP, we only get about five minutes of it and it ends in a no contest, but we thank the footage gods that any Buzz Sawyer v Yoshiaki Fujiwara exists. Fujiwara headbutts him - and Brett, who he headbutted right in the face - and Sawyer chucks Fujiwara into the post and is mystified when Fujiwara merely stares at him in response. Kido is you mild-mannered fellow who wants a wrestling match and instead Buzz just bites him in the ear.

This was basically a 14-minute caning of Ric Flair by the vengeful Ricky Morton. Honestly, I wasn't even going to watch it. I've been going (slowly) through 1986 Crockett for the last three years now and I'm close to the more famous Flair/Morton cage match from the Bash tour. I haven't seen that in about 15 years and I really wanted to go into it fresh. This was listed as being from the 6/22/86 episode of World Pro, which I realised later is wrong, but I was going by that date initially and knew this was a shorter match from the DVD file time, so I figured it might've been a test run of sorts for the July match. I thought it also might've been clipped or JIP because a 14-minute Ric Flair cage match in 1986 felt implausible. So I was maybe going to go back to it after watching the Bash match and unbeknownst to me that would've been the correct order anyway but I ended up watching this one first because it was next on the disc. All of that pointlessness aside I'm very glad I watched the thing because it was very different from what I remember the Bash match being. It was also very awesome. This was happening in the first place because Flair and the Horsemen had mashed Morton's face into a locker room floor. Morton's been wearing a protective face mask for a few weeks now, walking around out of the ring with his cheek and nose bandaged up. You and I and Ricky Morton and everyone else knew that Flair would target it again. Morton flipping the script and immediately going after Flair's face was so great, and I love how Flair initially sold surprise, then indignation, then rage, then eventually came to the realisation that he himself was going to need a protective face mask if this continued. Maybe he figured the line for Space Mountain wouldn't be nearly as long if Space Mountain was busted and in dire need of repairs. In a regular match he'd have rolled to the floor and composed himself. I like that he actually tried to do that here, only he had nowhere to go on account of the 12-foot cage. Later, after it became obvious he was stuck in there with someone who would relentlessly try and disfigure him, he just ran up the buckles and tried to jump over the top. Flair was always one for the bare arse spot and Morton damn near yanked the whole trunks off him just to get him back in. Morton really grinds Flair's face into the canvas, rakes his face across the top rope, grabs Flair by the nose and tries to pull it off, drags him around the ring by the nose, all great stuff built around retaliatory facial mutilation. Flair trying to punch Morton in the face and selling his hand after he hits the face shield rules, then he manages to remove it but before he can do anything Morton fights him off and takes it back, puts it back on and headbutts him with the mask! I loved pretty much everything they did that was built around DIY facial reconstruction. Flair trying to hit the kneedrop here carried a little more weight than usual. He was always going to do it anyway, but doing it to a guy with a mangled face is extra vindictive. Flair missing and Morton going to the figure-four is another thing that probably would've happened regardless, but it had a little more behind it on Morton's part here, some humiliation laced through it, whereas most of the time it just feels like a spot a Flair opponent would do because...well because it's a Flair match and that was the done thing. Flair sold the leg in a really subtle but amazing way too, especially after Morton does a legdrop make-a-wish thing to both hamstrings. The slow limp into Flair's failed elbow drop was probably my favourite instance of it and Morton was just all over him again like a rash. Morton will always bring incredible energy to matches and this was him dialled up to 11. Even as Flair escaping by the skin of his teeth finishes go this one might've been a wee bit abrupt, but I like that they threw that curveball in there. Sometimes even after a pasting the champ can sneak out a win, and not every match needs to go half an hour anyway. Another excellent entry from two guys who were made to wrestle each other.

That was complete madness. Holy shit what a bitta the pro wrestling. Honestly I don't think there's ever been a better triple thread in WWE history.

I forgot how good Blackwell was. He blew me away going through the AWA 80s set, then I never watched him for years, and then over the last few days I've watched a bunch of him and yeah, what an amazing portlyboy. In addition to what I said about him a couple posts up, he has an all-time great elbow drop and his running corner splash is the GOAT of GOATs. I re-watched the Algerian death match against Vachon the other night and jeez louise he about killed the wee fella with those corner splashes. What is the Blackjack Mulligan match folks were mentioning earlier in the thread? Because I don't think I've seen that before and a bit of new Blackwell is exciting. I may allow him to coast on good will all the way into my top 40. Fire me, I'm already fired.

I'm going through the Petit Prince footage now and he's truly mind-blowing. The Tiger Mask and Rey Jr. comparisons were the exact ones that came to mind watching the '66 match with Bobby Genele last night. He's ridiculous.

Yes! All ye Jerry Estrada fans be welcome here!

Fuckin Hector Guerrero v Sangre Chicana, brothers and sisters! That is a legitimate Tier 1 dream match for me that I never would've even thought about until I stumbled upon this. The primera is basically a full Guerreros show and it was amazing. Chavo had some nifty matwork with Markus Jr. that effectively became him tying Jr. up, followed by Jr.'s old man coming in to lend a hand before being shooed back out. He'd try and sneak up on Chavo like one of those don't wake the bear games you'd play when you were four and wrestling used to rule. Shockingly enough, Hector v Chicana was my own personal highlight, much like seeing OutKast and the Wu-Tang Clan sharing a stage would be, but also the actual highlight of the match as they were just brilliant together, much like I imagine Andre 3000 and the GZA would be. Before they even get in together Hector forward rolls over to the rudo corner, grabs an unsuspecting Chicana by the nose and uses his other hand to slap the nose away. Chicana psyches himself up and charges, drops down waiting for Hector to hit the ropes and step over him, but instead Hector picks him up and levels him with an uppercut. For such a rabid animal Chicana is an underrated comedy guy and his little confused look when Hector was nowhere to be found was so great. Loved the bit where Mando had Chicana in a seesaw with his knees as the fulcrum and every time he slung Chicana up Chavo and Hector would take turns knocking him back down with forearms. The Guerreros are just the best. I haven't seen much Markus Sr. but he was a fun old guy with fun old guy charisma. I wonder if he wasn't an awesome puncher in his heyday and passed that onto his kid because Markus Jr. hit Mando with an absolutely incredible punch flurry in the segunda. The tercera settles into a more extended Mando/Markus Jr. showdown as they punch each other into a state of only being upright because they're both propped up by the other, shoulder to shoulder, stuck in that position as the others fight around them. Markus Sr. gives his boy a shove and he lands on top of Mando in a pinning position, then Chavo flips them over and as Chicana tries to break it up Hector shoulder charges him out the ring, and Chicana's look of "oh no what have I done?" as he's toppling into the ropes was full Sangre Chicana. Really cool Guerreros performance across the board. Mando is the least talked about of the family, or he's the one whose work I'm least familiar with, but he was super fun as a weird sort of stocky pocket rocket, had some kooky submissions and spots like Tony Charles as Checkmate, then he'd go and flatten someone with a huge dive from the top turnbuckles to the floor. The Guerreros. What a wrestling family.

I have since softened on my stance that 75 was probably too high for Hector in 2016. If anything, I have become HARDENED on the stance that 75 is too low! I've been watching a bunch of random Hector stuff over the last few days and I find something at least fun about his performances in literally every match he's involved in. Evert single one of them. Like his brothers he's someone who clearly likes to be inventive and he's honestly do something different every time out. There's a six-man where he's tagging with Denny Brown and Tim Horner against the Horsemen (the episode of Worldwide that leads to the impromptu Flair/Windham match) and I'm telling you now, they should've had Tully and Hector feud for six months and then if Crockett had his wits about him Hector should've main evented Starrcade against Flair. Rugged Ronnie? What about Handsome Hector, Jim?! Hector Guerrero v Sangre Chicana was not a dream match I dared dream of but the Guerreros/Chicana-Markus-Markus Jr. trios from '87 is a total blast and Hector v Chicana was amazing. It's hard to really elucidate but Hector just has this demeanour in the ring, the way he carries himself, how he moves from moment to moment, where he looks like the most natural pro wrestler going. Eddie clearly emulated his brother - I've said it before, but it's striking how similar Hector his to what Eddie would be - and wrestling would be a hunner times better if more guys decided to be Hector Guerrero rather than Shawn Michaels or Bret Hart or a pillar of All Japan. I feel like I have more of a "methodology" or whatever snooty term you want to use when it comes to putting my top 100 together this time around. It's not a BIGLAV or anything remotely like that, but I know what I value most and one of my three biggest priorities is, if I were to take every match of a wrestler and plug them into a shuffle playlist, who could I sit and watch for longest without getting bored? And Hector Guerrero scores absurdly well on that. I'll have him as high as I can possibly justify, and then he'll get the favourites bump and go higher than I can ACTUALLY justify but I'll do it anyway.

Have I perchance mentioned that young Liger was the fucking truth? To be honest I've been cold on him for years and Takada has never been my guy, so if I hadn't been watching all this stuff anyway I'd probably never have checked this out. Fortuitous then, as it was pretty awesome. What I really liked was how they sold their standing in the hierarchy. Yamada was frantic in going to the ropes whenever Takada would apply the legbar, while Takada was much more composed if Yamada managed to lock in a submission. The crowd picked up on it as well and were far more vocal when Yamada was the one in trouble, probably because they bought him submitting early more than they bought it from Takada. By the end they were red hot for everything and a big part of that is Takada's performance, which honestly might be one of the best I've ever seen from him. I thought he was legitimately great in this. He started to get a little more desperate as things went on, showed frustration after Yamada kept getting the ropes, shaking his head like "will this kid just go away already," sold a greater degree of danger for Yamada's holds, gave him more in strike exchanges as the match progressed. Maybe he'd been taking cues from Fujiwara because he really knew when to give and when to take. There's a cool example about midway in after Yamada made the ropes off ANOTHER legbar attempt, and Takada got up and immediately started throwing kicks. He'd kept those in the holster for the first 8-9 minutes so at that point you knew Yamada was getting on his nerves. He might not have been a veteran yet, but this was him in a position of more experienced worker, not necessarily having to carry someone but at least be in the driver's seat, and fair play to him because he was excellent. Yamada was great as scrappy underdog. He held his own in strike exchanges and I liked how he would use things like lariats and dropkicks rather than the pure shoot style strikes of Takada, which if nothing else kept the line between New Japan and UWF halfway in place. Loved the bit where Takada refused to be whipped into the ropes so Yamada clotheslined him in the face a few times, then tried a wild dropkick and crashed hard. He also sold the struggle and the danger of not only holds, but of a few key moves, really in a way that not a lot of wrestlers two years into their career would (or at least not like this). Those legbar examples were obvious but so was the tombstone, where Takada tried it twice in quick succession and Yamada frantically wriggled out both times. Then there was the fight over the chickenwing in the back half where they were channelling Fujinami and Fujiwara, reversing the reversals trying to hook it in. That sort of struggle set up the payoffs for when Takada managed to grab the legbar in the middle of the ring. At that point I thought it was over for sure, and I think maybe the people did too, but Yamada made the ropes and the reaction was incredible. Then when Takada hits the tombstone - after Yamada hit one of his own - it lets him finally hook in that chickenwing. If that's not good build I'm not sure what is. This would've done really well on the 80s set if we had it, but I'm sort of glad we didn't because it's cool knowing things as good as this are still popping up. Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery. As they say (prolly).

That Rude/Dustin match from Worldwide is so good. One of the best Rude performances. Actually so is the Pillman match from February.

Fujiwara and the original UWF is such a match made in heaven. Nobody does corner strike exchanges like Fujiwara and nowhere accentuates the violence of corner strike exchanges like the original UWF. I think it's because that first UWF run was a little less defined from a stylistic standpoint. In UWF 2.0 and then especially the Takada/Maeda/Fujiwara offshoot promotions, you weren't going to get some of the insane brutality you got here because the rules around TKOs and knockdowns were actually enforced. You wouldn't get Fujiwara lying hunched in the corner while Yamazaki tries to cave his skull in with kneedrops in RINGS or PWFG. This had some of the very best corner striking you'll see, almost bordering on Battlarts at points. There was a spell of about four minutes where they pretty much stayed in the one corner shredding each other with kicks, punches, slaps and headbutts. First it was Yamazaki leathering Fujiwara with kicks, Fujiwara covering up and trying to weather the storm, then Fujiwara reversing it and laying into Yamazaki with body blows, then the tables being flipped again and Fujiwara ending up back in the foetal position. The heat for Yamazaki catching Fujiwara with kicks was absurd and there was one high kick to the neck that elicited one of the loudest pops ever, as well as one of the best Fujiwara sells of a high kick you'll see. There's another moment where it looks like Fujiwara has Yamazaki trapped against the turnbuckles and Yamazaki rips off a spin kick that about ruptures Fujiwara's spleen. He sold this thing like he had internal bleeding and I legit thought they were going to do a stoppage for a second. Basically this was some godly corner work and corner work is another thing Fujiwara is an expert at. The thread running through this is one as old as time in shoot style - Fujiwara is clearly the stronger on the mat while Yamazaki would rather be standing and striking, so it's the always-reliable striker v grappler dynamic. Yamazaki is often frantic in trying to reach the ropes while Fujiwara knows he can cinch in holds with significantly less resistance. Some sick examples of this where Fujiwara will rip into a hold in about two seconds and Yamazaki is left floundering. I thought the kimura following the piledriver was for sure the end, but Yamazaki making the ropes sent that crowd fully off their head. It was nuts. It's sort of unfortunate then that as soon as Fujiwara grabbed the nasty facelock the crowd knew it was over. There was no way he was escaping twice in quick succession like that, not with Fujiwara. Who - you may be shocked to hear - looked fucking amazing in this bout. So we're off to a flyer.

A very different match to the February bout, but an awesome one all the same. In February they went for more of a slow cook, where they used their charisma and personalities to bring it to a boil and build drama. This time there was no need to try and build tension - their factions had been going at it for months now and the tension was inherent, a palpable ever-present, so Fujiwara jumped Inoki at the bell, tried to snapmare him into oblivion and then choke him to death. As far as beginnings go it was pretty great. This was more of a pure babyface Inoki, almost the underdog given the way Fujiwara blitzed him early. Fujiwara was the Terminator, an unrelenting force that wasn't to be denied. If it looked like he had to give too much to Inoki in February then he took it all back here and it never once felt like Inoki had the upper hand. There was no shit-talking while locked in a hold, no counters or reversals that he didn't have to fight tooth and nail for. The first time he managed to sneak out of the choke he went straight into an Indian deathlock and the way he fired up the crowd was awe-inspiring. He tried to match Fujiwara with the sleeper and I love that Fujiwara literally went for his throat. They escalated like that the whole way through, Inoki having to throw more and more of his honour out the window to keep pace with someone who never brought any in the first place. When he punched Fujiwara in the back of the head and Fujiwara just grinned at him you kind of knew that the rest of the match would be fought on Fujiwara's terms. And once again nobody works or sells a choke like Fujiwara. He has to be the best ever at both and I loved Inoki trying to shake him by just throwing both of them over the ropes, only for the camera to pan around and there's Fujiwara still wrapped around Inoki, relentless. You think Inoki might finally have slowed Fujiwara down after ramming him into the post, but even gushing blood from his head Fujiwara kept coming forward. It was pure defiance, taking punches to the cut and giving no ground, refusing to even be whipped into the ropes, even getting blasted with the enziguri and walking away grinning, which was about 90% amazing and 10% horrifying. In the end Inoki might've found a way to eek out the win, but he had to walk through fire to do it and Fujiwara was the dragon.

More of the same from these two, which is very good pro wrestling. It's one of the first UWF showcase matches since they re-joined the New Japan fold and you couldn't have picked a better showcase. If nothing else, in case these crowds had forgotten in the two years they'd been gone, it reminded everyone how dangerous Maeda is as a striker and how much of a lethal counter-wrestler Fujiwara could be. The early going has some great matwork and fighting over holds. Maeda takes Fujiwara over with a sharp hip toss that about puts him on his neck, Fujiwara reverses a half crab by rearing up on his head and booting Maeda away with the free leg, they fight over an arm, a leg, just really good stuff all around. Then as it goes along they start to groove into the tried and true Fujiwara/Maeda dynamic. Maeda is an assassin and starts winging those kicks, roundhouses to the midsection, leg kicks, wheel kicks to the head, dipping all the way into that bag of nasty shit. Nobody absorbs blows like Fujiwara and some of his corner defence was incredible, then he'd try and catch some of those kicks and they'd slip through the guard, partially landing and visibly hurting him or fully landing and almost ending him. After about a dozen of these he starts to get belligerent, smirking and half strutting away from exchanges even though you know he's trying to get under Maeda's skin. Of course it takes next to nothing to get under Maeda's skin, so the latter maybe forces the issue a bit too much and Fujiwara clonks him with a headbutt. Maeda responding with one of his own that landed right in the cheek bone was amazing. Maeda getting a little frustrated and leaving himself open made for an awesome finish, with Fujiwara shooting off an elbow and catching him with the flash armbar. As a matchup this feels almost like the prototype for Ishikawa/Ikeda. Not that there had never been any striker v grappler matchups before Fujiwara/Maeda, but these two had some of that same grey area where Fujiwara could still strike when he needed to and Maeda was no slouch on the mat. Fujiwara/Sayama, for example, was almost entirely grappler v striker, because Sayama had no chance when it came to grappling. Being a proto Ishikawa v Ikeda is a pretty cool thing to be.

Bless the 1986 handheld video camera gods! Panasonic, we salute you! This wasn't available during the 80s project (I assume?); if it was I'd probably have had it top 30. I cannot tell you how much I loved it, although I will attempt to with many words. I loved it in all of the ways I expected to love it, but also in a bunch of ways I didn't expect. Every matchup rocked. They shake hands early but Fujiwara has no time for Ueda, waving him away because a deviant like that is neither to be trusted nor acknowledged. Then those two started with some rock solid grappling that I honestly did not expect Ueda to have in his locker at this stage of the game. Fujiwara slaps him off a clean break without a single second's hesitation, then when given the chance to retaliate Ueda surprisingly breaks clean so Fujiwara slaps him again. He didn't even think about it and had no compunction about doing so, a man utterly assured in his convictions. Later in the match when Ueda does crack him back, Fujiwara stares him dead in the face and the distorted colouring of the old camera footage makes him look like a psychopath from a Takashi Miike film. Yamada and Yamazaki have a gorgeous exchange, so quick and crisp and I'm sorry but give me Yamada doing the shoot style for 35 years. He was fucking awesome in '86 and this was some of the best matwork I've ever seen from him. It VEXES me that he pretty much ditched this stuff in the 90s, even if I understand why (New Japan juniors style, innit). Imagine a world where him and Sano switched places and Yamada went to SWS and PWFG and Sano wore the costume? Not that the world we got was a disappointment, but still. Ueda/Yamazaki was shockingly fun. Ueda kind of sandbags Yamazaki at a few points, especially when Yamazaki is foolish enough to think Ueda in 1986 is down for getting German suplexed off a whippersnapper, and instead Ueda whips him into the slickest armbar I've ever seen him pull off. Yamazaki looks almost disconcerted as he high kicks Ueda in the head and Ueda blows it off completely, so he backs into the corner to tag Fujiwara as Ueda stalks him down, and Fujiwara refuses the tag like "go and fight the fucking ghoul then!" Yamada/Fujiwara was the best of the lot and I love how genial Fujiwara is to the kid. They shake hands before having an amazing exchange and you could tell it was a proper handshake, not one merely for appearances but a handshake of genuine respect, teacher to student. They square off a few times throughout the match and in a later one Yamada backs him into the corner and slaps him, and the fact Fujiwara never headbutted him in the face right there is telling. When he has the opportunity to hand out a receipt he just pats Yamada on the chest, then looks over his shoulder at Ueda like he wouldn't be so lucky. Next time they end up in the ropes Fujiwara punches Yamada in the ribs, gives him a shot to the face and takes him over into a key lock. It was one of those "I like you, boy...but watch yourself" moments. And the armbar at the end is one of the most beautiful of the man's career. This honestly might be my straight up favourite match of the year.

One hour and twenty minutes! These gauntlet series are some of the coolest things New Japan ever did. They're not technically one match in the traditional sense, but in a narrative sense they pull together into one package with each individual segment contributing towards that overall story, flowing from one to the next, from beginning to end. The '84 gauntlet was my #1 on the DVDVR New Japan set and is one of the greatest things I've ever seen in wrestling. I have not re-watched that bastard however as it is an ENDEAVOUR and I didn't think I had it in me to do it in one sitting at this point in my life. Well to hell with that because I just sat on my arse for 80 minutes and watched this one front to back. In a novel concept I will now talk about each individual match, using no more than 150 words for each (I thought about doing 100 but Fujinami/Fujiwara was simply too good for me to be shackled as such). Takada/Yamada fucking ruled. Have I mentioned how fun young Liger was? If he wanted to he absolutely could've been an amazing shoot style wrestler, right along the same lines as Sano. I know that's like saying Michael Jordan could've been a really good baseball player if he didn't like basketball so much, but still. This had lots of struggle and was more or less entirely shoot style, with Yamada going at the prince hammer and tong. Takada thumps him with kicks and it looks like Yamada is going to be counted out, but he keeps getting up and the nearfall off the backdrop driver was insane. Yamada sells the urgency of these shoot submissions better than most actual shoot stylists. Great opener and probably one that would be remembered super fondly as an early Liger match if it was its own thing. Takada/Sakaguchi was a nifty enough styles clash, if a step down from what we just got. Takada aims to chop the big tree down with leg kicks and Sakaguchi is having none of it. Sakaguchi using his lankiness for leverage to escape holds is a cool way to get around the fact he shouldn't really be hanging with Takada on the mat. Canadian backbreakers are great. Bring back the Canadian backbreakers. Sakaguchi/Yamazaki was a badass wee five minutes. Yamazaki is fired up going after the big lummox, throwing on legbars and slapping Sakaguchi about the face when he tries to sit out of them. Sakaguchi is LONG though and it's hard to keep him locked up. Eventually he just muscles Yamazaki into a half and then full crab and Yamazaki succeeds only in softening Sakaguchi up somewhat for Kido. Sakaguchi/Kido wasn't so hot. Kido is tiny compared to Sakaguchi but probably quicker and Sakaguchi has had to deal with two people already. Which is part of the beauty of these gauntlets. Ordinarily there's no way I'd have expected Kido to win this, but under the circumstances he can keep plugging away and see what's what. If I'm him I'm thinking a small package is a decent way to go as well. So fair play to the wee fella. Kido/Koshinaka was pretty okay. Koshinaka dragging Kido the floor immediately and hitting a piledriver ruled, then he went after the leg which was a fine enough idea if not the most compelling in execution. Kido slabbering him with a forearm was sensational. I am not particularly sure what the finish was all about. Kido/Kimura was too short to really be much. Kido had already wrestled two guys and the last match ended with him lying arse-end up over the guardrail, so you maybe had an inkling of how this would go. Still, he went out a hero. Or at least a man deserving of mild applause. Kimura/Fujiwara is where the match picked up again. I guess this answers why Fujiwara was out for blood in their singles match later in the month. Kimura jumps Fujiwara at the start (much like Fujiwara would do in a couple weeks), rams him into the post, and this time the rock solid cranium can't save him. He comes up bloody and Kimura is all over him like a rash. He digs his fingers into the wound and when Fujiwara gets up and looks him dead in the face there's this "ooohhhhh" reaction from the crowd. Right before Fujiwara obliterates him with a headbutt. Fujiwara's face as he tries to rip Kimura's arm out the socket was an absolutely incredible visual. Fujiwara/Fujinami must be the best ever matchup that never materialised as an actual match. This was the closest we got to it and mother of god what a phenomenal bitta pro wrestling. Fujinami works the sleeper like he's trying to crush Fujiwara's windpipe and Fujiwara is the one true god of selling a chokehold, which you can add to the list of other things he's the one true god of. The struggle is just exceptional, the way Fujiwara tries to snapmare out of that choke only for Fujinami to keep hold, flip over with the momentum and go right back to it, Fujiwara's eyes glazing over more and more each time. There was one bit where he was reaching out for the rope, inches from that but closer to unconsciousness, so Fujinami wrapped a leg around the arm to cut him off and there was genuine belief that Fujinami might actually choke him out. As far as building drama with a single, simple hold it was pretty much perfect. Fujiwara knowing that Fujinami is the last one standing from Team New Japan and trying to get both of them counted out was so great. Fujinami sensed what the play was too and he was lunging to get back in the ring, but Fujiwara was feral and when that man has the bit between his teeth it's hard to pry it loose. I had no recollection of Fujinami hitting a total fucking gusher in this. Fujiwara ditching the count out strategy and piledriving Fujinami on the concrete instead was a pretty great way to bring about said gusher. It needed to be some real blood loss if he was going to sell being dead on his feet, and it was and the selling was phenomenal and so was Fujiwara whomping him with uppercuts and Fujinami just collapsing in the ropes. The backslide reversal to one of those uppercuts once again lends credence to the idea that UWF's kryptonite is the mighty backslide, but Fujiwara couldn't give a shit even after losing and goes right back to throwing headbutts. An unbelievable ten minutes and that might've been more than 150 words. Fujinami/Maeda to take us home honestly wasn't that much of a step down from the last match, which means it was fucking awesome. Fujinami's selling again is just out of this world, taking bullet after bullet and staggering around energy-depleted, falling awkwardly into the ropes, making last ditch reversals, facing down the inevitable while refusing to blink. Maeda hitting the dragon suplex and Fujinami actually kicking out of it is one of the best nearfalls I've seen in ages, and if you're going to do a blood stoppage after all this then it better look legit. And brothers, this looked very legit. Bring on the singles match. So there you go. Nine "matches" over 80 minutes. As a whole it wouldn't quite make my top three New Japan matches for the year, but things like Yamada/Takada and Fujinami/Maeda were awesome and that Fujinami/Fujiwara bit is as good as anything I've seen in ages. A hell of a thing.

About a year ago I went through nearly all of the '87 Fujiwara we have available. I mentioned it a couple posts back but I'd call him the best wrestler in the world at that point. A year later I've nearly gone through all of the '86 footage we have and I'd say he was the best wrestler in the world then as well. I used to think Fujiwara's absolute peak was '89-'90, but that was based on very little to nearly no memory of the New Japan stuff before it, which I hadn't watched since the DVDVR project way the fuck back in 2009 (which was more of a Greatest Match Ever thing and doesn't always give you the clearest picture of an individual anyway). At this point I'm pretty comfortable in saying that peak started at least as far back as '86, and that peak is about as good as any wrestler's ever. I mean, if someone can say they have a sustained peak of five years with greater quality work relative to the rest of their career then that's pretty impressive. But I guess every wrestler has a peak, you know? Scott Casey and Billy Jack Haynes and Kendo Kashin and Paul Roma and Octagon all had career peaks. I assume. Maybe Someone will deep dive Paul Roma and it'll turn out he had five years where he was clearly working at a higher level than he was for the rest of his career. At this point I can say I'm more peak in the Peak v Longevity debate so maybe peak Paul Roma will be enough to get him on my list. But peak Fujiwara is one of the three best wrestlers in the world for about five years straight, during a stretch that has some exceptional wrestling. And I still might be selling him short on how far back that peak extends. What I've come to appreciate about Fujiwara over the years, from watching the footage of not only him but the wrestlers he trained, watching the promotion he founded, watching the style he had a hand in driving, is that he almost has a Hansen quality to him. He has this end boss aura that makes every contest feel special, every exchange, every hold or strike or move feel important. That sounds verbose and honestly kind of stupid, but I really believe it. Stan Hansen is someone who was perpetual motion, always moving forward and would only give an opponent what the opponent decided to take, if that opponent was even willing to try. Maybe not against a Baba or Inoki or Funk where there was less of a hierarchal gap, but certainly against someone further down the ladder. Like a Kikuchi, or a young Taue or Kobashi. It meant a lot of his stuff in the 80s kind of bordered on him smothering opponents, but at the same time that needed to happen for him to build the aura that he emanated, which in turn made those moments where someone managed to hang with him feel huge -- or monumental if they actually beat him. It's not EXACTLY the same because I don't really think of Fujiwara as someone who gobbled folk up, but if nothing else he made you earn absolutely everything. There was a moment in the 9/86 5v5 elimination match where he squared off against Kantaro Hoshino, Hoshino clocked him with a straight punch to the temple, Fujiwara went down like a ton of bricks, and because Fujiwara is who Fujiwara is, that moment feels like Hoshino has damn near slain a deity in the mortal realm. I guess when you boil it down it's selling within a hierarchy and knowing when to give and when to take, but that's easier in theory than execution and I think Fujiwara was as good or better at it than anybody there's ever been. Without going through every post in the thread I can imagine someone has outlined his versatility. It's not even versatility in the sense that he was great at two very different styles of wrestling. That versatility is of course commendable, but I think - and I know how snooty and pretentious this sounds before I even say it - as a character worker he has tonnes of range. There are a few different faces of Fujiwara. One is the elite grappler whose general decorum is befitting of his status, aggressive but fair, tenacious but ultimately sporting. Take something like the 8/87 Maeda bout, for example. Another is the old master who's happy to mess around a bit, who can still enjoy life even past his prime, satisfied with the legacy he's built, secure in his standing. Look at the 3/06 match with Minoru Suzuki for that. Both of those Fujiwaras are great, sometimes for similar reasons, sometimes for different ones. But my favourite Fujiwara is the one who's out to watch the world burn. The Fujiwara who sets it alight in the first place, where decorum goes out the window and victory becomes a secondary concern. The Fujiwara who wants to make Choshu's life a misery, to drag him down to Fujiwara's level, even just for the sport of it. That Fujiwara is a special sort of pro wrestler that captures a sense of total no-fucks-given chaos very few ever have. If I'm listing not just a small handful of wrestlers that I'd want to see above any, but instead a small handful of character-portrayals from a wrestler that I'd want to see above any, then THAT Fujiwara is right up there with jealousy- and paranoia-driven 2005 Eddie Guerrero, angry at the world and everything in it midlife crisis Tenryu, and lunatic Terry Funk running around doing whatever he wants in Puerto Rico because he knows that's the only place he won't get arrested for it. On a more specific level, the stuff about him being an amazing counter wrestler has been mentioned before. I don't think anybody sells being on the defensive like him, the way he can convey strategy from how he turns his body to deflect or absorb strikes, the way he'll sell partial blows, the way he'll use that defence to make it look like he's drawing an opponent in, ready to strike back at the right moment. That ground has been covered. But has anybody worked a chinlock like Fujiwara? Has anyone SOLD a chinlock like Fujiwara? In the '86 stuff there are lots of amazing chinlocks, which in actual fact are more like sleeper holds or chokes, but in America they'd be called chinlocks. And Fujiwara applies a chinlock like he's trying to choke the life from you and he sells being in one like unconsciousness is but moments away. The drooling, the squashed face, the glazed over eyes - there's nobody better. Nobody tells a story through facial expressions like Fujiwara. He was top 10 in 2016 and he'll probably be top 5 in 2026. If I were to send in a list right now it would be between him and Funk for my #3. I guess he's fresh enough in the memory, and I watched his amazing 5/86 performance against Kimura recently enough, that Fujiwara would probably just inch it. By 2026 he might even be #1.

There are a few different faces of Fujiwara. One is the elite grappler whose general decorum is befitting of his status, aggressive but fair, tenacious but ultimately sporting. Another is the old master who's happy to mess around a bit, who can still enjoy life even past his prime, satisfied with the legacy he's built, secure in his standing. Both of those Fujiwaras are great, sometimes for similar reasons, sometimes for different ones. But my favourite Fujiwara is the one who's out to watch the world burn. The Fujiwara who sets it alight in the first place, where decorum goes out the window and victory becomes a secondary concern. The Fujiwara who wants to make Choshu's life a misery, to drag him down to Fujiwara's level, even just for the sport of it. This was that Fujiwara, and I don't have a clue what prompted it. He attacks Kimura while the latter is stepping through the ropes and after a minute Kimura is bleeding all over himself. You could tell right away that Fujiwara wasn't arsed about winning this and was more bothered about putting Kimura through hell. Any match against this Fujiwara is a fight and never a fair one. Even more so it's a test, one less about skill and more about character, your mental and physical toughness. How much can you take? How much can you give back? How much does Fujiwara really care so long as he has his fun? Kimura had no choice but to embrace the challenge and basically his first bit of offence was pinning Fujiwara to the mat and grabbing him by the throat. It didn't last long and pretty soon Fujiwara was back headbutting him and showing him how you really choke someone. Fujiwara has one of the meanest chokes ever, and I'm not talking about the guillotine or rear naked sort. He'll just wrap his hand around your trachea like a vice grip, crazy-eyed and frothing at the mouth and maybe a part of you wonders if Kimura shouldn't just live to fight another day. He's a wrestler and this isn't even a wrestling match anymore. Pick your battles and all that. I'm a sucker for a good rock solid Fujiwara cranium spot and this had three great ones. First Kimura smashed a chair over his head and Fujiwara merely took the skeleton of it and passed it to a bystander, then Kimura rammed him head-first into the turnbuckle bolts, the foolishness of it swiftly laughed off. There came a point where Fujiwara was covered in Kimura's blood, a wide, bloody streak of it up the side of his face that resembled the grin of Heath Ledger's Joker. If that isn't a perfect visual then I don't know what is. Kimura sells every legbar like his tibia's about to snap and Fujiwara looks demonic, like a snapped tibia was the least of his intentions. When you think Kimura might have a shot after the piledriver Fujiwara just takes him to the floor again and dumps him over the railing, and it's hard to explain but he did it with a casualness that was sort of remarkable. His body language, physical demeanour, whatever - that one moment pretty much summed up his entire thought process and he communicated it in a way that not many wrestlers could. That he had the cheek to bow to the crowd in the middle of the ring after the bell was the cherry on top. Really one of the great Fujiwara performances.

New Japan King of Sports! Dios mio what a wrestling match. I didn't remember a single thing about this and that is just ridiculous because I thought it was legitimately incredible. It's basically a full sprint version of one of these elimination matches and I guess a bit of a low key one at ~20 minutes. It certainly doesn't get talked about in the same breath as the others. I never watch a match and actively want to play-by-play it if I'm writing it up, but I kind of wanted to play-by-play this entire thing. I mean I won't because nobody can be arsed with that, but I wanted to because something brilliant was happening every four seconds. All of the opening matchups were great. Fujinami/Maeda picked up where they left off in June, Kimura/Kido had an awesome bit of grappling, Fujiwara/Hoshino was an electric 30 seconds, Takada/Koshinaka wrote another chapter in their feud and this was some of their best stuff together, and Yamazaki/Takano rounded it off with a great 'lower-ranked guys proving their worth' exchange. They all went about business with urgency, and like in March it took a quick pin for the first elimination, this time Kido being the victim. I guess the UWF guys were susceptible to a good backslide? At this point I need to talk about the Fujiwara/Hoshino exchanges, and Fujiwara in a broader sense, because their stuff together was spectacular and Fujiwara was fucking unbelievable in this. Initially it's Takano who gets in with him and Fujinami is on the apron frantically pointing at Hoshino like "no no let the wee madcunt in!" They both lock up and Hoshino immediately punches him in the ear like Hoshino will punch everybody in the ear and Fujiwara goes down like a ton of bricks. Just flat on his back, looking at the lights. It was an amazing moment, one that came off the way it did because Fujiwara is who Fujiwara is. What I've come to appreciate about Fujiwara over the years, from watching the footage of not only him but the wrestlers he trained, watching the promotion he founded, watching the style he had a hand in driving, is that he almost has a Hansen quality to him. He has this end boss aura that makes every contest feel special, every exchange, every hold or strike or move feel important. That sounds verbose and honestly kind of stupid, but I really believe it. Stan Hansen is someone who was perpetual motion, always moving forward and would only give an opponent what the opponent decided to take, if that opponent was even willing to try. Maybe not against a Baba or Inoki or Funk where there was less of a hierarchal gap, but certainly against someone further down the ladder. Like a Kikuchi, hypothetically, a Kantaro Hoshino. It meant a lot of his stuff in the 80s kind of bordered on him smothering opponents, but at the same time that needed to happen for him to build the aura that he emanated, which in turn made those moments where someone managed to hang with him feel huge -- or monumental if they actually beat him. It's not EXACTLY the same because I don't really think of Fujiwara as someone who gobbled folk up, but if nothing else he made you earn absolutely everything and when he goes down like he did here it feels like Hoshino has damn near slain a deity in the mortal realm. Their second exchange has Hoshino come in throwing wild punches and combos to the head and body, followed by Fujiwara charging him out the corner and caving his skull in with a headbutt. It was about fifteen seconds all in and it was phenomenal. And then there's Fujiwara's elimination, which is as perfect a sequence as I've ever seen. First Takano hits him with THE absolute bastard of all unholy bastard tombstones you've ever seen in your entire life, and Fujiwara's selling is off the charts amazing for the next couple minutes. Takano follows it up with a splash that Fujiwara rolls out the way of, but he doesn't get up and can't capitalise. This again is one of those things that you pick up on if you've seen enough Fujiwara, where he's clearly selling the effects of the tombstone by being groggy, basically giving Takano the rub by not mounting any sort of comeback. But you're also watching it thinking Takano better put him away now or Fujiwara will pull something out the bag. I knew the counterstrike was coming and I legit popped for it when it happened, the way he just ripped Takano into this disgusting armbar. Fujinami then comes in and grabs a choke (maybe a call back to the March match?), Fujiwara is going out - defiantly, as he manages a grin and then a scowl - but Fujinami drags him to his feet and Hoshino comes in and torpedoes both himself and Fujiwara through the ropes for the double elimination. In all of these matches there'll be one pairing that stands out above the rest. In this match it was Fujiwara/Hoshino, how they used a fairly short amount of time together to build this great little story, where Hoshino dropped the master early and got emphatically repaid in kind, yet refused to be beaten and wanted the satisfaction of eliminating Fujiwara, even if it meant going down with him, Fujinami more than happy to throw him that bone. But even more than all that it was Fujiwara being god. I loved the Fujinami/Maeda double elimination as well. They were going wild leading up to it, countering and countering again, the Scorpion deathlock into a Boston crab, Maeda grabbing a full nelson and looking like he's for hitting the dragon suplex. Fujinami must've been expecting it too and made a beeline for the ropes, ducking at the last second, but in forcing Maeda through them his momentum carried him along for the ride, just a fingertip short of grabbing that bottom rope. It was different from the March match. In that one Fujinami willingly sacrificed himself for the team, whereas this time he took a gamble and it didn't fully pay off...though under the circumstances you might still call it a success. The Koshinaka/Takada matchup to take us out was pretty great. I'm not about to go back and re-watch everything they did together but maybe I've been harsh on them as a pairing for over a decade now? I certainly didn't recall Koshinaka destroying guys with hip attacks this early in his career. He was nailing Takada right in the face with these. It was back and forth and I guess it meant they had to forego some of the selling, but it was molten hot and they were killing each other so I can't really complain. Takada about slapping the jaw off Koshinaka before wrapping things up with the swank cradle was a good finish. This wasn't as much of a spectacle as 3/26 and didn't have the star power of Inoki, but I liked this one even more. It just did not stop, yet it never felt rushed. For a balls to the wall sprint it might actually be the GOAT. Just a wonderful match and REALLY the very best wrestling there is.

I don't know how many of these multi-man matches I've written about by now. I bet that for every one of them I've said something along the lines of "really the very best wrestling there is!" Or something like, "if modern New Japan was like this then I'd watch it every week" or some such blatant fabrication. Basically I'm just repeating myself about the broad strokes, but this was amazing in the same ways the two '87 matches and the '88 match and the '90 and '93 matches are amazing. Every single person involved gets to look good. There's next to no downtime and something interesting is always happening. It's chaotic and the intensity is through the roof and they have the crowd going nuts from the first minute to the last. They weave the minor story points through the major story points and develop them over the course of the match. The key differences then are the stories that they're actually telling, which is where the beauty lies in making all of these matches feel very different and distinguishable. This started with the big Inoki/Maeda confrontation everybody wanted, possibly contrary to team New Japan's strategy because none of them seemed to want Inoki to start the thing. Even Hoshino took a slap in the face from the boss for trying to restrain him. It still seems wild that they never had that singles match in '86 because the people were molten for it. They do a quick bit of rope running and Maeda tries to take Inoki's head off with a high kick and this was one of those shots that, if it was designed to actually miss, you sure couldn't tell by the way he threw it. After that opening exchange they turn the pace up and everything goes by at a hundred miles an hour. Since everyone is fresh it's almost certainly going to take a flash pin or submission or a quick toss over the ropes for the first elimination to occur. Everyone is just too amped up for one guy to be able to hit a string of offence and score a pin without the opposition making a save. It's the best kind of hectic and some guys thrive in that environment. Hoshino will come in and punch you dead in the face twelve times, Takada and Yamazaki will throw multiple spin kicks in succession, Fujiwara will headbutt you repeatedly and oh if you're thinking it's a travesty that we never got Inoki/Maeda in '86 then what the fuck are we thinking about never getting Fujiwara/Fujinami EVER? Not one bastard singles match! Their early exchange was sensational and easily my favourite of that opening stretch. After the first elimination (a quick backslide) we settle into some of the bigger stories. It's easy to say this in hindsight, but if Inoki/Maeda was the money match going in then by the end of it Maeda/Fujinami felt like the logical progression. As the boss Inoki almost had to operate with a level of detachment, much like any boss would, I suppose. He bleeds for New Japan because New Japan is who he is, but I never really got the sense he bled for his teammates. Fujinami, on the other hand, was every bit the leader you'd want in the situation. He was always willing to come to a partner's aid, always the first to congratulate his teammates when they made an elimination, always rallying even in the face of adversity, then when he and Maeda got in together there was a different sort of anticipation. Inoki was the King and the bigger scalp, but Fujinami was the Prince and his downfall more than any would lead the kingdom to ruin. Maybe Fujiwara knew it too because he came in and tried to choke the life from him. I always associate Fujiwara with the amazing choke hold selling but Fujinami might've had him beaten here, eyes rolling back in his head and spluttering for air. Fujiwara must've had the thing on like a vice grip because Fujinami's lips were turning blue. And then Fujinami went and took a bullet for his team, launching himself and Fujiwara over the top rope, knowing he was going down but refusing to do it quietly, refusing to let Fujiwara wreak any more havoc in his absence. It was the perfect representation of Fujinami and not a chance Inoki would've sacrificed himself for the greater good like that. That said, Inoki/Fujiwara was a highlight in a match full of highlights. There was nothing quite as poetic about this as there was with Fujinami, instead it was a couple of old warriors crossing paths for the umpteenth time. Inoki grins and points at Fujiwara like "I see you're still wearing those socks" and Fujiwara grins back like "I see you're still a fucking prick." The exchange wasn't fancy but it was rugged and they fought over every hold. I should really watch their singles matches again (I guess there's no more fitting a time to watch a bunch of Inoki). Then there's Ueda. This is legitimately one of the only Ueda matches I've ever seen where he doesn't try and hit someone with a stick. Honestly it might be the only one. He's just a couple years older than Inoki at this point but really has no shot against the UWF guys, and yet the crowd are fucking badgershit mental for him. I think he spends a total of 45 seconds in the ring throughout the match and on one of his entries he's immediately tagged by Inoki and told to get back out again. When it comes down to him and Inoki against Maeda, Takada and Kido you're thinking it might as well be Inoki going it alone against all three. When Maeda spin kicks Ueda in the face you have no reason to believe in anything other than his impending demise. And then he takes a page from Fujinami's book and goes down in a blaze of glory, grabbing Maeda's leg and rolling to the floor, dragging Maeda along for the ride. The 2v1 finishing run isn't as dramatic as the rest of the match, doesn't quite have the same hook as '88 with Fujinami losing gallons of blood trying to survive against Inoki and Saito, but Inoki uses the lifeline Ueda gave him and if nothing else there's something satisfying about Mr New Japan braining the shoot stylists with enziguris. Really the very best enziguris there are. Really the very best wrestling there is.

Wait, what the fuck? There's a match with Fujiwara and the Tonga Kid on opposite sides and this is the first I'm hearing about it?! You'd look at those names and think this couldn't be as fun as it promises, and I mean sure, things could always be MORE fun, but life is like that sometimes and this was still very fun. Perhaps the perfect amount of fun for a10-minute midcard trios that happened to involve one of the biggest stars in the history of wrestling. I loved all of the parts with the Samoans encountering someone with a harder head than them. First the Wild Samoan rams Fujiwara into the post and is perplexed when Fujiwara shrugs it off. Then he elbows Fujiwara in the head, hurts his arm, and Fujiwara clonks him with a headbutt. Our future Tama tries his luck, throws a headbutt as the foolishness of youth blinds him to what he'd just witnessed, and his jelly-legged selling was frankly impeccable. Snuka isn't in long but does his double leapfrog bit and it looked cool enough. Wild Samoan kind of flubs jumping into the ring and bumps into Fujiwara's leg and I love how Fujiwara sold it like it'd been hyperextended. After that he's happy to chill on the apron and convalesce, and when Kimura tries to tag him back in Fujiwara points at his knee like "I'm not getting back in, I'm hurt" and basically tells Kimura to fuck off. He'll tag in for Inoki, though. Obviously that grates with Kimura and before long he and Fujiwara are scrapping and in the confusion the Samoans jump Inoki. Which...well why wouldn't you, ya know?