KB8

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?

Maaaan early Yamada was so good. It's wild how easily we (or, quite simply, I) forget that. He was mostly here to take a shit-kicking and bring some fire when given the rare chance to and my goodness did he take a shit-kicking and bring some fire when given the rare chance to. Takada was a wrecking ball and wellied him with kicks while Kido was utterly determined to rip the wee fella's arm off with a kimura. Like, Kido went back to this kimura about seven times. He was relentless with it. Inoki kind of gobbled up Takada and Kido when he was in there, although I must admit it led to some amazing moments, one of which being him juuuust about catching a Takada spin kick and ripping him into a leglock. When Takada landed one on him properly, like when he came in and smashed Inoki in the ribs while he was grappling with Kido, it felt huge, but those moments were few and far between. Inoki would set up the field for Yamada who'd come in red hot, but it wouldn't last and inevitably he found himself getting wasted in short order, like when he came flying off the top and Takada caught him with a kick. The huge German suplex at the end was spectacular, enough so that Inoki offered a handshake to the UWF guys. Real recognise real.

Well I'll be. A fairly decent amount of Tenryu v Mutoh matches have happened over the years, six of them from 1999-2002 alone, but this is the first one that's really jumped off the page as being properly awesome (the Tenryu/Muta match from 1996 is tremendous, but that's a whole different sort of spectacle). I thought the build and implementation of strategy was on par with some of your 90s All Japan classics, albeit on a much smaller and less ambitious scale. On the other hand this didn't have the excess of those and if you're like me then 19 minutes of this is going to be more appealing to you than 43 minutes of that, for as brilliant as THAT could often be. They start with some basic matwork, nothing too different from how they've started a few of their matches together, then about four minutes in Tenryu sets us on our merry way. I cannot for the life of me remember Tenryu doing a Shining Wizard before, but this was amazing and his impression of Mutoh's little pose after it was maybe even better. Mutoh is PEEVED and immediately has to leave the ring to compose himself and perhaps we wonder if he maybe should've sold his own signature move for longer than sex seconds there, though I suppose rage will light a fire under us all and with it comes an imperviousness that we can't quite comprehend probably. The last couple Tenryu/Mutoh matches I watched had Mutoh predominantly going after the leg. I get it because it plays into the Shining Wizard and it makes sense, and it was fine, but there's probably always going to be a ceiling on how much I'll enjoy Mutoh working a leg. This time he changes tack and instead of going after the leg, he focuses on the arm. But also the leg a wee bit and we'll get to that in a second. The transition into the arm work was spectacular, as he first wipes Tenryu out with a plancha, then hits a Shining Wizard that smashes the back off Tenryu's head off the guardrail, and follows those up with a cross armbreaker on the floor that actually has Tenryu tapping out. We get some foreshadowing of the leg coming into play after the Shining Wizard, as Mutoh lands on Tenryu's leg and it gets bent super awkwardly, and Tenryu clutches at it as if it's been hurt. Mutoh's offence is mostly low dropkicks to the shoulder while Tenryu struggles to his feet, so not really much different to his usual low dropkicks to the knee in overall execution. There are times as well though where he'll actually get Tenryu to the mat by using the dragon screw, so it's a bit of a two-pronged attack and ultimately plays to him setting up the Shining Wizard again if he can't make Tenryu submit. Tenryu's selling was great the whole way and I love that most of his offence in return was brutal chops and blatant face-punching. Things shift his way a bit when Mutoh incorporates a THIRD strategy like some sort of Pep Guardiola, where he basically uses the Shining Wizard to set up the moonsault as another alternative to the arm work. And like the actual Pep Guardiola he maybe shouldn't have overthought everything on the big occasion because Tenryu will not be hit with that fucking moonsault. He rolls out the way of the first one and Mutoh lands hard on his already-decimated knee, so obviously that slows him down while giving Tenryu a target to aim for in times of trouble. Tenryu gritting his teeth and finally unleashing the lariats was done about as well as you could want, a bit like your classic "this'll hurt me but it'll hurt you more" Kobashi/Hashimoto/Misawa performances after someone works over the arm for a while. Mutoh counters the first brainbuster by kneeing Tenryu in the head in mid-air and I think he even sold the knee after it as well, which obviously ruled. Then Tenryu gets knees up on Mutoh's third moonsault attempt, hoists him up for another brainbuster, this time absorbs Mutoh's knee strike, and crumples him in a way where you know he's not getting up again. This was really great. They easily could've gone another few minutes and sprinkled in some more nearfalls, but even for a relatively short finishing run I thought they built big drama and did so with only a handful of bombs, really because the timing and pacing was so strong. And the story of Mutoh's strategies almost turning himself in circles was really cool. He had Tenryu reeling and he overreached, maybe because Tenryu is who Tenryu is, but either way the moonsault was his own undoing in the end. And Tenryu will punish you as emphatically as anybody ever could. Just an excellent match.

I'm watching this in a pub in Cardiff and I've clocked that it's about eight hours long. I'm way the fuck too old to be watching anything for that amount of time so when there are memes all over twitter of an astonishingly handsome Scottish gentleman asleep on a bar somewhere while Moxley stabs someone with a fork then at least you know who's responsible for it. Seriously though there are like 15 matches on this bastard.

I wasn't sure how it would play on TV, but I was in the stadium last night and it was a total blast of a show and the main event was fucking biblical. We lived and died with Drew Mac, especially the Good Scottish Blokes, of which we were plentiful. Everyone was 100% behind Drew winning and at least two nearfalls blew the roof off. Part of me doesn't want to re-watch the match as it was such an amazing live experience and I kind of want to leave it at that, but I probably will. It was like a proper sport contest feel for the last 5 minutes or so, just real emotion with people fully bought in. If he won that thing there would've been genuine grown adult tears all over the shop. Aw fuck man they should've pulled the trigger. I wouldn't have had my shirt off quick enough, let me tell you.

The inter-promotional wrestling brings us the goods once again. This was mostly about the Aja/Eagle pairing for me. There was a wee bit of ill will there from the last tag they were on opposite sides of, so it meant we got plenty of meaty shots and parts where they'd just Vader-style run into each other. I couldn't tell you if I'd seen one Leo Kitamura match before this but she was a pretty great whipping girl on the night. She was kitted out like Kyoko with the face paint and tassels, and I'm not sure if she did that as a deliberate wind-up but she got her clock well cleaned for it. You could make a good case she was the star of this with her scrappiness and sympathy-garnering. Aja was thoroughly dismissive of her and at points it looked like she maybe even felt bad about walloping the poor girl. She'd take her down after Kitamura threw some feeble slaps, but then instead of pounding her head into the mat like she would against many others, she just tagged out and let Kyoko deal with it. Aja was also really fun taking whatever offence Kitamura could muster, the best being her quick springboard elbow out the corner where she went full bodyweight into Aja's chest, bounced off her like a crash test dummy, yet stunned her briefly enough so Kitamura could make the tag. An extended heat segment would've really pushed it over the top, but what we did get was the sort of thing you want and by the end Kitamura looked like she was struggling to even stay upright. I don't have much to say about Kyoko. I've largely avoided her going through this stuff unless she's opposite someone I really like and I came out of this thinking that if I was going to watch someone dressed in Kyoko Inoue garb I'd rather it was Leo Kitamura.

Stylistically I feel like I should've enjoyed this more than I did. It's not that I actively DIDN'T enjoy it, I just wasn't really engaged and even when they were doing things I'd usually be into I was sort of drifting in and out. The early parts were built around grappling and it was some of the more rugged grappling you'll see from this period of AJW, or even joshi in general. They slowed the pace down and kept it grounded, rarely taking it back to the feet so they could run the ropes or trade dropkicks and snapmares. I didn't find it all that compelling, but if it had gone the more back-and-forth route then I'd have found it even less compelling so...there's some valuable information for you all to do with as you wish. Minami has a great tilt-a-whirl backbreaker if you would like some more valuable information. Eventually Minami goes after Hokuto's leg and they started to win me over, even if some of what she did looked a little goofy. The part where she laid Hokuto's leg out flat and climbed the turnbuckles to hit a splash on it was a neat enough idea, but the setup was weird so Hokuto had to lie there and watch it happen rather than just, like, move out the way. Then again pro wrestling is stupid as fuck so maybe it's a hollow complaint. I liked how Hokuto would slow things all the way down to a crawl just to sell the damage, at one point hobbling around on the floor as the ref' put the count on, not getting back in the ring until that split second before 20. When she fought back and mounted some proper offence she kept drawing attention to the leg, like when she'd hit some suplexes but wouldn't be able to hold the bridge attempts. The selling was just right; understated enough that you bought her thinking the next time she tried it she'd pull it off, not going overboard as if she'd been shot in the calf leaving you questioning the wisdom of returning to that well. Then again pro wrestling is stupid as fuck so maybe that would've been another hollow complaint. Really liked the finish, which strangely reminded me of the finish to Warrior/Savage from that year's Wrestlemania. Maybe it was the decisiveness of it, the way it was emphatic while still sort of catching me by surprise. Like Warrior hitting the repeated shoulder tackles, Hokuto hit three missile dropkicks and a cannonball senton, all from different corners of the ring. Like Savage after those tackles, Minami was pretty much done. Hokuto put the exclamation point on it with the head drop while Warrior never needed to, but even still there was a brief moment of "wait, they're not getting back up here, are they?" And they do not get back up. Maybe if Hokuto had pinned Minami with one foot on the chest and walked away with a sleeveless tie dye jacket that had both of their faces on it this would've also been eleven stars. But then if my granny had wheels she would've been a bike. Alas.

Fucking hell is this an amazing bit of pro wrestling. The last time I watched it was over a decade ago, back on the DVDVR All Japan set. I had it as the 7th best All Japan match of the 80s then and honestly, that feels about 5 spots too low. Long story short, they worked one of my favourite match types in all of wrestling. That match type being the one that has you going from "these guys have no shot at actually winning this thing, do they?" at the beginning to "wait a second here, do they ACTUALLY have a shot at winning this thing?!" An awesome riff on that match type is one featuring a broken down semi- or fully-retired wrestler. Lawler/Miz from 2011 and Flair/Edge from 2006 are obvious WWE examples, where by the end of the match the audience is drawn in completely and they have you believing the old fella might just pull it out the bag. And this is the best version of that match ever, with two guys at their absolute peaks as wrecking ball bastards against two guys who look like they struggle to even exist, where general movements inside a wrestling ring look taxing beyond reason, where that crowd is just living and dying on every single thing those old guys do. I thought everyone in this was legit incredible. Every performance, start to finish. If Baba only had one good night left in him then he was going down emptying the clip and this might be the best example of his chops working on a level that very few strikes in history ever have. I don't care if they look a bit ropey, a thousand wrestlers today throw chops that sound like a shotgun blast - and probably hurt like one too - but none of them elicit the crowd reaction of Baba palming Tenryu in the head here. The Tenryu/Baba stuff works even better within the context of Tenryu's 1989. They matched up a few times throughout that year in six-mans and regular tags, and Tenryu showed nothing towards Baba but disrespect at best and contempt at worst. He didn't care for Baba's legacy and he showed it any chance he could, yet Baba would almost never bite, would never stoop to Tenryu's level no matter how far he was pushed. The tope at the beginning here is one of the best "you fucking WILL acknowledge me" moments ever, paying off about a year's worth of build. Obviously Baba's selling on the floor and then on the apron was amazing, rolling around like he's taken a gut shot from a cannon, milking every second of being incapacitated, selling that tope as he paces up and down the apron waiting for the tag. You knew the place would erupt when he got that tag, IF he got that tag, but Rusher got to take centre stage for a while first. For a guy at this point who can really only headbutt folk and eat chops you can't ask for much more. There were times where he was too broken down to actually move out the way of something, so instead he just braced himself as much as possible, grimaced and took whatever shot was thrown at him, sometimes defiant, sometimes too beaten to know where the shot had even come from. I love how the headbutts worked for a while until Hansen and Tenryu tried to take that head and just break it open like a coconut. The table shots looked brutal. The initial one even SOUNDED disgusting, then Tenryu came over while Rusher was sprawled on the floor and started ramming the table into his face. The beating Tenryu and Hansen laid on him mostly consisted of kicking and punching him in his cut open forehead and it would be hard to make a punch-kick heat segment on a 50-year old man any more compelling than this. They swarmed him, cut him off emphatically, wound up smeared in blood and none of it was their own, and after a while you knew all Rusher was trying to do was survive on the off chance Baba could halfway recover. There was an unreal bit in the middle of the beatdown where he blocked a Tenryu chop, grabbed him by the hair to throw another one of those headbutts that served him to well early, but this time Tenryu blocked it and walloped him with an overhand to the neck. It was a little thing but it was an amazing touch, one that reinforced how absolutely fucked the old man was. Then Tenryu tries to lariat him in the corner and Rusher just lowers his head and Tenryu runs face-first into it like a fucking maniac. Which was the perfect setup to the hot tag, but also highlighted a broader point of Tenryu being absolutely world class at eating strikes in this match. He made every headbutt, chop and big boot look like death, largely because he had no compunction about leaning ALL the way into them. There were four moments where he could've lost teeth because he was determined not to telegraph that he was about to be hit, so when Baba brought the foot up to counter the lariat Tenryu was taking that thing square in the face at fifty miles an hour (and the subsequent bump off it was indescribable). Every time Baba caught him with a surprise shot it actually felt like a surprise. Tenryu never slowed down before running into it, never changed the setup to whatever he was theoretically intending to do before Baba struck him, so those moments were some of the most immersive in the entire match. Like the beatdown on Rusher, Tenryu and Hansen working Baba's ribs was probably more compelling than it had any right to be. Partly it was down to Baba's selling but more than that it was because Tenryu and Hansen went full crowbar and tried to punt him up and down the place. The bit where they were taking turns dropping elbows on his sternum was almost disturbing. Baba stumbles into his own corner at several points after managing to survive onslaughts only to find his partner still sidelined, so the longer he needs to go it alone the less you believe he has a chance. Then Rusher goes down in a blaze of glory. In fact you can't even call it that, because blaze of glory makes it sound heroic, like he jumped on the proverbial grenade or took someone down with him, when in reality he did neither and had no say in the matter. The moment he trips Hansen from the floor makes you think he might've just bought Baba enough time, especially considering Baba had just eaten a double powerbomb (which was a great little piece of booking as it meant Baba didn't need to kick out of a death move immediately). When Rusher manages to drag himself back onto the apron you wonder if the crazy fuck might actually get back in the match. Hansen beheading him with the lariat before he's even upright was such an emphatic cut-off. You want your heroes to succeed, to pull it out even in the bleakest of situations, but you know what? Sometimes what you want and what the world gives you are at odds and you could practically feel the lariat rip the heart out that crowd. Baba ducking the next lariat and reversing the powerbomb was biblical, but in the end there was no chance. Even still, the struggle on Tenryu's face as he hoisted the big man up pretty well told the story. What a match. Selling, timing, NARRATIVE~, offence, heat, workrate, hope spots, cut-offs, whatever the fuck else -- it ticked all the boxes. One of the best of the decade.

Sort of nuts that it's been eleven years since I last watched this. It's still probably the best Hollywood Blonds match. The foreign object shtick at the beginning rules. Pillman takes a roll of coins out his trunks and cackles like some SHENANIGANS are afoot, then when Bagwell tells the ref' to check him he hides it back in the trunks but refuses to open his closed fist. When he finally does and proves there's nothing in his hand he bursts out laughing like this is the funniest shit in the world. He then hides it in the kneepad before passing it to Austin, so when the ref' checks the kneepad there's nothing there and Pillman is beside himself at how amusing this is. It was very Memphis and I'm not even annoyed that it never had any actual payoff to speak of (we never see it again after the opening bit). Bagwell and Scorp both take a turn playing face in peril and this crowd are just molten hot for these guys. It's always a hoot when the WCW studio crowds would chant "Whoomp, there it is" for Marcus Bagwell and they're absolutely losing it for him doing the Blonds' roll camera bit in Austin's face. Then Austin about yanks his head off with the most brutal towel clothesline you'll ever see, which was a fairly amazing transition spot. Scorpio's heat segment is even better than Bagwell's and I always love how much height he'll get on simple moves. Or not even moves as such, just how he'll leap into the air before hitting the mat as Pillman steps over him hitting the ropes. He's graceful in a way not many guys of the era were. There were a bunch of really fun Blonds moments during the beatdowns as well, my favourite being the assisted abdominal stretch, or maybe Austin's little dance mocking Scorpio. The more I go back and watch Austin the more awesome he comes across. I guess most people think of him as a brawler as that was how he worked during the supernova years, but to me brawling Austin was so good because of the energy and the character work. As an actual punch-kick brawler I don't think he ever really had good punches. His execution on regular wrestling moves and his bumping ability was always pretty outstanding though, and you get to see more of that pre-neck injury. Even a simple vertical suplex bump here looked great. He's a guy who's rocketed back up my favourites list over the last few years and maybe I'll do that full 2001 re-watch some day. Anyhow, this was great and one of the best WCW tags of the decade.

I guess Brody had better boots, if only by virtue of Necro not even bothering with such frivolousness in the first place.

I was reading this thread and got stuuuuupid hyped at the idea of Fit Finlay wrestling on TV again and then I realised you were all talking about his son (whom I've never seen so this isn't really a shot at the laddie himself) and I got bummed out and then I got to the Danielson stuff and got bummed out even more.

I'll echo the "Fire me! I'm already fired!" Flair vibes from the MJF promo, although the heel who was possibly Ultimate Warrior style holding up the company for money doing it on the boss of said company who's very well liked because he's basically an internet wrestling nerd in line with the promotion's primary fan base is sort of weird and ass backwards but then it's 2022 and everything's all meta and shades of gray and he swore a bunch so 12-year-old me would've dug it. Prolly. I actually like him more as an in-ring guy than a promo guy but he at least said everything with his fucking chest and, you know, hopefully wherever they go from here doesn't suck. Hopefully Jericho saw that bald spot of his and figured the best course of action is to go full 1980 Buddy Rose with the head-shaving and mask/wig combo for a while.

You know, I watched their mano a mano from the end of September '95 the other night and figured there had to be a trios leading into it where they tried to get at each other. So I guess that'll be the one then!

El Hijo del Santo, Atlantis & Rayo de Jalisco Jr. v Negro Casas, El Canek & Apolo Dantes (CMLL, 7/12/96) You could say this was a Santo v Casas show. And by "you could say," what I'm definitively saying is that this was a Santo v Casas show. It's so much of a Santo v Casas show that everything not involving them really pales in comparison. They're at each other's throat from the very beginning as Santo hits a running knee lift while Casas is stepping through the ropes, then drops him with a straight right to the face. And we're off to the races from there, brothers. The first 8-10 minutes are all Santo and Casas. Everyone else stands around watching, unsure if they should get involved while deep down knowing they probably shouldn't. At one point Apolo Dantes looks at Casas like "are you taking that?" and then a minute later there's another shot of him standing there like "well I guess he wasn't taking that." I think there was a 20-second period where both of them were on their respective apron before Casas comes in and sprints over to get at Santo again. It just escalates from there, spills to the floor, referees get involved, some suits plead with Casas to let it be over, fans in a frenzy. This was legit some of the best pull-apart brawling ever, where they'd be separated for a brief moment before one of them would break free and attack the other, every instance of it a little more wild than the last. There's about a dozen cops on the scene and Casas runs through rows of spectators while pensioners and children scatter. Santo will headbutt Casas until he's sprawled over someone's lap, then he'll get up and charge again and this time Santo is left lying underneath a row of fixed seats. The cops and referees nearly manage to usher Casas through the curtain, but he gets loose and sprints down the ramp and they're at it again. It was madness, like a genuine street brawl where the police are called and friends and family members are in tears on the side of the road. The problem is that nothing else is hitting those heights. When they're finally cleared from ringside the other four guys settle into an actual match, but it's hard not to actively want the camera to cut backstage for some more carnage with even other wrestlers trying to put out the fire. When the backstage cuts stop you hope the fight spills back out to ringside again, but it never happens. The remainder of the match sets up a 2 v 2 tag the following week, and it's fine and everything, it's just that nothing was going to match Santo/Casas unless it was more Santo/Casas. Still, this was some phenomenal Santo/Casas and it's worth watching for that alone.

Ayako Hamada v Mary Apache (ARSION, 8/31/98) This was pretty neat. I thought Apache was a lot of fun with her quick armdrags and swanky matwork, including a really tight armbar-anaconda vice hybrid thing. Hamada is 17 here and that's sort of bonkers. How many matches could she have had by this point, considering she only made her debut a couple weeks prior? Three? Two? She was rough around the edges because of course she would be, but I liked how her scrappiness made up for it. There's an exuberance that's quite infectious and overall this worked as a pairing. Mikiko Futagami v Rie Tamada (ARSION, 8/31/98) Really good stuff. Tamada zeroes in on Futagami's leg early and pretty much stays focused on it all the way through. Ten years ago I'd have wanted Futagami to sell it BIGGER, but at this point I'm fine with how she drew attention to it. It was more understated yet she'd hobble and show signs of discomfort. She also tried to palm thrust Tamada's front teeth through her brain and that was more important than anything else. Tamada has a bandaged up shoulder and by the end Futagami is trying to pull it apart, and as always with ARSION they're awesome at milking those escapes and rope breaks for all they're worth. Michiko Ohmukai v Yumi Fukawa (ARSION, 8/31/98) Not a patch on the April match, but still decent. Ohmukai's strikes - particularly her kicks - are a bit of an enigma as some will look atrocious and others will look fucking devastating and she had a few of both in this match. Which, tbf, is usually the case. In fairness to Fukawa she turned one of the former into an amazing spot by grabbing it out the air and locking in a sick kneebar, and then we got an example of the latter at the end when Ohmukai about took Fukawa's head off. I like how ARSION sell the gravity of these tournaments as the wrestlers will come in with something bandaged up from a previous round and inevitably those injuries will come into play. Ohmukai's shoulder is taped and if you want to convince me she worked the early parts with as much urgency as she did because she wanted to keep Fukawa from targeting that shoulder...well I'd probably listen. When Fukawa does get a chance to go after it I was absolutely buying Ohmukai tapping out. ARSION do near-submissions better than basically any non-shoot style promotion ever, FWIW. There were also parts of this where they stopped what they were doing and slapped each other really hard across the face. That even made a couple of the no-selling bits palatable. If you're going to no-sell something at least make it look like BELLIGERENCE has made you impervious to pain for a wee second there. Mariko Yoshida v Reggie Bennett (ARSION, 8/31/98) This is a great match up and of course this was badass. I like just about all of the wrestlers on the ARSION roster from this period for one reason or another, so this shouldn't be read as a knock on them, but Yoshida is different gravy and looks flat out amazing nearly every time she shows up. The early matwork here was fantastic and nobody else really does it quite at that level. She was crawling all over Reggie trying to work around the size disadvantage, trying to hook a limb in a way that wouldn't allow Reggie to literally just fall on top of her and smother her. Reggie is a blast and more than holds her own on the mat. Where did she actually go after ARSION? Yoshida was for giving nothing easy and Reggie had to fight for every throw just as much as Yoshida had to fight for every armbar or ankle lock. Yoshida cracking the code with the slickest armbar you've seen is a pretty awesome finish. It wasn't like she focused on a specific limb through the match, she was just grabbing whatever was there, used one hold then would transition to another when it presented itself, just constantly recalibrating as necessary.

Deeb is the business. I've been diving deep into AEW the last month or so, specifically from the September PPV last year up until the current day, and she's been a total superstar in everything. That's only a small handful of matches, granted, but still, she looks far and away the best woman on the roster and I hope she wins the belt at the PPV. Works a body part like a mean bastard, has lots of nifty holds, routinely works the ring post figure-four into her matches and that alone should make her a top 10 candidate, just a really fun wrestler that I couldn't even have told you was still wrestling a month ago.