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I'm overrating this for sure (I mean, probably), but look into these eyes and you'll find no trace of a fuck to be given. This ruled. Fuji is Dragon Gate's resident bruiser and tries to out-Tenryu Tenryu by chopping him really hard and punching him in the jaw and whacking him with chairs. I fully expected Tenryu to dish out something fierce in return but he went beyond even that. The punches and Adam's apple chops were ungodly and he even hit a dive off the stage! Well, it was more of a jump, but still, off the stage! Fuji may be a bruiser among the little fellas of his home promotion, but he's a head shorter than Tenryu and made to pay dearly for his temerity. Tenryu was also great at getting into place for Fuji's offence, like setting up the shining wizard by falling to one knee after being whipped into the exposed turnbuckle, crawling around to set up Fuji's Cena-style legdrop off the top rope. It felt organic and didn't look like a guy blatantly setting up his opponent's move, which was like 70% of what Dragon Gate seemed to be by the time I threw my hands up on it (about a decade ago now). I thought the penultimate punch Tenryu threw was a corker, but my goodness did he top it with the final one. I figured Fuji's head was for getting Oberyn Martell'd all over the canvas.

Well, for better or worse, this was a Sheik match. That means you get some stabbing, some blood, and if you're lucky some brawling that's more chaotic than meandering. We obviously got lucky because this had a hint of pandemonium about it. Tenryu was the focal point and much of the match was built around him getting stabbed with a broken bottle and poked in the eye with a stick. By this point Sheik really needed someone who was willing to play the game for his shtick to be interesting. Tenryu was willing, as he bled and came back with his own stabbing while Baba (who also took a stabbing) acted as back up. The crowd even started throwing stuff in protest to the pieces of wood being jabbed into eyes and Bugsy grabbed a piece of it and conked Baba in the head. Tenryu as spunky underdog will never not be at least a wee bit surreal and this was a fun spunky underdog Tenryu performance.

This kind of sounds a like a condensed version of their match from the previous year's G1. That one was the full half hour and got a bit long in the tooth, plus I remember it having some of the same issues around Liger selling the legwork. I actually remember thinking they might've had something great in them had they cut the length a bit. Perhaps not.

A Fuerza title match is a real treasure. There aren't that many of them in circulation and it's not necessarily the best setting for him (not to say he won't be great in it), but every time I come across a new one I feel like I need to see it (I say new one, but this has apparently been on youtube for over two years). For a title match it didn't have much in the way of matwork. To be honest, it didn't really have any. It was more of an "anything you can do"/"top this" affair with a primera built around throws rather than holds. Fuerza was even more of a goof than usual, maybe to the point of being too much for some, but I can't say I didn't get a kick out of it all. I'll never complain about him intimating he'd been kicked in the balls, no matter how many times he does it (and I counted at least four instances in this match). I'd never seen Gallo before, but if you're competent I'll have little trouble watching you wrestle Fuerza Guerrera. A little further digging revealed that he was actually Fuerza's trainer, and this was probably his last meaningful program before hanging it up. Fuerza started things out by trying to horse shit his way into getting Gallo disqualified for hair-pulling (no such thing happened, of course) before realising this is a title match and approaching the situation with a little more decorum. It never lasted and you knew it wouldn't, but it's fun to see him try once in a while. Some of what they did in the first caida was kind of weird and it built to them working quite literally as equals, trying the exact same moves at the same time resulting in several stalemates. They both went for a scoop slam and neither would budge, so Gallo tapped Fuerza on the shoulder, Fuerza thought it was the ref' and let go, and Gallo capitalised. This went on for a few minutes until they clonked heads off another shared idea, and that was enough to push Fuerza beyond the boundaries of acceptable title match behaviour. He mostly spent the segunda stomping Gallo and slamming him with a little extra oomph, but it wasn't until the tercera that we got our real Fuerza highlight, as he tried to bolt away from a Gallo tope only to run face-first into the ring post. There's an apuestas match between them on youtube so I think I'll check that out soon. It was probably a really fun feud.

Yoshihisa Yamamoto v Masayuki Naruse (5/16/92) Nifty enough version of what I guess is a RINGS young lion bout. Yamamoto was never one to shy away from smashing someone in the face with the palm of his hand and this probably had more palm striking than any other fight so far in RINGS' short history. The stand up capped out at decent, but it was engaging enough and they had one or two neat moments on the mat as well. Yamamoto is a favourite of mine and he goes on to have some absolute corkers of fights, so it was cool to see him as a pimple-faced rookie in his first outing. Volk Han v Grom Zaza (5/16/92) You had a feeling this might be good and I'm happy to tell you that you weren't wrong. This was almost sambo v freestyle wrestling and straight away it made for an awesome little bout. As in, literally as soon as the fight starts Zaza is hoisting Han up on his shoulders in a fireman's carry and the crowd are going bonkers. A couple of Han's takedowns were pretty as all get out, with the step over armbar perhaps being the prettiest of all, and there were points where he would maneuver himself into a dangerous position by simply dropping a knee (right into a standing triangle choke) or shifting his hips (as a standing switch of sorts). This also had a couple themes from previous Han bouts emerging again, including that susceptibility to being gut shot as Zaza drops him with a front kick to the solar plexus. Han then responds with the awesome spinning back fist and I think that might be my favourite strike in all of the RINGS so far. Han again shows that you might be able to get the dupe on him once, but if you try it again he'll make you pay. This came about when Zaza initially grabbed a kneebar by reaching through his own legs as Han positioned himself for a German suplex, but then when he tried it again later Han immediately yanked Zaza's arms to flip him over and open him up for a cross armbreaker. Some of Zaza's striking was whatever and Han appeared to have a tendency early in his career to give up his back a little too easily, but otherwise this was pretty damn choice. Adam Watt v Peter Aerts (5/16/92) This was a straight kickboxing contest (presumably a shoot) and it looked okay, but I did some stuff for work while it was on and never paid it the fullest attention. Dick Vrij v Mitsuya Nagai (5/16/92) If you ever wondered about the point at which Nagai decided he was going to be a vicious crowbar bastard then this might be that point. He got fucking annihilated here and yet he would not stop coming back for more. This was like six minutes long and it was mean and hasty and fulla hate and featured a full on sixty yarder to the willy. It ruled. Vrij was just destroying him with kicks to the head, the body, the legs, everywhere. At one point he reeled off an ungodly combo ending with a low kick that looked like it about Theismann'd the fuck out of Nagai's leg. Post-fight Nagai tells us he has learned a valuable lesson today and at some point in the future he will pass that teaching onto someone else in equally hideous fashion. We assume. Willie Williams v Bitsadze Ameran (5/16/92) Well this was...something. I don't know if it was one of those so-bad-it's-good deals or just bad or maybe kinda somewhat good in a weird spectacle sense but it was indeed...something. It's basically two and a bit rounds of very tall guys doing clumsy, sometimes awkward karate, lots of sloppy body shots and one or two submission attempts that might've materialised purely by happenstance. Ameran tried a bunch of wild looking wheel kicks and rolling kicks and when he accidentally pulled off Williams' do-rag the crowd reacted like Williams was really going to let him have it now. Parts of it were like something from a drunken pub fight in Bristol that you maybe saw on the YouTubes. This is the longest a Williams fight has gone yet (by a fair margin), and you maybe question the wisdom in that as he's not very good, but you appreciate the effort because how could you not but ultimately decide never to watch this ever again. Masaaki Satake v Bert Kops Jr (5/16/92) This was very much a Masaaki Satake fight, which meant he threw nice kicks and his opponent gave him some trouble on the mat before succumbing to the inevitable (said kicks) after several minutes of meandering-to-average shoot style. I wonder if they're actually building Satake up for something, as opposed to doing the same fight on every show for the sake of it. Kops looked alright in the first round, but you knew beforehand that he was the Barry Horowitz to Satake's 1995 Shawn Michaels, or the Pat Rose to 1984 Magnum TA, or the so on and so forth. Akira Maeda v Hank Numan (5/16/92) Easily the weakest of the RINGS main events so far, as well as the weakest Maeda fight. This was five minutes of not a lot, even if Numan looked like he might've been sort of okay. It was hard to tell given the brevity. I dug how pro-wrestling his sell job for Maeda's leg kicks was, at least.

Yeah, this was one of the good ones. Thought Hash was sensational in it, having no time for Fujinami's headlocks and just taking penalty kicks to his leg. The way he'd easily shut down Fujinami's early comeback attempts to showing how much harder he needed to work as it went on was great, and I loved the part where he started kneeing the hamstrings. Then he'd high kick him in the face because he is who he is. The struggle over the dragon screw (and how Hash would grab the ropes as soon as Fujinami went for it), the weird leg yank thing and the dragon screw finally being hit properly were all built up really well. I was a little disappointed initially that they didn't do more with the legwork, but as a means of taking Hash's kicks out of play it worked fine. Everything around the sleeper variations was great; the struggle, Hash's desperation in escaping, Fujinami's doggedness in going back to it. Finish playing off the previous escape was cool as well, and I don't know if anybody makes being in a sleeper hold as compelling as Hashimoto. Badass match.

We got The Highlanders squashing Deuce and Domino up here once. It lasted about a minute and a half and afterwards HHH came out and called Randy Orton a sheep shagger (it was DX v Rated RKO in the main event, he didn't just decide to come to the ring and shit talk Orton. Though I wouldn't have been surprised if he had).

Good Christ what a match. This was as lucha as you could possibly get in a match that's all about two young pretenders coming to scalp the heroes of yesteryear, given that the young pretenders are in their forties. In Mexico, you don't even hit your prime until you're 53. I loved how this started, with Santo and Villano taking the fight to the rudos and hitting stereo topes. You're thinking it's leading to a quick first caida win for the tecnicos, but they flip it and the rudos go on a lengthy run of beating the crap out of the maestros. Villano IV was so awesome in this, taking crazy unprotected chair shots, flat back bumping from the ring to the floor inside five minutes, engaging in some of the best punch exchanges I've seen in ages. Him and Solitario were just lacing into each other with jabs and hooks, then they'd throw in spin kicks to the guts for good measure. At points Villano and Santo looked utterly helpless, staggering around with their masks torn up, bloody and battered while their opponents had their way with them. There was one bit where Santo came to Villano's aid with this piddly roll up on Solitario and it was a pretty good summation of the match to that point. Angel Blanco Jr never even bothered to try and break it up, even though he was standing right there. What would've been the point? Why waste energy on the inevitable when you could kick Villano IV in the head some more? Non-lucha fans will often complain about transitions in lucha or how certain things are overly predictable. The big tecnico comeback in matches like this are usually telegraphed to an extent, but that moment the tide turned was perfect and I knew it would be as soon as they set it up. Sometimes it pays to give the people what they want and I don't think any wrestler understands that better than El Hijo del Santo. And obviously the tecnico revenge was phenomenal. Good grief were some of those payback chair shots nasty. There was a lull of sorts after a commercial break where they had a few minutes of "I'll apply this submission until someone comes in to break it up, then he'll apply a submission until the next guy breaks it up," but they kept punching each other in the face and soon enough went back to the mask-ripping and biting and such. Then they ran the set up to the finish, and that might've been the best part of the whole match. If you've seen five El Hijo del Santo matches then you've likely seen five senton into corner tope spots. It's a Santo signature and nobody works their signature spots into matches better than Santo. This time, though, the rudos have it scouted. Villano holds Angel in place for the senton, but Angel moves as Santo takes flight and Villano eats the senton instead. Santo keeps going as Solitario is standing outside just begging to be tope'd, but Solitario knows THAT'S coming and flings up a chair as Santo comes flying through the ropes. The post-match brawling might've been even grizzlier than the in-match brawling as they started headbutting each other and throwing uncooperative jab combos. By the time he walked away Angel Blanco Jr's white mask had been stained almost full red.

I'll agree with the general sentiment that Doc looked waaaay better here than he did in the previous couple years. He was super fun in this and brought a ton of energy, which went a ways to making up for the lack of prime Doc explosiveness as mentioned. The general manhandling of Ogawa but in particular the jabs to shut him down, the way he teased the backdrop, how fired up he was even on the apron, etc. Scorpio's offence is so unlike what we're used to in All Japan that you can't help but get a kick out of it. I didn't think Misawa was phoning it in, but for the most part he seemed content to hit his notes and move along. Still, Misawa hitting his notes and moving along can be pretty enjoyable. Definitely looking forward to seeing more motivated Doc.

Pretty decent single fall apuestas match, though I wonder if Segura hadn't nearly ripped Fuerza's mask clean off it might've been better. Fuerza had to keep adjusting it and hide his face when he took a moderately-sized bump, so we never got to see the blood truly flow. At times it felt like he was being more reserved than usual as well, intent as he was on keeping his face covered. It did not stop him from kicking and punching Segura in the balls several times. He seemed to get more creative with the foul each time as well, going from a straight kick to the Fuerza Punt to sneakily punching Segura low as he pushed out of a pin attempt. By the end he just grabbed a handful of wedding tackle and squeezed. Segura was fine. His stuff mostly looked good and I liked him ramming Fuerza's head into a freezer with enough force that it looked like he was trying to stuff him inside without opening the lid first. The big tope looked great as well. Some might nitpick on Fuerza being back to his feet first, but Segura cleared the barricade and might've dislocated a finger or two on the landing, so it's hard to argue he didn't take the brunt of the damage. That's the beauty of the tope, I guess. Sometimes the gamble isn't worth it.

Tengiz Tedoradze v Koichiro Kimura (4/3/92) Your mileage may vary on how much you get out of this. It's messy and they're pretty liberal with how much they let each other get away with. Tedoradze is game, but you can tell he hasn't quite gotten a full handle on how this works yet (it's his first rodeo so, you know, understandable) and gives his back up rather easily. If you can put up with that then there's a nifty little fight to be had here. There might be more pro-wrestling in these ten minutes than in the entirety of the previous six shows, but it gives it a unique sort of charm, which Kimura was probably in need of after two lengthy fights he wasn't a particularly compelling part of. We got a fisherman suplex, a full on Jumbo-style backdrop, nearly a Go 2 Sleep of all things! Tedoradze doesn't look like much -- he's almost Han-esque in his mild-mannered uncle-ness, but he's a proficient wrestler and chucked Kimura around with a strength that belied his modest physique. At a couple points he muscled Kimura impressively into throws, including a German suplex, and even hit an Olympic Slam from what was practically a deadlift position. You could pick at the finish and say he was close enough to the ropes that he didn't need to tap, but he's new to this, remember? Embrace the storytelling. Nobuaki Kakuta v Ton von Maurik (4/3/92) This was alright. There's a readymade story built into these Kakuta fights in that he's no use on the ground and instantly in danger when he's taken down, so crowds really buy into the drama when it looks like an opponent has him in some trouble. He still throws fast hands and feet, so you're at least likely to get a few decent combos for a pop as well. Von Maurik had a nice looking head kick even if none of his attempts fully connected, and he was always throwing knees to the body when Kakuta was on the floor rather than trying to grab a submission next to the ropes, so maybe that makes him the smartest Kakuta opponent yet. When he did go for that submission he made sure Kakuta would need to find a different mode of escape. Finish was cool, too. Willie Peeters v Yoshinori Nishi (4/3/92) There's an interesting contrast between early RINGS and early UWFi that becomes pretty apparent the more you watch of both. The UWFi natives like Takada, Yamazaki, Tamura, etc. were mostly accomplished grapplers while the foreigners they brought in, like Tom Burton, JT Southern and Billy Scott, couldn't really do...anything very well. Especially on the mat. The foreigners Maeda brought in were far more skilled in general, but almost all of them were capable-at-worst grapplers while the natives specialized more in the stand-up (Kakuta and Satake being the prime examples). Nishi is an older gent with a dignified sort of air about him. He's a striker who can handle himself on the floor better than Kakuta or Satake, but this was still Peeters' to lose when the fight went there. Felt like it might've been a shoot, but it didn't stop Peeters from flying off the handle once or twice. Nothing major or outwardly dickheaded, but that temper of his can be fierce. Nishi accepted it with equanimity and went about his business, then when he flung an accidental closed fist himself - and we believe it was accidental, for how could we not? - he was quick to apologise. A sound fella all around. This went the distance and as much as I like Peeters I can't say I was pumped about a six-rounder, but it wasn't the worst fight of its ilk. Dick Vrij v Marcel Haarmans (4/3/92) Haarmans is back to make his first appearance since the debut show where he offered nothing and got kicked in the face by Willie Peeters. He was a little more active here, but there was no point where I bought Vrij being in any danger whatsoever. Vrij even outright laughed at his piddly body shots and it felt like the big fella could've ended this pretty much whenever he wanted. That choke at the end didn't look the tightest, but I liked how Vrij maneuvered him into it. Mitsuya Nagai v Willie Williams (4/3/92) I'll be honest, I expected this to be a whole lot of nothing at best and possibly putrid at worst. But hey, it turned out to be perfectly fine! Nagai was certainly more game than Smit when it came to working with or around Williams and the crowd were way into it. Nagai also made it look like he was trying to actually hit Williams and he never sold half-arsed blows as near KOs. He made it look like a fight he was trying to win, basically. Short, fairly intense, a good crowd...yeah, this was okay. Masaaki Satake v Herman Renting (4/3/92) That fun Nagai match is looking more and more like an aberration for our dear Herman Renting as this was very ordinary and seven minutes of not much at all. I suppose it's kicker versus grappler again and Satake, despite having a face that annoys me for reasons I'm not yet aware of, throws some nice kicks. I mean, if you're gonna run a finish where someone's been kicked in the leg so often that they're unable to meet a ten count then you really need to make those leg kicks believable. And well, Satake had painful looking leg kicks. Akira Maeda v Volk Han (4/3/92) I know it's not the first thing you bring up when you're talking about Han, but man could he be a fun striker when he wanted to. It's kind of amusing seeing how much more convincing his strikes were than what some guys with legit kickboxing and/or karate backgrounds have thrown on these shows. He was throwing pump kicks and fucking spinning backfists and even incorporated the latter into a takdown attempt later on (faked the backfist before ducking low and shooting in for the double leg). Conversely, this might be the fight where it's established that a good shot to the gut is Han's kryptonite, as he takes a left uppercut and crumples in a heap for a near KO. There was also this awesome little theme throughout of Maeda being the more dangerous standing up, but dropping Han for a count would just light a fire under him. On at least two occasions he'd go down after taking a big shot - one being a huge wheel kick that looked spectacular - only to get up and jump straight into a hold that forced Maeda to scramble to the ropes. This wasn't a perfect fight and it was rough around some edges, but it was solid in every department I hoped it'd be and the finish was total Han. If you so desire you could probably even say it played off the finish to the first fight ("I've got him in a good spot oh no wait fuck I am in fact in a terrible spot"). Strong fight.

Tbf that line was more of a jokey way of saying I much prefer what Suzuki (as an example) is doing right now compared to New Japan main event style (or whatever we're calling it), but yeah, there are three Suzuki matches I definitely prefer (vs Sekimoto x 2 and vs Okabayashi) and a couple more that might not be better, but I'd rather watch them again than this. I really did think this was very good, though.

I had no intention of watching this but then on a whim I did. And I didn't regret it! I haven't seen their second match because no way I'm watching these two for an hour, but I did watch the January match (and liked some parts of it) and have a decent handle on the big picture of their rivalry. Even without that, though, I thought this managed to tell a really nice story in isolation. I don't like Okada much and in the four other Okada matches I've seen this year I thought he was pretty terrible, but this is by far the best I've seen him look in anything. I was a wee bit worried I was gonna hate it when they opened with the street dance/parity reversal routine as neither guy is Tajiri and likely to make me care about such things, but I suppose it fit with them being super familiar with each other's offence and all that by now. After that they won me over anyway, and I thought the first fifteen minutes were pretty excellent. Okada sold the neck great and I liked how Omega would really lean on it with a chin lock or just outright chop him across the neck, which even got some heel heat. The reverse rana on the floor was huge and the crazy apron dragon suplex felt like a real game changer as well. So many of the bombs in the first match felt inconsequential, but they took time to let the rana sink in and Okada's neck being vulnerable remained a factor right until the end. Okada being broken down even made his not-very-good strikes work, and there was one Rainmaker towards the end that looked like it had nothing behind it whatsoever and he kind of collapsed into the turnbuckle after it like that was as much as he could muster. At some point I started to lose some interest and the finishing stretch will probably never be my thing anymore, but it was right about on the line of what I can handle. It wasn't FULL on Step Up routine, and even if some of the transitions were abrupt and bordered on "doin' stuff," I don't think it went overboard. I still can't get by Omega's facial expressions but the part where he lost it after Okada kicked out of that awesome German suplex was great, like I truly bought that he was at the end of his tether and couldn't believe Okada still refused to stay down. All of the big spots and bumps were appropriately big (and man were some of those bumps BIG) and I never thought it got long in the tooth, so it was overall about as much as I'm going to get out of New Japan main event wrestling. I would put this behind the fourth or fifth best Hideki Suzuki match of the year, which is better than I was expecting going in.

Man, I loved the opening to this. Tenryu and Onita take centre stage again and they immediately try to throw each other into the barbed wire. Onita whips him across the ring, but Tenryu pulls up short and stares like "not today, motherfucker." Then one of Onita's little buddies comes flying into shot and dropkicks Tenryu into the wire. It was a really cool little play on the norm. Tenryu was fucking incredible in this and I wonder if he never missed his calling as a deathmatch worker. I don't recognise most of the participants and there's something amazing about Tenryu in his dress shirt and tie (yes, he's wearing a dress shirt and tie, and no, I don't know why) potatoing nameless scuzzy indy scrubs and throwing them through tables. He's the guy nobody knows who shows up at the house party and smashes the coffee table and headers your gran. He just revels in madness and Onita Pro made for fecund soil in which to plant the seeds of bloody chaos. I think my favourite part was when he picked up a barbed wire board and flung it at a group of hecklers (god damn unbelievable), but he also monkey flipped Okamura from the ring onto a different barbed wire board and then pelted his face with chairs, so maybe that was my favourite. Someone from team Onita got wrapped in wire again and I love how Onita proceeded to use him as a barbed wire-coated battering ram rather than, you know, alleviate him of his suffering and remove the barbed wire. Always the pragmatist, is Onita. The five minutes of clipping is annoying because why would you not want another five minutes of this, but we got a solid ten minutes of action and it was wild and crazy and awesome like you'd hope.

Remember when NOAH was really fun for a minute there? I thought Tenryu was pretty exceptional in this, in a subtle, low key sort of way. It was a match largely built around strike exchanges, but it was Tenryu's reactions to them that stood out (insert point here about those exchanges not just being rote "you hit me, I'll hit you" affairs, that they sold the strikes in interesting ways, that they injected personality into them, etc). Tenryu was 55 by the time he got to NOAH (this is his first appearance there, actually). He's a big name and still has pretty good mobility for a 55 year old who's been wrestling for nearly three decades. He can still go and he'll hit super hard (evident by Misawa's welted chest after a couple minutes), but he's breaking down and can't hang with the very top dogs like he used to. So he gets even more belligerent! And acts like an even bigger shithouse! There were a bunch of great moments in this where he'd be laying it in with chops, then later potato punches, and he'd be at least even in the exchanges...but then age would creep up on him and he'd be left in a heap somewhere. I love how he'd sell Misawa's elbows like molars had been knocked out, or Rikio's slaps like they'd scrambled his brains. It also led to him ramping up the cheapshots, like the knees and kicks from the apron, the short punts to the face, the casual interference. It could only get him to far, but he still had gas in the tank and he wasn't ready to accept that it might be time to step aside. Misawa was mostly elbows in this but good grief did they have some meat behind them. He hit one combo that even Tenryu's relatives felt, and later when he had Tenryu in a chinlock he took the time to measure one nasty little elbow to the bridge of the nose. Rikio and Koshinaka were fun understudies and for the eighty seventh time I'll reiterate how much more enjoyable I find old man Koshinaka compared to prime Koshinaka. I haven't seen the Tenryu/Misawa singles match in about a decade, but I'm wondering if it's as disappointing as it was thought to be at the time. It certainly shouldn't have been based on this.

Hans Nyman v Adam Watt (3/5/92) Fairly dire and I'm pretty sure it was a shoot. Watt is a tall, rangy Australian of some pedigree in boxing and kickboxing, but he never really troubled Nyman for the most part. His corner spent the entire fight shouting "punch, kick, punch, punch, kick, face punch, face punch!" in increasingly exasperated, broken English at the distinct lack of face punching. He also had no ground game whatsoever and had he been in there with someone a little more capable this probably wouldn't have gone as long as it did. My goodness Nyman is the spitting image of a young Ronald Koeman. He mostly stood flat-footed and scowling until the last round and a half when he went from first all the way up to second gear. Volk Han v Gennadi Gigant (3/5/92) Super fun bout, almost a highlight reel of Volk Han grabbing a guy's arm and throwing him around the place with it. It kind of makes you wonder why people would so casually try to grab him, or languidly throw palm strikes around his head. Why would you do that? Why would you hand him a lever to your pain? To be fair to Gigant he got the message eventually, but it never outright stopped Han, it only made it more difficult for him. There was one bit in particular where Han's yanked him around with an arm wringer and then landed him on his back with a throw. It looked absolutely spectacular. Gigant is a tall, heavyset guy who I think is also a sambo practitioner. He handled himself fairly well and used his weight advantage to try and control the ground, but Han was always slipping out of his grasp, and on top of that there's the ever-present danger of being countered in some absurd way you never thought possible. The final armbar was a thing of beauty, particularly in how Han secured Gigant's legs so he couldn't reach the ropes. Nobuaki Kakuta v Rudy Ewoldt (3/5/92) Definitely my favourite thing Kakuta's been involved in thus far. He still can't do anything on the mat but that at least added some drama to the parts where Ewoldt was able to take him down, which he did with a couple big slams. These crowds are massively behind Kakuta every time out and they about lost it whenever he reeled off any halfway decent combo. His team coming in and throwing him in the air after the fight - as he wept tears of joy - was so carny and great, particularly as Ewoldt approached those last couple minutes like a man who'd had about enough of this and was ready to go collect his paycheck already. Dick Vrij v Herman Renting (3/5/92) They seem to be referring to Vrij as Dick Fly now. I will not be following suit, however. This was decent enough. There's a hook to most of these Vrij fights in that, by virtue of the fact he's so much larger than his opponents, he's pretty much always opposite an underdog. Even Maeda felt like an underdog and Renting is not Maeda. Things started out pretty okay for Renting and he was persistent in going for takedowns, even if he never made much headway thereafter. He wasn't finding himself in a ton of trouble despite Vrij's striking, at least. Then Vrij found his feet and you felt it was only a matter of time. First came the leg kicks, then came Renting anticipating them, then came Vrij going high when Renting expected him to go low. And fuck me what a finish. Willy Williams v Peter Smit (3/5/92) Kind of a lumbering mess, but it only lasted a couple minutes. Williams clearly has no idea what he's doing on the ground and can't really make his strikes look convincing, so Smit is eating knockdowns off of ropey knees as obvious job fodder. But hey, no downtime! Masaaki Satake v Fred Oosterom (3/5/92) This was another short one, and like the Kakuta fight Satake wants nothing to do with the ground. Also like the Kakuta fight, it was probably helped by the fact they've ditched the rounds system. I mean it wasn't great, or even good, but it was short. Oosterom seemed capable enough of taking Satake down and Satake threw some nice enough shots, but there wasn't much to this. There's something about Satake's face that makes me wants to see him lose one of these. Maybe stick him in there with Dick Vrij. Akira Maeda v Ramazi Buzariashvili (3/5/92) This felt a bit more mat based than Maeda's last few fights, or at least that it had more of Maeda working the mat...if that makes sense. He's still the superior striker, but I don't think we've really seen him stretch out with his grappling yet like we did here, even including the Han fight (which was largely dominated by Han whenever it went to the ground). Buzariashvili is the guy from the sambo demonstrations at the beginning of the show and he was really fun in this. Some of his throws looked excellent and there were a few moments where he treated Maeda's kicks to the midsection with disdain, raising his arms and waving to the crowd as he dared Maeda to do it some more. Maeda of course did it some more and Buzariashvili was left to regret his earlier insults as he ate a kick straight to the chin. As Maeda started to create openings with his kicks I liked how it was Buzariashvili's throws that created his own openings, at one point tossing Maeda like a bag of cement and leaping on his back with the attempted rear naked choke (you know the crowd buy Maeda being in real peril when they start the MA-E-DA chants). It looked like they messed up the finish a tiny bit, but other than that this was really nice stuff and I hope Buzariashvili shows up again in future.

Yeah, this was pretty good. Right at the start they make it clear that Akiyama will go toe to toe with both Kawada and Taue, holding his own every step of the way in the strike exchanges. Early stages of this just feel bigger than most of the other All Japan matches of the year, with everybody going right for their big bombs without trepidation. Meat of the first half of the match is Akiyama being worked over. Kawada and Taue really go to town on him and it's a big time beatdown. Contrast this with the 11/29 match where they tried to take out Misawa in the first half. Misawa came back because Misawa always comes back, so this time it might be best to get rid of Akiyama early instead. He's not on Misawa's level obviously, but he's legit and he's proved it. First half is all really good stuff and builds well, but I wasn't invested in it the same way I was with something like the 10/30 Battlarts tag. Like, I'm watching it and it's clearly good, but I'm not drawn all the way in. Then Misawa puts Kawada on his head with a German suplex and that did it. That got me. I'm all on board from then on out. Back half of the match is so very, very great. It's about as good a fifteen minute stretch of any match ever, and it's especially impressive given the fact it's basically one extended finishing run that builds and builds in amazing ways, without ever coming close to being overkill. Seriously, the back half of this is breathtaking. I'm not sure who was the best guy here because everybody was incredible. Kawada's sell of the German is out of this world, the way he stands up and just collapses out to the floor. He never seems to be quite right after it, and there's one bit where he comes in off a tag and he does this little stumble like he's got brain damage. Akiyama lays out Taue to leave Kawada alone against him and Misawa, and there's this audible change in reaction from the crowd, like the Misawa/Akiyama fans know it's time to go for the kill while the HDA fans think it's gonna happen again. For the umpteenth time, Misawa is going to beat Kawada. This is one of Taue's finest hours, despite the fact he's maybe the least spotlighted guy in the match. Any HDA v Misawa & Partner tags have the big underlying story of 'Kawada v Misawa - Eternal Rivals', but Taue is the greatest partner Kawada could possibly ask for in his quest to prove 6/9/95 wasn't a fluke. He wrestles this with such an air of calm about him. There was a great point made already in this thread about how Taue never engages in strike exchanges with Misawa the way Kawada does, primarily because he doesn't share Kawada's pride in the matter and because he flat out doesn't have the strikes to be able to do so. He'd lose those battles, but he's ever the pragmatist, so instead of throwing elbows he'll just pick Misawa up and drop his throat across the top rope. He also knows Kawada NEEDS this win over Misawa, and there are a bunch of moments where he urges his partner to press on. He's there to lend a hand whenever it's needed, but he's the auxiliary unit to Kawada's vanguard. Things really swing in Kawada/Taue's favour when Taue, after teasing it and trying it all year, finally manages to hit Akiyama with the apron chokeslam. That leaves Misawa on his own against two men, while Akiyama crawls around for the remainder trying to come to his partner's aid. It's been established for a while that Misawa is the king of the comeback. In the 11/29 match the HDA tried to take him out early and it blew up in their face, but Misawa's been doing that for years. It's what he does. Now he's on his own, but Kawada and Taue need to make the advantage count while they have it. I'm not really sure how words can do justice to Misawa's performance in this finishing run. He is absolutely fucking perfect, eating offence while fighting and scraping and clawing back into it every chance he can, even if it's just to buy Akiyama time to recover and bail him out. He's like Spartacus on the battlefield, pulling arrows out of his body while continually moving forward, defiant even in the face of certain defeat. It can be easy to make stuff like that seem silly. Guys will take a truckload of offence and keep coming and the selling isn't always good enough to make it plausible or compelling. Misawa walks that line better than anyone I've ever seen. It's mind blowing how good he is. At one point Kawada shoots Taue this "what do I even do here?" glance and that one look sums up their entire rivalry. Akiyama trying to rise up like a fucking zombie just to get dropped on his head every time is almost hard to watch. There's one bit where Taue tries to chokelsam Misawa off the apron and Akiyama desperately grabs his leg to stop it, and it essentially winds up being his last meaningful sacrifice, even if it ends up counting for nothing, because everything he's involved in after that ends with him being dumped on his neck. Kawada hits one backdrop on him that was truly disgusting and Akiyama sells it like he's just been shot in the chest. He feebly crawls over to break up a pin, but Taue casually stands in front of him while Akiyama can only grasp at thin air. It almost breaks your heart.

Yeah, if Battlarts is a hybrid then this was a hybrid of the hybrid (or just the original hybrid that leaned more towards the pro wrestling side of the scale than the shoot style side). Not much matwork to speak of, more shtick than usual, but everything reaching at least an 8 on the stiffness scale, thus reinforcing that we are indeed still watching the Battlarts. Ikeda and Ono were winging shots the way you expect them to and I liked how Ono incorporated punching someone clean in the face into some quasi-comedy spots. His senton looked awesome as well. Orihara has a new look nearly every match of his I watch. Someone should document that. He mostly kicked and punched people in the balls but he wasn't shy about taking full force lariats and kicks to the body from Ikeda.

It's already been established that Ono can work a pretty, pretty, pretty good four minute match, but Kotsubo is very much not Ikeda and there's only so much Ono can do with a guy like that in four minutes. Kotsubo didn't flat out suck or anything -- he has some solidish wrestling, and he at least made the matwork look somewhat competitive even if Ono's scrambling was much quicker. I mean, if you've seen enough Ono then you get the sense he could turn loose and Kotsubo would not be able to fight off that armbar or heel hook. Kotsubo's main problem is that he doesn't hit hard, and when you're i) in FUTEN and ii) against Ono, that problem tends to be magnified. His German suplex never had much snap and looked more like a throw, then his lariat was kind of a grazing love tap, and Ono is supposed to sell that as a near KO after we've seen him take cannons from the Battlarts crew for years. Then Ono kicked him in the face and backfisted him into the 22nd century and you conclude that Takeshi Ono is far too precious a treasure to be showing up on tape once every other year to be wrestling Hiroyuki Kotsubo for four minutes.

I didn't really care one way or the other about Hijikata and his fighting spirit business, but Ono was outstanding again. He looks like one of the best wrestlers in the world in 2000/20001 and yet he mostly seems to be dicking around in barely-spotlighted undercard fights. Surely the one major blemish on Yuki Ishikawa as a booker/human being. Hijikata jumped Ono before the bell here, running him into the barricade before throwing him into the first row, and as Ono made his way into the ring for the first time he had this "okay so we're doing that, are we?" look on his face and you get a little giddy at what you fully expect him to do. Naturally he went and kicked the shit out of Hijikata. Some of his selling towards the end was incredible, like the crumpled sell of a lariat and the way he made it back to his feet like a cobra in answer to the snake charmer's punji. And like most dealings with a cobra, Hijikata wound up getting bit when he came too close.

I'm on an Ono/Battlarts kick right now and it may be colouring my perception, but I thought this was truly phenomenal; like one of the best sub-ten minute matches I've ever seen. Ono is one of the all time greatest at swarming a guy and he was unbelievable in this, going after Ishikawa at the bell and not relenting for a second, just crawling all over him, blasting him in the face -- he was a ferocious little machine. All of the punches and kicks looked immaculate, but it was the way he was leaping into those leglocks that impressed me most. He was grabbing them from absolutely everywhere and you know you're onto something when even Ishikawa looks like he's struggling to contain you. It led to an amazing bit where Ishikawa finally managed to hold onto him as Ono went for maybe his eighth crazy rolling kneebar of the match, hoist him in the air and drop him on his neck with a huge German suplex. Ishikawa for his part was excellent as well. You know his matwork is going to rule and he was countering in slick and awesome ways, usually by grabbing limbs and bending them at more angles than there existed joints to be bent at. There was one part as well where he'd just taken a shot to the face - could've been a kick, a punch, a knee, it was hard to keep track - and he came out smiling, like the extent to which this match was not a monkey show pleased him greatly. I would need to play-by-play this whole thing in order to note down everything I liked about it because I thought it was tremendous from start to finish. Seriously loved it.

Ishikawa looked like he hadn't missed a beat here. He never went full Battlarts with the striking, but there were a few shots straight out of 1998 -- the punches to the ribs, the slaps across the ears and face. His matwork was as strong as it ever was. Wallace was fine enough in being led, but it's the little parts like Ishikawa hooking a leg with his feet so Wallace couldn't roll out of a kimura that stick with you. Some of Wallace's striking was indeed pretty light, but the threw one fucker of a forearm from the mount and I thought he generally held up most of his end. This was an Ishikawa show, though, and a fun way to check him out in something that was a little less of a slaughterhouse than the Battlarts fare for which we know and love him.

How about that for a first caida mugging? I mean, if you're going to have a fall get thrown out in this feud now then you really need to make me believe it's warranted, and I'll be damned if they never made me believe it. This might've been Tarzan Boy's finest hour. He mostly spent the match staggering around bleeding and getting beat on, but he sure garnered sympathy and it was some great staggering and bleeding. At one point I think he tried to run the ropes and just kind of crumpled in a heap. Satanico continued his hot streak in mesmerising fashion and there are few wrestlers to ever do it that make me believe they want to truly tear a guy apart like he does. The way he opted for the foul at the end despite knowing they'd lose the match was pretty perfect. He didn't care about the result as much as what he'd be able to dish out after it was over. And of course he dished out plenty. It's already been said plenty of times, but the build to the hair match has been exceptional.

I thought Blackwell/Reed was genuinely better than Kerry/Flair, though I'm super bored of Kerry v Flair as a match up in general at this point. I get that I'm most likely in the minority.

Katayama's leopard print trunks in that Kitahara match were too awesome not to be worn by someone who didn't have confidence in his own abilities. I'm not surprised to hear that he was solid.