KB8

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.

I definitely remember liking a couple Ikeda in NOAH matches a lot, though I couldn't tell you what they were now. Pretty sure there was one match on an old Schneider Comp where he either teamed with or against Rikio that I thought was pretty great. I'm sort of on an Ikeda high right now so I might do a little deep dive soon.

Herman Renting v Shtorm Koba (1/25/92) Koba looks like he’s another guy straight out of the Grom Zaza/Tiger Levani camp of wrestling. Unfortunately the google search turns up nada, so confirmation eludes us. He certainly fought like someone with a modicum of proficiency in throwing people around, though. Renting was also less about the striking in this fight and tried to match wrestling with wrestling. At one point a suplex attempt goes awry and the clash of heads gives Koba a gnarly cut above the eyebrow. Koba’s sell of a Renting knockdown was somewhat less than convincing and he left the ring at the end like a man who knew he was getting paid to show up and roll around for thirteen minutes before submitting to a toe hold. One must respect the hustle. Mitsuya Nagai v Koichiro Kimura (1/25/92) This started out in fairly drab fashion and not a whole lot happened for a while there. We got some takedowns and they struggled for position, but it was mostly a stalemate and a bit of a slog. Then we hit the last five minutes and things started to get interesting. Kimura came close a few times to locking in some nasty looking chokes and Nagai threw strikes with a little more venom. Last couple minutes were especially good as they were just wildly flinging palm thrusts at each other’s face and Kimura looked about ready to collapse, at one point quite literally almost falling out the ring. There was some clipping going on as I think we only got about half of the full 28 minutes (why is Kimura going so long on these shows?), but it built to a nice crescendo. Willie Peeters v Bert Kops Jr (1/25/92) Peeters may have been my favourite guy of the ’91 shows and this is a rematch of a pretty entertaining fight, so I was looking forward to it. I will look forward to most things Willie Peeters. I’m not really sure how good Kops is, but he’s scrappy and he’s always willing to keep things moving, so if nothing else he’s a perfectly fine shoot style Tommy Gilbert. Peeters did his usual Willie Peeters things and I think my favourite Willie Peeters thing is how it’s basically guaranteed that his temper will spill over at least once a fight and he’ll knee a guy who’s on the floor or outright jump on their kidneys. In actual fact he did both those things here, but better than that he somehow managed to his a fucking piledriver! As in a full on piledriver where he caught Kops shooting in for the double leg and planted him. He did it right in front of his corner and the best part of all came afterwards when he turned to his corner man (Vrij) and laughed like he couldn’t quite believe he’d hit an honest to goodness piledriver. I was a little surprised at the finish because Peeters is very much a guy the crowd have taken to and Kops is sort of whatever, but I guess it leaves the door open for the rubber match and who knows, perhaps Peeters will hit a Burning Hammer or whatever gets you a solid two count these days. Nobuaki Kakuta v Rob Kaman (1/25/92) I'm gonna go out on a limb and say this was very much a shoot, the rules of which seemingly having changed from Kakuta's last fight. I base this on the last twenty seconds as they wound up on the mat and the ref' didn't immediately stand them back up. So I guess it's straight MMA this time? Kaman looked super accomplished here. I figured he was either a kickboxer or Muay Thai fighter. Turns out he was a world champion in both, used to play for Ajax (the football/soccer team) as a kid and was even in a few movies. I feel like I aught to have known this somehow. Anyway, this was what it was. Kaman looked great, Kakuta was spunky and persistent. Willy Wilhelm v Igor Kolmykov (1/25/92) I'll be honest, I'm not sure what Kolmykov does. You know, what his discipline is. Maybe freestyle wrestling? This was mostly Wilhelm as aggressor and he had a few nice takedowns, but neither are the most accomplished on the ground and not a whole lot happened when the fight got there. Crowd had themselves a chuckle at Kolmykov's wobbly karate but they weren't laughing at his cross armbreaker, no they were not. Gerard Gourdeau v Masaaki Satake (1/25/92) This was another rounds fight and I think it started off as a work, but then Gourdeau went off like a nutcase and punched Satake in the face a bunch for real and the fight got thrown out. Satake was bleeding from somewhere and Gourdeau raised his hand apologetically afterwards, but the whole thing was passable. I look forward to seeing Mahershala Ali hunt down the green-eared spaghetti monster's distant cousin Gourdeau in the upcoming third season of True Detective. Akira Maeda v Dick Vrij (1/25/92) The rubber match. This was mostly fought on the feet and there was that unease lingering from the previous fight that suggested Maeda might not be smart to let things continue like that. Other than Maeda hitting one capture suplex through the first three quarters of the fight it wasn't hard to disagree. Maeda's leg is still heavily taped and it wasn't not long before Vrij paints a bullseye on it. I liked the way Maeda sold all the leg kicks, a slight limp here and there that the crowd picked up on, which of course only added to their unease. At times during this he felt like a man with little more than a prayer, half hobbled as he was with Vrij only growing in confidence. In comparison, Maeda's leg kicks had nothing behind them and Vrij let him know it, then Vrij overwhelmed him and it led to a third knockdown. And there was that sense that it was going to happen again. Vrij had Maeda's number and if it kept going the way it was then he'd only TKO him again. You could argue that the climax might've been telegraphed, but I thought it was a fitting enough way to cap off a fun series.

Re: St Louis, Blackwell v Butch Reed sometime in 1982 is really damn good as well. I certainly prefer it to any of the Flair/Brody matches that I've seen (from anywhere).

Knowing All Japan like we know them it's not totally surprising that they never brought Ikeda in to run riot on their main stars (though they should've), but checking on cagematch it surprised me how often they jobbed him out when they did bring him in. To guys like Satoru Asako and Yoshinobu Kanemaru. I think even Shiga picked up a win on him. Mossman isn't exactly the first or second or tenth name you'd pick if you're an Ikeda fan looking at who he could match up with on that All Japan roster, but he'll at least kick hard and you know Ikeda will kick him back. This started out awesome as Ikeda dropped him with an ungodly right cross (and Mossman sold it like he had the cartoon budgies circling above his head), then leveled out at okay in the body, before getting back up to pretty good in the last few minutes. Ikeda never totally let loose like you'd want but he took some big bumps, including a reverse suplex off the top rope where he landed pretty awkwardly on the side of his head. Is any of his All Japan run worth tracking down above everything else?

Probably the best five minute match there's ever been. What a preposterously violent shitstorm of a thing. Ono starts throwing grenades right out the gate and drops Ikeda with an early knockdown, and I love how they managed to work a solid narrative into four and a half minutes. Ono is a whirlwind of punches and kicks, really going hell for leather, no beating about the bush. He's here for a good time not a long time, he doesn't get paid by the hour, etc. Ikeda is Ikeda, though. There's probably only a handful of wrestlers in history who can endure a more hellish beating than him and less than a handful who can dish it out even worse in return. So Ikeda survives the onslaught and just fucks Ono in the face with a headbutt. Ikeda's riposte is truly harrowing and yet Ono won't stop coming forward. The bit where Ikeda over-commits and Ono full force knees him in the back of the head is legit one of the most truculent things I've seen in a wrestling match. I've referenced this a few times as the bar for sub-five minute matches and every re-watch of it still leaves me sort of stunned.

Wonderful little ten minute scrap. Ono was fucking incredible in this, decking Hijikata in the first couple seconds with a straight right, unleashing hell with his strikes the whole way through, finding ways to escape whatever predicament Hijikata put him in to come back and drill him in the face. At a couple different points Hijikata left a limb dangling and Ono pounced on it, first tearing at the shoulder before moving onto the knee. He also has some of the most obnoxious hairstyles in wrestling history and this time he was rocking the bleach blond Johnny Rotten spikes. This really had something cool and/or brutal happening every other second and I loved Ono grabbing hold of Hijikata's kneepad so he couldn't reach the ropes out of the armbar. That sort of attention to detail is probably second only to his attention to punching you dead in the nose as my favourite thing about him.

Grom Zaza v Koichiro Kimura (12/7/91) I guess Maeda's been on that tour of Russia then, because enter: tricked out Easter European grapplers. This was edited in parts because unless I fell asleep for a bit - and I'm certain I didn't - the post-fight graphic says it went ten minutes longer than was shown. Even the editing department in RINGS must be stellar then, because I did not notice any clipping whatsoever. This was good stuff for what we got. Zaza seemed to bring a bit of everything to this: his awesome wrestling, some judo, a solid submission game and even some passable striking. He clearly has a hell of an engine as well because he never relented for a second and he didn't seem to be sucking wind by the end (of a twenty three minute fight (apparently), of which he was largely the aggressor). Kimura looks a bit like Yoji Anjoh in the face but he's far less of an obnoxious wee shitbird. He has pretty quick hands, but I think he gassed about five minutes in because he spent most of the time either curling up like a turtle or trying to crawl to the ropes. Grom Zaza will do that to you, I suppose. The crowd weren't totally on board with it and started booing him after his fifth or six rope break (which for all I know may have been his fourteenth or fifteenth of the unedited fight -- the points system seems to have changed on this show and I haven't quite grasped it yet). Conversely they were all about Zaza and his awesome shoot style STF and sharpshooter. I don't know what the finish was exactly, but it looked like maybe a choke or some sort of keylock but I'm also wondering if Kimura never just said to fuck with this relentless Georgian man climbing all over me and tapped. Maybe we'll never know. I will take more Grom Zaza and be immediately pleased, thank you. Herman Renting v Nobuaki Kakuta (12/7/91) This was strange. Was it a shoot? I mean, it didn't always look like one, but it had a fevered sort of hesitancy to it and if it was a work then...strange. Maybe it's the rounds system. This was another one of those and there hasn't been a good one yet. The difference here, though, is the inexplicably molten crowd! Why is this place going so bananas for a Herman Renting fight? Kakuta is a short karateka who wants absolutely nothing to do with a clinch or the ground or anything that doesn't involve standing and engaging in the fighting arts of karate. For large spells they do nothing much at all besides throw a few probing kicks. It was all very tentative, though it sometimes looked like they were right on the verge of turning loose. In the end the caution to protect their own face overrode the desire to smack the opponent's. Other than a few semi-grazing kicks I think one shot landed clean the whole fight and that was a suspect/probably illegal closed fist. Renting would close at a few points and Kakuta would sort of fall into the ropes to force the break without actually using a rope escape. The ref' would then stand them up and on one of those occasions Renting refused to let go of a partial choke which set the crowd off big time. Later on he grabbed another choke, this time of the illegal hand around throat/throttling variety and they liked that even less. When he cracked Kakuda's jaw with the punch that was it, never again would Herman Renting be welcome in the Ariake Coliseum. This was kind of a waste after Renting's promising outing on the last show, but his heeling it up was amusing. And holy moly did the people get into it. Chris Dolman v Tiger Levani (12/7/91) I'd never heard of Tiger Levani before. Where does he come from? What's his discipline, his hobbies, his hopes and dreams? A google search yields answers to none of these questions. He's kitted out in the same red and blue gear as Zaza so maybe they're from the same camp? He certainly has some Grom Zaza-ish tendencies in that he'll pursue those takedowns doggedly, and he almost turned one of them into a slick wrist lock. When it did go to the ground they were both pretty determined to grab leg locks, like nearly every single time. This often led to stalemates so eventually Dolman changed tact to lots of clinching and knees to the body. One or two might've been a wee bit south of the belt, but in the end it opened the door for a front choke and Chris Dolman is now the proud holder of the best win record in all of the Fighting Network RINGS. Dick Vrij v Willie Peeters (12/7/91) What an awesome little scrap. This had a bit of everything, some great striking, big takedowns and throws, dramatic submission work, insane heat, a frantic pace, even a kick to the balls. Vrij has a real unique aura and he's already improved noticeably over his four appearances. He's not a wizard on the mat by any stretch, but it sure looked like he'd picked up a few tricks. He is of course a man of many head kicks and that remains his primary mode of attack, but it's the way he carries himself as the big dog now with the shredded physique and the buzz cut that added an extra layer to this. Peeters ruled again. He has tonnes of personality and the crowd adopted him as their underdog babyface, which is a role he turned out to be awesome in. He was always in danger of taking blows because of Vrij's length and reach, but he'd continually try and close and chip away with punches to the body. They started coming off and earned him a couple knockdowns, and the crowd were totally behind him doing the upset. He just refused to accept defeat and tried to take it to Vrij at every opportunity. This had an easily discernible story that came off as being organic, two guys that were great in their roles, and a crowd that bought all the way into it. I loved this. Mitsuya Nagai v Gerard Gourdeau (12/7/91) Another weird round system fight. Gourdeau is the guy who kicked Teila Tuli's teeth out in the very first official fight in UFC history and later in the night broke two of the only three rules of the tournament (no eye-gouging; no biting). A few years later he yolked out Yuki Nagai's eye (or at least gouged it unto a state of permanent blindness) and generally looks like the sort who pulls the legs off of spiders for a hobby. Those are not the eyes of a kind individual. Apparently he's a neo-Nazi as well so all around swell gent, is Gerard. He dominated this and Nagai never got much of a look in. I actually thought it might've been stopped before it was because there was a point where Nagai was clearly not right after a guillotine choke. Nagai looked thoroughly outmatched here and Gourdeu's striking was too much for him. Hans Nyman v Masaaki Satake (12/7/91) Alright, this was definitely a shoot. Probably. I think it was a straight karate contest as well. Satake was very much the aggressor in this and really didn’t stop through all five rounds; he was constantly active and striking. Nyman was almost entirely on the defensive for the last couple rounds, though in fairness he never looked too troubled. Nothing from either guy had the other in a ton of danger, but it wasn’t a difficult fight to watch. Akira Maeda v Volk Han (12/7/91) Has anybody ever looked as good straight out the gate as Han? It didn’t hurt that he was about as legit as any to ever do it, but I imagine shoot style would be one of the most difficult styles to do properly and Han took to it right away. I mean, this is his debut and he’s pretty much already the Volk Han we know. There didn’t appear to be many growing pains at all. This was pretty great, of course. We’ve seen a host Europeans pass through RINGS already, some of them good, some of them less so, but it’s immediately obvious that none have been quite like this unassuming Russian as he flies into a rolling armbar after about forty seconds. This is a very different kettle of fish and the closest thing to what most people would point to as ‘high end RINGS’ yet. It largely felt like kicker v grappler, with Maeda being the superior striker and Han taking him down almost at will, tying him up in heel hooks and armbars. Han wasn’t as freaky with the submissions as he’d eventually become, but some of what he was doing was ridiculous. You think you’ve managed to fend off an attempted heel hook and before you know it you’re in a kneebar, then you somehow wriggle out of that but now he’s got BOTH your legs and you have no choice but to cling to the ropes for a reprieve. Once or twice Han would catch a high kick and just throw Maeda to the mat, a sort of casualness to it. Then he started to tire and Maeda caught him with that big wheel kick he’d been aiming for. Finish didn’t feel like Han underestimating Maeda as such, but with how dominant he’d been on the mat until then you get the sense he maybe never expected Maeda to have that in his locker. A fitting way to draw the curtain on the first year of RINGS.

Mitsuya Nagai v Herman Renting (9/14/91) One of the coolest things about a project like this, where you basically follow a promotion from its inception through to its closure with all the peaks and valleys in between (you know, hypothetically), is that you get to see the progression and growth of certain folk during the journey. Case in point: these two. In their first match they were fairly tentative, acclimatising themselves to this new and bizarre world of the shoot style, and it made for a fairly garden variety scrap between two young fellas finding their feet. Both are just far more assured this time out, their kicks thrown with a little extra whip, those kicks landing with a little extra leather. Combos are faster, the cooperation aspect more negligible, as if testing to see how well the other might react, pushing the boundaries of how much of the shoot-fightin' one can get away with in the fake-shootin'. Things started to get real chippy and Renting was taunting Nagai by brushing his shoulder off and asking if that was his best shot. Of course we see signs of reckless crowbar Nagai in response as he tries to full force Wanderlei punt Renting in the head as he's lying prostrate on the canvas and I'll be damned but at some point I had to stop and ask myself if this wasn't pretty fucking awesome. And you know what, I really think it might've been! I was practically in shock a few times at what they were doing. I mean it wasn't Tamura/Han matwork or world class striking, but it was so far above what they had done before (all of that one fight together that time) that I couldn't quite believe it. Renting was super persistent with his takedowns and Nagai was having to exert a ton of energy in not just preventing them, but in escaping if prevention failed. He got dumped on his neck for a knockdown and later Renting - I'm honestly not bullshitting you - hit one of the coolest German suplexes/throws I've seen. Often when they'd be stood up they'd waste no time at all in going back to the striking and Nagai even sprinted across the ring and tried a flying knee! He also drilled Renting with an unbelievable enziguri that legit had me off the couch. I had no idea Renting had this in him. Just a total blast. Willie Peeters v Bert Kops Jr. (9/14/91) Hot damn this was really fun as well. We're getting the niggliness on this show, brothers! Kops is unfamiliar to me and a google search doesn't turn up much of anything, but I'll go out on a limb and say he's a wrestler who's maybe dabbled in a wee bit of the kickboxing. He has some awesome throws, really torquing the hips and getting some angles on them as Peeters sails helplessly through the air. Unfortunately he can't really seem to do much once he gets to the ground and Peeters is usually able to wriggle free, so I'm left to question how much of the wrestling Bert really does (more than me, I'd wager). It leads to things being a little stop-start at points with the ref' standing them back up. Peeters continues to be a favourite of mine. He's a kickboxer who wants little to do with being on the mat. If he can avoid being there he will and his first plan of action is to stand and strike, though he is able to take Kops down a few times himself when pressed (he has the wrestling background and such). He also has a sort of Murakami-ness about him where it looks like he maybe never quite figured out how to pull his strikes and so he smacks Kops really hard with closed fists. I'm not sure he ever cared about that closed fist rule the whole time he was in RINGS. Same goes for the striking a downed opponent rule because he did that a bunch as well. There was one amazing bit where Kops took him over with a German suplex but Peeters immediately rolled back to his feet and cracked him with an uppercut. Post-fight Peeters is asked about his key to victory and he answers with, "I think the knee to the face. Thank you." How can you not love this guy? Dick Vrij v Ton von Maurik (9/14/91) Cagey start to to this one as Von Maurik - perhaps sensibly after Vrij's recent slaying of Maeda - appears to be reluctant to engage. Then again Vrij doesn't seem too eager, either. And so it goes for about two and a half rounds (this is seven three-minute rounds, btw) with the highlight being Vrij dickishly mussing Von Maurik's hair. Von Maurik isn't very good nor convincing and that's kind of the killer in this. Vrij is coasting in his own right but you at least get the sense he could break out and finish it whenever he wanted. That it went nearly six rounds and didn't even end with a brutal KO does not amuse Dana White. It actually started to pick up a bit as it went on and they followed suit with the first two fights by getting pretty chippy, at one point even spilling to the floor in the most obvious "accidental" fashion ever where Vrij threw a sly knee to the ribs, but there was a lot of fluff in between the good bits (which were few and far between, besides). Vrij's first knockdown of Von Maurik was an absolute corker, though. The slow motion replays of it are truly spectacular. Akira Maeda v Willy Wilhelm (9/14/91) This had a coupe iffy moments where the cooperation aspect was fairly obvious, but on the whole I thought this was pretty enjoyable. Wilhelm is a likeable sort of fellow, somewhat oafish looking yet wholly capable of chucking mere mortals around with relative ease, which he did several times. A couple of his harai goshis in this looked especially awesome. At one point it led to a half crab right in the middle of the ring and the crowd were in a rabid panic that Maeda might actually lose for the second show in a row. He also exposed his belly like a big gorilla and dared Maeda to kick him there, which Maeda did to little effect. Maeda going to the leg kicks seemed like a pretty sound strategy thereafter and it created openings to other things, such as the head kicks that almost KO'd Wilhelm twice. Finish had one of those moments of obvious cooperation, but it's whatever.

Thought this was really good for what we got. I've been watching some Bestia in SWS lately and he looked great working opposite a green Ultimo Dragon, but it was a treat seeing him turn loose and slap Casas stupid. The early rudo mugging was pretty awesome on the whole, my favourite part being Scorpio using Olimpico's own jacket to tie his arms up while Panther beat on him. Olimpico taking the wild head first bump off what he probably thought was going to be a hip toss and Panther trying to rip his arm out regardless was badass. For a two fall rudo beatdown I liked this a bunch.

I picked up every RINGS show from its first show in 1991 through mid-1994 or so towards the end of last year and I finally started going through all of them last week. My plan was to eventually watch everything in order until it turned to full MMA, but I may jump around some. High end RINGS is maybe my favourite kind of wrestling and it's one of my favourite promotions ever during that '96-'99 run, but early doors RINGS doesn't seem to be talked about much outside of stuff featuring the likes of Han and Maeda. Hopefully we can uncover some random gems from obscure Dutch judokas or the Willie Peeters masterpieces we know he's capable of. I'll keep a running list of the stuff worth watching as well (perhaps in some instances for reasons beyond technically being GOOD). Badass RINGS You Should be Watching (Baddest of the Badass in Italics): 1991 Akira Maeda v Dick Vrij (5/11/91) Chris Dolman v Ton von Maurik (8/1/91) Akira Maeda v Dick Vrij (8/1/91) Mitsuya Nagai v Herman Renting (9/14/91) Dick Vrij v Willie Peeters (12/7/91) Akira Maeda v Volk Han (12/7/91) 1992 Akira Maeda v Dick Vrij (1/25/92) Volk Han v Gennadi Gigant (3/5/92) Akira Maeda v Ramazi Buzariashvili (3/5/92) Akira Maeda v Volk Han (4/3/92) Volk Han v Grom Zaza (5/16/92) Dick Vrij v Mitsuya Nagai (5/16/92) Volk Han v Andrei Kopylov (7/16/92) Mitsuya Nagai v Cvetan Pavlov (8/21/92) Volk Han v Dick Vrij (8/21/92) Akira Maeda v Andrei Kopylov (8/21/92) Akira Maeda v Volk Han (10/29/92) Akira Maeda v Dimitri Petkov (11/13/92) Yoshihisa Yamamoto v Nobuaki Kakuta (12/19/92) Volk Han v Sotir Gotchev (12/19/92) 1993 Sotir Gotchev v Todor Todorov (1/23/93) Volk Han v Andrei Rumenezei (1/23/93) Masayuki Naruse v Sergei Sousserov (2/28/93) Sirra Fubicha v Kalil Valvitov (3/5/93) Volk Han v Andrei Kopylov (3/5/93) 1996 Mitsuya Nagai v Mikhail Ilioukhine (3/25/96) Volk Han v Nikolai Zouev (4/26/96) Tsuyoshi Kohsaka v Yoshihisa Yamamoto (4/26/96) ----- Herman Renting v Peter Smit (5/11/91) This had some okay grappling on the ground and one or two decent takedowns (or maybe takedown attempts), but there wasn't a ton of urgency to any of it and it all mostly felt like two guys doing a demonstration. "This is how you go for an armbar..." Renting threw some okay kicks, but they were pretty light and again looked a bit like he was showing us all where you're SUPPOSED to kick someone. The winning armbar was cool, at least. Not terrible, but it won't knock your socks off. Willie Peeters v Marcel Haarmans (5/11/91) Man, Peeters was fun in this. He threw lots of nice kicks that made a smack when they landed, he wasn't afraid to lay into Haarmans with punches, and even if he wasn't much use on the mat he was certainly game to try for takedowns. Haarmans doesn't really seem to do...anything...very well. He's a big lumpy dude and he absorbed lots of body shots, but there was never much behind any of what he was doing. When it went to the mat it felt like he was fairly composed, but I don't know if he had much to offer there offensively. I've liked the limited amount of Peeters I've seen previously and he's one of the guys I'm interested in seeing more of in the early RINGS years. Bill Kazmaier v Chris Dolman (5/11/91) Jeez Louise this was rough. They work it within the rounds system so I briefly wondered if it somehow was a shoot, like Maeda was on the crystal meth one night and thought it might be fun to book that, but it didn't take long for the notion to be squashed. Kazmaier looks a bit like Arn Anderson here if Arn Anderson fell out a boat, drowned, and washed up on the shore. At times he moved like it, too. I've never seen Dolman before but he has a bit of young Glenn Jacobs about him, despite apparently being 46(!). He also has a legit judo and Sambo background so if he shows up again I guess I'd like to see what he can do with someone capable. Kazmaier threw some strangely amusing body shots and a big suplex, Dolman had one or two okay takedowns, but otherwise this was four and a half rounds of not a whole lot. Akira Maeda v Dick Vrij (5/11/91) This was almost certainly helped by coming after the listlessness of the previous fight, but on its own I thought it still managed to be pretty dang fun. Vrij is always good for a bit of banter, his taunting and horse-shitting it up usually fairly amusing. Maeda was cool as you like through all of this, never rising to Vrij's bait, content to let Vrij force the issue before he would try and capitalise. Most of Vrij's slaps were more insulting than anything, though he did catch Maeda with a few that made the crowd sit up. He threw a handful of high kicks, but again Maeda would wait, catch one, then try and go for the takedown or submission. A couple times it backfired and he found himself rocked, but in the end it paid off like he'd planned. This went like eleven minutes and I dug it just fine. Mitsuya Nagai v Herman Renting (8/1/91) Is this Nagai's debut, not just in RINGS but in all of the pretend fighting? It's certainly the earliest Nagai I've seen, as well as the least bald. This had more going on than Renting's last outing (also a show opener) and was pretty okay if largely unspectacular. Nagai's kicks look sharp enough, though none that landed were of much consequence. It's a departure from later career Nagai where he's crowbarring the living shit out of people and everything is landing eight thousand percent, often across Yuki Ishikawa's front teeth. Renting is another kickboxer but his shots were more probing than anything. There were some sparks of an alright ground struggle and at one point Nagai slickly escaped a choke attempt to gain side control, but otherwise this was fairly by the numbers. Chris Dolman v Ton von Maurik (8/1/91) This was basically a shoot style hoss fight. It wasn't pretty, in fact it was ugly and ragged, but fuck if I didn't enjoy it a bunch. Von Maurik is...well I can't find any worthwhile info on him from a cursory google search but he's a tall Dutchman with a bitchin' perm. Dolman mentions in his pre-fight interview that he needs to be careful of Von Maurik as he's fast, in good condition and skilled in both boxing and sumo! He does not look like a sumo wrestler but who am I to argue? But yeah, right from the start Von Maurik charges Dolman and they're very soon taking pot shots at each other. Von Maurik's kicks come from a very flat stance and none of them land all that clean, but it looks like he's putting some meat behind them - at least to the extent he can with no real hip torque. Dolman has a really weird guard, forearms tight around his ears, face shielded by his elbow. Not much got past it, to be fair to him, but it did leave his midriff open to a punch combo that scored Von Maurik a knockdown. Dolman then started to flex the judo muscles and take Von Maurik down pretty much at will - once with an absolutely gorgeous harai goshi - at which point he would start headbutting him in the chest. This was evidently effective as it opened Von Maurik up to some submission attempts and Von Maurik clearly wanted no part of it, scrambling to the ropes as quickly as possible. It played into the finish as well, and I liked how Von Maurik tried to claw his way to safety while Dolman pulled him into the middle of the ring, like a big monster dragging some poor fellow into a pit. I said after his last fight that I'd like to see Dolman get a run out against someone who can actually go, and while I don't know if Von Maurik ticks that box he was an exponentially better match-up than Billy Kazmaier. And I thought this was just way fun. Willy Wilhelm v Peter Smit (8/1/91) If you squint hard enough Wilhelm looks a bit like Calumet County district attorney Ken Kratz, or a Tesco brand Stan Hansen. He's a judoka who medalled in the '83 and '85 world judo championships and apparently had a match (presumably worked) with Maeda in '89 that drew 60,000 to the Tokyo Dome! He tells us he's beaten Smit a couple times in the past, back when Smit was much lighter. This time it'll be a bit more challenging, and while he knows he can't compete if it becomes a kickboxing contest he feels he'll be able to take Smit down and either put him in an arm lock or strangle him. Smit's interview is gibberish to me as my Dutch isn't for shit. Basically I wanted to transcribe the Wilhelm interview because that is pretty much exactly how the fight went from his perspective and I sort of love that he not only outright told you his strategy, but went and actually executed it. He had his gameplan, was confident enough in it to lay it out there, and followed through on it. Smit really wasn't very good at all. He would move into the clinch without ever actually trying to do anything, though there was one bit where he threw Wilhelm into the ropes and kicked him in the ribs which led to Wilhelm selling it like he'd popped a lung or something. I thought that was going to be the finish, but Wilhelm got up after 8 and came out, arms raised and roaring, like a big bear who's just happened upon a campsite. I figured a mauling was imminent. And well, he never quite mauled him but he sure did strangle him. Akira Maeda v Dick Vrij (8/1/91) Vrij is in a foul mood after taking the L - as the youths say - in their last fight and comes out immediately swingin' for the fences. He's just all knees to the body and high kicks in a flurry of neo-Nazi primary villain in a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie rage and manages to score two early knockdowns. And it's obvious pretty quick that this fight has as clear a story as any pro-style match you'll see. Maeda has barely been in competition since the UWF closure. In fact I think this might only be his second bout in nearly two years; the first being his fight against Vrij on the previous show. Vrij is bigger, stronger, angrier and is literally trying to kick him senseless. He almost kicks him clean out the ring at one point (Maeda had to basically Terry Funk teeter-totter in order to stay in and it was great). The crowd get one million percent behind Maeda and when Vrij scores the fourth knockdown there's an audible "holy fuck he might actually lose this" reaction rippling throughout the whole arena. It turns to genuine panic when Vrij just keep coming forward, and not knowing the result myself I was thinking "nah, he's not getting TKO'd in ten minutes...is he?" His knee is also pretty heavily taped and when he gets up gingerly after taking another spill (not counted as a knockdown) you're thinking there might be no way back. He's injured and one knockdown off a stoppage and Vrij is absolutely all over him. It's inevitable. But it's still Maeda and this is his newly built house. He's been in worse situations, hasn't he? I was very much a fan of this, not just for the way they went about executing the match but also of the ballsiness of the booking. Best fight so far in our short history of Fighting Network RINGS.

I started buying footage as a teenager just as tapes were giving way to DVDs, but having stuff delivered to Scotland always seemed to take forever and it's not like I had much spare cash to blow on the random sleazy Japanese indies with the lumpy little dudes most corners of the internet deemed shitty at the wrestling. So like most newcomers I mainly stuck to the heralded All Japan, New Japan juniors, etc. It wasn't until 2007 or so, when I stopped closely following wrestling on a week-by-week/show-by-show basis and took a step back to check out things I passed over before, that I truly discovered guys like Tenryu and WAR at large. I'm very much someone who is always looking for fun new discoveries and looking under rocks that had been left relatively unturned (though I think PWO as a collective has turned just about every rock there is to turn), and a promotion like WAR ticks pretty much all those boxes. This is really just a longwinded way of saying WAR was the greatest and Japan needs more indies with ugly little bruisers who kick people in the spleen rather than handsome athletes who're all shredded and less willing to kick spleen.

Who knew Tenryu working a no rope barbed wire street fight tornado death match would be this fun? Man was that guy the ultimate journeyman in the 90s. He wrestled just about everywhere in Japan, working all these different styles from King's Road to what I guess was the approximation of Strong Style at the time to inter-genre (wow that doesn't sound pretentious at all) spectacles with Takada to crazy barbed wire deathmatches in Onita's scuzzy castoff indy. And he even showed up for a couple Royal Rumbles, just because. I have no idea why they decided to clip this. It's the main event of the very fist Onita Pro card, it's Onita v Tenryu, it had a rabid crowd, and above all else it was fucking wild. Why would you not want to show that in its full and unedited glory? Stupid people. They really just go hell for leather straight away and I love how Tenryu and Onita took centre stage while the others brawled away in the peripheries. Onita was rocking a big forehead bandage and Tenryu zeroed in on it and punched and elbowed the cut (with some awesome, brutal downward elbows) until it reopened. They also sold that first Irish whip attempt like they wanted no part of the wire whatsoever, eliciting a big "oooooohhhhh" reaction from the crowd. Match was all over the place in the best way possible. Guys brawled into the seats (whereupon seats were flung everywhere and used frequently as weapons), in and around the barbed wire, just everywhere in sight. Great bit where Tenryu and Nakamaki front suplexed Okamura into the wire and Tenryu used the body as a means of smooth egress from the ring, then Asako came flying into view with a crazy tope. Nakamaki and Yaguchi wrapped Onita in barbed wire and I loved how Onita, like a crazy fuck, spent the remainder of the match deliberately wrapped up so he could use it to his advantage. He was throwing himself bodily into people and they were getting their clothes and hair and face shredded by the barbed wire, then he gave Yaguchi a piledriver while his legs were still wrapped in said wire. By the end Yaguchi looked like he'd been savaged by a panther.