KB8

Maybe it's because I only just watched this and it's fresh and unique in my memory, but I seriously thought this was fucking with the high end MPro tags of '96 (or the ones from the '96 yearbook, at least). There was a palpable sense of chaos in this with everyone throwing huge shots and getting chucked around in ugly ways, plus the crowd was rabid and totally bought into the heel/face dynamic. I don't even know who four of these guys are and I still couldn't tell you who's who, but the home team were inspired in kicking the shit out of Taru. Okamura - who I know only by the process of elimination - was potaoing everyone with crazy stomps and one wheel kick that somehow didn't splatter the nose across the face of whoever took it. Stretch run with Okamura/someone trying to tap each other out while chaos ensues around them was excellent, but I think it was the extended heat segments on Taru that really elevated this. They never went back and forth just to hit their stuff -- everything felt earned and the heat and hate was always at the forefront. I'm sort of stunned at how good this was, honestly. I fucking loved it.

Kitahara v Katayama (10/29/91) was indeed very fun. I liked how Katayama seemed to know he'd be outmatched if he let Kitahara build up steam, or indeed if it got into a literal kicking contest, so he went after him early and tried to smother him. Going after the leg felt like a sound strategy as well and the leg work itself was fine. Kitahara did of course turn it into a kicking contest, though. Good grief was he laying it in. That one kick that about took Katayama's teeth out was savage and he was punting him in the spleen for good measure. He also hit what was practically a Ganso Bomb (for a mild 2 count) and his snap suplex is easily up there with the best of them. So quick and it always looks like he's really planting them. I very deeply regret not having Kitahara on my GWE ballot now.

Man Kitahara was the best. I remember when I first got into Japanese wrestling I'd buy tapes with as much junior heavyweight stuff on them as I could find. Guys like Liger, Kanemoto, Ohtani, Eddie, Benoit, etc. I doubt I even knew who Koki Kitahara was back then and if I saw his name on a match list I probably would've skipped right over it (unless he happened to be matched up with one of the aforementioned names). It's been a while since those simpler times. My tastes have shifted somewhat dramatically since then and at this point I'm more likely to seek out obscure Koki Kitahara matches than any from those other guys (with the exception of probably Eddie). This started out with Katayama, in his leopard print tights and kneepads, jumping Kitahara at the bell and laying a beating on him. He had to try and stay on top the whole match because if he let Kitahara catch his breath he'd pay for it. Of course Kitahara caught his breath and kicked Katayama really hard in the mouth. I thought he'd literally kicked some of his teeth out and Katayama spent the back half of the match bleeding down his chest. Kitahara also seemed to be nursing a bum leg from a previous match so Katayama would go after that now and then as well, almost as a contingency plan of sorts. Kitahara hit what was basically a Ganso Bomb and his snap suplex is so, so good; easily as fast and sharp as Dynamite Kid's or Benoit's or whoever else's. Fun match.

I'm still annoyed with myself that I never went to see him when he was up here. My friend was at the ICW show in 2014 when he made his comeback and the whole thing looked pretty tremendous.

Yeah, this had a real Battlartsy recklessness to it, just fifteen minutes of uncooperative crowbarring and potatoing from all four involved. Honestly, I had no idea who any of these guys were and didn't bother trying to identify them until after I'd watched the match. Cosmo seemed fairly obvious given the mask with the big star on the front and therefore it would stand to reason that whoever he was teaming with was Sato, but I didn't put names to faces of the other two until afterwards and it's been so long since I've even thought about K-Ness that that link meant little to me. I'm not sure who you'd point to as the best guy in the match (I'm not sure you'd be bothered to), but you might point to Fujisaki (he's wearing the singlet) as the one who gave the least shits about his opponents' safety. He really brutalised Cosmo and flung him about with abandon, hitting this weird body slam that left Cosmo crumpled beneath himself in a tangle of ACLs and ruptured patellar tendons. Beyond that he was stomping him in the face and hitting lariats right around the throat and dumping him on his ear with back suplexes. Saito was throwing brutal high kicks and dropkicking guys at weird angles, across the lower spine, upper thigh, just below the shoulder, right under the chin. Almost nothing in the match looked pretty but it did look like it hurt a lot. There wasn't a ton of structure, but the messiness worked for it and the heat segments certainly made it feel like someone was in peril. Pretty much the definition of Japanese indy sleaze. The very best kind.

I watched the whole 10/30/91 SWS card it was a real easy hour and a half. Pat Tanaka v Kabuki opened and it was a fairly standard affair, but Tanaka looked solid as always and Kabuki threw a couple of his big thrust kicks. Barbarian v Nagasaki was JIP, but at some point Nagasaki went nuts again and started winging chair shots. They brawled into the crowd and I figured they were going for the double count out, but they got back in and worked to a proper finish. Kitahara/Asai v Salvaje/Orihara was half pretty good and half pretty awesome. The Asai/Bestia parts feel like they're designed to get Asai over as WAR's young juniors ace and they manage to do that just fine. But this is really about Kitahara v Orihara. Orihara couldn't have been wrestling long at this point and he has some fun, stiff exchanges with Kitahara, where Kitahara shuts him down like you'd expect while Orihara gets to fight back and try to step to the plate. Then an Orihara kick catches Kitahara flush in the nose and Kitahara spends the rest of the match abusing him as payback. It might have been the most vicious I've ever seen Kitahara. It truly was an ass stomping befitting a Tenryu fed. Sano/Takano v Warlord/Paul Diamond wasn't all that good, but it had a few neat Sano/Warlord moments. Diamond was all over the place in it, messing up spots, getting awkwardly and belatedly into position for things. At one point he hit an ugly piledriver that I half expected to paralyze Sano. Hara/Fuyuki v Yatsu/Nakano had more Nakano v Fuyuki fun and I hope there's a singles match out there somewhere. It was a tag match fulla beef and nobody was scared to throw it around. Haku v Ishikawa was indeed a fun slobberknocker. I liked all the leg work on Haku and how he sold it, then they moved past that into the part where they slabbered each other and I dug that, too. Some of Ishikawa's lariats looked killer and there was one slap/headbutt exchange that was right out of Ishii's playbook (only not ridiculous). Main event of Tenryu v Takano was a pretty subdued Tenryu performance. He gave Takano a ton, which he seemed to do a lot with opponents in SWS. Maybe it's because he's so clearly the ace and biggest star in the promotion that he feels he needs to go above and beyond to try and establish viable challengers. I understand the need to do that, but I selfishly wish he'd do more of the ass beating and face punching and so forth. He did fling a chair at Nakano's head at one point, though. That was pretty great. I've watched a solid chunk of SWS from '91 now and I think a decent argument could be made that Kitahara was their MVP that year. Sano probably has a shot as well, actually, but Kitahara in that tag pushes him ahead. It feels like Tenryu needed a fire lit under his ass and it wasn't until the following year that he got it (with SWS's closure and the opening of WAR/beginning of the New Japan feud), whereas Kitahara was being the best Kitahara he could be just about every time out. That is to say he was a nasty little bastard.

This was real nifty and at points got pretty damn awesome. The nifty came from Asai and Bestia, who ran the gamut of Asai/Ultimo's armdrag and headscissor sequences with Bestia serving as a great base for all of it. None of Asai's stuff here will be new to you if you've seen more than a couple Ultimo Dragon matches, but for the most part it looked pretty when it needed to and more importantly like it was impactful. But really, you want this for the parts that were awesome (I mean why wouldn't you?) and those were courtesy of Kitahara and Orihara. This might be my favourite Kitahara performance ever. When they match up initially they both throw a few big kicks and Orihara fights admirably, but he's a young boy and Kitahara treats him as such. It's a fun dynamic and it works. Kitahara doesn't go beyond the pale, he doesn't take liberties, but he doesn't throw feather dusters either. The balance is as it should be, all things considered. Then Orihara kicks him a little too forcefully in the nose and Kitahara just absolutely fucking mangles him. It was almost uncomfortable at points. Orihara continues to scrap and stand up for himself and Kitahara gets even more abusive. He punted him in the face and kidneys, hit a vile roundhouse kick, gave him a snap suplex on the ramp, recklessly front suplexed him across the guardrail, it was brutal. And truly in step with the values of a Tenryu fed he gave up caring about the result of the match in order to continue beating on poor Orihara. Vengeance had taken precedence over victory. This was a match where everybody looked good and the whole thing came together well, but that one moment where something went awry - horribly, for Orihara - led to things taking a murderous detour. Kitahara as vicious wee prick elevated this past the ceiling it might've had otherwise.

Tamura's last match in UWFi before heading to RINGS. I don't know if the story about him working this as a big fuck you to the company/Takada is true or not, but it was certainly a RINGS match more than a UWFi one. The matwork especially is very RINGS; super fast sprawling and tumbling and jockeying for position. They only use one rope break each and mostly work to a stalemate, but it's the kind of shoot style matwork that's my absolute favourite matwork in wrestling. It's not quite the highest of high end RINGS, but you could see they had something brilliant in them and probably would've produced it if Sakuraba went to RINGS rather than Kingdom/MMA. There was one bit where Sakuraba was shifting his weight to get into position for a cross armbreaker, trying to force Tamura's hands apart. He leaned back to break the grip, but Tamura used Sakuraba's momentum to roll backwards and essentially wind up with side control. Finish was so good. Sakuraba comes in close and throws an uppercut, so Tamura moves in to close the distance and they sort of wind up in a clinch. I'm not sure if Sakuraba tried to throw another palm strike inside or Tamura just grabbed an arm, but one second they were standing in the clinch and the next Tamura had rolled him into a perfect cross armbreaker. Tamura was about to go on a run where he legit had a handful of the best matches ever done in the style, and this was a nice way to cap off his time in a promotion he'd pretty much grown out of.

I liked this while it lasted, but it had a bummer of a finish that I assume was unplanned. There was lots of Fujiwara playing defence in this and it was pretty great, which should be unsurprising because nobody has ever been better at playing defence than Fujiwara. Takada caught him with a leg kick early and I love how Fujiwara tried to nonchalantly walk it off, but he couldn't hide that dead leg limp and the crowd picked up on it. Takada tried to force the issue on the mat and there was one bit where he almost grabbed a triangle, and Fujiwara was wheezing and drooling trying to fight it. Fujiwara went down at the end like he'd punctured a lung, but this was just starting to pick up when it happened. Going by Takada's reaction it wasn't supposed to end like that after nine minutes.

This started out great with Kakihara rifling off a big slap and Kosh dropping him with a brutal, side-of-the-head brainbuster. For the most part the match continued in that vein. One thing I've liked about this show is catching a glimpse of some shoot style guys working a bit of pro style. Sano's obviously always been awesome at it and I'd seen Anjoh work it plenty of times. Takayama had one of the best heavyweight runs of the 00s. But it was cool seeing Nakano do it, and it was cool seeing Kakihara do it too (though I suppose you could argue UWFi always had some pro style elements). He only had six minutes to work with (lot of 5-6 minute fights on this card), but he made the most of it. He threw down with lots of nasty palm strikes and lariats, so Kosh was almost forced to grab a front face lock just to contain. Kosh has been around the block more than once, his age is starting to show a bit, but he knows how to handle a young guy getting chippy. The hip attacks are still treated as a big deal even if they maybe look a touch ridiculous in a shoot style setting, but it's whatever. Finish was nasty and yet probably only the third nastiest version of it done on this show.

Anjoh cuts an amazing promo before this starts. I don't even know what he's saying but he's wearing a dress shirt and beige chinos and you can tell he's being a condescending prick to the ugly homeless WAR guys, making these "I'm soooo scared" gestures while Takayama laughs at his little buddy's mean jokes. I'm not sure it's particularly smart business practice for a shoot style fed to have this on the same card as Tamura/Sakuraba. Like, this is not shoot style at all. At times it even felt a bit like a wink wink nudge nudge comedy match. But I'll be fucked if I didn't enjoy lots of it. Anjoh and Tak started out sort of dismissive, poking fun at the tubby WAR dudes and Gedo's ring gear. Fuyuki wants a Greco-Roman knuckle lock so Tak holds his hand way up and Fuyuki can't reach it. Anjoh is one of my favourite shoot style guys but he's such an awesome smug little carny that he makes this kind of match his home as well. He and Takayama were like a pair of all-star high school receivers welcoming a ragtag secondary that could barely run the length of themselves. So the secondary started being dirty fucks and kneeing the all-stars in the balls. I love how vocal Fuyuki is in the ring. He does this shrieking thing as he goes to hit someone and it makes him sound like a wildman. Anjoh mocks him for it so Fuyuki hits him with a fire extinguisher and we get a heat segment on Anjoh who blades and everything. Fuyuki punches him in the cut and team WAR work full on heel. At one point Fuyuki brings in a pair of Y-fronts or something and puts them on Anjoh's head, and Anjoh wrestles the rest of the match with these blood-soaked Y-fronts on his head. It was...strange. As was the finish. I have no clue what that was about at all. This was basically a WAR match that happened to be taking place in UWFi. There was nothing UWFi about it other than the initials on Anjoh's singlet.

How about this for a lumpy undercard dream match? This was like some parallel universe Dark Tower shit because both guys are basically each other if their career trajectories happened to be swapped. Nakano works SWS/WAR? He's Kitahara. Kitahara does shoot style and ends up in a Takada promotion? He's Nakano. To be fair, though, I actually didn't expect Kitahara to be as fun in this environment. I mean, it isn't really a shoot style match as opposed to a pro style match with shoot style trappings, but it was a neat enough amalgamation and I liked how Kitahara handled himself. The early mat exchange was nice and solid and once again Nakano ends up with a bloody nose. It must be made of mashed potato. Pretty soon they start smacking each other in the face real hard and my Clone Wars theory is confirmed as Kitahara's nose also gets opened up, though this was at least a result of a nasty looking knee and not just breathing, which is what I assume did for Nakano. Nakano hits a German and Kitahara no sells it like "*I* am the lumpiest here!" and roundhouse kicks Nakano in the head. This was yet another fun six minutes.

Man this ruled. I don't know why, but these two do not like each other and we get an awesome start with Yamamoto charging in straight away flinging slaps and Sano pump kicking him in the face. This was more Battlartsy than a New Japan/UWFi mishmash. Naoki Sano was fucking awesome at the pro wrestling, man. He's always able to incorporate pro style moves into a shoot style setting in really cool and organic ways. In this he applied what was basically a scorpion deathlock, then transitioned into an STF/choke, then into a regular crossface. Yamamoto stood him up and planted Sano right on his neck with a backdrop, but then got ahead of himself in the stand up and Sano OBLITERATED him with a spinning back kick. This hit flush in the face and I was stunned Yamamoto was able to get up. Well, Sano just dropped him again anyway, this time with a couple ugly looking powerbombs, eventually hooking in a choke for the submission. Six minutes of badass, that's what this was.

I did not know Nogami ever worked shoot style. Or this approximation of it, at least. They don't use the points system and there's a nearfall off a German suplex, so I guess it's a mishmash of shoot/pro. For five minutes I thought this was pretty tidy. Kanehara has big time strikes and tries to kick Nogami's leg in half and Nogami sells it like he has half a leg. Kanehara goes for a big KO shot, but Nogami ducks it and hits a German for a nearfall,which is about the most headway he'd been able to make up to that point. He then tried to follow up with another, because why wouldn't he, I guess? but Kanehara rolls through into a kneebar and Nogami has no choice but to tap. Perfectly fine.

Yeah, this was the business. I don't follow wrestling as it's happening the way I used to, but there are things I'll still make a point of watching every year and Murakami rolling into somebody's town to wreak havoc is one such thing. That he's now rocking the suit like a crazed looking hitman only adds to the allure. He was a total bastard in this -- the hooks, the short elbows, the uppercuts, the kicks, more or less every strike he threw. And we got the full range of facial expressions, from contemptuous sneers to disgust at his opponents to almost shock when either of them manage to actually hurt him. Jo really can't strike for shit and in a match that's basically 95% strikes that would normally be a red flag straight away, but I thought it actively added to the story of this. The gulf in hitting power between Jo and both Murakami and Sato is astronomical and the piddly strikes only reinforced that. Murakami and Sato reacted to those shots with either indifference or scorn - as they should have - and when they did sell big it was because the strikes looked like they actually warranted it. Murakami never went flying across the ring for a fluffed elbow, but he hit the deck quick enough for Jo's best punch combo of the match. Sato was playing more enforcer than front and centre asshole like Murakami, but he threw his knees and chopped guys to ribbons and at one point he told the crowd to quiet down so they could hear the thump off a headbutt. I will now endeavour to watch everything else Murakami does in 2017. Prolly.

This is probably right on that line between being a fun match and a skippable one, but I'm all about the WAR and there was enough randomness here that you probably should be too. Nagasaki is 53 at this point and he is flat out determined to skelp someone with a chair. Doesn't even matter who, he'll hit anyone. Hamaguchi is 47 but he drops elbows like a man two decades younger. They were great elbows, really quick and impactful. Tenryu took a bit of a backseat in this to let the others have the spotlight - as was his unselfish wont - and so Kitahara stepped into the role of guy kicking everyone in the face really hard. Kawabata was kicked many times in the face. Miyake was kicked many, many times in the face. Nagasaki was kicked once in the face and he went directly for that chair. Never for a second did you doubt the finish. This is the Wrestle and the Romance.

This kind of match has a sort of inevitability about it. Taue is practically unblooded and Kabuki, broken down as he's becoming, isn't dragging a guy in his second year past two of the three biggest stars in the company. And Tenryu and Hansen themselves are inevitable. They're wrecking balls, they destroy things and you can't stop it. The fun, then, is seeing how the old guy with the nunchucks and his rookie partner meet their demise. Tenryu and Hansen obviously smashed them to bits -- nasty chops, forearms, clubbering, forty yarders to the spine. Taue wouldn't go down without a fight though, and there was a great bit where he caught Tenryu coming off the ropes with a big boot to the chin before following up with a weird chokeslam that dropped him face-first. If wrestling was real then Hansen would have to be one of your top draft picks for a tag partner. He's exactly the kind of guy you'd want at your back in a fight. Any time Tenryu looked to be in even the slightest bit of bother Stan would come in and help. Put Tenryu in a leglock? Hansen is in kicking your face. Indian deathlock? Not on Hansen's watch. Taue and Kabuki got no respite whatsoever. He was also awesome at responding to Kabuki's short uppercuts (which looked GREAT, btw). The more Kabuki threw the more Hansen would sell them, going from almost annoyance at the start to eventually needing to just bowl Kabuki out the ring so he'd stop. Finish was cool as well, with Kabuki taking a wild bump to the floor off the lariat as Taue lay dead for a while after the double powerbomb.

Watched the Sano six-man, and yeah, really fun stuff. Second half of the match was badass with the blood and forehead biting and Fuyuki shrieking. Ishikawa's fat boy plancha! Right from the start I was thinking something was up with Kitahara and Fuyuki, like how Kitahara would never tag him and now and then he'd look at him like he'd want to smack him. And then comes the post-match. Man I love Kitahara. Sano v Martel is a dream match I never even thought about until now so I might need to check that out soon.

I wasn't too excited about watching this, but I gave it a go since it's their last match (and in the spirit of the project and whatnot) and wound up liking it quite a bit. Kawada was the best wrestler in the world in 2000 and he was exceptional in this. I don't think he took a great deal less of the match than Kobashi did, but the way he sold told you who the dominant one was. I mean, I wasn't in love with Kobashi Hulking Up or doing the fighting spirit spots, but they were almost worth it to see how Kawada would sell for whatever Kobashi would hit him with afterwards. All of Kawada's kicks were great as well. It felt like he always had the kicker's chance and I loved the enziguri to fight off Kobashi's dogged attempt at the German suplex. He can hit those kicks from anywhere and that if nothing else leaves him in the fight. And we also got some of his dead on his feet, thousand-yard-stare selling for good measure. The way he just kind of crumpled at the end was probably my favourite example, partly because it led to Kobashi's monster exclamation point of a standing lariat.

Watch the Kurisu six-man from the 6/30/94 WAR show. What a wild wee maniac bastard he is. He has no reason to be the way he is on a house show (god bless whoever sat with a camera for nearly four hours and filmed the whole thing). The headbutts, the chairshots, the flipping off of everyone who disapproves of his behaviour. He's everything great about WAR in one middle-aged, bellicose nutshell.

Random WAR six-man tags. They are the beautifulest. There's a Tenryu/Hara/Ultimo Dragon v Jim Duggan/Kamala/Jerry Estrada match on the 6/16/92 SWS show that might be the most random of all, at least on the non-Tenryu side. I mean, look at that. Unfortunately the match itself wasn't very good, but it had Tenryu v Jerry Estrada which is definitely a neat collector's item. I've watched a bunch of SWS/WAR and written about it here, blatantly ripping off Segunda Caida's Complete & Accurate: http://whiskeyandwrestling.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/complete-accurate-genichiro-tenryu.html, if that's any good to you (it's only Tenryu-related, though). The WAR/New Japan feud is probably my #1 in-ring feud ever. The Tenryu/Ishikawa v Hashimoto/Ohara match that took place on an untaped house show is one of the best sub-15 minute matches ever and it never would've seen the light of day if not for whoever recorded it from the cheap seats. How many shows did SWS actually run? It looks like most of them might be on the RealHero drive, which is pretty awesome.

Every time I see Norton I like him even more. He really feels like an under the radar pick for one of Hashimoto's best opponents. I mean, he had the strikes to match up in a way that a lot of Hash's New Japan opponents didn't really have, he had the aura of a guy who could conceivably crush most people, he could fling Hash around, and he was willing to take the ugliest brainbusters possible (evident from some of those gifs up top). There's a Norton/Tenzan v Hashimoto/Ogawa tag from 2002 - might actually be Hashimoto's last appearance in New Japan - that I had no real expectations for and it turned out to be completely awesome. I had no idea Norton had much of anything left in the tank at that point, but he was totally great in it and took a completely fucking insane bump off an STO/leg sweep double team. It's a killer match and a super performance from Norton.

Really cool seven minutes. Funaki was the heir to Inoki and Suzuki is a 2010s Billy Robinson, so you knew you'd get some neat matwork, and while it didn't last very long it most certainly was neat. Funaki is more than a decade Suzuki's senior but you couldn't tell from how he moves. He's still super quick in the scramble, rolling through and grabbing armbars like it was 1996. The last couple minutes were just great. They burst into a frantic race to either score the submission or drop the other with a bug suplex and the slickness with which they were reversing and countering was pretty impressive. Wish it were longer, but you take what you can get.

BEEEEEEEF. Pretty awesome potato-fest sprint. Big Japan is all about the lumpiness these days. Everybody just leathers each other. There were so many "fucking hell I can't believe he did that" moments in this where someone would crowbar someone else as hard as humanly possible. Ishikawa headbutted Okabayashi clean in the face and Okabayashi shoulderblocked him so hard his own gumshield flew out. I'm surprised Sekimoto still had any basic motor functions left after this. He's sort of terrible when his more annoying habits are indulged, and he has awful facial expressions, like he's having a stroke rather than communicating whatever he's trying to communicate, but he's a beefy wee tank who hits hard and gets hit harder. Ishikawa and Sato completely murdered him and it made for an awesome little heat segment. Okabayashi has lots of fans at this point and I'm still kind of whatever on him, but as has been mentioned he will fucking blooter a guy up and down the place and he was a rocking hot tag. There was one iffy no-sell bit towards the end, but it was the only part that I could've done without and even then they went right back to pummelling each other. Over the last week or so I've watched a fair bit of Big Japan from the last couple years, and in the absence of any shoot style it's probably the one promotion in Japan I could see myself following week to week at this point. Probably not entire shows, but there's a solid handful of guys there that I like a lot.