KB8

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.

This was really good. The opening stretch is another strong Suzuki matwork segment, with everything being mean and nasty and fought for, then Ishikawa decides he can't hang like that and takes a powder. Suzuki opens the ropes as an invite for him to get back in, but instead Ishikawa sits on one of the ringside chairs and gestures for Suzuki to join him. So they sit in the crowd and take turns elbowing each other really hard in the ear, which is a wrinkle on that particular trope that I don't have any problem with. I've only seen a handful of Ishikawa matches, but in every one of those matches he would stiff the daylights out of someone and he did that again here. Suzuki hardly throws love taps in his own right, but while he has the advantage on the mat it's Ishikawa who has the advantage throwing strikes. Ishikawa will apparently also recklessly fling you into things as he drops Suzuki over the ring apron with a front suplex. Some of the strikes down the stretch were meaty as all get out, particularly Ishikawa's knees to the body. We also got another compact-yet-satisfying finishing run -- no overkill, no egregious fighting spirit no-selling, and a cool finish that I initially thought was a miscue/botch. I would very much be down for watching these two crack each other in the face some more.

I don't really know why, but I'm always a little surprised when I make my brief, annual forays into the current Japanese wrestling and see Masato Tanaka popping up. Feels like he's been around forever, but he still looks to be in great shape. He's not someone I ever really think of as being in that "grumpy old man" category despite the fact he's been wrestling about as long as, say, Akiyama. I wouldn't say he was showing his age as such here, but I did kind of get a vibe of him being out of his depth (kayfabe terms) against the younger ace (who's pushing 40 himself). When he went to his deathmatch roots and brought out the table, for example, you could probably buy it as a sort of desperation move. Match only went 16 minutes so it was fairly condensed, though the opening matwork section still managed to feel substantive rather than perfunctory. It was also probably my favourite part. Suzuki is a Billy Robinson trainee so you always get the grittiness to his matwork, pulling legs at nasty angles and really leaning on joints. They moved away from that with a rote forearm exchange, but I should probably just get used to that already. Finishing run was short, and while they might've moved on from a few big spots without letting them truly sink in, I'd rather they did that than keep going for another five/six minutes of bomb-throwing overkill.

I think I'd also take Tamura, and Tamura '96-'98/'99 would be one of my answers for this. Tenryu from '89-'93 would probably be my #1, even if the period in between the All Japan exodus and the WAR/New Japan feud was pretty low key. I mean, you still had things like the '91 Yatsu match where they leathered each other, but the SWS and early doors WAR roster was pretty sparse (in comparison to what he was working with in All Japan and then New Japan). His grumpy/grumpier old/older man run from '00-'02 is great as well, though. Starts with the Sasaki match at the Dome and then he goes on a tear after the All Japan return. In '02 he was the meanest old bastard walking and I could watch him be cantankerous all day.

For a seven minute match with a result that was never in question, this was fucking great. Tenryu is pretty much the best ever in this kind of setting and I could watch him wrestle scrubs all day. You know he's never gonna lose (unless it's a G-1 or a tournament of some sort, I guess), but he's as unselfish a top star as you'll see in the ring. Sometimes he might even give some guys more than he should, but more often than not he strikes a perfect balance between letting the opponent look good while reinforcing who the guy at the top really is. Doesn't hurt when the opponent is game as well. Takagi has an awesome shoulder tackle where he lunges at Tenryu like a linebacker, then Tenryu backs him into the ropes and offers up the clean break only for Takagi to slap him across the face. Tenryu fucking kills him. He kicks him in the eye, chops him in the throat, then throws him outside and beats on him with a chair. It's the dynamic you know and love. Tenryu going on a rager and trying to bend a guy in half with a Sharpshooter is something I wish we saw more of. Tenryu going on a rager and kicking the shit out of someone is something we saw plenty of and it never gets old.

I think "the vast majority is edited or short tv matches" is wildly overstating it as well.

I thought the early portion of this was fine enough, cruising along nicely, then Jeff took that insane powerbomb on the steps and things picked up quite a bit. I liked Lashley in control, with the big crossface clubs, standing on Jeff's throat and generally carrying himself like a pretty big deal. I thought Jeff's vocal selling was on point as well, and while I would've liked a couple more minutes at the end the somersault bump that transitioned to the finish was another nasty one. Good match, and I was honestly as impressed with Hardy in this as I was Lashley.

Well fuck my face. I'm already backlogged with potentially awesome stuff from this service, but I might need to push this to the front of the queue.

Man, how fucking good at the pro wrestling was El Satanico? Los Infernales were an awesome unit of thugs and at times you wondered how the tecnicos could possibly make a comeback, but Satanico was king. He had so many great moments, usually with Tarzan Boy, like kicking him in the kneecaps, dragging him all over the place by the hair (looking like he was really trying to rip it from his scalp), and there was this great bit where he kind of condescendingly dodged TB's shots while TB was being firmly held at bay by Guerrero. It was one of those "whoa there, big guy" moments, where he and everyone else knew TB's attempts were futile. The only thing missing was a sly wink to the camera. He also carried himself like a true badass. There were times where he would take a quick breather from beating on someone to soak in the scene, and even though his stablemates continued to go for blood you knew who the most dangerous man in the match really was. It made the moment in the tercera where he actually decided to bail from the altercation with TB feel huge for the tecnicos; TB in particular. They'd managed to weather the storm and now even Satanico, after bullying and beating them all over the place beforehand, was questioning whether a one on one was smart. Satanico getting his comeuppance at the end was pretty fitting for a finish, too. I liked this a ton.

Well this was great. It's the kind of chaotic brawl you'd expect out of Brody if you'd never seen him before and only heard a bunch of old-timers talk about him as an all time level brawler. If this was the only Brody match you'd ever watched, you'd probably believe it to be true. In terms of selling or how much he was willing to give his opponent, he never really did anything that was different from his usual. It's just that the Stomper seemed to realise this and decided to TAKE what he was going to get. He walked through Brody's punches as often as Brody walked through his and it made for a totally wild, uncooperative, hate-filled scrap. We got forehead biting, we got guys being thrown into rows of seats, we got a referee being launched across the ring for trying to involve himself, and of course we got the blood. Brody was swinging chairs like a damn psychopath, sometimes clusters of them at a time, and at one point he even dinged the ref' because why the hell not? There was another bit where he just went a wander with this blood-smeared chair like he wanted to break something - anything - and it was fucking awesome. I was thinking, "where is he even going?" and then I realised it didn't matter because I don't think even HE knew. He was too caught up in the moment. He'd lost himself in his madness. Just a wild, ridiculously fun ten minutes. Based on this I'd say Stomper knew exactly how to get the best out of Brody, but I think it would be unfair to say Brody never brought it. I just wish he brought it like that more often.

I haven't seen this, but I thought their Uncensored match later in the month was crazy fun. I don't remember how good it actually was and it might've been more funny than anything else, but I got a huge kick out of it. Funk came out wearing a frozen chicken (with 'DUSTY' written on it) like it was a boxing glove, then said he'd brought Dustin's brother with him before sending someone in a chicken suit to the ring. Then he punches Dustin in the head with his frozen chicken hand. I think it was a cowbell match and Funk tried to change the stip midway through, then dinged the ref' with the cowbell when he told him no.

This was fairly but-the-numbers, but a by-the-numbers lucha trios is something I can sit through pretty easily and I guess I liked it a bit more than others have. I would've liked to see more of the Shocker/Emilio pairing since I'm assuming they were feuding at the time, but Shocker brought plenty of energy and I'll never not get a kick out of seeing full caveman Emilio punch someone in the mouth. Salvaje looked pretty broken down at points - the slingshot bump was kinda rough - but he has serious asshole charisma so people will always pop for the parts where he's getting knocked around (and at one point he took a nasty flat back bump out on the floor, so you can't really blame him for struggling with the slingshot). Tinieblas was just drilling guys with those Invader #1 style thrusts to the throat and Scorpio Jr. really leaned into one of them like a madman. Things like the Satanico/Tarzan Boy feud and everything Villano III/Atlantis-related rightfully get most of the press, but I'm glad we got a taste of what was going on down the card a bit, even if it was sort of forgettable on the whole.

I liked this a good deal at points, while at others I think I liked it more in theory than in execution. Hase constantly going to the arm, refusing to let Misawa play his own game, to the point where Misawa finally has to use the left arm to throw his elbows to set up that one big right that could KO anyone -- I liked how they built to that payoff. Still, the groundwork in the first ten minutes or so never really grabbed me, though I get that it was necessary and it was all certainly part of the story they were going for. I think criticisms of Misawa's selling are valid, but he's probably built up enough cred to get away with it. There's always a sense of "this'll hurt me, but it'll hurt you more" when he goes to the elbows, and now and then he'll throw in these subtle little touches that remind you he's not quite 100%. I think soup's point about him looking more frustrated than hurt is pretty accurate as well; not that I never got the sense he was in any real danger, just that you knew it was only a matter of time before Hase took his eye off the ball and Misawa would be able to make him pay.

This was basically Tajiri being a nasty little bastard for eight minutes and having fun doing it, so of course I liked it a lot. I tend to agree with Loss on Lynn, but there wasn't anything too cutesy in this and he was mostly working from below anyway. Tajiri mocking him, laughing maniacally at fans, throwing chairs off the guardrail, plastering him with kicks...all of it was great. He was on a tear in 2000 and I'll take as much of it as I can get. Thought the finish was good, too.