KB8

Yeah, I listened on a bit and you guys mentioned that Virgil was the Kamala replacement. Who replaced Bastion Booger? He was another guy that seemed to be scheduled to show up and never did so. I started watching all the '94 RAWs a few years back and Bastion did guest commentary on one episode where all he did was make bad food puns. I think it was Holly's TV debut that episode and Booger said he should start wearing a helmet because people were sick of him already. Oh, Bastion. How right you were.

"Height of my I.R.S. fandom." I love the idea of Parv running around telling his classmates to ditch the Pogs and put down the Pokemon for ten minutes to watch the taxman win the IC belt. Ludgiv Borga was a total enigma for me as seven year old. He was scheduled to appear so often and he always seemed to be replaced by someone. Wasn't he replaced in the '94 Rumble by Virgil or Bob Holly or something? Rubbish.

Tamura/Yamamoto from '99 is probably the most acclaimed (among this circle of fans, anyway) match to ever happen that I still haven't seen. It's one of those matches that I kind of want to save for a special occasion before watching, which probably sounds dumb, but whatever. Right now I'm looking at getting hold of every RINGS show from of the 90s so I'll probably get to it in about six years. Big fan of that #1 pick. I haven't seen it in about a decade and even then it was the clipped version that was floating about back then, but I love that I went through the top 50 and the closer it got to the end the more hypothetical #1s were falling until I had no idea what match would finish top. I should probably watch the newest version already.

I was hoping this would be fun and I was not disappointed. Young and eager Tamura with a point to prove is the best. Maybe somebody in his life told him he wouldn't amount to much and this is him out to prove that that person was a fucking idiot. Maybe it was Nakano who told him because Tamura is even more hot-headed than normal. Usually he has a chip on his shoulder, but this time he had the whole bag of McCoy's. He refuses to shake Nakano's hand at the start and once again comes out with the double quick matwork, everything carrying a real sense of urgency. Nakano can't hang on the mat like that, but I thought it was pretty cool for the NARRATIVE~ how he just used his size advantage to wear Tamura down. At times it amounted to him rolling on top of Tamura and slowly working for position - which wasn't all that interesting, it must be said - but it worked for him because he started to open up a points lead. It also pissed off Tamura and young, pissed off Tamura is a blast. The more he struggles with Nakano's little medicine ball body the harder he works, and that leads to an awesome spot where he shoots in for a takedown and gets absolutely wiped with a knee to the face. Tamura's KO sell was wonderful, as was Nakano casually walking away like it wasn't even a thing. This of course only extends the points gap - Nakano hasn't dropped a single point yet while Tamura has lost half a dozen - and it makes Tamura even MORE annoyed. He starts shit talking and slapping Nakano and they both throw nasty little pot shots, because Nakano won't take that guff from anyone. At some point Nakano's nose starts bleeding (I mean, of course it does) and Tamura slaps him across the face, so Nakano throws a kind of downward palm thrust like he's trying to mash Tamura's head into the canvas. His flurry of palms strikes that dropped Tamura a second time was another really great spot. This all builds to the finish where Tamura basically shit talks Nakano into throwing one too many high kicks and Tamura catches him with an ankle lock. I liked this a bunch.

I'm shocked he had Hansen/Kobashi in the 60s as well. IIRC it was his MOTY after going through the '93 yearbook the first time (revised thoughts on that are probably on the board somewhere and I've just missed them).

Total RnR formula match, but I love RnR formula and this was a really nifty iteration of it. All of the early shine was good and we got to see Dan Kroffat bump and stooge in ways we never did in All Japan. He still has the cool offence too, like a big giant swing and a weird Doomsday Device thing that was basically just a lariat off the second turnbuckle. Jaggers has some nice bumps off of back body drops and it felt like we got a better handle of how good he was in this than the Youngbloods strap match. He runs distractions and knows how to work a crowd, cuts off Morton, stooges and was generally pretty fun. Morton juicing gave his heat segment a little extra bite as well, because you had Jaggers and Kroffat punching him in the cut and ramming him into the post. I liked this a bunch, but then you could stick pretty much any two wrestlers in there with Morton and Gibson and I'd likely enjoy it.

This was more like the Dutch you want. In the Gran Guera matches he sort of hung back and stayed out the way, but he was obviously a central focus in this. Abby jumps him at the bell and slams him on the table, then the fork comes out and Dutch is cut open a few minutes in. Abby chucks him out the ring and Dutch happens to land beside the guy who's holding Shoo Baby, so of course Dutch gets back in and lets loose with the whip. DQ finish probably isn't surprising (Hugo on commentary suggests it won't be surprising to Abby either, but he's never cared about such things anyway), but I love Chicky passing Abby a coat-hanger and Abby using it to try and strangle Mantell. I was hoping for a short, fun brawl out of these two and that's what I got.

JT is by far the worst of the Americans Takada has brought in. It's difficult to bullshit your way through shoot style because if you can't do it properly then it's glaringly obvious, and it's already likely the hardest style in all of wrestling to work, so he really had no chance. At times Yamazaki looks disinterested because he knows he's saddled with an unenviable task and it's pointless to even try and make this compelling. Once or twice it looked like he might've considered taking liberties and just wasting JT, but then he'd reel back. Southern can't really do anything on the mat and his stand up is basically putting a shoddy guard up. Finish was kind of hokey. Maybe the ref' decided to be merciful.

Well this was tremendous. It's a total "underdog trying to step up to the plate" story and Tamura has the biggest chip on his shoulder the whole way through. Right at the start you see it when he dumps Anjoh a couple times and tells him to bring it. Anjoh will sometimes do something dickheaded and it just annoys Tamura and makes him even more desperate to prove himself at Anjoh's expense. He throws some slaps and you can tell it gets to Anjoh, because he responds by throwing brutal knees to the body in explosive flurries of annoyance at what this kid is doing. When he gets REALLY annoyed he pushes the envelope a bit and drops some super nasty knees across Tamura's head, and that leads to an awesome moment where Tamura repays the favour and Anjoh looks at him almost in disbelief. The nerve of this kid, who does he think he is? Anjoh grabs hold of Tamura's hair to prevent him from putting on a half crab, so Tamura drops the hold and just slaps him across the face. He knows how Anjoh is and he knows the last thing you can do is let him take liberties. It was a great dynamic and it ran through the whole match. Defensively this was a spectacular performance from Tamura. The speed on some of the ground exchanges was astonishing and Tamura would constantly roll out of or reverse situations that looked dangerous. When people talk about defensive wrestlers, at least in a shoot style context, the guy I think of as the bar setter is Fujiwara. I'm not saying Tamura is better, but at this point I think he's right on that same level, albeit in a different sort of way. Defensively Fujiwara was wily. He used all of his smarts along with the stellar ground game. He'd sometimes sucker guys in, and when he looked most vulnerable he'd completely flip the script and submit them, or at least use their fervor to finish the match against them in some way. With Tamura, it's his athleticism that's remarkable. His speed on counters, how he can wriggle free and instantly turn a position where he's almost caught in an armbar into a position that's advantageous. There were plenty examples in this, but the best might've been his escape from a front facelock straight into a go-behind. That probably doesn't seem terribly special just from reading about it, but it was breathtaking in execution and judging by the crowd response I wasn't the only one who was taken aback by it. Towards the end you could see him starting to tire, Anjoh's strikes to the body starting to wear him down more and more. He keeps on coming because he refuses to be denied and the crowd stay firmly behind him, but he was already fighting an uphill battle on the feet and it's tough to keep going on the mat when you've been kicked and kneed in the guts for fifteen minutes. You can have the strongest engine in the game, but that takes its toll. After the match Anjoh hangs around for a little while, because even a shithead like Anjoh can appreciate Tamura's effort. Real recognise real. Tamura had less than ten matches in his career at this point, btw. That's David Robinson averaging 24 and 12 in his rookie season level.

Man, I fucking loved this. I wouldn't really think of shoot style as being the environment most conducive to big spectacles, but UWFi always did things a little differently and this had just the right amount of pro style to make it a heck of a fun spectacle. This is one of the better Albright performances I've seen. He came across as a total monster, just destroying guys with suplexes and clubbing them about the head. Whenever Yamazaki or Anjoh landed a strike of any sort it felt like an accomplishment because Gary was able to either block or catch most of them. Even something like a Yamazaki high kick that would go over Gary's head had people stirring, just because the shot actually got close. The first exchange with Anjoh was awesome because Anjoh is so totally out of his depth with the size difference and he knows it. Albright just walked through Anjoh's kicks, grabbed hold of him and tossed him. There was one bit later where Albright got in close and Anjoh had to resort to dropping to his knees to avoid being suplexed, but Albright just grabbed him anyway and Anjoh had this amazing "oh I am fucked" expression as he got launched with a deadlift German. The Albright/Yamazaki exchanges were great as well; maybe even better than Albright/Anjoh. Yamazaki has a longer reach on his kicks and the first one that truly landed got a huge pop, then later when Yamazaki manages to suplex him the crowd responds with a big Yamazaki chant. Boss isn't great, but all he has to do as Albright's partner is not lose. His kicks were super light and he never had much to offer on the ground, but he was vocal with his selling and took a Yamazaki roundhouse kick square in the face. So fair play to him, I guess. Last stretch had some nice drama with Albright chucking Anjoh around, and there were a couple women in the crowd who looked terrified for him. Anjoh straight dives at Albright and catches him with a knee and the two women start to believe, but then Gary clubs him and grabs him around the waist and the women literally cover their eyes because they know what's coming. Anjoh makes it up to his feet after the first German (which was fucking disgusting) and sort of staggers towards his corner. He doesn't really know where he is, but he's close enough where he could probably tag out. Albright realises and charges him again, going in for the kill, and this time Anjoh doesn't get back up.

Is that the one where Hayes cuts the promo before it talking about his Farrah Fawcett hair? Maybe that just happened to be the promo before this match on Will's Gordy set, which is where I first saw the match. And yeah, if it's the same one, it's great.

Is Brody heel at this point or is throwing chairs at kids a babyface thing in Puerto Rico? I don't like either of these guys, but strangely enough my favourite singles match from both is probably against each other. And hey, I thought this had some good stuff! Dory channels his brother and throws a chair in the ring, so Brody grabs it and smashes it to pieces on the ring post. In an awesome touch, Dory takes a piece of the broken chair, hides it in the trunks and uses it to jab Brody in the head the first chance he gets. He then drags him outside and chucks him into the crowd and starts hitting him with another chair, and I'm not used to Dory getting wild like that. Eventually Brody comes back and fucking wellies Dory in the head with a revenge chair shot...but then it settles down a bit and they work a pretty mediocre brawl. Nobody bled buckets, no riots were nearly started. It was short, though. I actually thought the first half of this was shockingly fun and the second half was passable enough, and it's not like it stuck around forever. I think I feel comfortable saying these two are an okay match-up for each other. Minus that absolute stinker they had in All Japan. We'll forget that one ever happened.

This is one of those matches where Invader, even in the mask, bleeds and sells the blood loss like he is who he is, but you still wish he was mask-less so you get the facial expressions to go with the body language and punch-drunk stumbling around. Muta controls most of this and Invader gets his ass beat, but every time it looks like Muta might escape Invader grabs a leg to prevent it. When you think it's just a matter of time, Invader produces the almighty equaliser and punts Muta in the balls. Muta blades and about two seconds later his face is entirely red. Sick, sick blade job. He also gets crotched up top and that looked fucking nasty as well. Cool finish, too.

For a four minute sprint, this was perfectly fine. Chris Youngblood hit more of his big pump kicks and I'm now officially a fan of Chris Yougblood pump kicks. Pogo was running around hitting spin kicks and I think it's the first Pogo match I've ever seen where he doesn't try and stab someone with a broken chair leg or piece of scrap metal. Crowd really bought into the hectic finish after the ref' bump and I thought they nailed everything well at the end. It could've wound up being messy, but it came off great. No complaints about this at all.

This was really good and I'd put it right alongside the Savage match as Ayala's best on the set so far. He was mostly decent in this, but Super Medico was great. I'm pretty sure I've only ever seen him twice, and both times have been on this set, but he feels like a guy we should know more about. His punch flurries are amazing and the crowd go totally nuts for them. All of his early control was good stuff, then when Ayala takes over he's really fun selling from the bottom, fighting for his hope spots then crashing and burning as Ayala cuts him off. Puerto Rico seems to be a territory that knows how to make the figure four feel like a huge deal. There've been a few of the Colon matches where the build to him finally locking it in has been exceptional, and the build to it in this was great as well. Medico tries and tries to keep Ayala away, but Ayala keeps going back to that leg, dropping elbows, stomping on the ankle, twisting and yanking away. When he finally gets it in Medico just sells the absolute crap out of this and it's honestly some of the best desperation selling I've seen from someone in a hold. I thought for sure he'd give it up, but he made it to the ropes and I even had a little fist pump of my own. We need more Super Medico.

This might be the first time I've seen Bobby Jaggers wrestle. From a distance he looks a bit like a gruffer, late-career Buddy Rose. It's not how I pictured him from his commentary. Kroffat is peroxide blonde here and I don't think I've ever seen peroxide blonde Danny Kroffat before, either. This was short and everybody whipped each other with straps and Chris Youngblood was pump kicking guys in the teeth. I always assumed he was the worst of the Youngbloods, but he has a really nice pump kick. At one point he got thrown to the floor and yanked the strap to drag Kroffat out with him, and holy shit did Kroffat take a crazy bump outside. No hands, unprotected, face first to the concrete.

I liked this a bunch, even if the ending felt a bit abrupt. I really love how early days Muta moves around the ring. Maybe he's always moved like this, but it's been so long since I've watched any later-career Muta that I don't remember. I said it about him in the Invader I match, but how he conducts himself is just flat out cool. He has a real snap to his bumps and even the way he gets in and out of the ring has a sort of menacing elegance to it. He's solid enough on offence as well, but it's seeing how he reacts to things defensively, how he regroups and comes back for another go; that's where I get the most out of him. Invader III has brought lots of nice offence whenever he's shown up on this set and he was really good trading quick holds with Muta early, running the ropes at speed and hitting a great looking Super Astro-style headbutt. He doesn't really bother selling Muta's legwork from the middle of the match, but the crowd are super into the finishing run so I doubt THEY cared. At first I thought the finish might've been a referee flub because it looked like things were just starting to get hot, but either way this was good stuff.

Okay, so Invader v Mutoh (Super Black Ninja) is one of the few matches from Puerto Rico I'd seen before. Not this match specifically, but one of the stadium brawls (I think it was a Texas Death Match). This was more of a slow burner, but it built up to a hot finish. Young Mutoh had such a cool presence. The way he moves around and conducts himself, it has a hint of menace to it, like he's stalking you down. Plus he was super quick with his strikes, his dropkick had massive air, and he'd do things like his spazzed out elbow drop that just looked cool. We've heard plenty about him being lazy and all that, and I'm not really a fan of his, but early Muta could be pretty fun and he had a genuine aura. Invader was probably at his best during this on the back foot, which won't be too surprising because he's Invader and you want to watch Invader selling, but the early matwork was pretty solid as well. I'm looking forward to seeing these guys try to tear each other's throat out soon (I mean, hopefully).

This was way better than I thought it was going to be. I never knew Hugo had been a wrestler earlier in his career. It's really fun to hear him commentating on his own match, and he actually had some pretty good offence, sold well, and the crowd were all the way behind him. I don't know who El Profe is but he worked well in this, too. He hits a nasty double stomp, eats knees like a trooper off a top rope splash, and will bite Hugo's forehead when he needs to. I wouldn't be opposed to seeing more of these guys in the ring at all.

A step down from the last one, but more of the same. This time Muhammad is out and he's replaced by the Iron Sheik, but otherwise the teams are unchanged. Chicky was probably my favourite again. Him and Invader go after each other right away and then spend large parts of the match punting each other in the balls. Even when Chicky ends up handcuffed Invader will still wander over from time to time to low blow him. I'm not sure this is the best setting for Abby. I've loved him on this set, but I think in a match like this, where there's so much going on and it could be easy for a guy to rest on his laurels, he was mostly content to stand by the ropes and chop people in the throat or be punched in the head until his scar tissue opened up. There was plenty of stabbing in this as well and it wasn't even him doing it (it was Sheik, and it was some nasty stabbing). Dutch was pretty low key in both these matches. He threw some killer punches, but it felt like he spent most of the time handcuffed and out the way.

This is Puerto Rico's version of Wargames, except it's crazier than Wargames because it's Puerto Rico. Rudo unit consists of Abby, Chicky Starr, Kareem Muhammad, Hercules Ayala and the Grizzly Goon or something. There's a very good chance I'm wrong about that last one because I didn't recognise the guy, I might've misheard Hugo on commentary, and searching Grizzly Goon is yielding no answers of worth (help me out with this, Boricua!). But they're your rudos. Tecnico unit is Colon, Invader I, Bruiser Brody, TNT and Dutch Mantell, which was an awesome surprise. You fully expect this to be wild and crazy and that's exactly what it was. Chicky was probably my favourite guy in it. He took a bunch of great bumps off of being flung into the cage, he bled like crazy, and when things got a little too heavy he'd try and burst his way out the cage (it had a roof, so he couldn't). Maybe it's because there was so much going on and he wasn't the focus for large stretches, but this felt like a strong Brody showing. He seemed generous enough in exchanges, and there was one point where he just unloaded on Abby with the best punches he's ever thrown while the crowd went bonkers. I loved Colon and Invader's dual comeback at the end as well, Colon with his carved up forehead and Invader with his white mask stained blood red. This was pretty awesome.

This has a cool stip within the stip where the only way to win is by making the opponent submit to the figure four. Ayala was pretty fun again, especially in how he'd react to the barbed wire. It's his first time being in a barbed wire match, and right away you can tell he isn't at all comfortable being there. He backs into the ropes or the corner the way he would in any other match, but these ropes are covered in barbed wire. His reactions to this were pretty amusing, almost in a comedy bumping/stooging sort of way. We got lots of gruesome, nasty close-ups of barbed wire being dug into foreheads in this, but because everything was mic'd so much better we also got to hear the screams. It was pretty gnarly. There was one bit where Colon was using his feet to shove Ayala into the wire and it didn't take long for the cameraman to zoom in on the blood trickling down Ayala's back. I liked the finish a lot as well, with Colon playing Ayala's brass knucks game and locking in the figure four while Ayala futilely grabs the wire/ropes.

I actually watched this and wrote about it before Boricua (the second time) and grizzlyedwin came in and hit us with the awesome backstory. I felt like I had a decent handle of the backstory and all that already, but not to the extent I do after those recent posts. I'll probably end up watching it again with all that in mind, but my original thoughts were: Finally the blowoff. I don't think much went down here that wasn't picked up easily enough from how it was worked and the announcement of the time limit beforehand, but Boricua provided some extra context for us Puerto Rico novices anyway. Basically, Chicky doesn't have to beat Invader before the time limit, he just has to not GET beat. If he survives the 15 minutes, Invader has to retire. Invader has to actually win the match, obviously within the time limit, and if he does Chicky gets a haircut. There's your context. Honestly, I wanted to love this, but I didn't LOVE it love it. It was good and parts of it were awesome, but it didn't quite click all the way like I hoped. Chicky saying screw it to actually engaging in a proper contest and being content to run the clock down ruled. His self-satisfaction whenever he did something resembling an offensive maneuver, pointing to his imaginary watch to signify that time's running out, counting down with each passing minute as we get close to the time limit, constantly trying to scurry away when Invader was on top -- all of it was great. And the bit where he just crawled under the ring to hide was fucking amazing. I like how Invader started this in no real hurry even though he only had 15 minutes, being happy enough to punish Chicky initially, then realising he had to get it together as they were closing in on the expiration of time. Then he ran headfirst into the ring post and that put him in the position of having to fight back before it's too late. As a heavily story-driven match I thought the story they told was really good, but some of the ways they went about telling it fell a wee bit flat. The post-match was tremendous, though. This wasn't just a head-shaving. This was a head-, chest- and even moustache-shaving, and Chicky's tantrum would've made Emilio Charles proud.

Bunch of stuff I love has dropped in that bottom 100. Puts it into perspective how much good stuff there was throughout the decade. Things like Rockers v PoP, Eddy/Jericho v Faces of Fear, Tenryu v Muta, Michaels v Diesel (GFBE), Vader v The Boss, Eddy v Jericho from Fall Brawl, Fiera v Estrada and Vader v Dustin from the Clash are some of my favourite matches ever. I should probably watch Rude v Steamboat from Superbrawl again. I thought it was good, but definitely not outstanding. Maybe I was harsh and compared it to the Beach Blast match. It's been about six years since I watched it, tbf. This list is great, btw.

That is absolutely awesome. "He was a raving terror" is the PERFECT description of Terry in Puerto Rico. Perfect. You can just imagine him doing all of his crazy shit and Dory is following him around the place like "aw for fuck's sake, Terry, not this again!"