RINGS

[Loss]

So I'm going through my DVDs and have a ton of unwatched RINGS stuff from 1991-1997. I was wondering if someone can maybe hook me up with a history or match reviews of some of the stuff or something, because I'm trying to condense my entire collection to just the essentials, and I don't want to not keep something good. The other option is to watch every bit of it, which I may end up having to do, but any recommendations would be nice. I know about the more pimped Volk Han stuff, so no need to mention any of that.

 

The goal would be that I would save anything historically significant, featuring key names or above average as a match.

 

Any help is appreciated.

 

Thanks.

 

(I know about Quebrada, but I usually have polar opposite opinions from Lorefice. I thought about just keeping the stuff he called bad matches, but thought that might be slightly overboard. I will also do some DVDVR searching, so no need to post links to reviews from there or anything. Just curious what's out there.)

[pantherwagner]

Lynch has got a 6 or 8 DVD "history of RINGS" set. You could use that as a guide for major matches, and fill in the blanks with other opinions.

 

I tried to get into RINGS a few months ago, but somehow, in 2007, somebody not tapping out in seconds to a fully applied cross armbreaker looks faker to me than Joe Lider matches.

 

Something that I just recently did is go through PRIDE 1 to 8, leading to the 2000 GP. While we all agree that Meltzer's "PRIDE and pro wrestling in Japan are the same" line is bullshit, the first few PRIDE events are pretty much "booked" like a Japanese wrestling promotion (sometimes literally as there were several works during those days). You can really see the parallels - even though PRIDE eventually evolved into something different.

 

Sakuraba vs. Carlos Newton and Sakuraba vs. Vernon White from PRIDE 3 and 2 (respectively) are better RINGS matches than anything RINGS ever did. You should watch that stuff.

[silverwidow]

Loss, any list of top RINGS matches that don't include Volk Han is going to be very, very thin.

 

Kohsaka vs. Yamamoto, 4/97

Tamura vs. Kohsaka, 6/98

 

These are the only must-sees to my knowledge. The latter match might take a few viewings to fully appreciate, but it's as good as it gets once you get the style.

[ohtani's jacket]

Tamura/Yamamoto, 9/21/98 is a good fight. I'm sure there's others, but I never got around to renting much RINGS from Champion.

 

Shootstyle is my favourite form of Japanese heavyweight pro-wrestling & although RINGS only had a few great workers and a few great matches, it's the pinnacle of that style in Japan. If you want to see a shoot match that's like pro-wrestling you need to see the famous Funaki/Rutten fight from PANCRASE. Not sure how much of a shoot it really is, but it's awesome.

 

Incidently, Loss, Lorefice's ratings are pretty good for RINGS. They suck for UWF because he couldn't understand that Fujiwara was a God and was too high on Funaki and Minoru, but at least he realised that UWF-i sucked for the most part.

[ohtani's jacket]

I forgot Tamura/Frank Shamrock, 4/23/99, which was supposedly a shoot.

 

EDIT: Oh, and Kohsaka/Shamrock, 9/26/97... One of the best matches in company history. Awesome.