The One-Offs of New Japan World

[William Bologna]

A New Japan World subscription opens up a world of content. Want to see more of today's top stars? They have 1,407 Hiroshi Tanahashi matches. Are you interested in the decades-long history of the King of Sport? Well over six hundred Fujinami vs. Choshu matches.

But I like the weird stuff. You got a classic Kenta Kobashi Triple Crown match? Nah, I'd rather watch Johnny Smith take on the Headhunters.

So my favorite thing to do when I have an NJPW World subscription is go all the way to the bottom of the tags list and try to figure out what the hell is going on. That's what I'll be doing in this thread. We have 292 wrestlers with one listing (each) on the service. I won't get to all of them. Some of them aren't actually there. But there's still lots to check out: Dudes from GLEAT. Misspellings. Jesse Ventura. Women. The Great Antonio. Let's get started with . .  .

Dino Bravo vs. Abdullah the Butcher November 5, 1981

I remember Dino from my Hulkamania-plagued childhood, but this is the first time I've watched one of his matches on purpose.

He comes out with Dick Murdoch, while Abdullah is accompanied by Bad News Allen, looking quite hipsterish in a goofy cardigan and t-shirt that says, "Pro Wrestling." He's also got a busted finger, and I gather that's why we spend ten minutes sorting things out before the match starts. It appears that this was supposed to be a tag match, but with Allen down to nine fingers we're going to make it a single.

This is pretty contentious - everyone except Abdullah is yapping, and WWF president Hisashi Shinma has to come out to calm everyone down. I can follow what's going on because, in one of the great linguistic coincidences, "singles match" in Japanese is "single matchy." 

While they argue about this, the Butcher is standing perfectly still and sweating like a horse in church. He also looks like he's already bleeding. You'd think we were five minutes in.

If you had asked me which of these four guys would still be alive today, I would not have picked the obese one with a seeping wound on his head who breaks a sweat from standing still. Shinma's also still alive, by the way. Surprised me.

We finally get started, and in two minutes there's blood everywhere. Dino hits Abdullah a couple times, we go outside, and then we roll back in and bleed everywhere. Bad News throws a pound and a half of powder in Dino's face and commences to kicking him, triggering the DQ. Then Abdullah stabs Dino in the head with a spike and then brawls with everyone. And we're done! All that preamble for a four minute match.

It wasn't a good four minutes, either. I went and watched Murdoch take on Abdullah from a couple years later, and it was so much better. The Butcher really worked in that one. Here he was just awful. He didn't come off like a wildman; he came off pained and tired.

I didn't get much from Dino Bravo. His strikes weren't any good, and that's about all he did. He bled a lot, but maybe not enough to make it back onto NJPW World.

[William Bologna]

CIMA & Gamma Vs Ryuichi Kawakami & Shimatani Check GLEAT Ver. 3 - 1st Anniversary - July 1, 2022

It's the first anniversary of GLEAT! All I know about GLEAT is El Lindaman, whom I dig, but he's not in this.

This is a twofer – the only showing for both GAMMA and Check Shimitani. I don't know anything about these guys. CIMA is the only one I've heard of, and I wouldn't know if I walked by him on the street.

Kawakami leads the "Bulk Orchestra" and his partner "Check." These facts lead to me believe that all the good names in wrestling have been used. Is it too soon to recycle "Tarzan" or "Team No Respect"?

The Orchestra arrives in force, and they clearly have neither a height requirement nor a rule against performance-enhancing drugs.

We get a lot of rope-running and talking. It's not doing a lot for me, but it's fun to see CIMA out there looking like Dan Spivey. These dudes really are very small.

As things heat up, the Bulk Orchestra comes in to cheat. They put a guy in each corner, and then they all run into CIMA at the same time. It's incredibly dumb, but I like that it's in character – that's exactly the kind of thing a “bulk orchestra” would do.

It soon becomes cartoonish. GAMMA hits everyone with a kendo stick, but Kawakami has these giant gauntlets that he uses to block it. Eventually CIMA wins.

I might not be missing much by not keeping up with GLEAT.

[Mr JMML]

This is such an interesting concept, I really want to know how it develops over time.

[William Bologna]

Jesse Ventura Vs. Kengo Kimura January 6, 1983

Superstar Billy Graham recently passed away, and there's been a lot talk about the immense size of his shadow. Many of wrestling's top stars would not have looked, talked, and acted the way they did if it weren't for Graham.

Case in point: Jesse Ventura flaunted a bodybuilder physique, arrogant attitude, and hippie flower pants too close to the Superstar's prime for it to have been an homage. He apparently made a joke of this, claiming that Graham stole the look from him.

He completes the ensemble tonight with a beret and a Plato's Retreat shirt. Plato's Retreat was a sex club in New York, which I'm told had a very nice buffet. Was Ventura there for no strings attached sex with strangers or did he really like eating out of chafing dishes? I guess it's none of my business.

The bulk of this match is about knucklelocks and heeling. Kimura is there to play the personality-less black trunks straight shooter, while Ventura whines. They do the bit where there's a clean break and Kimura pats him on the chest, and Ventura complains to the ref like Kengo hit him. He lies about using a closed fist. The work ain't much - these are some slow-motion knucklelocks, and the crowd is being "respectful," if we want to be euphemistic - but I'm a big fan of the chicanery. 

Which continues as Jesse punches Kimura in the ribs a couple times and lies about it. When Kengo does it to him, Ventura takes a huge theatrical bump and throws a tantrum. "He hit me with a fist!"

We all perk up as we think we're getting a high spot, but false alarm it's just a bearhug. Finally Ventura gets Kimura into a sideways torture rack. There's cheering as Kengo fights, but he finally gives up.

Ventura was exactly who everyone says he is in this match. Not much on the working side, but lots of personality. Tatsumi Fujinami was always helped by facing a cheating dirtbag, and we saw a similar dynamic here. It was a little off seeing Ventura play the coward and then win with a very direct strongman move. I didn't hate it, but it was only eight minutes.

[William Bologna]

Mar 21, 1991 Tokyo・Tokyo Dome 3RD MATCH Steroids Warriors Showdown Scott Norton Vs. Ekuraiza

I'm leaving the title just as it is on NJPW World, because there's a lot going on there.

Steroids Warriors Showdown! In the last match, Jesse Ventura reminded us of Superstar Billy Graham by stealing every single thing about his persona. Here we are reminded of Graham's surprising frankness when it came to the tools of the trade - in his case, lots and lots of steroids. 

Ekuraiza is Equalizer, who is best known to me as Dave “Evad” Sullivan. Pre-NWO Hogan in WCW is some of the direst shit ever, and this is a great example. See, evil Kevin Sullivan had a good-hearted brother who was the world's leading Hulkamaniac. He was also a dimwit who got his own first name backwards. Did anyone consider the implications of this? Hey WCW fans! Don't you love Hulk Hogan? Don't you want to be like this guy?

That's in the future, though, and for now he's imitating my two least-favorite wrestlers, with his half-assed Ultimate Warrior facepaint and Bruiser Brody-style carpet samples on his boots.

Norton gets a big pop and a very exciting entrance (ring announcer: "Ova za top Scotto Curush Norton!"), looking like Jonah Hill took so many steroids that he's about to pop. Did Scott start dying his hair later? He's all gingery here.

It's a different kind of match. They do as many big guy spots as they can in three minutes. The blow a few, but there's no time to dwell on it because we're on to the next one. Really, it's the best match Scott Norton and Evad Sullivan could possibly have. They yell at each other a lot, and Norton shows some impressive athleticism.

That's not all Norton shows us. The finish comes when Norton hits the worst powerslam you've ever seen, pulls Equalizer's trunks, and reveals his scrotum as the ref counts to three. The dude's sack was just out there in the Tokyo Dome getting some air.

I hope Evad got a big sack of money to make up for the taint of defeat. Given that this is only outing on NJPW World, it looks like he took his balls and went home. At least fans were going nuts.

I thought that "Steroids Warriors" was going to be funniest thing about this match, with the fearsome Equalizer turning out to be Evad goddamn Sullivan a close second. But they swerved me. They swerved me with Evad's balls.

[William Bologna]

Bull Nakano vs. Akira Hokuto Apr 29, 1995, North Korea Pyongyang May Day Stadium

I'm filling in some gaps here. As famous as it is, I haven't seen any of the matches from Antonio Inoki's infamous trip to North Korea. Time to cross that one off.

The other gap is joshi. I have seen very little. I know a lot of the names, but I never got around to it. I mean, there are only so many hours in the day, and there are still Wolf Hawfield matches I haven't seen.

In my defense, I was there for Manami Toyota's U.S. debut. I was all, “Oh shit it's Black Widow from WCW vs. nWo: World Tour!” I think she heard me.

So this should be a promising one to get me started. I know who they both are – Hokuto's married to Kensuke, and I remember Nakano from my Alundra Blayze-plagued childhood – and they're both supposed to be good, right? Maybe that's not right. Like I said, I know the names but not much else. Was that like saying, “All Japan was led by such luminaries as Mitsuharu Misawa and Jun Izumida”?

First we get like five minutes where they introduce all the competitors. There's 2 Cold! I fast forward to the introductions, which are in Japanese. There is some light, polite applause. It really is a big damn crowd.

Bull largely relies on the hair-based offense that I remember her using in WWF. She gets a big reaction with a couple hair throws and a yell. She does seem to be a good choice for an unfamiliar audience. She's got a big look.

I'm focused on the crowd reactions here, both because it's interesting to hear what people who don't know anything about wrestling respond to, and because I enjoyed Scott Norton's story about everyone being dead silent until Flair worked his magic on them. "Scotty boy, I've been doing this a long time." Something like that.

Well, they're not silent for this. We get roars for Bull's spots, and real cheers when Hokuto mounts her comeback. I didn't think much of her spin kicks - the first one missed by a mile - but they're working on the crowd.

We go back and forth for a while, with Bull cheating to a greater or lesser degree (she pulls out some nunchucks in full view of the ref, but maybe the Pyongyang Athletic Commission doesn't allow DQs) and Hokuto making comebacks. Missed kick aside, Akira is impressive. She gives Bull a really sweet German to get back for the 'chucks, and her cross-body to the outside is the best dive I've seen all day. By which I mean, I just watched Dominion. It was a good show, but not one of those dudes managed to land on the guy he was trying to jump on. Not Hokuto, though - she bullseyed Nakano, who did a very professional job catching her.

Our finish comes when Bull tries a somersault senton off the top. Hokuto gets out of the way and does a sort of poison rana rollup into a pinning predicament that's complex enough that I don't feel like trying to describe it. The crowd is seriously buzzing when NJPW World shuts off the sound, so it's safe to say that these two won over the crowd.

I enjoyed this a lot. I've watched some interesting or even entertaining stuff for this project, but this was the first good one.

[Ma Stump Puller]

2 hours ago, William Bologna said:

Maybe that's not right. Like I said, I know the names but not much else. Was that like saying, “All Japan was led by such luminaries as Mitsuharu Misawa and Jun Izumida”?

 

Seems correct to me 

 

 

 

[William Bologna]

57 minutes ago, Ma Stump Puller said:

Seems correct to me 

 

 

 

Has someone been watching battle royals?

[Ma Stump Puller]

1 hour ago, William Bologna said:

Has someone been watching battle royals?

Him and Kimala are tag team goals to be fair

 

[William Bologna]

Super Strong Machine vs. Pedro Morales May 24, 1985

I actually watched another match on this card for the Fujinami thing. He and Kengo Kimura beat Dick Murdoch and Adrian Adonis, and it was dope. This, on the other hand . . .

Pedro and Machine roll around. They sit in holds. About five minutes in, the camera goes real wide because watching people wander down aisles is more interesting that anything that happens in the ring. It is at this point that commentary begins, which makes for an odd viewing experience. Maybe the guy was in the bathroom. He picked the right time.

After nine minutes of absolutely nothing happening, my hopes are rekindled as they start running the ropes a little bit. But it's the 80s, so this is just a setup for another goddamn double count-out. And of all the DCORs I've seen, this is the absolutely the laziest, most obvious, most perfunctory one I've seen. I would rather have watched them sit in holds for another ten minutes.

I guess the point of all this is to do an angle afterwards. KY Wakamatsu, who dresses like an idiot and manages sundry strong machines, comes out furious, kicking SSM and yelling into the mic.

I'm mad. I just watched Dominion, which was real good, and then I had a blast in North Korea with Bull and Mrs. Kensuke. I was in the mood to watch some wrestling! Never have my expectations been failed so badly. I hadn't heard much about Morales, but at least he had novelty, and I really like Super Strong Machine. I didn't know he was capable of something this bad.

[William Bologna]

Antonio Inoki vs. Tony Rocco Feb 2, 1979

Tony Rocco (or, as NJPW World has it, Tony Loco) is . . . a wrestler. There's not much out there about him. He wrested in California. Sometimes he called himself Don Corleone. In this match, he looks very much like he's from 1979; he could be a Star Wars extra.

And he's up against Inoki; I don't think he even has a Samoa Joe chance a' winnin'.

Things stay sporty until Antonio throws a kick. Rocco gets so mad! He threatens to punch the ref, and you can see his eyes bugging in full seethe all the across the ring and from 1979.

Rocco is fun to watch move. He's pretty explosive, and he has this furious way of running the ropes. Like, he's taking out his frustrations on them. I've never been more glad not to be a rope. He's got a great, playing-to-the-cheap-seats angry face, and he's bouncing all over the place for Inoki.

So he keeps it interesting enough until we hit a finishing sequence - some dropkicks, Inoki getting crotched, backslide, backdrop suplex, pin.

Not bad! I watched the whole thing and didn't get annoyed with Inoki, so it definitely could have been worse.

Whatever happened to Tony Rocco? Well two years ago he did 3,000 situps in Santa Monica. That's what happened.

[William Bologna]

Akebono & Yutaka Yoshie vs. Hiro Saito & B.S. Machine Jan 4, 2006

Hey, it's Akebono! Akebono is an enormous and enormously successful former sumo wrestler. He attained the sport's highest rank (Yokozuna, named of course after the former WWF champion) and was on ESPN all the time fighting Takanohana. After retirement, he tried his hand at pro wrestling and won the Triple Crown a couple times. I did a shallow dive into Chad's work a while ago, and it was better than I'd figured it would be. He's got size and presence, and he's great against someone who can tee off on him. But Akebono's not why we're here. He actually has three entries on New Japan World.

Teaming with the big man is Yutaka Yoshie, famous for wearing pink and being a big fat guy, although he looks like Check Shimitani next to Akebono.

Facing them we have Hiro Saito, who isn't related to Masa Saito even though he has the same name and looks just like him, and the reason we're here: B.S. Machine.

You will be either disappointed or relieved to hear that “B.S.” stands for Black Strong. I was disappointed when I found out that B.S. is . . . (wait for it) . . . Junji Hirata. Again. I had no idea this thread would mostly be about Junji Hirata, but he tricked us into watching another one by changing his name slightly.

Naturally, Akebono is the center of attention. He starts and shows us that sumo technique doesn't really translate to this sport as he sumo slaps the bad guys repeatedly. The crowd enjoys it more than I do, but there are cultural issues.

It takes chicanery to hurt Akebono - trips, double teams, etc. - but Saito and Machine are in Team 2000 or whatever, so they're not afraid to cheat.

It's obvious that they're killing time when Yoshie is in. Nothing awful, but the definition of by the numbers. Finally we can start paying attention again once the big guy comes back in. They try to double suplex him, but he double suplexes them! They spent a great deal of time setting up the big double squish, which does look pretty devastating when a guy that size does it.

It appeared, however, to take Akebono out of the running for a bit. He is as exhausted as anyone has ever been, to the point that Yoshie has to kick out of a pin that I think Akebono was supposed to break up. He recovers after a bit and sets up Yoshie's win.

One final (I hope) note about Hirata: If our sources are correct, he was 49 years old here. I had no idea! I didn't believe it was him at first. Sure, he's got the mask, but he didn't look like he was 49, and he moved like he always did. He stayed a regular for years after this, too. Did Junji Hirata secretly have a Tenryu-esque late career? Maybe that's a bad example. Tenryu may have been the best wrestler in the world at 50, but he looked 50. Super Strong Machine was never the best, but at 50 he was the exact same person he had been years 25 earlier. Maybe he really was a robot.

[William Bologna]

Gedo vs. Lord Gideon Grey Oct 3, 2015

Gideon Grey is no stranger to New Japan World, seemingly coming out six times a night during the Junior Tag League to introduce United Empire teams. But I guess this is his only match. He has the home field (pitch?) advantage, as this comes to us from Reading, England.

His opponent, "Gedo," is famous for almost killing Chris Jericho at Halloween Havoc and embarrassing Giant Baba at his country club by using his silly pro wrestling name. He's probably done some other stuff too.

Grey comes to the ring looking like Mick Jones dressed as a leprechaun. He is accompanied by a guy in outlandish foreign garb and tells the crowd to shut up. Repeatedly. Needs to work on his patter.

Gedo's in good shape, but he doesn't have much to do. He's the blue eye, so he's mainly a base for Grey to cheat while the colour commentator does Heenan shtick and pretends not to see it.

The chicanery is too much for our virtuous hero (Gedo? They couldn't have found someone else to be the virtuous hero?), and Grey puts him in the "House of Lords" to secure the submission.

I'm going to do a bad job of explaining why this match bugged me. Grey comes out and says he's better than you and you boo him because that's what you do. The bad guy announcer lies because that's what Bobby Heenan did. No one means it. No one's really even pretending to mean it. It's too many levels of abstraction, and they're all staggering around in the ruins of pro wrestling.

[William Bologna]

Antonio Inoki & Umanosuke Ueda Vs. Andre The Giant & General KY Wakamatsu May 1, 1986

I didn't plan this, but once again we have an often-seen non-wrestler getting into the action himself. Today it's KY Wakamatsu, usually seen with a grab-bag of gimmicks managing Strong Machines.

Long preface to this match, as Andre, KY, and some other guy argue with the referee about what I do not know. There is a coin flip, which settles whatever it is they're fighting about. The crowd pops for Wakamatsu revealing that his wrestling attire matches Andre's. It is pretty funny.

The match is strange and not very good. No one knows their roles. You would expect that Wakamatsu would get man-handled, with Andre being the only thing keeping them in the game, but that's not what happens. Bizarrely, Inoki goes close to 50/50 with KY. He gets bodyslammed, irish whipped, heart-slapped - I've seen him be less giving with Stan Hansen.

Very poor offense from the heels. When Ueda is in, they take turns biting his forehead until he bleeds. Inoki tags in and gets bitten in the forehead until he bleeds. Ueda's finally had enough and grabs a spike . . . which he doesn't do anything with. Andre takes it away and doesn't do anything with it. Everything is a bit off tonight.

The finish: Andre breaks up a pin. On his way out, Inoki giris him in the enzui, so he spills onto the apron and gets his hand caught in the ropes. Wakamatsu's enzui suffers a similar fate and Inoki wins.

Which was kind of neat, but really it should have followed Andre interfering constantly to save his hopeless, non-wrestler partner. That would have made sense and been a satisfying conclusion.

But it didn't work, because they didn't treat Wakamatsu like a non-combatant, and Andre didn't do all that much interfering. I get it - he's not super mobile, but then build the match around something else.

I was in the mood for some mayhem, but this did not deliver that and didn't make any sense at all.

[DGinnetty]

KY Wakamatsu was a wrestler for IWE from 1973 - 1980.  He would wrestle for Stampede occasionally 1982-1984, right before they grabbed him to be manager for the Machines for New Japan.  That would explain why he didn't get steamrolled in this match.  I don't think I ever saw him in good match in the IWE, FWIW.

Dan Ginnetty

[KawadaSmile]

On 6/2/2023 at 5:52 PM, William Bologna said:

I hope Evad got a big sack of money to make up for the taint of defeat. Given that this is only outing on NJPW World, it looks like he took his balls and went home. At least fans were going nuts.

This is poetry.

[William Bologna]

Black Cat Vs. Brutus Beefcake Jan 4, 1994

Black Cat (not his real name) was a Mexican guy with a Japanese father who was the foreign talent liaison for New Japan. I think Jericho talked about him quite a bit in his book.

Today's one-off is Brutus Beefcake. Brutus is, of course, the Wolf Hawkfield of wrestling: Not any good and working with gimmicks so bad that you think the next one can't possibly be worse but then it is. This is the start of a big year for him: Here in January he's flaunting his ripped pants in front of 60,000 plus at Battle Field In Tokyo Dome. Come December he'll be headlining Starrcade (cf. the post on Steroids Warriors Showdown Scott Norton Vs. Ekuraiza regarding the awfulness of the early Hogan era in WCW).

I'm trying to work out where Brutus is in his career (but not working real hard, because it's Brutus Beefcake who gives a shit). He's got Hogan's colors and manager - there's more Jimmy Hart than you'd think on New Japan World - but neither he nor Hogan would start in WCW for some time. I had assumed that he was here as part of the talent exchange, like when Kensuke came over to get a title for a little bit and High Voltage or whoever would do some NJPW tours. But no - the King of Sport decided to seek out otherwise unemployed Brutus Beefcake for their big dome show. Hogan's here too, so really it probably wasn't their idea, brother.

It's two very different matches depending on who's doing what. With Black Cat on offense, it's perfectly acceptable pro wrestling. But when Beefcake takes over, it takes him all of three seconds to run out of ideas, and things never do get better. His moveset is ghastly, his transitions are so awkward I'm cringing just watching them, and after everything he does you can see him thinking real hard about what he should do next.

That said, you know what? He's having fun. He's evincing a certain joie de catch, and it's contagious. Mr. Cat seems to be enjoying things. Jimmy Hart's always in a good mood. The crowd is settling in a for a stellar evening, as the Hulkster will take on Fujinami later, and Tenryu will gloriously put Inoki's bitch ass down for the count (turns out I've seen a lot of this card). So by the time he takes out his opponent with an anachronistic high knee (later to be his finish as *ahem* the Booty Man), we've forgiven him his trespasses.

[William Bologna]

Antonio Inoki vs. The Monster Man Aug 2, 1977

Legitimacy in a fake sport is a funny thing. Modern wrestling cares less than it ever did, but it clearly used to mean something. Antonio Inoki was faced with a problem: Giant Baba and All Japan had the coveted NWA membership, which provided means to establish a wrestler as extremely tough and cool. If you can push the NWA champion to the limit and leave him lucky to have held on to his title, that makes you look good. Take him to a time limit draw - even better. And if you plop down the money to rent yourself the belt for a week until Harley Race goes back to the States? Well, no one's tougher and cooler than the World Champion.

So what does Inoki do to keep up? You can buy yourself a phony baloney world title from Buffalo, but that's not convincing anyone. Well, what if we paid real fighters to come over and let Inoki beat them? Maybe Baba can beat the best wrestler, but Inoki can beat the best anyone! I guess it worked, except when Antonio got too big for his britches and tried to buy a win off Muhammed Ali.

So tonight we have "Monster Man" Everett Eddy, a forgotten full-contact karate fighter. Here's a kinda interesting article from Professional Karate magazine. Here he is getting absolutely starched in Las Vegas. And here's a trailer for one of my favorite films, Rudy Ray Moore's Petey Wheatstraw, the Devil's Son-in-Law, in which Eddy is credited as doing stunts. He might be in that trailer - there are a lot of guys with afros doing kung fu, so the odds are good.

I was dreading this, and I'm against the whole idea, but they started winning me over with the presentation. They put in the effort to make this feel different from a regular ol' wrestling match. We've got corner men with buckets, a ring girl (who doesn't get in the ring), judges at ringside, the whole bit.

And then it turns out that Everett Eddy is a pretty damn good pro wrestler. I wonder about the preparation for these things - did they get in the ring and practice? Eddy gets tripped by Inoki and put into an armbar. He takes it beautifully and goes right for the ropes. Inoki double arm suplexes him, and it looks no more awkward than a trained professional doing it.

Inoki is the weak link. I have two main issues:

1. He cheats! He's constantly cheap-shotting Eddy, and I don't get it. Maybe Monster Man did something nasty that I missed and Inoki's getting him back, but I don't know. He's supposed to be the hero, right? It's the kind of thing Jesse Ventura would call Hogan out for. I'm not cheering for this guy. He's a bad sport.
2. He doesn't sell anything. We get what should a dramatic sequence: Inoki pastes Eddy after a clean break, and Everett is justly angry. He retreats to his corner, complains a bit, and then launches a flying kick that catches that cheating bastard right in his face. Inoki goes down, the ref runs over to count . . . and gets to two before Inoki springs right up fresh as a daisy. He didn't even change his expression. The pro wrestler in this match is failing utterly at the fundamentals of pro wrestling.

Anyway, in round five (we even have rounds!) Inoki shoves Eddy, hits a very low late 70s powerbomb, and throws in a leg drop. Eddy is done! Rolling around, clutching his shoulder - the guy's a natural, and I wish he'd wrestled for 20 years. He's a better worker on defense than offense. Good seller, but his offense is probably hampered by having to be careful not to KO Inoki.

This is billed on NJPW World as "Asia Champion Series & World Martial Arts world finals" AND "King of Mixed Martial Arts finals," so it's a big win for Antonio. He is officially the King of Mixed Martial Arts.

Like I said, I was dreading this. This series of Inoki vs. real fighters almost convinced me not to undertake this project, but this is in the top half of the stuff I've watched so far.

Also, I'm dead serious about this and let's all hope I don't put together a Greatest Wrestler Ever ballot: "Monster Man" Everett Eddy is a better wrestler than Antonio Inoki.

[Al]

So this project grabbed my interest a bit, NJPW World is reasonably cheap for Americans and I love unorthodox wrestling. So I ended up watching this match last week. My takeaway from the match was that it was kind of...good? For much the reasons you described. Eddy was an interesting figure. I looked into him and found he passed in 2021. A Rodney Eddy, son of Everett Eddy, was murdered in 2015 in Erie. I assume that's the Eddy of karate fame.

[William Bologna]

That's too bad. I saw Everett's obit, but I didn't know about his kid.

But yeah, shockingly good match!

[William Bologna]

The Shadow & American Dragon vs. Tatsutoshi Goto & Wataru Inoue Dec 9, 2003

Regarding our dramatis personae:

• I once referred to Goto as the Yoshi-Hashi of New Japan. That's probably unfair to someone, but I don't know whom. He's 47 at this point and looks every day of it.
• American Dragon you probably know.
• I missed Inoue. He had a relatively short career owing to injuries, and he was out of the picture by the time I started paying attention.

Our one-off this time is the Shadow. This is not Lamont Cranston, who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men. There are about 20 guys on Cagematch with the name, but it turns out that this particular Shadow is better known as Viktor from the Ascension. Which doesn't mean a lot to me, but maybe there's something here for all you 2010s NXT fans. At this point in his career, he hadn't yet started cosplaying as a Road Warrior and was working Western Canadian indies with Don Callis.

Danielson's only a few years in, but he's definitely a cut above. You know what I like? Goto and Vik do some matwork, and they're obviously killing time. When Dragon kills time with matwork, he looks like he's trying to maim the other guy. This is a pretend fight, and by God he's pretending to fight.

Viktor gets some big power spots, while Danielson fills the time in a more understated fashion. Eventually Dragon and Inoue work a long sequence with some near falls, and it's all very nifty. Danielson does a Northern Lights suplex after which he keeps the hold and hooks a leg, which I've never seen before. I was especially impressed with a bit where he was behind Inoue holding his opponent's arms around his throat. He manipulated Inoue from a sitting position to a standing one, and then got him down to his knees so he could lean back and choke Inoue real hard. It was pretty complicated sequence, and Danielson took his time, but it all looked perfectly natural and uncooperative. Danielson has a subtler art than the rest.

They get the crowd hyped enough that there's actually a pop for a hot tag to Tatsutoshi Goto – that's how you know things are working. But things soon go south for the home team. While the little guys fight on the outside in front of a young Ryusuke Taguchi, The Shadow puts the veteran away with a spin kick (awful) and a top rope body press (good).

Inoue was mostly on defense, and I didn't get a great sense of him. He seemed fine! Viktor T. Shadow is not someone I would have predicted to make it onto national television. Dragon, with whose work I'm not as familiar as I should be, looked just as good as everyone says he is.

[William Bologna]

Miyagi Michiko, Hosokawa Yukari & Takahashi Nanae Vs DASH CHISAKO, Iwata Mika & MANAMI July 1, 2022

Aw jeez it's more GLEAT. We're setting a record with this one: Six competitors in the match, and six one-offs. I don't think we'll be besting that.

Dash Chisako is the hardcore queen. I know this because she has a folding chair that says “Chisako Hardcore Queen” on it. She and her teammates come to us from Sendai Girls. The other team has two people listed as GLEAT, and Miyagi is from “Japan.”

Manami starts the match by shrieking and doing what looks like an Arrested Development Bluth chicken dance around the ring until someone hits her in the head. Takahashi screams back at her, and they both scream for a while. Takahashi then tags in Miyagi, who screams a lot. One minute in, and I'm already at my tolerance limit for screams and dropkicks.

The other GLEAT match I watched had a lot of yelling too. Maybe it's the house style, or maybe I'm just noticing it more because this crowd is extremely “respectful.” Like so respectful there might not be anyone there. Maybe they were all just waiting for El Lindaman.

A lot of the wrestling itself is (in addition to the limitless dropkicks) extremely rehearsed-looking triple teams over and over. I liked this kind of thing back when Kaientai would do it to Gran Hamada – has the novelty worn off, or were they just better at it?

Once they pair off and start doing actual pro wrestling, things get better and the GLEATamaniacs in the audience even wake up a bit.

Then it goes all chaotic again until Hosokawa and Iwata work a long sequence all by themselves. Too long. The other four are all outside fighting basically forever. At one point we cut to Takahashi diving onto everyone, and there was really no reason for her to do that. It had no bearing on the outcome. But anyway, Hosokawa wins and it's too bad because Iwata was the only one I liked. She kicked hard and kept the vocalizations to a minimum.

Gedo wanted me to pay extra to watch this on NJPW World back when it aired. I'm glad I didn't - GLEAT is 0 or 2 so far.

[William Bologna]

Tiger Mask Vs. Masked Hurricane Oct 8, 1981

Masked Hurricane, of course, is Shane "The Bomb" Helms of Three Count fame. 

OK, that might not be true, but in a case like this it's hard to find accurate information. Cagematch tells us that Masked Hurricane:

1. Also wrestled as "Bobby Lee."
2. Lost his Bobby Lee mask to El Santo in 1978.
3. Wrestled 50 matches in his entire career.
4. Died in 2020.
5. Wrestled his last match in 2022.

I have my doubts about a few of these.

So much for Cagematch. Here's an obituary on Lucha World that answers some of my questions. The Bobby Lee gimmick was a Bruce Lee thing. NJPW asked him to put the Lee mask back on to lose it to Tiger Mask. Here he is talking to El Hijo del Santo for 40 minutes.

Anyway, this is a pretty nifty little match. They only go seven minutes and a do a lot of handshake shtick (Hurricane opens with a heel handshake but midway through hits him with the sportsmanship handshake), but they pack a lot in regardless.

It does lack flow. Basically, they arm drag and grapple for a while and then every so often Tiger Mask gets up and sends his opponent into the ropes and then they both go a hundred miles an hour for a little bit. Then it's back to the mat. It doesn't build.

Tiger Mask's work isn't excessively Tiger Masky, if that makes any sense. He keeps that stuff to a minimum, but he throws so many dropkicks that it's like he's making fun of that GLEAT match. Eventually he hits a tilt-a-whirl backbreaker on Hurricane, and goddamn that poor bastard got his back tilt-a-whirl broken. One of those spots where you're glad you're only watching. This secures TM the win and the mask of the Hurricane. It's really Bobby Lee's mask and by rights should be on a shelf in El Santo's study, but this is before Youtube so no one in Japan knew about that.

This match has at least two other reviews right here on this very website: Here's one and here's another. We all three kinda liked it.

[William Bologna]

Sting vs. Tony Palmore Jan 4, 1995

There's an art in putting people in a position to succeed. Paul Heyman is the classic example of this in wrestling, as he convinced fans that his parade of indie stumblebums would have been big fish in any pond. You can find examples in other fields - Earl Weaver springs to mind in baseball - and then you can also find people who don't give a damn.

Antonio Inoki wanted to relive his glory days by doing the martial arts thing again, so on this night we have the BVD Cup Martial Arts Tournament, which is named after underpants. He brought in a couple of legit martial artists: decrepit kickboxer Tony Palmore and UFC 1 jobber to the stars Gerard Gordeau. To round out the four-man field, and to lead Palmore to something acceptable in front of a huge Tokyo Dome crowd, he called upon . . . Sting.

I like Sting. He's had some great matches, and he seems like a prince of a guy. But he's way down the list of people I'd expect to succeed in carrying an untrained kickboxer to a good match. And succeed he didn't, to the point that this match has become infamous. Meltzer gave it the full negative five, and his readers named it worst match of the year. There are degrees of abstraction in pro wrestling - some people's work looks more like a fight than others'. Say you have Minoru Suzuki at one end and the Young Bucks at the other. You want someone on the Suzuki side for a job like this, and Sting's sitting way over there with the Bucks.

It is pretty bad. Meltzer and company weren't wrong. There are two good things:

1. A couple of Palmore's kicks are pretty great. He does this axe kick where he falls down on top of Sting after he hits it. Pretty cool.
2. Four minutes and twenty-nine seconds.

Palmore could have kicked the ass of anyone on this show except Gordeau, but he didn't look like it, and in this milieu that's what matters. He's pretty small, kind of tubby, and dressed in a schlub-like manner. He is very, very bad at pulling his punches, so it's too bad that most of match is him punching.

Sting is out of his element and not good at hiding it. He awkwardly blocks punches while waiting to do a wrestling move. He tosses Tony a couple times and gets in the scorpion for the mercy killing.

What are you going to do? Palmore is no Everett Eddy (the announcer mentions Monster Man at one point - his spirit lives on!), and as much it hurts to admit it, Sting is no Inoki.

[William Bologna]

Harlem Bravado vs. Great-O-Khan Feb 2, 2019

What's the deal with the Bravado Brothers? When I started paying attention, they'd pop up all over the place, but they never really went anywhere. They did some ROH stuff, they made it into Total Nonstop Deletion, and then nothing. I bet there's a story there.

Eventually one Bravado Brother retired. Harlem stuck with it, lost to Great-O-Khan in Nashville, and wound up in NXT. I had no idea! Probably because I don't watch NXT. He's "Andre Chase" now.

I could swear that back when Bill DeMott showed up in WCW as "Hugh Morrus," I saw at least one person mad that he changed his name. Why couldn't he use his real name, Crash the Terminator? As if the guy's name was Crashington Theodore Terminator. I think of that whenever I see someone's dumbass NXT name.

Good ol' Tomoyuki Oka is on his excursion, and he got a weird gimmick. I thought he was a great young lion. Everyone was focused on that giant bodybuilder (may he rest in peace), but Oka was a really good worker. And the same thing I liked about him then I liked about him here: He's deliberate. He takes his time before and after moves so their impact can sink in.

The gimmick itself I like but don't get. Maybe I'm missing something, but maybe I'm not supposed to get it. He's in, like, Manchu garb, but he's got a question mark over his face and walks like a zombie. Also he cheats like hell and sits on people.

It's been divisive since his return, but I'm all for it. There's a stylistic monotony at the top of New Japan cards, and I hope this crazy Mongol bastard makes it up there because he doesn't wrestle like anyone else. The dude was never going to be another Tanahashi - just look at him! - but he's a solid worker, and the gimmick ensures he's not boring.

These two have a solid match, which reaches its end when Khan starts just cheating like hell. He pulls the ref in front of him to block a Bravado, then he kicks him (a Bravado) right in the dick and throws a big punch. Which punch is a perfect example of what I like about him. He uses big body language to show us that he was cheating with that punch, and then he brags about it. He then drapes Harlem across his back and stomps a few times, hits that face claw choke slam thing and wins.

This was fun. I liked it. Yay!