What I have watched recently.....

[Guest Tim Cooke]

Been kinda slow watching some stuff in the past couple of weeks but that has picked up in the past day or two.  

 

First, I checked out the 60 minute Nakanishi v Maekawa draw and it was a ton of fun.  Momoe needs more basic moves to do early on so her big suplexes aren't exhausted by the end of the match.  Maekawa has the best kicks that I have seen out of anyone is a while.  Good pace and flow and this one seemed like 30 mins instead of 60.

 

Next, I checked out the AJW Tag League 2001.  Very hit and miss.  The main event between Toyota/Hotta v Nakanishi/Ito was fun because it continued the ultra violent Ito v Hotta feud but was nothing that I would run out to get.  

 

Next, I re-watched the big four matches from the T2P Debut show.  I think that with some character devlopment and some simple storylines, these guys could be that next step in the Junior Revolution.  The last time I saw such as big step taken was from the 4/16/94 Benoit v Sasuke to the 8/4/96 Dragon v Otani.  These guys did all of their lightening fast stuff inside the ring with no flying from anyone except Milano Collection AT.  Everything was done in a logical progression.  For all of the Minoru Tanaka fandom of him bring the mat worker from Heaven, these guys smoked him in terms of innovation and having all the submissions and mat work make sense in the subtext of the match.  I eagerly await the next show that comes out on tape, hopefully with some 6 man tags to see how they work those in that six sided ring.

 

I finished off with some great early 90's AJPW.  First, I watched the 12/7/90 Misawa/Kawada v Jumbo/Taue RWTL match.  Beautiful from every aspect of wrestling.  The match told two on going stories with Kawada v Taue and then Jumbo trying to keep proving that he is better than the punks that are Misawa and Kawada.  The heat and the moves were fantastic.  The Kawada v Jumbo matchup's in these tags and six man's are some of my favorites with the intensity both bring to the table.  It was especially cool to see the fans chant for Kawada and Jumbo look up and give them that "Hey, I am the man, you will cheer for me" and they start chanting for him.  

 

Finally, the 5/24/91 Jumbo v Kobashi match was what finished off my most recent viewing.  Quite the awesome match as only 9:30 of it aired but you knew at the end of the 9 minutes and 30 seconds that the match was an epic thing.  It has been said over and over again but it never hurts to repeat it by saying that Jumbo was quite possibly the best person I have ever seen work with opponents below him and make sure they got elevated while he didn't lose anything.  Makes you wonder what Akiyama would have become like if Jumbo has worked with him.

 

So, what have you all watched recently?

 

Tim

[Guest Jubuki]

I've been watching the '97 Giant Series lately.

 

The Doc/Ace vs. Kawada/Taue title change was a whole Hell of a lot better than I remembered - a ton of little nuances here and there that I dug, and Taue worked a good ending with Ace.  Then they cut the stoic beyond all stoicism interview afterwards that you can only expect from Toshiaki "What the fuck do I care about these questions?" Kawada and Akira "Why talk when I can mumble?" Taue.  Fun fun fun.

 

I damn near stalled out on Misawa/Kobashi (might have something to do with it being my favorite feud to bash), but I found my inspiration for that (although I'll still find a negative way to spin it, haha), so all is well.

 

Dream Rush is upcoming...I think I'm gonna finish off the G1 95, too.  And I watched all my Champion Carnival 2000 TV and alternated between bored/entertained.  Not a terribly good tournament.

[Guest goodhelmet]

I just finished watching Hayabusa-Masato Tanaka from Story of the F3 last night.

 

A couple of days ago I watched some M.Pro Lucha tv from early 2000.

 

Next on the slate of puro goodness is All Japan Giant Series 1997- Misawa-Kobashi. Yes!

[Guest Luke Argyle]

Well... broke out some Toryomon TV blocks from last year because I had not seen and in a while and had an epiphany of sorts.  I think the reason that I like the promotion is the overall feel that I get from it.  When I pop in the tape and hear "Glory" by Hi-Standard, I know I'm in for some fun, but not necessarily the pinacle of juniors wrestling.  There's still a lot of classic (if that phras can even be used for such a young promotion) Toryumon like Magnum vs. Sasuke from '99, but Toryumon to me is mostly a bunch of REALLY charismatic wrestlers recycling the same bits and spots in the most cohesive, entertaining manner possible.  Nothing wrong with that, but it's not groundbreaking.  Hopefully, that's where T2P will shake things up.  

 

I keep throwing in the NJPW PPV from 12/11/01.  Why do I enjoy this even SO much?  I am a shameless Kojima fanatic, this is true, and seeing Tenzan and him win the G-1 is a great moment for me personally, but there is a lot of great stuff on the card.  The young lions match is really cool, as you can see that Inoue and Shibata have a lot of fire for the pro wrestling.  It's funny.  I can actually watch them and see where they are thinking about what to do next instead of it being second nature.  It will come with time.  

 

Watched Kobashi vs. Hansen for the fisrt time and boy fucking howdy does it rock.  I was underwhelmed the first time because the first AJ I ever viewed was stuff from '99, so my perception of All Japan is seriously skewed.  I am attempting to remedy that and this match is the one that'll send me on my way.  Just stiff as shit and dramatic as all get out.  The shreik that the announcer lets out when Kobashi gets waffled with the lariat is classic.  

 

Finally, got to see Liger vs. Ohtani for 2/97.  3/96 is my favorite juniors match and 2/97 will not take that spot.  I love 3/96 too much for the story that's being told and how it unfolded.  That is not to say that the latter match didn't have great storytelling, because it had a shitload.  I love how the first killer shotay was shot in the exact same angle as the finish from '96.  Hell, even I was expecting Liger to win right there because it reminded me of the previous years finish so much.  The match as compared to the pervious year is almost like two matches in one.  It emulates the '96 match well, but then continues on to do some toatlly different things.  I think that I'll grow to love it more in time, but more than the '96 match, I couldn't say.  

 

And that's all I gots.  Peace.

[Guest thefrenchargel]

I just watched a best of Dynamite vs. Tiger Mask comp tape. This stuff NEVER gets old for me. Dynamite nonchalantly just walking away from a Tiger Mask crossbody attempt is one of my sentimental favorite spots. Cracks me up every time.

[Guest MRFTW]

Over the past 2 weeks or so i've seen...

 

Big Japan Deathmatch tournament from June 98. Honma vs Shadow WX kicked ass, Matsunaga vs Shadow Winger was pretty good too and the Matsunaga vs Great Pogo final was probably about as good as it could have possibly been considering it involved Pogo. All the other matches were pretty crappy.

 

The T2P debut show. Would have liked to see more high flying to go along with all the kick ass, inovative mat work. Main could have been better then it was and I didn't much see the point of the 6 sided ring either. Still a great show though.

 

Re-watched Dreamslam 1. Probably overall, top to bottom the best card ever.

 

AJW 8/25/93 "Legacy of Queens". Was pretty disapointed by the 10 woman elimination(too short) but it was made up for by some of the other great matches I either wasn't exspecting much from or didn't really care about like Takako vs Cuty and Kyoko vs Kandori. And you can never go wrong with a Dynamite Kansai vs Aja Kong match. May have liked that one better then the Big Egg match but i'll have to re-watch first.

 

AJW 10/9/93 "Wrestle Marinepiad 5". 8 woman tag was pretty kick ass along with a few other matches, main was pretty weak though. Can't remember too much else.

 

M-pro tv 11/22/00. Pretty much a one match show. If that tag was the best they had to offer I won't be buying any DDT tapes anytime soon. And considering the main involved Taka, Cima, Sumo Fuji, TM4, Magnum Tokyo, The Great Sasuke and some other Mexican Luchadores the match could have been so much better then it turned out to be. I would have prefered a straight 10 man tag to that elimination style war games/royal rumble gimmick match.

 

Osaka Pro tv 06/13/01. A good show when a tag involving Liger and Samurai is only the 3rd best match on the card. I liked the Daioh Qualtt/Gamma vs Black Buffalo/Tsubasa match better and I don't like rating comedy matches but the intergender 6 person tag kicked 8 million kinds of ass.

 

 

Next week(hopefully) i'll be getting

AJW 04/25/92 Wrestle Marinepiad 4

AJW 08/24/94 Commercial Tape

AJW 12/06/93 St Final

AJW 06/03/93 Commercial Tape

Kandori vs Nakano Chain match from LLPW 7/14/94

and

From JWP 3/17/95 the Ozaki vs Dynamite Kansai street fight and Devil/Candy vs Cuty/Hikari matches

[Guest Frank Zappa Mask]

I have just recently finished New Japan's Radical Fights, Vol 1 and 2.  It's 5 hours of clips of New Japan's history, and it's really a trip to see the evolution of wrestling not only on the Japanese scale, but on an international scale, as many of wrestling's great innovations have come from Japan.  Inoki dominates the tape, which has to be expected, but there are still so many notable moments all over the place, with such a great collection of wrestlers involved. (Hulk, Andre, Vader, the Steiners, even Hall and Nash for you non-puro heads)  I also dug the occasional "athletic competitions" that took place, even though the general consensus is that this push towards a shoot-style is what may be killing New Japan.  DAMN YOU INOKI~!

 

If I have one complaint, it's not enough JUNIORS.  Fujinami-Choshu takes on a certain formula after the third or fourth time.  How bout throwing one of the many great junior matches you ignored?  I did start digging Hashimoto espiecally as we got into the 90's.  Muta was Muta, and I always find him entertaining.  Onita's invasion was cool, and I really dug Ogawa at the end, but that's when the tape cuts off.  Anyhoo, essential viewing for any wrestling historian.......

[Guest stretch plum]

"If I have one complaint, it's not enough JUNIORS.  Fujinami-Choshu takes on a certain formula after the third or fourth time."  

 

Actually NJ released a whole seperate series covering the Jr.'s division a couple years ago called History of the IWGP Jr. Crown (or something like that), 10 one hour volumes in the same digest format as the Radical series. Naturally they're edited to the bone as far as matches go but it's a pretty nifty collection as a whole, highlighting two decades of Jr.'s wrestling and the progression of styles throughout the years. From Fujinami to Ohtani.

[Guest Captian Linger]

I haven't been watching a whole lot lately but I did get in my latest Joshi comp but haven't gotten around to a second viewing. My first viewings are usually pretty forced just because it's a bitch to wait for tapes (for me, at least).

 

1. Yokota vs Asuka 8-22-85-Only six freakin' minutes shown as expected but it looked like a fantastic match. The level of moveset was a step ahead of Sayama/DK from before. The heat was unreal...I think that ECW Arena fans would be afraid to be in that 1980's AJW audience;). Anyways, this may or may not have been one of the best matches of the 80's but who really knows? Not enough shown.

 

2. Nagayo vs Matsumoto 8-28-85: This is the less famous one, I guess, and from TV and not commerical tape so that quality isn't that great. I thought this was better than their next match. Again, I can't believe the crowd heat for this. Audience members were horrified when they were cutting Chigusa's hair after the match, some driven to tears.

 

3. Nagayo vs Matsumoto 9-7-86-Uh, I really don't know why this match is so praised. It has A LOT OF BLOOD, even the ref blades. But there isn't as much wrestling going on here as their other hair vs hair match. More stalling and a few minutes longer as well.

 

4. Nakano vs Kong 11-14-90-I dunno, first viewing had me buying into jdw's "overrated clusterfuck" idea but it wasn't horrible.

 

5. Toyota vs Yamada 6-21-92-Note to "pure wrestling" fans, mostly over at the Crazymax forum, this match can't touch 8/92. It seemed more like a solid excellent match that you would expect from these two but hardly anything classic. Yamada's kicks were about the only thing that was "better" in this match than 8/92. It even had just as much sloppy parts as 8/92 that people seem to think are so bad.

 

6. Kudoh vs Toyoda 5-5-96-Best death match ever, I'll leave it at that.

 

7. Shimoda/Mita vs Ito/Watanabe 9-21-97-I haven't seen a lot of Joshi post 1995 but I found myself enjoying this quite a bit. I still can't fathom why it made the DVDVR top 20 for Joshi matches but it was fun.

 

A second viewing could alter my perception drastically. The deuling English/Japanese commentary on Yamada/Toyota was distracting to say the least. When Lex Luger's name was mentioned I was perplexed. Man, this was a bloody tape, every match had severe blading excepting the first match and the Yamada/Toyota workrate affair. Good tape, but I think I'm going to go heavier on the 1992-95 stuff next time.

[Guest Jubuki]

Rage in the Cage is just about the best blowoff to a feud there is - satisfying in so many ways that other 'great' feuds never manage to achieve.  Watanabe, Ito, Maekawa, Hotta...hell, all of AJW, took SO much abuse from them over a 6-month period - concussions for Momoe & Maekawa, serious injuries to Watanabe, the list was enormous.  And then LCO announced they were leaving the promotion -- with the tag titles.  So RitC is Ito & Nabe standing up for themselves and the remnants of AJW (as Yamada, Tamada, Fukawa, Yoshida, & many others had bolted for not getting paid) against this juggernaut of hatred and finally showing the fight they had in them.  Plus, Nabe's selling is just...well...top 10 performances in any match, anywhere.

 

As for Chigusa/Dump - "workrate" hadn't taken over AJW in '86, despite the occasional Crush vs. Jaguar/Devil/Jumping Bomb Angels kind of affair.  Nevertheless, those two were connecting with the crowd as much as 2 women could, considering the audience was full of schoolgirls who idolized Chigusa and feared Dump as the ultimate bully (which she was - the full commercial version of that tape shows it better than a comp could).

[Guest MRFTW]

I guess the rage in the cage match is just one of those ones whear you need to know the backstory first then. On it's own I thought it was great but didn't think it was worthy of top 20 either. Even with the small amount of shows i've got I can think of atleast 15 other matches I liked more then that one.

[Guest CB2M]

5. Toyota vs Yamada 6-21-92-Note to "pure wrestling" fans, mostly over at the Crazymax forum, this match can't touch 8/92. It seemed more like a solid excellent match that you would expect from these two but hardly anything classic. Yamada's kicks were about the only thing that was "better" in this match than 8/92. It even had just as much sloppy parts as 8/92 that people seem to think are so bad.

I thought the work was great, but it wasn't as exciting as the hair match.  The near falls didn't have nearly the heat as August's match.  But Yamada was incredible, she's one of my all-time favorite workers.

[Guest Captian Linger]

"As for Chigusa/Dump - "workrate" hadn't taken over AJW in '86, despite the occasional Crush vs. Jaguar/Devil/Jumping Bomb Angels kind of affair.  Nevertheless, those two were connecting with the crowd as much as 2 women could, considering the audience was full of schoolgirls who idolized Chigusa and feared Dump as the ultimate bully (which she was - the full commercial version of that tape shows it better than a comp could)."

 

This I understood before watching the match. I'd have to be totally def not to catch on (plus I've done a bit of research on the two matches). Incidently, I just rewatched the '86 match and enjoyed it a lot more than the first viewing.

 

The first viewing took place right after a coffee ridden work shift so my eyes were pretty tired when I got home to watch the tape. That usually causes me to enjoy matches less...

 

Regarding 6/92 Toyota/Yamada.

 

"I thought the work was great, but it wasn't as exciting as the hair match.  The near falls didn't have nearly the heat as August's match.  But Yamada was incredible, she's one of my all-time favorite workers."

 

I agree 100%. The near falls weren't nearly as dramatic as their hair match which is what seperates "excellent" and "great" (great being top 20), imo. It just seems silly to me that some preach this match as being some amazing classic when it really has little in it to stand out from Manami Toyota's best matches.