Revisiting 90s Joshi #40

Akira Hokuto v Suzuka Minami (AJW, 4/29/91)

Stylistically I feel like I should've enjoyed this more than I did. It's not that I actively DIDN'T enjoy it, I just wasn't really engaged and even when they were doing things I'd usually be into I was sort of drifting in and out. The early parts were built around grappling and it was some of the more rugged grappling you'll see from this period of AJW, or even joshi in general. They slowed the pace down and kept it grounded, rarely taking it back to the feet so they could run the ropes or trade dropkicks and snapmares. I didn't find it all that compelling, but if it had gone the more back-and-forth route then I'd have found it even less compelling so...there's some valuable information for you all to do with as you wish. Minami has a great tilt-a-whirl backbreaker if you would like some more valuable information. Eventually Minami goes after Hokuto's leg and they started to win me over, even if some of what she did looked a little goofy. The part where she laid Hokuto's leg out flat and climbed the turnbuckles to hit a splash on it was a neat enough idea, but the setup was weird so Hokuto had to lie there and watch it happen rather than just, like, move out the way. Then again pro wrestling is stupid as fuck so maybe it's a hollow complaint. I liked how Hokuto would slow things all the way down to a crawl just to sell the damage, at one point hobbling around on the floor as the ref' put the count on, not getting back in the ring until that split second before 20. When she fought back and mounted some proper offence she kept drawing attention to the leg, like when she'd hit some suplexes but wouldn't be able to hold the bridge attempts. The selling was just right; understated enough that you bought her thinking the next time she tried it she'd pull it off, not going overboard as if she'd been shot in the calf leaving you questioning the wisdom of returning to that well. Then again pro wrestling is stupid as fuck so maybe that would've been another hollow complaint. Really liked the finish, which strangely reminded me of the finish to Warrior/Savage from that year's Wrestlemania. Maybe it was the decisiveness of it, the way it was emphatic while still sort of catching me by surprise. Like Warrior hitting the repeated shoulder tackles, Hokuto hit three missile dropkicks and a cannonball senton, all from different corners of the ring. Like Savage after those tackles, Minami was pretty much done. Hokuto put the exclamation point on it with the head drop while Warrior never needed to, but even still there was a brief moment of "wait, they're not getting back up here, are they?" And they do not get back up. Maybe if Hokuto had pinned Minami with one foot on the chest and walked away with a sleeveless tie dye jacket that had both of their faces on it this would've also been eleven stars. But then if my granny had wheels she would've been a bike. Alas. 

Revisiting 90s Joshi #39

Bat Yoshinaga & Suzuki Minami v Rumi Kazama & Yukari Osawa (LLPW, 5/11/93)

This was the Bat Yoshinaga experience. I legitimately don't know if I've seen another match with her in it. I mean I probably have, but I don't remember any specifically and if she was running around acting like this on the regular then that feels like something I'd remember. She was a bit Hotta-ish here, maybe because of the occasion - AJW v LLPW - or maybe because she just kicks people in the face as a rule. Either way it worked! She was absolutely blitzing Kazama and Osawa with kicks and I've honest to god never seen a person as stocky as her throw a high kick with this much speed. It was rapid and also about took Kazama's jaw off so it had the sizzle AND the steak. When the LLPW girls would try and hit her she'd just stare them down before cutting them in half. There was one point where she had Kazama in a half crab, and as Osawa was kicking her in the chest and back and head to break it Bat would simply look at her stone-faced until Osawa was removed from the ring. That led to an incredible moment later, where Osawa had Minami in a half crab while glaring across the ring at Bat and Bat waltzed in and fucking erased her with a roundhouse to the face. The half crab was actually used really well throughout this. Both teams went to it pretty often in the body of the match, but it never felt time-killy like those holds sometimes will in joshi. There was some clear one-upmanship with it and the best part is that every time someone applied it they made it look as ugly as possible, all side on with the recipient's hip being cranked at uncomfortable angles, wrenching back on the knee, the lower back bent to oblivion, just the complete opposite of your garden variety half crab. As time goes on Bat starts to feel a little more vulnerable, but before she loses an exchange emphatically she still has time to counter a pin attempt with an iron claw, which was quite frankly amazing. Some of the exchanges towards the end were a wee bit haphazard, a few spotty transitions here and there, then Bat reels me back in again by throwing brutal wheel kicks right to the ear and temple. If this is her career performance then she has a real jewel in her crown. 

Revisiting 90s Joshi #38

Shinobu Kandori & Mizuki Endo v Yasha Kurenai & Noriyo Tateno (LLPW, 5/11/93)

I think this is the earliest match I've seen of the Kandori/Endo team. In fact I don't even know if they were a regular tag team, but they teamed up a few years later when Hotta and Maekawa rocked into town. Endo is even less established here than she was in '97 and in '97 all she did was get the shit kicked out of her. I thought this was going to be one of those wild 90s LLPW melees as they all just brawl at the start and Tateno tried a pescado on Kandori that missed badly. It was a ridiculous thing to try in all honesty, a sign of desperation that was threaded through everything her and Kurenai did, particularly when Kandori was involved. I expected a murder to occur as Kandori picked Tateno up and launched her into a stack of chairs. Then she got on the mic and Kurenai immediately jumped her from behind with a sick elbow. The rest of the match was mostly Kurenai and Tateno isolating Endo, then any time Kandori was in - or close to getting it - they'd just jump her and claw at her face. They did not want Kandori in a fair fight under any circumstances, two women who knew they were in an unwinnable situation if Kandori could get rolling. Kandori does clean house eventually like you knew she would, but in the end Endo is basically hopeless and succumbs to her own pitifulness. Or rather a double chokeslam or something. 

Whiskey & Wrestling 1000!

One bastard thousand! Who'd have thought it? Not bloody me, I'll tell ye. I watched a few matches, a couple I'd never seen before but had always been meaning to. The pro wrestling is good. Witness.

Jim Breaks v Adrian Street (Joint Promotions, 2/12/72)

What an Adrian Street performance. This is the first and only real peak Street I've seen, all of the other Adrian Street matches I've watched have been from much later in his career, and even if he's always fun in them they all felt pretty late-career greatest hits tour. But this was something else entirely and maybe the best exotico performance I've ever seen. The way he'd flip a switch from prancing around trying to rile up Breaks to ripping at his face like a vicious maniac was incredible. The early headlocks were airtight and then he'd escape holds and smash Breaks in the nose with a forearm, fish hook him into a cravat, bodily fling himself at Breaks to grab a bodyscissors, just relentless. By the end of the match his immaculate hair looked like a bird's nest and he was practically seething at even the sight of Breaks. Breaks had no issue acting the prick either so it made for an awesome heel v heel dynamic. Cheapshots all over the place, nasty limb wrenching, shit-talking between falls, everyone in attendance lapping it up. Really the way they escalated things from start to finish was done about as well as I've ever seen in a match. You could just tell from how they moved and circled each other that they'd literally be at each other's throat before long and by the time Breaks started working for that wrist lock you bought him wanting to snap the thing. I've never really seen that Marty Scurll fella who I know does the finger-breaking sound effects so Breaks doing it here didn't even come off as silly, and Street sold it all like his wrist was being mangled anyway. I haven't watched nearly enough 70s Euro footage in general but this is probably best WoS-style match I've seen. Give us all of the Adrian Street. 

Bob Backlund v Ken Patera (Texas Death Match) (WWF, 5/19/80)

This'll always have a special place in my black and decrepit heart. President Bobby Backlund himself will probably always have a special place in my heart for that matter. Backlund was a revelation to me way back in the simple and innocent times of like 2006. The Smarkschoice best WWE match ever poll was the first big message board poll/project I really participated in, and through that process I watched a bunch of peak WWF Champion Bob Backlund. It sort of blew me away and behind Flair, it was probably Backlund who was my biggest gateway to all of the 80s territory wrestling I wound up hunting down, and am still hunting down a decade and a half later. My very first post on this here stupidity of a blog was a Bob Backlund match. A few years later I took part in another greatest WWE match ever poll (this time on another forum, as I am a glutton for punishment) and I had this as the 9th best match in the history of the World Wrestling Federation/Entertainment. Many years have passed since then, many matches have been watched, many tastes have changed. Backlund isn't really someone I'd call a favourite anymore and I'm not so sure I'd think this is still a top 10 WWE match ever, but I am happy to report that it held up well and I thought it was great. In 2010 I might've thought Backlund was the driving force, but in 2022, nine hundred and ninety fucking nine blog posts later, I thought Ken Patera was the star of the show. As far as Texas Death Matches go it wasn't much of a wild brawl. It was more of a straight wrestling contest that took some dark turns, and Patera was great at being the one who steered things there, at first because why wouldn't he? but later because his desperation called for it. He was full of confidence in the beginning, one of the only men in New York who could claim to be stronger than Bobby Backlund. Bob would often control large parts of his matches and at times he felt even more indestructible than Hogan, but here he felt very destructible and Patera went about business like he knew it. Structurally it was much more about Patera in control, with Bob's comebacks being built around big paybacks. It worked great because basically every single one of those paybacks ruled. Backlund's piledriver looked like it compressed Patera's spine, his big atomic drop would've sent Patera into the fourth row if he hadn't grabbed the rope as he flew over it, the posting and barricade-ramming on the floor to draw some sweet plasma, every moment like that was awesome. By the end Patera had to resort to a low blow and even in a match where no holds are barred that still feels dirty. When he brought in the chair his head had gone completely, so I suppose it's only fitting that that was his undoing in the end. And say what you like about Bob being a goof with silly facial expressions and ropey selling, but that pop at the end is as loud and sustained as anything you'll hear for Bruno or Hogan or Austin. The guy was over as a bastard for a minute there. 

Atsushi Onita & Tarzan Goto v Masa Kurisu & Dragon Master (Texas Street Fight) (FMW, 4/1/90)

I once saw this described as FMW meets Tupelo concession stand brawl, and if that doesn't sound like perfection to you then I'm not sure why you're even reading this. And as far as 10-minute prison riots go you can't really get much better. This is the second Kurisu street fight I've watched this month and it warms by heart that he's kitted out in the exact same flannel shirt and cowboy boots for both. Onita grabs him in a rear waistlock and Kurisu drops to his backside and I'm thinking he's actually going to try and counter it with an armbar. But no, he just yanked off his cowboy boot and smashed Onita in the face with it. Dragon Master was a fucking psychopath in this, winging chairs with abandon, smashing folk in the ankle, the back, the hip, the head, using the flat of the chair, the edge of it, everything with a real Murakami-ish recklessness. I assumed the part where Onita was trying to crawl into the crowd and Dragon Master was throwing chairs at him led to several lawsuits from audience members who went home with chipped teeth or busted shins. Goto was lying face down on the floor at one point and this lunatic with a head like a 5-year-old's egg painting was just obliterating him with chair shots. Truly the greatest Dragon Master performance of them all. Goto is dressed like someone on work experience at a construction site and it's just about impossible not to love that grizzly little demon. Onita is bandaged up everywhere like a patchwork quilt and his big putting his body on the line moment came when he used his body as a shield as - you guessed it - Dragon Master was trying to do a murder on Goto with a chair. Kurisu taking not one but two powerbombs on his neck like that is sort of harrowing and this was fourteen stars. 

Bret Hart v Stone Cold Steve Austin (WWF Wrestlemania 13, 3/23/97)

I'm not really sure if there's anything left to say about this. 25 years is a long time and there haven't been many wrestling matches with more words written about them since they happened than this one, so I won't go on forever. The work itself was great. The heat, the way they built to the big moments, the paybacks and everything else. Even the early crowd brawling was decent. It's easy to say now when we know what Austin would become, but this really does feel like the moment where goes from "this guy has something special about him" to "holy shit this guy could go nuclear." That said, he wasn't quite there yet. He felt like next man up, but Bret still felt like The Man. Whether you think he WAS The Man, or if it was Michaels or whoever the hell, it doesn't really matter - what matters is that Bret worked this like there was no question that it was him, the LeBron to Austin's Giannis (or KD or whoever the hell you think). In some ways it was maybe the last true underdog babyface performance Austin had, even if he never technically started the match as a fully-fledged babyface. After he went supernova it never really felt like he was a true underdog. Didn't matter if he was in there with Undertaker and Kane, or Foley with McMahon and Patterson and Briscoe doing everything they could to screw him over, he was Stone Cold and had godlike momentum that couldn't be be halted. Bret was still above him in the pecking order at this point and he carried himself like someone who wasn't about to relinquish his spot. You could get all poetic and pretentious about symbolism and the story and the way they told it, and to be honest it's one of those matches that warrants it. Bret is sick to death of Austin and needs to be rid of him. Austin is a madman obsessed with making Bret's life a misery. You could say it was a matter of respect but I'm not sure it was, at least not for Austin. I don't think Austin respected anything and I don't think he cared about being respected, not by Bret, not by anyone. He wanted to win because Bret said he couldn't. Even bleeding buckets, locked in a hold nobody escaped from, that obdurance kept him going until he physically couldn't. In the end maybe never earned Bret's respect, but he earned the people's whether he wanted it or not. Maybe he went on and had himself a career after that. 

El Hijo del Santo v Blue Panther (Monterrey, 4/9/00)

In a year that had the iconic Villano III v Atlantis feud, this to me is still the best wrestling to come out of Mexico in the year 2000. There are a few types of wrestling match about which I'll often say "this might be my favourite kind of wrestling." There's your real top-drawer shoot style, a bit of RINGS, UWF, PWFG, or the more hybrid-style Battlarts. There's your nuclear interpromotional wrestling, the WAR v New Japans and New Japan v UWFs of the world. Sort of along the same lines there's your big multi-man tags, often with that interpromotional twist as nowhere does a big multi-man match better than they do it in Japan. There's your timeless southern style tags, the sort of thing I can throw on after not having watched any wrestling in months and instantly remember why I'm still obsessed with this nonsense. There's your high-end lucha brawling, often in the form of an apuestas match that ends with someone bald or maskless. And then there's this type of lucha, the lucha title match loaded with that lucha matwork that you'll either think is too cooperative and showy or something that makes you go, "you know what, this might be my favourite kind of wrestling!" I don't know which of those styles is my absolute favourite, but I love them all like my own children and Santo v Panther is about as good as you'll get with lucha matwork. The first two falls here are roughly eight minutes in total, yet they don't feel rushed or stunted even with the traditionally short second fall lasting all of about 90 seconds. Everything is slick but never at the expense of the struggle. The reversals are fought over, the little details making everything pop, like when Panther shifts his body on the mat to reverse a key lock into a hammerlock. Panther also worked this like he had something to prove, every time he wrenched on a hold, every whip on a takeover, like he was using every pound of his slight weight advantage to its fullest. The tercera caida propels this into the stratosphere, which is really what you want in a deciding fall after two falls of Santo/Panther-level grappling. Panther picking up where he left off after the segunda by wrenching at Santo's arm built some real drama, and there were a couple points where people absolutely bit on Santo submitting because of it. The fight over the Gory Special, the setup to Santo's tope, the tope itself, all of it ruled. Even the finish was about as clean as you'll get for Monterrey. It came off great too, with the ref' getting physical with Santo to break the camel clutch only for Panther to use the ropes to seal the deal. A bit of a double slap in the face for the son of El Santo. An outstanding match and one of the best of the decade. 

So there we go. A thousand posts. What have I done with my life, you ask? Well I'll leave that up to you. 

Here's to a thousand more. 

Vader v Dustin, Mortal Kombat at the beach...WCW - where the big boys play!

Vader v Dustin Rhodes (WCW Clash of the Champions 29, 11/16/94)

Sometimes wrestling is an easy game. You know, coming from someone who has never stepped foot inside a wrestling ring. But in theory, the principles behind it, all of that, it isn't particularly complicated. You set up payoffs, you pay them off, the audience goes wild. Keep it simple, stupid. Vader is a bully the size of a bin lorry. Dustin is a country boy trying to step out of the shadow of his legendary father. You sympathise with the latter - I speak from experience as my own father is legendary within the human resources sphere at Panasonic and once travelled to Japan for a week or something, though I have about as much experience with human resources as I do stepping in a wrestling ring. I digress - and you wish for the former to receive the comeuppance he thoroughly deserves. A bully getting his rear end handed to him is about as simple and satisfying a narrative as you'll get in any medium. And they set that up and pay it off all within like 90 seconds, and it was just about the best payoff to 90 seconds of setup that you'll ever see. Vader keeps shoving Dustin into the corner and walloping him with those big fists, backing away shouting "you don't want it, boy!" while Dustin curls up in the turnbuckles. Like all bullies Vader thinks the kid won't smack him back, and as his confidence grows so too does his cruelty. He enjoys hurting people and making them feel weak. And then Dustin decides no I will NOT be having this tonight, sprints out the corner with a double-leg takedown and slaps the holy dogshit out of the bully. He even rips Vader's mask off, slaps him with it and throws it away, then clotheslines him over the top and pummels him some more on the floor. It's legit one of the greatest babyface spots ever and the crowd reaction is biblical. Perfectly set up, perfectly paid off. Vader's selling was incredible during this, just the way he looked so overwhelmed, really leaning into being the bully who bit off way the fuck more than they could chew, reconciling with the fact he's in a fight with someone and not just beating up someone who won't fight back. He even slips out the ring for a breather and tells the ref' to keep Dustin back, which must've been one of the first and only times you've ever seen Vader do that. Dustin was amazing as well. It's kind of ridiculous that he's actually slightly taller than Vader (though certainly not heavier), but he never FEELS it and that adds to how impressive his bursts of aggression are, how much it feels like he's overcoming insane odds. The bit where he catches Vader in the corner with a powerslam was incredible, then he tries the bulldog and gets yeeted clean over the top to the floor. Every hope spot and cut-off, every comeback, basically every second of this ruled. About as great a 12-minute match as you'll ever get. 

Glacier & The Cat v Wrath & Mortis (WCW Bash at the Beach, 7/13/97)

This might be the greatest match ever in which three quarters of the participants are faux martial artists and two of them can barely run the ropes. All four guys have at least one moment where they do a hokey kung fu pose that they definitely thought made them look like a Bruce Lee movie badass, or like a real-life version of the video game badass their character was based upon. It's the best match of every participant's decorated career, which is possibly something only your very best 90s All Japan encounters can say they replicated. Misawa, Kobashi and the lads truly are in elite company with Kanyon, the Sub-Zero knockoff and Ernest Miller before he wore slippers. I don't have a clue who laid this out but it was right on par with the best Pat Patterson director's cuts; a practically seamless flow of set piece kick routines and highspots. You could almost see the wheels turning at a few points with them moving into position for things, but it's hard to ding them too bad when the stuff they wound up getting into position FOR was awesome. Even as a self-professed Adam Bomb stan I'd never have guessed our man Wrath had a performance like this in him. I'd never seen him pump kick someone in the face when he was in the WWF but he surely pump kicked two someones in the face here, then he hit a somersault senton off the apron and basked deservedly in the moment. He and Mortis had a few absolute corkers of double-teams during the Glacier heat segment, including a huge powerbomb/neckbreaker combo and an AMAZING reverse Boston crab/legdrop thing that looked brutal. And speaking of brutal, the transition into the Glacier beatdown was immaculate. First comes the pump kick-senton combo from Wrath, who then props Glacier up against the ring post by holding a chair against his face so Mortis can obliterate him with a superkick. This thing was outrageous and I bet Glacier still gets migraines to this day. Glacier and the Cat threw some of the best kicks of their career, even the ones that landed to the chest looking nasty. Then the ones that landed higher about took someone's jaw off. The chain-wrapped roundhouse kick is pretty close to the perfect foreign object finish. An absurdly fun 10 minutes and one of my favourite PPV openers ever. 

An Uncontrollable Child, Given to Fantasy. A Leaded Lobotomy Left Tenryu Wild

Genichiro Tenryu & Stan Hansen v Giant Baba & Rusher Kimura (All Japan, 11/29/89) - EPIC

Fucking hell is this an amazing bit of pro wrestling. The last time I watched it was over a decade ago, back on the DVDVR All Japan set. I had it as the 7th best All Japan match of the 80s then and honestly, that feels about 5 spots too low. Long story short, they worked one of my favourite match types in all of wrestling. That match type being the one that has you going from "these guys have no shot at actually winning this thing, do they?" at the beginning to "wait a second here, do they ACTUALLY have a shot at winning this thing?!" An awesome riff on that match type is one featuring a broken down semi- or fully-retired wrestler. Lawler/Miz from 2011 and Flair/Edge from 2006 are obvious WWE examples, where by the end of the match the audience is drawn in completely and they have you believing the old fella might just pull it out the bag. And this is the best version of that match ever, with two guys at their absolute peaks as wrecking ball bastards against two guys who look like they struggle to even exist, where general movements inside a wrestling ring look taxing beyond reason, where that crowd is just living and dying on every single thing those old guys do. 

I thought everyone in this was legit incredible. Every performance, start to finish. If Baba only had one good night left in him then he was going down emptying the clip and this might be the best example of his chops working on a level that very few strikes in history ever have. I don't care if they look a bit ropey, a thousand wrestlers today throw chops that sound like a shotgun blast - and probably hurt like one too - but none of them elicit the crowd reaction of Baba palming Tenryu in the head here. The Tenryu/Baba stuff works even better within the context of Tenryu's 1989. They matched up a few times throughout that year in six-mans and regular tags, and Tenryu showed nothing towards Baba but disrespect at best and contempt at worst. He didn't care for Baba's legacy and he showed it any chance he could, yet Baba would almost never bite, would never stoop to Tenryu's level no matter how far he was pushed. The tope at the beginning here is one of the best "you fucking WILL acknowledge me" moments ever, paying off about a year's worth of build. Obviously Baba's selling on the floor and then on the apron was amazing, rolling around like he's taken a gut shot from a cannon, milking every second of being incapacitated, selling that tope as he paces up and down the apron waiting for the tag. You knew the place would erupt when he got that tag, IF he got that tag, but Rusher got to take centre stage for a while first. For a guy at this point who can really only headbutt folk and eat chops you can't ask for much more. There were times where he was too broken down to actually move out the way of something, so instead he just braced himself as much as possible, grimaced and took whatever shot was thrown at him, sometimes defiant, sometimes too beaten to know where the shot had even come from. I love how the headbutts worked for a while until Hansen and Tenryu tried to take that head and just break it open like a coconut. The table shots looked brutal. The initial one even SOUNDED disgusting, then Tenryu came over while Rusher was sprawled on the floor and started ramming the table into his face. The beating Tenryu and Hansen laid on him mostly consisted of kicking and punching him in his cut open forehead and it would be hard to make a punch-kick heat segment on a 50-year old man any more compelling than this. They swarmed him, cut him off emphatically, wound up smeared in blood and none of it was their own, and after a while you knew all Rusher was trying to do was survive on the off chance Baba could halfway recover. There was an unreal bit in the middle of the beatdown where he blocked a Tenryu chop, grabbed him by the hair to throw another one of those headbutts that served him so well early, but this time Tenryu blocked it and walloped him with an overhand to the neck. It was a little thing but it was an amazing touch, one that reinforced how absolutely fucked the old man was. 

Then Tenryu tries to lariat him in the corner and Rusher just lowers his head and Tenryu runs face-first into it like a fucking maniac. Which was the perfect setup to the hot tag, but also highlighted a broader point of Tenryu being absolutely world class at eating strikes in this match. He made every headbutt, chop and big boot look like death, largely because he had no compunction about leaning ALL the way into them. There were four moments where he could've lost teeth because he was determined not to telegraph that he was about to be hit, so when Baba brought the foot up to counter the lariat Tenryu was taking that thing square in the face at fifty miles an hour (and the subsequent bump off it was indescribable). Every time Baba caught him with a surprise shot it actually felt like a surprise. Tenryu never slowed down before running into it, never changed the setup to whatever he was theoretically intending to do before Baba struck him, so those moments were some of the most immersive in the entire match. Like the beatdown on Rusher, Tenryu and Hansen working Baba's ribs was probably more compelling than it had any right to be. Partly it was down to Baba's selling but more than that it was because Tenryu and Hansen went full crowbar and tried to punt him up and down the place. The bit where they were taking turns dropping elbows on his sternum was almost disturbing. Baba stumbles into his own corner at several points after managing to survive onslaughts only to find his partner still sidelined, so the longer he needs to go it alone the less you believe he has a chance. 

Then Rusher goes down in a blaze of glory. In fact you can't even call it that, because blaze of glory makes it sound heroic, like he jumped on the proverbial grenade or took someone down with him, when in reality he did neither and had no say in the matter. The moment he trips Hansen from the floor makes you think he might've just bought Baba enough time, especially considering Baba had just eaten a double powerbomb (which was a great little piece of booking as it meant Baba didn't need to kick out of a death move immediately). When Rusher manages to drag himself back onto the apron you wonder if the crazy fuck might actually get back in the match. Hansen beheading him with the lariat before he's even upright was such an emphatic cut-off. You want your heroes to succeed, to pull it out even in the bleakest of situations, but you know what? Sometimes what you want and what the world gives you are at odds and you could practically feel the lariat rip the heart out that crowd. Baba ducking the next lariat and reversing the powerbomb was biblical, but in the end there was no chance. Even still, the struggle on Tenryu's face as he hoisted the big man up pretty well told the story. 

What a match. Selling, timing, NARRATIVE~, offence, heat, workrate, hope spots, cut-offs, whatever the fuck else -- it ticked all the boxes. One of the best of the decade.

Complete & Accurate Tenryu

Tenryu Can't Hang Around the Same Old Town too Long. There's Freedom on the highway, He's Gonna Find it His Way

Genichiro Tenryu & Stan Hansen v Terry Gordy & Bill Irwin (All Japan, 11/19/89) - GREAT

Just hosses bein' hosses, boys! This was all about the redneck fury, Wild Bill roaring into town to reignite a war with his old Texas rival Stan Hansen. I mean, I assume they were old rivals. They tried to whip each other in the face with a bullwhip before the bell even rang so one must conclude there's some bad blood there. Did Irwin play football at West Texas State? Was there an altercation on the field between a young rookie Bill and a senior Stan, one that tore a storm across campus? Or maybe that building was only big enough for one cowboy on the night and they decided to settle it like only pro wrestling cowboys can. Either way Irwin didn't wilt and for the first couple minutes they went at it like one of them wasn't for walking out in the end. Gordy and Tenryu even stand aside like "I'll just not bother getting involved in whatever's going on there." It culminated with Irwin hitting a huge pump kick and the crowd responding like he'd been a fixture for years. I really liked the dynamic of the Gordy/Irwin team. I'm guessing they were starting to elevate Gordy as his own man at this point, a year after the '88 Tag League final where he was still Hansen's second in command. It meant he was often having to interject after Irwin got himself overwhelmed, once or twice because the latter thought it would be wise to try and have a go at Hansen and Tenryu at the same bastard time. In the parts where Gordy matched up one-on-one with Hansen he looked great. There was an awesome bit early on where he came in hot, whipped Hansen into the corner, then when Hansen put his foot up to block a running clothesline Gordy stopped dead and followed up successfully a second later. All of his partner saves involved booting someone in the ear and so we can add him to the list of folks I wish we got to see have a nice run in WAR. Finish is an absolute corker. Gordy is having to scramble to keep Irwin from being smothered again and he manages to stop Tenryu from hitting the powerbomb. Irwin sits on Tenryu's chest for the cover, but then Hansen comes roaring into view and fucking obliterates him with the lariat, which Tenryu just about manages to turn into a cradle before Gordy can make the save. 

Genichiro Tenryu v George Takano (SWS, 10/19/90) - EPIC

This was like the best version of your awesome New Japan Tokyo Dome main event, only worked in SWS and not in the Tokyo Dome. It was 13 minutes, built around some killer strikes and a small handful of bombs, all of those bombs got huge reactions because they were teased and then hit at the right moments, and we even got an ugly and uncooperative counter to a German suplex where Tenryu just wrapped his foot around Takano's leg and basically landed on his head. It was like the best Hashimoto moments where he shifts his weight at the last second to avoid a throw, not at all pretty but certainly effective. Takano frustrates Tenryu to begin with by throwing some quick palm strikes whenever Tenryu tries to engage. Takano sticks and moves and Tenryu does a pretty admirable job of not blowing his lid. In fact he barely even shows any annoyance. Really an astounding amount of forbearance from a man not known for his restraint. But then his first offensive move is a blatant chop to the throat so perhaps it was merely a CHARADE. Any of Takano's momentum comes to a screeching halt when he misses a pescado and Tenryu tries to volley his lungs to the back row. I loved Tenryu cutting Takano off with gut punches before going to the double stomps, just full force jumping on Takano's stomach while he rolls around with a ruptured spleen. Unfortunately Takano stops selling it completely about a minute later. I don't get hung up on body part work that doesn't have a true payoff at this point, don't mind when it gets dropped as the match story progresses, but this was really just ropey selling. Sell it like death one minute, zero acknowledgment the next, no middle ground selling taking us from one end of the spectrum to the other - if nothing else it was jarring and that short Tenryu beatdown deserved better by christ! Down the stretch Tenryu picks up an ankle injury and I love how he sold it like it prevented him from capitalising on the powerbomb. Those delays kept Takano in the fight, even if it was by a thread, but then there's only so often you can take an enziguri to the forehead or a powerbomb on your neck before it doesn't matter. 

Complete & Accurate Tenryu

Them Damn Cold Vampires Been Keeping Tenryu Awake, Tryna Build an Empire off the Things that They can Take

Genichiro Tenryu, Toshiaki Kawada & Samson Fuyuki v Giant Baba, Shinichi Nakano & Great Kabuki (All Japan, 10/28/89) - GOOD

This was pretty sensational whenever Tenryu was in there with one of Kabuki or Baba. Tenryu/Baba was always a blast around this period, Baba the broken down warrior passing through his old haunts, Tenryu with no respect for anything, the latter out to make the former's life a misery for as long as their paths are crossed. Many times Baba would be minding his own business only for the surly man with the jheri curl to stomp on his neck or chop him in the throat. I say this after nearly every Kabuki match now but I really do mean it this time when I say these were the best Kabuki uppercuts ever thrown. Right to the jaw and cheekbone, just a perfect pro wrestling strike. Fuyuki was really fun again, especially stepping to Baba and Kabuki. Maybe it's just hindsight but Kawada already feels like he's being shaped for big things, so even in those scrappy moments there's still a sense that he can hang. With Fuyuki he does everything with a little desperation, which strangely enough makes those exchanges that he probably won't ever win more compelling. 

Genichiro Tenryu & Takashi Ishikawa v Yoshiaki Yatsu & Isao Takagi (SWS, 9/29/90) - GREAT

It's kind of strange that the main event of the first ever SWS show would be joined in progress. Then again the first ever show from Tenryu's next promotion wasn't even taped (praise be to whoever snuck that camera in) so I suppose this is better than nothing. It starts in about the best way possible with Yatsu dropping a full table on Tenryu's head and opening up a cut above his eye. JIP wrestling infuriates me but I guess that's a halfway acceptable way of parachuting into a match if you're set on going the JIP route. Ishikawa was man possessed here and it's one of my favourite performances from him. He comes in off the hot tag and immediately destroys someone with a lariat, then the beatdown on Takagi is almost disturbing at points. I would've liked to see how and why he earned such ire from Tenryu and Ishikawa, but either way more than half of the 17 minutes shown are essentially of him literally being kicked in the face repeatedly. By the end he's bloody-nosed and his face is swollen like he's been stung by ten thousand bees. Yatsu comes in a couple times like "what is the meaning of this?! Are you trying to end this man's existence for having a mere table dropped on your head?!" If you're going to do a stoppage in a Tenryu fed then you need to make it look PROPER and this was a very plausible stoppage. I always felt as though Tenryu would have some more easy-going nights in SWS, which isn't my favourite Tenryu as you really want him annoyed at something and taking that out on whoever's across the ring from him. This was the complete opposite of easy-going so it's hard not to conclude that we are lucky to have such footage available to us. 

Complete & Accurate Tenryu

The Blood of El Brazo

Los Brazos v Pierroth Jr., Gran Markus Jr. & Ulises (CMLL, 2/4/90)

Based on the first fall I figured this was going to be a nice wee midcard Brazos match. It had some stooging and begging off from the rudos while the Brazos threatened to clean someone's clock without ever leaning all the way into it. At one point Porky walked around the apron, backed Markus Jr. up against the post, but instead of throwing a fist he just yanked off a handful of chest hair, which was a little absurd but also a lot amazing. Even through his mask you could see Markus Jr's "ouch, what the fuck?" expression. Then things go down a darker path. As soon as the second fall starts the rudos stab El Brazo in the face, or at least that's what it looks like because that boy is COVERED in blood. He's slumped in the corner convulsing and I don't even know what caused it but he's a mess after about six seconds. They triple team Porky with two of them holding him in place while Markus Jr. punts him in the guts. It's basically a rudo mauling the rest of the way and the tecnico comeback is short-lived, probably because one of them has been carted out for a blood transfusion already. I imagine this leads to something and I'm hoping that something is Super Porky crushing someone to death. 

El Dandy, El Faraon & Satanico v Herodes, Jaque Mate & Pirata Morgan (CMLL, 2/25/90)

This was a real Pirata Morgan shithousery tour, or at least the primera was. He humiliates himself early on after tumbling out the ring and he has a stick up his butt about it for the rest of the match. Dandy is trying to have an actual exchange with Jaque Mate and Morgan keeps interrupting, then keeps running scared, and the more he does it the more obvious it is that the tecnicos want to paste him. The payoff with Dandy skipping out the ring after running the ropes to nail him on the ramp (after Morgan ran all the way up there to get away from Faraon) was perfect. A little later Dandy wins one of their proper exchanges, hits a splash to put an exclamation on it, and we get the timeless Pirata Morgan skittering out the ring back bump. The rudo takeover wasn't quite as strong as you'd hope for from a transition standpoint but the work was good enough. Morgan was strangely quiet in the tercera as well so maybe he learned his lesson from earlier. There were a couple moments where Satanico snapped and kneed someone into the post and nobody ever conveyed a sense of "he's about to kick the shit out of someone here and that someone better run like fuck" better than Satanico. Dandy in 1990 was a thing of beauty in the ring. So graceful and quick, everything looking snug and silky at the same time - an incredible year where he was the best wrestler in the world. Finish is maybe a touch anticlimactic, but then Herodes lying helpless like a turtle kicked out its shell after his failed springboard is worth the price of admission. 

1990 CMLL Project

We're watching some 90s tags!

The Rockers v Haku & The Barbarian (WWF Wrestlemania VII, 3/24/91)

Your tried and true Rockers v big fellers tag is pretty much a can't fail prospect. Rockers v Demolition, v Twin Towers, v Powers of Pain, you're basically guaranteed to bottom out at decent. This wasn't quite on the same level as the Powers of Pain match, but it was still a blast and by this point they had a bunch of neat stuff they could do with Barbarian. Love the double nip up into both of them getting clotheslined inside out, the dropkick into hurricanrana spot always rules, then when they try it a second time the ref' stops it short so Barbarian comes in and does the assisted top rope slingshot that about cuts Jannetty in half. Jannetty leans all the way into every move, really bounces off the turnbuckles when whipped into them, gets clotheslined full in the face by Barbarian, leaps into a Haku crossbody that looked like a car crash, takes an amazing powerslam off the middle rope, just a great little heat segment. My favourite moment after the hot tag was when Shawn had cleaned house and Haku punched him right in the eye. Shit, Haku and Barbarian against some young athletic guys is as can't fail as Shawn and Marty against the big fellers! Truly a match made in heaven, then. The Rockers using some speed and double teams to score the win was the ready-made payoff to everything before it. One of the better Wrestlemania openers of the 90s, or maybe ever if you want think about it for more than seven seconds (unlike myself, who will not be doing that). 

Hollywood Blonds v 2 Cold Scorpio & Marcus Bagwell (WCW Worldwide, 5/8/93)

Maybe the best Hollywood Blonds match, and I say that as someone who watched all of that run relatively recently and pretty much loved it. This is real top drawer stuff. The foreign object shtick at the beginning rules. Pillman takes a roll of coins out his trunks and cackles like some SHENANIGANS are afoot, then when Bagwell tells the ref' to check him he hides it back in the trunks but refuses to open his closed fist. When he finally does and proves there's nothing in his hand he bursts out laughing like this is the funniest shit in the world. He then hides it in the kneepad before passing it to Austin, so when the ref' checks the kneepad there's nothing there and Pillman is beside himself at how amusing this is. It was very Memphis and I'm not even annoyed that it never had any actual payoff to speak of (we never see it again after the opening bit). Bagwell and Scorp both take a turn playing face in peril and this crowd are just molten hot for these guys. It's always a hoot when the WCW studio crowds would chant "Whoomp, there it is" for Marcus Bagwell and they're absolutely losing it for him doing the Blonds' roll camera bit in Austin's face. Then Austin about yanks his head off with the most brutal towel clothesline you'll ever see, which was a fairly amazing transition spot. Scorpio's heat segment is even better than Bagwell's and I always love how much height he'll get on simple moves. Or not even moves as such, just how he'll leap into the air before hitting the mat as Pillman steps over him hitting the ropes. He's graceful in a way not many guys of the era were. There were a bunch of really fun Blonds moments during the beatdowns as well, my favourite being the assisted abdominal stretch, or maybe Austin's little dance mocking Scorpio. The more I go back and watch Austin the more awesome he comes across. I guess most people think of him as a brawler as that was how he worked during the supernova years, but to me brawling Austin was so good because of the energy and the character work. As an actual punch-kick brawler I don't think he ever really had good punches. His execution on regular wrestling moves and his bumping ability was always pretty outstanding though, and you get to see more of that pre-neck injury. Even a simple vertical suplex bump here looked great. He's a guy who's rocketed back up my favourites list over the last few years and maybe I'll do that full 2001 re-watch some day. Anyhow, this was great and one of the best WCW tags of the decade. 

Piper's Talkin' Alabama, New Orleans to Mississippi, Chicago Where the Girls are so Windy City Pretty

Roddy Piper & Rick Martel v The Sheepherders (Portland, 1/26/80) - GOOD

I think this is actually the first Piper/Martel tag I've seen. It wasn't too bad, you know. The first fall was largely an extended babyface control segment on Williams, mostly headlocks but they're well-worked headlocks and our babyfaces look like they're really trying to squeeze someone into unconsciousness. We got the babyface switcheroo shtick behind the referee's back, then Martel switched to the headscissors and there was an amazing bit where he basically handstand walked up the turnbuckles, pushed off the top rope and took Williams down again with the headscissors takeover. The transition to the face in peril segment was a bit weak, but the work on Martel was fine. There's a better - albeit shorter - heat segment in the second fall after Piper takes a very Piperish bump into the post, then the Sheepherders take turns biting and choking him with their singlet strap. The hot tag looks botched after they do what I imagine was supposed to be a blind tag behind a distracted Sandy Barr, but instead Sandy treated it the same as any of the previous switcheroo tags and just took Martel's word for it. I love Sandy but he might've had a long weekend at the flea market because he had a bit of a shocker on the night. If that was Hebner in there folk would be baying for blood (or mildly irritated, I suppose). Third fall doesn't last too long before Miller DOES lash out at the referee by throwing him clean out the ring and Sandy takes a more graceful over the top rope bump than most seasoned wrestlers. Apparently in Portland the ref can just decide to holds the titles up and make them vacant. Imagine Hebnar with that sort of power? Unfathomable.

Complete & Accurate Hot Rod

Bret v Kwang for ALL the marbles maybe

Bret Hart v Kwang (RAW, 4/18/94)

Bret's one of those guys you can rely on to show up on TV in '94 and have something at least watchable. It might not be spectacular, might be fairly garden variety, but it'll bottom out at decent if he's given around ten minutes to work (almost irrespective of the opponent). That's actually been one of the kinda sorta knocks on Bret over the years. He's a Big Show wrestler, not a Small Show wrestler (neither of which having anything to do with Paul Wight); his style lends itself way more to working twenty minutes on PPV than eight minutes on Superstars or Mania or even RAW as it was in its formative years (for the flagship program it still really only had one non-squash match per show at this point). Comparing him to the other top end guys in the WWF that year there's probably more chance of the 123 Kid v Kwang for nine minutes coming out of nowhere and being awesome, but at the same time there's more chance of the 123 Kid v Kwang for nine minutes bombing than Bret v Kwang for nine minutes doing the same. Michaels started to get really fun in '94 so him v someone like Doink could end up being a hoot just for Michaels bumping around like a maniac. On the other hand it could end up being a pile of muck because Doink wasn't very good and Michaels wasn't as consistent as Bret. So the knock on Bret not being all that exciting working a smaller card might be true, but at the same time it's maybe not all that fair either. And sure enough this was super solid and Bret was very good in it. He hit everything nice and crisp, took Kwang's strikes right under the jaw and made him look like a viable enough threat, then hit the Russian leg sweep, the elbow off the middle rope, the backbreaker and all the other signature moves before taking it home. It was nine minutes, he looked good, Kwang looked good, and at the end he felt like the most worthy person to be holding that title belt. Say what you like but there weren't many more reliable than the Hitman. 

1994 WWF Project

Some Sunday Morning FMW!

Dick Murdoch & Atsushi Onita v Masa Kurisu & Jos LeDuc (FMW, 12/4/89)

What in the actual fuck? How did I not know this existed?! I don't have a clue how this match even came to be, but all four are dressed for warfare and let me tell you, Dick Murdoch and Masa Kurisu punching each other in the face is everything I could've dreamed of. Kurisu is dressed in cowboy boots and a flannel shirt like he's going to a west Texas karaoke bar. Murdoch is in jeans and already shirtless so presumably he's just come from another bar fight somewhere. Jos LeDuc is wearing the tightest t-shirt he could find, it barely covers his torso and after ten seconds of walking around he looks like what I would describe as a squeezed toothpaste tube. Kurisu is handed a bouquet of flowers at the intros and he throws them into the crowd, so Murdoch throws his own bouquet at Kurisu and it all KICKS OFF. It's a seedy alley fight front to back, which is really what you want. Onita bleeds and probably weeps. LeDuc worked Puerto Rico at least once in his life so he knows how to convincingly bite someone in their bloody forehead. Murdoch grabs Kurisu by his remaining hair, holds his head in place, cocks a fist and punches the wee gremlin straight in the nose. Kurisu and LeDuc wallop Onita half a dozen times with a cowboy boot then Murdoch comes in like a bull in a china shop and Onita literally folds a chair over Kurisu's head! Murdoch punching and kicking the chair while it's still welded to Kurisu's face was amazing. And I would say it's only fitting that a match like this ends in a picture perfect inside cradle. 

Atsushi Onita & Tarzan Goto v Mitsuhiro Matsunaga & Jerry Blayman (FMW, 12/10/89)

This one I'd heard about from a couple people and in some ways it's even more surreal than the previous match. Jerry Blayman is Jerry Flynn and he must've been wrestling for about five minutes at this point. Perhaps this was the match that turned him onto the shoot style trail. Getting headbutted in the face by Tarzan Goto is probably a much less fun way to live your day-to-day life than being put in worked armbars so who can really blame him all things considered? The ring is surrounded by barbed wire and I can't imagine too many barbed wire ring matches had happened before this, so there's a sense of horror any time someone so much as presses against it. Flynn and Matsunaga are kitted out in full gis and they just kick the life out of Onita and Goto the whole match, which is pretty much exactly what you want from a pair of reckless karatekas in a setting like this. At one point the referee even took a kidney shot for trying to stop Matsunaga from repeatedly spin kicking Goto as he was hanging through the ropes tangled in barbed wire. Onita ends up with a huge gash in his arm after a spill into the wire and spends the rest of the match intermittently staring at it in shock. People are going absolutely ballistic for all of this as well, especially during the heat segments. Tarzan Goto as dishevelled blood-soaked wrecking ball is spectacular and I about lost it when he grabbed Flynn by the gi and repeatedly yanked him into headbutts to the face. Flynn then takes a backdrop suplex and a sick high-angle powerbomb like a karateka who's been doing pro wrestling for five minutes. What a madness. 

Tenryu Sleeps to Dream in this Old House, Only Wakes for the Night. The City's Queen and She holds Him 'til the First Sight of Daylight

Genichiro Tenryu & Stan Hansen v Jumbo Tsuruta & Yoshiaki Yatsu (All Japan, 10/20/89) - GREAT 

It's been a minute since I've watched any iterations of this match up. Unsurprisingly it was good and did not feel like a waste of twenty minutes. This is the strength and conditioning coach in me talking but I always love how Hansen propels himself horizontally across the ground when he's going for a shoulder tackle. First rule of thumb for acceleration. A lot of the football-players-turned-wrestlers do it and I have no evidence to support this but I bet it's especially prevalent in those that played college football in the south. Anyhow, Hansen had a couple great shoulder tackles in this, though the meat of the match was a rare sight at Hansen in peril. He had a big slab of tape on his back so Jumbo and Yatsu said to hell with these cheapshotting fucks, ripped the tape off and went to town. It's not the role we're used to seeing him in, but I think he's super compelling as this force of nature that's been wounded and having to fight uphill for a change. I also loved how, when he finally managed to swing the tide long enough to tag out, he made a point of stomping on Jumbo's head before actually making that tag. The Tenryu/Jumbo exchanges were immaculate and every time they so much as looked at each other it was electric. Right out the gate Tenryu takes a swing at Jumbo while the latter is on the apron and Jumbo turns to the crowd like "here we fucking go again with this prick." He retaliates with a big boot shortly after it and how Tenryu's head stayed on is a mystery. Jumbo in peril down the stretch is good stuff as well, and even if the finishing run isn't epic in scale it had a few killer moments, the best being Hansen obliterating Yatsu as he tried to bulldog Tenryu. I assume our television producer was fired on the spot for missing the finishing lariat, but otherwise this was more or less what you wanted it to be.

Genichiro Tenryu & Ricky Fuyuki v Jumbo Tsuruta & Great Kabuki (All Japan, 10/22/89) - GREAT 

This had your classic All Japan hierarchy tag structure, only with a little WAR thrown in (or at least a precursor to WAR). Tenryu v Jumbo is yet again spectacular. Tenryu is the most antagonistic bastard walking and I love how Jumbo rises above it time and again. Tenryu slaps him across the ear before we've even established who's starting the match and Jumbo simply asks Kabuki to step onto the apron, rubs his hands together and lets the match begin like this is a civilised affair. And of course when he inevitably snaps it's a fucking tornado and Tenryu gets thrown into everything in a six mile radius. Kabuki was our punching bag for the evening here and even got himself a little colour to boot. Tenryu kicked lumps out of him, booted him in the spleen and chopped him in the throat. Fuyuki is always a fun scrappy wee bastard. He was still lean and practically a junior heavyweight at this point, not yet the pot-bellied ghoul he'd become, but he was never afraid to mix it up despite being uppercutted under the chin. As a match dynamic with four guys this good you were always getting something quality. This was quality. 

Complete & Accurate Tenryu

They Tried to Hold Tenryu Down but Can't Nothin' Last Forever. He Feels it in His Bones, There's a Change in the Weather

Genichiro Tenryu v One Man Gang (All Japan, 2/22/86) - GOOD

Hot damn, this might be the best One Man Gang in Japan performance I've seen. "Is that a particularly high bar?" you ask. "Who among us is really seeking to discover the best One Man Gang in Japan performance?" you may ponder. Well, it may mean little to you but it means something to me. This was just a great little six minutes. Gang is right out of your Randy Savage/Nasty Boys school of not toning down his shit one bit in Japan and in actual fact may have ramped it up even more than usual. He was a menacing presence, bellowing like a plains bear, clonking Tenryu with the ring bell, biting him in the face, CRUSHING him with a big splash, hitting some of the greatest clubs to the neck he's ever thrown. Higuchi frantically tries to get him to rein it in a little and Gang lifts his arms like he's about to smother the wee fella and shouts "I CAN'T UNDERSTAND YOU!" and goes back to choking Tenryu. When Tenryu finally rallies with some big overhand chops the place bursts into life, then when Gang cuts him off with a monster lariat - easily the best lariat I've seen the One Man Gang hit - he mockingly boos himself with a big thumbs down and wouldn't you know it but the crowd respond by booing him for real. Tenryu does what every sound strategist in his position would as he waits until Gang crashes to earth like a meteor off a missed splash and rolls him up for the 1-2-3. Gang eviscerates all in sight post-match, or at least a few ring boys and a couple folding chairs. I honest to god loved this. Wrestling is great. 

Genichiro Tenryu & Jumbo Tsuruta v Terry Gordy & Killer Khan (All Japan, 11/22/86) - SKIPPABLE

I watched this last night and basically remember nothing about it now. That's almost always how I watch and write about wrestling at this point. Watch some stuff before I lay my weary head on the pillow, type some stupid words about it the next day. It's a rarity that I have no recollection of the stuff I watched the night before, but here we are. Pretty much nothing. I think Jumbo and Khan had a nice slap exchange. I'm sure Gordy got cut open at the end. I do not know what the finish was. I cannot in good conscience recommend you watch this, but then again it was like 12 minutes so if it takes your fancy then go for it. We're all friends here, it's fine.  

Complete & Accurate Tenryu

Today we watch the Battlarts

Yuki Ishikawa v Victor Krueger (Battlarts, 2/20/97)

I guess it's easy to draw parallels because Ishikawa is a Fujiwara trainee, so when you already know that you're looking for moments where Fujiwara would do something similar against a big stiff like Krueger, but even still this felt very much like a Yoshiaki Fujiwara performance against a big stiff. Actually "big stiff" might be a touch unfair because Kreuger is maybe sort of okay, but the general point remains the same. Ishikawa had to try a few different strategies, regroup and re-plan, approach the problem from different angles, while Kreuger - an enormous bastard - would not be moved and tried to brute force his way to victory. Not all of his stuff looks great but when it does land it lands with a thud, which of course Ishikawa sells great. This may be the best Krueger singles match I've seen so that's pretty cool, I guess.

Daisuke Ikeda & Shoichi Funaki v Yuki Ishikawa & Naohiro Hoshikawa (Battlarts, 3/13/97)

This was decent when Funaki and Hoshikawa were in together, really good when either of them were in with one of the Godkings, and transcendent when the Godkings were in with each other. Ikeda was amazing here. He's legendary as a brutal mauler but this showed how good he could be as a wounded animal. His ribs were taped up and he had a few incredible moments of selling, like when Hoshikawa just punched him in the kidneys and Ikeda buckled over like he'd been shot. Ishikawa didn't outright target them, but in true Ishikawa fashion he did full force punt him in the ribs a few times. In true Ikeda fashion he responded by hitting a lariat straight to Ishikawa's ear. 

Daisuke Ikeda & Takeshi Ono v Yuki Ishikawa & Naohiro Hoshikawa (Battlarts, 3/14/97) 

Just Ikeda and Ishikawa plastering each other about the head for the second night in a row like a couple of nutcases. Very normal behaviour, practically a monkey show. This was an upgrade on the previous night's match, though I suppose it would be impossible for Funaki to Ono not to be an upgrade. As always Team Taco were absurd in their pin and submission break-ups, both of them sauntering into the ring to thump someone in the chest or head or neck, almost irrespective of how much danger their partner happened to be in at the time. Hoshikawa played more of an outright face in peril here and I liked the structure that gave the match. It's hard not to draw at least some sympathy when Ikeda and Ono are obliterating you so it was good stuff. Then Ikeda's taped up ribs came into play again, and late in the match it was him who wound up being isolated for a spell. Hoshikawa nailed him with what was basically a top rope shining wizard, then Ikeda paid him back tenfold with an absolute motherfucker of a lariat. This about took Hoshikawa out his boots such was the TRUCULENCE of it and whenever you get to use the word truculence in a match review you know you're in seven star territory.