Santo v Casas! Satanico v Chicana! The art of the pub fight!

El Hijo del Santo v Negro Casas (Mask v Hair) (WWA, 7/18/87)

The first in a series of very good wrestling matches between two guys made to wrestle each other. This was actually one of the first non-Eddie Guerrero or Rey Mysterio matches from Mexico that I ever watched, and even then, without really having a handle on the style, I could tell it was something special. It was less about the blood and mask-ripping and forehead-biting you normally think of in a mask v hair match. Everything was still worked with an intensity befitting the stakes, though. It had a sense of urgency from the beginning that never really dropped. Casas was at his smug best, celebrating a dropkick like he'd just won the fall and then celebrating ACTUALLY winning the fall like he'd won the World Cup. He threw some of the best punches of his career in this and his right hand was a cannon that always got him out of trouble. He was throwing those shots from a dark place and in general it looked like he was trying to put Santo in the ground. At one point he, from inside the ring, ran Santo across the apron and rammed him into the post with such force that he almost flung himself out the ring in the process. It's little things like that that put him in the GOAT conversation. Some of his bumps off of dropkicks or knee lifts were great as well, just flying across the ring but managing to not make it look like 1989 Mr Perfect. The tercera is as heated as you'd want and even in a match worked mostly clean you aren't the least bit surprised that Casas will try and rip off Santo's mask by the eye holes. Whether it was planned or he just slipped and they ran with it I'm not sure, but Casas leaping to the top rope to hit a dive only to fall off was amazing and very Negro Casas. I'm pretty sure he did it against Ultimo Dragon once as well, that ego of his driving him to show that he's every bit as athletic or capable of the spectacular as his opponent. Loved the fight over the camel clutch at the end. Whether it's his hair on the line, his life on the line, a raffle ticket on the line, there's no way Casas is letting Santo grab that hold without a fight. 

El Satanico v Sangre Chicana (EMLL, 5/26/89)

How fucking good are these two? Look, I grew up in a pretty rough part of central Scotland, in a town that has more pubs than houses. Well maybe not that many, but back then there was probably one pub per 500 houses and for a town with a population of about 8000 that is a lot of places to drink and fight. I have seen many a drunken pub fight in my life. This was that, and I was about to say "without the drunkenness" but then we are talking Sangre Chicana here so you know he would've been several units over the legal limit to drive or operate heavy machinery. One thing about the brawling in this, the realism of it is sort of staggering. It might genuinely be the most realistic fight I've ever seen in wrestling. I'm not talking fight in the shoot fight MMA sense with rules and restrictions; I mean fight in the way two men who've been drinking Guinness from 11 in the morning get to arguing about horse racing and one of them throws a pint tumbler at the other and they end up out on the street winging punches just as the kids are walking home from school. The way they (Chicana and Satanico, not the men we saw walking home from school) would hesitate, burst into fits of wild punches, retreat, size each other up again, burst back in, cover up while trying to fight back, it was amazing and as compelling as brawling has ever been. It didn't hurt that the punches were fucking incredible. There must've been a dozen where I thought "that might be the best punch I've ever seen." The tentative start was perfect and Chicana planting a headbutt right on Satanico's orbital bone was one of the best fuck you shots ever thrown, the grittiness getting ratcheted up a couple notches from there. In some ways the pacing felt a little like a lucha equivalent of Hashimoto/Fujiwara, not at all conventional but it felt 100% authentic and it was something I couldn't really take my eyes off. And then there's the selling from both of them, which was as wonderful as you'd expect from two of the best ever at that particular thing. Chicana getting entirely fed up with everything and throwing Satanico into the seats and trying to stomp him to death really did bring a tear to my eye. My childhood flashed before me and I yearn for those simpler times. An incredible bit of the pro wrestling. 

Tenryu can Dance and Act a Fool Upon that Bar or on that Stool, Choose to do Damn Near Anything this Side of Those Swinging Doors

Genichiro Tenryu v Barry Windham (All Japan, 12/5/83) - FUN

Nice and spirited wee contest. Windham was 23 years old here and as cliche as it is, the line about him being a natural pro wrestler definitely rings true. He just moved around the ring like someone born to do the thing he was doing, super graceful on his flying forearms, big rotation on his leaping clotheslines, athletic bumping that didn't look too showy. Tenryu was still a couple years away from being TENRYU but I always like seeing what he'll do in these earlier bouts, in those years where he was still finding himself, not yet corrupted by the influence of Choshu. This was like eight minutes and you could spend eight minutes watching far worse things. 

Genichiro Tenryu v Toshiaki Kawada (All Japan, 1/18/04) - GOOD

This had a lot of the good stuff you'd expect from Tenryu v Kawada. It's mostly built around strikes so of course that means we get some world-class hittin'. It wasn't Tenryu v Hashimoto or even Tenryu v Kawada from a few years earlier, some of it a little more standing and shouting while they wail on each other, but these are a couple guys who can do that without it coming off completely rote. At 54 there's an extra layer of belligerence to Tenryu trading strikes. It isn't 1989 anymore and there are only so many times he can absorb getting kicked in the neck, but he'll try it all the same and his old man "why am I actually still doing this?" selling is the best ever. You knew he'd lose the rag at some point and when he did he started launching chairs, Wada getting in his face about it while Kawada stood back like he also knew this would happen. We got a bit of strategy from Tenryu in the back half as well, going after Kawada's famously brittle knee. One of the dragon screws he hit looked pretty disgusting but it ultimately never lasted very long and then Kawada never bothered selling it anyway. They actually had me believing that Tenryu would submit to the stretch plum towards the end, just from the way Kawada was leaning into it and twisting Tenryu's head at mean angles. 

Complete & Accurate Tenryu

WAR, 5/20/93

The wrestling and the romance! Wrestling WITH the romance??? I'll leave that up to you. 

Michiyoshi Ohara v Yuji Yasuraoka

Exactly what you want in your 8-minute WAR opener. Is Ohara underrated? For a guy who's supposed to be muck he has a bunch of good matches and a couple absolute scorchers. This wasn't a scorcher but it was a super fun Ohara performance, one you can't simply pass off as a by-product of being in there with Hashimoto or Tenryu. In those matches he was fighting from underneath against lumpy WAR bastards, or later in the year against Hashimoto. I guess you could call that underdog Ohara. Yasuraoka was a WAR junior heavyweight mainstay and the sort of guy you'd see on a tape list against Ultimo Dragon or Lionheart Chris Jericho and that was the match you'd buy the tape for without realising the Ashura Hara v Haku match was the REAL reason you'd want to fork out some cheddar. He was 22 here and probably hadn't won a match yet. So Ohara got to work dominant for a change and by christ did he make the most of it. Yasuraoka slaps him in the face at the start and it sends Ohara into a frenzy. Yasuraoka's mullet is almost a ponytailed version of whatever Kensuke Sasaki was doing at the time so perhaps the mauling put upon him was warranted even without the slap. Ohara punches him directly in the throat and shreds him with A+ chops, even graded on the WAR scale (which is like A+++ for every other promotion at the time). Ohara whips him into the corner and Yasuraoka can't even put one foot in front of the other and goes tumbling like a toddler flying out of a playground slide. He gives the poor lad a front suplex across the top rope and Yasuraoka ends up on the floor, then maybe as a show of contrition Ohara holds the ropes open so Yasuraoka can climb back in. Yasuraoka trapping Ohara's leg in the ropes and going after the knee was a great little transition and I loved how Ohara's SURLINESS allowed him to just power out of a half crab. Ohara responds with THE bastard of all piledrivers and covers Yasuraoka with one foot on the chest. That he put this thing to bed by showing Yasuraoka how to actually apply a half crab was quite fitting. This was perfect WAR. 

Samson Fuyuki v King Curtis Iaukea Jr.

These two lumpy gents get down to brass tacks right away as Iaukea charges up the aisle to meet Fuyuki at the curtain and throw him into a stack of chairs. You're thinking - understandably - that this is going to be a fun contest but unfortunately that doesn't really materialise. For this much beef in a Tenryu fed they never did much clonking and most of the match was spent sitting in basic holds. Fuyuki does hit one great shoulder tackle and the lariat at the end looked like one Iaukea maybe didn't expect to be thrown at his neck like that. 

Masao Orihara v Kengo Kimura

This was more of a slow burner, but as always with WAR v New Japan/Heisei Ishingun everything had that underlying malice to it that we all hope for. Kimura was sort of dismissive of Orihara early, gave him a few cheapshots out of rope breaks, and it's a wonder Orihara never retaliated. Orihara is one of those guys who always seems angry. He's not short enough for it to pass for Napoleon Syndrome but that much testosterone in a bigger body and he might've been a real menace to society. Either way he waited for his moment and eventually crushed Kimura with a senton to the floor, which looked killer from the handheld camera angle on the other side of the ring. He tried to tombstone Kimura at one point and Kimura flatly refused, wriggled free and upkicked Orihara from his back. Then Orihara gave him a full blown Ganso Bomb on the top of his head and you understand why Kimura did not want to be piledriven by that man. After all, Orihara is someone who actively chose to be bald despite having a fully functioning hairline, joining the likes of Low Ki and Kazunari Murakami on that particular list of psychopaths. It's hard to blame Kimura. The running knee to the face at the end was befitting the environs of WAR. 

El Samurai v Ultimo Dragon

These two have shockingly good chemistry together. I think you could make a decent argument that Samurai is Ultimo's second best opponent behind Casas, though we have established many times over the decade-plus in which I have been writing words on this nonsense of a blog that I am not the biggest Ultimo Dragon fan you're likely to encounter. Maybe it's the WAR influence (it's probably the WAR influence) but their matches together were always tetchy, and if Ultimo worked with an edge like this more often he might've been more palatable. This wasn't Ohtani v Orihara as far as New Japan v WAR junior heavyweight superclassics go but it did the trick. It started with some okay grappling and they'd needle in some striking, pretty much bypassing the mutual respect part of the match and establishing that they didn't quite like each other even if they weren't stabbing each other in the head with scissors or whatever. Ultimo threw some mean kicks to the spine then literally walked over Samurai's prone body, which he paid dearly for later when Samurai powerbombed him on the floor. It didn't feel like a 17-minute match and the finishing stretch had some nice heat, even if it was a wee bit roll-up heavy for a second there.  

John Tenta & King Haku v Dino Ventura & Yoshiro Ito

This had an interesting Tenta/Haku dynamic, which made a match that already felt longer than it was feel slightly less long than it might've done without it. Tenta is in full Earthquake gear and comes out to his WWF music, while Haku gets no music. Was Haku still even with the WWF at this point? Did they have a lower card feud going on Superstars or something? Either way they don't much like each other and it leads to a few amusing bits of infighting. One of them will tag in without the other's permission and they'll almost come to blows, like when Earthquake raised his arms wide in the corner to show that he was allowing for a clean break, so Haku just reached up and politely tagged himself in. They get into a shoving contest a couple times, then as the match goes on they start working together, even try a double team where Haku holds Ventura so Tenta can clobber him, and naturally Ventura moves and Haku gets bowled to the floor. I don't have a clue who Dino Ventura is and initially I wondered if it wasn't actually Dino Bravo trying to rebrand, but it turns out Bravo had been whacked by the mob a couple months prior so I guess you can write your own WITSEC joke if you want to. He wasn't the worst wrestler on the card, at least. Prolly. Haku threw some nice chops and headbutts, Tenta had some big stomps, a cool headbutt to the sternum and a really nice elbow drop. Ito isn't really a lumpy boy nor is he a roided up block boy but he had one or two shoulder blocks that landed with a smack. This was a wrestling match that happened. 

Takashi Ishikawa & Super Strong Machine v The Great Kabuki & Akitoshi Saito 

Obviously this was good, in that obvious way that a match like this will be good. Lots of clubbering, lots of impact, lots of ill will, everyone throwing killer strikes, exactly what you want in your WAR v New Japan. Both sides got a chance to run a semi-extended beatdown in the body of the match, Kabuki and Saito first beating on Ishikawa followed by Ishikawa and Strong Machine isolating Saito. So essentially you're giving these guys four or five minutes to thump the daylights out of someone and I'm expected not to love it? Saito had some great kicks, really rotating through the hips and whomping guys in the sternum, ditching the top half of his gi in a way that suggested the crowbars were about to fly. Ishikawa's downward lariats always rule, Strong Machine was throwing big headbutts and had a killer one off the top while Ishikawa held Kabuki in place, and of course Kabuki fucking ruled with the uppercuts and thrust kicks. A couple of the kicks were particularly amazing here as he was almost off balance throwing them, the best one coming just as Ishikawa was stepping through the ropes. I'll take 12 minutes of these four hitting each other over most things these days.

Genichiro Tenryu & Koki Kitahara v Kuniaki Kobayashi & Masashi Aoyagi 

I'd seen this before, several moons back now. It was good then and naturally it's good now. Kitahara and Kobayashi had a great little violent match on a WAR card a couple months prior to this and they pick up where they left off here. Right at the beginning Aoyagi and Kobayashi just mug Koki and drag him to the floor. Crowd cheers this because for whatever reason EVERYBODY hates Kitahara. When Kitahara throws a single kick in return they boo him. Eventually he seems to realise he'll be booed no matter what and goes "fuck it, I'll just spit on people instead." And so he spits on people and cares not a single shit about this crowd. There's a great moment late on where he breaks up a pin attempt by casually kicking Kobayashi in the eye with the toe of his boot, and I always love that as a way to break a pin attempt. Aoyagi got to look really strong here (kayfabe-wise), giving Kitahara nothing at points and once or twice he even shuts Tenryu down completely with kicks. Tenryu is fairly low key and doesn't REALLY let loose, but he will still haul off and chop you to shreds and he does that several times. His selling for everything Aoyagi and Kobayashi throw at him is pretty much immaculate as well. I genuinely bought him going down to a Kobayashi cross body, which is ridiculous and awesome at the same time.

Ashura Hara v Shiro Koshinaka 

I may have mentioned it before but WAR v New Japan truly was the best. This was more or less exactly what you'd want out of these two, if what YOU want out of these two is the same as what *I* want out of these two. It's interesting to see how WAR took the All Japan strike exchange and missed move sequences of the time and put their own potatoey spin on them. Rather than trading forearms these two just clonked each other with headbutts. Rather than blocking and reversing and countering suplexes that landed them on their neck, this ended with Koshinaka jumping hip-first into Hara's face. Some of the best parts of WAR matches are when one guy will do something unnecessarily nasty at a point where nobody would do shit like that anywhere else. There was one such part in this where Hara kicked out of something and sat up groggily so Koshinaka threw a headbutt to the back of his head. Koshinaka was stomping Hara in the corner, so Hara blocked one of those stomps by grabbing Koshinaka's leg, then stood up, leg still in hand, and clotheslined him directly in the face. For all the violence though, the match had a nice story as well. Koshinaka was confident early and other than being stupid enough to go headbutt for headbutt with Ashura Hara, you felt that confidence was warranted. Then as it went on Hara started picking up steam, started hitting harder, and big time New Japan guy Koshinaka began looking very much the underdog. Hara hit peak surliness when Koshinaka was crawling around in a daze and Hara was kicking him repeatedly in the eye. The best pro wrestling. 

The sons of Santo and Perro!

El Hijo del Santo, Negro Casas & Atlantis v El Hijo del Perro Aguayo, Tarzan Boy & Hector Garza (CMLL, 8/6/04)

This was Santo's second match back after his CMLL return. His actual return match was the previous month, which in itself had come after Perrito had recently turned rudo on Casas. I never watched the Santo return match but now I'm thinking I maybe should have just to see where this much animosity came from. Maybe it was just Perro out to take a scalp and no scalp would make more of a statement than El Hijo del Santo's. He jumped Santo at the intros and left him hanging off the ramp, legs in the air while spectators tried to cushion any fall. When Casas and Atlantis got to the ring they were swiftly jumped as well and the primera was really a mauling. The comeback was amazing though, especially Santo's tope after ducking a double clothesline. Perro went flying and the poor bastards in the first row never had time to react so I'm assuming someone's front teeth were lodged in Perro's shoulder blades. While the falls were evened up quickly after the comeback itself, I liked that the tecnicos just continued going after the rudos. This wasn't a case of the comeback culminating with a pinfall or submission - the pinfalls were merely stops on the road and as soon they happened the rudos were on the floor getting thrown into things. Obviously Santo v Perro was the main pairing here and that's what the match was built around, but I did love the brief Casas/Tarzan Boy exchange in the tercera. Tarzan Boy was such a punchable little prick, taking his shirt off and flexing, challenging Casas to a posedown. Of course Casas couldn't be arsed and instead put him on his back, but he did stop to hit the double biceps pose right after it. The finish was great. It came down to Santo and Perro and Santo went for the camel clutch, but as Perro shoved him off Santo flew into the referee. It was a minor ref' bump, nothing big or exaggerated, but it gave Perro his opening and he booted Santo clean in the balls. I will now endeavour to watch their singles match again. It didn't do much for me when I watched it about 10 years ago and that feels stupid. 

The Tarzan, the Goto, and the Indy Sleaze

Tarzan Goto & Sambo Asako v Masa Kurisu & The Shooter #1 (FMW, 5/14/90)

Talk to me all you like about how 90s All Japan was the pinnacle of using a tag match to set up a big singles encounter; nothing they ever did made me want to shell out my hard-earned cheddar to watch Misawa v Kobashi or Kawada v Akiyama like this made me want to see Tarzan Goto and Masa Kurisu punch each other in the eye for 12 minutes. Kurisu was at his unpleasant best here and I can't think of a wrestler I'd less rather be in the ring with than him. Nothing he ever does looks pulled in the slightest. He was trying to obliterate Asako's eardrums with slaps, clonked him with disgusting headbutts, stomped his face into the canvas, at one point he even came in and kicked him in his big fat arse. All the while Goto aimed to top it by abusing Shooter, who's some guy in a mask who throws a bunch of reckless kicks. Goto matches Kurisu's headbutts every step of the way and then he superkicked Shooter in the throat. He also put the poor fella on his neck with a capture suplex. The best part was when Asako and Shooter were grappling on the mat and Kurisu and Goto both grabbed a chair and started wellying the other two while staring each other out. Of course the eventual Goto/Kurisu pairing ruled. It was brief, but they fucking hammered each other with those headbutts and set up the singles match perfectly. This was bliss. 

Revisiting 90s Joshi #54

KAORU v Yasha Kurenai (GAEA, 4/15/95)

Exhibit #242 as to why the inter-promotional wrestling rules. Kurenai doesn't have much of a rep, or at least not a good one, and that's a shame because at this point I'm convinced she kind of rules. KAORU seems to be fairly well regarded and I'm beginning to see that she also rules. The crowd is red hot and Kurenai slaps KAORU in the face straight off the bat, so KAORU sends her to the floor and topes head-first into a chair. This was one of those screwball Chris Benoit topes that maybe makes you wince just a bit. Kurenai then chokeslams KAORU on the chair outside, brings her back in the ring and sits her down on it before booting her head off. Kurenai was a seedy witch in this, stamping on KAORU's fingers, biting her wrist and spitting a chunk of it at the referee, whacking her with a stick, working over KAORU's throat. KAORU gets some payback by biting the wrist and stamping on the fingers, then drags Kurenai up the aisle and flings her into a wall before sitting in the chair in the middle of the ring waiting on her. I loved the visual of Kurenai from outside staring at KAORU with open contempt while the latter is entirely indifferent towards her. Kurenai's offence was mostly low level stuff, her biggest shots being springboard legdrops, but that makes her stand out in an era where joshi was going for bigger and bigger. She was fully about getting heat here and she wasn't about to turn anyone to her cause by doing something swank. KAORU on the other hand has the perfect moonsaults. I preferred the opening of this to the stretch run, but the final few minutes made for a really dramatic finish and the nearfalls had people biting big. All it missed was KAORU giving Kurenai a return smack with that stick of hers. 

One More Last Beer, Cold as Colorado. One More Damn Thing that Tenryu'll Feel Tomorrow

Genichiro Tenryu v Stan Hansen (All Japan, 3/29/89) - GREAT

This was just before Tenryu and Hansen started teaming together. You could see how they might become allies from the way they absolutely wellied each other several times throughout the match. Parts of this were excellent, usually the ones built around Tenryu making a comeback. Hansen was much less frenetic in control and worked this like his strategy was containment first and foremost. He took control initially by ducking for a back body drop, popping up when Tenryu went for the head kick and literally giving him a lariat to the face. This was more forearm club than his regular lariat, but it looked no less lethal and Tenryu sold it by rolling outside and lying on his back for the next minute. After that Hansen kept Tenryu locked down with the chinlock and it felt like Tenryu knew he had to make the most of any openings, which he usually did by blistering Hansen with chops or hitting enziguris. I'm not the first person to make this point, but the way Hansen can make ordinary moves look like killshots is really spectacular. He hit one back elbow here that about took Tenryu's head off and even the way he'd set up for an elbow drop had the crowd on edge. The last few minutes were really great, first with Hansen trying to hit another lariat as Tenryu was on the apron, only in doing so Hansen crashed into the buckles. He sold the ribs after that like one or two of them were shattered and that was Tenryu's road in. They even went back to the first lariat spot, except this time it was Tenryu who drew in Hansen with the back drop fake-out and the clobbering was flipped. Tenryu flying off the top rope with a shoulderblock and both of them colliding heads looked brutal, then we get a clean and creative finish to round us out. It's a rarity that this matchup fails to deliver. 

Complete & Accurate Tenryu

Tenryu Came From the Mud Where the Low-Lives Waller, Sailor-Swearing, Single-Parent, Double-Wide Squalor

Genichiro Tenryu & Ashura Hara v Jumbo Tsuruta & The Great Kabuki (All Japan, 5/24/88) - GREAT

At this point I'm convinced any Tenryu v Kabuki interaction is worth the price of admission. Throw in the small matter of Tenryu and Jumbo trying to put each other in the hospital and how could this not be good? It stood out from other Jumbo v Tenryu tags as by the end you had three quarters of the participants dealing with an injury, while Kabuki was left unscathed (relatively) and untethered and free to skulk about hitting thrust kicks and uppercuts. Hara was playing up a rib injury from the very start, then in the back half Tenryu got bounced into the guardrail and had to deal with a cut forehead, and then towards the end Jumbo was hobbling around on one good leg after kneeing the turnbuckle bolt. The way it was structured meant we got a few mini runs of peril, and even if usually I'd have preferred one longer heat segment, I'm not sure that would've fit quite as well with the story on the night. I mean the intensity certainly never dropped, and everything that was focused on those particular injured body parts was good stuff. How can you watch pro wrestling and not love someone punching an opponent in their bloody forehead? How can you not love Jumbo slapping on an abdominal stretch and using his free hand to dig the knuckles into Hara's side? What is pro wrestling if not a man flinging a full fucking table at another man's injured leg? Nothing, brothers and sisters. It is nothing. 

Complete & Accurate Tenryu

Captain Redneck v Dr Death!

Dick Murdoch v Steve Williams (JCP, 7/10/87)

This sort of handheld footage is a real treat. I would assume it wasn't actually taped for TV and the wrestlers would've known that, so in some ways it gives you the purest look at them. What do they do when the cameras are off? There was that Meltzer talking point from years ago about Murdoch being a lazy house show worker who'd goof around or whatever. I think at this stage the laziness point has been pretty thoroughly nonsense'd, but to be honest I love goofball Murdoch anyway so if more footage of him doing that on house shows was to appear on the internet 30 years later then I wouldn't be complaining. And while this wasn't FULL goofball Murdoch, at least in part because of the context of the feud, we were gifted with ONE of the the absolute best goofball Murdoch moments ever. The stipulation coming in is that Williams can't use the cast on his arm as a weapon or he'll be disqualified, and I'm not sure if it was Murdoch and Eddie Gilbert who broke that arm in the first place but Williams starts by going right after the arm of Murdoch. He has some really nasty stomps to the forearm while his other foot has Murdoch's arm pinned to the mat, very Arn Anderson-ish while Murdoch has to pretend he can't yank the arm away. Murdoch is selling all the way to the back row whenever Williams slams that extended arm down across his shoulder, then Williams picks him up on his back and starts squatting like Murdoch was a weighted rucksack. You knew that Eddie Gilbert skulking around ringside with a cane was going to come into play and of course he distracts the ref' so Murdoch can smash Williams in the arm with it. Murdoch was mean as a bastard working over the arm, but I thought Williams' selling was equally great. He never let you forget the arm was his major weakness, the way he'd sell huge whenever Murdoch stomped it or smashed it into the turnbuckles or hit it with the cane, whereas in contrast he'd sell a stomp to the back or the ribs like something he could shrug off. There was a great bit where he tried to fire up and rush after Murdoch on his knees, Murdoch frantically backing away before shutting Williams down with another kick to the arm. As soon as Williams starts the comeback Murdoch turns the stooging up to 14, first with his spinning top sell of a big vertical suplex, doing about five rotations in place. He throws a punch that Williams blocks with the cast arm, Murdoch sells his own hand (a cool combo of the previous arm work and the fact he just punched a cast), then Williams clocks him and Murdoch's sell of it is quite frankly indescribable. Murdoch falling limp into Williams' arms before being propped up and tagged again really is the best of Captain Redneck. We even got a great finish to boot, with Gilbert's distraction backfiring and Murdoch being met coming off the top with a cast to the jaw. 

Revisiting 90s Joshi #53

Aja Kong v Manami Toyota (AJW, 8/20/97)

Apparently this went to a 30-minute draw. It really says something about how good the AJW editors were because I could not have told you where they shaved 10 minutes from. Either way, as far as Aja Kong v Manami Toyota goes this had all of the good stuff you might associate with that match-up. It largely followed the same formula as their 11/94 match, with Aja trying to bend or break or sometimes bend AND break Toyota while Toyota refused to succumb to either. Toyota was actually even more belligerent in '97 than she was in '94 so now and then she'd just shout something that I couldn't understand and start hitting Aja in the face. At one point she broke out of a rear naked choke and literally double stomped Aja full in the mouth. I'm obviously picky about the Toyota that I watch, but I've been on a roll with her lately and I thought she was pretty excellent again here. You knew she'd burst into life at points and hit some suplexes or dives, and she did that and those suplexes looked nasty and the dives were every bit as reckless as they needed to be if they were going to topple Aja. Her missile dropkick to the floor is a fucking absurd thing and how she never crippled herself in all those years is beyond me. But the selling in between is really good as well, not just in how she's selling the submissions as she's in them or how she's bumping for Aja's offence; I mean the parts before she gets up and runs the ropes or jumps off of something. She'd take a little stagger, delay those bursts just a couple seconds longer than she would've years before, and something as simple as that really puts across the scope of what she's trying to overcome. Those delays set up some great cut-offs as well, like when she went for a big dive to the floor and wiped out one of the ring girls, which Aja followed up with a PLUMP tope that clattered Toyota and the same poor ring girl. I even liked the big table spot because it felt like Toyota needed to up the ante or she'd just get smooshed before long. Also it looked brutal so that helps. The finish is something I could've gone either way on, but in the end I think I liked it. Toyota was dead on her feet, but she'd keep kicking out until she was dead on her arse. Aja hit her with three hideous urakens and Toyota wouldn't stay down. It was a small thing, but I loved how one of Toyota's kick-outs was a bridge accompanied with no screaming. There was none of her usual defiance, it was pure instinct in that moment. Aja giving her a bare-handed fourth looked like it must've shattered Toyota's whole face, but by then Aja had literally punched herself into exhaustion and just as she makes the cover the bell rings. Even if Toyota never won, she at least survived and somehow that felt closer to a victory than defeat. This was good stuff.