Revisiting 00s US Indies #48

Austin Aries v Bryan Danielson (ROH Nowhere to Run, 5/14/05)

I reckon I could watch this match up all day. Or at least parts of the day, most days. Maybe even ONE day I'll watch that match where they wrestle for like four hours with Gabe Sapolsky on commentary and if that's not the highest compliment I can pay both of them I don't know what is. I haven't watched those 2007 matches since probably 2007, but this feels like a good shout for being their best match together. I loved the early parts with Aries chucking Danielson across the ring by his beard, Danielson coming back and chucking Aries by the ears, then Aries grabbing Danielson's beard again to keep hold of a headlock as Danielson tries whipping him into the ropes. Everything was really snug and fought over, largely a stalemate but nothing felt like they were going through the motions. There was a fight over a Japanese stranglehold that especially ruled, Danielson as vicious as you'd expect while Aries had to try and roll over or out of it, finally managing it and reversing it and even applying his own version into the bargain. Danielson's kicks the whole match were tremendous and he gave us the first glimpse of them during this opening stretch. His aggressiveness during this period of his career is something else and I'm pretty sure 2005 is my favourite year of his, the way he worked with a GIGANTIC chip on his shoulder going after the belt. I prefer that to how he worked after he did win it, when his urgency and drive to prove something gave way a little to some of the arrogance one can only demonstrate by working a 57-minute main event with Delirious. He didn't have the belt here, had never held it before, and maybe there was a voice in his head that told him nobody thought he COULD hold it. So he stretched Aries like a sadist, grabbing him by the face, cranking his neck at disgusting angles, locking him in some double-arm stretch plum where he was trying to twist Aries' head 180 degrees. Danielson from this period would also throw in some goofy shit to juxtapose the savagery and I loved him doing that here with Earthquake's Richter Scale finisher, stomping around to start the TREMORS~ while Aries lay unconscious. Aries finally takes over by just flinging Danielson over the ropes out of a headlock, following up with the bullet tope. Similar to how he went after Gibson the night before he targets Danielson's arm from here and it was great stuff again, super varied offence but crisp and violent. Really liked his headstand hammerlock thing that he tried transitioning into Cattle Mutilation, which he couldn't quite lock in, partly because Danielson was too stubborn to let him, partly because it SHOULD be difficult to apply someone else's finishing hold, especially if it's a hold only really used by that one person anyway. Of course I loved how Aries would routinely halt Danielson's momentum on comebacks by yanking on the beard again. As someone who has grown a very large beard at several points of their life I can tell you it's annoying as fuck when someone decides to pull on it. Whether it was that or the Cattle Mutilation I'm not sure but when Danielson decided he'd had enough he tried to kill Aries. The armwork sort of gets forgotten, but YOU forget THAT when Danielson absolutely hammers Aries with those kicks. These are the best he's ever thrown. His enziguri was used to get him out of trouble a handful of times and there was one shot on the floor where he had Aries up against the barricade, measured him, and fucking obliterated him with a spin kick right out the Ikeda playbook. I was a little shocked at how decisive Aries' win was in the end, though Danielson locking in the REAL Cattle Mutilation had everyone fully biting on a title change before that. Danielson sullying the Code of Honour and leaving without giving Aries his handshake is probably a bit of foreshadowing for where Danielson would go after finally winning the belt a few months later. How could we expect anything different from a man willing to display such wanton dishonour? It takes an appalling sort to willingly work 60 minutes with Colt Cabana knowing it'll be available for purchase on DVD.

Revisiting 00s US Indies #47

Necro Butcher v Thumbtack Jack (Cabin Fever Deathmatch) (IWA East Coast, 11/29/08)

I'm not really sure what makes this a cabin fever deathmatch, to be honest. I don't know what it means. The ring is surrounded by platforms made of light tubes that are wired together, presumably intimating that the participants are confined to the ring, the fear of leaving and being cut to pieces enough to instill in them a form of MADNESS experienced only by deathmatch practitioners. I've never seen Thumbtack Jack before. Necro comes out bloody and battered wearing a torn up $4 ROH shirt, so presumably this is not his first match of the night or maybe on the way there he got into a fight with some raccoons or scaffold workers or whatever. This was pretty much pro wrestling for the sickos; the sort of thing you don't tell non-wrestling fans or even most actual wrestling fans you've watched lest they make all manner of assumptions about you. Telling people you grew up watching WWF and your hero as a kid was Stone Cold Steve Austin is just about acceptable. I would never in a million years broadcast that between once and thrice a year I will willingly watch two psychopaths attempt to mutilate each other with soda-lime glass in front of 23 people in a community centre in West Virginia. The match started with Necro going right at our man Thumbtack, kicking him into a panel of light tubes hanging in the corner before punching him dead in the face. The punch looked and sounded vile and I'm not sure Jack expected it, even though he absolutely should have. Jack has tape around his waist - possibly from a match earlier in the night - and Necro scraping his fingernails down the bandaged area is a hunner diseases waiting to happen. One solitary person in our audience does the Ric Flair woo when Thumbtack Jack fires back with knife edge chops. After they trade revolting headbutts like top tier morons Jack gets slammed on a pile of light tubes and walloped over the head with some more and almost immediately he's bleeding profusely from his head and shoulder. These are two men who cannot be caged by any feverous cabin and before long they've brawled into the crowd and up towards the back wall, where Jack makes his comeback by running up said wall and hitting a moonsault, which honestly was fucking awesome. He throws a trashcan at Necro's bare shins and jabs his bare foot with the back of a chair, both of them by this point leaving bloody smears and trails wherever they go. Jack smashes a bundle of about 20 light tubes over Necro's head and drapes a light tube blanket over, then misses his moonsault by about eight feet but still ends up stabbing himself in the hand with a piece of glass while Necro writhes around bleeding from the eye. The close-up camera shot of Thumbtack Jack pulling a piece of broken glass out of his finger is the part where those of us with any sense decide enough is enough and go find ourselves a different hobby. The big car crash spot came off great, with Necro punching Jack off the apron and Jack falling several feet through a platform of light tubes. And a not-insignificant part of me kind of loves the finish. Necro asks the referee for assistance in bringing another light tube contraption into the ring so naturally you're expecting some more madness to unfold, but instead Jack reverses a scoop slam into a small package for the surprise win. Surprise not just in that Thumbtack Jack won (unless someone tells me Thumbtack Jack is actually an IWA East Coast legend and was a seven-point favourite from the beginning), but in that they went to the finish before following through on whatever nonsense they'd teased with the light tubes. Maybe that's the deathmatch version of a southern tag ending before the hot tag. Obviously this had gnarly shit in it and this is an crowd who arrived expecting gnarly shit, but really they were dead at the start and by the time they got to the last few minutes the heat was right there, so credit where it's due for working the place (or you can give no credit whatsoever and declare this an affront to the noble art of professional wrestling, as is your choice). I don't feel like a better man for having watched this, but I do feel like I've learned to better appreciate the simple things in life that don't involve excessive violence and depravity. Possibly. 

The Battlarts Boys in Battlarts...and NOAH!

Takeshi Ono & Katsumi Usuda v Minoru Tanaka & Naohiro Hoshikawa (Battlarts, 7/6/97)

I guess this was sort of a Battlarts version of a kickpad juniors tag, in that everything is hellaciously stiff and one of the participants is an ornery fuck with zero regard for anyone's jaw staying attached to their face. Everything looks as clean as it gets but now and then Ono will just roll in and boot someone in the liver or grab them in a choke. There's a story thread of Minoru being kicked often enough in the leg that he spends most of the match limping, and before too long Ono and Usuda try and yank that whole leg off. Hoshikawa fights the good fight for his team by hitting several disgusting German suplexes and it's interesting seeing how 1997 crowds react to that compared to 1987 crowds. There was nary a peep for one suplex that nearly crumpled Ono like an accordion and somehow it's All Japan's fault probably. In true Battlarts fashion the longer it goes the more vicious each instance of a partner interjecting becomes, reaching its peak with Ono throwing two roundhouse kicks to break up a half crab, Hoshikawa defiantly refusing to release and Ono giving him no choice in the matter by hitting him with an absurd tiger knee. At one point Ono just drags Hoshikawa to the floor and throws him into the seats, entirely fed up with it all. The finish with Usuda going back to the kneebar and Tanaka having no choice but to give it up was a nice way to tie up that particular NARRATIVE~. Obviously this was good. 

Daisuke Ikeda & Muhammad Yone v Akira Taue & Takuma Sano (NOAH, 7/10/04)

Well this started absolutely spectacularly with Yone and Sano spin kicking each other in the guts, Sano hitting a backdrop so vile it looked like Yone would puke, then as Yone is crawling around on all fours Ikeda runs in right at the moment Sano tags Taue, Ikeda using Yone as a springboard to fly kick Taue in the face. It settled into a Yone in peril segment thereafter and that takes up a good chunk of the match. He takes some HEAVY shots and Sano puts him on his neck more than once. Yone's selling was almost Kawada-esque at points in how he looked dead-eyed and out of it (we assume it was merely selling). Eventually Ikeda comes in swinging for ALL the fences, hitting a huge lariat and again using Yone as a springboard, this time to hit a corner clothesline on Taue. Sano has thoroughly settled into his take no shit from anyone role by this time and any extra pounds he'd put on only made him extra surly. He is a true dad bod with the disposition of a Tarzan Goto and will fully double stomp someone's intestines, which he did twice to Yone, the second one off the top rope and once more it looked like Yone was going to punk. 

Revisiting 00s US Indies #46

Austin Aries v James Gibson (ROH Final Showdown, 5/13/05)

"Another really good Austin Aries match." I guess I should stop being surprised at this point, but since I started going through all of this stuff again a few years back, there really hasn't been one Aries match I've revisited - or visited for the first time, like this one - that I've come out of without a higher opinion of him as a wrestler. I feel like he was at his absolute peak around this time and there's pretty much nobody I'd be opposed to seeing him in there against. The opening section had a real nice snap to it and all of the hold-trading was airtight, none of the counters into and out of holds looking overly cooperative or choreographed. It's sort of crazy to me that with all the bells and whistles and production values of today, I can't think of many current wrestlers doing these sequences who manage to pull them off like this crop of indie guys in the mid-2000s who were being recorded by like three people with video cameras. I could quite easily be convinced this period was as good as it's ever been for workrate promotions doing workrate. Even if the STUFF they're doing today is bigger and flashier, it rarely feels as organic to me as what they were doing on a 2005 ROH show. Anyhow, the early parts were good and I liked them foreshadowing Aries targeting Gibson's arm by stomping on the elbow out of a key lock. He takes over fully with one of his rocket topes and Aries really does have one of the best topes of the last 25 years, certainly outside of Mexico. They then follow through on that arm stomp as Aries drapes Gibson's arm over the barricade and crushes it with a running dropkick, which sets off a pretty great control segment. He's mean and focused working the arm, hitting some cool hammerlocked scoop and sidewalk slam variations, really snapping Gibson to the mat with arm wringers. I don't need offence in wrestling to look super crisp, but it's worth mentioning it when you've got a guy like Aries making everything look killer, like he's actually trying to hurt a guy and win the match. Gibson for his part is really strong working from below and selling the arm. He made it show that nothing was coming easily, clearly hindered in trying to fight back and hit certain moves. He hangs the arm limp by his side and has to throw punches and forearms with his right, then resorts to headbutts from his knees in moments of desperation. At other points he'd fight from his back and on one occasion Aries just about piledrove himself on his own head off a monkey flip. They played up the arm for the big spot out on the floor as well, with Gibson failing to get Aries up for the Tiger Driver and that leading to a wild flip senton into the crowd. This was also second from the top on a show where Danielson and Homicide would blow off their best of 5 series in a cage, so they worked the finishing run with a bit of restraint rather than going for epic. The two big kickouts felt huge even still; Aries' 450 splash and Gibson's Tiger Driver that he was finally able to hit after locking in a guillotine choke (that he had to release fairly quickly because it was applied with the left arm). I thought the last couple transitions were maybe a little rushed, but I did like the finish with Aries almost being out on his feet and fluking his way into a home run bomb. A very good wrestling match. 

Some Folks Call Tenryu Mister, Others Just Call Him Out. Some Folks Call Him a Son of a Bitch when He ain't Around

Genichiro Tenryu v Kengo Kimura (New Japan, 2/6/93) - GOOD

This was very good in all of the ways you'd expect Tenryu v Kengo Kimura in 1993 to be good. Tenryu jumps him in the aisle as Kimura is making his way to the ring and it starts a SCUFFLE with all of Kimura's Heisei Ishingun buddies. Kimura looks at the ref' like "what is with this guy?" and Tenryu punts him in the eye socket. Now and then one of Kimura's boys will stick a hand in the ring to grab Tenryu's ankle, Tenryu will kick them as expected, then Aoyagi or Saito will jump in the ring and that'll bring the WAR lumpies around. It never broke into any full blown riots like the best of these will, but you can't go wrong either way. I've watched a lot of modern wrestling over the past six months and as I say that you already know where I'm going, but there is not one wrestler going today who can chop a man in the chest like Tenryu. He shut down Kimura with some absolute cannons here and Kimura looked like he was having a stroke. Kimura's leg lariats landed square on Tenryu's face. Tenryu's punts landed flush on Kimura's spine. You might kick out of one powerbomb but you will not kick out of two. 

Genichiro Tenryu v Tarzan Goto (WAR, 7/6/97) - GREAT

If you thought Tarzan Goto was going to rock up to the WAR fifth-year anniversary show like a man who knew what decorum was then you would be sorely, embarrassingly mistaken. Akira Maeda even made an appearance and handed Tenryu a big bouquet of congratulatory flowers, for who knows how difficult it is to start and subsequently run for five years a renegade indy promotion more than our boy Maeda (I assume). Tarzan Goto cared for none of it. Tenryu treated this as a sporting contest to start, breaking clean off a rope break. As soon as the tables were turned Goto walloped him and Tenryu's astonished expression pretty much told you this was going to rule. Goto was a menace the entire way and after the first couple minutes of throwing at least one sick lariat while being punched several times in the face in response, he decided that dragging things off the rails was his preferred course of action. He did this by cutting off one of Tenryu's boots with a pair of scissors and then spending the next few minutes stomping and elbowing the exposed foot. When that didn't lead to a satisfactory outcome he picked up a glass bottle and smashed it over the referee's head. I'm not sure what the ref' did to deserve it but how could we even begin to understand the psyche of such a man? The ref's bladejob was ludicrous and even his full head bandage was stained dark red before too long. Obviously the longer this went the less shit Tenryu was willing to put up with and many punches to the jaw were thrown, many lariats to the throat were slung, many elbows from the top rope were dropped on Goto's tree trunk neck. The last one was putrid as it looked like Goto tried to roll out the way and the elbow landed side one. I'd be surprised if he could've turned his head properly for a week. This was basically everything Tenryu v Tarzan Goto entails. 

Complete & Accurate Tenryu

A bit of Starrcade '86

I was originally intending on watching the whole show, but time has been limited of late and so I cherry-picked. The Garvin/Bubba Louisville (or was it Louisiana?) street fight was a super fun 10 minutes. I considered watching the Flair/Nikita main event but I chose to spend that half-hour doing not that. Maybe another day. 

Dusty Rhodes v Tully Blanchard (First Blood Match) (Starrcade, 11/27/86)

I loved all of the horse shit at the start of this. You've got three guys who are god-tier heatseekers in JJ, Tully and Dusty and they decided they wanted the people rabid for blood before the bell even rang. The people in question wanted to see Dusty punch and elbow Tully in the head enough times that it cut him open. That very thing had happened often enough that JJ and Tully both knew it was a very real possibility again, and if it happened here then that would be the match. So JJ decided to bring some head gear and somehow couldn't understand why that wouldn't be allowed. He tried applying vaseline on Tully's face and couldn't believe that was against these particular rules either. Earl Hebner is generall a terrible referee but his penchant for overexcitement worked great here because he was blowing a gasket at everything, which in turn seemed to rile everyone else up in the process. JJ getting clobbered with a bionic elbow and bleeding over his white shirt is quite the visual and I love him subsequently yelling at Tully about the importance of covering up. It made you buy into the gimmick before the wrestles themselves had even touched. Tully is sublime getting knocked around while trying to avoid being hit in the face. Dusty has to take out the legs so Tully can't run, throw body shots to open up blows to the head, and Tully eats it all better than just about anyone in history. With the way they build up to that first elbow to the head the people legitimately believe it could be a match-ender. You knew Tully would get desperate before too long and sure enough he grabs one of JJ's shoes as a weapon. Hebner has been cleaned out at this point after getting caught under a suplex, so when Dusty takes the shoe you think he's about to give Tully everything he's earned. I kind of love that instead he just throws the shoe aside and opts to beat Tully bloody with elbows and mounted punches. You can probably guess where things are going when Dusty tries to revive our boy Earl, JJ using the distraction to clean Tully up with a towel and vaseline. Not for the first time in 1986 Tully managed to save his own bacon with a roll of coins, clocking Dusty with a fistful of them, Hebner coming to just as Dusty sits up bleeding like a pig.  

Rock 'n' Roll Express v Arn & Ole Anderson (Cage Match) (Starrcade, 11/27/86)

A really great tag match, one of the very best Crockett produced in a year where they produced a goodly amount of them. They wanted to establish right away how dangerous that cage could be as Arn and Ole never even bothered targeting an arm or leg, instead trying to throw Gibson's face into the cage. Gibson was always a step ahead and there's nobody like Arn when it comes to getting caught between the ropes and the cage and getting the back of their head repeatedly slammed into steel. The RnRs were super aggressive early on and I loved how whenever it looked like an Anderson was about to come in and double up, Morton and Gibson would beat them literally to the punch. They knew better than anybody how the Horsemen operated and Morton especially understood what it was like to be locked in a cage with one. Eventually the Andersons do take over when Gibson misses a high knee in the corner and Arn seizes his opportunity, smashing the leg off the cage. The heat segment isn't the longest but it's excellent stuff, which shouldn't really be a surprise. Then when Morton tags in it takes about 1.8 seconds for the Andersons to cut him off. There was no time at all for Morton to build momentum, this was instant and it told the broader story of the match from the Andersons' perspective. As soon as they saw their chance to take control they would, and from there they wouldn't let it be relinquished. It meant running plenty of distractions, cutting the ring off and liberal interference, one of them hooking Morton by the leg so he couldn't crawl away while the other came in and measured their next shot. The attack on Morton was two-pronged. First they went to work on his bloodied up face, just like every Horseman did when they were in there with Ricky Morton, especially when surrounded by a cage. It was driven to begin with by Flair earlier in the year, almost entirely born of insecurity, but all four of them were intent on disfiguring the guy and the best way to do that here was smash his face into the cage and grate it up and down the steel mesh. The second point of attack was Morton's arm, because these are the Andersons after all and I guess old habits die hard. As you'd imagine Morton was incredible and it's one of his very best beatdowns, building and building heat until the place was molten. When it looked like Morton had finally managed to turn the tide with a DDT on Arn, Ole came in IMMEDIATELY and broke the count. That maybe rubbed off on Gibson because when Arn hit the spinebuster Gibson was straight in before the ref' counted to one. Those moments created a sense that both teams believed it could end at any moment, especially when looking at it from the RnRs' side given how much punishment Morton had taken. The finish played into that a bit while also being unexpected. It averted the expectation of the hot tag, of Morton rallying and getting Gibson in, of recovering enough himself for one last push. That tag never came and instead Gibson, coming in to thwart yet another Anderson double-team, saw an opening to save Morton and the belts along with him. Gibson even sold that leg until the very end and both crawled out the cage beaten and bloody. The Andersons looked like a well-oiled machine, but on the night they were a step slower than the champions. I guess it pays to be resourceful. 

The Fantastics in 1988 (part 2)

The Fantastics v Midnight Express (JCP Pro, 3/26/88)

Okay, this might actually be the best US tag matchup ever. I'd always been Team MX v RnRs, and the Midnights v the Rock 'n' Rolls is obviously still top shelf, but at some point the Midnights v Fantastics jumped them as a pairing and now I sleep soundly within the warm EMBRACE of that RED HOT opinion. Put me on yer Observer Radio and I'll unleash all sorts of molten takes. Honestly I'm not even sure this is the best Midnights/Fantastics match, but they have about a dozen excellent ones and this is definitely up there all the same. It's the Fantastics' debut in Crockett, a few weeks before the 1988 Crockett Cup. The Midnights are fully raging that both teams are only separated by three seedings in the tournament. They expect to mop the floor with them in short order but the Fantastics collar them again and again early, always frustrating the MX and going back to the armbar. They were going long here so the build was patient, but the timing on everything was brilliant and every time the crowd think the MX might've seized an advantage the Fantastics reel them in again. Even some amazing Bobby Eaton punches can't swing control and of course Cornette is livid as they get run in circles. Eventually we get what the nerds all want, which is Tommy Rogers playing face in peril as the Midnights run distraction and double teams and Bobby Fulton loses his mind. The transition was basically a pop-up throw from Eaton into a Lane superkick and it was every bit as cool as it sounds. Lane's striking - his karate, if you will - was as good as it's ever been and his follow-up spin kick to the stomach might've ruptured Tommy's spleen. They didn't really do as many teased comebacks and cutoffs as I expected, but Rogers in peril was stellar stuff. It's one of Fulton's best performances as well, taking the beatdown for the second heat segment and eating some awesome MX double teams. The leapfrog onto Fulton's back as he's draped over the ropes looked killer and once again Bobby Eaton was throwing some absolutely scorching right hands. His top rope elbow drop wasn't far off Macho Man territory here either. My main gripe with this is that of a 35-minute match we probably miss eight minutes due to commercials, which obviously isn't the fault of the wrestlers but will still PEEVE the superdweebs. On the other hand the superdweebs - I count myself among that number - are placated somewhat as we get to see the important TRANSITIONS~ and such. The Fantastics scoring the upset with their own rocket launcher ensures that the feud will continue and at the end of the day that's the main thing. That this might not even be the best MX/Fantastics match to air that WEEK is sort of bonkers. 

Dory & Terry v Baba & Jumbo

Terry & Dory Funk Jr. v Giant Baba & Jumbo Tsuruta (All Japan, 3/13/75)

This was a very good wrestling match. Maybe not a tremendous one, but a very good one. Terry Funk, however, was tremendous IN IT. He was always doing something interesting, in the ring, out the ring, animated, active, aggressive, urgent, desperate, sometimes two or more of those things and maybe several other descriptors at once. The Funks came across as a well-oiled machine in the first fall working over Jumbo's arm. They operated with lots of quick tags and tight arm wringers, then every now and then Dory would smash Jumbo in the face with one of his mean European uppercuts. Jumbo for his part was pretty interesting working from below, though Terry was such a presence that everything around him sort of got pulled up to his level anyway. The same goes for when the tide eventually turns (after a cool dueling nip up!) - Jumbo is more than fine working on top but Terry is just magnetic fighting from underneath. At times it almost feels like a story of Terry's overzealousness and how it'll cost him. In the first fall there's a point where he has the chance to tag Dory, chooses instead to go it alone, then ends up getting shut down off a leapfrog attempt with a deep armdrag. In the second fall he jabs and weaves with Baba and obviously it turns out to be a mistake because Baba clonks him in the face with chops, Terry flying out the ring with an amazing bump through the ropes, landing upside down on a ringside table like he'd just been launched out a trebuchet. He also hadn't been stabbed repeatedly in the face by Abdullah and the Sheik yet so this wasn't the red hot uber babyface Terry we'd get in the coming years. It meant he wasn't above getting underhanded when a situation called for it, like when he gave Jumbo a piledriver on the floor to set up the Funks taking the first fall. When he drops the second fall for his team he has no interest in starting out the third and about swings on poor Joe Higuchi for trying to keep things on track. As that deciding fall went on both Funks got more and more surly, neither being afraid to break up pins with a knee to the neck or double up with nasty forearm strikes. I liked the finish with Jumbo reversing a vertical suplex and falling on Dory for the win, Baba realising at that very moment that 15 years down the line Jumbo will return the favour for the man who will ultimately unseat him as The Ace. I assume. There was some confusion as to how the reversal here came about and post-match the camera pans around to Terry picking Higuchi up ready to skull him with a brainbuster. 

Hokuto v Satomura, the lead-in tag!

Akira Hokuto & Mayumi Ozaki v Chigusa Nagayo & Meiko Satomura (GAEA, 3/11/01)

I haven't seen a lot of 00s Ozaki. Or really any post-90s Ozaki, honestly. I'll read about Ozaki matches from 2007 or 2017 or whatever and there'll almost always be mention of "interfering police" and I never really understood what that meant, but seeing this I guess it just means someone literally dressed as police interfering in the match. Normally the interference stuff wears thin to me but I haven't seen any of it in a while and this was basically a balls out sprint from about two minutes in, so it wasn't as grating as it can usually be. After having watched so much mid-late-90s Satomura over the last couple years, what this really felt like was her stepping up to the plate and showing she can absolutely hang on the level of the legends surrounding her. At a couple points she seemed almost sheepish about stooping to the level that Ozaki and Hokuto wanted to drag this to, preferring to wrestle rather than choke people with a chain or wrap it around her boot and kick people in the face. By the end I don't think she'd done the former but she had absolutely done the latter and Ozaki might've regretted bringing that chain into play in the first place. Hokuto and Ozaki - particularly Ozaki - were all about the chaos, going above and beyond to create as much of it as possible. They attached Chigusa and Meiko at the neck by a collar on the end of the chain, and there was a part where both of them tried to walk in separate directions only to get jolted back, a real stinger of a thing. There was one weird moment where Chigusa had Ozaki on her shoulders so Satomura could hit something or other, but it wound up being Ozaki suplexing her from her perch atop Chigusa and I'm not entirely sure what they were aiming for. Perhaps Satomura's innocent NAIVETY was her downfall. A lesson for us all, I'm sure. The last few minutes are super dramatic with Chigusa and Satomura determined to walk through fire and pull out the win, Chigusa putting the nail in Ozaki's coffin with the sit-out powerbomb while Satomura holds Hokuto at bay. I think I'm pretty well ready to finally see that singles match now. 

Whiskey & Wrestling 1400!

16 years! 1400 posts! Who in the almighty fuck thought I'd still be writing far too many words about the weird and stupid professional wrestling after all this time? Not me, I'll tell ye that. To celebrate the momentous occasion, like we celebrated post 1300 and 1200 before it, I watched some stuff I've wanted to check out forever and then also a 2020s FTR tag because people have been telling me to. I wrote words about them, but you can choose to ignore them if you wish. You can do what you like, friends, I'm not your granny. 

Midnight Rockers v Adrian Adonis & Bob Orton Jr. (AWA, 2/20/88)

It always kind of shocks me how gargantuan Adonis was late in his career. Every time I see him I'm like "holy moly Adonis was fucking STOUT!" And apparently he was starting to slim down a bit for one last run just before the car accident. So this wasn't even the biggest he'd been! He was shaped like a taller, rounder Brazo de Plata here which...I wouldn't have thought possible. I have no clue who the woman on commentary is but she tries to make a fat joke at least three times before telling us Adonis has been doing a lot of weightlifting recently, with the weight being on the end of a fork. Rotund he may be but this was an excellent performance from him and Orton, a real showcase of how to work someone over, build heat and cut off the babyface comebacks, sometimes through underhanded tactics, sometimes by getting mean and surly and demonstrating some wrestling proficiency. They take over after an awesome bit of the latter, with Michaels trying a big headlock takeover on Orton only to get caught and hit with a backbreaker, Adonis coming in to crush him with an elbow while Michaels was across Orton's knee. It was a cool counter tactic as just before this Jannetty took both of them down with a neat headlock/headscissors combo. Orton in particular has some really fun and varied offence here. There was one cutoff where it looked like he was going to whip Michaels across the ring and just floored with him a clothesline instead, he hit a brutal looking neckbreaker, then did the Dick Murdoch calf branding only the other way around, so he basically landed with his shin across Michaels' face! From a missed hot tag they chuck Michaels to the floor and Orton rams him into the post, and Shawn's bump is legit screwball. Then Orton just blitzes him with a punch flurry that you will rewind a dozen times. Adonis was throwing some great punches as well and his bionic elbows were tremendous, as if his strikes started to match Dusty's the more his physique did. Michaels is a great face in peril and an awesome bumper as you'd expect. On one of his cutoffs he practically tries to leap at Adonis only to get elbowed clean in the face and splat hard. Adonis wouldn't be outdone on that either though and even at his PLUMPEST he was still a freak for the bump, eating knees on a running splash attempt, getting bodyslammed in a red hot comeback spot, and after the hot tag going upside down in the corner with the speed of a man a quarter of his size. The match eventually breaks down and we don't get a particularly satisfying finish, but it still feels like one of the last great tag matches in AWA history. As far as heat segments go it was absolutely top drawer and I like to think Adonis and Orton could've had a sensational run in Crockett had Adonis not been in the accident.

El Satanico v Pirata Morgan (Hair v Hair) (AAA, 11/26/93)

Los Infernales explode! There might've been AAA boards around the ring, AAA graphics across the screen, but this was as much of a CMLL apuestas match as you'll get and all the better for it. I don't remember how these two even came to this point because a few months earlier they were teaming together, one last run around the block. Morgan was bleeding within a couple minutes, Satanico ramming his head into the turnbuckles, even turning him side on so that his covered eye socket got some as well. It was even Satanico who first went to the biting, the guzzling of the blood, the spitting it in the air like a freak. The first caida was only a few minutes long and it was basically a Satanico mauling. I don't know if it was intentional or not, though I do know Pirata Morgan and it wouldn't surprise me at all if it was, but leading into the backslide that ended the fall it looked like Morgan slipped on his own blood that had dripped onto the canvas, which is just sort of incredible or maybe horrific or both when you really think about it. Satanico's mouth was covered in blood between falls, like a cartoon character after eating a dozen punnets of cherries. The struggle and detail behind everything is where this was exceptional, especially in the tercera. Both are among the best detail-oriented wrestlers ever and they looked like a pair of guys on their last legs as the match wore on. At times Satanico would almost stumble into a takedown, then explode into a violent outburst before his meagre store of adrenaline ran out. At one point Morgan cracked Satanico with a backhander, Satanico fired back and went to run the ropes, so Morgan just nailed him in the sternum with a dropkick that was two-thirds desperation, one-third pure exhaustion. You could see the whites of Satanico's teeth when he gnawed on Morgan's forehead and you know for a fact Pirata Morgan would not be outdone if it came to a forehead-biting contest. Maybe there remained some mutual respect from those years where they were partners in crime because by the end they were determined to submit each other rather than slam the other's head between the barricades. Jake Roberts sat at ringside during this and I can't imagine he wasn't a fan of what he saw. One of the best apuestas matches of 1993. 

Toshiaki Kawada & Akira Taue v Hayabusa & Jinsei Shinzaki (All Japan, 11/23/97)

This was awesome stuff, and honestly about as much fun as I've had watching 90s All Japan in a long, long time. I don't want to beat the dead horse and go on about how that period of wrestling no longer holds a great deal of excitement for me now. I'll say that there's obviously some incredible wrestling there, some that I'll probably love in 2026 as much as I did when I first watched it in 2006. It's just something I've seen an awful lot of and it doesn't really play to my tastes the same now as it did then. The FMW deathmatch scrubs coming into Baba's house and effectively getting babyface'd by the home crowd? Well that's a little bit different. They should've gotten Tenryu and his lumpy misfits in as well, that might've been halfway decent. Kawada and Taue are not at all enamoured with their FMW opponents, however. This is All Japan Pro Wrestling, we do not deal in springboards or flashy nonsense! Neither take kindly to Shinzaki attempting his Undertaker rope-walking and immediately - and emphatically - shut him down. Kawada was particularly ornery about it and looked downright offended that Shinzaki would even attempt such stupidity. The crowd didn't like that, but if you've seen any 90s All Japan you know there's a good chance they circle back to it at some point and it'll probably be awesome when they do. Hayabusa stepping to the Demon Army of cantankerousness is great fun and I loved him kipping up into the surprise dropkick. The crowd did too and I really did not expect them to be this into team FMW. Kawada again seemed annoyed at some masked interloper trying to hang and bang with him so he chopped him as hard as possible several times. I guess it's easy to forget that Kawada used to be pretty awesome now and then. Hayabusa staring it down and asking for more was a rare occasion where that sort of thing actually worked and played into the story. He is not from this world, but his own world is every bit as worthy as this one and he'll defend it against someone who thinks it beneath them. After Shinzaki comes in off the hot tag they really build the hell out of the last 10 minutes. In that sense it was classic All Japan, except it had the new wrinkle of offence and wrestling moves that nobody else in All Japan was using, with everyone in attendance desperate to see all of it. Every time Hayabusa and Shinzaki threw Kawada and Taue's shit back at them the crowd went nuts. They'd try some things that would get blocked or countered the first time, but they'd persist and eventually it would pay off and every time the place went more and more bonkers. They're still huge underdogs at the end of the day though, and the crowd pretty much knew it, so whenever they needed to double up to seize an advantage they were actively encouraged. It leads to some amazing moments like the string of springboard splashes and Hayabusa's moonsault as the exclamation, then later Hayabusa stopping Kawada from hitting a suplex with a kick to the back, Shinzaki following up with his backflip kick, and Hayabusa hitting a perfect 450 after they manage to clear Taue out the ring. When Shinzaki grabs Taue in an arm-wringer for the third time the place erupts, then everyone goes full ballistic as he climbs the buckles and walks the top rope. The curveball of him leaping off early to catch an onrushing Kawada was fucking incredible. You could tell Kawada haaaated that Shinzaki was able to trot out his carny bullshit and he probably would've murdered Shinzaki if he reached him. Shinzaki hitting his praying powerbomb was an unreal nearfall and not already knowing the result coming in I found myself pulling massively for the FMW lads to get the win. In the end they couldn't quite manage it, but they got the well-earned standing ovation afterwards and looked sensational in defeat. Who knew the interpromotional wrestling could be this much fun? 

The Briscoes v FTR (ROH Supercard of Honor, 4/1/22)

Honestly, I was never all that interested in watching this series. I'm not really an FTR guy and most of the highly-praised FTR tags I've watched over the last few years haven't been for me. Too long, too much going on. But I've always liked the Briscoes and now Mark is one of my current favourites, so I went for it and I thought it was tremendous and about as good as it gets for modern day tag team wrestling. I guess there's no right or wrong way to work a tag match, but this one stayed as true to the things I love about tag team wrestling as any that I've seen in a long time. Even if this was a Dream Match - and for many it 100% was a dream match - it wasn't entirely Dream Match Wrestling, or at least not in the way I normally think of Dream Match Wrestling (I will stop capitalising that henceforth). Most dream match wrestling will lean too far into excess for my tastes, where the dream becomes putting on the biggest match possible and everything is in service of that. Even if a match is a DREAM~ match it should still be about winning the thing, and ultimately this felt like a contest between two teams who were trying to win, all in the pursuit of proving they were the best. They were also two teams who did not care for each other one bit and that'll always be more fun to me than people going out to have a respectful contest. The Briscoes look like hillbilly nutjobs and also wrestle like hillbilly nutjobs so everything feels like a fight. Nothing about the early stages here came off as rote and nothing was given easily. It was back and forth, but every momentum shift mattered and it was never haphazard. It was frenetic with a real sense of urgency, almost like an 80s New Japan tag where control was hard to come by, without anything seeming particularly cooperative or rehearsed. Nobody was doing stuff just to be doing it, no parity stand-offs, no extended reversal sequences to show everyone how good they were at doing armdrags, nothing where they kipped up at the same time for a staredown so the crowd could see they were watching something for the ages. They went about showing how good they were by ripping each other into headlocks, jamming the other on attempts to get out of them. Nobody was countering a headlock with a headscissors without some struggle. When Dax went into a headstand and popped up out of that headscissors, for a brief second I wondered if he wasn't going to lock eyes with Jay so the crowd could applaud his demonstration of skill. Instead he spat in his face and ran away when Jay wanted to kill him for it. Above all, there was a real nasty edge to everything. Dax would really snap down on a legdrop or throw a knee to the neck before tagging out, and neither team was shy about doubling up when the opportunity arose. Both teams tried cutting the ring off and keeping things in their own corner, FTR working more as subtle - and at times overt - heels, cunning and cerebral where the Briscoes were content for things to get messy. It makes sense when Dax looks like a supervillain who'd try and replace his nemesis' brain with a hamster's while Jay and Mark look like redneck militia. Dax would get frustrated, roll out the ring and throw a chair in. Jay's frustration would come from the referee catching it and removing it from play. Even the strike exchanges followed that track and they weren't just tacked on either. It made sense for them to happen in the first place when framed against the backdrop of two teams trying to prove a point. What made them work, though, was how nobody strayed from their character. The Briscoes would initiate those exchanges because they knew they'd thrive in them and eventually win them. When Mark does his redneck kung-fu shrieking like a madman you wonder why anyone would be stupid enough to engage. And Dax realises it too because as soon as he loses ground he ditches the chops and just punches Mark in the jaw (selling his own hand like a true pro). Basically they took a lot of things I wouldn't normally be keen on and made them great. That happened again about halfway in when things broke down and everyone spilled to the floor. A part of me was worried that they were about to go into an extended finishing run for like 20 minutes, but thankfully they went in the other direction. They kick off a proper heat segment when the FTR give Jay Briscoe a catapult into the underside of a table, which is an amazing transition spot and Jay even got himself some COLOUR for good measure. The heat segment itself isn't even that long but it's terrific, with FTR working the cut, Dax punching the cut and shaking out his fist, Wheeler yanking back on Jay's braid to peel the cut open like a sicko, fish hooking him with two hands, both of them throwing cheapshots to the bloody forehead whenever the ref's back was turned, it was brilliant stuff. This might actually be my favourite Dax Harwood performance ever. In addition to all the stuff already mentioned he would throw in some real vicious shit like wrapping Jay's braid around his fist and using it to snapmare him. They never hung around forever after the hot tag either. It was paced really well and didn't even have that many big nearfalls, certainly a lot fewer than I was expecting. I guess it makes sense given that they would've known they'd come back to this matchup down the line. Just a fantastic match, one that stacks up against any from the 2000s ROH heyday and honestly, a whole lot of the best US tag matches ever. 

So there we go. 16 years, 1400 posts. A bloody miracle, if you ask me. Here's to 1400 more. 

Flair & Tully v Dusty & Nikita!

Dusty Rhodes & Nikita Koloff v Ric Flair & Tully Blanchard (JCP Pro, 11/8/86)

With a longer heat segment and a halfway proper finish this is one of the best tag matches of the 80s. As is, it's merely an awesome match that's one of the best tags of 1986. Talk about looking a gift horse in the mouth. This crowd is absolutely fucking molten for the newly-turned Nikita and Dusty is also perhaps somewhat over so obviously the atmosphere is bonkers. We get 10 minutes of Flair and Tully bumping and stooging and showing a GARGANTUAN amount of ass and it was glorious stuff. Flair backs Dusty into the corner on a collar and elbow tie-up, then starts to back away clean so he can show how good a sport he is. He doesn't take more than one step before Dusty slaps him clean across the face, in no mood for any of the shit he's seen Flair pull a million times before. Flair is almost flabbergasted and definitely livid. Dusty was bamboozling everyone with his footwork and rhythm and hypnotic HIPS, blitzing Flair with punches and elbows and it's nearly impossible to conceive of a crowd that could eat anything up more than this crowd ate this up. There's one sequence where Dusty took on both Flair and Tully at the same time, unloading with those punches and elbows, stopping to bonk JJ on the apron who takes an amazing tangled up bump in the ropes, before putting the exclamation on it with a double knife edge chop, and it was as close to impeccable as you can get. Flair spits on Nikita so Nikita asks the crowd if they want him to get in the ring and let me tell you there is not a single thing this crowd could want more than that. Flair goes flying off a tie-up, Nikita points to his biceps, the place erupts. Then they did it again and the place erupted more and sometimes it doesn't need to be difficult. Nikita shrugs off a vertical suplex before cleaning house with the sickle, and there's a wide shot of him standing tall in the middle of the ring while Flair and Tully lie motionless on separate sides of the apron, Dusty coming in to rev things up another gear and I could watch this 27 hours a day no problem. The heels take over for a spell when they go after Dusty's hand, the one that the Horsemen broke during a recent parking lot mugging, and it was a wonderful three minutes. If they kept it going for seven I think someone might've tried to jump the barricade. This was particularly evident by how a GOODLY amount of people were fully irate when Flair thrusted his hips in their general direction. Him and Tully stomp on Dusty's hand, punch it, wrap it around the ropes and twist, Flair drops the knee on it, JJ wallops it with a shoe, then they exploit Nikita's soviet temper by drawing him in so they can both try and break the hand together. I thought the timing was weird on Dusty making his comeback, how he just sort of grabbed Tully in a figure-four abruptly, but you gotta love Nikita STEAMING across the ring to cut off Flair with so much venom he nearly piledrives himself horizontally into the turnbuckles. I don't remember top rope moves resulting in DQs many other times in Crockett so it felt like a bit of a cop out here. Again though, a few more minutes in the heat, a relatively decent finish, and this is up there with the reddest of red hot tags of the 80s. 

Yoshida v Yagi - The Queen of ARSION Classic

Mariko Yoshida v Hiromi Yagi (ARSION, 2/18/99)

Maybe the definitive Mariko Yoshida masterpiece. Hiromi Yagi was awesome here too, fair play to our girl, but I had Yoshida as the 10th greatest wrestler ever on the recent GWE vote and part of me wondered if it was too high and then I watched this and no, it was not too high even a wee bit. This show comes a year to the day since the very first ARSION show and in that time Mariko Yoshida has been a demon, largely unbeatable on the mat for a year straight. Aja could knock her head off and Futagami could catch her in a flash submission, but by and large Yoshida's run has been dominant. She's the Queen of ARSION title-holder for a reason. Maybe that sort of dominance can lead to complacency, or if not complacency then at least a false sense of security. She may have thought she wouldn't even need to stretch out after the opening because she planted Yagi with the Air Raid Crash and nearly got three, Yagi barely kicking out and immediately rolling to the floor while Yoshida flexed in the ring. She even flexed during the pin, one knee across Yagi's shoulders, almost a show of disrespect from a woman who wasn't typically prone to it. When Yagi came back in she was undeterred, though. She hit a German suplex and went straight to work, sure in her own skills. The first half of this was about as close to joshi RINGS as I've ever seen, maybe not necessarily in terms of flash but certainly in terms of struggle and quickness. Kana and Satomura have worked Ikeda v Ishikawa, but this is the first time I've truly thought of Tamura v Kohsaka. Yagi was a pit bull in the opening 10 minutes, even if you sensed that Yoshida was still queen. She was by no means arrogant and never took Yagi lightly, so if you expected that from the pin attempt at the start it was maybe you who underestimated Yoshida. She went at Yagi as forcefully as she'd gone at every other opponent before now, Yagi just gave her the most trouble, even if the champ didn't necessarily show it. If this was indeed RINGS then Yoshida would've been winning on points, Yagi having used up a few rope breaks while Yoshida hadn't used any, though she came close a couple times. It was almost dead on 10 minutes when Yoshida did choose to go for the ropes, but even then it was more because Yagi rolled her over into them just as she grabbed the cross armbreaker. Yoshida looked concerned for the first time though, and two minutes later there was no mistaking she had to scramble for the ropes to break another armbar. Her selling of the arm in the back half was incredible and she looked in real danger. If she was in a proper fight against Yagi with TWO good arms how would she go about it with one? Yagi only grew in confidence as well and this was by a distance the furthest Yoshida had been pushed to this point. Yoshida with her back against the wall is a fucking animal of the highest order and some of what she did in the back half was phenomenal. The way she bridged out of another armbar to apply the most ridiculous guillotine choke - very deliberately with the good arm - had my jaw on the floor. Yagi just kept going for armbars and kimuras and the more she did the more relentless Yoshida had to be. It feels like I repeat myself every time I write anything about a Yoshida match, but there's never been anyone better at milking a near-submission than Yoshida and that place fully bit on her tapping to the cross armbreaker. It helped that Yagi was equally determined to take that arm apart, at one point bridging out of Yoshida's attempt at side control and rolling into a sort of majistral cradle, used in turn to set up yet another armbar. Yoshida was forced to reverse an Irish whip while shielding the bad arm and even Aja never had her operating with quite this much vulnerability. The final minute is as good as it gets for selling a submission hold and building drama. Yagi desperately tries to buck and squirm out of Yoshida's choke, but Yoshida is ferocious and when the python has you, good luck not passing out. What a fucking tremendous match. The very peak of Yoshida and the crown jewel in a year as good as any a wrestler has had. Maybe having her as the 10th best ever was too low.  

The Fantastics in 1988 (part 1)

I want to watch everything we have from the Fantastics in 1988. Some of it I've seen at one point or another in the last 20 years, some of it never. I like southern style tag team wrestling. This feels like a worthy undertaking. 

The Fantastics v Jack Victory & John Tatum (WCCW, 1/4/88)

There have been very few wrestlers in the history of this great sport to do the whiny pouty faces like John Tatum. He has the most punchable, ridiculous face imaginable, an obnoxious weasel with zero redeeming qualities, practically weeping at the crowd's ridicule, someone with enough self-awareness to know that the face he possesses is a gift and not a burden and uses it to make a building full of drunk rednecks want to throw things at him. It's quite frankly amazing dedication to his craft. Jack Victory had also gotten really good around this time, albeit for different reasons. I love how early on he just picked up Fulton with ease and press slammed him, which forced the Fantastics to lean on their skill and PROFICIENCY to create advantages. And really Tommy Rogers hitting three perfect dropkicks in a row is about as perfect a show of skill and proficiency as it gets. Tatum is an incredible stooge in the opening stretch and takes the Buddy Rose bump out to the floor, screwing his face up afterwards like a sniveling child. The heels do the blind arm wringer spot to Rogers twice, Tatum passing Tommy's arm to Victory while the referee is containing Fulton, then on the third attempt it backfires and Rogers feeds Tatum's arm to an unsuspecting Victory. Tatum is mystified and inconsolable all at once. When they do eventually take over they manage it by throwing Fulton into the barricade and Fulton ends up bleeding pretty heavily during the heat. For as pathetic as Tatum may look when being humiliated, he's someone who will flip a switch and stomp your guts like he's trying to burst a balloon. Some of the stuff he and Victory were doing during distraction spots was properly vicious and I wasn't really expecting that from a regular TV match. They even dragged Fulton over to one of the cameras and held his bloody face up to it, a warning perhaps to other good looking fellers around those parts. I was ready for Tommy Rogers to come in swinging after the hot tag, but before it ever arrived they took it in another direction and went to the finish, Tatum smashing Fulton in the face with a microphone to break up a small package and Victory capitalising. It leaves plenty on the table for a return match, one where you hope the Fantastics can get some revenge. 

The Fantastics & Solomon Grundy v Jack Victory, John Tatum & The Real Thing (WCCW, 2/12/88)

There was a lot going on here. Grundy is billed from Pig Knuckles, Kentucky and I have no idea if that's actually a place or not. It sounds like it might be. I'll be honest, I don't know much about Kentucky outside of the show Justified. The Real Thing is Rip Morgan and billed from New Zealand, which is actually true. Before the bell he does the Haka and the commentator calls it a Norwegian war dance. Ordinarily a match involving Tommy Rogers where Tommy Rogers is the least featured wrestler in the thing will be disappointing, but our boy Jack Victory just about made up for it with an awesome performance. He threw some tremendous punches here, flattened the significantly portlier Solomon Grundy with a killer clothesline, then took a wild bump to the floor off a dropkick. John Tatum has one absolutely incredible weepy facial expression close-up and then so does Bobby Fulton and for a babyface you realise Fulton doesn't really have the most endearing face. His leaping headscissors takedown out the corner was very cool, though. Grundy plays big boy face in peril and it was fine stuff, then later gets chucked over the top rope and splats like a fucking maniac on the concrete. Real Thing is supposed to be some sort of crazy person or whatever and to be fair he was a pretty fun menace running up and down the apron, putting boots to the babyfaces, hitting double teams when the ref' was distracted, all with a sort of manic Ultimate Warrior energy. Really fun TV 6-man tag. Everyone was motivated, it had some heat going in and they built on that as it went. 

Revisiting 90s Joshi #60

Akira Hokuto & Chigusa Nagayo v KAORU & Maiko Matsumoto (GAEA, 2/16/97)

Maybe my favourite dynamic of 90s GAEA is the rookies against the veterans. I guess it comes with the makeup of the roster, one that was relatively thin to begin with, where they clearly made a point of spotlighting their young stars in the hopes of moulding them into something special. It feels like on every show there's at least one match where you have some scrawny teenager getting the ever-loving shit kicked out of them by one of the biggest stars in joshi history. It's the ultimate trial by fire and there's no greater fire for Maiko Matsumoto - who I have never heard of in my life and couldn't tell you if I'd seen her wrestle a match - than Chiggy and Hokuto. All Maiko can really do is an atomic drop, and I guess now and then a janky legdrop. That doesn't stop her from running at the legends before the bell's even rung, probably knowing she's about to get demolished but ready to go out on her shield all the same. It takes about 10 seconds for her to get shut down and the first stretch of the match is basically her getting tormented while KAORU can only look on. Chigusa was GLEEFULLY beating on this poor schmuck, holding Maiko's hand out juuuust enough that KAORU would try and tag her only for the hand to be snatched back at the last second. Hokuto was the Dangerous Queen and everything that entailed, unfortunately for Maiko Matsumoto. Chigusa had her in a seated full nelson while slapping her repeatedly on the back and shoulder - the latter heavily taped - then Hokuto came in and they put her in a double cross armbreaker, which was frankly unnecessary. Hokuto never forgave Matsumoto for that early attack and even started biting her on the shoulder at one point. Eventually Hokuto gets fed up playing with her food and just chucks Maiko into her own corner so she can tag out. From there it looks like Maiko will only be of use as a distraction or getting in the way long enough for KAORU to do something, maybe holding someone in place so her partner can hit a springboard. But then Maiko strings off half a dozen atomic drops on Hokuto and for a second we believe in miracles. Hokuto shows us all why she's one of the best ever by selling these atomic drops like they're taking an actual toll, hobbling a little more after each, perhaps showing a little desperation for good measure. Of course she killed the kid dead in the end and there was never really any doubt about it, but still, Maiko will learn from it. She will learn and it is not the last I will see of her (she retired two years later. It's likely this is actually the last I will see of her). 

Mantopoulos! Roger Delaporte! The 1960s French Catch!

Roger Delaporte v Vasilios Mantopoulos (French Catch, 3/23/68)

It's been a while since I've visited my favourite pro wrestling Vasilios. Delaporte I haven't actually seen before, but enough people have told me to watch him that this pairing excited me. There was a fairly significant size difference in favour of Delaporte, who sort of worked as a bully at points but also a bit of a craven shithead, which is really one of the best combinations you can get. Delaporte reminded me of Dick Murdoch here, the way he moved, his body shape, his trunks, his hair, his sneaky athleticism despite not looking like much of an athlete. The biggest similarity was how he would crack Mantopoulos in the jaw. Mantopoulos is a wizard and would draw Delaporte in with TRICKERY, but Delaporte is far from a simple weasel and has ample skill of his own. Then when the skill didn't work he'd get to the cheating, sometimes by grabbing Mantopoulos by the throat and choking him. At times he'd just thump a downed Mantopoulos in the spine with brutal kicks, like something out of a WAR undercard. There was some amusing stuff with the referee here, who was dressed like he'd just come from officiating the Snooker World Championships. There was a great moment where Delaporte backed the ref' into the corner with his derrière, then kept him there long enough for Mantopoulos to charge in with a dropkick. Delaporte moved at the last second and the ref' got toasted, which resulted in Mantopoulos getting himself a warning. Delaporte then pointed to his head because he's that much smarter than everyone else. By the end the ref' had wound up both men and Mantopoulos gave the fella a diving headbutt to the gut three times in a row, none of them accidental. I will endeavour to watch more Delaporte. I will endeavour to watch ALL of the Mantopoulos. 

Darby v MJF - Title vs Hair

Darby Allin v MJF (Darby's World Title v MJF's Hair) (AEW Double or Nothing, 5/24/26)

The Darby world title reign has been just about my favourite thing in wrestling in forever. I didn't get to see the PPV live, but I bought the replay when I got home on Sunday night and watched the whole show unspoiled over the next day. I hadn't bought a wrestling PPV in about 15 years! And I pretty much enjoyed the whole show, even if I never paid a ton of attention to some of the matches. It was primarily a purchase driven by this match though, and the winner being up in the air made the live experience (well, blind experience) a really fun one. I haven't seen all of the matches these two have had together but I've at least seen ONE, and that was the Full Gear 2021 match that I wound up liking way more than I'd have expected if you'd told me beforehand how it was going to go. MJF has never seen Darby as anything more than a stunt show idiot and certainly not a professional wrestler on the level of MJF himself. In 2021 their feud was built around Friedman talking shit about Darby's deceased uncle and then the match started with a headlock because MJF said Darby couldn't do one or something. I don't know, look it up. MJF won that match when he hit Darby with a punch while wearing that big stupid ring he has and then pinned him with a side headlock takeover. Darby won the belt from MJF last month with the same headlock takeover pin (after giving him a low blow). If you'd asked me how I figured this match would start I wouldn't have needed to go very far down the list before I said "maybe a side headlock takeover?" There were a number of callbacks in this, even obvious to someone like me who is not exactly steeped in the LORE of AEW. The Savage/Steamboat roll-up sequence is a tired trope at this point but I wasn't shocked they went to it and it isn't the first time they've done it either. What they played off most, though, was the last month of Darby's career, his title reign, and I can at least say I've watched that. I thought in general it came off really well. This was Darby living fast and dying hard, going out the only way he knows how. He said as much in the lead up to this - he doesn't care about legacy, he cares about living in the moment and taking on anyone who challenges him for the belt. He's done that and then some, defending the title seven times prior to this, sometimes twice in a week. He could only hold out for so long before exhaustion or wear and tear caught up to him. Against Guevara he passed out while applying the Scorpion Deathlock, the first sign that he maybe can't keep burning this particular candle at both ends. It happened again here and it might've ultimately cost him. He couldn't come back from the abuse he normally puts himself through while dishing it out to whoever is across from him. The Coffin Drop off the scaffold was effectively his last gambit, but he cracked his head on the table or the stage and when you add blood-loss to his existing physical state you kind of knew where it was going. As it wound down I found myself feeling deflated, not in the match itself but rather in the knowledge that the run was coming to an end. I thought the payoff was great, the finish devastating as both the proverbial nail in the coffin as well as the physical, precisely BECAUSE it left me deflated. I wanted my boy to win, to continue the reign, continue taking on all comers. None of that happened and I was gutted. And that's kind of the whole point, isn't it? Even to a jaded old prick like me, that's kind of the point. 

Team Taco in All Japan! Kurisu v Monkey Magic! Captain Redneck v Muta!

Daisuke Ikeda & Takeshi Ono v Tsuyoshi Kikuchi & Yoshinari Ogawa (All Japan, 6/29/97)

Here we have a window into a world in which Kikuchi jumped ship to Battlarts. I guess it's also a window into Team Taco jumping ship to All Japan on a permanent basis but that's a far less fun prospect for me personally. This was a mean nasty fight and you could tell it might go that way from the intros, just how Ikeda was pacing back and forth in front of the home team. Kikuchi offers up a handshake at the bell, and it's accepted by Ikeda but in a way that tells you there won't be much in the way of pleasantries. The first exchange of strikes led to Kikuchi absolutely drilling Ono with some of the nastiest forearms you've ever seen him eat and forget about the All Japan bar, these were set against the Battlarts bar. Team Taco were sort of treated like invading scum here and the home side never seemed particularly interested in selling a ton, but it gave the match a real gritty feel and Ikeda and Ono were more than happy to take their licks. Ogawa was in full heel mode despite being the home favourite, working the headlock on Ono, grabbing the hair when Ono tried to shake him, spitting on Ikeda when he drew attention to it. They brawl to the floor where Ogawa tries to set about Ono with a chair, the ref' takes it from him, and as they make their way back in the ring you can see Ikeda and Kikuchi in the background fully punching each other in the face and staring dead-eyed in response. There's a camera shot of Kobashi, Akiyama and Fuchi standing by the curtain watching the match and as it pans back to the ring Ikeda volleys Kikuchi as hard as humanly possible in the spine. Ikeda throws several strikes and Kikuchi somehow stays upright, so Ono spin kicks him in the back of the head and Ikeda fucking MURDERS him with one of the sickest lariats ever thrown in an All Japan OR Battlarts ring. No wonder Kikuchi was reduced to a snarling little demon bastard within a few years. After the Team Taco Doomsday Device (!!) I thought Ono was actually going to tap Kikuchi with the octopus stretch, but Ogawa breaks it up and Kikuchi folds Ono like a deck chair with a disgusting triple German. For a guy who's one of the greatest punching bags in wrestling history, Kikuchi has one hell of a mean streak in him and it turns out he had it before Liger rocked into town in '02. A rematch of this on Team Taco turf would've ruled immensely, I'm sure. 

Masa Kurisu v Monkey Magic Wakita (FMW, 12/1/89)

The stage is set. The combatants are primed, ready. They shake hands, respect mutual. The bell rings. Before its din wavers, Kurisu has punched Monkey Magic Wakita in the face. If you've seen one Kurisu match you have a pretty good idea how this is going to go coming into it, and it more or less did go that way, but young Monkey Magic held his own more than I would've expected, mostly through his dogged determination to submit Kurisu with a kneebar. He went to that kneebar several times throughout the match and we can only tip our cap to the lad. Kurisu was still Kurisu, though. He would not be bodyslammed and in turn would bodyslam Wakita as hard as he possibly could. Wakita might've had an arm injury coming in because Kurisu goes after it with brutal stomps and Wakita sells it all really well, very vocal and always trying to shield it when making any comebacks. Kurisu breaks out of those kneebar attempts by axe kicking the arm and as Wakita lies curled up on the mat grasping his arm Kurisu stands up and stomps on the elbow like he's trying to kill the world's sturdiest cockroach. The match spills to the floor and Kurisu just annihilates the kid with a chair shot to the head, then as Wakita is down Kurisu repeatedly smashes him with the chair, the handheld camera position missing the visual of each shot but catching perfectly Wakita's anguished squeals. As soon as Kurisu put him in the kimura you knew it was all over but the shouting. 

Dick Murdoch v The Great Muta (NWA Worldwide, 6/17/89)

I love the Muta face paint from this period, set against the lighting of these late 80s/early 90s NWA/WCW arenas. It always reminds me of seeing him on old WCW tapes as a kid. We didn't have WCW on tv anywhere I can remember so I would rent PPVs from Global Video - or Cassie's Videos, which was the independent video store around the corner from my house. They had a fruit machine that I wasn't supposed to play until I turned 18 but of course Cassie's Videos was long shut down by the time that day arrived - and Muta always mesmerised me. The way he looked, the way he moved, the way he was presented, there was nothing like Muta in the WWF, other than maybe the time Kabuki showed up and hit Undertaker with a bucket and everyone put him in a casket. I loved JR's comment about Murdoch having worked more tours of the orient than anyone else in the NWA so this might be a tricky matchup for Muta, who's basically been a MENACE in the company since arriving. Murdoch works as lovable old redneck, or as lovable as your tolerance can stretch given rumours of his salty proclivities around minorities, spry even as he ages, hitting an impressive dropkick and kipping up sharply out of a top wristlock. Both crash into each other off the ropes with a thud, and as Muta hits the deck I love how Murdoch takes a beat to hunch over selling the impact before hitting the opposite ropes. Muta nails him a nice jumping spin kick and Murdoch takes a big spill out to the floor, perhaps a sign that Murdoch has never encountered a man such as Muta on those orient excursions. Muta working the armpit nerve hold is better than the trapezius hold because he can twist and groove the shoulder at various angles while Murdoch looks to the crowd for confirmation that yes we do indeed want you to punch him in the face. In a fair and just world Murdoch would've took this one home in the end, but Gary Hart distracts the referee long enough for Muta to mist him and steal one. Good guys always finish last, I guess. 

A couple more from '87 Fujiwara

Yoshiaki Fujiwara & Nobuhiko Takada v Riki Choshu & Kuniaki Kobayashi (New Japan, 7/12/87)

There are few things better than Fujiwara taking it upon himself to make Choshu's life a misery. Every time they're in a ring together you know there will be a point - or perhaps several points - where Fujiwara will grab Choshu by the throat and drag him to the canvas. I don't know how many times he did it here but it was a lot more than once, and that bled into his interactions with Kobayashi as well, as he'd get whipped off the ropes and on the way back he'd wrap his hands around Kobayashi's throat and tackle him. The mere sight of Choshu drove him to madness and if you were on Choshu's side you were getting it too. Takada was all energy, all kicks. The first time he came in Fujiwara refused to leave and just kept choking and stomping on Choshu while Takada knew better than to intervene. Takada tries to put the Fujiwara armbar on Choshu but of course Choshu fights it, so Fujiwara storms in and does it himself. The ref' throws his hands up like "fuck sake mate again with this??" Kobayashi learns the hard way not to ram Fujiwara's head into a turnbuckle, trying it three times only to get clonked with a headbutt in return. Then Fujiwara headbutts Choshu who was minding his own business on the apron. In the end Choshu put Takada down with the lariat and I'm not sure Fujiwara was upset that his team lost or that he could no longer assault Choshu within the legal confines of a wrestling match. There are times I wonder if he isn't the best to ever do it. 

Yoshiaki Fujiwara v Antonio Inoki (New Japan, 5/20/87)

Inoki brings out an entirely different side of Fujiwara. With Choshu he becomes a possessed maniac. His only concern is raw violence. He wants to hurt Choshu, maybe even humiliate him. I'm not sure he actually cares about winning a wrestling match. I think there's a part of him that wants Choshu to give it back. I think he likes the idea of dragging Choshu into a fight he doesn't want, just to see how he responds. Or maybe he just hates his guts. It's very different with Inoki. When he sees Choshu he immediately sees red, whereas with Inoki it never feels like there's any personal animosity. I don't know if he's ever tried to crush Inoki's windpipe with his bare hands. I'll admit there's a good chance he has at one point or another. It's not EVERY time, though. I think he likes fucking with Inoki and I think it's because he knows all of Inoki's insecurities. WE know all of Inoki's insecurities. Inoki may act above it all, play it off as Choshu or Maeda or whoever having the issue with HIM and it being a one-way street, his retaliation forced but without malice, a king defending his crown only when pushed. But that's horse shit. We know enough of Inoki the man to know there's a thin line between that and the character, and we know that if you come at Inoki, the man or the character, he'll put you down. He relished that show of strength, when he could lash out against a challenger and put them in their place. He wanted everyone to know what he was capable of. He just wanted you to think it was THEIR idea. Fujiwara was never interested in the crown. A man like that could never have it anyway and I think he knew it. Rather than dethrone Inoki, Fujiwara wanted to get a rise out of him. He wanted to beat him too, of course he did, but beating Inoki and dethroning him are two very different obstacles and achieving the former wouldn't necessarily lead to the latter. Secure in that knowledge, Fujiwara would seek satisfaction elsewhere. I don't think he was particularly bothered about hiding the fact, but you could tell he took great pleasure in making Inoki retaliate, pushing him to the point of outburst, shining a light on Inoki's arrogance, his capriciousness. Inoki would usually stop himself short of emptying the clip, usually because Fujiwara would stop himself short of doing enough to warrant it. But now and then he'd push the right button and Inoki would react exactly how Fujiwara wanted, and Fujiwara would smirk and Inoki would know the facade had slipped, if only for a second. Even in a match like this, one on an untaped house show where truthfully not a lot happened, the dynamic played out the same. It never felt like they were just killing time or sitting in holds - there was a fight to escape everything and they worked for every inch, obvious even in the handheld footage. The pacing was pretty stop-start but they'd intersperse the grappling with some stand-up, some tit for tat with strikes, and basically every time it was Fujiwara who started it, first with a few slaps, then with the headbutts. Eventually it got far enough under Inoki's skin that he unloaded with stomps to the head like he was Sayama and this was 1984. If Fujiwara took any satisfaction in that you couldn't tell. My favourite parts of this were when one of them would try something, have it thwarted, then need to change strategy for the next attempt. When Inoki tried to take Fujiwara over with a snapmare, Fujiwara repeatedly jammed it by putting his foot down so Inoki leapt into a headscissors, but even the takeover wasn't graceful because Fujiwara had no interest in giving it easily. As far as Fujiwara v Inoki goes this was pretty low key and in that sense you maybe wish it was televised, if for no reason other than having some close-up shots of the struggles and grimaces and expressions of both. Still it's these two and we take what we can get. 

Darby v Rush - another match made in heaven

Darby Allin v Rush (No Count Outs) (AEW Dynamite, 3/25/26)

Here's a phrase I use a lot when I watch Darby against someone I've never seen him matched up against before: "of course this could ONLY be awesome." I say that so often because I want to watch Darby against pretty much anybody anyway, but Rush? Man c'mon. How could this be anything other than awesome? There was a point in time, about 12-13 years ago now, where Rush was my favourite wrestler in the world. I was following CMLL weekly and he and Casas were trying to kill each other nearly every show. Then I stopped following CMLL weekly. I haven't really followed any wrestling weekly since then, I guess until the last few weeks with AEW, and in the last 10 years I've probably only seen half a dozen Rush matches. I can tell you this, though - he is still now what he was then. Hardly anybody works with the sort of unhinged intensity as Rush. They call him El Toro Blanco and he works exactly like it. As Schiavone says, you mess with the bull, you get the horns. Darby never even needed to mess with the bull here, Rush just charged him at the start and chucked Darby off the turnbuckles to the floor. The match hadn't even started but the horns were out. There were points where Rush was a walking, raving, roid-raged madman, pacing around ready to fight with anything in front of him. The yoots might call it AURA or some such, but Rush had an air of menace about him that was best avoided. He almost reminded me of late 90s Scott Steiner where he'd just do whatever he wanted during matches, sometimes fully and blatantly booting someone in the balls in front of the referee, and nobody had it in them to do anything about it. What are you gonna do, tell him not to do that? And then what? This was that and when Rush grabbed Taz's water bottle and poured the whole thing over himself I loved how Taz was like yeah sure go for it. Nobody wanted the horns and they were happy to let Darby have them. And obviously Darby was an amazing foil for all of it. He got whipped into the steps outside the ring and his flip bump that about smashed his calves off the barricade was nuts. His first tope attempt hit nothing but the base of the announce table and it landed him with a cut forehead, which Rush sunk his teeth into both literally and figuratively. When he tried to go blow for blow with Rush he got wrecked, one slap to the face sounding like a fucking gunshot. The comeback would need to be fast and sudden and as usual he'd need to take a risk. His first opening came when Rush started lounging in the middle of the ring, Darby sprinting out the corner to jump on him and rain punches. The second tope landed and it was Rush who got clattered into the table this time, then Darby followed up with a missile dropkick while Rush sat dazed in a chair. They had to be clever with the finish because Darby had spent about 85% of the match getting assaulted, and even at the best of times it's hard to have someone like Rush lose convincingly and make it plausible. I thought the way they did it was great, with Rush charging across the ring with the corner dropkick, Darby avoiding it and using his smarts to roll him up. Every Darby match is like watching him solve a puzzle in real time. Usually the puzzle is figuring out how to use his own body as a weapon without breaking that weapon in the process. His opponent is a door and Darby's the battering ram. This time he picked the lock instead, and the look Rush gave him afterwards makes me hope they get to do this again at some point soon. 

Kaientai DX against the M-Pro boys! A lucharesu~ classic!

Dick Togo, Taka Michinoku, MEN's Teioh, Sho Funaki & Shiryu v Great Sasuke, Super Delfin, Gran Hamada, Gran Naniwa & Masato Yakushiji (Michinoku Pro, 12/16/96)

This might just be the pinnacle of the style. It's been about 10 years since I last watched most of these guys; longer than that since watching them together in a match like this. The first comp tape of Japanese wrestling I ever bought was Jeff Lynch's best of M-Pro set, which was like 12 discs and cost about 40 quid and took as many days to get delivered. It was well worth it. That then turned me onto things like Toryumon and eventually Dragon Gate, which I started following in real time and buying Dragon Gate shows every month. Before too long I stopped doing that because it turns out Dragon Gate just wasn't really that enjoyable. Stylistically it might've been the spiritual successor to M-Pro, but I didn't find the wrestlers as good, it didn't have the CHARM of peak M-Pro, and my tastes had changed enough that my money was better spent elsewhere. Somewhere along the line the M-Pro evolutions lost me with how much STUFF they did. The M-Pro guys did plenty of stuff as well, but I cared more about those wrestlers than any of the ones that followed and so at the end of the day, I could still have fun watching M-Pro in a way I couldn't with the promotions that spun off from it. This was 100 miles an hour and never really slowed down for a second, but there was never a point where it felt like an exhibition to me, never just an extended run of cool moves and sequences and nearfalls. Maybe someone who doesn't have the sort of attachment to this particular time period of this particular promotion that I do would feel differently. Maybe to that person, Masato Yoshino, CIMA and BxB Hulk are the pinnacle and these guys are dated. To that I say you are entitled to your opinion and you're also wrong but fair enough. This had a proper sense of animosity from the start, more so than any other great M-Pro matches I can think of, and this is a promotion where GETTIN' CHIPPY was the norm. When one exchange was won and the next opponent came in, it didn't feel like it's because it was their turn to do so because that's how they'd laid it out. It was frantic and someone else would be in there immediately and it felt like that's because their teammate just got dropped. They were the next man up and there was no point pissing about. There was struggle and the first attempt at something might get cut off, but that didn't mean the guy trying it would just forget and move on. Naniwa did his little crab walk along the middle rope early on, the thing he would do to set up an elbow drop, and KDX weren't in the mood for it so they shut him down. He eventually fought back and went for it again, and as he did so Sasuke came in to hold Taka in place, the latter trying to wriggle free only to eat the elbow anyway. The early build was great and they used it to tease a bunch of dives. Basically every person in the match has a signature dive so the PA guy in the building was yelling over the mic for people to scatter every other minute. None of the dives were hit though - every time someone ran the ropes to set one up the potential recipient got out of dodge so the guy in the ring had to stop himself short. The crowd were ready for all of them but the wrestlers weren't ready to give them one yet. Masato Yakushiji was dressed like a Christmas elf in his green pyjamas and got thrown around the ring early, so I loved him being the first one to actually score on his dive, his cool basement slide headscissors that sent Togo skidding about 10 feet across the floor. Of course the place went nuts for it and they stayed nuts the rest of the way. Yakushiji was actually brilliant the entire time here, whether it was working from below taking a stomping or hitting spectacular armdrags and ranas, his dance partner Dick Togo the perfect base for all of it. The overall tetchiness really ramped up the crowd heat, so every piece of interference or double- or triple-teaming by the heels was booed while every time the babyfaces gave it back they were met with cheers. This was not a crowd there just to see Good Pro Wrestling, they wanted to see their boys lay a beating on the punks. Taka was a heat-seeking little rat bastard so Sasuke launched him over about six rows of chairs, then Taka threw one of those chairs in a rage and everyone booed him all the louder. There wasn't really a prolonged heat segment in the middle which might've propelled this into upper tier MOTDC territory, but the mini stretch on Sasuke was tremendous and capped with Teioh and Taka crushing his skull with a double dropkick. Sasuke at least got his revenge later when Togo went up top and Sasuke flung a chair at him from the floor. The last few minutes are as hectic as the very best M-Pro, with guys flying into big bombs and exchanges and the heat continually building, never reaching a point of diminishing returns with the nearfalls. There were even some ludicrous All Japan style head drops if that's your thing - Yakushiji landing all the way up on his neck off a Dick Togo German suplex, Shiryu and Naniwa both getting backdropped fully on top of their heads. Just an outstanding bit of wrestling.