January 1993

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The junior tag was much faster and livelier paced and just a really fun match. One thing that's different between early 90s junior indy wrestling and today's junior wrestling is that back then everything felt made up on the spot, nothing felt overly contrived or choreographed, and I like that a lot. Even when Motegi busts out a dive it feels like something he just decided to do in the moment, and thus much more exciting. Motegi is generally awesome in these matches as he always does something entertaining, like randomly locking in an awesome ground cobra twist in this match. Matsuzaki I liked a lot on the previous OPW show and he looked good again here throwing hard kicks…

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Yes, it‘s Kandori taking on 5 girls in a row. It may sound preposterous on paper, but it ends up totally working in practise. You can talk about how this may have buried half the LLPW roster, but realistically only Saito and Handa have a chance of lasting longer than 5 minutes against Kandori here, and both are smartly placed at the beginning and end of the match. This first match up is Kandori vs. Saito. I was worried about this, thinking Kandori might squish Saito, but they had a fierce competitive match. Both went for the kill right out of the gate and it was intense stuff. Saito belted Kandori with her signature hard kicks and Kandori fired back with her s…

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Takada must have given a killer pep talk at the UWFi annual Christmas party because this is also Bad News Allen's best match to date. Granted, that doesn't mean it was a GOOD match, but at least he came off a little more believable here. He does his usual schtick until Miyato stuns him with a rolling solebutt to the gut and escapes the reverse armbar. But Allen comes off strong in the finish, sweeping the leg, judo throwing Miyato down and tapping him with the armbar.

Gary ain't fucking around and immediately belly-to-belly suplexes Dennis. The ground stuff is whatever but nobody is paying to see Gary Albright work a hold. No, they pay to see him DESTROY Koslowski with a German suplex, Jesus. Koslowski, looking a bit loopy, manages a gutwrench suplex on Albright and sends him to the ropes with an armbar. But after another belly-to-belly, Albright puts on the full nelson and KOs him with the dragon suplex. Gary Albright squashes are something else.

Gene Lydick is clean shaven, looking like a true superstar, and while he hasn't clicked quite yet, that isn't the big news. The big news is that Tom Burton just had his best performance to date. This was actually a lot of fun, with everyone throwing suplexes. Nakano/Anjoh are all over each other, Nakano's suplexes are pretty, Anjoh's knees are plentiful, and Burton is giving it his all, even if his all sucks. He's throwing Germans and knees and clubbing forearms. After he pops Nakano with a slap, he tries for maybe a powerbomb? but Nakano slickly counters out into the Fujiwara armbar for the submission.

I think Steve Day's got his takedowns down. He responds to Kanehara's opening quick hands with a belly-to-belly suplex, and then he keeps using arm whip throws to down Kanehara but he can't follow up on the mat. Oh well. Kanehara sends him to the ropes a couple of times but in the end, Day deadlifts him with a German suplex, arm whips him down and taps him with the armbar. Best Steve Day match so far? Yup. Good match? Okay match.

Another really good match and strong showing from Severn, who has quickly become the best American dude in the promotion outside of maybe Gary Albright. Severn was born to SLAM and that's perfectly okay in my book because Kiyoshi Tamura was born to slip-n-slide. Tons of solid matwork in this with a well-conveyed back-and-forth struggle for holds and intuitive transitions. I liked Severn's leg trip takedown and then when Tamura tries smacking him, Severn answers with knees, a dope front chancery suplex and an underhook suplex. He almost overhead suplexes poor Tamura on his head. Tamura tries for an armbar, then goes to the scissored armbar and finally a choke when nothing …

Now this ruled! Kakihara rules! Look, Kaki doesn’t want your handshakes, he just wants to slap you dead, which he tries to do on Sano, taking him down right out of the gate in a flurry of open hands. Sano tries the knees but Kakihara knees him right back and takes him down with a big suplex. When Sano tries to slow things down by sitting in a front mount, Kaki works his way out and around, into a front necklock, and then delivers a necklock suplex! Sano then takes control of the situation, working his way into a single leg crab, which he turns into an STF when Kaki doesn't tap, really wrenching the neck. That's an STF. They trade strikes, Sano hits a cool underhook suplex…