The Microscope

She has always been a wrestler that I've never considered to be in the GWE conversation because of her longevity, having a only 7 year career hurts a lot when you compare her to other candidates, I also want to point out that she wasn't only a deathmatch wrestler but also a great singles and tag worker with Combat Toyoda as her partner. I saw that many people underrate her while others overrate her so I'll do my best to see where her career fits with a short retrospective of her FMW and AJW work.

Brock Lesnar is one of my all-time favorites. Let's do this. Recommended Brock Viewing (plain = very good, bold = great, red = exceptional) Brock Lesnar vs Jeff Hardy (WWF Backlash - 4/21/2002) Brock Lesnar vs Hulk Hogan (WWE Smackdown - 8/6/2002) Brock Lesnar vs The Rock (WWE Summerslam - 8/25/2002) Brock Lesnar vs The Undertaker (WWE Unforgiven - 9/22/2002) Brock Lesnar vs The Undertaker (Hell in a Cell) (WWE No Mercy - 10/20/2002) Brock Lesnar vs Big Show (WWE Survivor Series - 11/17/2002) Brock Lesnar vs Big Show (WWE Royal Rumble - 1/19/2003) Brock Lesnar & Chris Benoit vs Kurt Angle, Shelton Benjamin & Charlie…

I've started watching the DVDVR 80s Memphis set and this thread is basically my motivation to finish the whole set. I'll start my trip to Memphis with two matches from the 70s that I couldn't pass on watching. Let me know if there is anything else from the pre-80s era that's worth seeking out. Jerry Lawler vs. Bill Dundee (8/22/77) Dundee's hair is on the line, but Lawler had put up not only his car, but his manager's hair too. This has a slow start. Lawler is a heel here and he's all condescending and arrogant until a Dundee shove is enough for him to change his tune. Both men are quite reserved at first and this takes a while before it gets going. This m…

Another year, another thread. Just managing to finish 1980 is a milestone I initially wasn't 100% sure I'd reach but it turned out to be a good starter year to find my footing on a project like this. As I delve further into the decade the task only becomes more daunting as more promotions have more footage exposure, and the sheer quantity of matches is about to explode in a few years. But that's a problem for another day. For 1981 I'm thankful that we seem to be getting more matches from the Mid-South Coliseum, AWA footage takes a big jump, by the end of the year we have both Mid-Atlantic and Mid-South TV, and the Network has finally started uploading Championship Wrestli…

Marvelous is one of the smaller traditional women’s wrestling companies in Japan that I personally started following in 2017. I quickly became a big fan of the then rookie Mio Momono and company Ace Takumi Iroha, formerly of Stardom. I think it started to get a bit of a wider following in Western online fandom in 2019-21 when a very exciting group of rookies made their debuts and the inter-promotional feud with Sendai Girls won a lot of acclaim. Unfortunately as of 2023 it’s been in a bit of a rut since then, though I still check it out and think there’s potential for a resurgence. This thread is gonna be me watching as many Marvelous shows as I can get my hands on a…

You mean the clown that Hotta punted? Over the last year or so I have barely tipped the iceberg of Command Bolshoi, but I have learned that she is easily a top 75 GWE candidate. She may be a top 50 or even a top 25 candidate. I want to find out. Yes, she's a clown who started as a flying comedy worker. However, she developed into a Rey Jr Kimura worker in her 27 year career. I have seen her damn good in 1993 and damn good in 2019, so the question is how fucking great is she? Thankfully a few years ago she started a youtube channel to upload her music. Somehow that turned her into the Buddy Rose of joshi and now that channel has over 300 matches of her's. I…

I haven't seen anyone make a thread for this yet, so I figured I would share my thoughts on UWF 2.0/UWF Newborn as I am currently re-watching all of the events. Others are free to share their thoughts as well if they want (and they will probably be able to review matches much better than I can! ) UWF Starting Over (5/12/1988) Nobhuhiko Takada vs Shigeo Miyato Decent match with a weird structure. Miyato taps twice but the match is still declared a draw. Solid work, however, with some nice matwork from both. Miyato looks promising here, and Takada gets in his spots as expected. Good opener for UWF 2. 0. ***1/2 Tatsuo Nakano vs Yoji Anjo Another soli…

Other Deep Dive stuff Introduction Tiger Mask has a bit of a iffy reputation depending on who you ask or where: some places he's a sloppy overrated act that could never sell a lick of anything, in other places he's one of the big "events" of wrestling, someone who permanently changed the landscape forever and well beyond his time in a lot of ways. Which one is it? There's no obvious objective answer obviously, but given my interest in the guy I figured I would watch basically every single match possible of his that I could get my hands on, including a lot of random tags. My only big rule for this was that I would skip the Dynamite Kid matches.....because qu…

BE MAD WITH ATTACK!!! BML was a japanese indy from a time when there were a fuckload of japanese indies. The guy behind it was former NJPW Fumihiko Uwai and the point of BML was to be some sort of Neo NJPW and keep it's spirit while Actual NJPW was drifting away into La La Land under Tanahashi. For a promotion with so many awesome guys (Fujiwara! Kurisu! BattlARTS dudes! Random MMA stiffs! Murakami!) BML gets kind of slept on. A guy on YouTube was nice enough to upload all of it, so time to give it a look. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNOfKmK5nZIurQ8fUk26GcA/videos Show 1 - BML "Illusion" 9/11/2005 Osamu Kido vs. Yoshiaki Fujiwara I love a fed that begins with two…

I've not been in the mood to watch lengthy matches and shows as of late and I stumbled across the excellent Monsoon Classic Youtube channel that is chock-full of matches from C-shows from many US promotions. A lot of these matches looked interesting, so I spent an entire morning making my way through them and decided to make this a mini-project. Seeing as most of these matches are on the short side and clock in at 3-4 minutes on average, I've decided to ditch the regular star rating system and instead opted for a Segunda Caida-style rating system. I'll start this off with an era that takes me back to my childhood. I remember watching Metal and Heat more the th…

I've always had a hard time getting a good grasp on the minis. They're cordoned off from the rest of the workers in their own division, so you aren't going to get a glimpse of any of them wrestling guys you already know and instead have to dive into matches where everyone's unfamiliar. Virus of course ended up breaking away from the rest of the minis, but that came after the period I'm most familiar with. Consider this my attempt to seriously familiarize myself with him and other minis even if some of these matches I've seen before. I realize that he no longer identifies as a mini, but you know what? Virus's Luchawiki page and my driver's license have the same height list…

Other Deep Dive stuff Woooo boy. I've been looking forward to getting this set up. A lot of people focus in on Sayama's prime days: either as the Jr heavyweight ace in New Japan or his UWF stuff. That's perfectly fine: a grand majority of his career highlights exist within those years: but I always noticed that his later stuff when he returns to pro wrestling proper in 1994 to fight Liger and beyond are kinda ignored and left by the wayside. I've heard some people have overlooked his work in that regard for a multitude of reasons, mainly his varying quality and/or style. I don't agree with this mostly and I believe there are not only good matches after his first majo…

Early JWP seems to be the biggest mystery of joshi along with LLPW. There's so little discussion about it, even though there is plenty interesting to it: it had future stars like Kandori, Ozaki and Kansai, and veterans such as Devil and Itsuki Yamazaki. Gran Hamada trained the girls, and they used a unique style while still bringing the workrate. I've aquired quite a bit of this old stuff recently, so I think it's time to settle this and discover things such as: - What are the good matches involving pre-interpromotional blowup Kandori, Kansai, Ozaki, etc. that is relevant to their GWE case? (Stuff that was not brought up in the GWE discussion) …

I brought up doing a Complete & Accurate of Yoshida in her GWE nomination thread a few days ago because: a) she's awesome so why the hell not? b) the ARSION stuff rules and it's probably my favourite joshi promotion ever and Yoshida is the primary reason for it, c) I haven't seen too much of her earlier AJW stuff and 00s Yoshida - like lots of 00s joshi, I guess - is pretty underexplored, and d) she's awesome so why the hell not? I had her at #69 for GWE 2016 based off of like a week's worth of watching her right before the deadline. I revised my list a couple years ago and I can tell you she was very many spots higher, and for 2026 I can see her being higher st…

I think there are enough people on both sides of this fence we can break it off into its own thread. I know jdw has been preaching about hating Brody for 20 years but most of us didn't have the same access to dial-up he did back in the back in the day. I also have some specific matches I can point to later that illustrate why I hate watching Brody wrestle.

A New Japan World subscription opens up a world of content. Want to see more of today's top stars? They have 1,407 Hiroshi Tanahashi matches. Are you interested in the decades-long history of the King of Sport? Well over six hundred Fujinami vs. Choshu matches. But I like the weird stuff. You got a classic Kenta Kobashi Triple Crown match? Nah, I'd rather watch Johnny Smith take on the Headhunters. So my favorite thing to do when I have an NJPW World subscription is go all the way to the bottom of the tags list and try to figure out what the hell is going on. That's what I'll be doing in this thread. We have 292 wrestlers with one listing (each) on the service. …

The Viewing List NWA Champ (misc) Dory Funk Jr. vs. Gene Kiniski (2/11/69) [wins title] Dory Funk Jr vs. Jack Brisco (01/01/71) [st. Louis] JWA Dory Funk Jr. vs Antonio Inoki (02/12/69) Dory Funk Jr. vs Antonio Inoki (08/02/70) Dory Funk Jr. vs Seiji Sakaguchi (12/09/71) Dory Funk Jr. and Dick Murdoch vs Seiji Sakaguchi and Michiaki Yoshimura (12/12/71) Dory Funk Jr. and Terry Funk vs Giant Baba and Seiji Sakaguchi (05/19/72) All Japan Dory Funk Jr. and Terry Funk vs. Giant Baba and Tomomi Tsuruta (10/09/73) Dory Funk Jr. vs Jack Brisco (01/27/74) Dory Funk Jr. vs Jumbo Tsuruta (08/29/74) Dory Funk Jr. and Terry Funk vs. Giant Baba and Jumbo Tsuruta (03/13/75) Dory …

Other Deep Dive stuff Introduction How do you go crazier than deathmatches and gory blood? You join up with Inoki and fight a bunch of green Japanese MMA dudes! This will chronicle all of Necro's matches in IGF (minus one house show that was never filmed...ignore that through) and we'll see if they're anything worth watching. Vs The Predator (IGF Genome5 06.23.2008) Predator/Terkay is doing his Brody impression against a debuting Necro, so of course these two just work it as a brawl. He's throwing big kicks to the torso, Necro's just throwing punches and everything to survive against this giant dude, including some of the best gut punches I've s…

Pretty simple concept: I'm going to watch one match from every notable feud Dibiase had in the WWF to see how good Ted could be on any given night. It should be noted that I'm more favourable towards positive three star matches as opposed to disappointing three star matches, i.e. matches I felt earned three stars rather than only being three stars. Here are a list of the feuds. Please chime in if I've overlooked anything. vs. Hulk Hogan vs. Randy Savage vs. Hercules vs. Jake Roberts vs. Bret Hart vs. Big Bossman vs. Dusty Rhodes vs. Virgil vs. Legion of Doom vs. The Natural Disasters vs. The Nasty Boys vs. The Steiners vs. 1-2-3 Kid vs.…

Ringo Mendoza/Hombre Bala/Gran Cochisse vs. El Supremo/Enfermero Jr./Talisman (EMLL, 1/27/84) Does Gran Cochisse look like a bad worker in this match? Absolutely not. He does a good job of setting up the beef he has with Enfermero Jr while working with El Supremo and later on he does a great job of selling a beating at the hands of Enfermero while also getting his licks in. Is he the worst worker in the bout? Nope. No-one really looks bad in this bout. The younger workers like Mendoza and Talisman are crisper than Cochisse, but Cochisse is the one driving the narrative forward and at the end of the day its his bladejob and the screwiness of the finish that is the tal…

Southern Heavyweight Title Match: Johnny Valentine (c) vs Tim Woods (1973) -- great looking brawl for the title. There's a lot of Greg in the way Valentine sells. Really cool sleeper spot that ends with Valentine punching Woods in the eye. Finish is forgettable, but Woods keeps pummeling Valentine afterward. Johnny rolls under the bottom rope with a bloodied forehead and the title in hand. Great footage. World Title! Jack Brisco vs Johnny Valentine (June 24th, 1975) (Championship Wrestling From Florida) -- Great looking title match. Tremendous selling from both men, and a cool looking submission from Valentine. Brisco was such an incredible athlete. Why don't we talk…

Other Deep Dive stuff Introduction Ok so unless you are big big into small Japanese indies like 666 or NEO or whatever, chances are you haven't even heard of Yuiga: that's perfectly fine because her impact in any major indie is minimal, at best a undercard worker, at worst a random face in a rumble or big tag. Her more significant contributions come from her own promotion via Batos Cafe Entertainment, wherein she's basically done a crap-ton of main event matches there either being hardcore shtick or trying to work shoot-style against beefy heavyweights, with consistent matches throughout the year. These were lost footage until they started being released on a dr…

I'm going to work my way through 1980, covering as many different promotions and styles as possible. If all goes well I'm going to try and continue this on and tackle the rest of the 1980s. This project will have an eye towards the GWE project and I'll try and contribute in those threads as I build up familiarity with these workers. Often in the match reviews I won't be giving detailed breakdowns of the action, as it would probably be as interesting to read as it would be to write, but instead I'll outline my observations in regards to specific performances or general comments on my likes and dislikes from a particular match. I will give star ratings for as many mat…

Last year, a friend of mine made a video covering the best matches and wrestlers he saw from 2002 (watch here) and it compelled me to go back and reevaluate what I had seen from that time period; mostly some big PPV bouts with The Rock, Brock/Taker HiaC, and a dozen or so matches featuring the Smackdown Six. Most of it still holds up in my view, but I didn't stick to just the Smackdown side of WWF/E and ended up skimming through what looked appealing on the Raw brand. That led me to the belief that, in a year where all-time greats like Rey Mysterio & Eddie Guerrero were in their primes, getting plenty of time and quality matchup almost every week, Goldust was clearly …

I picked up every RINGS show from its first show in 1991 through mid-1994 or so towards the end of last year and I finally started going through all of them last week. My plan was to eventually watch everything in order until it turned to full MMA, but I may jump around some. High end RINGS is maybe my favourite kind of wrestling and it's one of my favourite promotions ever during that '96-'99 run, but early doors RINGS doesn't seem to be talked about much outside of stuff featuring the likes of Han and Maeda. Hopefully we can uncover some random gems from obscure Dutch judokas or the Willie Peeters masterpieces we know he's capable of. I'll keep a running lis…