The Microscope

With more footage, it seems like Heenan would be a no-brainer top 5 all time candidate. He is incredible. Bobby Heenan vs Billy Red Cloud (Chain Match – AWA – 6/24/72) 4 minutes of clips. There’s an amazing spot where Red Cloud ties Bobby up in the chain and just spins him and Bobby goes 100mph and takes a big bump. Some funny comedy and then also guys trying to choke each other out with a chain. Wish this was full. Looks awesome. Bobby Heenan & Blackjack Mulligan & Blackjack Lanza vs Dick the Bruiser & The Crusher & Little Bruiser (WWA – 11/24/72) I was unaware that Dick the Bruiser had a mini. Little Bruiser starts and Bobby ge…

I find it crazy that this place hasn't had a Fu-Ten thread yet. I love what I've seen of the short-lived promotion. If you haven't seen anything from them, imagine Battlarts with lo-fi guerilla production values and you're pretty much there. It was formed by Daisuke Ikeda in 2005 and ran 62 shows before closing its doors for good in 2015. On top of Ikdea, Battlarts alumni such as Yuji Ishikawa, Katsumi Usuda, and Takeshi Ono were all regulars on the cards. Well-known talents that also have made appearances for the promotions include the likes of Fujita Hayato, Zack Sabre Jr., Tamon Honda, Masao Inoue, Munenori Sawa, and Kota Ibushi. Here's a short match that sums up …

I ranked Taka #44 on my Greatest Wrestler Ever list., which I felt was a pretty aggressive ranking and one I wasn't completely comfortable with it. The fact that he has had such a long career working well in a variety of styles and a variety of places helped him a lot. 44 felt high in isolation, but I also didn't think any of the guys I had below him on my list had better careers. After watching and re-watching some of his work since last March, I am pretty sure I wouldn’t lower his position at all. If anything I would bump him up a little bit the next go-around. He has been a top tier wrestler going on 25 years now and is as well-rounded as any junior heavyweight in …

Shibata was someone who I thought in the right setting could be a really big star after watching his matches against Kawada (2004) & Akiyama (2005), but never seemed to materialize for him in the 2000s. He throws a wicked kick and knows how to spark that type of chaos that can make pro wrestling so gripping. It seems he is finally coming into his own in modern New Japan. I am going to start in 2014 and work my way backwards. Katsuyori Shibata vs Tomoaki Honma - G-1 Climax 2014 Day 8 As a straight up fighting spirit match, this is a ton of mindless, slobber knocking fun. But, unlike most fighting spirit matches, this has the cool hook that lovable loser, Honma …

Just randomly watching Billy Robinson vs. Lee Bronson from WoS 1978 on youtube in prep for the Bock match on the All Japan set I'm going to start watching soon. But bloody hell! He's amazing! Not only that, I'm intrigued by the presentation. It's fascinating (and a little bit amusing) to see this very straight-laced, stiff upper-lip late 70s ITV broadcast. This might be the purest presentation of wrestling as a legit sport that I've seen. What can you good people tell me about WoS and Billy Robinson? How much stuff is out there? And how much is worth tracking down? What are the best matches? Just generally use this thread to talk about Robinson and WoS.

Other Deep Dive stuff Introduction Ogawa is one of my favourite wrestlers ever, and while I'm really happy people have realised just how good he is in working smart and enjoyable matches, there's not a lot of in-depth GWE stuff out there for him! I've been stuck in for the last while with COVID, so I basically just sat down and watched a ton of Ogawa matches back to back lol. Mostly tried to cover NOAH from the more...forgotten years, namely mid 2010's, but there's some other stuff as well. Ogawa isn't someone who has epic GOAT-tier performances often, but consistently he's working at extremely impressive levels, which I hope to illustrate here. Don't expect thi…

Other Deep Dive stuff Introduction Through Takayama's wrestling years are pretty well documented by now, not a ton is really focused around the first 5 years of his career which was almost completely dedicated to being a shoot-style wrestler in the likes of the UWFI as well as showing up for most of the very short-lived successor-promotion known as Kingdom. This has been a curiosity for a while as I'm a big fan of Takayama in general, so the idea of seeing him in a completely different environment was a very interesting proposition. I've reviewed and documented almost all of his matches from those five years to go over here, through this will only be focus…

I'm going to watch all of the WWF PPVs that happened on 1997. I'll cover the more memorable TV matches too. 1997 might be my favourite year for the WWF as there hasn't been a year where so much changed over the course of the year. If you compare January 1997 to December 1997, it's like looking at two different companies. Let's see if it holds up. WWF Royal Rumble 1997 (1/19/1997) WWF Intercontinental Title Match Hunter Hearst Helmsley (w/Curtis Hughes) (c) vs. Goldust (w/Marlena) Goldust is an excellent worker and Hunter was decent enough by this point in his career. Both men can throw a neat punch and they spent a lot of this one brawling outside the r…

Other Deep Dive stuff Introduction Ok, so you are probably wondering how, of all things, did this come to be in the first place? Simply put, I wanted to see if Tadao Yasuda was ACTUALLY the worst IWGP champion in history, and I was left so impressed after watching what's available of his title stint that I changed into a Deep Dive: was those three Nagata matches outliers, Nagata carrying him to greatness, or did Yasuda actually have a GWE case that hadn't yet been discovered? My findings are....complicated. I outlined some basic thoughts midway though on another thread, but here like with Nishimura I really wanted to put all of the cards on the table, and see wh…

I'm just going to start watching through WWF starting in 1980 and I wanted some place to document it.

In a similar vein to the RINGS thread but...with U-STYLE. I'm taking a break from my UWFi deep dive (mainly because I'm not looking forward to watching a 25+ minute Tom Burton match) and picking up U-STYLE with the first seven shows. It's Tamura and a bunch of young studs shoot-stylin' around in what I could only describe as a BattlARTS/RINGS mashup. I'll keep a running list of recommended matches to dip your toes in. 2003 Yasuhito Namekawa vs. Kyosuke Sasaki (2/15/2003) Takehiro Murahama vs. Kazuki Okubo (2/15/2003) Kiyoshi Tamura vs. Wataru Sakata (2/15/2003) Takehiro Murahama vs. Kyosuke Sasaki (4/6/2003) Kiyoshi Tamura vs. Dokonj…

Mark Rocco is the single most polarising guy for me in British wrestling. Mostly everyone's a big fan of him except for me, but I'll give the devil his due if he entertains me. For the sake of this thread, I'm going to rate these matches Rocco Love, Rocco Hate or Rocco Indifference. Mark Rocco vs. Lee Bronson (5/11/77) Lee Bronson was a top young heavyweight prospect in the late 70s, who if British wrestling had continued on its merry way, may have ended up being in the Tony St. Clair/Wayne Bridges position come the late 80s. As it was, he never got that chance and never went that far. There were a lot of promising young heavyweights over the years and not many of…

In a similar vein to my ECW project from earlier this year, I'm going to make my way through the most celebrated WCW matches in chronological order and share my thoughts with you. Let me know if I miss any must-see matches. I'll be using Cagematch and the DVDVR WCW set as a guide. Lex Luger vs. Ric Flair (NWA Starrcade - 12/26/1988) This felt very similar to Flair's match with Sting at the first COTC, but this was a much better match. It's Flair versus an inexperienced power wrestler and it's up to Flair to make the guy look like a million bucks. Flair does his usual tricks here. He begs off Luger and uses underhanded tactics to take control. The JJ Dillion interf…

Other Deep Dive stuff Introduction The Movement was started off by Johnny Ace in 1998: more specifically, his betrayal of Kobashi and the end of GET on 23.08.1998. Ace filled Kobashi's absence with mostly mid-card Gaijins: Johnny Smith, Wolf Hawkfield, etc, as well as bringing in Bart Gunn (going by Mike Barton) as a enforcer, namely boosted by his shoot knockdown of Steve Williams in the Brawl 4 All. Now Movement is a somewhat complicated faction to describe; while being built from a heel action (namely Ace attacking his weakened and exhausted partner after eating a loss) the actual motive of Movement was built around the premise of foreign talent being ne…

How often do you hear anything about this feud besides the two big matches from 1990? It was a long one, but I really can't recall any of the buildup matches getting much praise or any notable discussion, really. Dandy accidentally slapped Satanico at the anniversary show to precipitate the turn, and the next week Satanico spent the whole match beating Dandy up when they were programmed as teammates again. Getting into things with their first match as opponents... Satanico, Emilio Charles Jr. and Kung Fu vs Dandy, Atlantis and Octagon, October 5 1990 This was a good start. Dandy and Satanico found ways to shine despite not being the main story of the match, with Da…

Hey guys, Been forever since I was on here as the reality is I've been caught up in so many different things I just haven't had much time to watch any wrestling, save the odd match here and there for nostalgia and so on. But as I'm back in the UK for a month, in quarantine for this week and next, and in the process of copying my DVDs over onto an external hard drive, I thought I'd set myself a little "project" to watch. Back in the day I was one of the Joshi "defenders", but whereas the majority of my men's DVDs are on YouTube, etc, I guess Zenjo et al lost their popularity just before those platforms took off and there's far less of it out there. And when ther…

Martel who as a wrestler gained a lot of cred with me recently. Martel was a great baby face worker in the Steamboat, Morton vein. He seemed like a really smart worker who could tell a story in the ring. He was great at working a body part and working spots around it. From what I have seen of him in Portland, AWA, Japan, territories in Canada,WWF, and in his last run in WCW he could go. In Portland he had a match with Buddy Rose that I think is one if the greatest matches of all time . They had a great feud with one another. His team with Piper where he worked against Rose Army, and the Sheepherders produced some great matches. In the AWA he got a run as world champ…

If you look in the match database section, you'll see that a lot of DDT matches are reviewed by myself (and some others) so I thought I'd just make a thread in the Microscope section to put them all together. Dramatic Dream Team (DDT for short) has a long history considering their relatively short lifespan (23 years is nothing compared to fellow wrestling promotions in Japan such as NJPW and AJPW. Sanshiro Takagi, with the help of fellow independent wrestler Shoichi Ichimiya, began DDT in 1997 with the goal to be unique and bizarre. What is their identity? What does DDT stand for? Well, that’s hard to really explain considering how much variety the promotion offers …

Other Deep Dive stuff Introduction I've spent the last few weeks trying to figure out if Kendo Kashin is actually worth his flowers or if he's just a unmotivated/lazy performer. Here are the facts learned from watching 100+ matches, spread out from his rookie years all the way to his very recent RJPW and NOAH stuff. Here's some basic info on the guy "Is Kendo Kashin lazy?" This is the most common complaint about the guy. In some aspects, yes: Kashin tends to repeat sequences over and over, and in a meta-sense the audience know his routine well and respond way before anything happens because they know how things go step by step. He is a very sequence-ba…

I haven't seen very much from post-'90s Mexico, which means that my thoughts on Black Terry basically end with his run in los Guerreros del Futuro. Let's see how long it takes me to form an opinion of him. Black Terry vs Mr. Condor, December 5 2021 This looked like the most incredible thing ever from the start. Not just the hard shots but the scenic backdrop, the camera angles and the fans within arm's reach cheering on Black Terry. Eventually it became clear that they didn't have a whole lot else to offer beyond stiffness and the match wasn't building anywhere. Also the fans started chanting this is wrestling and the promotion's name, which served as a reminder th…

Introduction NO FEAR were one of the biggest tag teams during the downturn years of AJPW (1998-2000) and functioned as a platform for the mostly bland leopard-print Takao Omori and UWF-I export Yoshihiro Takayama to get their profile raised as they were pushed up the card. The original version of them was actually a trio alongside Gary Albright, whom would be booted out soon afterwards; they'd later become once again a trio when eternal undercarder Satoru Asako was lumped in with them (through he was so forgettable that even major wrestling databases don't even bother to acknowledge the guy as apart of the group). They were pretty much low-card lads for a while (doin…

I thought it would be fun to see how well ECW holds up after coming across DVDVR's Best of the 90's list. I'll watch every ECW match that was voted on for that list (50 matches in total), plus any match that has a good rating on Cagematch. I'll cover a handful of important shows here too (Barely Legal '97, Heatwave '98, Guilty As Charged '01, etc.). I know that the general consensus is that ECW hasn't aged well, but I thought this would be a fun project to find out for myself. I have a nostalgic soft spot for some of the shows that I used to own on VHS, plus I haven't seen many of their most celebrated matches. Let's start this by looking at The Night The Line Was Crossed…

The Big Stupid List of Great ARSION Matches 1998 Yumi Fukawa vs. Michiko Ohmukai (4/11) Mikiko Futagami vs. Rie Tamada (8/31) Mariko Yoshida vs. Rie Tamada (4/17) Rie Tamada/Hiromi Yagi vs. Tiger Dream/Ayako Hamada (Twinstar Tag Final, 12/7) Reggie Bennett vs. Mariko Yoshida (8/31) Mariko Yoshida vs. Ayako Hamada (8/31) Aja Kong vs. Mariko Yoshida (6/21) Aja Kong vs. Michiko Ohmukai (2/18) Mariko Yoshida vs. Candy Okutsu (Queen of ARSION Title, 12/18) Yumi Fukawa vs. Candy Okutsu (2/18) Reggie Bennett vs. Mariko Yoshida (5/5) Mariko Yoshida vs. Mikiko Futagami (5/5) Candy Okutsu vs. Mikiko Futagami (4/17) Michiko Ohmukai vs. R…

You didn't ask for it but you're getting it anyway! Austin Idol vs Jack Brisco (SECW – 7/7/79) Our very first look at Idol and he already looks like an excellent wrestler. This is basic stuff mostly worked out of a headlock but Idol is bringing all of the character & flair to the match with his stalling schtick & subtle heel work. Some things like strutting around, grabbing the tights on a roll up, pulling the hair, accusing Brisco of pulling the hair when Brisco clearly isn’t, begging off when Brisco goes to punch himt. All little things but when taken together paints a picture of Idol as a clear heel. He has a real flamboyance to him. I’ve comp…

Other Deep Dive stuff Introduction Always neglected when it comes to retrospectives, Izumida has always been a curious undercard performer to me since I started watching a bulk of the AJPW TV segments overall. Behind the goofy appearance and uninspiring look was a tremendously aggressive act that could seriously go when prompted, from huge suicide dives to some truly insane spots for a guy his size. Through he never had any truly big pushes, he was always great whenever given the big stage to show off his stuff, but despite this a lot of the reception (especially on Cagematch and the like) has him positioned shockingly low on the totem pole, where he currently s…