April 1989

Finals of the IWGP title tournament on this show. These two are just beasts - I'm on a Hashimoto run right now but might just start watching Vader matches for a while. There's a great moment at the start where Vader has smoke come out of his mask and does a war cry or something and the camera cuts to the most unimpressed Hashimoto ever. They just clobber and stiff each other and Vader hammers Hash with a lariat to win the belt in around 15 minutes. Good, stiff fun that is outshined by Hashimoto vs Zangiev earlier in the card but still absolutely worth watching.

Nice action packed sub-ten minute match. Zangiev was great in this with his suplexes and power spots plus I loved his reaction to Hash spitting at him. I liked Hash being more subdued in a sense since the danger Zangiev presented with all his suplexes and subs meant that one too many strikes could spell doom. But when he got his opening he laid it in, as expected. I feel like a Cesaro circa 2013 versus Hashimoto would look a bit like this. EDIT: My initial review for this actually really undersells how great it is lol. Seeing moves like the head scissors that you're used to just being part of the "headlock-head scissors-staredown" sequence to open a match being put to…

The other fun part of watching the original JWP: getting to check out how good Mayumi Ozaki was early on. She was a 5 foot 90 pound girl with 3 years of experience, but the way she wrestled here, she might aswell have been Arn Anderson. She brought the asskicking to the idol girl in a way that made this resemble a US style match, working Cuty over with stomps to the face, big knee drops, stepping on her hand etc. I know this type of stuff is bread and butter joshi, but I still thought the way they paced the match early on was exceptional, with Ozaki dominating and Suzuki having to string a few nifty babyface flyer spots together to regain control. Eventually Suzuki starts…