March 1998

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I'm on a bit of a Black Warrior high right now. He's been a standout in a bunch of the trios I've been watching from around this period (~'98-'01) so I was pretty hyped when I stumbled across a title match. I know the '96 match with Dandy is talked about often, but my memory of it is that it was way more of a Dandy match, where Warrior was sort of along for the ride against a guy who was having an awesome year. This felt like more of an even contribution and even if it probably wasn't a classic overall, I thought that first caida was borderline great. It had a little bit of flash, but it was more rugged, they captured the sense of struggle and the little fights over lever…

This was, admittedly, fairly brief and felt a bit like a prelude to a conclusion we never got to see. On the other hand, this was also absolutely brutal and classic WAR material. Araya still absolutely hate Tenryu and their interactions are gold as you expect, but you also Koshinaka not giving a damn and treating everyone like garbage. Kikuchi is a schlubby looking barefoot guy with manbreasts and he just gets murdered. Some of the stiffest shots I've seen Tenryu throw in this one and Araya remains the King fo the Moonsault as he connects one to the back of Koshinaka's head in this one. Not a high end WAR tag – it's just a little too short for that – but two crusty vets …

See the problem with 1998 WAR is that there's so little of it. This was realy clipped, showing 8 minutes out of 13, however what was shown was some insanely violent, pissed-off scrappy pro wrestling. 1998 Ishii is just as brutal as during his more famous New Japan run, but in 98 he didn't do any overly long strike exchanges and was slightly more athletic, hitting a beautiful dropkick. Yamada always looks good giving and taking a beating, he is a deathmatch guy so he can totally do savage headbutt trading and has creativity for huge but not overly elaborate spots. He sure gives Ishii the business in this one, busting his nose with a spin kick, dropping some mad DDTs and ju…

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Leave it to a bunch of sleazy dudes and old geezers to have one of the funnest bomb throwing sprints of the year. You know any match with Tarzan Goto & Ryuma Go in it is pure money. If you don't, I hereby decree it. I was expecting a wild brawl, but they mostly stay in the ring and stick to the all star team of Tarzan/Go/Kabuki waffling the shit out of the sleaze greenhorns. Matsuda & Okumura aren't all that great, but that DOES NOT MATTER because they were here to get punched in the face and kicked in the throat a whole LOT. The exchanges between Goto & Yamada were insanely gory and easily the highlight of the match. I also unexpectedly loved Kabuki, who is s…

A lot of these GAEA sprints have the tendency to go into mindless back and forth. That was not the case here as they did all these clever, unpredictable transitions. Surprisingly good opening exchanges involving Sugar Sato, who is far better than her rep for sure. You also had Yamada kicking people in the face. All the cut play spots where well timed and added to the match (not something that is the case in every joshi match). Enjoyable stuff despite 1-2 missed spots.

Yeah, I'm pimping a Hirota match now. What are you gonna do about it? This was a cool sprint that WORKED and told a STORY due to Hirota being Hirota. This was before she was a total clown act, so she actually tried to be competitive with Meiko by rushing her with hip attacks and rollups, and Meiko putting her in place with arm-snapping flash submissions and general viciousness. Hirota's Hip Attacks work because she has a variety of them – hip attack to the shoulder, hip attacke to the side of the head, avalanche hip attack etc. Match a few neat moments (including Hirota reversing the armbreaker in a great sequence) and Hirota's partial sloppiness actually added to…

Another sprint where they avoid overkill and instead focus on bringing the asskicking. I think I prefer the GAEA sprint over your typical back and forth spotfest because it comes across as too eager workers pushing really hard rather than two workers trying to get every move in. Satomura looked badass again – brutal strikes, arm-snapping flash submissions – and Sato had some neat selling and brutal stomps. Her chopping down Meiko with stiff backfists was impressive too. Effective finish.

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