June 1998

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A sprint. This had all the things a joshi hater can't stand. Random moves and transitions a plenty, fuck all rhyme or reason. I guess it's true that you need matches like this to go along with the mat clinics, but I felt like was watching a „Greatest Hits“ clip of their previous matches at times. The level of execution was pretty high (besides Tamada almost KOing Candy with a missile dropkick) and everyone here had unpredictable offense, plus you get to see Ohmukai kicking people in the face a bunch and Fukawa grabbing all these fancy armbars. And, the match only went about 12 minutes which I think is a lot better than having this type of bout go 20+. So, it was a solid w…

Heavily BattlARTS inspired girl wrestling with plenty of brutal kicks, suplexes and flash submissions to entertain you. Yamada looked excellent and her exchanges with Satomura were probably some of the most violent of the year. Kato does not sell on the level of the other women and there were some weak moments, but nothing to detract from the bout in a major way. There was also some fun games around the young girls refusing to tag out which would or would not backfire on them. KAORU held up her end and the finishing run between Satomura & Kato was loaded with cool exciting counters.

YAKUSHIJI SHOWCASE MATCH!!! This was a really indy match, like something Homicide and Amazing Red would do on an IWA-MS card. The match had 3 tornado DDT's! And 2 Malenko/Guerrero rollup exchanges! Still, despite the mindless and somewhat heatless nature of the bout it was nice to check out these two stretching out and working around their spots and doing some holds. Yakushiji comfortably outshone the shooter with more spectacular kicks and nastier submissions (dug that Cavernaria). So, lucha > resu, or something? Mighty overkill for this match, but I don't hate it so bad because they built it from the ground up starting with basic armdrags and headlock takeovers.

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Dustin Rhodes vs X-Pac - WWF RAW 6/22/98 Best in ring RAW so far this was another goodie. Great sprint from two midcard workhorses. Weird babyface/heel dynamics keep this from being very good. Pac is a dick to Dustin early and gets some nice offense. Then the Born Again Dustin crotches X-Pac nice continuity from the HHH match, but weird Dustin needed heel transition spot. Then it feels like a comeback with him playing to the crowd for the bulldog. Chyna trips and Dustin turns the other cheek and eats the spin kick. Great mechanical work but narrative needed work. Dustin wants post match handshake and X-Pac tells him to Suck It! Perfect! ***

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Ken Shamrock vs Mark Henry - RAW 6/22/98 It is official Mark Henry was legitimately as soon as 1998. Best TV match of this run save for Funk/Foley. Henry's offense was intense crisp and energetic. Great power offense. Great work in out of the bear hug. Henry's weeble wobble selling to set up the Rana to take him off his feet for a nice pop. Shammy was pretty good in this. Vader body attack on outside. Shammy hits belly 2 belly to win. Henry feels like the heir to Blackwell in this. ***

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Another of those really good matches CMLL would produce multiple times a week. We get some quality Virus matwork aswell as unusually heated exchanges between Halcon Negro and Olimpico. It's also really nice to see Kendo doing his awesome thing in Mexico.

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This was an utterly insane, blood drenched spectacle. Orihara looked really great here, taking one of the craziest bumps I've ever seen, and ripping Takeru's mask and kicking him in the face, and generally doing a massive feat holding this together. His selling was fucking crazy too as he was selling the blood in a way that you fought someone was really about to die here. Match also had a bunch of awkward painful high end junior offense, stiff powerbombs and neck compressing suplexes and all that.

The wild ride that is 1998 continues as now Kanako Motoya of all scantily clad joshi fairies is stepping up to provide the kickass grapple oriented pro wrestling. Shockingly great performance from her as she did a great job selling a bandaged leg and also worked that cool convoluted submission based style that was so en vogue then aswell as throwing in some nice high kicks for good measure. Amano is another girl who does the flash submission based style and she does it exceptionally well as she has really cool looking and natural ways to get submissions. Both of them sold extremely well and they did a really nice job working a 50/50 type contest without things getting sil…

Really cool match which saw the future Ran Yu-Yu trying to take down Kansai. Kansai was past her prime at this point but could still bring it and kick you in the face hellishly. She works nice, simple and snug and doesn't allow any sprint work, so this match was a nice change of pace for joshi. I'm a Miyaguchi fan as she has solid simple spots (stiff european uppercut, enzuigiri that kills, big Samoan drop) and she works well against Kansai here. There is some weirdness early on with Miyaguchi working some armbars on the arena floor and refusing to let go, but it lead to a funny moment where Kansai grabbed a random umbrella and used it to hook Miyaguchis leg. While the ar…

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