October 1998

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It's always a blast watching Backlund in this kind of environment. Here, he stooges around for most of the first half until they start slapping each other and Ikeda headbutts him out of the ring. Backlund's selling of the headbutt is the best kind of comedy, as he collapses into some of the fans in the first row while Ikeda mocks him in the ring. Backlund's able to reverse an abdominal stretch into a big ole double arm suplex and then fires off some of his signature spots before scoring the pinfall. A fun easy, breezy watch.

Greg Valentine working in Battlarts sounds like a weird TEW save but no, this did actually happen in a actual match that did, in fact, happen. I guess Backlund (who was currently having a career-high run in the company) threw a good word out there about the guy. Now sadly this isn't the birth of shootstyle Valentine as he mostly just works this like a regular match but fair credit to the guy; he makes Oya look like a million bucks, especially with the overdramatic selling of his Inoki-style Enzuigiri. Valentine gets his control spot in the middle with some nasty clubs to the chest and pulling on Oya's face through the ropes. Dude just hurls Oya around here with a big Butt…

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These type of garbage brawl meets Kings Road matches haven't aged very well. The dueling chairs spot, guys getting hit in the head with trash, the wandering crowd brawling, you've just seen it too many times, and FMW seeming dry and heatless by 1998 doesn't help. Still Kanemura's performance here was enjoyable, he worked the arm like a fiend during the opening section, even going back on it with some nice Fujiwaras later on, bloodied his opponent and worked the cut good, and bumped like Misawa, taking a german suplex on his head and a nasty guilltone drop into the corner steel. Kuroda pretty much does the same spots in every damn match he's in so Kanemura getting some int…

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Leave it to a pair of 18 year old girls to have an excellent lengthy match in 1998. The cool thing about the mat stuff they did here was that it wasn't shootstyle stuff, but closer to NWA-ish legbars and kneedrops, executed in really vicious fashion. Sugar doesn't have the high end offense of Satomura, but I thought she did well enough to mix it up and keep the match going. Everything made sense and built really well to their respective finishers (Death Valley Driver vs. Liger Bomb), and while there wasn't any super-focussed extended selling they worked hard to put eachother's offense over as devastating. Plenty of neat spots, including Sato finding ways to counter Satomu…

GAEA runs a lot of sprints, but this was the kind of match that felt like a mix between NWA Studio grappling and BattlARTS with more high flying. Very unique match where both kept stubbornly going for specific moves. Both kept trying for a suplex, Uematsu for the Northern Lights, Kato for the Dragon Suplex, and they had some cool ways to work around these moves. In between that Kato had her kicks and Uematsu a nice shotai, and Kato kept trying to choke her out. You could tell they put thought into every move they tried. That kind of singular focus was really unique and it produced a compelling match. The weak point was the finish which I thought failed to pay off what the…

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