Jetlag

I have 10: 1. Hokuto 2. Devil 3. Jaguar 4. Meiko Satomura 5. Kandori 6. Harley Saito 7. Mariko Yoshida 8. Aja 9. Jackie Sato 10. Kana Maybe: Chigusa Yumiko Hotta Carlos Amano KAORU Ayako Hamada Dynamite Kansai Toshiyo Yamada Michiko Ohmukai Azumi Hyuga Mikiko Futagami Command Bolshoi Mayumi Ozaki Yumi Fukawa I'll have too rewatch Bulls top matches, though

I am gonna do the comparison and say Yatsu is better based on the fact his matches have never made me want to stab my eyes out and I gave way more a shit about his prison hold than Angles Ankle Lock.

That's a different match, actually.

I've found out that Yatsu has really good longevity for a guy who's considered a heavyweight spot machine. SPWF was a pretty bizarre promotion, as half the roster left in 1994 and Yatsu was left to scrap cards together, but he always works hard on those shows and has some cool matches. He also looks good in the early 2000s still working places like World Japan and NJPW in one off appearances. The most notable thing is he never really changed his style, he's always there being Yatsu, hitting bulldogs and powerslams and it never ceases to entertain.

I actually think his best stuff is in WAR in the mid 90s. He was just allowed to let lose and be a stiff technical bruiser like a more shooty William Regal. Granted, that lasted only about one tour. God damn I wish he had done more stuff like that, or at least that we had more of his indy career on tape. The UWF stuff is cool but I'm not sure he's better than random eastern europeans having brief stints in RINGS.

I hope people will give Jackie Sato more attention this time around. She was quite the badass and with more eyes being on that era of joshi and more footage becoming available people should watch. The Yokota match is brilliant and Sato is every part of it. There's also some of her JWP work becoming available, something that was completely in the dark to me 5 years ago. It seems she pretty much reinvented herself. She had an interesting superstar match against Nancy Kumi. I also just now watched her in a tag where she grappled with Shinobu Kandori like a BattlARTS match.

I must be a weirdo because I recall really liking another Tenryu/Dibiase match. Also, how can you forget that we get a Tenryu/Kawada handheld from 1989? Tenryu is the gift that keeps on giving. Even if with no strictly "new" footage there are ton of handheld matches that are barely talked about where he looks really good. I mean really really good, like "getting a great match out of Daikokubo Benkei on a WAR houseshow" level good.

Scorpios universal appeal is incredible. Whether Mexico, Germany, WCW, ECW, Japan, seedy IWA Mid South show, he looks great and gets over.

They had another really great match in 2018. That Doi match is a really good carryjob. He also had a really good match against Nishimura in WNC. Tajiri may actually be one of the best wrestlers of the last decade. He doesn't have a huge resume of "OMG Superclassics!!" but tons lots of crafty good little matches against guys who were otherwise largely useless. Remarkable consistency in his old age. He was also in the cruiserweight classic, even.

I even did a 2 disc WYF compilation. That was after I bought all the available TV footage from Lynch. However, recently, more handhelds have popped up thanks to Max Lanciault. The following list only includes matches that were available on TV and comm tapes at the time: Canek / Principe Maya vs. Motegi / Kamikaze (Tag Tournament Finale, 3/31/95) Motegi / Kamikaze vs. S. Nakano / Hirofumi Miura (7/30/95) Motegi / S. Nakano vs. Okamura / Mochizuki (5/25/97) Kamikaze / Masakazu Fukuda vs. Y. Fujiwara / Hiroyoshi Kotsubo (5/25/97) Y. Fujiwara / S. Nakano vs. Kamikaze / Masakazu Fukuda (5/30/97) Tadahiro Fujisaki / M. Saito vs. Cosmo Soldier / Takeshi Sato (6/10/97) Ryo Miyake vs. Shigeo Kato (6/10/97) Shinichi Nakano vs. Masayoshi Motegi (6/10/97) Kamikaze / Fukuda / Kotsubo vs. Mochizuki / Okamura / Taru (6/10/97) Shinichi Shino / Rikio Ito vs. Masashi Aoyagi / Gokuaku Omibozu (7/16/97) Kamikaze / Fukuda / Kotsubo vs. Mochizuki / Okamura / Taru (7/16/97) Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs. Shinigami (7/16/97) S. Nakano / Motegi vs. Tarzan Goto / Ryo Miyake (7/16/97) Kamikaze / Fukuda / Kotsubo vs. Mochizuki / Okamura / Taru (8/9/97) S. Nakano / Motegi vs. Goto / Kikuzawa (8/9/97) Tadahiro Fujisaki / Makoto Saito vs. Great Takeru / Akinori Tsukioka (9/23/97) Shinichi Nakano / Basara vs. Tarzan Goto / Jun Kikuzawa (9/23/97) Kamikaze / Fukuda / Kotsubo vs. Mochizuki / Okamura / Taru (9/23/97) Tadahiro Fujisaki vs. Makoto Saito (1/8/98) Masayoshi Motegi / Cosmo Soldier vs. Takeshi Sato / Makoto Saito (3/20/98) Masashi Aoyagi vs. Gokuaku Omibozu (3/20/98) Masked Angel Rosetta / Cosmo Soldier vs. MAKOTO / Masked Angel Freia (11/30/99)

Albert Sanniez Another guy who massively benefited from the French footage becoming available. The man looked world class from his first appearances in the 60s up to his last in the 80s and virtually always had an outstanding match. Amazing technico, but also amazing rudo. Looks great both doing high end technical work as well stooging for faces and being a rough playing bastard. Has both great singles matches and great tags under his belt. One of those French guys whose matches you can show to anyone and their jaw will drop. Matches: w Francis Sullivan vs. Bernard Caclard/Tony Martino, 10/21/1967 w Bernard Caclard vs. Kader Hassouni & Claude Rocca, 3/20/1976 vs. Le Petit Prince, 10/15/1977 http://segundacaida.blogspot.com/search/label/Albert Sanniez https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/wrestling_ko/viewtopic.php?p=46647#p46647

That Rae match was fun, but I actually thought Rae looked better. She did all the fun/unique spots, unpredictable bumping, ate some nasty punishment and was super expressive while Mercedes looked a little bland faced. I actually like that Martinez carries herself like a badass I don't recall ever thinking she was high end. There's def. some good looking match ups there, tho.

There has been quite a resurrgence of interest in joshi on social media, with wrestler like Satomura being signed to WWE and characters like Maki Ito attaining a decent following. Whether that increase in interest is due to the work being good or the idol factor is for the reader to decide.

No but also yes. He's got a shitload of boring as hell material but also some goodies. I am particular to the Inoki matches, but due to Inoki magic.

The Guy Robin match is really good, but to be honest he doesn't stand out a ton among the legion of really great French babyfaces who throw one hell of a forearm and I wasn't super in love with the Hunter team (mostly due to Hunter). His later heel stuff is fun but didn't exactly produce much high end wrestling. I'll pass but it was cool discovering him in his young age.

Pretty good doing worked shootstyle and I'd like to see more of his Style-E material. That said this nu age deathmatch stuff is dreadfully boring and sameish and dead last on the list of wrestling I want to see.

All too little footage of him. He looks like a beast in his one French appearance. The AJPW stuff was right before he quit wrestling. In Germany, he was arguably the most succesful promoters golden boy and wrestled in front of millions each year, a golden era of which we have nothing. I like him in the AJPW stuff, but it feels like judging Lawler without Memphis.

Her JWP run was fantastic: Itsuki Yamazaki vs. Plum Mariko (JWP 5/25/90) Rumi Kazama & Shinobu Kandori vs. Devil Masami & Itsuki Yamazaki (JWP 9/30/90) Itsuki Yamazaki vs. Miss A (Dynamite Kansai) (JWP 1/6/91) (UWA Tournament First Round Match) Devil Masami & Rumi Kazama vs. Miss A & Itsuki Yamazaki (JWP 4/26/1991) Devil Masami & Hikari Fukuoka vs. Itsuki Yamazaki & Cuty Suzuki (JWP 5/25/1991) Dynamite Kansai & The Scorpion vs. Harley Saito & Itsuki Yamazaki (JWP 8/8/91) Unfortunately, she quit right before the interpromotional era. I imagine if she stayed around for that we would be raving about her. Her veteran style was so cool. I'm a bit lukewarm on the mid to late 80s AJW style, but I'm open to recommendations.

France in 1957. Futen in 2010. CMLL in 1997. ARSION from 1998 to 1999. Wrestle Yume Factory from 1996 to 1998 ca.

Very interesting stylist. She's had lots of good to great matches which are really overlooked and there's still many matches from her back catalogue that I have yet to watch. On the other hand, I have seen her in some stuff that was pretty bad/underwhelming. The plus side is she stayed good for a really long time, like she was clearly good up to her retirement, just dealing with really bad opponents most of the time.

Just watch everything you can find. It's not like there's a metric tonne of stuff. The best match is the Zrno singles. There's also a Zrno rematch, even, although it's not on the same level but still cool. He also had some nice bloodbaths in the early 80s against the likes of Gypsy Joe.

Creepy Japanese handheld guy is back online, and he seems to be doing Google Drive filesharing now. He hasn't responded to my email, though. Too bad because he seems to have a pile of hard to come by joshi footage.

I really don't think so. If you watch that stuff there was far, far fewer "I hit you - you hit me stuff". And almost no "waiting for the other guy to hit you back". Even in matches centered around strike exchanges like Tenryu/Hashimoto. Instead there was far more guys trying to maul each other in the corner or in the ropes. If you watch young Ishii, you can even see him trying to do the "puff his chest and act tough" thing but his opponents wouldn't let it fly. There really was nothing like those Ishii/Shibata matches, and whether you think that is a good or bad thing is probably down to taste. I think Ishiis matches becoming more robotic may be due to him being pretty shot physically (and transitioning to heavyweight/roiding) and him being allowed to max out his tough guy act.

Shinobu Kandori looked pretty great in the original JWP, something that was barely explored by the community 5 years ago: Shinobu Kandori vs. Miss A (7/13/89) Shinobu Kandori vs. Harley Saito (7/19/90) Rumi Kazama & Shinobu Kandori vs. Devil Masami & Itsuki Yamazaki (JWP 9/30/90) Miss A & Harley Saito vs. Shinobu Kandori & Rumi Kazama (JWP 10/10/90) Mayumi Ozaki & Rumi Kazama vs. Shinobu Kandori & Harley Saito (JWP 1/6/1991) Dynamite Kansai & The Scorpion vs. Shinobu Kandori & Harley Saito (8/4/1991) I had never heard of the Saito singles before, and it absolutely blew me away. I also stumbled upon a Satomura singles in 2007 or so that was really great too and something overlooked. I look forward to diving more into Kandoris work in LLPW and the more obscure JWP handhelds. She could crack my Top 50 next time we do a list.

Shocker is one of those lucha guys who would be washed up for years and then suddenly turn around and have an awesome run. He probably doesn't have the consistency to be worth serious consideration, but he probably has more great matches to him than a few nominated workers.