Jetlag

@itako18jp have also started selling various never before seen indy footage on Twitter and Goto is another guy who benefits massively as they have released a couple gems involving him, including one match that goes 30+ minutes and is really great. One of those matches makes Tarzan Goto another wrestler who has had great matches in 4 decades.

I still stand by much of what I wrote about Pat Roach earlier. Great guy. While we have a good deal of him on tape, there is not much of his heel stuff. There's one match vs Mike Marino on YouTube where Roach is full on cocky giant and it's pretty amazing. He reminded me a bit of Andre there. He had surprisingly few TV matches in the UK at that point but there's some interesting looking stuff. He lost by KO to George Gordienko on TV in the early 70s, and had another TV match against a guy labeled "Seigi Sakaguchi" and I'll be damned if that's not Seiji Sakaguchi on a somehow forgotten foreign excursion. I'd give my toe to see that. Roach also had lots of nice performance very late in the game. There is a brief TV match with Johnny Kincaid that has some awe inspiringly painful looking holds and selling, and also an old man tag from Germany in 1994 featuring Axel Dieter, Klaus Kauroff and someone else that I recall being pretty fun.

I think he suffers from the fact that he was at his best when Japanese wrestling nerds had much higher standards so he wasn't considered anything special. Then the Okada shock happened and New Japan gained a ton of new fans when they became more available to an international audience. Then Shiozaki changed his look to Okada lite which was just weird and didn't make him super interesting to the new fans. If someone now was having the kind of matches Shiozaki had during his best years people would be all over him.

Nominating Taro Yamada Taro Yamada has had an odd career. He works all kinds of undercard gigs on the Japanese indies, mostly short tags in promotions like 666 where he barely gets to do anything. Then Mutoha comes around and puts him into 20-30 minute long technical wrestling epics and he turns into an absolute monster wrestler. He along with Hiroshi Watanabe and Yasushi Sato really owes it to that promotion. Oh and he had a bunch of awesome matches with Keita Yano too. But yeah. When Taro Yamada is allowed to do stuff he absolutely is one of the best wrestlers of the 2010s-2020s. Great matworker, and beyond that has a really vicious side. His matches with Konaka, Keita Yano, Yasushi Sato, Hideya Iso etc. absolutely have some of the best wrestling you'll see and he also has some gems that go into a completely different direction like his bout with Takahiro Tababa. Fascinating wrestler and another case of someone who is completely out of nowhere great that we discovered mostly thanks to the Mutoha organizers being gentlemen and unveiling their footage to a wide audience. Recommended matches: vs Konaka, Mutoha 7/5/2015 Terrific match, Mutoha at its very best. It’s a rounds match that begins in a fashion inspired by World of Sport matches, with both guys displaying slick counters and moving in and out of holds very swiftly, but it quickly becomes a tangled nightmare as both guys would tie each other up in increasingly esoteric ways. Yamada was an absolute monster here, he looked like a true master of the llave style, and he just does things that nobody else does. He was tying up Konaka in so many different ways here, but also putting lots of creativity into his set ups and escapes, it was an absolute onslaught. Yamada is very much the driving force for most of the match, just tying Konaka in knots, and it seems Konaka only survives because Konaka is a flexibility demon and he can be put into contortions that not many other wrestlers could stand being put in. Although Konaka has a few moments where he really catches Yamada and it feels like a big victory each time. Not only were the submissions mind blowing, but so were their escapes from them. It was a display of mat wizardry in the truest sense. They do 20 minutes of outstanding grappling before the fifth round of 5, at which point Yamada loses his cool and finally nails Konaka with that curb stomp he likes to use. After that the time was running out and each moment felt frantic. Really edge of your seat stuff with both guys displaying incredible technical proficiency and body control while maintaining a competitive aura. I have been watching technical matches from Europe, Japan, Mexico, America for 15 years now and this was as good as any that I’ve seen. vs Hideya Iso 1/13/2020 Another really good match from Mumejuku. Very mat based as you expect. Iso has that Osamu Kido-like vibe, he’s a dumpy technician who doesn’t look like much and doesn’t do fancy moves but he has that easily overlooked kind of charisma and he can pull out some cool crafty stuff. This was Isos best performance that I’ve seen and Yamada looked like one of the best wrestlers in the world. It was pretty much Isos traditional, basic skillset vs. Yamadas llave holds. Several really good mat exchanges here, I especially liked Yamada pulling off a Paradise Hold in plausible fashion. They just went out and wrestled so there wasn’t some kind of exceptional story although I was rooting for Iso to upset his opponent. Sometimes you just want to watch two guys wrestle for 20 minutes and they delivered. Gnarly finish. This stuff is why Mumei was maybe the most important promotion in the world during that time period. vs Keita Yano, Wallabee 6/14/2012 Damn great match, I imagine if Yano had never stunk up BattlARTS and instead was only known for doing weird technical matches while wearing his joker makeup and clown singlet in a tiny gym we’d all be Yano superfans. Taro Yamada is the last guy in Japan still holding up the T2P style matwork and one of the most underrated grapplers on the independent scene. This was 25 minutes of matwork that was like a great IWRG style title match. It was a mix of Yamadas llave holds with Yano going along and some cool RINGs-like leglock work thrown in, with both guys doing a great job escaping and transitioning between holds. Whole match felt fresh and competitive and never was like a derivative or weird LARP, these guys were trying to pop each others shoulders and/or ankles the whole time. There were one or two geeky moments where Yano did some “rope running” although it was more like a comedy spot with Yano hooting like an owl, and both these moments lead to cool spots, one where Yamada actually trips Keita with a drop down and another where Yano tricks Yamada into his special hold. There wasn’t some kind of story if you are into that but there were a few great nearfalls and I deeply respect these two for just grappling it out for 25 minutes without slowing down, and never throwing a strike or even a body slam, it was all submissions and funky cradle pins (especially loved Yamadas weird Delfin Clutch variation), just really tightly worked stuff that wouldn’t look out of place in a WoS or lucha title match. I did love Yanos dickish knee slide across Yamadas face and the moment where Yano had enough of the llave holds and challenged Yamada to an amateur match was really cool. Finish was great aswell. Best Yano match I’ve seen by far and actively a great match, which is a major shocker. Yamada played a huge part too but I’ll be damned if Yano wasn’t feeling it that night. Apparently there have been a few matches between these two and I look forward to checking them all out but as it stands this is the best I’ve seen from Yano by a mile.

If there's any particular NEO from that time period you'd like to see, let me know because I have a ton of it from the 2002-2004 years. If you ask me, most of that stuff has been forgotten for a reason because the promotion was largely terrible from the little I've seen, but if other people enjoy that style of wrestling I won't stand in he way.

Came across this article talking about how the entire Granada TV archives would be moved, catalogued and made accesible to the public in 2022: https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/whats-on/arts-culture-news/vast-granada-tv-archive-returning-24019217 It seems to be mainly talking about music related stuff as well as the paper archives, but hopefully it's a step towards more old WoS footage becoming available sometime in the future.

There actually is a full version of the legendary Smith/Hawkfield vs Misawa/Akiyama draw. Nothing mindblowing happens in the first 20 minutes but there is some solid hold for hold stuff between Smith and Akiyama, and lots of spots where Smith and Hawkfield are helping each other out to cut off the offensive runs of Akiyama and Misawa to keep things plausible. Very impressive build to the last ten minutes. You have to hand it to them for getting this much reaction out of Smith kicking out of a Tiger Driver at the last minute. Definitely a classic when you add in all the storytelling, cool bits of wrestling and a fucking Streetfighter character being there.

Man, Johnny Smith vs. Taiyo Kea from 2001 is really fucking good. Smith works the arm but Kea throws him out the ring and Smith bangs his leg into the guardrail. Kea proceeds to work the leg and Johnnys selling is absolutely on the money. They do all these awesome counters and Smith does a bunch of cool shit being the master of the hammerlock, like nailing Kea with a HAMMERLOCK PILEDRIVER. Fucking great. The crowd chants for Johnny big time and boos the fuck out of Kea. This was pro wrestling at its finest. I might have to go on a Johnny Smith deep dive.

Szakacs had some really interesting matches on TV. He faced Billy Robinson in 1966, and George Gordienko in 1965. Mouth watering stuff. Another victim of ITV maliciously holding the footage hostage.

Recently came across this match, which is apparently new. Thought this was pretty awesome. Rikidozan is clearly the predecessor to Tenryu here beating the dogshit out of Blassie, who is a complete ghoul. Rikidozan just hammering away at Blassie with fists and those damned chops is everything a legendary folk hero needs to be. I also dug those running punt kicks he did. At some point Blassie puts a headscissor on Rikidozan as if they were going to catch a breath but instead Rikidozan breaks out by stomping on Blassies face. It goes by pretty fast for such a long match and the intensity is tremendous. Rikidozan takes a pretty huge bump into the buckle and comes up bleeding. Rikidozan with blood in his eye trying to fend of the vampire coming at him was ridiculously great. Admittedly they kind of overdo the lowblow as Blassie lowblows Rikidozan like 5 or 6 times in the match but that is a minor complaint. The LA territory looks awesome with the announcer doing a fantastic job commentating. Wish there was more footage from that time period. I'll have to rewatch the first Blassie match but this may be Rikidozans best match. I could watch Blassie biting and getting beaten around the ring all day.

The peak of wrestling attires was the 90s with the simple designs and popping colour schemes. Todays attires are way overdetailed to the point where nothing stands out anymore and it all becomes a muddled mess. Compare the simple color schemes of Hulk Hogan, Vader, Sting, the four pillars etc. to todays average boots and trunks guy. Awful.

Yes, that seems to confirm my suspicion. Cagematch mentions that the Titanes program was introduced in 1971 on state TV, with the footage being destroyed in the war, then it was started up again in 1977. Judging from the results from the very first show in 1971 they already had the cartoon gimmicks then with Batman and Robin being there.

This channel has put up all the episodes from 1981-1982, although in lesser quality. Seems this guy screencapped them from elsewhere so they must be out there. The official Chilean TV channel has posted only 1-2 episodes and a few clips. They said they were working on releasing all the episodes but that was 8 years ago, so... Some of the episodes have guys with more luchaesque masks. I am pretty sure the real Rayo de Jalisco shows up on a few episodes (unless there's a Chilean guy who decided he's gonna imitate Rayo de Jalisco). There's also an Angel Blanco who seems to be a Chilean luchador, and an El Matematico who has a similiar costume to the Mexican guy but I'm pretty sure its an imitator. This channel has also collected an insane amount of clips of old south american wrestling, seems the concept of the cartoon gimmicks was insanely popular on the continent as the Argentinian show infected all the other countries: https://www.youtube.com/@Cuadri2013/

Watching this, I am thinking that for this TV show they stuck a bunch of highly skilled wrestlers into goofy gimmicks to do 5 minute TV matches. All these guys bump incredibly well and clearly know what they are doing. Maybe it was a last ditch effort to breathe life into a dying territory, similiar to French wrestling getting goofy in the 1980s. Dracula does a bunch of awesome shit here and Robin hits a cool suicide dive and some really swank headmare variations. They even find a way to make the old armdrag from the top rope make sense. South America always had a reputation for having a never ending supply of amazing wrestlers and no doubt Chile must have had some masters too. I wonder if Chile had another, less goofy wrestling TV show before this. I don't mean to denigrate the amazing presentation that Titanes del Ring had or the committment Dracula had to his act but I'd like to see some of these guys go 20 minutes.

The Mutoha YouTube channel is now putting up free matches regularily. They are also putting up older, rare stuff from the cameramans archive, such as a cool Headhunters vs Nakano & Miura tag from WYF in 1995. Worth keeping an eye on. https://www.youtube.com/@user-uh9zn6fj7h/videos

VDB was active until about 2005. It wasn't exactly a huge organization at that point, basically the pet project of like 2 guys. They even ran an old school 59 day tournament in Hannover in 1999 but it didn't go well. Those late 90s shows were indeed different from CWA and that was the intention. Axel Dieter Sr himself helped organize/book them. The intention was to do a throwback to the classic days of European catch. That's why they look like that and the style is much more technical. I am pretty sure the 1980 stuff was filmed by a cameraman hired by Axel Dieter. It ended up in Dieters archive and his son briefly sold the material on DVDs through German messageboards in the 2000s.

The 2003 Hotta AtoZ match is sick as hell. I'm shocked almost nobody has brought it up in all these years. They do some really cool grappling and then just rain hell on each other like a high end BattlARTS match. At one point Yoshida took her glove off to punch Hotta straight in the face.

EWP has undergone some changes in their management. The promotion has been renamed to "CWP", Catch Wrestling Promotion, and they are back to running shows in a martial arts gym that holds about 100 fans. It's a far cry from their glory days, but at least they are still kicking.

Recently @itako18jp on Twitter started selling videos which really helps the case of guys like Yasushi Sato. I suggest you get a twitter and contact them, it's super chill to buy from them and the footage is well worth the price. We have gotten a few more Yasushi Sato singles matches out of it all of which are great. So far I've watched Sato vs. Konaka, vs. Hideya Iso and vs. GENTARO, all of which are awesome and pretty different. He's also really good in the big Unicorn Road match from 2018. The Konaka match is really unique, I watched it on the same day I re-watched Negro Casas vs. Santo from 1992 and while both are on the same level Konaka/Sato is clearly better. They also got the Yasushi Sato vs. Masamune match which I recommended 2 years ago in case you didn't watch it. GENTARO match is also really unique and great, two guys grappling and trying to score weird pins for 20 minutes, and Sato vs. Iso is completely awesome too. At this point Sato is definitely a lock for my list, the guy can do no wrong. There's a lots of early career Yasushi Sato against awesome looking opponents that we don't have yet, there are more Konaka matches including a 60 minute match, another GENTARO match, a match against Michio Kageyama who was a reckless karate kicker at the time, a match against Kengo Takai which looks insanely stiff from the highlights. If more of that stuff surfaces at some point I could see Yasushi Sato being in my Top 10. They also put this match on YouTube: Sato & Yuiga vs. Taro Yamada and Aki Shizuki . Naturally they go 30 minutes with no ring but it's really good, Yasushi Sato/Taro Yamada stuff is great and maestro-ish, there was also a crazy stiff headbutt exchange at one point. The women are bit wonky, but Sato vs. Shizuki is pretty good also, Shizuki is so big that the intergender factor barely matters and they just have some good exchanges. When you can have a match this good with no ring you are definitely something special

Roy Lucier uploaded a +20 minute Negro Navarro singles match from the 80s Based on this and the Mando match I'd say Negro Navarro is easily an all time level brawler, he looked awesome fucking his opponent up here. He also had some really graceful grappling moves but this is mostly just an awesome bloodbath.

Since I did my best of 1998 project when there was much less lucha libre online, this is very curious to me! I'll definitely be watching the rest of that Top 10. I thought Felino/Santo was by far the greatest match to happen in Mexico that year, so the fact that two matches finished above it is super interesting.

Probably true, though Gernot Freiberger (@catchmuseum on Twitter) has done a good job digging through the history and writing various articles. I think the main reason it's all such a jumbled mess is because of the various promoters all doing their own thing, and foreign fans thinking that all German territory wrestling = CWA which adds to the confusion. Not to mention weird stuff like people thinking that Indio Guajaro was Rene Guajardo.