Jetlag

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Usuda vs. Indy junior continues to produce the goodness. This was worked exactly as it should be – Usuda being the far superior shooter who would dominate on the ground and Fujita as the gutsy flyer who'd use quickness and determination to survive. Fujita can get aggressive and Usuda is a great counterwrestler to work with that aggressiveness. The middle portion of this match where both work the mat and refuse to go for ropebreaks while coming up with counters was solid gold. Highlihts include Usuda locking in an ultra tight Chickenwing Crossface which seemed to almost pop Fujita's shoulder, a pissed off Fujita raining headbutts from mount (and receiving a receipt in kind later on), Usuda countering Fujita's finisher etc. Fujita eats some huge blows in the standup section while finding believable ways to come back. This was largely excellent, logical junior vs. Shooter action which is only brought down slightly by 2-3 blown/weak looking spots.

JIP 1 minute in. The opening exchanges are solid, but this really gets hot when Tenryu kicks Kojima in the face and his nose starts gushing blood. Tenryu & Koshinaka proceed punch and twist his nose to a smear and this is pretty grizzly and great. Some surprisingly clever spots ensue (I love that Fujinamis Dragon Screw is a super dangerous move), Koshinaka looks really good hitting people in the back of the head with his ass, there is also a really nice Fujinami/Tenryu showdown with Fujinami again busting out a huge kneedrop in a great moment. Kojima is not super compelling here getting punched in the nose, but he is perfectly alright as your dime store japanese heavyweight who can hit a hard lariat and Tenryu just beating him down was amusing.

Hiromi Yagi, we meet again!! Yagi is a hidden great wrestler and it's always great to see her get a chance to stretch out and work her magic. This was a pretty kickass fight between two girls with legit ability; JD' was pretty judo-centric (they had a judo jacket shootstyle match earlier in the show) and that was felt very strongly in this. Modern day junior workers should study matches like this, as this was fast paced, unpredictable, hard fought, exciting pro wrestling, and every move they did required minimal cooperation. There was no time killing or filler work, both ladies just went for the kill the whole time, always fighting for an armbar or chokehold. I dug the matwork and Sakai adds a lot, and when they weren't fighting like mad for the advantage there were a few neat spots. Yagi is a rare joshi worker who understands how to add meaning to sprint sections by resisting basic spots. Yagi refusing to be thrown makes Sakai following up with a dropkick a lot more logical, Yagi selling the fuck out of her arm added some sense of desperation to her comeback, Yagi going into a bridge and forcing Sakai to elbow her in the stomach is such a simple spot that makes even a simple pin attempt look important. She also knows how to make believable comebacks, as most of the time she would counter with a flash submission, until she had gained enough momentum to hit her big throw, which felt like a big moment. That is not to put down Sakai because she is a badass suplex & submission artist of her own. Textbook finish very well executed. This rocked.

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 interesting exchanges out of him was impressive.

No sane person will look at this matchup and expect any oustanding wrestling exchanges. However, as a spectacle this was insanely effective and super entertaining. This mostly stays in the ring, Matsunaga is in his gi and anytime he's throwing crazy kicks it's great. But of course, this is about heatmongering and the BattlARTS dudes doing their best to come across as slimy pricks, so the biggest pop for the crowd is when the Big Japan guys finally get them outside the ring and get to bowl them into the chairs. I also liked Yamakawa as the worlds bravest white belt trying to roll with Usuda, right at the go he goes for a feeble takedown and ends up eating a bunch of stiff knees and high kicks in a moment that mirrored real life fighting. Him struggling to lock in a basic Figure 4 when he finally got the advantage was the icing on the cake. Some effective nearfalls at the end, Matsunaga bringing in a baseball bat (leading to some amusing attempted disarming), and of course Matsunaga punching a bloody Ishikawa in the face. No #1 babyface Matsunaga coming to save the day swinging weapons and fists may be almost as good as evil psycho Matsunaga.

Fun short match which was actually quite slow and gave everything time to breathe. Kakihara annoys Kawada some with nice stiff palm strikes and judo moves, so Kawada just kills him dead. Some of the stiffest shots he's dished out all year. Kawada doesn't even need to kick you in the head, he KO you with a basic slap. Rating: Watch if you're in a sadist mood.

I enjoyed this. Young Booker T with the super athletic kicks really was something. Some surprisingly fun opening exchanges before Benoit starts beating him down. It's always weird to see the smaller guy beat up the bigger, muscular dude. It's also weird to see Bookers axe kick not being a finisher. I thought Benoits control segment was merely okay. Booker sold well but didn't push back much. Dug the random finish. Fine TV match. Benoit hasn't really set my world on fire in 1998.

I'm not a huge fan of these "poor mans AJPW" type matches. It's all very formulaic, being long, having some body part work and a slew of big moves being thrown, but nothing they did really drew me in. Gannosuke looked good, selling his leg very well (not that the legwork wasn't pointless and boring), and I liked how he caught Hayabusa with the Gannosuke Clutch in the middle of a boring control segment to wake the fans up, I also liked how he just punched a flying Hayabusa in the face. Still this felt extremely long and they didn't have any great ideas for the big move trading.

The opening exchange felt a bit like something from these Ricochet/Ospreaye matches. Flips galore! But the match works because Juvi is viciously cutting off Rey the whole time. Lots of big moves, bumps and some amazing sequences. I actually didn't feel the match was crammed because they let everything breathe just enough. Agree about that legdrop not looking so dandy. As far as spectacular wrestling matches go you can never go wrong with these two.

I really like the Best of BattlARTS comp, however, the fact that matches like this are missing from it – and thus are being overlooked – is crazy. Believe me when I say this was crazy good, not just „eh, why not check out this match, some good matwork and stuff“, seriously probably the best tag they did that year. This matchup the previous month was more of your typical slow building BattlARTS main event with solid mat exchanges throughout and so on, this on the other hand was a fucking house of fire, and it was very different, while still sticking to the story of Honma & Fujita as trying to prove themselves in the house of BattlARTS. So right at the get go Honma starts dropping bombs on Usuda, hitting him with a diving headbutt in the middle of a mat exchange and following up with a huge dive and some crazy high kicks of his own. Usuda desperately using his superior shoot skills to regain the advantage was really great and the opening exchanges really made me believe the match could end at anytime. To follow that up, all the Ishikawa/Usuda exchanges were insanely violent, full punch-you-in-the-face-kick-you-in-the-eye barfight mode, setting the table for their singles match. Fujita was great once again, having an awesome slick mat exchange with Honma and constantly working for his signature submission hold, he also dumped him with one of the most brutal german suplexes I've ever seen, not just from a tiny dude like him. I also loved how he desperately tried to escape Ishikawa's armbreaker. Seriously this whole thing was so intense and hard fought, both the BJW boys really lost their calling as BattlARTS/quasi shootstyle guys. Really loved all the Usuda/Honma exchanges as whenever these two started trading you felt someone was about to get knocked out, and Usuda twisting up Honma on the mat near the end was just spectacular. There is one major goof where Fujita no-sells a brainbuster, but honestly the rest of this was so fucking good and just classic BattlARTS hybrid wrestling material that I can forgive it.

I actually enjoyed these opening exchanges a lot. Resisting and countering basic moves works a lot better for me than throwing out „surprise“ suplexes in the first minute, also really liked the bit where Kobashi sought to rip Akiyama in half with the Octopus Stretch. I think it says something about AJPW that people praise this match while saying that the promotion went off the rails with overkill in the late 90s ---- as in any other promotion this match would be considered insanely excessive. Kobashi hits 3 huge headdrops in the middle of the match – all in a row – and Akiyama's legwork has several big spots of it's own. It has the same problem as Akiyama's earlier match with Misawa – where Akiyama pretty much does as much as humanly possible to put his higher ranked opponent away, but it just doesn't happen. That being said – Akiyama's legwork was super brutal, Kobashi sold fairly well (aside from popping up after eating a suplex once or twice), Kobashi's chops and surprise lariats ruled (he was just smashing Akiyama), and everything made sense. I still thought they could've done a smarter job with the ideas they had (Akiyama putting on the Figure 4 for the second time is an example of a spot that may have worked in a different context but was just killed dead here).

BattlARTS vs. MUGA, baby. We all know Otsuka can be a really great grappler when he wants to, but he is often tangled up in doing all kinds of weird experimental stuff. MUGA boy Takemura is the type of guy to get a nice all-grappling shootstyle match out of him. Takemura isn't GREAT and doesn't bring a ton to the table here but he meshes really well with Otsuka a and they move nicely from smooth rolling to zit-poppingly tight holds. Takemura's unpolishedness may have added to some of the reversals towards the end feeling more uncooperative. Of course Otsuka also just ragdolls him and it's beautiful.

With the camera work this looks a little like something that would air on MTV. They battle in an imitation UFC cage while a ref watches from above! I dunno, this is conceptually interesting and it's cool that they did this, but I can't get into this late 90s WWF stuff much with the constant back and forth. The first couple seconds were intense but Shamrock standing up while he was pounding Owen on the ground took me a bit out of the whole thing and it just turned into a more regular, slightly clunky wrestling match. The slams into the cage etc. looked great but guys would just go on offense after absorbing this stuff. Owen has really great looking slams etc. and the spot where he tackles Shamrock into the cage after the Sharpshooter. Shamrock does some weird athletic stuff like bouncing off the cage etc. I guess they wanted him to be their version of Goldberg but it doesn't really work for me.

The Dungeon is a creepy place. Can you imagine what that room smells like?! This had a cool novelty flair with every punch and bump being felt more directly. It is to 1998 WWF matches what the fistfight from They Live! was to hollywood movie fights, in a way. Being WWF it all feels very pre-planned and crammed together, but the rams into the wooden wall looked genuinely brutal and the environmental usage/Dungeon is Owen's tag partner stuff was cool and well executed. Lawler awkwardly joking over what felt like very real violence compared to your average WWF match at the time worked. It's da attiduuuuude era so we gotta have a silly ref bump and finish. Who on earth buys Severn falling for that? Atleast the dumb bell shot looked sick and drew an audible reaction from the crowd.

3 out of these 4 guys had an absolute banger the previous month in BJW, and now swap in Yuki Ishikawa. This wasn't a state of the art inventive junior sprint like the january match, but just a really good BattlARTS formula tag. It is really cool to see Honma and Fujita adjusting into this environment, they aren't shootstylists, but they can grapple and hold their own and you can totally see them getting the hang of it, aswell as believably working moves like armdrags and huracanranas into shootstyle exchanges. These two having lengthy quasi shootstyle runs would have been awesom- ah let's not talk about it. Aside from lots of quality mat exchanges there is some nice disdain, as Ishikawa disrespects Fujita in the opening minute of the bout, so later Fujita to break up submission nearfalls would just pounce on Ishikawa like a mad dog. Fujta would get one back on Ishikawa by actually hitting him with a suicide dive. It was a cool dynamic that got paid off nicely in the second half of the match when Fujita took a sick beatdown. Honma is a guy who can drop bombs and after 15 minutes of matwork something like a piledriver or brainbuster has extra snap. Of course Honma is a guy who has no problem to get powerbombed into barbedwire so he also has no problem getting kicked in the skull by Usuda. Brutal finish. Gutsy as hell match and they worked this for like 70 people in attendance, current indy wrestlers aren't that stupid anymore, but it has made wrestling less fun.

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 just killing him with one of the most dastardly kneedrops ever caught on film. He was also not having Ishii's macho bullshit, shoving a chair in his neck when he tried blowing off a chairshot. Not a mindblowing match by any means, but I always get a kick out of a savage violent spectacle like this.

BJW 1/ 2/98 Let's check out some old school BJW, shall we? Not a forgotten or obscure fed, but this period certainly is. I mean, look at this card! How many things can you say about any of these names? Neftaly vs. Miho Kawasaki Shunme Matsuzaki vs. Shadow VII Yone Genjin vs. Naohiro Hoshikawa Kendo Nagasaki & Gennosuke Kobayashi vs. Masayoshi Motegi & Makoto Saito Katsumi Usuda & Ikuto Hidaka vs. Tomoaki Honma & Minoru Fujita Gedo & Jado vs. Yoshihiro Tajiri & Yamakawa Jason the Terrible & Shoji Nakamaki & Mitsuhiro Matsunaga vs. Great Pogo & Shadow WX & Shadow Winger Aaaaand of course a 1998 indy show opens with a forgotten japanese girl wrestler and a luchadora working quasi lucha exchanges. This and the other first 3 matches are really clipped so it's mostly just to get a quick laugh, but what they showed of the ladies match wasn't bad. Neftly hits a nasty senton and wins with a nifty powerbomb variation. Matsuzaki is a sad case as he always looks ridiculously polished (for a guy in the second match of your typical sleaze card) and always gets saddled in some non match, in this case against a mexican Mini-Mr. Pogo (sorry Ricky Santana, you're better at lucha than garbage brawling). All these BJW undercard matches quickly devolve into crowd brawling shenanigans. I would've liked to see more of the BJW vs. WYF tag – because Motegi is GOOD and Saito is COOL and I am actually liking Nagasaki with his nice back elbow and quick bursts of wrestling and actually dangerous floor brawling. The unrecognizable rookie Kobayashi is yet another indy guy who doesn't know how to take Saito's springboard moves properly which almost feels like a rib at this point. So they actually showed the BattlARTS vs. BJW dudes tag in full and it's AWESOME. I am not playing a trick on you here, if that match happened in BattlARTS it would have a good shot at being the tag MOTY. It's not a BattlARTS style match but it has enough cool shootstyle matwork and stiff shots throughout to keep you entertained, and the whole thing is just ridiculously tight, innovative stuff. Hidaka & Fujita are all skinny and young but they join the 98 GAEA crew by looking spunky, inventive and super talented. Pre-bumpfreak Honma is good as your kickpadded guy who sells really well, can work a kneebar or two and gets kicked in the head by Usuda. Usuda looked like a badass black belt tumbling with some purples trying their best to push him. He is a stoic shooter guy with some really spectacular counters and he always works really well with these indy juniors he can just rip apart and this was no exception. I also liked that because Hidaka and Fujita are scrawny 1 year rookies any basic move on them looks like a plausible finish. But the whole thing was just a bonkers match with breathtaking lucha meets shootstyle submissions and counters and nasty double teams and some brutal stand up exchanges (Usuda just dropping bombs) and yeah this is just the kinda gem you hope for when going through this old stuff. Also, great moment where Honma botches a springboard move so Hidaka just pounces on him and they beat the shit out of eachother. That's how you cover up a blown spot. There was no way in hell that Jado/Gedo vs. Tajiri/Yamakawa could follow up the workrate of the previous tag and they wisely didn't try. They worked more of a US style tag with Gedo and Jado bringing the heel cutoffs and punches and rope stun guns and Figure 4s and what not. Pretty bread and butters stuff but it wasn't a bad match and I always enjoy checking out young Tajiri who is such an ultra sharp wrestler with the kicks and lucha flying moves and so forth. The main event – well, you know what you're getting. Mostly wandering brawl with 2 guys occasional rolling into the ring to do stuff, then back out. In between that you get shots of Winger putting a headlock on Matsunaga backstage and strolling up the stairs. There were a few cool individual moments, such as the big Nakamaki dive to open the whole thing, Pogo hitting some Tenryu kicks on a bloody Matsunaga, Matsunaga hitting karate kicks and the Undertaker walk on the balcon, Pogo bringing out a barbed wire drill and Jason working Jason spots. This was falls count anywhere so there were also some cool spots where they had multiple referees and fans on the outside would count along when a nearfall happened. Finish is Jason working his „resurrection“ spot a bunch (yeah Shadow WX you loser you're not going over JASON) and winning with a god damn Northern Lights Bomb. Jason The Terrible is indestructable and it rules. This show top to bottom was not as good as the IWA Japan stuff but it had an absolute killer obscure gem in Usuda/Hidaka vs. Fujita/Honma (I totally expect one of you granddads to tell me how eveerrrryone put that one on their VHS comps back then and talked it up as a **** 3/4 match on random obscure DVDVR offshoot boards). Everything else delivered as you'd expect and I always enjoy checking out a random card like this.

30 minutes of slick polished shootstyle. You could sit back and nit pick around this match, but I think it's safe to say that the whole thing was a success. Tamura came across as a highly methodical, dominanting force, mostly being in a controlling position or preventing Kohsaka from taking a dominant position himself, including defending against all of his takedowns. This lead to Kohsaka fighting from underneath but repeatedly getting the better of him, even while not always forcing a rope break. Kohsaka going 2-0 in points feels significant similiar to a soccer match where the ball is constantly in one team's playing field only for them to break through a handful of times and score. The matwork itself was slow paced but they kept the swank moves coming to keep you interested and the struggle felt significant. Then Tamura knocks Kohsaka over in one of the greatest near KO's ever (due to being extremely well sold) and it feels like the match can end anytime now. It all works really well and despite Tamura feeling invincible you realize Kohsaka maybe better at the mat game and able to beat him in such a way. It is not easy to tell such a story while bringing the action and working such a tricky style in a match stretched to titanic proportions but they did a wonderful job. Finally, here's a Dean Rasmussen quote which always comes to my mind when thinking about matches like this: „In case there are those of you who don't remember scientific wrestling- it was American mat wrestling that Nelson Royal and Danny Hodge did when they wrestled guys who were also faces. It was really interesting and it was ALWAYS a time limit draw and everybody shakes hands at the end and the announcers talk about what a joy it was to watch and how it was what wrestling should be, meanwhile, you're hoping BlackJack Mulligan and Wahoo are gonna kick the shit out of each other pretty soon.“

Sammath is fucking awesome. Also, Alex Jones knows how to cut a promo, PJW to a lesser extent. If I were in charge of a wrestling school I would tell students to study their material. Shitting on Kenny Omega for booking criminals is lame. Talk about him being a lousy booker. If he had booked Dan Maff vs. Trauma II, now that's a woman beater vs. statutory rapist matchup I'd have actually liked to see. EDIT: Also who on earth would object to someone booking Jerry Lawler vs. Steve Austin?

This may be the case of an apuestas not QUITE delivering on the promise of the buildup trios. These two were fighting like mad everytime they squared off, and there are shades of that in this match – Guerrero starts with an awesome punch combo in the corner, and there are scrappy moments throughout the match. In total this was a big match with big moves where both guys worked hard – it didn't quite have the epic transitions or savage feeling I want from a legendary mask match, but rather huge bumps and dives. I'm probably unfairly harsh here because of how annoying bloodless mask matches got in the 2000s, while this was a far better match than any of these.

The first half of this was great action. One of the better „small scale“ Kawada performances of the year and also the first time I've seen Kakihara show some kind of fire in AJPW. Lots of stiff shots and I liked Kawada torturing him with a few basic armlocks. The 2nd half was not as good as the first. I was slightly annoyed with Kawada no-selling the armbar and the UWFi boys being threated like jobbers.

JIP. This was surprisingly one of the stiffer matches I've seen between the GAEA younglings so far. Sato hit some fierce urakens and kicks to the face and Nagashima at one point started throwing shotais from mount. She also nailed Sato with some of the most brutal double stomps I've seen in a while. This was largely Nagashima working as a grappler, busting out her signature slick moves with Sato working as the bigger girl. It works surprisingly well and I thought Sato did a remarkable job putting over the smaller Nagashimas skill. Flash finish that works really well.

JIP. Watching Nagashima will make you realize fast she was one of he more innovative workers around in 1998. This was closer to your typical sprint joshi but paced slow enough and with enough selling to make you appreciate everything. Lots of slick sequences and counters. Uematsu brings a nice vicious edge to this workrate-y match, hitting some brutal knee combos and punching Nagashima square in the jaw at one point. One thing I like is that many of the spots shown here would be near physically impossible to do for most male workers – especially the bridge up spots and Nagashima landing on her feet from the Northern Lights Suplex. Roughly 7 out of 13 minutes shown on both TV and comm tape.

JIP. This was a rockin' little match. I enjoyed the super simple build which was Kato's sleeper hold vs. Sato's dragon screw and Figure 4 leglock. I measure wrestlers by how good they are at selling a sleeper hold and Sato does a nice job here, visibly affected early and close to fading later. They engage in some high end bomb throwing action throwing violent high kicks and backfists and this is really good stuff and another entry to the quality year both these girls were having. NOTE: The G-Panic version shows about 11 minutes out of 17 while the comm. Tape version has only 8 min.