Jetlag

So far Tarzan Goto matches anywhere have yet to disappoint. The dude always does the same thing, fucking dudes up, but builds really effective southern tag structure around. I just watched the 1998 Indy World show. It's the only show available from this fed. Phil reviewed the main event for his Fujiwara project. I didn't think it was a GREAT match but a great find for sure. Really fun stuff, Ryuma Go was a maniac. Then there was a Tarzan Goto vs. Kaientai 6 man tag which I liked even better, I can't believe the DVDVR crew used to hate Goto. There also was junior tag spotfest featuring all your sleaze kings TAKA, Orihara and Asian Cougar spottin and runnin. Great show, I'm having way more fun watching these indy cards full of sleazy heavyweights and insane juniors than I've had watching current wrestling the last couple years.

This was a really fun trios where guys mostly run in to do fun shit. Itakura likes to throw stiff kicks, but ends up taking a big beating and ends up suplexed into a bunch of chairs. Fujiwara was mostly slapping the taste out of people's mouths and Nakano, for a UWF guy, mostly focussed on bringing hurty looking strikes, at one point raining punches to the back of Itakura's head from back mount. Go was off the chain here and acted like a crazy motherfucker you wouldn't want to confront, ramming into people with headbutts like a madman. Yatsu and Okamura were decent enough but mostly this was a showcase for the fun stuff the Fujiwara/Nakano/Go dream team could do.

Big badass brawl pitting Goto against Kaientai (who are all in WWF gear and have Yamaguchi-San with them), but mainly Goto against Togo. I loved the opening, which has Goto attacking Yamaguchi only to be hit by big Togo diving senton. Then chaos ensues and Togo is recklessly flying into chairs. Easily one of the better „opening brawling“ segments I can remember from a match in Korakuen Hall. Togo ends up busted open and has his cut worked over. Togo gives a really great performance here, and Goto and Aoyagi are great working the cut (Azteca is decent too).Goto uses foreign objects, while Aoyagi throws punches and kicks at Togo's face. Goto is so great here as a grotesque lumbering psycho destroying the little dudes, and Aoyagi working exchanges with Kaientai and laying into them with kicks is all kinds of fun too. It gets to the point where Goto gets ready to carve people up with a broken beer bottle and you wonder how Kaientai are gonna get out of this alive. I actually loved the sports entertainment twist right before the finish too as it resulted in a badass character moment from Aoyagi. Match probably needed a big dive train or something, but as it was it was a spectacular fight.

Hey... this is another kind of match you don't see that much anymore. They nuke eachother with highspots nonstop, fuck all rhyme or reason, but the match stays short enough to not piss you off. The first 2 minutes of the match have 5 Michinoku Drivers – with TAKA eating 3 of them in a row and laughing about it a minute later. If you can get over that kind of idiocy, there was some fun to be had here. Cougar and Palomino bring the highspots, Cougar hits about half a dozen guillotine legdrop variations, and Palomino has nice height on a standing huracanrana and a great tope. TAKA and Orihara add some character work – meaning middle fingers and low blows. Taka also flops his dive and ricochets into a bunch of teenage girls. The most important thing is that this didn't overstay it's welcome and didn't do a bloated, tryhard finishing run.

Yeah, and he even offers downloads! Pretty cool for eurofolks like me who wish to dodge shipping costs. Thoughts on all 3 discs: 1 - the commercial tape: the Takaiwa vs. Shoda (Masada) rookie squash is fun and violent. Everything else is great. This is a keeper for sure. 2 - the 1998 show: I loved this show because every match was a fun, inventive grappling heavy 10 minute match between two young guys/girls and the main event was a hidden gem. 3 - the 1999 show: this is the least of the 3 shows but still fun to watch. Satomura/Kato, the Aoyagi match and the main event were the best matches. Also Kurashima almost killed his opponent in the opener with 2 ganso bombs.

Fun signature Aoyagi match, meaning karateka vs. pro wrestler rounds match.Okumura isn't terribly exciting, but decent enough as a wrestler going for takedowns and submissions and willing to stand there and trade shots with Aoyagi. Actually thought this was an Aoyagi carryjob, as he obviously brings all the really fun offense, and did a neat job selling. Aoyagi was getting the better of Okumura, but the younger guy seemed to be cracking the old guy down due to youth. Also, for a guy who you think of as bringing the very real shots, Aoyagi had some really fun pro stylized kicks and punches, such as a really slick axe kick he threw after evading a takedown, or a diving kick off the 2nd rope. His punch to the throat was obviously the highlight. Match was pretty short at only 9 minutes and didn't have an outstanding finish but it was still really cool to see what Aoyagi could do against such a generic guy.

This was a decent attempt at a main event fromtwo inexperienced guys. Masada kept getting the better of Fujisaki on the mat, so Fujisaki started cracking him with headbutts, bloodying him and drilling him with brutal backdrop suplex moves. Masada was busting out lucha moves here, including a gory special from the ground which was pretty choice. Other than that they weren't good enough to keep the matwork as interesting as it was in previous MUGA matches, and the match ended rather abruptly. Fun match.

More MUGA joshi. This was more MUGAish than the other Meiko-in-MUGA match, as they focused even more on holds and working them. Almost every move lead to another hold, and holds would lead different variations. Really well done stuff as these two knew how to add variation. I really liked Kato's side headlock into a rope walking bulldog, and she was rocking all the Cobra Twist variations too. Meiko did a nice job zoning in on both the arm and leg, and the finish had some pretty nasty headdropping moves before a desperation submission. Nice stuff and it's always cool to see the GAEA girls show what they are capable of in a clean singles match.

Another decent grappling match, altough they ran out of ideas. Match should've gone 8 or 7 minutes and would've been good, at 11 minutes it felt slightly bloated. I was surprised that Kotsubo didn't stink it up, he kept things moving, had a really nice stiff punch combo and won the match with a olympic leg screw into ankle hold that was pretty boss.

He got a big run of singles matches and title matches for his retirement run. Virus also has certainly been privileged compared most other guys on the CMLL roster, getting more long title matches than almost anyone else on the roster in the last couple of years.

Fujisaki is a rare creature, so it's double awesome to see him pop up in MUGA. This is mostly amateur style grappling with Fujisaki having a tough battle against the bigger Kurashima. Kurashima, for a nobody who never did anything in his career had absolutely badass throws, including one where Fujisaki goes for a crucifix hold and just gets flattened into the mat. Fujisaki retaliates with his awesome JYD headbutt and an absolutely deadly Steve Williams backdrop where he drops Kurashima on his face. Kurashima may have been knocked loopy, or maybe it was the reason why he remained a nobody for the next 20 years, but he seemed to be struggling to keep it together during the last couple minutes. Another quality undercard bout.

BattlARTS young guns square off! For some reason, junji.com works more shootstyle in MUGA than I've ever seen from him in BattlARTS. This was super fun, two flyweights who can hit the mat doing some really nice grappling, and then doing a mighty fine job working some pro style spots and nearfalls. The awesome thing about watching two obscure low ranked guys in an undercard match is that you have no idea who is going to win and what their finishers are. So I bit on all the nearfalls here. Really liked the well timed dropkick, the ultra-slick submission counter from Hidaka, junji landing his goofy elbow combination into a submission nearfall, etc. Rocking little match.

It's the GAEA girls working a MUGA match!!! AWESOME! This was a really cool match just as the circumstances promise. A little more grappling heavy than your average joshi match, but they also mix it up with some unique, fun lucha-influenced exchanges. Nagashima can both whip out the fast huracanrana and the mean Greco headscissor choke on the ground. Satomura has a real knack for nice simple stuff, in this case busting out a cool leg stretch on the ground and a cool airplane spin. They both show their great fundamentals (test of strength into a bridge etc.) aswell as some creativity. I've grown fond of well worked basic opening matches and this was a goodie.

Takeshi Ono. Indy till the very end. Masakazu Fukuda, altough he's not considered an all time great. He was a really good indy guy with limited tape and not even a big run of indy main events. Then he died.

Masada is the future MAZADA, which is kind of mind boggling when you look at him. So, the guy who these days mostly plays a scummy rudo and stooges for Mil Mascaras and other aging juniors once upon a time was a thick amateur wrestler and Fujinami's project. And this was a pretty fucking awesome rookie vs. Vet match. Part of that is that you watch a match like this with no expectations, and everytime something awesome happens it's unexpected, but this was genuinely really good. Because it's MUGA they stick to grappling, and it's a really nice mix of amateur style and pro wrestling holds. Fukuda is the real deal here leading an inexperienced guy to a bonafide mini-epic. At some points you can tell Masada didn't have the instincts down, but overall he gets to look great. Masada has really nice amateur movements and enthusiasm, and they build from the matwork and submissions into awesome suplexes, choice counters and nearfalls. Fukuda allows the kid to look good while reminding everyone he is the boss, his suplex moves, STO and stiff shots looked badass. Great Fukuda performance, the guy was a treasure.

Shane Rigby is some catch wrestler and also he rules. I assume he never had more than a handful of pro wrestling matches, but he is a joy to watch. Great mechanics, bridges and grappling. He is a total Carl Greco-like wrestler and would've been awesome in PWFG. Takemura is just a non-descript rookie here and gets gobbled in entertaining fashion. He has some nice arm rolls and that's it. But Rigby really brings it with the awesome fast takedowns, deadlift german suplex and wrestling mat transitions. This was all grappling and a pretty perfect squash.

More MUGA slick matwork. At times the exchanges here resembled intense IWRG maestro scraps. Ooya is perfectly good in this environment, and Ishikawa is just off the chain. This wasn't as psychologically sharp as the previous tag with Fujinami, but I especially liked the Ishikawa vs. Nakano sections, as it was really cool to see Ishikawa use his his skill against a bigger, beastly opponent, and the Fujinami/Oya finish, for two guys who are about as random a pairing as you can get, was really good.

Jesus christ it's just one man and his opinions. By "phoning in it" he probably meant not doing enough apron moves or some shit.

I got 3 discs from Quebrada: http://www.quebrada.net/videos/Muga1.html This is fucking awesome stuff. If anyone has more 90s MUGA, contact me because I'll pay you in gold. More reviews will come later. So far I watched 2/3 discs, and every single match has been worthwhile. The main events kick ass.

See, this is why you get grimy old tapes from forgotten 90s spin off feds: if this were NJPW, these two would get 8 minutes in the opening match and it would be forgettable. Here, they get 18 minutes to stretch out and do their thing. Nishimura continues to rule in 1998, he was a total wrestling machine here, as if to teach 2nd grade shootstylist Fukuda a lesson and prove his Gotch-style can totally fuck with any shooter. Fukuda is a great opponent for Nishimura as he can totally go in this kind of ultra-tight, mostly mat based contest, gives a nice contrast to Nish's old school style with his modern shoot grappling and sells exhaustion very well. I love that even after way more than 10 minutes of exhausting mat struggle, Nish still sprawls when Fukuda goes for a takedown and then proceeds to lay in really stiff Inoki leg kicks. The finishing run was pretty simple but great, Nishimura getting great submission nearfalls for basic Figure 4 and Cobra Twist moves while Fukuda was planting him with suplexes and headbutting while fighting for a top wristlock in frustration. Also loved how Nish just dropkicked Fukuda in the face at one point. The finish itself was a little underwhelming, altough the move itself was great. Everything up to that was a high end intense contest full of awesome NJPW vs. UWFish struggle and intensity.

You look at this matchup, taking place in MUGA, and you think „this sounds like a lot of matwork“. And you'd be correct. Pretty much a purist's dream match with all four guys hitting the mat hard. Perfect blend of shootstyle, 80s NJPW and MUGA psychology. Ishikawa fits like a glove here and looks great. Aside from all the great arm whips, headscissors and armbars and slick grappling they knew how to make basic holds meaningful and spice things up with struggle. Really liked the young guys getting the advantage and old guy Fujinami busting out a huge kneedrop off the top to break up a submission nearfall. Also Nishimura looks awesome and as good as he was in the 2000s. Match is a little short (17 minutes) but as good as it looks on paper.

Angry juniors clobbering each other. Takaiwa's a caveman, but his brute style works pretty well in this kind of match. Kanemoto knows how to beat people up in interesting ways. Unfortunately, the match suffered from lack of structure and meaningful transitions. For example, Kanemoto was getting worked over, but made a random comeback with a single slap and was out of trouble. Also, Fukuda hit an amazing looking chokeslam against Takaiwa, but was met with a DVB 3 seconds later. Fukuda was in young lion gear here but fired up to make up for it. Ohtani didn't do much of note beyond his usual program. Decent match.

Fukuda enters the BOSJ and pushes the legend to the limit! Liger goes out of his way to make this indy nobody look great! It's hard not to love Fukuda here with how he withstands Liger's stiff shotais and busts out a bunch of great throws and holds. Opening matwork was pretty rockin' and better than the usual Liger trademark surfboards. Fukuda's sleeper variations were pretty choice and him getting control over Liger was done nicely. They do a pretty great section where they exchange pitbull headbutts on their knees to mix up the bomb throwing. The crowd gets hugely into the possible upset too. Sweet match.

Greco and Ikeda looked really good against eachother in the previous tag. So here's them in a singles match! For such a short match, this was GREAT. Ikeda is a guy who is comfortably „very good“ on the match, but Greco just guzzles him here. Greco has ridiculously high end technique. High end slick ground grappling. High end headscissor work. A bloody high end sidewalk slam! Greco really was a master at taking the most simple things and turning them into something amazing. Ikeda is all outmatched bull here and he has some great brief spurts of pissed off bull rushes. This was like the best 9 minute Velocity match ever.

Carl Greco vs. Daisuke Ikeda (2/20/97) Greco and Ikeda looked really good against eachother in the previous tag. So here's them in a singles match! For such a short match, this was GREAT. Ikeda is a guy who is comfortably „very good“ on the match, but Greco just guzzles him here. Greco has ridiculously high end technique. High end slick ground grappling. High end headscissor work. A bloody high end sidewalk slam! Greco really was a master at taking the most simple things and turning them into something amazing. Ikeda is all outmatched bull here and he has some great brief spurts of pissed off bull rushes. This was like the best 9 minute Velocity match ever.