Jetlag

Walter looked good here. For some reason, he is easily the most talented guy to come out of germany/austria recently, but he is rarely put in a position where he can do what he does best. As usual he had to stooge a lot for his smaller opponent, who didn't look all that good. Walter's leg work was pretty great. Fuck knows why a giant austrian farmer boy has to work like Regal, but he does it well. Of course, Riddle no sells aaaaalll of it and just gets his shit in. I was glad when Walter crushed him with the powerbomb. Enjoyable match.

I didn't really like Starr in this. He had all this dweeby offense that didn't look good at all against Walter, and he was far too reliant on Walter feeding into him in convoluted ways, like leap frogging over Walter and all that dumb shit. Also, his Davey Richards-like "intense" facial expressions where really annoying. You are supposed to sell that you are getting the shit beaten out of you first, and not how angry or badass you are. This needed more Walter stomping the shit out of Starr to be good and less Starr popping up to get his shit in against the bigger guy. For example, Starr would just absorb a big spot from Walter like that huge dropkick, and then the next minute just hit a brainbuster type move.

Paul London wrestling in payamas is hilarious. Another moves match. These type of fights are okay once in a while, but when every match on the show is like this things get boring. Well, there was some semblance of a heat section in this, but in the end there were too many random transitions and throwaway moves for me to take this seriously. London hits the SSP for the big 2.99999 moment before Bones pops up and just finishes him. Lame.

Okay match. These first round matches have been essentially "cram moves into 5 minutes", so Donovan deserves some credit for actually selling a bit. I don't really like these "lift opponent into a convoluted position and then drop him into a knee strike" moves they did a bunch here and Riddle kind of looked like a feeble little kid against Dijak at times, which is the opposite of what you want from your MMA badass.

This was kind of mediocre. It was kind of like, Kanemoto on a WCW syndicated match vs., I dunno, Alex Wright? There was no real great matwork and Kanemoto didn't really lay in his strikes. I mean, I don't want him to concuss his opponent, but even his chops and slaps looked week. Also, Thatcher did all these goofy "I am evil" faces and Kanemoto seemed to threat the match like a light hearted affair, waving to the crowd and being all big smiles.

God damn that balding spot on Muto. Good match which was interesting due to Muto not yet having turned into the Shining Wizard spammer. Instead he spammed Figure 4 leg locks. Still, Tenryu carried this nicely. The opening technical work was actually good and then Tenryu just beat the hell out of Muto. Loved the spot where Muto tried his handspring move and got just chopped in the neck. Tenryu busted out a few unusual moves like a fucking Spider Suplex and an extra messed up version of his shitty brainbuster to drill Muto into the mat. Should have been a little more reliant on strikes than big moves in the last couple minutes as Tenryu just doesn't have a big enough moveset for that type of stuff, plus I was a little annoyed with Muto's popping up, but they kept things exciting and did the big move extravaganza very well. Extra-nasty finish too and this is easily one of the better Muto singles.

Indy sleaze superstar Orihara comes to NJPW to battle their resident sleazebag! Lots of Face Washes and blocked snapmares ensue. This was a ton of fun. Orihara uses rough tactics and Ohtani is not afraid to retaliate. Orihara looked pretty good, kicking Ohtani in the balls a bunch and laying in stiff chairshots aswell as bringing the highspots and some smart control spots. Ohtani took no crap and bloodied Orihara's nose. Meltzer's rating seems pretty high but this was a very good sub-10 minute match.

I didn't really think the matwork was outstanding or unique from what I've seen in joshi. They did the usual stretching holds and then moved on. They also teased (or should say "pretended") Genki working the back and Ran going for chokes but it didn't lead anywhere at all. The body of the match just struck me as average and not really building very well.

That's a crazy rating. I thought this match wasn't even good. It was above average in parts, but mostly it was just a deathly bland affair that didn't even have much crowd heat and was pretty sloppy in parts, that atrocious blown rollup sticking out the most. After some okay-ish time killing they just moved into the usual big move and 2.999999 trading without much creativity. No transitions or even nice reversals or exchanges, just pop and do the next move. Lousy match.

This was pretty epic for such a minimalist match. The main thing that these guys do is STARES. And these guys are the masters of staring. You get all kinds of awesome moments thanks to their facial expressions. The pacing and build is of the charts too and thus the crowd is on fire for the finish. The story of Hashimoto coming in, taking out Tenryu's leg and then just drilling him repeatedly in his own ring made for a really compelling match as you were wondering how Tenryu could come back. I don't want to glorify overly stiff moves but Tenryu bloodying Hash's nose was good way to remind you he is still Tenryu even when in trouble. The bomb throwing, and subsequently Tenryu pushing ahead to overcome Hashimoto was really great too. Great match.

Minoru Tanaka looked like he was cosplaying Tamura to get a gig in RINGS here. Tanaka actually tried to have a serious match here and went above his usual mediocrity, so this isn't quite "Ishikawa carries someone to his career match for the 3,000th time", but, still... you don't really see Minoru Tanaka matches this good against someone not named Ishikawa. Really good match with no cute stuff, just really good matwork and Ishikawa doing a great job playing outmatched veteran worker against younger athlete.

Michiko Ohmukai/Yumi Fukawa vs. Ayako Hamada/Mika Akino (Twinstar Tag League '99 Semi-Finals, 12/18/99) The Ohmukai/Fukawa team hasn't really set my world on fire so far. You'd think they'd complement eachother or something, but not really. This was clipped and looked like just a bunch of spots. I guess you can't have blood drenched awesome tags all the time. Mima Shimoda/Etsuko Mita vs. Aja Kong/Rie Tamada (Twinstar Tag League '99 Semi-Finals, 12/18/99) Another clipped match. These standard LCO matches are pretty crap, altough they have some amusing spots. The LCO double chop has to be one of the laziest spots ever though. Mima Shimoda/Etsuko Mita vs. Michiko Ohmukai/Yumi Fukawa (Twinstar Tag League '99 Finals, 12/18/99) More the same. Fuck this go go shit. This only went 6 minutes anyways. There was no real trace of the stuff that made the previous LCO/Fukawa stuff compelling. Ohmukai threw a few punches and Shimoda blows a spot where she is supposed to dodge an Ohmukai kick and gets kicked in the eye pretty badly. LCO win this in shockingly easy fashion and I'm kind of dreading the further LCO push. BONUS MATCH – Yumi Fukawa vs. Mariko Yoshida (9/26) You can call this a mat spotfest if you will, but fuck it. This ruled. This is exactly what makes Arsion so cool. Ultra smooth, tricked out matwork with plenty of freaky Solar-ish submission grabs, dreadful battling on the ground and Fukawa fighting the big bad spider lady like a fiend. Super enjoyable compact bout. So that, uh, ends it on a kind of whatever note for 1999. This year had some pretty great matches but overall was a bit of a step down from the super interesting stuff that was going on in 1998. Dropping the badass quasi shootstyle hurt for sure aswell as the lousy LCO run. Atleast we got a great bloodbath out of it. Best ARSION Matches of 1999 1. Mariko Yoshida vs. Hiromi Yagi (2/18) 2. Etsuko Mita/Mima Shimoda vs. Ayako Hamada/Mika Akino (12/11) 3. Mariko Yoshida vs. Mikiko Futagami (4/14) 4. Yumi Fukawa vs. Mariko Yoshida (9/26) 5. Mariko Yoshida vs. Hiromi Yagi (5/4) 6. Mariko Yoshida vs. Mika Akino (1/17) 7. Mariko Yoshida vs. Yumi Fukawa (5/4) 8. Mariko Yoshida vs. Aja Kong (8/6) 9. Mikiko Futagami vs. Michiko Ohmukai (5/4) 10. Ayako Hamada vs. Mari Apache (7/25) 11. Mari Apache vs. Chaparrita ASARI (7/25) 12. Mima Shimoda/Etsuko Mita vs. Yumi Fukawa/Rie Tamada (7/25) 13. Mika Akino vs. Chaparrita ASARI (7/25)

This match is a literal riot. St. Clair is your good old clean british technician babyface, but Bond just busts out every single cheating tactic he knows, causing a big fight to break out which was one of the more surreal images you could see on WoS. Bond's work over the midsection and his use of the wrist tape is the stuff of legends. I also really dug his elbow to St. Clair's face and weird rope balancing headlock. Really cool stuff that looks slick, effective and believable. St. Clair was exactly as good as he needed to be in the role he was in and gave Bond enough material to bump and stooge, but this was the Dave Bond Show. Also, Bond's facial expressions and body language were hilarious. However, I loved the abdominal stretch nearfall. Only in World of Sport. The finish was kinda lame, but the spot that lead to it was cool.

Greco/Ishikawa/Hidaka vs. Ikeda/Naniwa/Yone (Elimination Tag, BattlARTS 5/10/1998) When you see "BattlARTS" and "Elimination Tag", you think of that super classic from 2008. This wasn't that epic, but still a great piece of pro wrestling. The elimination stip adds a good deal of character and unpredictability to the match, and everyone here gets to look really good. The Naniwa/Ishikawa interactions are so much fun. Hidaka also looks like the most talented kid here, and not just because of his flying. Dude could really dish out the palm strikes. Of course, Ikeda leads his team as a bastard heel captain and it comes down to Team Greco ending up in a disadvantaged situation. Lots of double teaming and nasty boot scrapes ensue. Eventually Greco ends up being the focus of the match, and let me tell you he was tremendous. His selling and fighting back from underneath was world class. The fact that Greco always looks like he can finish an opponent in 2 seconds also adds a ton. After the match a brawl breaks out with all the jumpsuit kids having to separate the competitors, which you rarely saw in BattlARTS. Match started out fun and got really good towards the end, making you want to see all the potential single matchups especially Greco vs. Ikeda.

Shibata likes to play stiff shooter badass. Fujita is the actul legit shooter who you can hit as hard as physically. Naturally they're a good matchup. Them fooling around on the mat and working for submissions won't blow your mind, but you'll watch this match for Fujita mauling Shibata. Fujita really knows how to go Angry Bear when it counts and he just destroys Shibata with knees and soccer kicks. Crazy match.

This was a bonafide juniors epic. I mean, this is pretty much the match all those PWG nerds dream of having. It works because they put the ECW high spot mania into an AJPW match. RVD only blows about 1/5 of his spots and Kroffat absolutely manhandles him. Kroffat absorbing a series of cute RVD high spots, then making a comeback by nuking RVD with throws was pretty great. Everything Kroffat did looked awesome as if he was a prototype Super Dragon: big fat sentons, yanking by the stupid ponytail, knees to the face etc. The Hokuto(?) style headdrop move off the top was hellish too. Very entertaining match.

This was just a gritty old streetfight. Fujiwara was a total fiend here and him targetting Tenryu with punches aswell as torturing him on the mat was just nasty. I was a little annoyed with Fujiwara no-selling Tenryu so much and some of the uncooperative hard hitting exchanges near the end came across as awkward, altough that was what they were going for and the stubborn rolling kicks were great. Not a super classic but it delivers what you want from Fujiwara vs. Tenryu in spades. Also, I kind of enjoyed the finish mostly because I once heard an old carny german wrestler explain what makes these throat chops so dangerous ("the hyoid breaks, and you choke on your own tongue").

This was quite the shootstyle main event. A little long and directionless at times, but the matwork was good enough and when they threw kicks, they just sliced through eachother. A seemingly gassed Yamazaki nearly kicking Maeda's head off was such a spectacular moment. Yeah I don't have much to write about this. Solid in the first 20 minutes and pretty dope violent stuff in the last.

This is more like a classic title match. It's all about the struggle over holds and building to the big throws, making the simple work here very compelling. I just love the first nearfall for the surfboard hold. There is some meandering, but Chigusa knew to sell when it was on the money, and Devil looked like a devil. The fact that there's no choreographed spots, making it all feel like it was made up on the spot, adds a ton to the match too. My favourite bit may have been Devil blocking a Sharpshooter, taking out the leg and then both of them going into a greco lock up. Just a great battle of attrition. Chigusa isn't always on point but her UWF offense here was a lot of fun and because she is a megastar she added a ton of heat to the match. Then you have those fucking punches and huge exhaustion in the last couple minutes pushing this into EPIC territory. Magnificient match.

Mariko Yoshida vs. Aja Kong (12/11) This was the least of their matches so far. It was still a good match with plenty of neat spots, just underwhelmingly short and not a ton of tension. They didn't emphasize the skill vs. Power aspect much and some things felt like they had no consequence. Annoying because these two really should have a classic together, but I guess they just didn't feel like it that night. Etsuko Mita/Mima Shimoda vs. Ayako Hamada/Mika Akino (12/11) Way to salvage the show. For those of you who don't know: this is just out of nowhere turns into one of the goriest matches ever. I dunno how good LCO actually are, but they are pretty effectiv here abusing the young girls and their cheating and not giving Hamakino much offense added a ton to the match. Shimoda leaving a bloody handprint on Aja's shirt was probably the baddest thing she ever did. Ayako and Akino put on an unreal performance – really one of the best „outmatched babyface“ performances I've ever seen. They worked together, and when it was time to bleed, they coated everything in red. Ayako was stunning in particular with her selling of the blood: at one point, she ducked a clothesline and just collapsed, as if she slipped on the blood. When she busted out the scissors and her's Papas signature headbutts as if she was channeling his spirit you know you are watching a classic. Hamakino sticking to flash pins and submissions during the finishing stretch was perfectly believable and produced great nearfalls, especially due to the booking of past matches. Intricate structure and really a total classic of a match, and probably an easy candidate for the best match ever that has two workers in their second year of wrestling.

Yeah this is it. This is the stuff. A few things about this: 1. It's the first Fuchi performance where he acts like a vicious bastard. 2. It's also the first time where Taue really brings something to the table, from being the weak link, to acting like a dick, to having heated interactions with Kawada. 3. A previous six man had a finish involving Kobashi and Mighty Inoue, so they tease the same thing by having Kobashi go against Fuchi at one point. Another thing is the structure and them really making use of the length. In the opening they shuffle through all the matchups in some nice, fast paced wrestling exchanges, the best move being of course Taue kicking Kawada in the face to start their story. They tease Jumbo working the back but then Taue gets it. The in peril sections here are done better than in previous tags because they have slightly more showy selling. Still haven't developed better build to hot tags, but they are getting there. The section where Fuchi is stomping and punching a bloody Kobashi in the face was some beautiful violent pro wrestling. I also really dug how Taue just drove his face into the mat. Taue was getting it that night. His reckless dive also ruled. However, the section also kind of sets up the only problem of the match, which is that Kobashi wasn't vicious enough later on against Fuchi. I mean, dude, this guy chucked the edge of a steel chair in your nose. You sure a rolling pin combo is the best way to exact revenge? The end run was as great as these matches can have. Lots of awesome flurries of strikes and brutal shots, my favourite being Jumbo near decapitating Kobashi with a lariat and the crowd going wild for it. It had almost a boxing like feel where guys would throw but could get caught with a good surprise shot. I also actually liked the somewhat deplaced nearfall section with Kobashi and Taue. As these guys are so close in their standing that their exchanges actually felt like two young guys trying to prove who's superior. So yeah. Blood, hatred, heat, battling for supremacy, elbows to the kidney. The best AJPW match of 1990.

This was a good 6 man tag. Fast pace, no restholds, lots of stiff shots to keep you entertained. However, since Misawa & Friends where still somewhat green at this point, it still feels like they are running through their shit when they are in control. So the most interesting bits are when Jumbo comes in to interact with them. Taue took a beating but it didn't lead to much, on the other side Kobashi took the most punishment, including being on the bad side of some vicious lariats from Jumbo, and Mighty Inoue of all people stepping on him, attack him with punches, knee drops, double stomps and even a piledriver on the floor. The Kobashi vs. Inoue finishing stretch was thus pretty exciting because Inoue is old and feeble, but can win with a flash pin. That was some cool booking.

Again JIP to the MVC controlling. This was a really fun match where Williams and Gordy work over Kawada in stiff fashion. There were some great Kawada/Gordy interactions - Kawada laying into a big gaijin as hard as he can never gets old.The finishing run was pretty hot with Kawada and Misawa throwing the big guys around for impressive nearfalls, including Kawada dropping Gordy with a sick powerbomb. After the match a brawl breaks out, indicating somebody was pissed off with that result.

JIP to a control segment on Kawada. We get some stiff strikes and Kawada taking huge bump to the outside after eating a nasty lariat from Jumbo. The finish run had some cool exchanges and Misawa looking like a boss. This wasn't bad, but not really terribly exciting. The result was cool to see though.

Damn. I don't remember this being so brutal. I mean, BRUTAL, yeah, but this felt like one of the Top 10 most gruesome matches I've ever seen. The kicks and palm strikes here put any UWF match to shame. The opening with both of them pummeling eachother followed by a piledriver through a table followed by Aja chucking said broken table at Hotta was one of the best to a match that I can recall. The selling and transitions, as with pretty much any Hotta match, were lacking, but thankfully there was bit of a big vs. little story to add some semblance of psychology below the crash crash horror. Kong dominating Hotta on the ground using her weight was good. Then of course you get the work on Hotta's bloody stigmata hand. I was impressed with the struggle during the nearfall section and how they kept building towards Hotta getting the big powerbomb in on Aja as if it was Hogan/Andre. Smart finish. This is an MOTDC for all Lady's wrestling.