Ma Stump Puller

Your best bet is probably his NOAH excursions where he was working a lot more tags than usual (namely with Davey and the like) remember those being quite well done for the time, if a bit of a product of that said time as well. That's a main weakness of Bryan as he's never truly been at that incredible quality in tags than he has in singles; it's the thing that leans over Terry over him for me, alongside Terry having far superior heel work (though that's way more personal as I simply don't like Bryan working heel most of the time lol)

Other Deep Dive stuff Introduction Ogawa is one of my favourite wrestlers ever, and while I'm really happy people have realised just how good he is in working smart and enjoyable matches, there's not a lot of in-depth GWE stuff out there for him! I've been stuck in for the last while with COVID, so I basically just sat down and watched a ton of Ogawa matches back to back lol. Mostly tried to cover NOAH from the more...forgotten years, namely mid 2010's, but there's some other stuff as well. Ogawa isn't someone who has epic GOAT-tier performances often, but consistently he's working at extremely impressive levels, which I hope to illustrate here. Don't expect this to be Complete & Accurate tier by any reasonable standard, but instead a wide assortment of matches that have generally fell under the radar for a while. I'll be ranking these matches on a grade of four standards: 1. Great (fantastic, must watch/MOTYC) 2. Good (worth watching, solid) 3. Decent (alright, does the job) 4. Forgettable (bad/not worth watching) This is more of a formality so anyone who's skimming these can get a quick synopsis of what to watch and not to watch without having to read through paragraphs or try to guess how good a match is based on other ranking systems. I'll try to pace out the matches being uploaded just so there's not a huge chunk being thrown on at once. ============ Atsushi Kotoge & Taiji Ishimori vs. Kotaro Suzuki & Yoshinari Ogawa (04.12.2012) This was marketed as the big return of Ogawa; he'd been under months of recovery after a botched Bison Smith Bisontenial badly damaged his neck in pretty terrifying scenes, especially given, well, you know. Ogawa would never be the same after the injury as he'd lost so much mass (presumably from not being able to work out normally/general inactivity) that he could only work Jr heavyweight matches from then on in, so this was set up as a debut match to get that over. The match itself isn't that special outside of that fact, I thought it was decent enough. They establish Ogawa as the big player with his vast experience, but Suzuki and co also get in the usual high-speed Jr sequences you'd expect and so this never gets down to a complete crawl. Ishimori and Kotoge have the dynamic of being two good acts by themselves, however not working great as a team as they regularly get outsmarted by Suzuki and co who have better chemistry. Outside of that though this just felt like a usual spotshow without much of a story or point to it; the stuff was cool but if you don't have anything there dramatics-wise to make it interesting I tend to zone out after a few minutes. Finish focuses around Ogawa being useful as he keeps Ishimori from getting in the ring and allowing Suzuki to get the win with a few big elbows after the spot work. Nothing that interesting here but if you like the usual big fancy Jr spots as per the style of the time, you'll get some enjoyment out of this. Ogawa is clearly still getting used to being back in a ring, he never looked overtly rusty and kept up well with the younger guys. RANK: Decent Akitoshi Saito & Yoshinari Ogawa vs. Katsuhiko Nakajima & Satoshi Kajiwara (09.02.2013) Kajiwara is the forgotten Kensuke student, probably because he wasn't really one but most people assumed as such given his deep connections to the Kensuke Office lads. He's not really much to talk about apart from some basic lucha hybrid work at half-speed Ogawa gets a bit of life out of a pudgy Nakajima alongside Saito going full gear with kicks, but inevitably can't go as braindead as his opponent in that regard. The bratty kids of Kensuke try to land Saito individually but he's way too big for either of them to handle for long, so they mostly go for double team dynamics instead. This works for a good while with some nice work until Ogawa is able to handle the two with some speed and snappy backdrops to even the score. The lead for the finish was pretty simple: Saito got it in for Kajiwara as they went for their own sequences, despite some (honestly pretty shoddy) stuff from Kajiwara, he got dropped after a Saito lariat, Death Cloak, and then a big Death Sickle kick for the pin. Pretty robust tag that was super designed around protecting Nakajima, which is fair enough given what they wanted to with him even this early. Kaji is the weaker link here both in kayfabe and in reality: he's fine, I wouldn't say he wowed at all here. Ogawa and Saito put in the usual work and didn't look half-bad getting the younger workers to something enjoyable. RANK: Decent Harlem Bravado vs. Yoshinari Ogawa (10.02.2013) You might know Harlem from his current work as Andre Chase in NXT. Him in NOAH is....well, certainly a weird thing to see (though unsurprising given the era we are in) but this wasn't terrible, namely because they focused on the fundamentals and Ogawa can wrestle those kind of matches while sleeping. This was focused around Bravado's youth and speed vs Ogawa's usual cheap tricks and nasty technical stuff, trying to get pins off bending the shoulder all the way in a hammerlock and pulling at Bravado's ears to get him off the top rope, just some really great classic bits on display. There's honestly not much for me to say: this was just a smartly worked small match with two very competent workers who got the memo pretty early. Ogawa makes sure to get Bravado over near the end as he bumps big for a lariat and other big bombs, including a nice top rope European Uppercut. Eventually Ogawa gets the advantage with his slick drop-down low blow when Bravado comes off the second rope, pushing him into the ropes and then kneeling down in order to literally trip the guy over for a sneaky Rat Boy special roll-up finish lol. Nothing special for this however definitely a fun watch if you want to see Chase do some actual solid ring-work for once, and Ogawa is obviously there to lead things along and make this better than it had any right to be. Good carry-job. RANK: Good Mikey Nicholls & Shane Haste vs. Takeshi Morishima & Yoshinari Ogawa (24.02.2013) TMDK? Babyface Morishima? It has to be weird pre-NJPW merger NOAH! This was a pretty solid tag, actually. Haste and Ogawa do some good sequences as he blindsides the vet with his speed, and Morishima is obviously the big threat here that TMDK immediately set about grinding down to the mat. Good news: this means we get some psychology! Bad news: it's more or less a excuse to sit in rest holds. Probably for the best as Morishima was steadily on the decline here due to his alcoholism and had lost a lot of muscle ; not quite as bad as next year where his matches are mostly sad EVIL-tier stuff where people are interfering every minute to disguise how little he can do but you can tell he's lost a few steps from his prime. The middle part is good as Nicholls gets beat down by the two for most of it, so Morishima doing big lumpy power moves and Ogawa doing mean Southern-style punches and brawling, always a enjoyable combo. Haste's hot tag is entertaining as shit as he just hurl himself all over the place to just lay it in for Morishima, and the two manage to really get over their superior teamwork by always having each other's back and knowing how to work off the other. Morishima of course powers though the two and even lands a top rope dropkick, even if it's a bit wiffed. Him and Haste have a big guy/small guy back and forth as Morishima just throws his weight around and Haste can do little but try to wear him down with his indie-riffic leg-slaps. Finishing stretch is good enough as Ogawa tries to get the sneaky win, despite Morishima's assistance he still ends up caught in TMDK's double team Tankbuster for the conclusive pin. Pretty solid stuff all round; even though this starts slow it gets good real easily, and TMDK are solid workers despite their tendency to overdo it at points with their stuff. Morishima was the usual lump he was around this time, he felt a bit more engaged and alongside Ogawa's varied and pretty slick pace, this was surprisingly great for the last half. RANK: Good Hitoshi Kumano & Yoshinari Ogawa vs. Ricky Marvin & Super Crazy (09.03.2013) Cut up slightly as the first few minutes were missing on the TV edit. This was a early prototype of the later messy Stinger/whoever else rivalries as Ogawa and co face off against the Los Mexitosos duo, who were on a pretty long run with the GHC Jr tag belts at the time, even defending them in AAA. They immediately bully Kumano as he's the weak link rookie, getting some good mileage out of some nasty lucha holds to work the back. Marvin does a super sick rolling Mexican Stretch to really hammer in their dominance as Ogawa fails to tag in and keeps getting blindsided by the numbers advantage. Super Crazy was obviously a bit slow in places but did his job just fine if a bit off in places. Eventually Ogawa gets in regardless of the legal tag and runs wild with a good pace as he goes though his usual spots, but due to not being the legal man the ref is too busy getting Ogawa out to notice Marvin using his title belt to whip the guy in the face and steal a win with a roll-up. Nothing special for a undercard, I'd say everyone worked in some decent spots to make this at least somewhat decent, and it works to build up to later things down the line. Nothing really memorable about this though. RANK: Forgettable Takashi Iizuka & Toru Yano vs. Takashi Sugiura & Yoshinari Ogawa (21.04.2013) Good lord remember when Yano and Iizuka were GHC tag champions? Holy fuck that was the dark ages of NOAH, and sadly we are right in the middle of their reign, so this was as expected quality from these two. It was actually entertaining seeing Yano and co get blindsided for once as Ogawa and Sugiura immediately start beating the pair down hard, isolating Yano to take abuse by himself. The two get this going really well with a great burst of violence and some solid chemistry as they manhandle the CHAOS duo. Yano takes the advantage with hair pulling and this turns into the usual heel formula for the CHAOS lads as they turn this into a boring stretched out heat segment on Ogawa with lots of trash brawling and the like. I can at least say the crowd were into it and Ogawa was selling remarkably well, even if the ref just looked like a insignificant ass just standing there as the two cheated aplenty, even right in front of him. Sugiura's hot tag was crazy loud and he just abused and threw around Iizuka here despite the dude being all banged up by this point. The finish is the closest we ever get to a Ogawa/Yano singles match as the two exchange some surprisingly robust roll-ups, a extended backslide tease between the two allows Iizuka to run in with the Iron Finger, attack Ogawa, and for Yano to get the cheap win with said backslide. Nothing good here, I'm afraid. The NJPW guys are immensely limited and as much as I like Yano as a stupid tourney spoiler, he was pretty insufferable at this point given his limited ring-work and lack of actual heel heat for said antics, which were mostly cheap gags. That style works for a G1-style tournament; not for a daily week by week match standard, and Iizuka is.....washed, to put it nicely. Ogawa and Sugiura try to make this as solid as possible and it really felt like they were trying to showcase just how crappy their opponents were by contrast, but I can't in good faith recommend this. RANK: Forgettable Genichiro Tenryu & Yoshinari Ogawa vs. Masao Inoue & Takeshi Morishima (11.05.2013) This was for Kobashi's Final Burning event, and of course it wasn't really all that serious given Inoue is here and mostly in the spotlight Tenryu is done physically by this point and can't do anything apart from hang on the ropes and a few punches, so this was all done to smart work instead of going full tilt, though that didn't stop Morishima trying to bust his hip with some of his huge spots. Inoue is great at his usual shtick as the match builds around him being a shit to Tenryu early with a sneaky eye rake on the apron and knowing he's fine because he has Morishima to fall back on, but of course the poor guy just can't keep it together to actually win a match so things quickly fall apart. Ogawa makes Morishima look like a complete monster as he just gets thrown all over the place, while he does the opposite with Inoue by bullying the poor sap for the most part. Inoue's comedy stuff is great, his selling is just so animated as he crumbles and falls over himself whenever there's even the slight chance of him doing something impressive. Him and Ogawa build up a second rope clothesline remarkably well as Inoue takes multiple attempts to land it properly, and when he does there's a good reaction. Despite Inoue even landing his goofy wind-up lariat, he easily falls to a Tenryu chop into Ogawa School-Boy for the conclusive pin. This was cleverly worked, but not that great unless you really like seeing Inoue comedy spots. Ogawa carried most of this given Tenryu was in no real condition to do much of anything, so that's a bonus. RANK: Decent Kyle Sebastian vs. Yoshinari Ogawa (17.05.2013) Cut slightly by about 3 minutes. Sebastian is a trashy Canadian indie worker who was picked up during the decline days of NOAH for only one tour, so this is fairly rare stuff. He does a silly dance sometimes and that's basically the gimmick. While it might work in DDT, not so much here. The start was generic arm work between the two and mostly there for Sebastian to get in some offence. The weird part is Ogawa's bit, which has him take control when Sebastian seemingly tweaks his leg off a leapfrog spot. From then on in Ogawa mostly takes control while Sebastian gets in the occasional bit of offence while no-selling the leg issues when he has to do his spots, typical sloppiness there. He lands some generic offence including a dropkick and a top rope crossbody, but despite his weak stuff Ogawa is still standing and keeps going back to the leg. This pays off in the finish as Sebastian tries for a flashy moonsault to dodge Ogawa's elbow in the corner but in doing so he tweaks it more and ends up stumbling to the floor, allowing Ogawa to snap on his Figure Four for the tap out victory. Nothing undercard showing and mostly Ogawa carrying with his pacing and general work. Sebastian isn't really that good (like, at all) for this standard of quality, feeling like a sore thumb by comparison. Didn't really get much from this at all. RANK: Forgettable Kyle Sebastian & Slex vs. Yoshinari Ogawa & Zack Sabre Jr. (30.06.2013) Pretty good for a opener. Slex is the guy most people know: Kyle Sebastian is a job guy they got from Canada. This is the first match where Ogawa and Zack are teaming up; they already have a fairly good connection given Ogawa trained the guy. Baby Zack is still iffy in places but him and Slex have a mostly smooth technical exchange, and Ogawa seems really energised here as he moves well and his stuff is fairly on the money to keep up with the faster pace. Slex and Zack by far have the best exchanges here though: these two really got something going here between Zack's slick technical pace and Slex's big bombs and spots. Sebastian's big thing was basically just spamming dropkicks, though he does do a cool moonsault at one point. Ogawa was the slowest, obviously, and he did struggle somewhat with the sprinty pace that this was going at, even if he was still quite good when it came down to it. They worked this into the finish as Ogawa couldn't get the job done and Zack's way too busy going at full tilt, ending up knocking out Ogawa with a Sick Kick attempt, allowing Sebastian to get a quick roll-up and the big upset. Ogawa shows his maturity by kicking Zack's ass post-match: for many tag teams this would be the end of their partnership, funnily enough this is just the beginning for these two lol. Good sprint, a bit too spot-focused and not much selling to find, but it did well in showcasing the shaky foundations of the Zack/Ogawa partnership as opposed to a more tight-nit duo, which will continue to endure for the next two years. RANK: Decent Roderick Strong & Slex vs. Yoshinari Ogawa & Zack Sabre Jr. (20.07.2013) Ogawa and Zack still aren't quite on good terms as Ogawa refuses to shake Sabre's hand during the pre-match. The starting sequences are good for separate reasons: Sabre has some nifty technical stuff and him and Strong work particularly well together while Ogawa has to eat shit as Strong destroys him with his signature hard chops. It's cool to see Ogawa try to do Kobashi spots where he's trying to push though the pain to try to get his stuff in, he's absolutely NOT Kobashi, he can't hit hard enough to do much of anything, and so he's sent all over the place and selling his ass off. Ogawa finally gets in something when he sneakily rakes the eyes on a pinfall attempt, but he has to quickly tag out after Strong threatens chopping him even more red than he already is. We get some miscommunication spots as Ogawa and Zack can't bring down Strong and knock each other over in the process, allowing the other duo to get in a big flying kick and Slex hurling himself over for a dive to the outside. Slex works over the back with some basic but fine enough stuff, Strong adds some great flavour with a big double Gourdbuster and nice strikes. They amp up the disrespect to really get the crowd rooting behind Zack as he bumps good and gets over the eventual hot tag. The hot tag sadly wasn't that hot as Ogawa's stuff is a bit meh; nothing bad by his standards but it didn't really have any fire behind it to really get anyone interested. I don't know what was up with Strong's arm as he kept looking at it multiple times: was he working injured or something? Not sure, but something was definitely up given he kept going back to it. Slex gets in to do a bunch of cool stuff before Zack jumps in for some awesome tricky counters and big kicks to the legs and arm to disable the guy and ground him for a armbar. Strong gets overeager as he runs all over the place to land moves while Zack uses all of the goofy WoS spots he can to keep him under control. I did like them reincorporating the miscommunication from before as Ogawa and co don't mess up this time, but Ogawa still gets mad when Zack can't get a proper roll-up applied lol. Strong and Slex have a awesome double team bit where Slex powerbombs Zack into Strong's knees in a nasty bump. Zack has to fight for the finish himself as he hurls huge strikes to save the day and catches Slex in a cross armbreaker/leg lock, forcing the tap-out. Ogawa is still mad post-match and beats his ass again as per standard. This was full of solid action and actual reliable selling as Zack gets a full showcase to essentially get over that alongside his technical work as well: he can be a bit insufferable in places with how little he communicates struggle for his bits, however he was tolerable here. Ogawa by design doesn't do a whole lot, but his work is also impressive for what it is as he gets over just how out of his depth he really was, and how dirty he had to get in order to survive. RANK: Good Masao Inoue vs. Yoshinari Ogawa (04.08.2013) Wasn't anything special but a fun little comedy match. Inoue is a guy I wish people would get a closer look on because he's really great at working ring psychology and knowing where to be a goofy idiot and when to get the crowd to rally behind him. He was never a "good" wrestler in terms of workrate, but that's not always needed to be a solid act. Him and Ogawa have a easy rapport that gets them a easy match as a result, based around Ogawa being a bully and Inoue being the underdog that has to rely on eye rakes and trying (and failing) to do moves. There's some great slapstick with Inoue getting his groin abused aplenty and stumbling over trying to get back in the ring to escape a count out loss when Ogawa tries to throw him to the very end of the arena. Inoue gets his shit in near the end with some clotheslines and a terrible shoulder charge from the second rope. When he tries again for one Ogawa just moves casually out of the way lol. It was cool seeing Inoue slapping on a rear naked choke, but Inoue is too dumb to notice that his shoulders are pinned to the mat and so loses the match. As I said, it's not really a workrate match: Inoue is way too gone for that: it's a functional comedy outing that never threatened being anything more than it was. RANK: Decent Jushin Thunder Liger & Tiger Mask vs. Yoshinari Ogawa & Zack Sabre Jr. (07.12.2013) Ogawa and Zack's first title win, and it's a pretty flush match! It was fun to see Ogawa as a hometown babyface against the NJPW invaders, and they do a good job in balancing the heat of the NJPW duo with some actual good ring-work alongside it. Liger playing the cocky heel also rules as well because, well, Liger. He works to mock Ogawa by stealing all of his usual Ratboy antics, so he targets his leg and just keeps at it with nasty holds and stomps, even borrowing his figure-four to try and add the ultimate insult by tapping him out with it. Tiger Mask IV kicks hard and.....well that's about it, really. Him and Zack have a good little dynamic with the young lad consistently getting beat around the place whenever he tries to save Ogawa from a particularly mean submission, but outside of that the guy is his usual boring self. Zack goes mad and does a double suicide dive for his hot tag and almost brains himself on the mat because of how crazy he is, thankfully went off fine. He sticks mostly to his usual M.O. of arm work, especially given Mask's bad arm is a perfect target for it. Him and Liger do a cool top rope Frankensteiner reversal into a roll-up, which was pretty nifty. The lead for the finish is good also as Ogawa leads one last charge against the duo, but he finds himself overwhelmed by their sheer numbers by this point and takes some big near falls to get the crowd hot, including a big top rope Butterfly Suplex from Mask IV. Liger arms one last big palm strike, but Ogawa snaps on a last-chance roll-up where he pretty much just throws every bit of force left in his body to try to keep Liger to the mat, and it works! He cheats out a big win once again despite everything against him. This suffered from a few issues: Tiger Mask IV is just not that good, for one: and there's some definite lulls here. That said, this was still a good late-Liger performance, and Zack and Ogawa are a really consistently flush duo that definitely deserved the feel-good win given how much they threw on the table here. Probably the first Zack/Ogawa performance that was properly good on both ends in terms of them feeling like a actual unit, though it also isn't the last either. RANK: Good ======= That's pretty much it for the first part until I finish up my watching.

I'll also vouch for RVD by saying that he was a guy who brightened up any AJPW match that included him, though that's speaking for a version of RVD that was more reserved, actually sold and got over stuff. He also made AJPW Shiga watchable, which is not a easy task! I also feel like Sabu is just a better version of him in all aspects, including the crazy spots. One thing I'll give him is that he's always entertained me somehow in every match he's been in, even if that's mostly due to just doing cool stuff for the sake of it. He's a fun videogame-like wrestler who just goes full tilt most of the time, that definitely can be appealing for a lot of people.

I'd rather have Bryan do that for the rest of time than Mox where half of the elbows don't even try to land

Ring IQ: Nishimura, Yoshinari Ogawa, Tenryu Athleticism: Jumbo, Vader, Tiger Mask I Control Segments: Hashimoto, Ogawa again (seriously that dude can work a arm or leg for 10+ minutes and still be fresh, somehow) Kensuke Sasaki Selling: Ishii, Hansen again, Tenryu again, Satomura, Kikuchi Highest Floor: Satoshi Kojima, Johnny Smith, Wilkins Jr, Jaguar Yokota (still outperforming talent even today) Highest Peak: Takayama, Tamon Honda, Mariko Yoshida....this one goes for way too long

This was a treat. Nakanishi is only 2 years or so in the business, still a Young Lion but he's practically already got his whole shtick downpat as a huge dude who throws weight around. Hashimoto establishes that well as he gets pushed around for the first minute or so in tests of strength before resorting to his signature stiff kicks to sort things out. Nakanishi tries answering with slaps but Hashimoto just beats the shit out of him whenever he tries to step up again. There was barely any actual wrestling bar a suplex for the first 5 or so minutes, it was just big Hash throwing stiff shots and his opponent having to essentially survive with occasional moments of resistance. Slowly yet surely Nakanishi gets more and more shots in and Hash has to resort to submissions to try to slow him down (including a nasty Fujiwara) but eventually he powers out of a front face lock into a huge underhook belly to belly that Hash jumps really big for, making Nakanishi look like a monster. Nakanishi has this kind of unpolish to everything that he does that makes his offence so much better: his spears are just basically him doing running headbutts to the stomach, his big lariats are just him ungracefully throwing himself at Hash to knock him down, and he has stuff like rapid-fire headbutts and wacky German suplexes that just add to the jank, really getting over his gimmick as a big dude who relies on power instead of technique. Crowd explodes for Nakanishi applying the backbreaker/Torture Rack but Hash elbows him in the cheek to get out. I love the subtle Hash selling: he's been in control for the entire match, looming over his opponent, pacing the match his way: just kneeling down and looking concerned gets the crowd all excited because they know he's going to have to step things up to end this conclusively. And he does, finishing the match quick with a side kick to the legs, a stiff rolling wheel kick and a great jumping DDT into triangle armbar for the win. This was a short beating essentially but for what it was, I really enjoyed it. No big epics here, just two beefy lads hitting stiff shots until one fell down. Hashimoto is one of the greats when it comes to getting squash matches over and Nakanishi even this early was real fun, despite his arguably underwhelming career.

Yeah the official graphics for the match have it as the same as well as shown (nine seconds into this upload)

15 minutes is within the time-frame of a good Suwama match, and Nishimura works well with his kind of smashmouth rampaging. He shows a different side here with his technical fundamentals coming into play against Suwama's sheer strength, a dynamic he's done aplenty. I also liked the narrative of Nishimura getting miffed about his opponent doing well and throwing in some dirty work to even the odds, namely some unclean breaks and the like. This quickly gets into a ugly brawl on the outside as the two land some stiff shots to the other before Nishimura goes back to his technical stuff, namely working on the legs. Good Inoki-style Enzuigiri to the Suwama on the apron, as well as Nishimura just no selling rough forearms and egging for more. There's a lot of that classical fighting spirit stuff in there that really makes this distinct from more scientific Nishimura bouts; here he makes Suwama throw tons to tire him out before honing onto the leg again, but at times he'll just start swinging with the punches, which is unusual out of the guy; he has a plan but sometimes that just goes out of the window because he really wants to settle into controlling the match by any means possible, which was a cool theme that ties right into the finish later. He really hones in on the leg of Suwama with a vengeance, even resorting to wacky caveman-lite headbutts to keep the holds maintained alongside just spamming knee drops onto it for added damage. The finish for this is particularly cool as Nishimura's obsession with keeping control on the young ace causes his downfall: he keeps trying for headlocks which are answered with big backdrops. Suwama spams out about six of these for the win despite some tricky roll-up attempts and near falls by Nishimura, but he just can't get over his need for the headlock and so eventually crumbles. This was perfectly paced around Suwama's better features, namely his strikes and bombs, which respectfully look pretty good here. He sells well and gets the crowd going in his struggles against Nishimura's fairly strong work, mostly focused around trying to ground him down. It's not mind-blowing for a 15 minute match, but manages to do a lot with what it's given and as such we avoid the dreaded Carny match filler for the most part in favour of some good dynamics instead. Solid stuff.

This match is fascinating but not for the reason you think: if this was just a regular squash I wouldn't be bothered. I'm typically not a huge Joshi guy but when I seen this, a early JWP taping of a match that happened in America (in the 90's, of all things) I had to check it out for myself. The match itself is just another Devil rookie squash, done a million times before, nothing special there. Kitamura is the usual rookie for the time: she's fine enough but obviously very limited, green, and not exactly amazing at much. They initially work it as per usual for the first minute: Kitamura is the snappy rookie who's throwing herself all over the place for Devil, trying to get sympathy with extended headlocks to control the dominant force, etc etc. Here's the weird thing: the crowd cheers for Devil, not for Kitamura lol. She's kinda taken aback by it first, then she plays up to it and the crowd love it. From then on in she's working as a dominant babyface squashing the jobber, and you can tell how she mixes things up to cater to them, though that's not hard when even the hair pulling gets strong approval from the crowd. When she starts throwing Kitamura's head into the turnbuckle they absolutely get behind it, and she in turn plays up to that by getting them to count along to her turnbuckle smashes, prolonged pauses to get them more heated, etc. It's so....weird. Kitamura still works her side of the match the same (and actually gets some boos for that when she starts getting stuff in proper) But Devil quickly gets back in control with the usual shtick. The finish has her land the usual big Devil lariat for the three count, but the reaction is HUGE: if you told me the reaction was for Hogan landing his Leg Drop on some random B-tier house show I'd be none the wiser, it was bizarrely awesome. Match wasn't anything much special though, I just thought it was really impressive that Devil was not only massively over here, but she had the sense to play up to that rather than continue to do a heel routine. It's not like everyone here got that same treatment either as the other matches on the card weren't nearly as hot (apart from maybe the last minute of the main event?) so there was definitely something there. Interesting oddity for sure.

This is during Suwama very mixed first reign with the Triple Crown, but I felt like this was one of his better bouts: it was clear the intent with this match was to get him over, and Nishimura is obviously the perfect man for the job there. First 10 minutes are basically just rest holds and grappling, with Suwama not being able to really do much against the far more accomplished technical worker, through he's able to transition out of Nishimura's holds rather well and is shown at least to be able to hold his own defensively, with some ring work in using his elbows and knees to dig in to Nishimura's joints during sequences, alongside his size to really keep things from getting too hairy. Suwama throws some strikes, but Nishimura answers with some great Euro uppercuts, but ends up flying to the corner after a big double chop and a big sell. Suwama tries for a top rope splash but Nishimura nails him with a flying kick, then plays dirty by smacking him with his own title belt on the leg and stomping on it. There's a solid figure four spot where both men battle for control, with Suwama having to reach the ropes through this doesn't stop Nishimura from grabbing on the hold as much as possible. I'll bring this up now, but I particularly love Nishimura's uncharacteristic heel work: he's not overtly going over the edge, but like a Bret-style performance, you can tell he's desperate to get the win and will most definitely bend the rules to do so. He failed once against Kawada four years ago, and that frustration at never getting the big one in all of his prior title matches is very much felt here. Suwama starts to use more of his bombs to get past his bad leg, nailing a great delayed backdrop by carrying his opponent from the ropes to the ring, as well as targeting the leg to even the score. There's great selling from Nishimura throughout as he braves the pain and barely is able to stay standing after a huge lariat, stumbling over himself. He teases pinning Suwama in the same way he did a few weeks back via a backslide counter but gets a big near fall, and a O'Connor roll gets the same result. He manages to grab on a Cobra Twist but Suwama powers out to the ropes. Nishimura plays to the crowd for a second one and they pop big, but Suwama gets another backdrop out. Nishimura counters a brainbuster into a small package for another near fall and then grabs on a sleeper after jumping like mad for Suwama's big bombs. Nishimura gets a final Cobra Twist on but Suwama counters it by rolling down into a front toe hold into ankle lock, then converting it to a big German suplex in a awesome transition. Suwama hits another backdrop into a Last Ride for the pin. Nishimura doesn't necessary "carry" Suwama into a great match (namely because Suwama was honestly already pretty good, just not being booked great with long matches, something he always struggled doing) but he definitely adds the suspense here in comparison to his opponent, selling for his stuff hard and making Suwama look like a unstoppable force when he's struggling through his submission attempts and leading into his bombs. I was a bit bugged by Suwama not selling the leg after the belt shot and latter limb work but I felt like he didn't make such a thing too obvious. This definitely felt like a match where Nishimura went out of his way to make the new champ look legitimate rather than a back and forth thing, and I would say that was accomplished here, at least for the moment. Solid stuff, one of Nishimura's all-out stronger main event showings, namely because it's a 35+ minute match that feels like 20 at best.

Classic Kid/Craig Classic is a nothing Gaijin act that basically showed up for virtually every Japanese company in service as a reliable but mostly undercard jobber act, nothing particularly interesting comes up in his career but he seems solid. KEITA I guess sees this as a challenge so he pushes the guy to a near 20 minute mat-wrestling clinic while having no ring, a super quiet crowd, and nothing more but some random Yoga mats to work with, all while still doing his weird TDK Joker act. KEITA for the first half mostly focused on trying to get to the arms, using a massive assortment of typically tricky technical displays while Kid uses mostly conventional stuff to handle the guy, holding his own for a while while doing so. KEITA cheats when Kid is in the lead before defaulting back to pulling out more insanely innovative showcases to show off. At one point he does like a literal cross-arm cross armbreaker and while it looks weird as anything it's also pretty awesome. His heel work is mostly focused around, interestingly, the eyes of Kid: raking at them, scrubbing his foot on them, punching them with knuckle-first strikes, or generally finding any opening to do more stuff involving targeting the eyes. It's almost like he was just trying to find as many ways humanly possible to do eye-work effectively as there was just so much on display here, way too many to go though individually. Kid sells for ages as he gets small pockets of offence to get his stuff in, but said stuff is mostly just aping Dynamite Kid/Benoit spots so I was glad of that, no thanks. KEITA pulls out all of the stops to try to get the win, including a dumb ref bump by using the ref to defend himself from a diving headbutt (which I'm 100% sure he just stole off Kendo Kashin) him doing a weird cartwheel senton off a chair (because again....no ring) and long drawn out attempts to finish the match with submissions into roll-ups and vice versa, just mangling the guy with weird ye-oldie Catch technique. The lead to the finish has Kid dominate at last as he is able to counter a Scorpion Death Lock into a Crossface, lands a chair-assisted diving headbutt, and is then able to win after landing a limp Tombstone and grabbing a Fujiwara armbar into Crossface transition out of KEITA's kick out, keeping it applied even when he tries to roll out of the hold into a cradle pin. Kid asks for their rematch to be a two out of three falls match, which KEITA agrees. This match would ALSO be recorded on Keita's other YT channel and it's a fucking bonkers crazy length as it clocks as a full 60 minute match, so I'm definitely going to check that out when I can spare a whole hour. Anyway, this is a great match: probably Kid's best outing ever as he sells strongly and gets good enough reactions for his ability to hold out against the onslaught of moves, for KEITA it's just another day rolling on sleazy mats in front of at best 25 people. Such is life.

It's a massive struggle between those two always lol. It typically comes down to A. How long is their longevity (is it a reduced workrate over time or the same, do they improve over time with experience and learn new things, their consistency with different opponents and matches) B. How great is the peak (is it really that great or is it more spread out, how much of a distance is it between that peak and everything else, how much is it down to choice of opponents, pacing and crowd reaction etc) Typically the greatest wrestlers as you say are nearly always present in their matches and balance the two effectively enough to keep audiences interested. Someone like Tenryu, for instance, is brilliant at both.

The people (oh god this just sounds like a "you people" promo now) who ranked the event on Cagematch typically averaged this out at nearly one star on the scale which I found to be just complete bullshit: this was a tremendous love-letter to classic British Catch wrestling, and unlike many matches where the guys involved are too scared to keep that going for the whole match and just default into regular stuff usually after a while, these madmen kept this theme going for the whole duration pretty much. Williams focuses in on the arm until trying for a fancy top rope moonsault in the corner, with Ogawa stomping his leg and causing the lad to crumple. What I loved about this was how they'd be consistently trying to get to their respective limb to work on, so you had moments when Williams would try for the arm using the ropes and turnbuckle and Ogawa would roll out of the ring and trap his leg in the ropes instead while he was arguing with the ref. Lots of great little smart moments like that where it felt like limb targeting was actually important and meant something as opposed to padding instead, so they wrestled like those mattered and as a result the crowd in turn was, shockingly, invested in the outcome. Like you can imagine these two have a excellent chemistry where they keep finding clever ways to outsmart the other on the mat or use their respective limb target as leverage, so Ogawa would strain the leg of Williams to get him down easier and Williams in turn could use the arm to neutralise Ogawa's usual tricky transitions and keep things under control. Near the end of the middle you have this terrific sequence where Ogawa kept pulling out these transitions to get out of a arm wrench, but Williams was such a dog that he kept just driving leverage because of how effective his arm work had gotten by this point, which felt right out of a WoS-era outing. Of course these two always pull out their usual signature spots, but they are in purpose to be used to keep driving home the limbwork advantage, never straying too far away from it. The last few minutes build on the two trying to bomb the other out, but Williams is always one step ahead and eventually snaps a cradle out of a hammerlock to steal the upset win when Ogawa lowers his guard when reaching for the ropes. Sure, was the crowd not super loud for this? Definitely: they cool down after a while given Williams and Ogawa aren't exactly crazy fan favourites and this had no crazy dives or spots/head-bumps to keep them occupied, instead being lots of slick technical wrestling worked at a realistic pace that respected fatigue, even if they pick up at certain dramatic moments and give a good response by the end. Doug Williams has historically loved working with Ogawa: it's the reason why he picked the guy out of everyone possible for his 2017 retirement match, after all: and it's not hard to see why as he can just nerd out with the technical work here and have someone who's also slick enough to make that work for a match. It's crazy to see just how this old-school side of Ogawa emerges here as opposed to his usual fun Rat Boy cheating antics, but it's fresh enough to keep interest and amaze given this typically never gets a chance to fully emerge. Honestly fantastic and a joy to watch, a great little gem.

Nigel is never wrestling in a million years lol. Love the guy but he made his peace with wrestling more than a decade ago, not to mention I wouldn't be comfortable seeing it in the first place

If it's like prior All Together shows, expect at best a six-man tag that goes 20/25 mins.

I didn't think it was bad per-se, I just hated the pretentious film-school lite narratives about "oh Go is in the middle of the ring and Fujita is the outsider so he's not in the centre, it's a metaphysical battle between Inoki-Ism and Kings Road!!!" when people who actually watched NOAH regularly knew it was a regular occurrence in Fujita matches at the time that he just did for shits and giggles. It wasn't anything special, but because a lot of people who didn't see NOAH watched that match and tried to make something out of a 30 minute staring contest it got fairly popular as a result. It's more of a wrestling equivalent to a Rorschach test: it doesn't actually mean anything, therefore anyone could walk in and try to make sense of it. I'm not opposed to those interpretations but it was head-scratching. IIRC he started doing it way back in PRIDE, he did it in NOAH as apart of the Taniguchi feud, which included a honestly way better match/feud than Go/Fujita I'd heavily recommend that over it. The staring there actually means something. As for Fujita in general in NOAH, his stuff is more or less the same but noticeably more refined, and he excels in tournaments as the supreme spoiler who could beat anyone he's paired up with. His Hideki Suzuki match is controversial for being a big technical wrestling fest, definitely enjoyable for me though.

Nigel was a heel during this run (this was just after his Tyler Black match where he was shit-talking the guy and playing the heel about a week or so prior) but he's a face here, basically demanding that Sweeney just get in the ring and fight him for his RoH World title, and of course Sweeney is a cowardly shit so he's going to stall, stall, stall. Now the good news is that Sweeney is a solid heel and so these stalling segments are quite entertaining: he won't even share a ring with his opponent for the introductions and he spends a good few minutes trying his hardest to not get his ass kicked, but he gets caught a few times when he's too busy taunting fans instead of watching his back. Nigel wrestles like a 80's Southern babyface, throwing clean strikes but also getting in some scrappy hair pulling and getting hi-fives from kids while bashing Sweeney all over the place, it's great. It's still stalling but functional, and it easily showcases the dynamic of the match while letting the crowd get more heated in the process. I also loved that these two actually incorporated that earlier dynamic into some actual wrestling sequences, namely Sweeney getting consistently outsmarted by McGuiness's goofy British WoS spots and selling like mad for when he had to get over frustration, bumping big, or both. Of course you can't have a entire title match be a one-sided beatdown, and eventually Sweeney gets the advantage when his opponent gets sloppy and goes arm-first into the turnbuckle, allowing him to work on the arms of McGuinness. Nigel around this time had already been known for his extensive damage to them: he'd almost been stripped of his title in reality due to a torn bicep: would never be fixed completely for years and would actually only get worse as he ended up tearing both soon enough. You can therefore buy Sweeney using this to get some sleazy work of his own at last, and his stuff is pretty by the numbers but solid enough. Nigel sells really well and despite this crowd being majority kids and casual fans, they don't get bored of the hammerlocks and slower paced arm work, namely because of said selling, which is dynamic and pretty self-aware of the match itself, so you never really feel that Sweeney is in full control, any random strike that lands flush is a dangerous thing. Nigel also gets over his initiative, never just laying down and eating stuff but always trying to either hide his bad arm, crawling to the ropes before Sweeney even tries anything or throwing shots, poking at eyes, anything to try to survive. It's fascinating seeing what he used as a heel routine being used for the opposite instead, and it works pretty well I'd say. Comeback is good (despite more or less no real attempt to sell the arm) and they even get in some near falls as Sweeney just defaults to bomb-throwing to finish the job but eventually falls to a Tower of London and a lariat for the pin. This had some great shtick: Sweeney is no Cornette or Heenan but he clearly works off guys like them here as a sort of more competent version of their in-ring work as managers, playing the coward and only getting the advantage with cheap shots and the like. This wasn't a crazy workrate outing for McGuinness (and honestly, he needed something like this given the state of his body at this point and time) but as a throwback 80's style heel/babyface dynamic? Yeah, he was great. Not the most conventional but good for its own reasons, even if no one on this Earth actually thought Nigel was losing the belt here apart from maybe the nine year old fan in the crowd.

Idk I remember Fujita v Go being firmly all Fujita-based in terms of actually being anything worth watching. Not to say that being more interesting than Go is a GWE achievement, but still, something at least.

Yeah no the Bob Sapp match Sasaki has is probably one of my favourite low-key showings I've seen when I was interested in Sapp's stuff. The belt-hung lariat spot single-handily makes it one of the crazier displays he's had, including the fact he actually, like, sells and bumps great for Sapp to boot. He'd probably get on a top 100 just for that.

Dissing Hansen seems dirty, but given the complaint is more or less about his general match structure and not just about him in particular, I feel like there's something to it. When I was deep diving 1995/2000 AJPW, the main negative thing that stuck out about Hansen was that a LOT of his matches ran around the same dance of some brawling, but also lots of boring, aimless arm work; this was mentioned last page but it shone out for me when actually going though it because it was so prevalent. I totally get why it's there and it makes perfect sense psychology-wise, it's just that every second match just devolves into "let's work the arm" and then it mostly doesn't even get brought up in the finish bar maybe some small hints of selling, and it gets especially shitty when the UWFI guys come in and we get the suggestion of submissions being more dangerous: cross armbreakers are instant-death holds if applied fully, double wrist locks and other stuff are now enough to even threaten the top top guys on the card. Hansen does not play ball with any of this. There's a match he has with Tamon Honda around about 1996 where Honda works the arm for basically the entire match, Hansen sells great for all of it: probably one of the few times Honda seemed motivated as well: but then he just wins with the Lariat at the end. No drama, no nothing, it's just completely ignored. Even the cross armbreaker gets a flash of selling but it doesn't go anywhere. Honda just eats shit. It's not always the case (there's some good drama built off it in the later years, especially when Hansen doesn't have that big megastar booking anymore) but there's a good few times where this same formula emerges, and it's almost always boring because it never leads anywhere. Like a Hansen/Honda match "should" logically rule, but because of that formula it drags it down to a boring slog.

Naturally this is a squash, but Hansen is good enough that he is able to get the crowd properly into this with Honda's few big pushes and makes this into probably the best rookie vs vet showings of this entire card, because the gimmick was essentially just that bar the main event. Honda is SUPER green and you can tell that just by seeing the generic rookie offence moves they teach: the top rope knee drop, the body press from the turnbuckle, crappy chest forearms, scoop slam, you name it. Hansen does well at selling Honda's offence not by flipping all over or flailing, but solid match details, like him having to rope break off a tight headlock instead of powering out, which later gets him annoyed enough to start throwing strikes when Honda is able to catch him again in a headlock and by extension conceding the technical stuff, or Honda legitimately getting the best of Hansen in a brawl which annoys him so much that he smacks Honda with a row of chairs: all of these are neatly packed here alongside Hansen beating him down a lot, but it never feels contrived or hasty, which is always a positive of his matches. There's never a feeling that Hansen is "giving" Honda space to actually do stuff. There's some great strength spots as well for Honda as he gets a backdrop and some scoop slams on his far larger opponent, which impresses the crowd a lot. He misses the top rope knee drop, Hansen works on the leg until the ref gets in the way, leading for one last big bit of offence from Honda: namely, a DDT. There's a great sell at the end where Hansen counters the backdrop attempt right after this and hits his own. Afterwards, he sits there acting dazed and you almost think he was thankful he countered that: Honda the rookie managed to put Hansen in a little bit of danger, even despite his immense inexperience. He realises what he needs to do, and sets up a Western Lariat; game over. This is a short but very well put together match that makes Honda look great, even despite his near complete lack of moves beyond some basic stuff. Hansen naturally carries Honda to this bygone conclusion, but for what it's worth, Honda looks sharp and motivated, a far cry from his very dire AJPW stuff afterwards. Definitely worth seeing even as a oddity outing, but it's also a solid example of Hansen getting probably Honda's best outing in his early career (that was actually up to Honda, not just him being the pin eater in a six-man).

To be fair the Suzuki Hirohito gimmick got like, a minute of stock footage and quickly dropped afterwards. The goofy Heidenreich "frozen Nazi" gimmick was a idea a writer had at the time that even Vince (apparently) thought was too much and abruptly left when it was brought up This was the 2003/2004 era as well where they just went for maximum shock factor shtick as well, so shit like this was never surprising

Not as good as their 2021 classic, but this was still really quite something to behold. A 40 minute match for 98% of wrestlers over 50 would be a very daunting task, but Ogawa just casually does it on a random B-tier show. he's been a pain in Kiyomiya's ass since he lost to the guy last year, being one of the few guys who can reliably stop him in his tracks, including a time limit draw last year. This defines Kaito as learning from those mistakes and adapting through given he easily sends Ogawa flying with a bunch of high-speed offence early on and quickly shows off his improved ring skills. Ogawa has to play every trick in the book to survive, pulling out some remarkable spots for his age and showing some insane cardio by keeping up with the young lad for the whole duration of this match; he could've easily pulled a NOSAWA or Muto and sat on the mat for most of it with super slow paced stuff, but they didn't do that here. Ogawa is also a master of working holds and counters, always making sense from a in-ring perspective but maintaining a good rhythm throughout that keeps the crowd engaged in the action. Seeing him somehow get a ref bump from a arm wrench on the ground by pulling him into the hold, or making multiple headlock takeovers fresh and exciting by engaging them in different sequences of counters when Kiyomiya tries to escape in a multitude of ways, either with eye pokes or big leaping headscissors is just genius pacing and a lot different from simply sitting in a hold for minutes on end; despite the start being mostly holds, it goes by incredibly easily. There's also some great fire from Kiyomiya in the later halves as he endures Ogawa's tricks and manages to not just overpower him with his explosive strikes and offence, but he manages to finally outsmart the crafty vet at his own game, frustrating him to the point where Ogawa just openly kicks the dude in the groin out of frustration. While there's no real narrative for the start beyond Kaito being way too fast to handle, Ogawa eventually hones in on Kiyomiya's arm for leverage and works over it for a good duration here, with some pretty brutal work done throughout. As Kaito gets more and more fired up throughout this, enduring the submissions and firing back big elbows despite having one arm to work with, Ogawa has to pull out bigger and bigger moves to keep on top: hurling him out of the ring violently with a arm wrench toss, or slamming his groin into the ring post for a near count-out victory. Kaito eventually gets on top and Ogawa has to pull out some tricky counters to simply stay in the game, even calling back to his famous Akiyama 1998 sprint in places with spots taken directly from there in how he tries to creep some roll-up attempts: it all feels desperate, and the longer it goes on the more you can tell Ogawa is losing all control here and just resorting to anything and everything to keep a hold of things. Eventually Kiyomiya has to go to new lengths to obtain the win, focusing on brutal Tsuruta-style jumping knees and most remarkably, using a Cattle Mutilation as the finish. Fantastic babyface work from Kiyomiya throughout as he balances vulnerability with pure Kobashi-lite fire when Ogawa is tormenting him, as well as some great mat-work and agility. I would probably grade their first encounter slightly higher, but this is still really well paced and worked throughout, felt nothing like 40 minutes. Gritty, nasty technical masterclass that perfectly showcases why both men are so well regarded, even if there's no big "spot" to really go crazy about. It's just a very lean match that manages to pace itself perfectly, which in the age of 30+ "epics" that slog along is a godsend. Really stellar stuff.

I'm betting 20 bucks that Sanada wrestles the exact same as before but with a few new moves lol. People thought he'd be a different man when he left AJPW/W-1 and became the Cold Skeleton.....and he was, just with a few new moves, same boring wrestling though. Great look, great potential, utterly dire at being interesting though. Maybe Okada like Suwama before him can drag this guy to something special again. I'd like Okada to lose just for the chaos afterwards, but it isn't happening.

All the boys are here! The Super Generation Army is in full force! The Holy Demon Army has emerged! Baba.....idk why Baba is here but he's here anyway. The starting sequences establish the scene: Taue is a very mean bully, Baba is here to hit limp strikes, and Misawa and co have to struggle to succeed. To be fair this is one of the stronger Baba performances of the 90's: he actually takes big bumps and doesn't look completely done in-ring like he did in 1998/1999. Limited? For sure, I would say he can still "go" in the way you'd expect. Misawa/Kawada are of course great together and so on point with their sequences that it never looks contrived or anything like that, everything comes naturally with them. It was also cool that Kawada was the guy in danger in places here than the usual "Kobashi in danger" formula that was abused so much even by this time. Of course we still get them, but they aren't the main theme of the entire match, which was seriously refreshing. I will say that while the usual Pillar interactions are solid, this did lack any underlining story to it bar some small stuff like Kikuchi just being useless at maintaining any momentum and Baba being really quite petty here with his antics. There wasn't really any big heat segment until way into the middle half as Kikuchi spends a good few minutes doing what he does best: selling and bumping big. This was fun with Kawada as he threw nasty kicks and chops, it was great with Taue just endlessly scoop slamming Kikuchi and dropping him endlessly.....the match definitely downgrades when Baba is doing his slow chop routine. Kikuchi actually making him take a bump was a epic spot, but to lead up to it we had to go though some fairly slow stuff. Taue holds on to Kikuchi in the corner to do some dirty strikes, Baba just lets him go anyway to tag in Misawa as he doesn't want to get involved in their heelish antics, which does get a nice lead-up near the end when he relents and works off a Kawada distraction to land a big back suplex off the top rope. The last 10 is namely focused around Baba, so erm, it wasn't great, it's about as good as 90's Baba can go at this point; him and Kobashi have a undeniable chemistry that gets this way more solid than it should have been as they went back and forth with surprisingly fluidity: it's a bit sad that we never could've got a proper match between the two bar this and the Baba 1998 birthday bash. Road to the finish is typical AJPW bomb-spamming and it's still great, just kind of flavourless for the most part as there wasn't really any main story for the crowd to work with. Finish comes with Kikuchi trying (and failing) to handle Taue and Baba one final time, who wreck him with some great spots until he finally falls to a chokeslam. Listen, I'm a big fan of these, this felt more like a "here's stuff you've already seen" match without much original to follow up on, so it was lots of solid work you've probably already seen with bigger crowds and better intensity. Baba being here and game to work is great, but he still slows things way down and Taue by this point was a way better giant who does his job a considerable amount more competently. Pillars and co are on good form, however bar some cool moments this didn't have much of a spark to it to really set it off proper. That said, it's still a pretty good showing, just with obvious flaws that come with this being a B-show.