Ma Stump Puller

been randomly searching out GENTARO content and yeah I'd agree with Jetlag wholeheartedly, he's a super versatile worker. One video has him doing sleazy indies as a weird Shawn Michaels/Bret Hart composite (even down to doing the Sweet Chin Music for a finish) the next will have him do a 30 minute technical epic a few years later as if there's no difference between the two. The man is somewhat deranged in that regard, but there's no denying his talent.

Master Blaster??? Yep, we're going there. I'll give credit to Blaster/Greene: he's not a very good wrestler but he does well enough here as the stocky heavyweight with clear limitations mostly hidden behind his muscle. What really matters with this one is how they work the match itself. The two push their advantages well: Blaster is the cocky big guy who can easily throw his weight around while Ogawa can only get in little quick bits here and there before he's run over. With the focus on a fairly limited power-wrestler, one would think that the crowd wouldn't care much about this at all....but that's exactly the opposite! Ogawa's work on the defensive with his selling and urgency to try to fight back alongside Blaster playing into the bruising heel shtick get the crowd fairly shockingly vocal with this one, with even actual big boos for Blaster when he keeps trying to mangle Ogawa's poor back. Ogawa himself gets in his usual generic underdog spots, including pulling bit for bit the Taue small package counter from last month's Carnival showing to be used here (and it wasn't as smooth either mind). They're done competently and build to the bigger stuff, like Ogawa doing a huge German suplex on Blaster for a near fall that felt completely bonkers given the sheer difference in size between the two. Ogawa jumps well for a bunch of Blaster near-falls as he keeps getting up despite the beatings he's put under. Blaster's facial expressions as the crowd keep egging Ogawa on are good as well, showing him annoyed as he keeps ramping up the bombs to progressively closer calls. Crowd gets loud for Ogawa pushing though regardless and eventually he outlasts Blaster long enough to take advantage of him being knocked into the turnbuckle, snapping on a classic school-boy to steal the win. Alongside the Abby match this is one of Ogawa's first big shine moments, even if it's on a unaired undercard. It showcases his dynamic already of being the smaller man in a land of giants, and we even get little bits of the sneaky but resilient character he'd play to perfection in the late 90's and beyond. Blaster did his job and this is probably one of his best matches as a result since it's one of the few matches Al Greene had where he wasn't either jobbing his heart out or working a boring squash. Definitely not a must-watch but certainly one to mind if you want pre Rat Boy greatness, this was sweet.

Murakami had a pretty productive 2024 despite appearing barely at all and being in his 50's. He got to be apart of a bunch of enjoyable multi-man brawls, his Fighting Detective appearance was good enough considering he was mostly working with Ishikawa at an age where he's close to being a legit pensioner and his SSPW singles match with Super Tiger was a bunch of chaotic fun despite being immensely short. He's proven that there's still some fire in the old ugly lad yet. It was good enough that I actually had him on the Top 50 performers of 2024 for the Violent People VP100 Ballot (which I WILL shill for the sake of it). Nowhere near his quality stints for sure, but absolutely still relevant for any case to be made for the guy.

I best know of him from his epic 6-minute squash with Bas Rutten, definitely something to consider beyond his (mostly decent) RINGS stint

great gimmick, eccentric guy, super memorable...and totally ass in the ring. You hate to see it!

I totally get not liking this match. For me though, I think there's a lot to value. [warning: long ass post below] This is a infamous slog of a match, clocking in at 50+ minutes in length and yes, before you ask, there are versions of this that show it in its entirety if you look deep enough. For one, I can't recommend this to the vast majority of people. Unlike other 50/60 minute matches this takes place mostly outside of the ring, and many minutes are dedicated exclusively to the two brawl-walking through the arena or downtime. What the match DOES give you is extremely well done hard violence that gets uncomfortably uncooperative at points, big table spots that go crazy stiff, and a consistent looming sense of dread whenever they go somewhere else to start swinging. Your mind at points almost becomes numb from the amount of times they hurl a chair at each other's heads going about 50 miles per hour, or the fact that Ito spends a good portion bleeding from the face almost endlessly; you become focused purely on whatever awful carnage the two end up doing and when if ever the match will actually stop. The bloated time and action almost lend themselves into a different form of wrestling where you're not necessarily looking for careful psychology or well-done atheticism but instead the next awful gross moment Hotta will dream up in her twisted mind of hers. One could easily sum this up to the awful blob of shicky overviolence that much of Joshi puro had become at the time; this was around the same chunk of years when GAEA were main-eventing purely off Chigusa/Asuka doing these same kind of trashy brawls, Ozaki was also leaning into this as well and much of the next decade would be very much dictated by those same lows of trashy brawling. I could very easily agree with those claims, but watching this match, I didn't get that same vibe from it; the action in the Chig/Asuka matches still felt "safe"; there was a distance between me and them wherein I knew what they were doing was gimmicky and silly, like with the special branded tables or with the fire-blowing, it's silly and distant enough that even the blood has a layer of transparency where they clearly advertise it as a gimmick, like it's just something there as a prop to add drama. I as the viewer have a sense of intangibility wherein like a piece of fiction I can distance myself from it like mist to air or whatever. This just has blood there nearly from the getgo and......never bothers to milk it. In fact after the first half hour you basically blank it out because it's just in your face at all points. The violence here lacks that same sense of gimmick to it. Hotta drags Ito around with a rope and beats her face raw with kicks; the rope is still a gimmick, but in this case it feels much more threateningly real. No one's going to put you through a table in real life, but someone slamming you on concrete or throwing you off a high height? Those are REAL. It's shit that happens to people every hour of every day. There's no looking through it. And yeah sure there's still the occasional goofy bit like Ito doing huge foot stomps off the top of the ladder, but for the most part like a real fight the glamour is completely stripped, in its place a plodding structure where we see everything from the loose brawling to the chair hurling all at a slow drip. There's some great babyface work from Ito as well as she spends most of this getting her ass kicked; her comebacks are swift but sometimes extended, yet never feel fully confident. She always seems to slip up at the last moment, a flub here and there, maybe even a intentional botch before losing it all back to Hotta who then takes it all for granted with her overconfident control segments. They completely deconstruct the typical hardcore structure by having Hotta do the usual spots but completely nonchalantly, not even trying them as finishes since she in actuality just wants to use the turnbuckle hooks to beat on Ito some more. If this was something of the 90's, one would expect a sense of showmanship there or even extravagance. The kind you'd see from Onita-matches where there's dramatic beats to go with the danger of the spots, but again there's really none of that here. When Hotta wants to swing the turnbuckle hook, she does so like she's done it a million times before; there is no impact to the spot, it's just there with everything else. There's even a really good bit where they have everything positioned at the back of this Kawasaki theatre complex like an actual play; there's even a curtain, only with the pair in front of it. They perform a couple of contrived hardcore spots; a table bump, a foot stomp from the top of the ladder; and when it's done? Hotta is thrown, and Ito dives off it; they plunge from the theatre and back into the miserable pit fight they find themselves both under. And sure this is all (probably) unintentional, but it's a amazing allegory for the complete deconstruction of the 90s hardcore match; even the participants are choosing to willingly leave their comfortable structure to give us something more unseemly, more bizarre. Hotta turns a turnbuckle without ropes into this strange art piece using rope and a ladder; Ito tries using it to climb off, but is then socked stiff in the face and then forced to hang off it and in that moment she's completely lost, drawn into the wreckage of the ring left over. It is within that structure where the finish happens; Hotta wraps a chain around her leg and kicks Ito stiff in the face while she's stuck and then gets the KO count for the victory. I can totally get the issues with this match. It's a fucking mess, and I'd say anyone who's willing to spend 50-something minutes on a match probably has too much time on their hands. For this, though? I thought it was excellent. It's one of the few hardcore matches around this time that felt like it had a soul of sorts, giving us everything it had despite that everything including a bunch of sluggish shit. Hotta feels like the ultimate bully and Ito for one night actually had charisma, what a shocker!

I now have a couple more VGM Studio Isn't Youtube or Dailymotion, but instead from bilibili this time. Namely their Chinese translations of matches, which in turn inadvertently has saved a metric fuckton of 2000's material that is either real hard to find in good condition (NJPW, NOAH) or downright impossible (early OZ, Muto-era AJPW) either way, extremely useful if you want some gems. 飛翔天使221 Awesome old tape collection of early 2000's Dark Age Joshi Puro, like the real heavy stuff that you barely if ever see like GAEA and NEO when they were really on the back-end of business and battling for what little TV time they got. Reliable uploads with a bunch of really unappreciated matches for the time.

This is somewhat clipped but it doesn't seem to be anything substantial, probably like 2 minutes at most. I went and found the unclipped version and it frankly doesn't add a whole lot worth mentioning bar some downtime and brawling. Violento Jack is primarily known for his gory deathmatch schlock which is why it's somewhat shocking that GENTARO not only actually wrestled the guy but additionally did it llave style and pretty damn good to boot. It's nothing like a Masters match or anything, was still quite impressed with what they threw out here, the two clearly knew their stuff. We get a couple of neat sequences where the two basically just go back and forth applying slick holds and counters, Jack throwing out a especially cool chickenwing pinning clutch into a Crossface transition that felt like something you'd see out of a deep-cut ARISON match or something. GENTARO seems out of it until Jack tries for a dive to the outside and gets dodged, eating shit on the floor below and allowing for his opponent to creep back in with leg work. We get a couple of cool counters like Jack countering a kneebar by trapping GENTARO's spare foot to turn it into a no hand toe-hold back on him but it's mostly the other guy in control here, using his heelish antics to attack and bend the legs whenever possible in control segments, fairly decent stuff for what it was. They build up to a couple of quick bombs for near falls, namely a German suplex and backdrop respectfully. Spot of the match comes after the latter as Jack springs up from a near fall 2-count to trap GENTARO in a nifty grounded Octopus Stretch to wear him down enough that he can then recover and immediately pop back into a winning situation with a big package piledriver for the finish. This was pretty solid for what was essentially just a 10-minute TV match, mixing in some fun grappling with GENTARO's ring general antics as a heel to add some colour to the antics here. It's the kind of match that you'd probably overlook in the long run but definitely one that adds immense value to GENTARO's GWE case, especially since he has aplenty of these fun condensed showings.

Thank you for your continued interest! I gave it a quick watch and it absolutely warrants the newfound praise.

Yeah I heard about that as well. Really awesome that a already known great match was actually better than we knew it as in the first place, the establishing work especially helps to set the scene before everything goes apeshit and punches start get thrown. If you're going into the NJPW early Nishimura stuff his Hashimoto singles in 1998 is pretty damn good for a quick hierarchy-style AJPW squash for Hash, quite fun

I'd also probably add the Choshu feud tags (it spanned a fair couple of matches, but I feel like each are fairly worthwhile in content.) and the GENTARO match, of which I think is perhaps Nishimura's top 5 best ever performances and his last truly great match. Obviously this Primer in many ways is more impactful than it was when I made it for reasons I don't really need to elaborate on. There's a real need to make sure that wrestling is preserved, especially for those who sadly are no longer with us and cannot speak for themselves. If this got at least one person into watching the man and his craft, that's worth it and then some.

I compared Fuke to Eric Roberts a good bit back and honestly I haven't been proven wrong since. He's a guy who COULD have fairly good matches with his solid technical fundamentals and experience, decent strikes.....but he'd rather just check in and check out than put any tangible effort into his performances. Getting something good out of him is more a testament to the person wrestling him than it is to the actual guy. I respect his longevity but fact is that he's really done a whole lot of nothing for a good long while.

I originally got the match + full show from Jetlag (thanks again! ) but VKF's channel have also uploaded this to their Youtube as well following Nishimura's tragic passing. It's a pretty damn good celebration of everything Nishimura stood for as a worker; incredible, crisp technical wrestling with expertly done storytelling via said wrestling, GENTARO especially seems to be having the time of his life wrestling what probably was one of his idols as he sells his ass off for the guy. Nishimura around this time had mostly faded into the background as most of his time was occupied with his political career so when he did wrestle it was mostly for pretty nothing tag matches where he'd just go through his routine without much focus or effort really applied into it. He'd not ever be terrible or even bad in them, just kinda in the background clearly not giving it a whole lot of thought. Something like this existing was especially shocking that the guy was still THIS great and could put on legitimate classics when inclined. The starting work is mostly the usual signature spots; the standing Nishimura arch, clean break etc etc. GENTARO gets pissed that he's getting upstaged starts working dirty in the headlock alongside throwing his signature Bret-style punches, which turns out only seems to piss off his opponent as he responds with nasty elbow smashes and a mean Cravat into headlock transition. The main gimmick is Nishimura simply having all of the cards when it comes to the technical game, consistently throwing out these wild counters to things that GENTARO tries to do, namely his big mistake being consistently going to the well of moves that Fujinami (who Nishimura knows very well for obvious reasons) also uses. He tries for a Bow and Arrow stretch at one point and immediately regrets it when he gets his foot bent into a toe-hold/kneebar, stuff like that. GENTARO sells like everything and adds in momentous struggle to the matwork; others recently may have done this kind of stuff faster but they don't get that ground work tends to be a grindy and rough struggle for the most part, especially when it's as detailed as it is here and covers about 98% of the match. Like GENTARO spending nearly a full minute just in a hold trying to comprehend a counter is much more engrossing than watching someone speedrun through multiple transitions at such a rushed pace that it looks like they're breakdancing, you know? They just get it in that regard. Nishimura looks solid in the ground work but those little moments where his stoic shell breaks and he gets nasty are the real money moments. Like after they'd had a struggle over toe-holds and leg locks Nishimura tries to drag his foot for a submission, but his opponent sticks to the ropes to escape it happening. There's a couple of seconds where he processes it, stands over the guy and lets him limp closer to the corner, then stomps the shit out of his hind leg while he's not even looking. It's such a sudden/brutal spot that it almost snaps your attention right back by how subtly done it is, crazy good. If a guy like Finlay did that we'd probably still be ranting about it to this day lol GENTARO also gets in some highlight moments where he's able to throw in counters like taking a Muta Lock and turning it into a Cravat choke but this is mostly just him selling and bumping big for the invading force which I think he does a awesome job at. He's even able to convincingly get over a potential count-out after Nishimura smashes his shin into a chair, even adding in theatrics by falling to the ground when he tries putting weight on the bad leg to step into the ring. You feel every bit of his struggle throughout the entire bit right up to the big shine comeback spot after Nishimura misses his second top rope knee drop, then his desperation to even the score creeps in. I'd say his offence is lacking in a couple places (he doesn't get much height for his signature shin breaker on the turnbuckle post, for instance) however it does build up nicely as he lands a couple of impactful suplexes despite his leg preventing him from absolutely capitalising. It felt like a truly 70's AJPW finish build wherein both guys are fatigued and moreso battling that than each other. There's some heavy focus on GENTARO trying to put a statement with his victory as he frequently goes for the figure four (Fujinami) and Spinning Toe Hold (Dory) clearly to showcase his mastery over one of their biggest students. Nishimura rides out the holds and exactly like the 2006 MUGA match GENTARO goes for the figure four once too many times, allowing Nishimura to quickly reverse the leverage and tap him out in the end proving his experience over the youth. This is a really well done match that basically plays to all of the pair's strengths and none of their weaknesses. Nishimura looked fantastic here for his age, really hammering in the control work to make him look like the big threat he is here. It's quite crazy since his best material is working as a crafty underdog: having the roles reversed here makes it clear that GENTARO by stature just isn't up to snuff despite some big close calls here. There's a sense of importance to the pair's work that you just barely see anywhere else wherein every big turn and twist in momentum feels like it could be the last. It's another cap in GENTARO's hat for him to come into a match like this and have such a lack of ego that he just happily went along getting his ass beat for most of this without complaint. Honestly? I think that mentality makes this match as great as it is - There's no pretensions of a "epic" or 50/50 bullshit, just a guy way over his head slowly realising it over the course of 25+ something minutes. Masterful craft by two of the best to probably do it.

I was really dreading this one. Already early 2025 has not been a good year for wrestling fans. Nishimura had been battling stage 4 esophageal cancer for the last year and a half, having spread to his brain and everywhere else there wasn't much of a positive prognosis. He kept battling from his IG posts though and even managed near the end to wrestle a couple of times. RIP to one of the underrated technical greats.

This was the only Misawa GHC match that I was completely unable to review back when I was going through his title reign; namely because the match itself, much like many mid-2000's Puro content had been scrubbed off the internet completely bar a occasional snippet uploaded onto somewhere like Veoh (RIP) leaving a very noticeable gap in content. This made it so elusive that even the most famous video on Misawa's reign doesn't cover the match whatsoever! Thankfully some random Japanese salaryman just happened to have a low quality upload of it from a week or so ago so it does once again exist online. This is about as complete as the match appeared to have been, which means that we're predictively missing about 8 minutes of what was probably downtime. I do imagine that the PPV DVD of this that's floating around probably has the full thing though good luck trying to find it for a reasonable price. This was mostly pretty decent by 2007 Misawa standards since the guy was obviously not going to have the workrate from prior decades. He's much less mobile and carrying a lot of wear and tear but with a guy who is as simplistic as Smith is (despite some quirky moves he pulls out now and then) Misawa can easily just play the usual Western Monster shtick he did well enough with Vader back in the 90s, flowing right back into his role from then like he never left. They use a lot of that playbook here with staggered no-selling from Smith, easily overpowering his senior foil when it came to strikes and grapples while Misawa could only look on in his signature Stoic gaze, trying to find anything to play against him. We do get some moments when that shell cracks; a uncharacteristic moan when being forearmed in the chest for instance; bringing some humanity to the ailing ace. Similarly we get the opposite when Smith mistimes and gets his leg dramatically caught falling off the top rope, letting Misawa uncharacteristically ignore the ref to throw in multiple mean back elbows to Smith's foot in desperation. This takes away his base and allows Misawa to start building a lead with his usual heavy-set offense of the time. I thought this was for the most part pretty by the numbers even down to the horrendous motif of the Tiger Driver being so pathetically reduced in stature that Misawa just does it like 15 minutes before the actual finish for a near fall bit and not a single person in the crowd buys it. That has to sting after seeing so many 90's epics having that move be the conclusive finish lol. Now what I WILL say is that Misawa takes some horrific bumps here namely one where his opponent press slams him from the ring to the ramp which results in probably one of the most disgusting "THUNK" sounds I've ever heard. Now Bison also takes one, mind you, but it's a backdrop and nowhere near as high-impact. I have no fucking clue why Misawa was green-lighting these spots, dude also took a ramp-Bisontenial/Styles Clash that thankfully was modified to be a bit safer. Still, this is just nuts. It's a real showcase of how reckless he was seemingly having to take things to warrant being in the main event game. It doesn't take much for Misawa to get the crowd right into this by teasing a count out with those kind of spots, easily garnering massive sympathy merely by trying to stand on his own two feet. Smith follows up with a crazy top rope shoulder smash to Misawa on the outside alongside a equally crazy bit where he dove over the guardrail to hit him with another one. While I don't think Bison Smith was a crazy good worker I do heavily respect his atheticism for a guy that large to be moving as fast as he does here at points. They work the last half around the threat of his claw which, sorry to say, no one really bites. The claw was barely believable in its peak, let alone 30 something years later with a guy who hasn't beaten anyone worth their salt with the move: it worked with Kobashi's legendary selling in their matches but that's the exception to the rule alas, making this segment very cold by comparison with the crazy spots that came before. The crowd react much more for a big second top Emerald Flowsion which staggered Bison enough for Misawa to wear him down with a series of elbow strikes until finally finishing up with one to the back of the head a-la the Samoa Joe match for the pin. This kinda showed the contrast between Misawa and Kobashi; while the latter has a explosive and fairly short outing with Bison filled with intensity and fire, Misawa opts for a more traditional heavyweight match, more grindy and slower to fit the pace of both the gravitas of the event and Misawa's own struggling body. It's certainly not one of Misawa's better title outings, trailing off a bit in places and struggling to get crowd investment until Misawa starts taking stupidly dangerous bumps to add drama. It's a bad way to see what was one of the ring geniuses of the 90's (i mean this was someone who could get a crowd to explode with basic facial expressions, mind) reduced to taking dangerous stuff with a body that certainly was not up to that task. Bison did well enough, but his performances while strikingly dynamic are really hollow under the surface; there's really no humanity to his work, he just tends to do his big spots and grunt around the place, one never really gets the feeling that he's selling anything or trying to tell a story with how he works. The physical struggle that AJPW (and especially Baba-era) were so good at conveying is non-existent with the guy, probably because he seems to be too gassed to emote and work at the same time. Is this a bad match, though? I don't think so, but part of me wishes Misawa had spent one of these very valuable title bouts getting over a up and coming talent rather than a mid-card bruiser who was never going to be more than that.

Always felt like he missed a gear after the early 2010's. NJPW gave him a good boost, but then they started leaning more into the Tanahashi/Okada flashy types than Goto's more traditional heavy set work and he kinda got lost in the scuffle bar the occasional G-1 match that would get traction with the smarky Western fans, honestly couldn't tell you his highlights for some years. I can't blame him for playing it safe but I can't help thinking that he might've been better suited for a All Japan stint.

I think body-part work in a wrestling match can be done to a EXTREMELY high standard if it's taken to the natural conclusions. Guys like GENTARO/Ogawa pushed the envelope for how long you could really go just attacking a leg/arm and for the most part it was pretty damn good, even going 15+ minutes long at points with that same dynamic. Even Kenny Omega when he's actually forced to pace himself has some astonishingly strong leg selling if you give the room for that to breathe. I kinda get what Zack is doing now though, submission workers don't really work for the Kings Road-ish style NJPW have adopted so he's a bit less focused than he could be. It definitely makes them more watchable as opposed to his NOAH stint where he would spend obnoxious amounts of time submission-chaining for no apparent benefit.

Kinda shocking that it's taken this long for her to get nominated, you could go all the way back to her earlier years and still find great showings aplenty. Kada makes the case for her well enough, my only real complaint is that sometimes she can be a bit too derivative with the boring ahh grappling sequences, especially when she's not someone who has any conclusive submission finishes so it almost always feels like padding. Other than that? Pretty damn great, shockingly effective at getting less than impressive acts over to boot which is always a soft spot for me.

Eh i'd agree that it's pretty premature to be putting Gabe on a 100 list. He has a couple of good matches but I think he works best with existing heat/a angle to warrant his antics. I'm also not a fan of him starting to leer into the dreaded "epic" overkill style that has pacified so many great workers as of present.

A good showing of GENTARO in his Bret-phase of technical brilliance against the uber-sleaze kickboxing MMA dude in Yago. The start of this was good tense grappling with the pair as they messily tried to grab for chokes and headlocks, occasionally getting tied in knots trying to submit the other. GENTARO does a good job guiding this around by working as the smaller man, having to consistently find clever ways to catch his bigger/meaner opponent off-guard. He typically has to try to attack limbs like the legs or arms to take away Yago's base and force him to work from under on the mat which comes into his biggest strength here. Yago feels like a bit of a crowbar here in that he's a bit all over the place in times and doesn't have the cleanest work in terms of anything he does but that works into his presentation as the less-refined yet still dangerous foil pretty well here, so it wasn't too much of a turnoff. Occasionally he does something REALLY awesome like a Robertson-lite back suplex backbreaker or just punching his opponent in the chest or face, so you can't really go wrong with that. Yago seems to focus on the back during his little control stint in the middle half while GENTARO threw out a awesome amount of focus on attacking the leg in different ways to take back control, really keeping the coherency of the match together as he kept having to change things with his speed and agility to keep in the game. The crowd do get into the two getting over the Cobra Twist as the big scary move in Yago's arsenal that could win the entire match, GENTARO spending multiple occasions either having to struggle for dear life or just barely escaping from it by tying up in the ropes. When it gets cleanly applied it does get a tap out but there's a lame ref bump to ensure that Yago looks good without actually winning (which I despise as a "thing" in wrestling, it just doesn't work most of the time because it makes the guy who's supposed to look competent instead seem like a complete fucking dumbass for dropping the hold to lightly tap the ref's shoulder a couple of times). We still get a nice sequence of submission chaining out of Yago though so the spot isn't completely derivative. GENT throws a bunch of good bombs for near falls, a punch to the stomach from Yago again taking back control. The finish is built to make Yago again look like a killer as he tries for the pumphandle slam but GENTARO just barely manages to counter into a tight head/arm clutch 3.1. roll-up to win the whole thing. This felt like a match mostly made solid by GENTATO's efforts in regards to putting over Yago as a big threat that he with all of his technical tricks couldn't really handle. There's good control spots where he does keep things together, it never feels like he's completely safe and you get reminded that aplenty here because when he screws up the momentum swings right back to the bigger guy. Yago here in places looked like a good worker; I could totally understand why he wasn't a bigger thing though. He has the size, the background, he's just kinda flat when it comes to actually backing up his hoss appearance with actual hoss shit. His shots are typically really unconvincing pats to the shoulder or head, occasionally he hits great when he's actually trying to punch but it mostly feels like he's holding back immensely due to his background, which is a common problem with ex-MMA guys because they just can't be coached to work a punch when they've spent decades doing it one way lol. Definitely a mixed bag of a wrestler, which makes it much more significant that a guy like his opponent could carry him to something as fairly solid as this. Pretty solid lower-end GENTARO carry, but still a worthwhile watch for the guy.

I'd add to this as well by saying that the WWE involvement has mostly been a net plus on their shows. The KENTA/Nakamura matches were good, Tavion Heights got insane coverage for his wins over top guys like Kenoh (not to mention getting super over with his amateur-wrestling shtick) and Omos similarly has been booked really well and presented like a legit big deal feature. He's clearly a Muto-project, I would expect him to be back in the company sooner than later. NOAH's gained quite a bit from the headlines generated from everyone involved here.

I've really enjoyed the turn Fujita has had from his 2010's Inoki-Ism big deal antics to more of a elder statesmen figure who works small little feuds here and there. His little spat with Shuji Ishikawa resulted in some amazing big-man beef showings, his singles with Kitamiya being a classical Strong-Style sprint and his current project in putting over Daiki Odashima as this never-say-die rookie babyface has ruled. It's shown depth to him that I never thought would've been possible even 5-ish years ago.

This like recent SSPW events hasn't been officially aired however there is a good fancam by fellow wrestling fan fxnj that thankfully captures this epic main event. Murakami in 2024 is certainly not one for quality; he isn't going to hand you a lovely steaming Battlarts pie full of intricate grappling or complex stand-up work; but what this version is especially good at is projecting a unique chaotic vibe into these kind of matches. The way he swaggers around, dressed in a completely ugly dress combo with slacks, MMA gloves at the ready to stumble in and punch someone in the head is not only incredibly based, but it's something that you simply cannot find anywhere else unless you went to Japan's deepest underbelly and found a couple of drunk Yakuza guys. Most of us don't have those opportunities though so I guess this'll do. Super Tiger has stayed basically where he's always been, a consistently good but underperforming talent that only really seems to give a damn if the mat has the Battlarts logo on it. The start of this is a very entertaining brawl as Mura runs in before the match starts and goes at it with Tiger in a striking exchange, ending in him winning with a hook to the head. Outside stuff is more or less what you'd expect from this style of Murakami matches (throwing into stacks of chairs, the odd punch) but it does have a very cool bit where he just smacks Tiger in the back with kicks over and over in a fairly brutal fashion. The crowd feed off this energy in such a way that Murakami de-facto becomes the face here, getting consistent chants and applause despite eternal hometown babyface Super Tiger being right there. That lad in question does fine enough selling from what's shown throwing in a couple of nice strike combos but being too fatigued to really capitalise properly. There's some mask work here as well with it being teased getting yanked off and that predictively going absolutely nowhere as per expected. They get back in and Murakami tries to do his corner stomp: bless him, he's really past the age of being able to just pounce onto someone's head like he used to be able to do even a decade ago instead gingerly plopping his legs onto Tiger for a few seconds. They kinda incorporate that into the big comeback spot as Mura is too busy trying to get his stomps right that Tiger is able to hurl him off. One scuffed STO spot later and we get the first big spot of the match as Tiger carefully lands a head kick to counter a punch. This is followed up by a random (but definitely awesome) brainbuster into GTS spot that gets the upset pinfall in less than 8 minutes! Definitely not a classic (in fact having Super Tiger get his ass beat for most of a match before abruptly winning is pretty much beat for beat ripped off from his Fujita feud) but I thought this was a fun enough romp for what it was. In a world of incredibly long strung-out epics that go long purely just to go long, having a title match just end with a convincing finish is VERY refreshing.

i've been watching a good chunk of ajpw in the 2000's and i would have to agree with most of what this is saying. AJPW respected the tag belts quite a bit more despite the dire roster in places and i think they eventually pulled together a fun jr scene when they start pushing guys like Hayashi/Kondo and co in the mid to late period. Their legacy just isn't as well known because a lot of the documented footage Gaora scrubbed off the internet bar obscure corners like Veoh (RIP.) and other oddball websites, which is a shame because half the reason why I made this thread was due to that lack of exposure.

I don't invest much into these sort of things but the idea of Takayama not being a HoF-guy is legit baffling to me tbh, not to knock anyone in particular (we all have our blind-spots!) Guy was one of the few who was could be stuck as a legitimate top star in all three mainline promotions and his peak was pretty much him having good to great to ground-shattering epic matches with pretty much everyone. Even his UWF stuff (which is usually overlooked) has a bunch of solid material that proves he could've been successful down that road as well as a rampaging knee-throwing monster. Shit even his AJPW stint has a bunch of matches that any contender would be happy to have on their resume. I've talked about late-Takayama before in detail but I do want to say that he doesn't have a REALLY bad decline in terms of match quality. He just goes from a insane peak to being more varied. I likened him to a late-stage character actor before; he's someone who relies more on the classical psychology of a giant than being the freak of nature that he was before; more of a oddity who's about filling in and getting work out of being able to play all sorts of roles regardless of condition or opponent. It allows him to do a silly comedy bout with a Inoki impersonator the one week, do a freakshow match with a green ex-MMA guy the next, fight in a dingy basement floor covered in chains as a sleazy enforcer after, then pop in to fight Tiger Mask in a dream match and then somehow also be a big main event hoss all at the same time without losing any face. He had legendarily high levels of variety in him; I even seen him recently on a old 2009 AJPW house show taping where half of his moves were just dropkicking people! There is a wealth of great work there for the guy and it absolutely warrants a deep analysis by anyone interested.