ohtani's jacket

This was a fun match. It was almost like a minimalist version of BattlARTS that evolved from them getting older. Nowhere near as violent as the Ikeda match, but Ishikawa still got a punch in before the sleeper at the end.

This was okay. I didn't really buy into it as some kind of amazing technical match, and I agree that it lacked the urgency and drama you'd expect the type of match the commentators were trying to sell. I also couldn't figure out whether Danielson was working heel or face, not that I like his schtick either way. What I did love was the finishing stretch with Gibson fighting so hard to avoid Cattle Mutilation. Those types of exchanges I could appreciate more than the "Ladies and gentleman, James Gibson" schtick from earlier in the match.

This was spotty but entertaining. I've been conditioned to watching Triple Threat matches in WWE and ROH so they don't faze me anymore. My biggest takeaway from this was they were being set up to be more like TNA's version of cruiserweights than the complete workers they were in the indies. I mean there are a lot of high flying spots in this compared to your average match from these guys. Joe's dives are incredible, though.

Dylan Hales used to always speak highly of this match and with good reason. This is the closest thing you'll see to a proper Cage Match in the WWE. Even Hardy's decision to do the Bull Nakano leg drop off the top of the cage makes sense within the context of the story. I couldn't keep up with which parts of the feud were a shoot and which parts were a work, but this has got to be Matt Hardy's career match.

I'd never seen this before. It's an interesting television documentary that maintains kayfabe while at the same time putting a French spin on things yet still provides a glimpse into what life was like for the AJW wrestlers and some of the personal problems they had at the time. You also get expert commentary from Flesh Gordon.

The trailer for this finally dropped. I have high hopes for this as Netflix Japan have a pretty decent track record. Chigusa was involved in the wrestling choreography.

This was a lot more fun than I thought it would be. Of course, it was mainly smoke and mirrors with Pierroth's crew, the commissioner Scorpio Sr, Los Perros and La Nazi, but lucha has been having apuesta matches like these since the dawn of time. They're not always Sangre Chicana vs. MS-1. After the bout, Los Perros humiliated Pierroth with a bag of leaves to make up for Pierroth feeding them dog food the week before. Not sure whether they were meant to be tobacco leaves or something else. Halloween was way too cocky while taunting Pierroth. He's got a hiding coming. This could have been a lot worse.

Shawn Michaels continues his odd little year. It's almost like he doesn't give a shit who they put him against, he's delivering a good match no matter what. Masters is basically doing The Narcissist gimmick with Billy Jack Haynes' finisher. The kid does a good job in this match, but it's no surprise that he was in and out of the fed before being cut loose. At least he has this match on his resume. Vince must have been creaming over this backstage. MASTERPIECE! SEXY BOY!

This was kind of a necessary but uninspiring end to the Eddie vs. Mysterio feud. The emotional, Mexican soap opera stuff had concluded at SummerSlam, but Eddie still needed a pin over Mysterio before moving on to a new program. A cage match gave Rey the perfect out to drop a match to Eddie and so we get this closer. Despite the fact that this feud had given us excellent character work and acting from Eddie, and rejuvenated his career to an extent, I think everyone was ready to see it end.

Collins vs. St. Clair (Bremen´95 - Chain match) Collins comes out to Frankie Goes to Hollywood's Two Tribes, which is a respectable choice. Tony comes out to Simply the Best by Tina Turner. You can tell he's used it before as he fist pumps to the drum part right before the chorus. This is a decent match considering it's only 10 minutes long. It could have done with more blood and more violence, but that's asking a lot from 90s Catch. If it had been the 80s, you would have had 30 minutes of Collins grinding the chain into St. Clair's face. God bless Tony. I respect the fact that he was still working in the 90s. He knows what he's supposed to do with the chain in these types of matches, but he's incapable of emoting any sort of anger or rage. At least they were active.

CWA Bremen´95: ECF - Collins vs. Scorpio It's an age since I've watched any of this stuff and one of the main YouTube channels has gone kaput, but let's give this a whirl. I'm assuming that Dirty Dan Collins is Danny Boy Collins doing a heel gimmick. David can correct me if I'm wrong. He's filled out a lot since the last time I watched a Collins match and has grown his hair out. There's not a lot of mat wrestling here because Collins is working heel and Scorpio isn't that great at it outside of fundamental US holds. Instead, it's one of those international junior style matches that were so common in the 90s as these guys toured the world. Collins appears to have modelled his game on Fit Finlay albeit with more athleticism. There are enough highspots in this to entertain most of the Bremen fans, but it's fairly mid tempo.

@Phil Lions Slightly off topic, but regarding your thread about Pre-1940 European matches that were filmed, but the footage seems to no longer exist, is August 3, 1932: Jack Pye vs. Ben Sherman (London, England) different from the video that's available from Getty? https://www.gettyimages.co.jp/detail/動画/bell-rings-and-two-wrestlers-canadian-ben-sherman-and-briton-ニュース動画/539142450 The British Universities Film & Video Council appears to have more Pye footage, including the Stoeff bout you listed. http://bufvc.ac.uk/allbufvc/search.php?q=Pye&components[bund]=1&facet_media_type=moving_image&facet_genre[cinema]=1&sort=relevance

Jack Pesek vs. Friedrich (Fritz) von Schacht, 6/27/1952 WrestlingFilms brings us another upload. This is a fun bout from the undercard of a Thesz vs. O'Connor match at Wrigley Field. It's a fairly typical Chicago match, you've got the good looking young wrestler in Pesek going up against the rough veteran in von Schacht. Enjoyable stuff. von Schacht does some some fun work in the ropes where he teases spilling over into the crowd. I assume there's some stupid reason why Thesz vs. O'Connor doesn't exist on tape.

The Fabulous Rougeau Brothers vs. The British Bulldogs (WWF, 8/29/88) This was the first WWF PPV I watched both on commercial tape and on free-to-air TV. I'm fairly sure this match bored the crap out of me as a child as I was only interested in the gimmicks and the match results at the time, but watching it now, it's a well worked opener with a ton of action and pretty good use of a limited Dynamite Kid. There's a guy minding Matilda at ringside who takes you out of the match at time, especially when he tries to reposition Matilda so that it looks like she's watching the match, but for the most part it is a solid opener. The MSG configuration seems different from how it was in the late 70s-early 80s and is fairly sterile, but I still buy this as a good WWF match. Superstar is great on commentary. Monsoon says SummerSlam is a happening at least three times.

WrestlingFilms has uploaded a new film transfer: Chief Yaqui (Indio Cherokee, Chief Cherokee) vs Karl (Karol) Kowalski 1/30/50 There a lot of cheesy sound effects and some racist commentary from Bill Stern, but that aside, Yaqui is a unique looking wrestler who works a crazy looking style for 2024 let alone 1950. The finish is wild. WF says there's not much info about Yaqui online. I wanna says he's a time traveler.

This was a fun match. It was easily the best Suzuki match I've seen since he returned to pro-wrestling and finally he looks like the Suzuki I've been expecting. I'm sure he transitioned into this type of wrestler in matches that I didn't bother to watch, but he brought it here and that's the main thing. KENTA went hard as the upstart looking to knock off the veteran punk. Hard to imagine a better version of this.

This was another good match between these two. It differed from the PPV match in that it was more of story-driven bout with the stipulation being that Bischoff would fire the loser. They worked a tight about under the circumstances. Eric paraded around ringside like a dime store Vince McMahon trying to help Jericho win. The most exciting news was that Angle attacked Cena after the bout and absolutely brutalized him. Rampaging Kurt Angle is a scary mofo. I guess he's out of the doghouse and ready to tear Cena a new one.

I guess Smackdown is the place to be now. This was a decent Smackdown that served as a coda to a bunch of SummerSlam matches. Usually, you'd expect to see this type of match on a go home show, but here it was on the Smackdown after the PPV and a lot of the workers were selling how banged up they were. It wasn't as red hot as some of the more famous WWE six-mans but it was a fun bout. Batista doesn't look great as the Ace. He should really be working a program with a guy like Guerrero, imo, but they tried to put him over as an unstoppable badass with the finish.

This was a lot more enjoyable than recent Perros del Mal matches. It didn't get going until the tecnicos made their comeback in the second fall, but the crowd was red hot for Mistico and Perro. Lots of great action in the tercera. The crowd kept booing Atlantis, which would lead to a heel turn the following month. The ending was anti-climatic but the real finish was Pierroth sending his crew to attack Perros del Mal. Pierroth forced Los Perros to eat dog food, which was a brilliant piece of booking. One of the better faction beatdowns in a while. Pierroth came across like a don.

This was an interesting blend between a Hogan match and a WWE main event. The crowd were really into it. Hard to call it anything less than successful.

I don't think I've seen it. I haven' seen much footage post '88.

What year is it from?

I'm no Saint fan, but it wouldn't surprise me if there were some great Johnny Saint matches locked away in the archives.

The Fabulous Rougeau Brothers vs. The Rockers (WWF, 10/13/89) The WWF's European tour continues with a stop in Paris. I thought this was more exciting than the London match as there was less stalling and the crowd was hotter. Others may argue that it was more of a sprint than the drawn out London bout, but the quick action hit the spot for me.

Did Gorilla Monsoon ever wrestle in France? I was watching a Rockers vs. Rougeau Brothers match from the WWF tour of Europe in 1989 where Lord Alfred Hayes talks about the pair of them wrestling in Paris twenty years prior, and Gorilla brings up a shady promoter who Hayes names as Alex Goldstein. Lord Alfred mentions Édouard Carpentier, whom Gorilla claimed to have wrestled many times. Then they joke about some area of Paris that Lord Alfred lived in, and some dodgy stuff he got up to that I couldn't really understand. I don't think I've come across any results of Gorilla in France so I'm assuming it's BS.