mikeawesomemike Wrestling Comp Vol. 2

Hey again! I know it's only a day later, but I had such a great time putting together that first comp that I decided to do another one. Here it is:

Would recommend not reading further until after watching it, so that you can enter the compilation blind. But feel free to do whatever you want.

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Jason Cross vs. Jorge Estrada (NWA Wildside 3/29/03) - FUN

Everything I've seen from NWA Wildside feels so ahead of it's time. These two guys in particular, they were doing some wild (lol) stuff for 2003 U.S. standards! Yeah, there were some other great independent juniors at the time, but these guys were next level. Cross is like ten years from the future and Estrada feels like a Mid-South TV champion from the 80s. He can move quick if he wants and is flashy, but knows how to use that in a way that's still able to get amazed fans to dislike him. This was sick as hellllllll.

Put this as the first match because it feels like it could open up any wrestling TV show in the past two decades and make me want to continue watching the rest of the show (and then be disappointed that the rest of the show doesn't get better than that, but I promise that's not the case for this).

Dump Matsumoto & Bull Nakano vs. Velvet McIntyre & Dawn Marie (WWF Boston Gardens on NESN 3/8/86) - FINE

Commentary was notably atrocious for this, but that's unfortunately the case for a lot of the WWF matches with joshi involved.

Trying to ignore that though, this was still neat. You get Dump and Bull being evil in Boston and the crowd's not super into it, but they still worked the way I wanted them to. They beat up the faces for a bit, but lose to the athletic Velvet McIntyre. It's pretty simple, they don't do anything insane, but cool novelty. It's Dump and Bull in the Boston Garden.

Sabu vs. Osamu Nishimura [NWA Independent World Title] (NWA Sabu 8/7/94) - FUN

You're getting Nishimura working a Sabu match. That's awesome. It's probably the most interesting way that this matchup could be done. It feels like it's a bit of a sprint too. Sabu tries to bombard Nishimura with offense that's pretty different to what he's probably seen up to this point, Nishimura tries to be more calculated than Sabu. I don't know how you wouldn't want to give this a watch.

Now I think I want to see their matchup from a year later in ECW at some point.

Zandig vs. JC Bailey vs. Nick Gage [Ultraviolent Underground Title/Junkyard Death Match] (CZW 7/?/05) - GREAT

This is a one minute clip. The full match is out there online, but I chose not to include it because I wanted to stay under a certain time and thought this served as a nice teaser for the match on its own. Watch the match if you haven't yet, it's one of my favorites from CZW.

Simbolo vs. Makabre (MWF Millenials Fest 9/6/25) - GREAT

One of my favorite matches this year. Good lucha brawling in front of an interested crowd at La Terraza Elma. I don't find myself always cheering for him in his matches, but something about Makabre feels so broken down and destroyed physically that I really wanted to believe in him. You can tell there's a real passion in every single punch, kick, and bump. I know Simbolo can be a bit hit or miss, but I wonder what an apuestas between these two would like. Watch this one for sure; I'd love to know if anyone else thought it was as good as I did.

Lou Thesz vs. Buddy Rogers [NWA World Heavyweight Title Best Two Out Of Three Falls] (NWA Chicago 1/26/51) - GOOD

This is a clip of the final three minutes of this hour long draw. I watched a bit of Lou Thesz this year for the first time. He was great, genuinely deserved every ounce of recognition he had. I thought these final moments demonstrated exhaustion really well, probably because they actually were tired by this portion of the match. You get the idea though. Thesz just felt like a real wrestler, yknow? Rogers is pretty good too.

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My thoughts were a lot less lengthy on these compared to yesterday, but I still wanted to leave a few comments about the matches at least. I wouldn't consider any of those as formal reviews though.

Thank you for reading my thoughts on these matches/this comp today; I hope you enjoyed! If you didn't, that's alright too. Let me know if you have any thoughts, criticisms, ideas, or whatever in the comments or get in touch with me on my Twitter page.

mikeawesomemike Wrestling Comp Vol. 1

Hey y'all! It's been a while, hasn't it? My bad, lost a lot of motivation to write for a bit. But now, I want to write again, so here.

Currently, the incredible Wrestling Playlists is in the middle of their "Season Of Giving." For the uninitiated, a bunch of great wrestling fans online (including Charles, the guy behind the project) curate these playlists and compilations to share with subscribers/readers. I wanted to do one this year, but couldn't get much done before the deadline due to my horrible time management. I felt a bit inspired though, seeing some of the cool concepts and ideas some folks had. Another thing that inspired me was seeing some of the comps produced recently by guidedbyrockets. They've all been great and something that I like about them is that you can tell what kind of fan they are based on what matches are selected. And if I remember correctly, that was part of the goal with the Season of Giving stuff: put something together that would show people what type of wrestling fan you are. Also in general, I just really like taking a peek at older wrestling comps like the DVDVR Yearbooks and such.

So without further ado, these things made me wanna do one of my own. Here it is:

In this post, I'm gonna talk a bit about the matches I included in this, maybe some info on why, and also just how I like these wrestling things. I would highly recommend going into the comp blind, not knowing the contents within it ahead of time, but I can't stop you from doing whatever.

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LSD "Survival" Rongai vs. Ettsu (Japanese University Student Wrestling Match 4/11/06) - GREAT

I could wax poetic about how amazing "student wrestling" can be. These two guys have seemingly no training and are in front of a handful of people and they put on a great wrestling match in spite of that, in an area that looks to be on their university's campus! Ettsu is a Misawa clone, and I'm not the biggest Misawa fan ever, but it's awesome seeing King's Road bumps brought to this kind of environment. LSD "Survival" Rongai. That's it. I don't even know where to start with this guy. He's insane. Well, both these of guys are, but he is definitely so. It feels like he takes the overwhelming majority of the nastiest moves in this. Even when he's when he's the one delivering them.

After some consecutive crazy spots happen on the outside, the match ends via double count-out. I really liked this finish because Ettsu delivers a disgusting suplex from the apron to the outside floor to prevent Rongai from getting in at the last second. It's all he had left in that moment, so he ends up losing too, but it made it feel all the more like he actually wanted to win the match.

That actually doesn't end up being the true finish though, because Ettsu grabs a microphone and begs for the match to be restarted, as this will be the final time him and Rongai would be able to face off. I don't think a reason is outright given as to why that is, but I assume one (or both) of them was about to graduate and therefore would no longer be at the university. Rongai agrees for the match to be restarted with a three minute time-limit. Honestly, I thought it was a cool moment. It was real, yknow? Can't make that kind of stuff up in "professional" wrestling.

Nothing much happens in the added minutes that's anything crazier than the earlier match, but they still treat it like a sprint and they both are rushing to win. Inevitably, none of them can get that before the time expires. Amaresu rules, watch this.

Masao Orihara vs. Gran Naniwa [Tohuku Jr. Title Tournament] (Michinoku Pro 8/16/02)

This is just a clip of the finish to this match. I like both of these guys a lot, but it's especially awesome seeing Orihara as this weird little freak that chokes people considering my introduction to him was his stuff during the WAR/NJPW feud. I mean, he was somewhat like that back then too, but this is looks and feels like a completely different guy.

Kana vs. Kagetsu [Best Two Out Of Three Falls] (OSAKA Joshi-Pro DAIJO 1st Anniversary 3/21/11) - FUN

This is a bit clipped but still watchable enough that I feel I can review this.

One of the few Kagetsu/Kana singles matches and if I remember correctly, this one was on YouTube for a bit before being taken down and disappearing for some years. I bought a "Best of DAIJO" DVD and got this with it, mainly because I wanted to see this match. Very glad I did, because this was neat.

Seeing either of these two work a 2/3 falls is really interesting, and they don't do a bad job structuring it either! Kagetsu's still pretty early into his career by this point and we don't see anything that's reminiscent of the Oedo Tai era of his work that would define said career, but he was a damn good wrestler still at this point. Instead, Kana's more of the heel here and of course, she's excellent in that role. You're getting Kana, an Ishikawa trainee near her peak against Kagetsu, a Meiko Satomura trainee who's young at this point and is fighting with a lot of fire in his heart. Like I said, neat for what it is.

Ricky Marvin vs. Virus [Mexican National Lightweight Title Best Two Out Of Three Falls Match] (CMLL 12/12/00) - FUN

Ricky Marvin is one of my favorite wrestlers of all-time and so is Virus. Virus is still very good to this day, and this was a pretty big deal for Marvin at the time. Another two-out-of-three falls match, but this is lucha libre. Even for these two smaller guys, they make the match feel like a big deal and you can tell how important it is to them.

This was one of the first matches I looked for when I was introduced to Ricky Marvin, and so it has a special place in my heart.

Kazunari Murakami vs. Lee Young Gun [No Rules Match] (UFO TAKE OFF 10/24/98) - GOOD

As far as I know, this is Murakami's pro wrestling debut. The story seems to be that he was training at Lee's gym, before things got out of hand after Lee started throwing live rounds at him. Somehow, Lee's the one that's mad at this and he says he's gonna kill Murakami.

Lee throws some sick kicks, like the ones he threw at the gym. It seems like he's got Murakami in trouble for a second. The Heisei Terrorist does what he does though, and within a moment's notice he's able to flip a switch and DESTROY Lee. Huge slam, followed by a disgusting judo throw, ended off with an armbar. In the five seconds he pulls all of that off, we see the Murakami we all know. This guy was always going to be great, huh?

The bell-to-bell for this is like a minute and a half at most, watch this.

Ryuki Ueyama vs. Ryuji Hijikata (AJPW 4/12/03)

This is a clip of the finish to this match. A while back I did a bit of a deep dive on Ueyama and watched 90% of the matches he did (there were less than 30 of them). I left thinking that he was someone who could've been a bit of a gem but just barely missed the mark a lot of the times with his match output, even if that wasn't always his fault. I do wonder how his career would've panned if he fully committed to pro wrestling early on.

And then Ryuji Hijikata's one of the sickest fuckers ever, love that guy.

Junkyard Dog vs. Kamala (WCCW 10/21/83) - GOOD

JYD really did ooze of charisma. In fact, he didn't just have charisma, he WAS charisma. I have such a fun time watching him whenever a match of his comes up. I don't mean any disrespect to Kamala either but man, there's never anyone that would come close to moving the crowd the way Junkyard Dog did and it's so clear when you see how they react to him compared to his opponents. He just got it like no other.

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I know this was a bit different than usual, but thank you for reading my thoughts on these matches/this comp today; I hope you enjoyed! If you didn't, that's alright too. Let me know if you have any thoughts, criticisms, ideas, or whatever in the comments or get in touch with me on my Twitter page.