Matches #10 (but it's just one match this time and it's the best)

Hey y'all! Back to doing more stuff like this now. There's so much wrestling out there to love.

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Osamu Nishimura vs. TAJIRI (MUGA World M-LIVE 9/23/2007) - EPIC

This was apparently contested for Nishimura's "US Heavyweight Championship" under two out of three falls.

There it is. The perfect pro wrestling match. It took ages to get here, but these guys did it. I feel like I could go days on end praising Nishimura, especially what he was able to achieve with his work in MUGA. Yet, I had never seen this match before. Didn't even know it happened!

I've never spoken about my thoughts on TAJIRI before but he's great. Everything he does in so many of his matches is so calculated and intentional. It feels like because most people know him for his junior/cruiserweight stuff and overlook what he's doing below the surface in favor of his athleticism. I was thinking a bit about this the other day: TAJIRI is even more impressive than most of these other wrestlers that people associate with controlling a crowd and having the audience in the palms of their hands. When it comes to those guys, it's pretty easy to see what makes things work with the popular options like Austin, Rock, Hogan, Mistico, Sammartino, Tanahashi, etc. Whereas I don't think the average fan even understands how TAJIRI is manipulating certain reactions out of them and getting exactly what he wants. The guy is like 10 steps ahead of the crowd in terms of being able to elicit whatever perception of himself and his opponent he wants.

The little things he does are so great, but along with that aforementioned junior work, he's great at the big things too. He knows how to make a match both engaging and exciting. And who better to do that with than someone equally as skilled in Osamu Nishimura. Nishimura is another wrestler who is always able to make so much so meaningful. Say whatever you will about "legacy" and "greatness" (which I think would still be in their favor), but I think these two are among the best wrestlers ever to step foot into a ring.

TAJIRI spends a lot of the first fall controlling Nishimura's arm, stunningly out-grappling him in the process. It's annoying and frustrating because...well because I know TAJIRI can reasonably do that, but my heart tells me Nishimura should be killing him in that department. Really, my heart just wants that to be the case, but TAJIRI's so good at pulling at those strings. He's an incredibly sharp mind and that's also what has led to him having so much longevity throughout his career. No matter how much his body and style changes, he's among the best when it comes to structuring a match. I know he has some books out there on pro-wrestling and his philosophy around that stuff that I'd love to get the chance to read at some point.

The cocky bastard steals that first fall too! Now he's got some weight behind what how he's carrying himself and that legitimacy he had throughout the first fall means Nishimura's gonna start falling behind if he's unable to catch up quickly. Nishimura's truly one of the most ultimate babyfaces though, and nobody can power through like him. All any underdog needs is one second of an opening and then they can deliver the goods, but Nishimura particularly excels at creating that opening himself. When he does that, boom, sickest uppercut forearm strikes you've ever seen. I guess they do most closely resemble something Fujinami would do, but I think they're even better. Probably in my top five moves ever.

Nishimura's able to get to his signature spinning toe hold and then tries to make TAJIRI submit with the figure-four. The issue, TAJIRI doesn't give anyone that satisfaction of getting to see him tap out. Instead, he mists Nishimura. It's an instant DQ for TAJIRI for that fall, but he was going to lose it anyways. Now, he's lost the fall still but has the upper hand on Nishimura going into the final fall and we get robbed of Nishimura submitting him.

Going a bit against the grain, the third fall's actually the shortest. Really short. Like, three-ish minutes? But it's perfect. See, TAJIRI thinks he's got Nishimura but in reality, he's the one that's already got. He attempts to kick Nishimura once and instantly the pain from the earlier leg work kicks in. You can actually see TAJIRI try to hide it from his opponent, but alas, it's too late. Nishimura gets on the offesne with some striking to the leg, then figure-four, boom. TAJIRI throws the referee (who looks like it might be Duke Sado? Not sure if he was even around at this point) out of the ring so he can mist Nishimura AGAIN and escape the hold without getting disqualified. He pays for that though because he's got no one to count his pinfall on Nishimura.

As soon as the referee does get back in and is a bit too banged-up to count the pin normally, TAJIRI spends just a little too much time berating him and Nishimura's able to capitalize with another huge figure-four. TAJIRI treated the move as a big deal the entire match, he had to cheat twice to escape it. Now, he had no more escapes and it was the end and that was a fate he simply had to accept immediately.

Amazing finish but it's just the cherry on top of a match that is excellently executes it's point across to a tee. While writing this, I saw this Tom Green tweet about "MaxwellBoards" and his thoughts on what makes a match five-stars. I've actually always felt pretty similarly. A match that is able to be good at what it's going for is good and one that can't is typically bad. There's exceptions of course but that's not the point I want to make here. Basically, this match goes for something that is a rather simple "give the audience a reason to hate the bad guy and then give them want they want to see (which is the bad guy getting beat up)" but that's seemed to get harder to pull off in wrestling as you go through the decades. This match is able to do it perfectly though. In fact, I'm aware every piece of art is up to interpretation and can be ambiguous, but I don't know how anyone could see this and not all come to the same conclusion about the story they told.

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I love Osamu Nishimura and I love TAJIRI.

Thank you for reading my thoughts on these matches 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 & tetrab0mb Wrestling Comp

Hey y'all! Little bit of a different comp today, because this one's a collaboration with my friend, Tetra. Check out @tetrabot9000 on X and @tetrab0mb on Instagram if you like good photography and sometimes the occasional writing thing. Here's the comp:

As this is a collaborative effort, this blog post is also gonna be a bit different. Tetra wrote a bit about the stuff they wanted to be included in this comp, so I'll specify who's from what in this.

Wouldn't suggest reading further until after you have finished watching. I can't stop you from doing that either way, but I do suggest you experience this compilation without knowing the contents within it.

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Nick Gage promo hyping up NGI2

"SHLAK. One minute, this guy's hanging from meat hooks, drinking a beer. Two hours later, I walk by his van... and he's smoking, CRACK. Now I know why this guy don't feel no fuckin' pain!"

"Markus Crane, this guy, he lands on pigeon spikes: punctures a lung! What the fuck is wrong with this guy?"

Matt Tremont vs SHLAK [GCW World Title/Nick Gage Invitational 2 First Round] - GCW Nick Gage Invitational 2 (9/16/17)

Tetra: The second Nick Gage Invitational is one of my favorite tournaments. It is truly near and dear to my heart. I'll expand more upon this when we get to my last match, but Matt Tremont, the veteran, enters this tournament against a rookie in SHLAK who is willing to take as much punishment as dearly possible. 

Matt Tremont is dedicated to putting down SHLAK, a man who, in the lead up to this tournament, had described him as a crack smoker. Off the jump, Tremont greets him with a light tube bundle and bursts it in one of the most aggressive ways anyone has burst a bundle in a death match, much to the commentary's chagrin.

SHLAK takes some gnarly stuff, getting whipped with barbed wire, vicious headbutts from Tremont, but SHLAK delivers his own as well! He sends Tremont through the barbed wire ropes, and even suffocates Tremont with a plastic bag before going back to light tube offense. I can't think of a better way to start off my portion of this. This just rules.

Rastaman vs Carl Malenko - BATTLARTS (11/26/00) - FUN

Mike: I'm telling you, I really like this Rastaman guy from everything I've seen. This is clipped, but it's still more than enough shown to get a good feeling about the match. Carl Malenko is also the best Malenko and just a crazy good wrestler that I wish got a chance to do more beyond BattlArts. This match is a bit unlike a lot of the famed Bati-Bati stuff you'll see people recommending.

Nick Gage vs John Wayne Murdoch [King Of The Death Matches 2015 Finals] - IWA-MS (6/27/15)

This is a minute-long clip from the match.

Tetra: This whole match is great, but for the most part, in order for brevity, you just need to see Gage and Murdoch fighting it out in the crowd in a bar-fight. This IWA Mid-South crowd is hungry for violence, and they're eating up everything these two are doing. Especially since Gage had just been put on parole at that point. This is one of my favorite old generation vs. next generation matches, and, both men refuse to pull any punches.

Yuki Ishikawa vs Ryuji Hijikata - AJPW (7/22/04)

Tetra: I've spoken about this match at length with my friends, but there is one key proponent of this match. You don't necessarily need to win a match to end up the ultimate winner, sometimes, you just need to survive. Hijikata is aspirational in the way that he walks away tough as nails, and demands more, whilst Ishikawa smiles at his petty little beating. Sometimes, this is what I want to see.

Masahito Kakihara vs Tatsuo Nakano - UWFI (9/21/92) - REALLY GOOD

Mike: There's tons a blood in the matches Tetra picked, and lots of guys getting beaten the hell out of, so I wanted to keep things in theme with this classic. Nakano and Kakihara, well, they beat the hell out of each other for less than five minutes. Nakano puts up the fight of his life to outmatch the quicker Kakihara.

? vs. ? (Raff-Sanz Promotions ?/?/97)

Mike: This is a quick clip from a Dominican wrestling show in the 90s. There's music playing, commentary sounds like they're speed-talking, and the wrestlers just do a lot in the span they have. I think it's neat.

Masked Holiday vs Great ZAKO (Unemployment Pro Wrestling 11/21/18)

Tetra: This is one of my favorite matches, mainly due to how avant-garde it is. For the most part, wrestling has always been a very interesting performance art to me, and this encapsulates it. Professional wrestling can happen anywhere, even in the weirdest little spaces. Whether in a parking lot, or in a tiny little apartment where walls become weapons. Both Keita and Zako showcase their knowledge of their surroundings by taking everything to their advantage, even as the match transforms between an astounding technical showcase with the little space they have, to a messier brawl. Too small to be a bar fight, too large to be just an exhibition, but just big enough to prove that anything can be done if you are aware of your space.

Matt Tremont vs Nick Gage [GCW World Title Nick Gage Invitational 2 Final] (GCW Nick Gage Invitational 2 9/16/17)

Tetra: This is one of my favorite death matches to ever occur on American soil. This is a cinder block canvas death match, for Tremont's GCW World Championship. Tremont had defended this whole tournament, and the finals were obviously going to be Gage vs. Tremont, but at the same time, this match for the most part was a dream. Gage had just been released from his parole violation, had fully served his time for the bank robbery, and had fully come out a different man. He was always hardcore, but he came out this shredded monster who was dedicated to put any challenger who stepped in his way in the ground. Nick Gage had a mission statement, and it was to conquer the world of American death match wrestling once more.

Matt Tremont had announced beforehand that this would be his last death match tournament, and would start to wind down as well, (lol) and everything crescendoes into this spectacle of this being Tremont's last shot at winning a death match tournament, and Gage proving himself once more to the hardcore fans who had embraced him just like before, if not even more. In a way, this feels like the biggest death match that could occur on American soil. Especially once they bring out an incredibly nasty stipulation that, to my knowledge, hadn't been brought out on American soil. At least, not to this extent.

Every match, every competitor, featured something that proved how bad they wanted to win this tournament. Markus Crane had torn some of his flesh off trying to get to the second round, getting cut in a distressing way from a Spanish Fly onto a light tube bundle. Matt Tremont had been attacked with a gusset plate board from Miedo Extremo, a weapon that is now so common-place today, but is still shocking to see. Gage and Ciclope in the first round went hard at it, fish hooking Ciclope with a rod, and reeling him off of the top rope, and even doing his signature face wash with a razor board.

It only makes sense that Tremont and Gage would kill each other. They needed to kill each other. Especially since Gage is stepping into a different world. Really, it's how you become a made man.

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Wow, Tetra wrote A LOT. Now I feel a bit bad for just leaving my little comments on the matches I included lol. Truly thank you though for all of that, yknow I appreciate it.

Thank you for reading both my and Tetra's 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. 4

 Hey y'all. Another comp today from myself. I promise I'll stop doing these daily at some point lol.

Wouldn't suggest reading further until after you have finished watching. I can't stop you from doing that either way, but I do suggest you experience this compilation without knowing the contents within it.

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Ricky Banderas vs Rastaman (IWA Puerto Rico 12/?/1999) - GREAT

The rematch! This has a lot of the same stuff as their first match, but that's absolutely fine with me. If anything, Banderas feels even more fired up. He's such a fighter here.

It's barely missing some of the magic that the previous matchup had, but maybe that's just me loving chaos.

Bryan Danielson vs Kaval (FCW TV 2/7/2010) - FUN

This was taped on 1/14/2010. Pretty sure this was Danielson's first FCW match as well. You're getting a dumbed down version of Danielson v Low Ki but they also have to try to get creative because this is sub-10 minutes. I've seen more 2010 FCW than most probably. It's not good, but you'll sometimes get a match like this that's interesting to think about at least.

They do some stiff-for-WWE-standards striking and matwork. Looks good, feels good. You can tell even at this level, there's still that road agent/production micromanaging behind every match, but this one does a better job at separating itself apart and making me feel like I'm watching two wrestlers go at it, which those other ones don't.

Bruiser Brody promo (NWA Polynesian Wrestling 8/?/1986)

Brody loved this shit, man. One of the promos where all you can do is silence, listen up, and believe every word coming out of his mouth.

Bret Hart vs Jeff Jarrett [Special Referee: Big Boss Man] (WWF House Show San Francisco, CA 12/5/1993) - FUN

I think I like the WWE house show style a lot, what can I say. We need more special referees to be like Big Boss Man here. Jeff Jarrett's great. I'm not the biggest Bret fan but I think he's seriously good here. Does an awesome job at slowing being unnerved by Jarrett until he finally breaks.

El Hijo del Santo & Damian 666 vs Super Parka & Blue Panther (WWO 5/3/2003) - GOOD

I want to believe there's always room for wrestling to get better, in any time period. And then I watch El Hijo del Santo and yknow what, maybe it can't. I've watched so many of his matches and I'm still always amazed. Somehow, he's able to move in a way that feels mythical. The stories about El Santo make a lot more sense when you see what Santito was capable of. 

Blue Panther can be just as good of a rudo as he is tecnico. He can be a real bully in the ring, even with Hijo del Santo being as aggressive as he is in this. Super Parka gets a bit too much of the spotlight, but Santito shuts him down a few times at least.

The finish isn't great, but the rest of the match is good enough at least.

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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. 3

Hey y'all! Another day, another comp.

Wouldn't suggest reading further until after you have finished watching. I can't stop you from doing that either way, but I do suggest you experience this compilation without knowing the contents within it.

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Junkyard Dog vs. Great Kabuki (JCP World Wide Wrestling 4/7/1984) - FUN

Dude. JYD might be one of my favorites ever, huh? I like Great Kabuki a lot too, and wish he was more widely known as something other than "the guy that started the poison mist stuff" but he's no match for Dog here. No one ever is. At every cut-off and submission, JYD gives the crowd something to get behind and believe in. I think that a large part of pro wrestling is believing and living in the moment. He got it.

Abdullah Kobayashi & Mayumi Ozaki vs Kyoko Kimura & Yuko Miyamoto (BJW Katsura Special 2 6/4/2006) - GREAT

Insane, awesome match. Mayumi Ozaki doing deathmatch. You know what to expect out of the guys here, so I left this wishing Kyoko did even more hardcore shit like this. Of course, she did do a lot in her own right, but I feel like she could've easily been one of the greatest deathmatchers we've ever seen with this kind of stuff. Everyone just beats the crap out of each other. Don't even get me started on how sick as hell the Kobayashi/Kimura headbutts are.

Kept the post-match broadcast stuff in because they showed Kyoko comforting a really young Hana Kimura after the match, and that touched the heart yknow?

Hana Kimura vs Yako Fujigasaki [JWP Junior Title & Princess Of Pro Wrestling Title Tournament Final] (JWP Fly High In The 25th Anniversary Day 7 Evening Show 9/18/2016)

After that, I thought it'd be neat to include a Hana match. This was tourney final that had both the JWP Junior and Princess of Pro Wrestling championships on the line. The Princess one actually has a really interesting lineage if you're interested in checking out that kind of stuff. Of course the JWP one does too, but I hadn't heard of the other one previously.

This has some nice babyface work from Hana fighting upwards against the larger Fujigasaki. And I use that word "fighting" because she's able to truly make it feel that way. Hana wants to win and it feels like a competition. As far as I know, this was her first proper championship win, also why I included it.

I actually don't know much about her opponent here, but she seems gnarly herself.

Masao Orihara vs Great Sasuke [Tokuku Jr. Title Tournament] (Michinoku Pro 8/17/2002)

This is another clipped matchup from this tournament. This one actually followed the matchup I included in the first comp, Orihara/Naniwa. This seemed just as good, if not better than that. More evil dickhead Orihara, please.

Ricky Banderas vs Rastaman (IWA Puerto Rico 12/3/1999) - EPIC

Been on a bit of a Rastaman kick lately. He's awesome. Need to see more of his BattlArts stuff for sure.

This is almost as perfect of a wrestling match as you can get. Wow. It's like seven minutes, watch it ASAP.

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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. 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 3/29/2003) - 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 3/8/1986) - 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 8/7/1994) - 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/?/2005) - 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 9/6/2025) - 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 1/26/1951) - 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 4/11/2006) - 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 8/16/2002)

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 3/21/2011) - 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 12/12/2000) - 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 10/24/1998) - 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 4/12/2003)

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 10/21/1983) - 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.