Matches #7

Hey again y'all! Been really enjoying the wrestling I have been watching as of late and it's felt like I've been spending a lot more time watching and less time writing, so let's fix that by talking about some of the stuff I've seen recently.

Before we get to that though, I really wanted to give a major thank you to everyone who was involved with anything relating to the Thanomsak Toba interview I posted earlier this month. Loads of people read it, reposted, had very nice things to say, and some friends even helped me put a number of those questions together. I think that whole process was one of the coolest things I've been a part of in regards to anything I've put out there for wrestling, so I am eternally grateful for how much people seemed to like that.

Now, on to some matches!

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Judas el Traidor vs. Heddi Karaoui (Lucha Memes/Coachelas Lucha Libre 10/22/2023) - FUN

This was my first time watching a Heddi Karaoui match, after it popped up in my recommended feed and I saw it was against Judas el Traidor (who is one of my favorite independent wrestlers in the world right now). I've heard many things about Karaoi and his grappling ability so I was excited to see how this matchup would go because Judas can do it all: Great grappler, brawler, can strike, knows how to work against all levels of experience.

Arena Coliseo Coacalco is basically Judas's domain and you can tell. The crowd is really behind him and generally I thought this crowd was nice, as this usually tends to be one of my go-to favorite venues for dream matches with a llave focus. Karaoui was good at playing into the dynamic by resorting to rolling outside and more power-based holds as opposed to stuff that's more technically sound and visually appealing.

I didn't understand why there was the strike-off near the end, even if the striking itself wasn't bad. Either way, this match is 16 minutes of mostly llave that I'd imagine fans of any of these wrestlers would enjoy. I wonder what this match would look like had Judas went for some brawling and Heddi would have to try adapting or relying even more on keeping his opponent neutralized by the holds.

Sasaki Complete Jr. vs. Kota Watanabe (CWP Overdrive 7/12/2025) - GOOD

This tournament final match was for the vacant/new CWP Middleweight Title. 

I can't say with 100% certainty that these two are student/amateur/hobbyist wrestlers but I'd like to think so, considering they both combine for less than 100 matches total despite the pooled 12ish years of experience between the two (and also the fact that they have primarily wrestled for CWP). 

To be honest though, you could've told me that Sasaki Complete Jr. was a Sportiva rookie or Big Japan young boy and I would've believed it, and I mean that as a compliment to the highest regard. His kicks are what I can describe only as "sharp", if that makes sense. That's not to say Watanabe is not any good either, he's got some promise too. He does a good job working from under in this, which is pretty important given the type of match they're working here.

I felt that Sasaki was great at being that boss for Watanabe to overcome and was very compelling when he was dominating. It also seemed like this was best for Watanabe as I was moved much more by his "passive" selling than his offense in the later portions.

I'd recommend this match if you're into more amaresu stuff.

Junkyard Dog vs. The Grappler (Mid-South Wrestling 6/9/1982) - FUN

This was a Mid-South Louisiana Title match that aired on the 6/19/1982 episode of television.

It's a short one but a goodie still. I don't like giving play-by-play on these (for various reasons), but I think the finish is the best display of what this match is about: The Grappler's laying on the outside and while Junkyard Dog is waiting for him to come back inside, The Assassin attacks JYD. JYD hits what is seemingly a metal plate in Assassin's forehead (he's wearing a mask so I don't know), realizes this, and then attacks the back of his head instead. More interferences happen and the match has to get thrown out, but the crowd goes wild as Ted DiBiase makes the save and he stands triumphant alongside Junkyard Dog in the ring.

Simple (I know that explanation may have seemed complicated but I promise it's an easy watch), rewarding pro wrestling.

Osamu Nishimura vs. Yuji Nagata (NJPW Toukon Spirito Guerriero 6/2/2005) - SKIPPABLE

This was from a 2005 NJPW tour in Italy and seemed to be lost for 15 years, until a fancam of the match was uploaded onto YouTube in 2019. Apparently the full tour is out there, but I couldn't find anything other than this match anywhere.

This is also "European Rounds", meaning there's five 3-minute rounds and also the ref can give yellow and red cards up to his discretion. I actually like how creative they get with the stipulation compared to how they usually would be wrestling each other. I feel they do a good job of working within the stipulation, but I do have some gripes with the match.

As opposed to something like the CWP or Mid-South matches, I really struggled with getting myself invested in the match. There wasn't enough struggle and little-to-no urgency from both sides. In his own review of this match on the Handwerk blog, Simon wrote, "Nagata gets more technical than usual, and Nishimura gets madder than usual". Unfortunately, that's all this match really was to me: Nagata and Nishimura wrestling each other's match and just that.

I'm going to say that no one should take the "SKIPPABLE" at face value though. I do appreciate Nishimura's selling performance and this match is generally a neat novelty. I'm sure others would enjoy this match more than me.

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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.

Just Some Matches #2 (HD Fishman in a Cage & NJPW 5x5 Elimination Tags)

Hello again, everyone! Hope whoever saw my first post enjoyed what they read and if not, that's alright too. Before I even get into wrestling stuff, I just wanted to first thank each and every one of you that either read, reposted, liked, or even just saw any of my posts about this blog. I had such a great time writing that first post and it was very gratifying to see that there's at least people besides me that enjoyed giving it a look!

It means so much to me that even one person would even go to look at the site, let alone read an entire post I made. Feeling so excited, I wanted to talk about more matches! So I asked some friends for some ideas of what they'd like to see and got 3 matches in particular for this one.

Macuarro vs. El Hijo del Fishman (Zona 23/Lucha Memes Junkyard Mania 8/18/2024) - GREAT

Given the nature of this match, I feel like it's best to just get right into it.

If this was your first time seeing Macuarro, like it was for me, I don't think anything can prepare for his look. I originally thought that Zona had grabbed a random elderly man from the crowd to get murdered by Hijo del Fishman. Which, to be completely fair, he does take a nasty beating in this match. But it's one that seems more courageous rather than "this poor old man is gonna die, this is disgusting". I think the reason this is has to do with Macuarro's ability to dish it out himself. He isn't a stranger to the junkyard; quite the opposite actually. He's a bit of a cult legend when it comes to the Zona 23 fanbase and while I didn't know that at the time I watched this match for the first time a few days after it released onto IWTV, I was definitely made into a fan of his after this performance.

The match starts off how you'd expect a Fishman match to start off if you seen him wrestle before: he takes in a lot of boos and then he brawls with his opponent around the venue before they even get in the ring. I'd be lying if I said he wasn't a formulaic worker. Most of well known matches are all against Máscara Sagrada NG and they're all almost exactly the same exact match every time. But it always works for me because I love that type of match that he goes for, a good ol' lucha walk n' brawl.

While this match does start off that way, it does take a different turn than usual for Fishman. When the match finally gets to the ring and inside the cage, he brings his typical irritated vibe. Drops a brick on Macuarro's stomach, gets him with some skewers, tries to put him through a car hood. You definitely do feel at least a little bad for Macuarro here. The change comes when he's able to move out the way and Fishman goes through the hood instead, leaving a massive opportunity open for him. Macuarro races to a bag of weapons and this is when we get to see that he's just as sick as Fishman is.

This balding, old man uses skewers of his own, a TROWEL, and even uses a hammer to break a brick on Fishman's stomach. Both of them bringing this kind of energy to the junkyard, fueled even more with a heated crowd, gives this a bit of a "dudes rock" feeling to this match. But it still feels differently than most Fishman matches, which do have a similar vibe. With his usual matches against someone like Sagrada, it's like "Yeah! Brawl around the arena and beat the hell out of each other!! Woooooo!!!". Though in this match, it's more of a "these guys want to kill each other and I'm a bit scared but the lengths they are going to do so is awesome to see".

(Also, Hijo del Fishman is really good when it comes to just absorbing all that heat from the crowd. Near the beginning of the match, the entire crowd is booing him and cheering for Macuarro, so he just stands there and takes it in, before continuing to try to murder Macuarro. Later on, there's a point where his pants start falling a little and the crowd points it out and starts to laugh at him, so he quickly pulls them up and has a real embarrassed reaction as he looks around at the crowd to see if they noticed. It's like a perfect balance between being arrogant enough to make people want to boo you, but also showing that you are actually fazed by the crowd in the end.)

This is a really sick match, in more ways than one. I'd personally recommend it to anyone who enjoys the Zona Junkyard brawls, but I don't know if I would say the same for those that don't. It's a pretty violent beating and not for the feint of heart.

Thank you to Evie for suggesting this one!

Akira Maeda, Kazuo Yamazaki, Nobuhiko Takada, Osamu Kido & Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs. George Takano, Kantaro Hoshino, Kengo Kimura, Shiro Koshinaka & Tatsumi Fujinami (NJPW 9/16/1986) - FUN

Thanks to Ben for suggesting both of these NJPW matches!

New Japan 5x5 elimination tags are always good. I have yet to come across one that I dislike. I love tag team wrestling, especially when you can get a number of mini singles matchups within one match. That's largely the bread and butter of these NJPW elimination tag matches, and it's no different here.

I think this match does lack a little bit in the substance department. Yes, you get the cool matchups between Fujiwara/Fujinami, Takada/Fujinami, and Takada/Koshinaka. These are huge encounters, but also feel like they're holding back. In complete fairness, everyone in this match does a good job and there's great grappling exchanges, transitions, and reversals; but I feel like even the big matchups still feel incomplete, like there wasn't enough for me to latch onto. It makes it difficult to think very critically of this one, but there's still enough good in this match to make it fun at least.

In terms of stuff I really did love in this match: Fujiwara's performance and the Takada/Koshinaka finishing matchup. 

Fujiwara is excellent at everything he does in every match, of course, but here he's real good at being a foil to Fujinami and also generally to Team NJPW. One moment that stuck with me was when Fujiwara just starts dropping headbutts on Team NJPW, one-by-one. The crowd goes crazy for it, despite Fujiwara being the opposition to their side. 

Takada and Koshinaka tease their duel a bit earlier in the match, but we actually end up getting more of it in the finishing stretch. This made it feel a lot more fulfilling than the other matchups in this one. Koshinaka gets beat up by Takada a good amount, but the crowd explodes whenever he shows anything that keeps him in the match, whether that be a kickout, hip attack, or even just not submitting immediately when Takada gets him.

Like I said, the match isn't bad at all, just a bit lackluster in my opinion. And with that being said, there's still really sick stuff in here, so it's definitely worth watching still!

Riki Choshu, Tatsumi Fujinami, Shinya Hashimoto, Masahiro Chono & Hiroshi Hase vs Genichiro Tenryu, Ashura Hara, Takashi Ishikawa, Super Strong Machine & Tatsutoshi Goto (NJPW 6/15/1993) - GOOD

You can tell shit's about to go down before this one even starts. The crowd makes some noise when the lights dim for entrances, as Tenryu leads out Team WAR. Team NJPW don't really have a designated leader, but the crowd does really love Choshu more than anyone else it seems.

Team NJPW is much more star-studded than the WAR team, but I still think I'm a bigger fan of the WAR guys going into this. Takashi Ishikawa is a personal favorite of mine and I can't wait to use this blog to talk about him more, Ashura Hara is another really good, underappreciated legend, and Super Strong Machine is a beast that was needed for a match like this.

This match is slower paced than the other one we talked about, but I enjoy it more because that's more my style for these kinds of matches. To it's credit though, the '86 match does do a really good job at not wasting a single second and making every moment count, while this match does have it's downtime points.

Tenryu is the first person to be eliminated from Team WAR and that creates this awesome sense of uncertainty and worry for the WAR guys. He gets caught off guard by Fujinami, which then creates some more tension between the two teams. Super Strong Machine offers a nice change of style by focusing on the arm of Fujinami, who's elbow is wrapped up. This leads the next few tags to become about isolating that arm still and making sure he hurts.

From this point, we get some breakups whenever the WAR guys try to tap out Fujinami, but they don't feel like regular breakups. There feels like there's a real animosity that comes from the NJPW guys that makes what would be a routine submission breakup into Choshu hitting the hell out of Tatsutoshi Goto while he puts Fujinami in a Scorpion Lock.

Speaking of which, there's a bunch of creative ideas in this one! Hase gets a giant swing that goes 20 (I think, from what I counted at least), but he gets instantly attacked as soon as he's finished with it. I'm not sure if it's a bad thing because the crowd had no time to react to that feat and Hase had no time to take it in, or if it's sick because the WAR guys don't give a shit about giving him time to breathe. Generally, the match has an innovative feeling to it, if that makes much sense. It feels like the elimination tags worked from this one.

I think while I definitely prefer this match to the previous one, I like both! This match and how it's structured is personally more geared towards my tastes.

Hope you enjoyed reading this! 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!