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 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.

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.