More Matches? Yes. (Fujiwara, Sangre Chicana, and an Instant Classic)

Hey y'all! It's been a little bit longer since the last post, I know. Things have been slightly hectic lately and so some of the stuff I've been working on had to take some small delays. Fortunately though, I did want to get out a post today because I need to scratch that writing itch somehow.

The biggest reason I couldn't write much earlier in the week is because I haven't really been watching much lately. The past couple weeks have mostly been recent CMLL stuff that I've really loved, but didn't have anything to say about it other than "I recommend these matches." Two of these matches were watched only because they were suggestions from friends (as part of a mini wrestling "book club", if that makes sense).

Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs. Super Tiger (UWF 9/7/1984) - EPIC

In response to a Matt D tweet a few weeks back that was about how a spot from a Mike Bailey vs. Kazuchika Okada match felt sport-like as opposed to feeling "real", I asked if there was anything in wrestling that could do both: make things feel real but also feel like a competition. Most of the responses were answers of shoot-style and to be fair, it makes sense. 

I thought about that a lot throughout this matchup largely because of how I already perceive Fujiwara. He's not a wrestler that seems to care for the competitive nature of shoot-style, but does a hell of a job at making what he does feel real. Rather than it feel like he just wants to out-wrestle his opponent, I almost am horrified (in the best way) at how he would instead prefer to crush whoever stands across from him.

I know it's too easy to say this (especially when it comes to shoot-style stuff), but the match truly does feel like a fight instead of a wrestling match. And I love that. Fujiwara spends the early portions of the match trying to murder Sayama and I wince at how brutal that offense looks. When Sayama gets the upper hand, he does the same and it's even more disgusting. It goes beyond the "beat the hell out of each other" scale and enters the "are they shooting???" territory in my mind.

Something that will occur throughout these matches today is my praise for the selling. Super Tiger does a great job at getting his ass beat and making you feel bad for him but the star of this show is Fujiwara by far. What sticks out is the selling of his exhaustion. For a feeling that is so common and one that the audience can relate to, I don't think there's many wrestlers ever that have sold it great. Fujiwara is on that very short list of those who can though. As I'm watching him lay there after getting destroyed by Tiger's kicks and knee drops, I start to feel like I just went through a war myself.

For someone like Fujiwara who has kind of always been an evil bastard wrestler in my eyes, I do feel sorry for him while Sayama is laying it in on him (even after Fujiwara was being just as evil to him earlier in the match!). If that's not a testament to how strong his selling is here, I don't know what is. To me, that's what selling is for.

MS-1 vs. Sangre Chicana (EMLL 50th Anniversario 9/23/1983) - EPIC

I've tried to deep-dive Sangre Chicana before but just have never gotten around to doing so, which makes me all the more glad I got to watch this recently. Both him and MS-1 are names that I've heard have some of the bloodiest brawls in all of lucha history and if there's anything I love most in wrestling, it's two awesome punchy guys making each other bleed throughout any venue.

It's a 2/3 falls hair vs hair match, and most of the first fall is spent with MS-1 keeping Chicana outside the ring after catching him off guard during his entrance. An interesting note-to-self is that throughout this ordeal, MS-1 looks scared. His body language makes him seem anxious. Almost as if he attacked Chicana before the bell because he knows he wouldn't stand a chance otherwise.

Once again, this is another match that serves as a masterclass in selling fatigue and exhaustion. Sangre Chicana showcases fantastic selling but also some of the best striking I've ever seen in wrestling. Every single punch is exaggerated just enough that all of them mean something without going too overboard that it would become cartoonish.

And they don't call him SANGRE Chicana for nothing; he bleeds buckets in this one. The visual of the bleeding itself looks awesome but what follows is even better. Throughout the course of the match, it feels like Chicana is getting stronger in real-time as soon as he starts to see his own blood. It's astoundingly easy to get behind him during this, really leaving me with wanting to watch more of his work. Only the best of the best can flip a switch and get everyone behind their big comeback solely through their bleeding (and punching).

Excellent match; maybe one of the greatest ever?

Sareee vs. Ranna Yagami (Stardom 6/8/2025) - GREAT

Let me be clear, I do love Ranna Yagami and she's someone that I do always want to cheer for. But I understand that Stardom is behind when it comes to their trainee quality compared to the rest of joshi promotions. Marvelous has Senka Akatsuki and Sora Ayame, Pro-Wrestling Evolution has ZONES and Chi Chi, Marigold has Seri Yamaoka and the recently debuting Shinno showed so much in her debut match against Mai Sakurai. While I don't think Stardom produces bad talent, their current, more lenient approach has certainly led to some of their rookies being lapped by those coming out of some of the more traditional dojos.

Sareee seems to agree too. In an interview with Tokyo Sports prior to this match, she was quoted as saying, "“Stardom wrestlers overwhelmingly lack the fighting spirit that is an important part of joshi puroresu. I have no choice but to train Ranna Yagami thoroughly in the 6/8 Korakuen show!" [credit to Shigeo on twitter for translating this quote]

Even though the interview is in-character, I think there's some truth to what she's saying. In fact, the part that sticks out the most is that she says she will "train Ranna Yagami" in their match. Sareee truly does care about the joshi scene and is not saying these things just to chastise the talent coming up in Stardom. She's trying to prove a point and push these rookies to be stronger and get further.

The best compliment I can give a match like this is that it was very reminiscent of an 80s AJPW match with the same dynamics: fiery young boy getting killed by much more experienced, grumpier old man. The match quite literally starts exactly how I'd want something like that to start, with Ranna instantly getting on the offense before Sareee could even finish making her entrance.

And going back to that point I said about Sareee wanting the best for these rookies and wanting to further them, my favorite part of this match comes pretty early on. After Ranna catches her off guard in the beginning, she continues to get some offense in on the outside. Right when she lands a couple of forearm strikes, you see the biggest smile grow on Sareee's face to the extent where she can't even hide it. She looks like a proud mom because she knows very well what she has done. She unlocked something in Ranna and pushed her. That might be my favorite wrestling moment this year.

While this match continues to be even better from there, that's the stuff I wanted to talk about for today. If you want a more in-depth look at this match, I highly suggest checking out my friend Zeph's blog when they publish their own thoughts about it!

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Thank you for listening to my thoughts on some random matches today; I hope you enjoyed reading! 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!