w/ Reggie Bennett & Kaoru Ito vs. Akira Hokuto & Etsuko Mita & Mima Shimoda AJW 6/27/95 ***3/4

A big show semifinal, but really it could have been o­n just about any AJW show in those days. They didn’t do anything out of the ordinary; it was just a ton of talent working well with o­ne another. Lots of tags and several double teams made this a very collective match, and both the giver and the taker did excellent jobs of making the moves look good. Yoshida is still the standout o­n her team, but with Hokuto’s unit it’s pretty much a toss up.

Though LCO & Momoe Nakanishi are the o­nly o­nes remembered for having excellent matches with, or more aptly in spite of, Maekawa she was great in those times in comparison to the level she was at when this first gem somehow transpired.

Toyota was all banged up, so the others totally carried her. Hotta instilled the psychology, and Yoshida & Ito stepped up their work rate.

One of the first matches that showed the immense potential ARSION had. The worked shoot style is pretty believable here, and with the top two fighters it seems like either could be o­ne move away from victory.

The first in a memorable string of singles matches wrestled in Yoshida’s new style that is what the Battlarts guys should have come up with instead of being a veritable mishmash of shooting, Lucha, and just about every other style. It focuses o­n the mat and the more believable aspects like Battlarts was going to in theory, but does maintain enough pro wrestling that she can try to finish with a concussive move, her air raid crush. This is arguably Yoshida’s best performance because she does it o­n ARSION’s biggest show, in their biggest match to date becoming their first champion in the process, but most importantly because her opponent isn’t really much for the style but Yoshida still finds ways to make it totally come off.

Yoshida led Akino to o­ne of the best debuts ever o­n 7/21/98. Now Akino was getting a title shot, and they did a match whose quality was worthy of any belt even though Akino was by no means a credible challenger.

This was something of a dream match to me, so I was a little disappointed with it at the time. Yagi is a rare wrestler, as close as they come to being always good and always making their opponent better yet she rarely has an excellent match. This was o­ne of those few excellent o­nes, but with Yagi being such a superior mat wrestler to any of the women Yoshida had already had very good to excellent matches with, I thought this might be the time when Yoshida scored a true classic. I’m still not sure if some of this match doesn’t really make sense, or you have to throw out all your preconceptions and develop a new set of standards, but I do know the match was technically excellent and ahead of its time.

They seemingly blamed Yoshida for the promotion not taking off even though they never gave her a chance and she was the best thing about the promotion. This was her last successful title defense that they bothered to release, but she made it more than memorable delivering her best ARSION match to date and the best match of Gami’s career. Yoshida’s style was still developing, and here they did a better job of going between the mat portions to the standing portions as well as selling and countering better.

ARS 2000 marked the beginning of Omukai’s big push, but Yoshida’s first round match was by far the show stealer. Over a year’s worth of hard work for Fukawa started to really pay dividends, as she had made herself into an excellent mat wrestler. Where she would o­nce grab the rope, now she would pull out an impressive counter. Yoshida was able to do anything with her, and she was now the o­ne wrestler in ARSION that could answer. This was even a rare ARSION match where they made you truly care who won. Unfortunately for Fukawa, they o­nly delivered o­n the upsets that were just rolled out and no o­ne cared about, and they quickly started changing styles every few months so her opportunities to truly use much less further develop her new style were limited.

Aja finally bothered to pay attention to her promotion 15 months after it started, and that just meant she was out to regain her old glory. This was the match that, while late, still might have been able to validate Yoshida, but instead it came closer to putting the final nail in her main event coffin. Nonetheless, it seemed like an excellent match although it’s hard to tell since it was suddenly more important to show mediocre Omukai matches in their entirety.

One of the last matches that was at least close to "The Yoshida Style". Yoshida allowed Fukawa to be portrayed o­n her level, and get the win Fukawa arguably should have gotten that May. Though there was little encouragement for Fukawa style wise or push wise, this rare opportunity to show how good she could be and the suitable reward helped set off a 10 month period (until her unfortunate retirement) where she was the consistent highlight of watching ARSION.

Yoshida is suddenly Aja’s second fiddle. That said, the smart move would have been to continue her slide and job her here. Hamada & AKINO were coming off their great upset win over LCO that not o­nly put them o­n the map but made them. Rather than capitilize o­n this, Aja took it as an opportunity to hoard another title, not even allowing it to come off like Ayako & AKINO had a chance of winning. Yoshida vs. AKINO was o­nce again excellent though.

Lioness’ doesn’t debut in ARSION as even a slightly more giving wrestler, but the match is worked with the intensity and urgency that is necessary to get over the invader angle. The early portion is really the highlight, with a unique combination of Yoshida’s submission style and Lioness’ high impact brawling. o­nce they get to the big moves it becomes conventional, but they are top workers and the execution is excellent.

ZERO-ONE Sky PerfecTV! LIVE SPECIAL Hustle-3 5/8/04 Kanagawa Yokohama Arena

Okay, so I marked out and ordered this show o­nce I heard of the Foley/Kawada match. Stupid idea, I know, but I can`t take it back now. So, here`s a review to get some good out of the bad.

The first 15 minutes of the show were them panning the crowd and asking people to do the "Hustle Hump," that Ogawa and Hashimoto got over in the first Hustle show. Behind the announcers they have fans waving Hustle balloons and stuff. I guess they`re trying to give the impression that people care about this show? I bet those fans were given those as they walked in the door ala WCW. They`re really trying to get over that Hustle Hump because they then had Ogawa and Hashimoto come out to perform it with the crowd.

20 minutes in and this is our first match. Of course, all the Hustle shows have had a good opener and this was no exception. They started the highspots early with everyone flipping to the outside and the crowd was really in to that. In fact, most of the this match was chain spots but in a bigger venue like this, maybe that`s all you can do to get the crowd excited.

Wow, this match had two transvestites, two women and a mini!!!!! Talk about diversity!!!! I didn`t watch all of this match, but from what I saw, the ladies seemed to be the most impressive. Mini Abismo Negro did some cool stuff as well. Lets just say it was what it was.

In the vein of ECW, the TV scrambles and we`re taken backstage to the Team Monster area. It is tinted green and foggy, while the other locker room in Yokohama Arena is perfectly clear!!!! This reminds of the anime Dragon 1/2 where this guy carried around a bucket of dry ice with him everywhere he went. I think Takada is doing the same thing now with the dry ice and a light kit with green fils. Mick Foley and Yuji Shimada do a variation o­n the Hustle cheer, "DO THE HUSTLE!!!! BANG!!! BANG!!!!!"

Cut to something I never thought I would ever write: KAWADA DOES A BACKSTAGE VIGNETTE!!!!!!!!! Ishikari is in the locker room as Kawada warms up, and then is kicked in the leg by Dangerous K. Ishikari writhes in pain as Kawada paces, thinking about the match.

Finally, the blow-off from Hustle-1!!!!!! Didn`t really watch the match but what I saw was pretty much what I expected. However, it wasn`t the worst match o­n the show. That honor goes to............

Typical Tiger match, and you know what that means. Total garbage. Sabu came out with Tiger Jeet Singh and afterwards they brawled with Corino and Dusty. Seems to set up a match for Hustle-4. This smells of Memphis booking

Choshu got the biggest pop of the night. That says something about this show. Man, three bad matches in a row.

To make things worse, another backstage angle at Team Monster headquarters as Nash and Hall arrive with two girls they picked up the night before. They`re ordered by Takada to eat "Chicken and Pork" (Ogawa and Hashimoto), and the Outsiders promise they will. These guys must be laughing all the way to the bank.

6) Mark Coleman & Dan Bobish defeated Shinjiro Ohtani & Wataru Sakata in 10:02 when Coleman used a side crank hold o­n Sakata for the win.

Originally, Giant Silva was to be Coleman`s partner but someone did something right and replaced the big guy with Bobish. Inoffensive tag match. I`ve pretty much come to grips that you are never going to get a five star match o­n this show, so you take what you can get. Sakata and Ohtani did a good job of bumping for for Coleman and Bobish. Coleman has gotten stiffer with his punches.

After the intermission, Joe Son lip syncs a song in his thong. Disturbing.

Out comes M. Bison, I mean, Takada to give a speech. Nobody cares what he says. They then showed a package with Foley and Kawada. Kawada said he doesn`t remember Foley from his All-Japan days. OH!!!!!! Foley didn`t like that comment!!!! Supposedly, Foley mentioned in his first book (which I`ve read but I don`t remember this) that Kawada was really lazy during his tenure in All Japan (back when Kawada was still a member of The Footloose, by far the historical high point of the All Asian division) while Misawa and Kobashi were work horses. No gaijin ever has anything nice to say about Kawada.

Typical American style match with heel ref Shimada doing fast counts for the Outsiders and slow counts for Ohgun. He mistakenly fast counted Ogawa pinning Hall when he got out of his daze. Surprisingly, Hashimoto kept this match from being negative stars. He basically just stiffed both of these guys, and Nash even tried to wail back.

After the match, Takada announced he had some Japanese allies as well and said he was going to bring in someone who had "No Fear." Of course, this is obviously hinting at Takayama and if he does come in, and takes o­n Hashimoto, then we might have quite the match. Since Hustle-1, I wondered why they didn`t try to bring in Japanese shooters like Sakuraba, Takayama and Tamura who actually know how to work.
RINGS 1991-95

Overview and highlights of early RINGS

You won’t find too many groups of people who complain that they are no longer being lied to. RINGS fans are one such group, and it’s somewhat understandable because the art of deception they were used to could be so beautiful.

RINGS was always supposed to be real, but early RINGS was simply on par for realism with the other U.W.F. offshoots, UWF-I and PWFG. In other words, it’s not going to fool too many people who have watched an extensive amount of UFC & PRIDE. Of course, those leagues weren’t around when RINGS started in 1991, and most of the audience wasn’t familiar enough with the differences between works and shoots to know it was fake. A few of the matches were real, but aside from the all shoot shows in Holland, it was often Willie Peeters, who had interesting shoots or uninteresting works, doing a shoot in the second or third match with the rest of the card being works. Many of the early shows were dubious when it came to match quality because aside from Maeda, who was still at least good in 1991, all the U.W.F. natives had gone to UWF-I or PWFG.

Volk Han didn’t show up until the final card of the first year (although there were only 3 before this), putting over Akira Maeda in the main event of a major show at Tokyo Ariake Coliseum on 12/7/91. The result didn’t matter because, whether people picked up on it at the time or not, the sambo master had just made RINGS a league worth watching. The match was not realistic even by the standard of the time, but the fans were really into it because they were not only using big moves early on but also ones they’d rarely seen. Han did a dobitski udehishigigyakujujigatame (jumping takedown into a cross armbreaker) less than 1:30 into the match, and this was a move that you just didn’t see in those days. It was the cool style of worked shoot, highlighted by a cross heel hold, snap suplex nearly into a udehishigigyakujujigatame, belly-to-belly suplex, and a wicked wheel kick by Maeda to the side of Han’s head. Just a wonderful debut by Han and a very good match overall.

The style of RINGS didn’t develop into something more pro wrestling oriented because of Han. In fact, his second match with Maeda on 4/3/92 was definitely not as exciting or inventive. It was a longer (by almost 50%) slower paced more technical and realistic match, but it was of the same relative quality and he won. This was the second job Maeda had done in RINGS, and of the 11 he did in the history of the company, 4 were to Han. This is important because, although Han could never be the draw that Maeda was, their trading wins put them on a similar level in terms of importance. Han could make a guy look great and put him over, something Maeda couldn’t do, and it would make them someone capable of beating Maeda even if they never did.

The problem with early RINGS was there was no one else decent to build up, and they seemed to have no problem building up guys that weren’t decent. The other natives were either kickboxers or rookies, and the foreigners, my god they were awful. There was a whole clan of guys that trained in Holland with aging and ungodly boring sambo master Chris Dolman. Most were lousy kickboxers that had no aptitude for working, especially any sequences on the mat. The only one that was decent was Dick Vrij, aptly nicknamed “Cyborg,” but he was only interesting because he hit hard. Vrij was the first to beat Maeda in RINGS, but overall Dolman was by far the bigger name, legendary as a multiple time world sambo champion, and had the bigger push. There were plenty of other foreigners from all across Europe and beyond, but for the most part they were guys you didn’t want to watch. As good as Han was, for many years non-Maeda worshipers avoided RINGS like the plague.

One improvement was the entrance of Andrei Kopylov from Han’s camp in Russia. Although he possessed none of the spark and flair that made Han’s matches so exciting, he was a solid technician that did some nifty things on the mat. In his first match against Han on 7/16/92, 30 seconds into the match Han picked Kopylov up over his head, slammed him to the mat, and could have won with some bizarre knee lock. However, Kopylov not only lasted a little over 17 good minutes with the master, he made him submit. The propelled him to a Yokohama Arena main event against Maeda the next month. Of course, Kopylov lost this match, but gave us a good 18+ minutes where he proved he was at least capable of pushing the top star. Unfortunately, that’s pretty much the level he stayed at, a notch below far inferior guys like Willie Williams (god-awful martial artist that was a famous opponent of Inoki), Dolman (had a big name and was the head of the camp), Vrij (#2 in Holland, but was established immediately since Maeda’s first five RINGS matches included going 2-1 against Vrij), & Tariel (I have no explanation for this 300 pound turtle’s push beyond he was the head of the small pathetic RINGS Georgia group).

With Maeda knocking Han out of the first annual WORLD MEGA-BATTLE TOURNAMENT in the 1st round, the tournament was largely ruined. Their match was good, building a level of drama that exceeded their previous matches, but not quite as good because it was a little too long and more towards a more “realistic” old U.W.F. match. The less said about the final where Dolman beat Vrij the better though.

Masayuki Naruse & Yoshihisa Yamamoto debuted against each other on 5/16/92, and were already able to have a pretty good match with one another by 7/16/92. Naruse would pretty much stay at that level, a guy who had a number of matches that were better than adequate, but nothing that really stood out unless he was in with someone awesome. Yamamoto would become a guy to watch, but the first new native to get a push was Mitsuya Nagai, a striker who debuted on the second RINGS show. With Maeda out for most of ’93, Nagai got to headline the 4/24/93 Yokohama Bunka Taiikukan show against Han. Although the vast majority of the credit belongs to Han, it’s none the less impressive for Nagai that they had the best RINGS match to date. Working with the younger, quicker, and more athletic Nagai allowed Han to explore a faster and more glamorous style that would ultimately be the style of matches his fans remember him the most for. Simple rolls into holds and to alleviate pressure from submissions, now sometimes taken for granted because of regular imitation, were the kind of thing that made the match fresh and amazing RINGS at the time. Nagai earned a lot of respect here because Han threw everything he had at him, but he was able to maneuver his way out of trouble many times before eventually losing.

When Maeda returned in October, he was set on reestablishing himself. This was not a good time because he fought slug after slug en route to defeating Tariel to win the MEGA-BATTLE TOURNAMENT. He also totally squashed Nagai in 5:02 of a non-tournament match on 12/25/93 and beat Kopylov on 3/19/94 in an 8:51 match that was good from a technical perspective but never really got started. At least prior to all this, there was a very good Han vs. Vrij match on 7/13/93 that was pure adrenaline. Han defined the style a lot more with any other opponent than he did with Maeda, so he would have better matches with lesser opponents due to a faster and more exciting style. The problem with Vrij though was that you really couldn’t do anything on the mat with him. It was all takedown into submission and then escape, but Han was able to make it a lot more exciting than Kopylov and his acting was a lot better, which all in all was worth about *1/2 above the Vrij vs. Kopylov match from 5/29/93.

Maeda was never as good when he came back. His next match with Han on 6/18/94, a 19:06 win, was couple notches down because Maeda was not in as good of shape and bothered by his bad knee. He kept it slower and simpler, really not doing too much. It had some moments of brilliance of course, and was good overall, but it wasn’t that explosive and failed to generate an abundance of crowd heat even though Maeda was still really over and strong at the box office.

Han’s match with one-dimensional kickboxer Hans Nyman the next month was actually a little better than the Maeda match. It was short, but Han did something Maeda never really did in RINGS, which was let somebody totally kick his ass and then come back and win. Nyman was blistering Han, kicking him so hard that Han was “knocked through the ropes to the floor." Just a very unselfish performance by Han, making a match that had no right to be good just that.

Han’s finest hour up to that point in time came on 1/25/95 when he not only had his best match with Maeda, but also beat him to win the MEGA-BATTLE TOURNAMENT for the first time. The match boasted good hard striking in standup and almost always the possibility of a submission when they were on the mat. This was the most modern looking of their matches up until this point in time. It certainly didn’t look like old U.W.F. It had more stiffness and realism, with better positioning including Maeda using the mount now that people were becoming familiar with the real deal through UFC tapes. Maeda wasn’t improving any, but he clearly put in the extra effort here and it paid off.

Some of the spotlight started shining on Yoshihisa Yamamoto at the end of 1994. He had his first two matches with Maeda. Of course, he lost both, but he showed a lot of energy and charisma in the first and the fans were into it. The second match was similar except Yamamoto wasn’t as fiery or exciting, which was odd although most guys seem different when in with Maeda because he more or less calls the shots. That the match was more submission oriented was probably part of it because Yamamoto is more charismatic during standup. In any case, the match was down to average, but simply being in the ring with Maeda helped make people take notice of him.

1995 was Yamamoto’s year. Although he lost to Nagai on 3/18/95, Nagai would be left in the dust by the end of the year with Yamamoto being a real #2 native (Nagai never beat the top players). The match with Nagai was one of the most memorable because of its realism. It wasn’t the most exciting match, but of the two dozen I looked back on this was the most credible, the precursor to the changes of 1998. It was hardly the most heated, but they didn’t let that bother them and eventually the crowd got into it. While the matwork was the most notable today, the fast Kakihara like striking sequences that sometimes resulted in knockdowns where they wouldn’t get all the way up until the 9 count were very important toward generating the drama. The back and forth finish was really good as well. A very good match that stands the test of time.

Yamamoto’s big break was not really a break at all. In the only real match I’m mentioning in this part, he lasted nearly 20 minutes with the mythical greatest fighter in the world, Rickson Gracie, during a Vale Tudo Japan tournament match on 4/20/95. This was hardly a great shoot, they were in the ropes most of the match, but the power of the Gracie legend was such that Yamamoto had to be the real deal just for being able to last this long with the “god.”

Realizing they had a golden opportunity, Yamamoto was thrust into a two match program with Vrij & Han. The first match against Vrij on 7/18/95 was probably the best of Vrij’s career. Propelled by two Vrij fouls, brutal kicks to the head when Yamamoto was on his knees, they had a match of Kazunari Murakami intensity that was actually damn good. Vrij’s strikes were just violent, and Yamamoto is a good enough striker to credibly get a few good flurries in on him. Yamamoto even cut him under the eye before winning via TKO because Vrij ran out of points.

The second match with Vrij on 9/22/95 failed to recapture the magic of the first. Without the fouls, it never approached the same level of intensity. It was like watching a mixed match because Vrij, as usual, was totally in grab the ropes the second he gets taken down mode. Yamamoto was fearless though, and he shocked everyone by beating Vrij quicker and this time with a submission. This was really a huge win for Yamamoto because Vrij and Han were the only active fighters (Dolman had retired) to have two wins in RINGS over Maeda.

Yamamoto’s improved ability really made a big difference because with him and Han on the card you could now pretty much count on there being two good matches. Yeah, as a whole the shows still weren’t the greatest, but due to Yamamoto 1995 is the first year one can start recommending the RINGS product as a whole. When they got together in the ring there might be one less good match, but they made the show a must by producing some of the best matches in the history of the company.

Their 6/17/95 match that Han won in 15:15 was very good, and more than hinted at the greatness they would go on to produce. This was a strong technical match that was made by their attitudes. Yamamoto showed his hunger, and Han didn’t have a problem with making it look like Yamamoto could beat him. It didn’t have the realism of Yamamoto vs. Nagai, but there was a lot more going on without overdoing it.

Their rematch on 12/19/95 was important for a number of reasons. In the end, least of which is the fact that Yamamoto got his first win over Han here, advancing to the finals of the MEGA-BATTLE TOURNAMENT in the process. It’s important because it was the best RINGS match up to that point in time, but the style was the key. This was a new match that set the tone for the way Han and the young natives would evolve the style. It was all about immediate reaction. It’s was not about having a lot of talent and athletic ability, but about having the confidence to use it. It was about believing in your opponent, knowing he could keep making the next move, doing the right thing to keep the sequence going and avoid being trapped. It was almost an advantageless match, and it was beautiful.

With Kiyoshi Tamura joining the league the next year, among other things, RINGS had the perfect guy to continue to evolve this new style.

Jerome lists

After watching pretty much a whole year of All Japan and New Japan TV, I decided to establish a list of my 50 favourite matches, divided in several categories, namely heavies, juniors, tags, six man and junior tags (how original…..). I prefer this kind of ranking since I don’t think it’s fair to compare a junior match to an heavyweight match to a tag match, each having their own kind of style and dynamics. I quickly saw that the different categories were not equals as far as quality goes, the richest o­ne being the heavy tags, the poorest o­ne being the heavy singles. What I mean by this is that there are tag matches not included in that list that are well worth watching whereas there aren’t many other strong single matches. The junior tag category was kinda tricky since I included matches involving heavyweights (Machine, Takano, Davey Boy), but the matches are worked against junior opponents in a junior style, so it seemed the right thing to do.

Instead of just giving away five list of matches, I prefer a thematic classification, complete with other important or interesting matches for each topic.

NB : the number before the air date is the ranking of the match in its own division.

PS : this is a completely subjective list.

All Japan

Jumbo & Yatsu vs Tenryu & the Revolution

This is the main feud of the year, as Jumbo is The Man, seconded by fellow Olympian Yoshiaki Yatsu and other veterans like the Great Kabuki and Masa Fuchi. Tenryu is the native rival, leading the Revolution, which is essentially the Footloose (Toshiaki Kawada and Samson Fuyuki) and « honorary member » gaijin monster Stan Hansen (after he broke up with Terry Gordy).

22/01 : Jumbo & Yatsu vs Tenryu & Kawada

Good match, infamous for Tenryu’s ultra short in-ring time. The ultimate « Tenryu’s sleeping at ringside » match. Kawada won’t make the tag even after getting his ass handed to him, and it’s just bizarre to watch.