Wrestling Dream Battles

I'm really glad that I've had the opportunity to dig into FMW. As an ECW fan in high school, FMW always seemed like the cooler cousin of ECW...if just for the Tanaka vs Awesome stuff. In my VHS days, I had BJW & IWA Japan stuff but not FMW. Eventually I got an Explosion Death Match comp tape. Then a few years later, I got the Highspots Hayabusa comp which was very good but not great as a taste of the true best of Hayabusa. So finally digging my teeth into the meat of FMW has been fulfilling. As garbage/hard core wrestling has fallen out of mainstream favor for a long while, I think the memory of ECW and FMW is fading. So I'm glad to keep the flame burning. I need to watch more but my absolute favorites so far are: Atsushi Onita & Tarzan Goto vs Masanobu Kurisu & Dragon Master [Kendo Nagasaki] (FMW 04/01/90) Masato Tanaka, Kuroda & Koji Nakagawa vs Kanemura, Hido & Hosaka (FMW - Exploding Barbwire match - 09/01/96) Masato Tanaka vs Mr. Gannosuke (01/06/98...

All Japan Pro Wrestling Tiger Mask (Misawa) vs Great Kabuki (01/28/86) HM Genichiro Tenryu vs Ashura Hara (04/12/86) Jumbo Tsuruta & G. Tenryu vs Yoshiaki Yatsu & Animal Hamaguchi (05/17/86) Tenryu & Giant Baba vs Stan Hansen & Ted DiBiase (07/05/86) HM Tenryu vs Yoshiaki Yatsu (07/31/86) HM Hansen vs Terry Gordy (09/11/86) HM Jumbo & Tenryu vs Baba & Tiger Mask (11/28/86) HM Zero One Wrestling Omori & Otani vs Takayama & Kohei Sato (02/18/07) Manabu Nakanishi & Omori vs Takayama & Sato (03/08/07) HM Masato Tanaka vs Daisuke Sekimoto (07/16/07) M. Tanaka vs Yoshihito Sasaki (05/27/07) Omori vs Y. Sasaki (07/16/07) Sekimoto vs Y. Sasaki (07/28/07) Sekimoto & Sato vs Omori & Y. Sasaki (08/02/07) HM M. Tanaka vs Dick Togo (09/30/07) HM M. Tanaka vs Takao Omori (10/26/07) HM M. Tanaka vs Yoshihito Sasaki (12/24/07) M. Tanaka & Otani vs Yuji Nagata & M. Nakanishi (05/29/08) Ring of Honor AJ Styles & Matt Sydal vs Dragon Kid & G...

IWE Cobarde & Herodes vs Isamu Teranishi & Mach Hayato (02/28/81): Great action tag match! Tons of stuff going on here. Definitely recommend this one! Ref kinda muffs the finish but it doesn't really matter. Mach Hayato vs Cobarde (03/02/81): Pretty cool stuff, paced closer to Mil in AJPW but moves similar to NJPW lucha libre at the time. joined in progress Carlos Plata & Jose Luis Mendieta vs Isamu Teranishi & Mach Hayato (04/08/81): This was off the hook! Joined in progress but fast paced action with some really crazy moments. Definitely recommend this one! Herodes vs Mighty Inoue (1981): Roy's got this listed as El Cobarde but it's Herodes. Very good stuff, Herodes is quite the the chicken shit heel. Good face/heel match with Inoue finding his openings. Exciting finish too. World Wrestling Peace Festival 06/01/96 Lady Apache & Reina Jubuki (Akira Hokuto) vs Bull Nakano & Neftali: This was Bull vs Hokuto with Lady & Neftali as help. A fun time!...

Genichiro Tenryu vs Umanosuke Ueda (All Japan) - I promise I'm not going to focus only on guys like Ueda & Tiger Toguchi but, damn! These guys are really overlooked and deserve your attention. This bout is a blast, for example. Tenryu takes Ueda's kendo stick right from the start and is cracking him over the head with it. Then these two are just smacking each other around with chairs and fisticuffs for 5 fevered minutes. Next, the camera man wildly spins trying to capture a younger Tiger Jeet Singh rushing to the ring. He attacks Tenryu and only then does ref Joe Higuchi end the match in a DQ 😆 It should have been thrown out from the start! Haha, I'm glad he didn't though! Both guys are bleeding . Tenryu is bathed in the red stuff. The match itself is 5 minutes but the other 6 minutes of 11 minutes is unhinged fighting in the ring, in the crowd and on the way to the locker room. 👇👇👇Click on the labels below for more reviews you might enjoy!

Dory Funk Jr. vs Jumbo Tsuruta (AJPW) - We only get a third of this but this is slow boiling old school technical match that I would have loved to see in full. Now don't get me wrong, I try to watch stuff under 15 minutes like this TV version especially when looking online. Again, I am trying to get thru my DVD backlog. That said, this was really good and they work a mean headlock match. They are knocking the sweat from each other with their elbows & chops. I dug this one! Dory's an absolute master in pacing and maybe the best ever frankly. He doesn't have a great look or a ton of athletic moves but he knows what to do and when to do it better than anyone. And he knows his limitations. He's in my top 25 favorite wrestlers. Jumbo too.

Tenryu & Tsuruta vs Giant Baba & Tiger Mask (AJPW) - Holy cow! Baba comes alive! This is a precursor to the late 80's Baba tag/6 man resurgence. Not only that but Misawa Tiger goes off! He must have done a half dozen high risk moves. Tenryu and Jumbo just laid into their boss & didn't go easy on their junior partner either. Misawa definitely looks ready to play a bigger role in the organization. If you're OK with Baba then, this might be a near classic match . 👇👇👇Check out the labels below. I think it's really important to keep old school wrestling interest alive. Seeing the Greatest Wrestler Ever results and how hard 80's wrestling got hit is indicative of how the algorithms are keeping fans away from old stuff. Or it's how fans are being inundated with flashy new shit  to the point where wrestling history is fading.