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TAJIRI You Might Have Missed #5

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Tajiri & Zumbido vs Chicago Express & Black Warrior (05/29/97 BJW): 7-8 minutes of lucha sweetness. Nearly constant movement. BJW shows the whole thing. Even they knew how good this was - hidden gem. RECOMMENDED Tajiri vs Chicago Express (05/30/97 BJW): Reminds me of Tajiri vs Super Crazy - dives, cool arm drags, ranas - you'll dig it! Tajiri & Ikuto Hidaka vs Super Crazy & Super Calo (12/18/99 ECW) Chattanooga, TN. This would be so awesome to see at your high school gym! These fans saw something special. Spring board moves, tilt-a-whirls, dives, fighting in the crowd... the ending came sooner that I would have wanted but that's not a complaint but a preference. Very good stuff! RECOMMENDED  Tajiri vs Tommy Dreamer (03/25/00): Wichita, KS. Corino is talking crap on the mic. Dreamer comes out to shut him up but Tajiri intervenes. This was a fun house show type match yet had some pretty good spots. Definitely scratches an itch for your standard ECW match. Everyone...
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Cruising the 80's: Giant Baba vs Nick Bockwinkel - 12/01/80

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Giant Baba vs Nick Bockwinkel (All Japan):  Holy cow! Bockwinkel was like a man possessed in this match! I've never seen him this aggressive. He's usually cool, calm & calculating in the ring. Here he was looking to hurt Giant Baba. Nick was driving in knees like Yoji Anjo and clubbing Baba's chest like Stan Hansen. This really was something special to see. Baba was certainly spry in in 1980. His big boot looked great and he had quite the offensive flurry (for him at least). This was very good pro wrestling. It's about 9 minutes long. I really liked this match.  👇👇👇Check out the labels below for more reviews you might enjoy!
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FMW You Might Have Missed

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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...
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Best Matches Watched So Far...2026

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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...
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Lucha Libre: World Wrestling Peace Festival '96 and IWE '81

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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!...
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Cruising the 80's: Tenryu vs Ueda - 07/22/82

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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!
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Cruising the 80's: Dory Funk Jr. vs Jumbo Tsuruta - 12/03/86

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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.
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