Mike Reviews Japan

Happy Friday Everyone!

We’ve got some AJPW for you today, courtesy of F&C. We’re heading back to January 2001, as All Japan Pro Wrestling visits the Tokyo Dome for a show to honour the memory of former owner Giant Baba who passed away in January 1999. This looks to be a VHS that only covers some of the matches on the show, with Steve Williams and Mike Barton being the big match included here, although it wasn’t the bout that closed the show itself.

AJPW had suffered a talent exodus in 2000, with Mitsuharu Misawa leading a group of wrestlers away to form Pro Wrestling NOAH. This was the first big event that the company had tried to run since the exodus, with them inviting New Japan stars and Freelance talent in to put on a show capable of getting people to come to the Tokyo Dome to see that All Japan could still put on a good event.

You can view the full card for King’s Road New Century below

AJPW King’s Road New Century 2001 Card

Happy Friday Everyone!

We’ve got The Spiral reviewed for you today; a New Japan Tokyo Dome show from 2002 filled with Inoki-ism and, hopefully, some decent wrestling interspersed between the madness. Big shout out to F&C for making this show available by the way. It’s something that’s well worth the investment in these post-WWE Network days.

We’ve got Bob Sapp making his in-ring New Japan debut on this show, as well as Joanie “Chyna” Laurer getting in there to clash with Masahiro Chono. Yes, that was actually a match that happened. Maybe they called the event The Spiral because it represented New Japan spiralling out of control at the time?

You can view the full card for The Spiral by clicking below;

New Japan Pro Wrestling The Spiral Card

Happy Friday Everyone!

We’ve got some NJPW in Osaka for you today, courtesy of our friends over at F&C. This show took place in August of 1998 and the main match on the card sees Masahiro Chono, in full-on nWo Japan pomp, going for the IWGP Heavyweight Title against Tatsumi Fujinami. Elsewhere we’ve got Genichiro Tenryu battling Shinya Hashimoto and the exciting prospect of Great Sasuke and Jushin Liger going at it

Let’s see if New Japan can rock the Osaka Dome, or whether their big show ends up being more of a whimper

You can view the full card by clicking below;

NJPW Rising The Next Generations In Osaka Dome Card

Happy Head Dropping Friday Everyone!

Today we’re watching the debut show of Pro Wrestling NOAH all the way back in the year 2000. NOAH came about due to a split between the top stars of All Japan Pro Wrestling and Mrs. “Dragon Lady” Baba following the death of Giant Baba, with Mitsuharu Misawa leading an exodus to form a new company. They went with the NOAH name because it was like they were setting off on an epic journey, hence why this show is called Departure. It’s never explained if Misawa and co tried to take two of every wrestler with them though, although the thought of two identical Akira Taue’s forming the world’s most clumsiest tag team certainly sounds like it would be fun.

Debut shows can sometimes be a bit tricky, but lets see how NOAH do when they have their chance to make a first impression with Departure

You can view the full card for Departure by clicking below;

NOAH Departure full card

Happy Friday Everyone (Hope your day wasn’t too unlucky)

We’ve got some Japanese Pro Wrestling from 2002/03 today, as we take a look at the feud between Zero1 and All Japan. Zero1 was a company started by Shinya Hashimoto when he was exiled from New Japan after losing a big match to Naoya Ogawa. Zero1 was originally supposed to almost be kind of a satellite promotion to New Japan, with the idea being that the Zero1 guys could come in to do “inter-promotional” matches with the New Japan guys, but really everything would be under the New Japan umbrella. However, Zero1 ended up becoming quite successful in its early years and became a genuine company in its own right, leading to them doing stuff with All Japan and NOAH as well as having some New Japan folks involved at points.

All Japan’s business had been hit and miss since the death of Giant Baba at the end of the 1990’s. Mitsuharu Misawa had orchestrated a mass talent exodus as they all disagreed with how Baba’s widow was running the company, leading to Pro Wrestling NOAH being formed. At one stage there were rumours doing the rounds that Mrs. Baba might have to sell the promotion, but what ultimately happened was that Keiji Muto, Satoshi Kojima and Kendo Kashin all ended up jumping from New Japan in 2001. This gave the promotion a bit of a shot in the arm and business momentarily improved, but then the All Japan fans started disliking a lot of Muto’s booking decisions and business started to drop again.

In 2002/03, a feud between Zero1 and All Japan seemed like a good idea for both promotions. Zero1 was still a fledgling company, so getting to work with an established promotion like All Japan would help them gain some credibility. For All Japan, the thought of being able to have someone like a Hashimoto come in to work shows for them as part of the working relationship was very appealing, especially as Hashimoto was the more old school meat and potatoes kind of wrestler that traditional All Japan fans would potentially like. Thus the two companies got together and this commercial tape is a collection of some of the matches that took place.

Happy Strong-Style Friday Everyone!

We’ve got some more stuff courtesy of New Japan World for you all today, as we have a look at four matches from the Best of the Super Junior tour in 1997. Best of the Super Junior is essentially a G1 Climax for the Junior Heavyweights, where the wrestlers fight through a Round Robin stage and then finally the top two meet in the Championship match. Sadly we haven’t got the whole tournament as NJW has only uploaded these bouts from the tour, but it should give us a flavour of the whole thing at least.

We’ve got two matches from the 25th of May 1997 and then two matches from the 5th of June 1997, so lets have a look at what the New Japan archives have for us!

Happy Toukon Friday Everyone!

I’m going back to New Japan World today by looking at a show from the Fighting Spirit tour in February 1998 that they’ve uploaded. Some of the matches seem to be jumbled up, but I’ll present them as New Japan does on their service. I’m sure we’ll see plenty of Fighting Spirit (hey, he said the name of the show we’re watching!) in the Main Event, when Kensuke Sasaki takes on Osamu Nishimura!

You can view the full card for Fighting Spirit (as well as the correct order of the matches) by clicking below;

NJPW Fighting Spirit Tour Night 10 Card

Fighting Spirit is emanating from Sapporo, Hokkaido on the 7th of February 1998

Majority of pics come from Quebrada

Happy Kings Road Friday Everyone!

Let’s take a look at some AJPW TV from 1998, seeing as it’s easily accessible and we’ll probably get some good wrestling.

You can view the card for the AJPW event these matches came from by clicking below;

AJPW at Budokan Hall Card 28/02/1998

Happy Fighting Spirit Friday Everyone!

I’ve been barely using my New Japan World sub, and seeing as the WWE archives might have disappeared by the time you read this, I’ll be dipping into it more for my reviews. Hence we have The New Beginning 2012 today, which I had to watch on pirate DVD from eBay back in the day.

This is the show that essentially made Kazuchika Okada as a top guy for years to come, as he’d had a pretty underwhelming return against YOSHI-HASHI at Wrestle Kingdom but then immediately made everyone forget that with his performance here (I believe there was even a theory going around at the time that the YOSHI-HASHI match was deliberately flat so as to make this match all the more impressive).

Sadly the entire card isn’t available on New Japan World, but there are enough matches to make a reasonable review.

You can view the full card for The New Beginning below;

NJPW The New Beginning 2012 Card

Pics come courtesy of HANDWERK, Voices of Wrestling and Wikipedia

Happy Weekend Everyone!

I’ve actually got a bit of a free weekend, so I decided to get a Wrestle Kingdom review up. I’ve done literally zero research into the show and I haven’t watched a New Japan show in ages, but I usually enjoy it, so let’s see how it goes.

You can view the full card below;

NJPW Wrestle Kingdom 19 in Tokyo Dome Card

Happy Sunday Everyone!

The folks in the Evening thread were discussing this New Beginning show and made it sound interesting, so I’ll have a look at it. It won’t be a full review, but just some musings after a casual viewing.

As always, get yourself over to Rick‘s page for your Japanese needs!

Card for New Beginning below;

https://www.cagematch.net/?id=1&nr=380029&page=2

Happy Saturday Everyone!

For the first review of 2024 I’m very pleased to be able to welcome a most salubrious guest in the form of that fine gentleman known as Maffew. You might have seen his work over on the YouTube’s in the form of Botchamania. In addition to that, any regular visitors to the Blog of DOOM will know of Maffew’s excellent wrestling reviews. Over the years Maffew has tackled such subjects as WWECW, NXT and a real smorgasbord of Japanese Wrestling, featuring the likes of SWS, NOW and WAR. It’s that latter category that made me feel that it was a good time to ask Maffew if he fancied a collab. Thankfully he did, and thus here we are as take a look at FMW 10th Anniversary Show Entertainment Wrestling Special Live (say that one fast three times!)

You can view the card for FMW 10th Anniversary Show Entertainment Wrestling Special Live by clicking the link below:

https://www.cagematch.net/?id=1&nr=10380&page=3

Happy Saturday Everyone!

I haven’t reviewed some classic All Japan in a while and I recently stumbled across this event on a certain video streaming website. As the title would suggest; Bruiser Brody Memorial Night In Budokan was a show held nearly two months after Bruiser Brody had been killed in Puerto Rico. Brody had been a huge star in Japan for both AJPW and NJPW, and his regular tag team partner Stan Hansen is in action on this show against Abdullah The Butcher.

We’ve also got Giant Baba, Mitsuharu Misawa, Genichiro Tenryu and Jumbo Tsuruta appearing on the show as well. This isn’t the full card but rather most of the second half, and I’m not sure if the other matches were taped for a later showing.

You can view the full card for the event by clicking below;

Card with guide « AJPW Summer Action Series II 1988 – Tag 6: Bruiser Brody Memorial Night In Budokan « Events Database « CAGEMATCH – The Internet Wrestling Database

Happy Saturday Everyone!

I’ve had this one sitting in my collection for a very long time and have never got around to watching it, so for the want of something to review this weekend I thought this tape would be as good a pick as any. I got this from High Spots Home Video a while back, although tracking it down now might prove to be a bit more difficult.

For those not au fait, Best of the Super Junior is an annual tournament that New Japan holds where they get the Junior Heavyweights together to see which one of them is the best (clue is kind of the in the name there my dudes). The tournament is not to be confused with the Super J Cup, which is a straight single elimination tournament whilst BOSJ has a round robin group stage first, not unlike the G1 Climax.

This tape has 11 matches on it, so not every match in the tournament is covered, with the last match on the tape being the tournament final. The tape is pretty much just a compilation of matches without much connecting tissue. It looks like they just took televised matches from the tournament and stuck them all together in one collection

The main combatants covered on the tape are The Heat, Tiger Mask IV, Jushin Liger and Koji Kanemoto, with guys like American Dragon and Ultimo Dragon popping up at points as well.

The tournament took place in the Spring/Summer of 2004, starting on the 22^nd May and ending on the 13^th of June.

Happy Wednesday Everyone!

I watched some Lucha a couple of weeks back and was thinking of watching some more, so I decided to combine my love of Japanese Wrestling with some Lucha Libre by watching one of the Fantastica Mania shows on New Japan World.

For those not au fait, Fantastica Mania was when New Japan would bring over some guys from CMLL in Mexico and pit the Lucha stars against some of the native New Japan guys whilst also holding some matches between the Luchadores as well.

I’ve never actually watched one of these shows in full, so I thought I’d give this one a go just to see if I would enjoy it or not. Why not read along with my review to see whether I did or not?

Happy Wednesday Everyone!

I decided to head to New Japan World to find some matches to review this week and wanted to search for bouts from 1991 just to see what came up. I ended up finding some battles from Sapporo in February. Now on the New Japan World website it says that all the matches took place on the 5^th of February 1991, but a trip to CageMatch.Net would seem to suggest that only one of them took place on that date with the others taking place on the 6^th. We’ll go off CageMatch for the purpose of this review.

Some of these matches legitimately look quite interesting so I thought they’d make for good review material. Let’s see if I’m right!

Happy Wednesday Everyone!

Today we’re going to be looking at some matches from All Japan’s big show at the Tokyo Dome in May of 1998. I’ve had a peruse on YouTube and managed to find five of them, so that’s what we’ll be watching today. I’m not sure if the full card ever made it to TV or not. I could have probably found more but these five matches are enough to fill close to two hours and that’s more than enough for the Wednesday review slot.

All Japan had stayed away from running the Dome due to Giant Baba having a previous bad experience back in 1990 when he’d promoted a show also featuring stars from New Japan and the WWF. All Japan was probably past its peak by the time 1998 rolled around from the insane hot streak it had experienced since switching to clean finishes in big matches at the end of the 80’s, but they still had a big moment of Toshiaki Kawada finally getting his big singles Title win over Mitsuharu Misawa, along with Vader coming in from the WWF to work the semi-main.

Being that it was All Japan, they eschewed a lot of the bells and whistle that companies like New Japan put on whenever they ran a big show in a venue like this, and instead just presented a match focused All Japan show in front of a near 60,000 crowd.

The playlist for these matches can be viewed by clicking HERE

In a quick aside, according to the Wrestling Observer from this time period Paul Heyman was trying to arrange some ECW involvement to help All Japan fill out the card. He was basically happy for ECW guys to be booked and used in any way All Japan pleased in exchange for getting an ECW Title match between Shane Douglas and Hiroshi Hase where Hase would put Douglas over. Heyman’s thought process was that Hase would be fine with doing a job because he was basically semi-retired at this stage and he’d also be able to carry Douglas to a great match, thus allowing Paul to show the match on ECW television in order to make ECW look important. Sadly that deal never went through though and there’s no ECW involvement on this show as a result.

Happy Wednesday Everyone!

Back on the NOAH waggon this week, as I decided to watch the first big Budokan Hall event following the end of Kenta Kobashi’s epic two year reign on top of the promotion. Takeshi Rikio is closing the show as GHC Heavyweight Champ against Akitoshi Saito, whilst Misawa and Kobashi take part in undercard matches.

Kobashi put Rikio over clean as a sheet back in March of 2005, so let’s see if his passing of the torch gives Rikio some juice on top as Champion. This is available on YouTube and you can watch along by clicking right HERE.

Happy Wednesday Everyone!

This week we’ve got three matches from New Japan World as we look at the BVD Cup, which was a four man tournament held between Antonio Inoki, Gerard Gordeau, Sting and Tony Palmore at the Tokyo Dome in January 1995.

Ostensibly it was little more than an excuse to put Inoki over by having him beat some non-regular New Japan guys, but it ended up being a less than smooth operation owing to both Gordeau and Palmore having little or no experience competing in worked matches, meaning they were thus wildly out of their element, leading to some very…”interesting” bouts to say the least.

Happy Saturday Everyone!

I decided to review some FMW on here because I don’t think I’ve done that before and this show happens to be up on YouTube so it was easy to find.

FMW was started up by Atsushi Onita in 1989 after Onita had been forced to retire from All Japan Pro Wrestling due to his injuries not allowing him to work the All Japan style anymore. Onita had previously worked in Memphis where he had first discovered the weapons based brawling style that the Memphis territory would use when it was time to settle the score in a feud.

Feeling that he could promote an entire company around that style, and thus disguise the fact that he physically wasn’t capable of working a more athletic technical based style anymore, Onita set up Frontier Martial-arts Wrestling, with himself as the top star.

The combination of wild action and Onita’s unmistakable charisma on top led to FMW becoming a viable option for a lot of wrestlers and fans during the 90’s, with the company enjoying steady success and big gates for Onita’s matches with the likes of Terry Funk and Genichiro Tenryu.

Onita eventually “retired” from wrestling in the mid-90’s, but the new stars such as Masato Tanaka and Hayabusa struggled to carry the load now Onita was gone and this inevitably led to Onita going back on his word and wrestling again, thus earning him the name “Mr. Liar”.

This show represented FMW’s first foray into the world of Pay Per View and a few ECW guys are on the card (ECW and FMW had a bit of business agreement going on at one stage which was why the likes of Mike Awesome and Masato Tanaka would sometimes show up in ECW around this time). The card looked interesting so I decided to give it a review.