More IWE Matches For The True Believers

                        (Written by jom)

     My apologies. I don't mean to immediately go back to the personal collection well, but I've been incessantly watching these new tapes and WOW. There's just too much here worth talking about that I can't help but push it to the front of the line. Next post will be exclusively matches available for free on YouTube, I promise you that. 

Gypsy Joe vs. Mighty Inoue (04/27/1978)

     Dirty, nasty, brutal. Mighty Inoue gets a big-time singles match against Gypsy Joe and unleashes inner demons like never before. One of the biggest revelations coming from the IWE voyage is that Mighty Inoue is a complete psychopath. All it takes is a little bit of a push from a malevolent force and Inoue will happily ramp up the evil from zero to a hundred in a second, transforming from the chipper showstopper junior with the somersault sentons and big shoulder tackle into a spiteful and ravenous bastard. Gypsy Joe, of course, does not give him a little push, instead delivering a shove with the force of an NFL linebacker. He's dead-set on eating Inoue's face only a few seconds into the start of his fouling brigade, cracking him over the head and neck with hammer fists and throwing closed shots to the jaw every time he can get a chinlock on. Inoue, in turn, responds with 90% punches directly to the face, before eventually picking up the cannibalism himself with his own face-eating tactics. They rip each other's hair out, kick each other in the dick, and even bring a solid metal cigarette bin into the equation. I don't think I would put this in the tippy-top tier of IWE brawls (too much ring time and not enough blood for that spot), but it's undoubtedly circling around the 2nd to last floor. Wonderful piece of chaotic pro wrestling, my favorite kind indeed.

Rusher Kimura, Ashura Hara, & Animal Hamaguchi vs. Masa Saito, Mr. Hito, & Umanosuke Ueda (04/19/1979)

    There's absolutely nothing wrong with tags designed to be crowd-pleasers. Far from it — there's real value in matches built to give the people what they want. It almost feels stupid to say that out loud, but seeing as how so many people have always despised the lucha legend tags where the old heroes and villains would go out and do their spots to the adoration of the crowd, it's apparently an agenda worth fighting for. This match is another one of those people pleasers, as it's three invading villains doing their usual sort of heel heat while the babyfaces make repeated miraculous comebacks, all to build towards an Ueda/Kimura title match the next day. Nobody's trying to reinvent the wheel here, but if it ain't broke don't fix it. Mr. Hito is the most interesting part of the match to me, not only because it's one of the few Hito IWE matches we have on tape (and, for that matter, one of the few Hito Japan matches as well), but also because Hito is such a great bump guy for the heels. He looks like a Masa Saito mini-me and wrestles with a similar level of viciousness, while also being the only guy on the heel team willing to bump around for the babyfaces, which he does a great job at. I have no complaints about Saito and Ueda being protected to high heaven here, especially considering Ueda's impending title challenge, but the circumstances really do force me to appreciate Hito's talents as a bumbling fouler. Everyone else here does well, too. Really, if you know the type of work these guys do, it's business as usual. Not a great match or a match that feels like a big deal in any capacity, but not really a match designed to be that way regardless. House show main event that passes with flying colors.

Animal Hamaguchi & Great Kusatsu vs. Big John Quinn & Gil Hayes (06/29/1975)

    I don't know what the first fall of this match is like, as we jump straight into the second fall. I also don't know who John Quinn and Gil Hayes are, as I have never even heard of them before, let alone seen them. From a cursory glance at their wikipedia pages, both were long-time mainstays of Stampede wrestling in their native Canada, with Hayes spending almost his entire career up north while Quinn worked basically everywhere in the world at some point. Really, none of that needs to be known here, because all that matters is that Hayes and Quinn are the two most evil wrestlers alive. I've slowly built up this belief throughout all of the IWE watching that IWE was the one promotion in Japan to get the closest to southern-style territory rasslin', and this is the first match I've seen that feels almost designed to prove that argument. Within 30 seconds of where we join into the match, Hayes takes Hamaguchi outside and slams him face-first into a table. Thirty seconds after that, Hayes and Quinn get Hamaguchi back in the ring, and Hamaguchi is losing actual buckets of blood. What follows is one of the most uncomfortably gruesome angles in Japanese wrestling history, as Kusatsu tries his best to protect a completely limp and bleeding out Hamaguchi while the Canadians attempt to sneak around him and land shots on Hamaguchi's corpse. I truly cannot remember the last time I've seen something even remotely close to this from a Japanese company. It is entirely foreign to the makeup of that country's wrestling style, more reminiscent of something out of Memphis or Puerto Rico. I'm half-convinced that Dusty Rhodes was booking for IWE via snail mail. This is something special.

Great Kusatsu & Mighty Inoue vs. Pierre Martin & Mad Dog Martel (12/02/1975)

    As usual, two of IWE's beloved native workers take on two dastardly foreigners in the unforgiving steel cage. Martin and Martel are devious French Canadians known as THE COMBAT, with Martel actually being the older brother of Rick Martel. I'm still not exactly sure who is who, and I refer to them in my notes as "Combat Bald" and "Combat Hair," so that's what I'll be sticking with here. They're the traditional bunch of fouling white boys, prone to scratching and biting but also pretty amazing punchers, especially Combat Hair. Combat Hair comes off as almost a Canadian Satanico in this match, both in appearance and in his general in-ring style, full of nasty punches and incredible face bumps. Combat Bald is good too, albeit his best trait (his selling) only comes through once the early heel heat portion morphs into something much bigger. After two minutes of basic and solid fouling, the cuts cuts away for some clipping and comes back to Mighty Inoue bleeding harder than I've ever seen him bleed at any other point in his career. It goes beyond just a crimson mask and nearly becomes a crimson chest and torso as well. Inoue once again takes this torturing as his excuse to unleash hell upon the white boys with the nastiest chair shots of the 70s. Kusatsu is more than happy to dish out equal punishment too, including breaking a glass something against the ring post and repeatedly stabbing Combat Hair in the face with it. They beat The Combat up and down the ring with cage slams and big punches and everything you can imagine. While other IWE brawls have felt like culminations of violence, this is the first to feel more like a celebration of violence. Inoue and Kusatsu give the people what they want by pulling out anything and everything to destroy The Combat with. Maybe the most fun I've had with a match this entire project.

Rusher Kimura vs. Mad Dog Vachon (03/26/1977)

    Writing these little reviews makes me feel like an IWE Paul Revere. I just want to scream to high heaven that the Rusher is coming, so everyone can be prepared to witness Rusher kino. This is a strong candidate for the top spot in Rusher Kimura's Ultimate Bloodletting Classics list, and actually usurps the Mulligan match for the crown, at least for now. Mad Dog Vachon gives us the second best tone-setter in IWE history by spitting in Kimura's face only seconds into the match, and maintains that vile energy by spending the entire match fouling. No joke, about 80% of his offense is just cheating, ranging from eye pokes and claws, to chokes, to biting, to anything else you can imagine. He rips at any open hole on Kimura's face like he's trying to remove his skin. He gets his hands on a chain and begins putting Kimura through the closest thing to Hellraiser torture he can. The thing with Rusher Kimura, though, is that he gives back what he takes, and he gives it back twofold. It's similar to the Mighty Inoue policy of taking any provocation as a sign to press the nuclear button, but Kimura usually goes about it in a more heroic way, albeit just as brutal. Rusher Kimura is a reaction: if you give him a little, he'll give you a little more back. If you're a guy like Mad Dog Vachon, who gives Rusher the beating of a lifetime, then you'd better grit your teeth for the Rusher comeback run. Chain torture evolves into ring post slams which evolves into closed fist brawling among the crowd. Everything goes to hell and everybody dies, including the referee (which fulfills the long-dreamt prophecy of an IWE match where every single person in the ring bleeds). The entire finishing stretch of this match is up there for the best of Rusher's entire career. Calling this IWE fireworks feels like an understatement. This is an IWE atomic bomb, a dangerous and blood-soaked explosion of the pro wrestling spirit that probably left an indelible impression on the psyches of everyone in attendance. Easily one of Kimura's best matches thus far, and most likely one of his best matches ever.

Primordial IWE Matches To Turn You Into Dust

                       (Written by jom)

     I have been on the planet Earth for a reasonable number of years now. These matches precede me by over double my age. It is baffling to me how much of this is in reasonably high quality, and I keep catching myself staring in amazement at the crispness of the Strong Kobayashi hammer fists. I just don't feel like we were meant to be able to see Rusher Kimura's early bloodletting spectacles in higher quality than the later ones. There has been some grave error in the fabric of the universe, and we can only use it to our own benefit. I ain't complaining though. Old ass IWE makes me happy :). 

Asataro Sano vs. Sankichi Fuji (10/29/1969)

     The very first IWE match on tape. It'll always be weird seeing matches from the 60s, especially from Japan. It's almost even more shocking that we have this match specifically, considering how few IWE young boy matches we have. We don't have a single bit of Masahiko Takasugi, Kodo Fuyuki, or Apollo Sugawara, but we somehow have an Asataro Sano match. Sano would be gone from the business by 1971, while Fuji would leave IWE for a life of working in the states, only returning years later for a short tour as Yasu Fuji (where he would have one of the promotion's best cage matches ever). Just by virtue of how fascinating this match is as a historical relic, it's worth checking out. The action itself is just about fine, though. Everything is weirdly stagnant and the progression of the match feels stilted but that comes more from the time period than anything else. Asataro Sano knows three moves and can't bring himself to string those moves together in any varying ways, but his dropkick is cool and he throws punches to the gut. Fuji is actually a very solid heel for someone so early into their career, catching Sano with punches to the jaw in headlocks and sticking his thumb in Sano's throat when the ref isn't looking. He also randomly hits a bodyslam on the floor which gets zero pop from the crowd but a big pop from me. I can't say this is anything more than perfectly fine when it comes to the in-ring stuff, but it's definitely something I think people should watch, just to see how much wrestling has changed in the last 50+ years.

Rusher Kimura vs. Billy Robinson (06/03/1974)

    Strong chance this is the biggest footage tragedy in IWE history. Bigger than Wahoo/Kusatsu, bigger than any of the other 8mm film I've seen so far. Arguably, the only one of greater magnitude is the original IWE cage match of Rusher vs. Dr. Death, and that one feels like less of a tragedy and more of an inevitability considering the circumstances around the match's broadcast. We have a little over a third of this match, and no audio at that, and even with so much missing I think there's a high likelihood that this is one of IWE's greatest matches ever. Kimura is a hammer and Robinson is a scalpel, and those two truths come to define the match. Both men get a chance to show how well rounded they are early on, with Kimura doing some great wristlock work on Robinson in the early portions and Robinson responding with nasty elbows and uppercuts, but the idea becomes set about halfway in that Rusher has Robinson entirely beat in a standing strike battle, and Robinson is forced to use all of his brain to avoid getting caught in a Rusher onslaught. I've never seen a wrestler so willing to block like Robinson. Especially nowadays when guys are totally fine with eating a strike to respond back with their own, Robinson stands out for how hard he tries to not get hit. When blocking isn't viable, he tries to eat Rusher alive with unrelenting strike combos, and that strategy is proved to be a double-edged sword when Rusher eats it all and tsuppari strike's him to hell. This is a battle of masters, two of the very best deep within their zones, and it delivers on all fronts. If we ever get the full version of this (which I have to assume doesn't exist anymore), I'm sure it'll stand out as a top 5er at the very least. It's able to land in the upper echelon just as it is now.

Rusher Kimura & Mighty Inoue vs. Danny Lynch & Butcher Lynch (01/06/1975)

    So, the Lynch Brothers (no relation to Jeff or David). Two of the strangest looking fellas I've never seen anyone talk about before. As far as I can tell, both of them come from the UK, which means their hobbit-like frame at least makes a little more sense. They look like the middle form in the Pokemon evolution chain going from Trashman to King Kong Bundy. They also work as oddly as they look: Danny does kung fu strikes while making Donald Duck noises, and Butcher goes for pure Britwres handstands and headscissors. They feel more like Saturday morning cartoon characters than gritty pro wrestlers, which makes the match in question feel even more surreal. This is the first Kimura bloodbath I've ever seen where Rusher isn't the heaviest bleeder; Danny Lynch gets some of the gnarliest juice in IWE history and spends half the match sporting a crimson mask. His blood is so coagulated too, splattering around the ring like Nickelodeon slime, especially during the points where Kimura literally stomps the blood out of his head. Kimura is pretty ruthless all around, chopping at the wound and even throwing a low blow at one point. Maybe he didn't appreciate Danny's attempt at Shaolin style martial arts, or maybe he just doesn't like people that look so round. Mighty Inoue falls more in line with the wacky fun that the Lynch Brothers imply with their inherent goofiness, mostly pulling off cool counters like one of the best back body drops I've ever seen, but he also gets in with the grittiness when he does a 1975 chair shot to one of the brothers and chokes the other with a cable on the outside. It's all such a bizarrely compelling affair, like turning on Wacky Races only to watch Dick Dastardly get waterboarded halfway into the episode. Definitely worth checking out to witness the passion of the Lynch Brothers. Also Rusher Kimura goes uber rage mode following the fuck finish and brutalizes referee Osamu Abe and booker Isao Yoshihara, so that's awesome.

Animal Hamaguchi vs. Mighty Inoue (09/26/1973)

    Absolute blast right here. This is spiritually much closer to the types of young boy matches you would see today compared to the Fuji/Sano match, albeit neither of these men are actually rookies. Hamaguchi and Inoue give Korakuen Hall a wonderful lightning-quick technical match, one full of techniques mostly foreign to the scene at this point. It's an amazing showcase of how talented both men are at this kind of relentless workrate action, and it's a great preview of not only their future work, but also the future of wrestling in Japan in general. I'd go so far as to say that this is the closest 1970s IWE ever got to hosting a spotfest, albeit the kind of spotfest is very different from the ones happening in the decades to come. I think the biggest boon of this match is just how good both men are at integrating struggle into their work. The execution is absolutely flawless, but the picture-perfect motions never sacrifice the realism of the work. Hamaguchi and Inoue fight over arm drags and cravates and every other hold they put each other through, all while finding more intricate ways to go about putting themselves into winning positions. This is supreme pro wrestling, and definitely stands out among the IWE crowd. It's a total heartbreaker that this would be the last time these two would face off in any capacity on tape until the Ishin Gundan invasion of AJPW in the mid-80s. This is a singles pairing that could've rocked the world.

Strong Kobayashi vs. Rusher Kimura (07/09/1973)

    The one. IWE's new ace versus the man who will become the true ace only a few years later. This is the first native-only title match in Japan in over a decade, and it has that big fight feel in droves. The crowd is super amped up before the bell even rings, and Kobayashi and Kimura know exactly how to play into that, crafting one of the better slow and deliberate title matches of the era. Similar to the Robinson match discussed earlier, this plays out partially as a striker against grappler sort of deal, with most of Kimura's big comeback moments coming from his nasty chops and Kobayashi taking back control with some of his best grappling I've yet seen. A lot of it is both creative and brutal, from the leg crucifix where he kept trying to squash Kimura's head like a grape to the body scissors with tailbone-shattering slams. It's certainly not the most exciting work at some points, but for most of the match, it's just active enough to keep you locked in. Kimura also does a great job of fighting out of the holds, mostly through chopping Kobayashi to hell while on the ground. The more energized moments of the match feel like great payoffs as well, especially the all-out brawl near the end of the first fall which I've posted to Twitter at least twice now. I think that the third fall would probably be the fork in the road for most people, as everything up to that point is pretty great, and the way they approach finishing the match either cements the match's status as great or knocks it down a peg depending on personal preference. For me, I think it's a fitting end to one of the most important title matches in IWE history, even if I also think there's a better version of the finish out there in another timeline. Regardless, this is more great stuff, maybe not either man's best work but something worth mentioning when discussing both men's strongest assortment of matches.

A Wrestling Enterprise Of The International Variety

                      (Written by jom)

     I think that if Rusher Kimura were to wrestle in 2025, he would receive the Jon Moxley "blood gooner" accusations, and, whether or not they have any basis in reality, my head would unscrew from my body and fly at the accusers like a cannonball. Rusher Kimura bleeds for ME. Rusher Kimura bleeds for YOU. Rusher Kimura bleeds for ALL the IWE faithful. Take part in IWE communion and cherish the blood of Rusher, along with the Strong Kobayashi wafer biscuit. 

Rusher Kimura vs. Blackjack Mulligan (10/10/1973)

     Visceral violence. This is a top tier match belonging in the Kimura Bloodletting Hall Of Fame. Two men in their early 30s that appear to be in their late 40s taking turns trying to push all the blood they can out of the other's face using only their fists. What's not to love? Describing it as just a bloody punchy match actually does this one a major disservice though, as both men put in stellar performances and do a heck of a job making themselves out to be the best wrestlers alive. Blackjack Mulligan's work as a heel is phenomenal. He's not afraid to look like a complete goof in the early portions as Kimura outwrestles him at every turn, yelping in pain and practically begging the ref to break the holds with farcical hair pull accusations. Throughout all of this, he keeps motioning to his tights, and the IWE fans are smart enough at this point to know that Mulligan has an equalizer that he's waiting to get his hands on. Once he does, it's a slaughter. Mulligan's work surrounding The Foreign Object is where he truly shines, maybe even more than when he's punching Kimura in the face. He's so good at slipping it in and out of sight, shifting it around his body to keep the ref from ever noticing, while making sure the crowd is keenly aware of its presence. I almost made the match's GIF a clip of him shifting it from his trunks to his palm during an impromptu gear check by the referee, only to then slip it right back into the glove the second the ref turns away. It's smarmy and reprehensible and all around evil, the exact kind of work a guy should be giving a hard-nosed hero like Kimura. Speaking of Kimura, what a god damn seller he is. He stumbles around and gasps for air as his entire face gets covered in red. He swings for the fences in the face of complete annihilation. He is blood-drenched and near death, and yet he can't help himself but get back up and try one more time to give Mulligan a couple good socks to the jaw. As always, the Kimura comeback delivers big time, especially once he gets his hands on the loaded glove. You can certainly levy accusations that this match goes a bit too long considering how much the match repeats itself with these punching frenzies, but, as someone with a deep and unhealthy obsession with brawls, this match never stops giving me what I love, so I certainly can't complain. Just as much of a clinic in character work as it is a gore feast for the sickest of minds.

Ashura Hara vs. Nick Bockwinkel (10/03/1979)

    I've been covering a lot of bloody brawls and big-time grappling epics in the last few posts, so it's kind of nice to get a match like this for the first time in a while. This is good! It's a nifty little match that never really goes beyond first gear, but that first gear is good enough on its own. Hara and Bock do mostly basic work but both are smart enough workers to be able to make it all feel pretty interesting. Bock is the king of positioning, putting his own body as well as Hara's into the exact right place for any given spot or counter. There's so much evident greatness in the way he approaches momentum shifts, not only making them feel labored but also showing a step-by-step guide to how he performs each one. It works especially well against Hara, who, while entirely competent on the mat, certainly isn't as energized here as he was in the Zrno classics. Also, both guys throw super awesome shoulder tackles. I'm so used to shoulder tackles being perfunctory at this point, so seeing both men put so much effort into actually tackling each other with theirs made me genuinely pop a little bit. This isn't some big great encounter or anything that'll be remembered by me a week from now (maybe save the shoulder tackles), but I'm not going to complain about two guys putting in a perfectly fine match.

Invader #2 vs. Goro Tsurumi (01/20/1981)

    Another match that lands more along the lines of "fun" than "great." I hate that we have so little Goro Tsurumi IWE footage compared to the other major players. He's a pretty wonderful foil to Invader in this match, kicking his ass with nasty punches and knee drops while getting into spats with referee Thesz. Invader isn't the greatest of the foreigners around this point, but he's pretty interesting as a face that's incredibly willing to foul. There's a great spot where Invader and Tsurumi trade hidden closed fists, and I have to imagine Thesz was not a happy camper watching these guys so willingly break the rules in the latter half of the match. Once again, this is nothing vital, but if you're in the mood for some Goro Tsurumi, this is definitely one you'll find some joy in.

Rusher Kimura & Great Kusatsu vs. Umanosuke Ueda & Thunder Sugiyama (09/13/1979)

    We're on a roll here with matches that deliver the goods. This is more of the usual Ueda/Rusher madness, complete with hot starts, nerve holds, and a bullshit finish. What more could you ever want? As usual, everyone performs at their usual high level, with Kusatsu especially standing out at maybe his most pissed off I've ever seen. He responds to Ueda's cheap tricks and choking propensities with equal violence, at one point holding him in a necklock through the ropes and cursing at him the whole time. While he never really throws any of his great punches during the match, he does take Joe Leduc out of the equation with them before the match even begins. I'm incredibly excited to find the one Kusatsu match from era where he's really allowed to let loose, because it's not hard to tell that he has real hate boiling under the surface. Thunder Sugiyama also stands out here, less because of his performance (which is really good to be clear!) and more because of his presence at all. Sugiyama's IWE work on tape is tragically limited, a bizarre fact considering how big of a deal he was for the group in the early days. It's nice to see him show back up as an NJPW fighter, crushing Kusatsu with his hip drops and happily going along with Ueda's choke clinic. In all, this is the usual great stuff from these guys, and definitely serves its purpose of making me want to see a lot more from each of them.

Spike Huber & Rocky Brewer vs. Animal Hamaguchi & Mighty Inoue (07/25/1980)

    Let's rip the band-aid off: this match is not good. At least, I can't find it in myself to call it good. The matchup itself is high potential, as IWE's greatest tag team of Hamaguchi and Inoue get to take on the lunatic white boy Huber and another complete nobody named Rocky Brewer. In my experience, putting the more energetic IWE guys against the foreigners that know how to get a little crazy is the winning formula for the cage matches. Hell, they even send Gypsy Joe out there as Huber and Brewer's cornerman/guide through the chaos. The biggest problem this match has is that they gave it 27 minutes, and the four men involved couldn't find a way to deal with that except via working a completely normal match for the first fourteen minutes. No joke, you could spend the entire first half of the match pretending that the cage isn't there, and at no point would they break the spell of your own delusion. No cage slams, no face grating, the only time it even gets close is when Inoue dodges a Brewer tackle and Brewer goes through the ropes, just happening to hit the cage. The work itself, that kind of energized tag work Hamaguchi and Inoue always excelled at, is perfectly fine, but the complete disregard for the environment of the match legitimately troubles me. It does! It bugs me to no end to see these guys just working holds and making quick tags, all while they're surrounded by unforgiving steel and chain. The action only gets moving in the right direction after Gypsy Joe appears without a shirt on and hands the white boys some sort of big spike or 2x4 or something. It is the largest item I have ever seen that can deservingly be called a Foreign Object. Even then, there's still a minute or two of the white boy duo working over Inoue normally, until Huber gets his hands on a much smaller Foreign Object and admittedly does awesome falling stabs to Inoue. The proceeding 13 minutes are generally pretty sick, as all four men end up bleeding, the fists start flying, and the drama picks up appropriately, but the energy just isn't there. I was so checked out by the time Joe showed up with The Big Ass Foreign Object that none of the work after that could get me all the way back into it. Would I therefore call this a bad match? I don't know! The work is jarring, but it's still fine, and they do very nearly bring it back in the last few minutes. I just think this match possesses a fundamental misunderstanding of the cage and what it implies, and the more I think about it the worse I feel. If all you care about is moments, there are good ones here. It's certainly the most off-putting cage match I've ever seen though, and not in a good way.

My CIA Activation Phrase Is Kokusai

                    (Written by jom)

     No links on this one, as all matches reviewed come from some new footage I got from a close friend. I'm sure some of this is floating around online in the usual sorta places, but, as far as I know, none of this is on YouTube. I'll probably be hopping back to this footage on occasion, but I do still plan to use as many publicly available matches as possible in future posts. The people must witness IWE. 

Ashura Hara vs. Mile Zrno (05/07/1979)

     Zrno and Hara run it back just one day after their previous classic. This is our final piece of Zrno's IWE run, which might be the strongest foreigner run in IWE history just based on the average quality of each match on tape. It seems like all it took was one day for Zrno and Hara to figure each other out too, because the grappling in this match is, somehow, noticeably better, a completely mind-blowing turn of events considering just how good the matwork of their first match was. It's almost llave-like in a way, as both men refuse to break contact for minutes on end as they flow through incredible holds and incredible counters to holds and incredible counters to counters of holds. There's plenty of wonderful little moments, like Zrno locking in a hammerlock and slowly pushing Hara to the ground to prevent a bodyslam counter, or Hara pushing his leg into the back of Zrno's knee to force a drop toe hold that Zrno had no intentions of going down for. Zrno and Hara are also not afraid to lay into each other just as hard as they did in their Korakuen match, with Zrno's uppercuts especially standing out. Having said all of that, is this match better than their first encounter as a whole? Sadly, I don't think so, albeit the race is incredibly tight. I could simply say that the finish of the first match is still too magnificent to be overtaken, and that wouldn't be entirely wrong, but that's certainly not the only reason why that match is better. Honestly, this match's progression is strange. For as riveting as the grappling is, it never seems to fully leave that first gear, certainly not helped by this being one fall to a finish rather than another best 2/3 falls match. Once this finish for this match comes, it sort of just happens. It's cool, but it feels almost random compared to the fantastic build-up for their first match's ending stretch. Still, this match is great, and another must-watch for the grappling heads in the audience.

Rusher Kimura vs. Mighty Inoue (06/29/1975)

    I will admit that going into this match, I was tepidly excited. I had a strong feeling that whatever they gave me, I would enjoy it, but I also could imagine the less-than-engrossing Kimura matwork I'd have to get through for all the good bits. I think Kimura is a perfectly fine worker on the ground, but enough Kimura matwork matches have come and gone in my life for me to know that his matwork just isn't what I want to see from him. It's not his strong suit, and on occasion feels like a waste of time. This match is not a waste of time. This match is a wonderful case of both men using their time perfectly. A sizeable chunk of it is clipped, and maybe that portion was all Kimura matwork, but the wrestling we do get is totally killer through and through. This is Rusher Kimura engaging in counter-style pro wrestling, and, against all previous assumptions, he's actually pretty amazing at it. He and Inoue go through sequences clearly based around Kimura's partial immobility, which leads to Kimura eating shit some times and pulling off awe-inspiring counters in the others. This match is also a wonderful case study for Mighty Inoue, not only as a worker, but also as a character. He is ruthless right from the jump, turning slaps into punches and choking Kimura in the corner, looking for any advantage he can take over the more experienced champ. Once Kimura escalates the violence himself with throat-targeting chops and big bombs, Inoue gets to showcase himself as one of the most resilient men of the time by kicking out of more 1970s kill moves than I've seen anyone else do. It's the type of performance that establishes a guy as a true main event star, and I have to assume that's what it does for Inoue at this point in time. Tack onto all of that a fantastic finishing stretch featuring the very best counter in IWE history and you have yourself one of the greatest straight-up wrestling matches of the era. One day I'll learn to never doubt Rusher Kimura.

Strong Kobayashi vs. Bill Watts (01/19/1974)

    I will be entirely honest and admit that some of these 50+ year old Japan singles matches wear on me, at least a little bit. I've spent the last month or so professing my love for Ancient Pro, so it certainly does hurt me to come clean. This match is a strong example of the kinds of older matches that feel a little too much like a chore at times. Basically the entire first half is grappling, and while the grappling has moments of greatness, most of it is pretty dry. I find it fascinating that, at this point in time, there wasn't an obligation to create a sequence out of the matwork. Nowadays, it's entirely impossible to see guys do early match grappling without each hold being part of some larger sequence. In this match though, Kobayashi and Watts maintain holds until their opponent escapes, and that's the end of it. The closest thing to a modern sequence comes with Watts tries to do the same full nelson escape Kobayashi had just used, only for Kobayashi to catch him with another full nelson. Outside of that, each hold was treated as its own spot, and it's certainly an interesting way to look at matwork, if not incredibly tedious at some points. However, I still think this match is pretty sick, mostly because the entire back half is Kobayashi bleeding and hulking up while Watts fluctuates between cheating torturer and big ole baby. They also amp up the energy by 10 for the entire final fall, which helps a lot with engagement. Maybe I would enjoy the early portion grappling if I wasn't a Tiktok-brained zoomer, but that's the way the cards fell, and I do still find a lot of joy in this matchup. Expect more Strong Kobayashi ace run on the blog in the future.

Indian Strap Cage: Great Kusatsu vs. Wahoo McDaniel (11/28/1973)

    Now this is way more in line with my brain pattern. This is our only piece of Wahoo McDaniel in IWE footage, which breaks my heart considering Wahoo's one of my favorite territory guys. Thankfully, the single match we have is this one, with one of the best IWE stips I've ever seen. This match also has no sound, which presents a very interesting question: how did the fans in attendance respond? Considering the kind of action and their usual reaction to cage matches, it's a safe assumption that they were super vocal and gave this match the kind of noise it deserved. It's also true though that IWE crowds could be criminally silent depending on any number of factors. Therefore, we must consider this match to possess Schrodinger's Crowd; as long as we have no sound, we have no way of knowing whether or not the crowd audibly cared. Anyways, this match fucking rules. Even with about half of it clipped away, what we get is super sick and exactly what you would want: guys beating the fuck outta each other. I've very quickly come around on Kusatsu being one of my sleeper favorites of the home team IWE boys, and this is just another feather in his cap as he takes the fight to Wahoo with tons of nasty punches and elbows. Wahoo is more than happy to respond with his own punches, as well as those signature chops that probably sounded like death itself. It's only now as I write this review that I realize we have lost one of the best audio experiences in wrestling history. There's slams into the cage and whips with the strap and tons of drama surrounding the four corners winning stipulation. This match almost definitely sounds as good as it looks, but we'll probably never know for sure. If we had this match in complete form with audio, it'd probably be a top 10 IWE matches contender. As we have it now, it's just a real great match, and another piece of ammunition in the slowly growing Great Kusatsu agenda.

Cage: Rusher Kimura vs. Gypsy Joe (05/07/1979)

    In the last IWE write-up I did, I spent a good amount of time on the Joe/Kimura tag series, bemoaning the lack of a culminating all-out brawl before realizing that I had no right to criticize those matches for not being something I had concocted in my own imagination. It was a reflective moment for me, a lesson in appreciating something for what it is rather than depreciating for what it isn't. Well, I regret to inform you all that this match is actually exactly what I have been looking for, which means that I have now had my cake and eaten it, too. Gypsy Joe sets the tone by sauntering down to the ring with a sledgehammer, and then spends the rest of the match trying to split Kimura's head open with his own sledgehammer-like fists. There has never been a more vampiric performance in Joe's career, as he relishes in Kimura's ever-growing bloodshed and tries his damndest to get his fill, constantly biting at the wound until his mouth is covered in Kimura's blood. Joe also utilizes The Foreign Object better than any IWE foreigner before or since, using it as a crutch any time Kimura starts to get a little too feisty, and, sometimes, just for fun. It may not shock you to learn that this is also the greatest Kimura performance I have ever seen, as he swings wildly with the hardest punches and slaps he has ever thrown and attempts to destroy Joe's brain with ridiculous headbutts. He's a wonderful face in peril for the whole match, but he shines the most once he finally gets The Foreign Object from Joe, turning into a Dracula of his own and giving Joe his own case of face-ripping torment. At this point in the blog's history, we've talked about a lot of great IWE brawls, and we've talked about a handful of great IWE cage matches. Hell, we've even talked about a different Joe/Kimura cage match. This match stands above everything else so far, and it does that from nearly a mile up. This is, at least up to this point, the greatest IWE match I've ever seen. Oki vs. Bock and Inoue/Hara vs. Ellering/Lathan stand as the only real opponents (in terms of what's been discussed on the blog), and even those feel a step below right now. I'm certainly riding a discovery high and a recent viewing high. I've watched this three times now and I will certainly watch it twice more by the end of the week. Still, even after I cool down, I don't think my opinion will change. It’s simply the best.

Various IWE Matches To Cure The Common Cold

                   (Written by jom)

     I might put out a list or something once I inevitably hit 10 IWE posts later this month. I promise you that I'm trying to think of other things to talk about on here, but I haven't pumped out articles at a rate this high since COVID. I am simply enraptured by the beauty of Ancient Pro. The IWE eagle flies over me. Who am I to ignore it?

Rusher Kimura & Great Kusatsu vs. Gypsy Joe & Killer Karl Krupp (01/05/1980)

      Pure piss & vinegar. Gypsy Joe is in one of his moods and Rusher Kimura is happy to satiate him with some of the wildest and most uncomfortable brawling I've yet seen. Like all great IWE brawls, things almost immediately break down at the bell, but what follows this time around is especially chaotic Korakuen touring, to the point that the most accurate comparison piece would probably be the Texas Death Street Fight from FMW. There's a frantic energy to all of the fighting, along with a willingness to push the stiffness to startlingly high levels. It's the kind of work that pushes all the right buttons for me and puts me into that heaven-like state. Then Killer Karl Krupp takes over and I'm brought back down to reality. Now, let me be clear. I think Killer Karl Krupp is cool! I like the claw! In fact, I really like the claw! He generally holds his own during the brawling portions and bumps huge for the babyfaces in the perfectly comedic way that works best for the IWE heroes. The issue is that Killer Karl Krupp is a claw worker, and the jump from the frantic and uncontrollable brawling at the start to extended claw sequences is absolutely felt during the match. Not that the claw work is even bad either; there's one super awesome claw struggle between Kusatsu and Krupp that had me on the edge of my seat. It's just such a tonal shift that it takes me out of the match. Speaking of Kusatsu though, this is another great performance from him. He's a fantastic FIP for guys like Kimura to run a comeback for, and he's not afraid to throw hands in that Kantaro Hoshino rabbit punch kinda way. Seeing him cold clock Joe after Joe refused to sell for him was riveting stuff. The incredibly violent brawling returns in the last five or so minutes, and the post-match brawl continues it with super sickening chairshots and garbage thrown in the ring, but that grind-to-a-halt middle portion can't be ignored. It's a great match, but more than anything else, it makes me hunger for a Joe/Kimura 1980 collision where all bets are off and they just destroy each other the whole time. Whether or not that match will come to pass on our journey remains to be seen. 

Rusher Kimura & Animal Hamaguchi vs. Gypsy Joe & Spike Huber (06/28/1980)

     Ahaha sike bitch that match is right here! Or, at the very least, another chance at it. Once more, this starts off huge with lots of outside brawling, and while the brawl might be slightly lesser than the previous one, it features Spike Huber, who stands head and shoulders above Krupp in that department. I'm getting ahead of myself here though. First of all, who the fuck is Spike Huber? His claim to fame stateside is being the son-in-law of Dick The Bruiser, but he might be my new favorite IWE White Boy. He's just as much of a line-stepper as Joe is, throwing a bunch of awesome punches and constantly running interference. He's also got incredible facial expressions and a great mind for selling, going between overly-dramatic slow fall sells where he sticks one leg up and ridiculous flipping sells where he nearly kills himself on landing. Hamaguchi is a wonderful foil to him, able to match him in the explosive energy while also proving himself just as violent as everyone else here. He's throwing the usual dropkicks and hitting funny standing splashes, but he's also responding to Gypsy Joe's fouling by goozling him and dragging him across the ring by the neck. Kimura and Joe's contributions can go unstated entirely. Both men are arguably in their primes and they deliver violence with the same fervor as in the previously discussed January tag. Now, having said all of that... this is not the match I desired. For as chaotic as some of the outside brawling is, it's still not the primary focus. The actual in-ring work is full of slower hold-working moments and the usual momentum changes. As much as I would wish otherwise, this match is firmly committed to the IWE main event tag formula. It's through that commitment to the standards of the time that this match reminded me of something incredibly valuable: I am not the booker. For as much as I may think I know what's best, I'm just some random dude typing away on a keyboard 45 years later. I really don't know what would've sold tickets or been worthwhile for the workers, and committing myself to theoreticals is not only asking for disappointment, but also denying the true greatness of anything that goes against them. This match fucking rocks. It is the time-tested formula of IWE's most exciting period, with four guys more willing than ever to kick each other's asses and a pretty raucous crowd for a show not happening in Tokyo. It's full of pettiness and hate and builds to so many crowd-pleaser comeback moments. Hell, it even has one of the most interesting bullshit finishes I've seen come out of IWE. It is a standout piece of work in a genre of match I have come to love. So no, according to my nerd ass pussy self, this isn't the match I wanted. It turned out to be the match I needed. 

Mighty Inoue & Isamu Teranishi vs. Strong Kobayashi & Haruka Eigen (06/29/1980)

    I've been so deep in the IWE brawl tag mines that watching one of these high-octane technician tags feels like a much-needed breath of fresh air. There's an implicit story to this match of former ace Kobayashi returning to IWE after joining enemy promotion NJPW to take one of their top belts, but that barely matters at all because the IWE faithful are just happy to see the prodigal son come back home. Instead, this is relentless tag team action from bell to bell, as both teams take turns picking at limbs and testing strategies while looking for the right moves to seal the deal. The IWE duo are the most technically adept, both great at counters and picking their spots, but Teranishi has a slickness that allows him to seamlessly flow out of any situation, while Inoue is more prone to fighting his way out with the big chest chops and slaps right to the mush. Kobayashi plays his part against both perfectly, less mobile and less capable of fighting back on the mat, but also still such a fortress of a wrestler, making Inoue and Teranishi work for everything they get and withstanding so much punishment. Eigen fills the role of Kobayashi's little attack dog very well too, running interference constantly to break up submissions with headbutts and turn the match into something closer to a standing fight. These kinds of tags feel like intricately-made machines, full of little moving parts and interesting mechanisms that make the whole thing work wonderfully. This might be my favorite of the IWE tags fitting into this genre, and you really should check it out, if for no other reason than to see Mighty Inoue and Haruka Eigen working energized juniors sequences over a decade before they would become The Quintessential Old Men.

Kintaro Oki vs. Alex Smirnoff (10/11/1980)

     Yeah dude this is just fun as hell. Two of my favorite characters in IWE get to meet in a singles match and it's exactly the kind of schtick I was looking for. Smirnoff is a chain maniac, basically using it the whole time by either choking Oki with it or punching him with a chain-wrapped fist. He's a master at keeping it out of referee Thesz's line of sight, at one point shifting it to his other hand and hiding it behind the turnbuckle. Oki, meanwhile, is wonderful bumping around in his own half-mobile way, and his headbutts are as supreme as usual. The entire finish is based around Oki's unstoppable rage after finally getting his hands on the chain, and it's a ton of fun. We even get some referee Thesz shenanigans with him throwing off the shirt post-match, looking for a good ole tussle. The previously discussed Oki/Sik vs. Smirnoff/USSR tag was a wonderful setup to this encounter, because it's all the fun character-driven work turned up to eleven. Simple as that. Secretly, this is one of my favorite matches of the project yet, just because of how much fun I had with it. Wrestling is actually super easy when you aren't trying to be a high-concept loser and just give the people all they need to be happy.

Strong Kobayashi vs. Billy Robinson (05/14/1970)

    True Ancient Pro right here. Also incredibly incomplete Ancient Pro! This is five minutes of clips from a nearly 25-minute match. Just by the nature of its presentation, it's kind of hard to gauge the actual quality of the whole thing, and that also gives me a little less to talk about compared to usual. Still, there's a lot of awesome stuff to take in here. Wrestling like this just doesn't exist anymore. Strong Kobayashi and Billy Robinson put each other through the work in ways that have been lost to time, ranging from bridging headscissors struggles to monkey flip waistlock counters. Certainly, most of the IWE I've watched up to this point has felt foreign to the wrestling of the modern day scene, but this is the first match to feel truly alien in both presentation and execution. And that sucks! I really do enjoy these super old school grappling affairs where both guys put on weird holds and torture each other circus tent style. This match also works as a wonderful example of the value of building to the bombs, as seeing Billy Robinson pull off his vicious backbreaker after assumedly 20 minutes of grinding Kobayashi down with mean holds hits a lot different than him just hitting it in the first five minutes next to a bunch of other bombs. It's major credit to them that even with how clipped this is, the wear and tear of the match still comes through. This is definitely worth a watch beyond just the historical footage aspect, especially for anyone that enjoys seeing a guy work a god damn hold.