(Written by jom)
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.
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