More IWE Matches That Make Me Say "Hooray!"

                (Written by jom)

     I'm starting to notice a pattern with the last few blog posts. Apologies to anyone with a natural aversion to Tarzan Goto or Rusher Kimura, but this is an itch I can't help but scratch. I swear to move onto different subjects going forward on the blog... at least regarding Goto Ippa. The IWE mind virus has completely taken over my thought process, and I can no longer go more than three days without a Rusher Kimura bloodletting performance or a Kintaro Oki headbutt festival. Expect to continue to see IWE posts until the sun dies (or until I can finally move on from IWE addiction to something more reasonable, like heroin). Once again, I've gathered together a handful of matches that I've either already seen and love, or never seen and expect to love. Because love is all you need, really. And brother, I love IWE. I hope by the end of all this, you learn to love IWE too.

Mighty Inoue & Animal Hamaguchi vs. Red Devil & Ray Candy (02/28/1981)

      Another Hamaguchi & Inoue Korakuen brawl to soothe the soul. My most pressing thought coming out of this match is that punching is a dead art form and I miss it dearly. For a lot of workers around this time, punching seemed to be a marker for whether or not you were worth a damn. Red Devil and Ray Candy throw amazing punches here, with Devil having snappier headlock punches and Candy throwing massive haymakers. Inoue and Hamaguchi tend to utilize chest chops and kicks, but I've seen both throw great punches in the past too. This isn't even much of a punch-heavy match either. I think I just needed to see punches, and this match has punches, and my thirst for fist-to-face violence has been quenched. Everything else about this match is awesome too. Ray Candy is one of the most striking big men of his era, feeling more akin to the big guys of the 90s with a great balance of hoss offense and genuinely interesting athletic moments. Candy never spends any time trying to do lucha sequences at underwater speed, but he does get a few points to showcase his capabilities as a big bumper. His bodyslams are also insane, so insane that commentary really has no idea what to call them and flips between "bodyslam" and "deadly drive" the whole match. Red Devil is fine too. He's more of a fall guy for the faces than any actual threat but he's clearly a competent worker. His main ring name is also Bill White and I definitely have two distant uncles with that same name so I felt a bit of kinship with him. Inoue and Hamaguchi almost need no explanation, as they deliver the goods as usual. Inoue is more prone to grabbing chairs and bludgeoning than ever before though, which is a really awesome trait for a babyface like him to have. Definitely not as great as the previously discussed Korakuen brawls, but a very fun match nonetheless. 

Rusher Kimura & Great Kusatsu vs. Masa Saito & Umanosuke Ueda (04/18/1979)

    It feels weird to call a match like this "another day in the office" for Ueda and co., but it really is. Ueda and Saito are here to cause trouble as usual, and trouble entails lots of fouling and weapon usage. This kind of shameless cheating is kind of a lost art in modern wrestling, at least over in Japan, and for as much as you could accuse it of being "stupid" or anything like that, it also totally ruled. Kimura and Kusatsu are very serviceable as home group heroes, working Ueda and Saito over on the mat and bringing the fight to them on occasion, but Kusatsu basically exists for Ueda to use random objects on, ranging from choking him with power cables to cracking a beer bottle over his head. Saito also partakes in the weapons fun, but his best moments actually come from his bare-handed work, throwing mean chops and choking Kusatsu and Kimura while they're down. As always, this builds to a chaotic finish, complete with interference and numerous ref bumps. If you're allergic to cool shit like that then don't tune in I guess, more for the rest of us.

Rusher Kimura vs. Gypsy Joe (12/03/1976)

     Apologies to the people I offended by claiming that Ox Baker is the best foreigner in IWE history without even mentioning Gypsy Joe. I'm still correct, but I apologize regardless. Gypsy Joe really is one of the all time greats though, and most likely does sit as the 2nd best foreigner in the company's history, especially considering his cage matches. This is Joe only a few years away from his IWE peak, facing off against Rusher Kimura in an environment both of them love, and it plays out exactly how you'd expect, with tons of violence and hatred exactly as the doctor ordered. Joe, here in a singlet that looks more like a grandmother's swimsuit, is a complete bastard, bloodying Kimura up by trying to eat his face and smashing his skull into a million little pieces using the cage. He still "fouls" even in a no disqualification match, hiding his punches and keeping the ref from seeing his Foreign Object probably more out of instinct than anything. It's a textbook performance from Joe, which always makes me pretty happy. Kimura delivers a pretty spectacular performance of his own, though. This is a contender for Kimura's best work from beneath, as he stumbles around and cries out in pain at all of Joe's brutalizing. At one point, he even does the Funk-style wild swings, throwing reckless punches at Joe's general direction, doing anything he can to find escape the onslaught. His big comeback is full of headbutts, punches, and slams into the cage, the exact kind of comeback this type of match deserves. Would I say it's either man's best cage match? Probably not. I think it certainly sits in the upper echelon for both, though. Expectations absolutely met for one of IWE's most promising matchups. 

Ox Baker vs. Alex Smirnoff (07/10/1979)

     This is kind of a weird one. Both on paper and in practice, this match is incredibly raw. Baker and Smirnoff are two of the most brutal foreigners in late 70s IWE, and here they are taking chunks out of each other in a gory chain match. The problem is that this show has the quietest IWE crowd I have ever seen. This match is contested in near-silence. I'm not sure if the crowd pops even once. The most vocalization from the audience comes from random coughs or the rare "ooooo" from a single person. I'd go so far as to say it borders on COVID-level silence, except even those crowds were allowed to clap a few months in. Now, does that even matter? Kinda, and I think anyone who would say otherwise is a crook and a liar. Especially with a big brawl like this one, there's an expectation for vocal crowd involvement. I'm used to old ladies gasping in horror at the blood, or half-drunk salarymen yelling and punching the air during the big babyface comeback. The fact that none of that happens here is, well, bizarre. And I get it, Japanese crowds are quiet. Trust me, I need nobody to tell me that after spending years way too deep in this bullshit, and I especially don't need any rubes to tell me about how "crowds get loud when they care! just look at 90s AJPW!". It's just a fact of life that Japanese crowds are much quieter on average and basically always have been. Clearly the people here are invested, and it's more the culmination of this kind of environment being faced with a match so antithetical in spirit. It certainly does its damndest to overtake my thoughts on the match, though. Once again, the match itself is great. Obviously so. I really enjoyed my time watching Ox Baker make really old guy threats ("You need a chain upside the head Smirnoff!!") as both men punched, clawed, and bit each other's wounds, all while wildly swinging chains into each other's bodies. It's exactly what I wanted in terms of the action itself. You just need to know that there are moments of silence that truly break the brain. At the very least, it broke mine.

2/3 Falls: Kintaro Oki vs. Nick Bockwinkel (03/31/1980)

    Just for a little bit of context, I've seen this match only once before. About six months back I finally decided to start going through the "IWE Chronicles" releases, and this match was placed near the start of the very first tape. At the time, I wasn't the most engaged in watching it, and I mostly walked away thinking "that was pretty great" before moving onto other IWE work. Now, here I am six months later, firmly entrenched in the IWE mindset, and I am here to tell you that the jom of March 2025 was a FOOL. This match is outstanding, a masterful piece of work put on by two of the very best of the era. Oki and Bockwinkel play the game of inches, telling a story more focused on the little details as it builds towards the bigger conclusions. The entire first falls of this match is grappling, and excellent grappling at that; there's full effort put into the full nelson struggles and keylock maintaining to make all of it really mean something. Oki isn't someone particularly known for his grappling abilities, but he plays his part as the fortress wonderfully, putting in tight and deep holds that Bockwinkel has to find his way around. Bock is such a master when it comes to spacing out these grappling portions, slowly climbing through submissions in a way that really milks it for all it's worth while never going so slow as to lose the viewer. Both guys also counter holds with such great quickness and snappiness, making the slower building periods feel more like both men playing mind games, waiting for the exact right moment to strike. This trend continues into the second fall, albeit with a Bock more willing to push the limits of acceptability, countering holds with eye rakes and chokes which draws the ire of referee Lou Thesz. Oki, as stoic as the man always was, really does a great job of getting more emotional here, going from stone-faced to legitimately frustrated by Bock. All of this builds to the final fall, where everything explodes in the most beautiful way possible. For as extreme as all of my praise here has been, I don't truly think that I've exaggerated much if at all. This is a monumental piece of work, a strong contender for IWE's best singles match ever, and quite possibly one of the greatest matches ever flat-out. For all the Mutoha/Mumeijuku/80s NJPW/general slow-burn grappling fans out there, please do yourself a favor and watch this match. Excellent Pro Wrestling.