(Written by jom)
Mighty Inoue & Animal Hamaguchi vs. Kintaro Oki & Umanosuke Ueda (10/05/1979)
Goro Tsurumi vs. Isamu Teranishi (03/12/1981)
This is probably the closest thing to a throwaway TV studio classic that IWE ever put on. It's the kind of match that finds itself seated among the sick ass Ronnie Garvin squashes and randomly awesome WCCW lucha matches. While this match, like most of IWE, is distinctly Japanese in structure and execution, this is one of the more lucha-adjacent matches to come out of the company, complete with Tsurumi putting in a wonderful stooging base performance to compliment Teranishi's incredible athleticism and fantastic execution. The bigger spots like Teranishi's amazing sunset flip counter out of a failed monkey flip certainly wow the most, but the smaller stuff like Teranishi's punch sequence really does a lot for me, especially when Tsurumi is putting in a hell of a job selling it all. Tsurumi also gets his receipts in great ways, from throwing punches to the jaw during a chinlock to chopping Teranishi's throat while he's laying on the ground. Add onto all of this one of the more awe-inspiring finishing stretches I've seen come out of this period and you've got yourself a real hidden gem.
Rusher Kimura vs. Ox Baker (06/23/1979)
I know that I started the blog post by referring to Kimura's many boring singles matches, but this is certainly not one of them. Ox Baker was almost undoubtedly the best foreigner in IWE's history, save for maybe Nick Bockwinkel (who worked there significantly less) or Alexis Smirnoff (who was Baker's regular tag partner too). For a fed with such a penchant for brawling, he was the perfect fit, a massive lumbering heel with a presence that screamed danger. In most of his matches, his work more closely resembled Resident Evil's Mr. X than anything else. He's a creeping death, slowly following his opponents around the ring and putting them through the torment of clubbing blows whenever he gets close. Some people would probably say that it borderlines on cheesy, but I would disagree - it's actually very cheesy, which is why it's so great. I mean, look at Ox Baker. He is the most villainous man to walk the face of the planet. Of course he's going to wrestle more like he's a slasher villain than a professionally trained worker. Kimura also always does his best work in these kinds of bloody and violent fights, and he does a damn good job of not only fighting back valiantly, but also eventually really taking the fight to Baker with nasty chops and headbutts. It's slow and plodding, but it's also a gruesome chain match. If there was ever a match that would benefit from that kind of pace, it's this one.
Isamu Teranishi & Ashura Hara vs. Katsuzo Oiyama & Goro Tsurumi (01/30/1980)
It hurts my soul that we have so little of the Oiyama/Tsurumi duo on tape. I mean, we barely have any Oiyama in general, but every time I've seen them team up, it's been magic. In a way, Independent Gurentai were the heel answer to Hamaguchi & Inoue: young and energized, able to seamlessly work together, but also fueled by malice with a penchant for fouling. They do a good job of taking it to Hara and Teranishi in this one, with Oiyama pulling off some awesome headbutts (especially the rebound one) and Tsurumi throwing great punches all over Hara's body. Oiyama also gets to show out with his weapon usage, trying to bisect Teranishi on the outside with a chair before trying to beat him to death with it while Tsurumi has him in a saw trap-like situation. Hara, for his part, in way more of an all-rounded dynamo than the lumpy shitkicker he would become only five or six years later, and it's really cool to see him working the mat with such high ability. And Teranishi rules, obviously. He feels like such a revolutionary figure compared to everyone else, a man displaced from time by at least four or five years. More of a popcorn match than something entirely substantial, but god I love myself some popcorn.
Rusher Kimura & Mighty Inoue vs. Joe LeDuc & Umanosuke Ueda (09/09/1979)
Outstanding. Is this Ueda's best work from his time in IWE? Maybe so. The singles against Kintaro Oki and his cage match against Hamaguchi & Inoue are really the only two matches that stand a chance of besting this one, and I'm currently leaning towards it being better than the Oki singles at least. What we have here is Ueda at his meanest, his smarmiest, his most willing to punish and most unwilling to be punished. This is Ueda The Coward as much as it is Ueda The Tormentor. Seeing him turn on a dime from an unrepentant fouler throwing hidden closed fists to a crying yellow-belly begging for mercy borders on being a religious experience for me. It also helps him that he has Joe LeDuc, another biblically accurate IWE foreigner, as his big muscle, throwing massive clubbing shots and fully following behind on Ueda's fouling antics. Inoue, much more of a victim in this match than in the previously covered Ueda tag, fights his heart out as he's stabbed, choked, and treated with no regard for his livelihood. His big revenge moments are full of his own fouling, from low blows to chokes to even one of the craziest weapon moments I've seen in all my IWE watching. Inoue never even attempts to portray himself as a "hero of justice" - Mighty Inoue is a man getting fucked on by Umanosuke Ueda, waiting for the moment he can strike back with the same kind of violence. Rusher Kimura, somehow, ends up being the least notable guy here, while also delivering one of his best house of fires ever, punctuated by an incredible LeDuc "timber" sell. This is the kind of match I wish I could bottle up and take sips of for the rest of my life. This is the kind of pro wrestling that shakes me to my core and keeps me in this godforsaken hobby. If you watch anything from this post (and you really should watch everything), let it be this match. This is everything to me.
