(Written by jom)
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.
