The Voices Are Back. They Beg For IWE.

                          (Written by jom)

     I took a bit of an IWE break recently, mostly because I was just busy but also to refresh myself with other wrestling. Sadly, I have conditioned my brain too far. I couldn't help but watch and think "where are all the referee bumps?" or "why isn't there a 9ft tall cage around the ring?" I'm like a sick dog, ready to be taken behind the shed and sent to the angels. Until that happens though, I'll remain here, in my chamber of IWE. 

Rusher Kimura vs. Nick Bockwinkel (10/05/1979)

     Bock. Is. Back. Nick Bockwinkel returns to the IWE blog posts and once again delivers a really great match against one of the stalwarts of the company. Rusher feels like a great compliment to Kintaro Oki in that sense, similar in build and mobility but different enough in both the grounding and standing game. As usual, this match starts with nearly ten minutes of old school grappling, and I'm just in love with everything that happens. So much of the grappling portion is based around Kimura putting on side headscissors, and it works so well thanks to both Kimura's dogged determination and Bock's wily escape tactics. Watching them battle it out on the mat, I couldn't help but think that these kinds of matches feel almost similar to double acts from old vaudeville comedy, with each guy filling their own roles to work off one another. Rusher Kimura is the straight man, stiff and rigid in his work and entirely grounded. Nick Bockwinkel, meanwhile, is the banana man, flailing around wildly and crafting weird holds and escapes to get control over Kimura. It's a comparison that may not land all the way, but I hope my ramblings at least make some sort of sense. Everything beyond the grappling is great and exactly what you would ask for from the pairing. Bock is an incredible seller and Kimura is an incredible giver, and everything feels just so well done for the pairing. Truly, this is the perfect match that these two could give, down to the wonderful bullshit finish. Another strong non-brawling performance from Kimura, and another great match from Bock.

Strong Kobayashi vs. Lars Anderson (09/26/1973)

    As I've stated before, the usual Strong Kobayashi match format doesn't go entirely well with my sensibilities. I can enjoy a good bit of slow-burn grappling, but the slow crawl pacing of many of his matches is just a bit too slow for me. So you can imagine my excitement when I was skimming one of the early 70s compilation DVDs and stumbled across what appeared to be a Rusher Kimura-esque bloody brawl featuring Kobayashi! I have no interest in Kobayashi being Kimura, but I was just interested in seeing what Kobayashi would do in an environment like this one. And yeah, he's pretty good at this whole brawling thing. He's a little less active than Kimura is in his matches, more prone to just letting himself get beaten down, and his strikes definitely land with less oomph (especially the Hulk Hogan style chairshots), but he's certainly able to harness the spirit of a pissed off ace, throwing mean shots to the midsection and eventually taking out his frustrations on the referee. Lars Anderson, for his part, is fine enough too. He's pretty good at what he does here, which is mostly punching and kicking Kobayashi in the face, so he slots in nicely as a dollar store Blackjack Mulligan. I still anxiously await the Kobayashi match that'll blow me away, but this is a nice detour from snail-like matwork and an interesting look at another of Kobayashi's faces.

Rusher Kimura & Great Kusatsu vs. Danny Lynch & Butcher Lynch (01/07/1975)

    The quacking Humpty Dumpty duo returns. Last time we saw the Lynch Brothers, they gave us a very special Kimura bloody brawl featuring the very first instance of someone bleeding more than Kimura himself. Well, here they are once again, and they're game for another big Kimura bloody brawl, albeit one that's way more in line with the usual expectations. This match actually has one of Kimura's grosser bladejobs, as he spends the entire last half of the match with blood all over his head, arms, and torso. The Brothers Lynch are strong in control with their usual bizarre offense, complete with Danny Lynch throwing reach-around tummy punches and Butcher Lynch basically running across the ring to land uppercuts. They're great on defense too, bumping like lunatics around the ring for Kusatsu and Kimura, and Danny Lynch cranks it up even farther during Kimura's big comeback as he starts hitting backflips on every Kimura punch. It's selling that goes beyond the point of parody, but I love it very much. Certainly not one of the best tags from this era or matches from this genre, but a fun little time that makes me happy we have more Lynch Brothers footage.

Ashura Hara vs. Nelson Royal (10/05/1979)

    This is a pretty infamous match, less for the content and more for the ramifications. The long and short of it is that Nelson Royal's NWA Junior Heavyweight title defense wasn't considered authorized, and both NJPW and AJPW contacted the NWA to protest about the belt being defended in a non-NWA organization. This would result in Royal giving up the title and retiring, making this his last match (until he would un-retire four years later) and leading to the creation of another junior title because of more NWA in-fighting spawned by this. All of that is to say that most people don't remember this match for the match itself, which I think should be rectified. This is great! So much of Hara's late '79 run has been him proving his capabilities in as many facets of wrestling as possible, and this is his best showing when it comes to the slower minimalist grappling that dominated the Japan main event scene. Unlike the swift and complex matwork of Mile Zrno, Royal's brand of wrestling is concentrated on headlocks and sleeper holds, doing his best to trap Hara back into the chokes any time he would find a way to escape. Hara is great on defense, scrambling on the mat to escape Royal's clutches and selling Royal's knee strikes to the body like his appendix burst. The work is slow, but it's well-practiced, and the struggle is kept interesting enough to never lose me. It all builds to a great finishing stretch involving big suplexes and even bigger counters, the exact kind of ending this type of match deserves. I certainly wouldn't call this better than either of the Zrno singles matches, but it still stands out as a different kind of great technical match than what I'm used to seeing from Hara.

Mighty Inoue & Great Kusatsu vs. Mad Dog Vachon & Gypsy Joe (02/27/1977)

    Wild, wild fun. Honestly, I don't have a ton to say here. The biggest problem I have with these kinds of matches from a writer's perspective is that they leave little room for aggrandizing, and aggrandizing is, in a sense, my business. This tag wears its heart on its sleeve and spends no time at all attempting to apply subtext or hidden meaning or any of that other bullshit. What you see is what you get, and what you get is an unstoppable frenzy of Korakuen violence. These are four immensely talented brawlers being given the floor to brawl, and they do basically everything you'd want them to do in that situation. Gypsy Joe keeps finding assorted objects to attack people with, ranging from actual blades to big bins. Vachon repeatedly nearly kills fans with his crowd rampaging and gets into little fights with Inoue & Kusatsu multiple times. The home team throw their usual nasty strikes and get big comeback pops. It's textbook stuff from the four in question, and the execution is great all around. No need to try and think too hard about a match like this. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the show.

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.

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.