Kazuchika Okada and Tomohiro Ishii are two of my favourite wrestlers of all time, so it’s kind of a crime that I haven’t seen this match before. It also means that I am almost guaranteed to like it. As I write this Kazu is making his entrance and I’m smiling away well aware that I’m about to see something I’ll love. See you in twenty minutes.
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Let’s dive into another five-star classic as we look back at Shingo Takagi going head to head with Masaaki Mochizuki. I say it’s five-stars, but I’ve seen a few places say that Dave has never officially bestowed the rating on it. Truthfully, I don’t care. I want to watch and write about Shingo because he’s my boy, so if it’s bothering you, imagine it says wrestling classics at the top rather than Meltzer’s Classics. Better? Good.
Continue readingMeltzer loved 90’s Joshi, didn’t he? We’re back in AJW where Manami Toyota and Toshiyo Yamada are facing off for the IWA World Title with the added stipulation of it being a Hair vs Hair match. It was the blow-off to a long-running feud which grew out of the two having previously teamed together.
I can’t find any pictures of the match. Have Bull instead.
A quick note before we start, the list I’m using for these five-star matches has a Bull Nakano vs Yumiko Hotta cage match on it that happened around this time. However, I can’t find that anywhere. I haven’t even come across any mentions of it outside of that list. I’m assuming it’s a mistake – Bull wrestled Aja Kong in a cage a few months before – but if anyone can clue me in, please do.
There is a slightly complex stipulation for this one. It’s Two out of Three Falls, but it’s actually what WWE would call a Three Stages Of Hell. They start off with a Falls Count Anywhere, then have a Stretcher and finally a Cage. I can’t find if it was a particular section that got five stars or not, so I’m going to watch all three. Also, it’s worth noting that it would be giving these recordings too much credit to say they were terrible quality, which is going to affect the review.
We’ve seen this match before, haven’t we? Yes, a few months after this six-man combo got a five-star rating they went out and did it again. That first one stood the test of the time. Will the second?
Liger takes flight!
I’m about to do something I have never done in a Meltzer’s Classic. In fact, it might be something I’ve never done before. I going to compare something favourably to a Taichi match. It is my favourite Taichi match, but it’s a Taichi match all the same.
Quick disclaimer, chronologically, I should be covering Tenyru, Kawada and Fuyuki vs Tsuruta, Fuchi and Yatsu. However, I can’t find it anywhere. If anyone knows where I can get a copy of it or even some highlights, let me know. For now, we must move on.
As usual, there isn’t much in the way of pictures.
You wait months for a Meltzer’s Classic and then two come along at once. We spoil you, we really do. We’re still in Japan, but we move away from Joshi and back to New Japan Pro Wrestling where two all-star teams go head to head for the vacant IWGP Heavyweight Tag Team Championships. In one corner we have a very young Keiji Mutoh teaming up with Shiro Koshinaka, and in the other, we have Akira Maeda and Nobuhiko Takada. I’ll be honest, outside of Mutoh these wrestlers are unknown to me, so I guess it’s time to see what they’re like.
These two were pretty badass.
After a short break, we are back with another dive into Dave Meltzer’s five-star classics. We’re (as we often are) in Japan for this one and it’s our second appearance from all-around badass, Lioness Asuka. In this one, she goes up against her Crush Gals teammate Chigusa Nagoya in a match which takes both of them to the limit.
