Commissions continue again, this one coming from frequent and generous Ko-fi contributor Carlos O. You can be like them and pay me to write about all different types of stuff. People tend to choose wrestling matches, but very little is entirely off the table, so long as I haven't written about it before (and please, come prepared with a date or show name or something if it isn't obvious).

Commissions continue again, this one coming from an Ko-fi contributor and number one KOTS fan Parkmap. You can be like them and pay me to write about all different types of stuff. People tend to choose wrestling matches, but very little is entirely off the table, so long as I haven't written about it before (and please, come prepared with a date or show name or something if it isn't obvious).

Commissions continue again, this one coming from regular Ko-fi contributor MainsTheMad. You can be like them and pay me to write about all different types of stuff. People tend to choose wrestling matches, but very little is entirely off the table, so long as I haven't written about it before (and please, come prepared with a date or show name or something if it isn't obvious).

Commissions continue again, this one coming from an anonymous Ko-fi contributor. You can be like them and pay me to write about all different types of stuff. People tend to choose wrestling matches, but very little is entirely off the table, so long as I haven't written about it before (and please, come prepared with a date or show name or something if it isn't obvious).

Commissions continue again, this one coming from regular Ko-fi contributor and the contributor most responsible for showing me current Puerto Rican wrestling, PEN. You can be like them and pay me to write about all different types of stuff. People tend to choose wrestling matches, but very little is entirely off the table, so long as I haven't written about it before (and please, come prepared with a date or show name or something if it isn't obvious).

Commissions continue again, this one coming from regular Ko-fi contributor B. Igevil.. You can be like them and pay me to write about all different types of stuff. People tend to choose wrestling matches, but very little is entirely off the table, so long as I haven't written about it before (and please, come prepared with a date or show name or something if it isn't obvious).

Commissions continue again, this one coming from regular Ko-fi contributor Trevor Fitzpatrick. You can be like them and pay me to write about all different types of stuff. People tend to choose wrestling matches, but very little is entirely off the table, so long as I haven't written about it before (and please, come prepared with a date or show name or something if it isn't obvious).

Not really through any conscious effort, I'm less and less interested in absolutes. The older I get, the more statements like "this is the best [x] ever" or "nothing can ever be better than [x]" lose their appeal to me, and the same goes with any real definitive kind of ranking. Making lists at the end of a year is hard enough, I'd already probably do 2010s YEAR IN DECADES stuff maybe a little differently in bits and pieces, anything beyond that just seems like a way for teenagers or people in their early twenties to try and show off and signal their good taste (I would know, I did a 1000 match GME list in 2008 when I was a teenager, and thankfully, it's vanished from the internet so I never have to confront how bad it probably was).

Again with the Heisei Ishingun leg of the larger WAR vs. New Japan feud, something relatively short, mean, and real interesting breaks out. Usually, the idea of a heel in peril is one of my least favorite things wrestling can do. Not only does it go against what's usually the central point of any match with defined good and bad guys, like there are in this subsection of WAR/NJPW, but more often than not, it's employed by deeply unserious and…

Have you ever wanted to see a really weird looking guy get beat up, bludgeoned, and repeatedly kicked in the face for thirteen minutes? Of course you have! You wound up here after all! Ths version of this match that exists on the commercial tape might cut this down to five or six minutes, robbing us of over half of the match, but thankfully, there's a handheld version of this show out there too that fellow enterprising freaks and footage completionist perverts can look at, and it confirms that this is, in fact, an entire great match.

This was a barbed wire cage match, as well as a tournament final, for the vacant WING World Tag Team Titles. Like is often the case with a barbed wire cage match, or even regular steel cage matches with barbed wire wrapped around either the top or a little on the sides, this is not quite everything you'd want it to be.

Vader has returned to Japan, now jumping to the UWFi in something of a coup given that he's also in the middle of his essentially year-long run as WCW World Heavyweight Champion, and they could not have lined up a better debut for him than this. Tatsuo Nakano, the ever beleaguered hard luck warrior of the UWFi, has absolutely zero chance, he's beaten before the bell ever rings on paper along with another probable busted up nose to go along with yet another audacious beating, and everybody knows it but him.

Commissions continue again, this one coming from an anonymous Ko-fi contributor, one who ought to take this as a lesson to check what projects I'm in the middle of before paying for something they were going to get for free anyways. You can be like them and pay me to write about all different types of stuff. People tend to choose wrestling matches, but very little is entirely off the table, so long as I haven't written about it before (and please, come prepared with a date or show name or something if it isn't obvious).

Matches can be great for lots of reasons. Sometimes there's some intricate attention to detail, some total commitment, an undeniable physical skill on display, mechanical perfection, a perfectly executed story, and of course any one of those kinds of things working in sync with another. Other times, something is just really fucking cool. This match is a hair under seven minutes and it's entirely made up of the bad doctors bleeding a lot, old man Sheik stabbing both of them in the face as often as possible and recklessly throwing tables into them and throwing them into other objects, and then early era but still pretty nutty Sabu flips and table spots.

In the same way that styles make fights, matchmaking really does matter, at least so long as it's reflected in the match itself in some way. Take a look at this match for an example. Mechanically speaking, Mitsuya Nagai is not yet lighting the world on fire, to whatever extent he ever did years later when he became a very very reliable wrestler, and although he's perfectly fine, he doesn't exactly dazzle as a Volk Han opponent.

The thing about RINGS, for those wondering in real time why I haven't covered any RINGS in 1993 prior to this, is that it really can all run together sometimes. RINGS is rarely ever bad, the majority of RINGS shows are made up entirely of matches with a floor of "pretty good", but when you watch enough, the lower or mid-level work (relative to RINGS itself) kind of all blends together.

Once again, many things can be true at once. First off, this is cool as hell. Throwing two different generations of mean and cool top AJW antagonists at each other is already a winning formula on paper, especially when they had little enough overlap (three six or eight woman tags in 1985-86, when Bull wasn't really Bull at all) to make this essentially a first time ever meeting. 

Commissions continue again, this one coming from frequent and generous Ko-fi contributor @beenthrifty. You can be like them and pay me to write about all different types of stuff. People tend to choose wrestling matches, but very little is entirely off the table, so long as I haven't written about it before (and please, come prepared with a date or show name or something if it isn't obvious).

Commissions continue again, this one coming from frequent and generous Ko-fi contributor Carlos O. You can be like them and pay me to write about all different types of stuff. People tend to choose wrestling matches, but very little is entirely off the table, so long as I haven't written about it before (and please, come prepared with a date or show name or something if it isn't obvious).

Commissions continue again, this one coming from Ko-fi contributor Jack Mangoon. You can be like them and pay me to write about all different types of stuff. People tend to choose wrestling matches, but very little is entirely off the table, so long as I haven't written about it before (and please, come prepared with a date or show name or something if it isn't obvious).

Commissions continue again, this one coming from regular Ko-fi contributor Trevor Fitzpatrick. You can be like them and pay me to write about all different types of stuff. People tend to choose wrestling matches, but very little is entirely off the table, so long as I haven't written about it before (and please, come prepared with a date or show name or something if it isn't obvious).

Commissions continue again, this one coming from Ko-fi contributor MainsTheMad. You can be like them and pay me to write about all different types of stuff. People tend to choose wrestling matches, but very little is entirely off the table, so long as I haven't written about it before (and please, come prepared with a date or show name or something if it isn't obvious).

Commissions continue again, this one coming from an anonymous Ko-fi contributor. You can be like them and pay me to write about all different types of stuff. People tend to choose wrestling matches, but very little is entirely off the table, so long as I haven't written about it before (and please, come prepared with a date or show name or something if it isn't obvious).

Outside of the Tenryu vs. Hashimoto singles matches, and maybe a few other Tenryu singles matches, I wouldn't argue too heavily if someone thought this was the highpoint of WAR vs. New Japan. The crowd here in the Sendai City Gymnasium at least ensures that, atmosphere wise, this is right up there with the very start of the feud.