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).

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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).

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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.

Once again, in ways I'm sort of running out of words to describe given how rarely the reasons for it change, this card's Heisei Ishingun vs. WAR tag delivers. There are a bunch of moving pieces here, guys rotating in and out quickly enough for nothing to weigh down on it like it might in a two on two tag or even a regular six man, sick brawling spots early on like another piledriver on a table from Koshinaka, and what feels like a million awesome kicks.

Finally, the juniors of New Japan and WAR have something to add to the best feud of the year. That's not to say they haven't had the chance before. All through these shows I've been watching, there have been NJPW vs. WAR juniors matches, usually involving El Samurai and Ultimo Dragon. They just haven't done a whole lot for me, or stood out really much at all compared to the heavyweight stuff.

This was a no ropes barbed wire net steel cage match. Following the collapse of his Puerto Rican army (and apparently the defection of Jason to the side of good, along with Miguel Perez Jr.), Victor Quinones has enlisted pure monsters, as well as the helpful use of two vowels instead of one to gracefully sidestep any potential lawsuits, to destroy (stop the???) Matsunaga, inside one of WING's many many wonderful contraptions.

Repeating myself isn't especially fun to me as a writer, and I can't imagine it's any more fun to read over and over again, but this is is another one. One more on a bunch of different piles. Another great WAR vs. New Japan tag. Another great WAR vs. New Japan tag where Heisei Ishingun makes up the New Japan side of things.

Like the Hashimoto vs. Fuyuki match that came right before it, this is not the most traditional interpromotional fight, likely owing to a choice to play a little more to a more vocal pro-New Japan audience in Yokohama than had been the case on previous WAR shows. Like that match, it's played much more evenly, with tension on both sides, and in this case, as a dueling control segment type of a tag team match.

It would be wildly incorrect to say that New Japan vs. WAR wasn't already great, but it's here, adding Shinya Hashimoto to the mix, where things jump up a level. Here, in this match, such a thing is not always so obvious. For all his many great qualities already, Shinya Hashimoto is not the kind of jerk invader that someone like a Genichiro Tenryu or some of his underlings have been, or even that guys like Heisei Ishingun or Riki Choshu on his own side have been.

This was a gauntlet style elimination match, which is to say a series of one on one matches between the four sides, with the victor of a given match up staying in to face the next man up. As can often be the case with these matches, it's not without its flaws. I think a traditional four on four elimination match, or maybe the rotating two on two format of the 1990s AJPW and 2000s NOAH gauntlets, may have served this match a little better.

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 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 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).

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It's the old classic, The Ace faces The Man Who Would Be King. This is to 1993 UWFi what Akira Maeda vs. Nobuhiko Takada was to 1980s UWF, except in this case, the younger wrestler is already awesome. While Takada was clearly earmarked because of size and look and being good enough in the ring to pack it up, by comparison to his peers (those also turning pro in this style around the late 1980s or early 1990s), Kiyoshi Tamura already feels significantly ahead of them all at just under four years in.

On its face, this is not the most interesting match in the world. Dennis Koslowski, despite having a name that sounds just like that of Dennis Kozlowski, the former CEO of Tyco who was convicted of financial crimes back in 2005 when we actually convicted people of things like that, is just the twin brother of PWFG's Duane Koslowski. He would have nine professional matches ever, all for UWFi and the last of which would come by the end of 1993.

After a month and a half of fighting with what's essentially a scouting committee or a first line of attack in Aoyagi and Great Kabuki, the A team of Heisei Ishingun/Anti-Players Association comes in to take everything up a level. They don't get one of the real high level WAR teams right off the bat, occupied by bigger matches on WAR's biggest show of the year so far, but what they do get is a real spirited fight from two guys in Fuyuki and, to a lesser extent, Kitahara, who make sure to extract their pound of flesh along the way.

Wrestling never has to be complicated. Sometimes it is and sometimes the complicated stuff can also be really really great, but if someone is good enough, it doesn't matter all that much. Look at a match like this. Ashura Hara and Masashi Aoyagi have a match that's like 80%, at minimum, three different things between Aoyagi's kicks and Hara's chops and lariats.