10. 1979.01.04 - Jackie Sato & Maki Ueda vs. Mami Kumano & Monster Ripper K: This is the last match Beauty Pair ever had a tag team. It is also the debut of Monster Ripper, aka Rhonda Sing or Bertha Faye in her unfortunate WWF gimmick. Rhonda grew up in Calgary and was a big fan of Stampede Wrestling growing up. She had contacted Stampede about being trained but was turned down (the Harts didn’t train women at the time). A trip to Hawaii in 1978 re-ignited her ambitions when she saw AJW for the first time, as she recalls in an interview in SLAM Magazine in 2001: “I was actually in Ha ..read more

AEW Dynasty 4/21/24 Bryan Danielson vs Will Ospreay MD: I've had RVD on my mind lately. They used him on the 4/20 Rampage. I haven't gotten to that yet. There's been a lot of wrestling to watch and I only caught the back half of Rampage so far because it more directly led into the PPV. I'll go back for it and for Yuka vs Emi because it sounds like an amazing Emi performance in difficult circumstances. When I think about RVD, though, I think about his PPV match with Benoit. I haven't rewatched it in decades and I have no desire to now, so bear with my memories. You have to understand what it wa ..read more

  It is always rough looking back at old work. I have been writing about wrestling for 25 plus years and have some true whiffs. I have venerated stuff that stinks, and trashed stuff that rules. It is always important to reevaluate your priors and shift gears when you realize you made a mistake, and there are a fair number of DVDVR reviews where I trashed Tarzan Goto. I seem to remember coining the nickname Tarzan Scroto. I couldn't be more wrong. He is clearly in the absolute top tier of brawlers in wrestling history, an absolute wild man who brings a sense of real chaos to everything ..read more

  Tarzan Goto/Mr. Gannosuke vs. Kendo Nagasaki/Yuichi Taniguchi IWA Japan 7/5/95 - EPIC ER: Have we been fools for ignoring IWA Japan this whole time in our focusing on WAR and FMW and New Japan Russians and all else? Where have the IWA Japan champions been? This is fucking WAR baby, this is fucking all time great 80s Memphis, it's the kind of inter promotional Japanese realism that has aged perhaps greater than any other kind of 80s and 90s puro. The first VHS tape I ever traded for after getting the internet was a 6 hour IWA Japan/FMW/W*ing comp. It started everything. I had l ..read more

Super Swedish Angel (Tor Johnson) vs. Tom Renesto NWA Los Angeles 1951 MD: Yes, Super Swedish Angel is Tor Johnson, that Tor Johnson, the Tor Johnson. This is the only full match we have of him. I've seen this one likened to being straight out of a B film itself, but it almost felt like 1950s Sports Entertainment to me somehow, even in a way a lot of the other gimmicks haven't seemed to be. I expected Johnson to be more monstrous or thuggish but he was over the top in that sort of writhing almost Baby Huey sort of way, arguing with the ref, pulling faces, yelling at the crowd, marching around ..read more

Week 22: The Tag Team Ides of March EB: Last time we covered the first weekend of March where the TNT vs Abdullah Universal title series kicked off. Although we touched upon the end result of that Universal title series between TNT and Abdullah, there were  other happenings in CSP across those weeks, which will be our focus in this installment. As was previously mentioned, there is a Caribbean tag title tournament approaching on March 10. The titles are vacant due to Gerry Morrow leaving the territory and we have eight teams in contention: the Super Medicos, the Invaders, the Caribbean Ex ..read more

9. 1978.12.17 - Lucy Kayama/Tomi Aoyama vs. Mami Kumano/Sylvia Hackney (2/3 Falls) K: I’ve mentioned her a couple of times prior to this but this our chronological footage debut on Tomi Aoyama. She was also part of that 1st official class of 1977. She was a spectacular athlete in an era where they hadn’t quite worked out how to incorporate her kind of athleticism into pro-wrestling. She’s like a 1970s version of Dante Martin where it’s more about good she is at basic things like jumps than anything much more complex. We have a basic start where the heels just jump Tomi. Lucy tries to tag in ..read more

  Tangled Up in You 1. Daniel Makabe vs. Zack Sabre Jr. Prestige Wrestling 4/14 ER: I didn't plan on following Dan around on tour like I was following late era Dead, but after he worked the main event of our DEAN~!!! show last week and I saw he was working Zack Sabre in Portland the next weekend, I checked plane tickets just to see how feasible it would be. You now those plane ticket deals you hear about but never actually experience? The kind where someone you know makes it sound like an airline paid them $1,500 and gave them free flight vouchers to anywhere in the world just for ..read more

7. Darby Allin vs. Brian Cage AEW Rampage 8/11  ER: Maybe one day I will tire of watching Darby Allin fall in ways I don't think the human body should fall, but this tunnel is black with no sign of any light at the end. Darby Allin appears to not just lean into bad landings, he seems to relish aiming the plane directly at them. I can't get past it. Darby has this Low Ki precision to his landings, but Low Ki's landings were works of athletic physics that made his body spring across the mat and ropes with a violent control. Darby seems to have the same incredible control but opts to m ..read more

Benito Gardini/Al Williams vs. Cyclone Anaya/Walter Palmer NWA Chicago 5/26/50 MD: This was a delightful 27 minutes, with some clipping, but you get so much of it, you hardly care. My buddy Ohtani's Jacket got here first and said I'd love Gardini, and guess what, I do. He likened him to a 1950s Porky, and I can see that on appearance and over the top antics, but, of course, with a deep Italians stereotype. He was great at getting driven down on his face (at one point the commentary said his nose would soon be like a wet donut), at getting caught up in the ropes and on top of the ropes, jiggl ..read more