KinchStalker

To explain: Kimura has loaded his leg supporter with a metal bar, which was discovered after the match.

Somehow that would still make this analogy way less dumb than the one I was spitballing to a friend in 2020, where the Super Generation Army were the Trailer Park Boys and Jumbo and Taue were Mr. Lacey and Randy. (We all had to find ways to process COVID trauma, okay?)

Ever since Matt told me this the other day I've been imagining Kawada as Fredo. Like he's in the booking meeting when Baba makes him drop the Triple Crown to Kobashi in 98 for his first defense, going "It ain't the way I wanted it! I CAN HANDLE THINGS, I'M voice crack OVER!"

Kikuchi is going to get hurt soon and won't factor into the tags for a little while. I could maybe see that being an issue for you.

His contract was set to expire and Baba had a multi-year deal lined up. But Kabuki turned in his notice two days after winning the title.

At some point in the future, I will be sharing more of what I know about this. In case you don't know, I have a thread on PWO that drives deep into the early years of NJPW. Once my laptop is fixed, I will be able to resume research and writing for the next post, which will cover Inoki's 1974 match against Kintaro Oki but will start with a bio of him. It will include the story of how he came into the territory with JWA backing in 1965 and how Jang Yeong-chol killed his career by exposing the business.

Edit: board just isn't working with me here, sorry. Chon Kyu-deok, one of the two men who started South Korean wrestling. https://i.imgur.com/Eaagn0Q_d.webp I wrote a thread about him here: https://twitter.com/KinchStalker/status/1602060079335079936?t=Bm0FgZoxYcgp68n-3XaD7Q&s=19

My instinct is to tell you to watch through April '91, but we'll see how you feel at the end of the year.

Gotta love that Ishinriki decided to go with SWS despite his big brother being All Japan's bus driver. Are you going to cover the next night's show? It's not at the Tokyo Dome but it's arguably a better stopping point. By the time of the next tour, Tenryu has taken over as president and they're looking to get Ashura back.

He came out to an horn-driven instrumental cover there. Only New Japan actually licensed the real thing.

Kinda disappointed that Kojika didn't show up rocking this. Jumbo actually took a dig at his fashion sense in his autobiography.

Lead announcer is Shigeo Sugiura. This was broadcast on TV Tokyo, so Sugiura was brought on as he had been the lead announcer when they carried the IWE (back when they were Tokyo 12 Channel). Mustache guy is Great Kojika! The woman is Cutie Suzuki! Far left is Koji Kitao.

You're in for a treat re:Fujinami/Kimura whenever you get around to 1987.

Michiaki Yoshimura, Yoshinosato, Toyonobori and Giant Baba in an ad for Guinness beer, c. November 1965. This was RIGHT before Toyonobori left the JWA.

Before I became a puroresu nerd, I was a capital-C Cinephile. My attention span has plummeted in the last five years so I haven't watched movies that often as of late. But this is a big deal for me. I was a huge Godard fan. And not just the 60s stuff, either (although Pierrot through Weekend might be my favorite stretch of his filmography), I mean the hard shit. Histoire(s) du cinéma, Dziga Vertov Group, the 80s comeback, et cetera. I had even been going back to some of the video stuff like Numero deux lately, because I was considering making an AJPW history video essay series and was looking for inspiration to expand the grammar beyond other work in that vein. (Yes, I realize how dumb this sounds.) Most of my other favorite directors were dead by the time I got into them. Tarkovsky, Fassbinder, Bresson(, Oshima, Angelopoulos, Mizoguchi, Ozu, and on and on). My other favorite French New Wavers, Resnais and Rivette, also died around the time I entered my big film phase. (Also, sadly, Akerman.) But Godard, (like until recently, Varda,) was still hanging on. I admired the late modernist that he had grown into, even if it infuriated others (and even if my brain probably couldn't focus enough to watch that stuff today). I think I'm going to put Passion on tonight. Always liked that one. RIP

I've only seen this moment from the match, as someone GIF'd it and posted it to Reddit about a year ago. But I love it so much. Kevin doesn't have the cultural understanding to get that Kimura was provoking him to tag Inoki in (thus putting himself above Kevin in the hierarchy), so when he whips him he just bounces off the ropes.

Two notes. Mutoh claims that he stopped using it after his second excursion (the first Muta run) because he'd heard it in a strip club. His mid-90s theme "Triumph" is, to put it charitably, a very clear homage. Basically sounds like The Final Countdown refracted through, like, Symphony of the Night.

Recently learned that New Japan had Billy Jack Haynes come out to this in 1985.

Fun fact: IIRC, the idea with his helmet was advertising space. (Nobody bit.)

I see that costume and just think "TETSUOOOOOOOOO".

I suspect that an issue is the dearth of high-quality images you can find online of older Japanese wrestlers without searching their actual (that is, Japanese) names.

"You could not live with your own lack of knowledge. Where did that bring you? Back to me."

Oh to be a fly on the wall when you see the file length. The monkey's paw curls for you tonight, Matt.

Brody coming back to work on this tour was a big deal. He and Snuka had bounced on the last day of the last tour of 85 and gotten banned from the company for it, but had reconciled with Nooj (for the time being).