Going through Shodates Best Matches of the 90s List Part 1

 I was a fan of Shodates original PWO message board run. Troll or not, his lists were refreshing and a much needed shot in the arm for dying message board culture, and I'm having fun going through his sometimes baffling, sometimes spot-on match recommendations.

The List

87. Minoru Tanaka vs. Satoshi Yoneyama (BattlARTS 1/13/1996)

BattlARTS begins. And the world would never be the same! I probably would've skipped this, but Mr. Shaw Dahtay rated this as the 87^th best match of the 90s. Will that is probably a weeeee bit too high, it's a fun little squash. Basically Yoneyama is useless on the mat so Tanaka uses him as a punching bag and dumps him with impressive suplexes. Normally I dread watching Tanaka but he he looked like a prick here and really roughed up Yoneyama with brutal knees and shotais, so that was refreshing. Yoneyama gets pretty fired up flurry hitting his abisegiri (his one good spot) but is soon put to pasture. Short, violent, kind of out of nowhere, a fitting beginning to the promotion.

86. Minoru Tanaka vs. Shoichi Funaki (BattlARTS 10/4/1996)

Rated the 86^th best match of the entire 1990s by our man Shouda Tey. This is one of the more baffling choices, as it's a short outburst from Tanaka, before Funaki takes over with a bunch of leg submissions only to get tapped out by a surprise armbar. Effective formula and everything looked good particulary the opening near KO but there was just not a lot of meat to it and Funakis leglocks weren't super interesting.

95. Minoru Tanaka vs. Shoichi Funaki (PWFG 2/28/1994)

The 95^th greatest match of the 1990s as rated by Sh'oh D'Atay. This was a lot better to me than their match 2 years later, but what do I know? This is very much a PWFG undercard match but they show more spirit than probably during their entire BattlARTS run. They really work for the submissions and there are some great leg grabs and chokes. Tanaka hits a plausible shootstyle dropkick and drills Funaki for a near fall with a big judo throw. Watching them here is so different from the soft uninspired matwork they'd do later. Nifty finish. Really more of a unique snapshot of what could have been, as I could see these guys having a really great match if they kept working like this, but it's a cool match.

245. Akira Hokuto & Toshie Uematsu vs. Kyoko Ichiki & KAORU, GAEA 1/19/1997

This was #245 on our friend shodate's list of the Top 250 90s matches. Good thing because otherwise I probably would've never watched this. This was fantastic and instantly became one of my favourite joshi matches of the year. Lots of cool uncooperative exchanges throughout, and the match told a good story. You had Hokuto being two classes above both opponents (and making that very clear), Uematsu refusing to back down and wrestling a class above hers, and Kaoru and Ichiki trying everything to gain the advantage and topple their opponents. There were some basic spots such as biting, stomping eye rake or hair pulling toss which felt really violent here. There was also plenty of awesome receipt spots, especially whenever Hokuto felt disrespected, she would step up and show who's boss usually by booting someone in the face. There was also plenty of head droppin death moves and crushing diving attacks. Despite that the match didn't feel like overkill and ended at just the perfect spot. Little weak transitions here maybe, but yeah all things considered I enjoyed the hell out of this.