Assorted World of Sport

 

Steve Wright vs. Brian Maxine, 12/2/1972

Steve Wright was just a skinny young man here, but what an athlete. Maxine was like the British Jerry Lawler. He came to the ring wearing a crown and threw flyers into the audience. This was a match that drew nuclear heat. Maxine tuned down the flamboyance in the ring and was just a hard nosed, knuckle-grinding heel. His use of his knuckles and forearms to grind the hell out of Wright reminded me of a certain Tony Oliver. He grinded his knuckles into Wrights kidneys, his eyes, the forearm across the throat, and the crowd just hated him for it. It‘s a wonderful thing to see a crowd eat up a subtle heels antics like this. Also really dug the subtle hanging choke he did. It was very unique, violent looking stuff. The first round is mostly both guys attempting holds and cartwheeling and rolling out of them. When Maxine first takes a back bump the crowd just erupts. By the second round they were rabid to see Wright put an armhold on Maxine. It was true peak of the art of face/heel working stuff. Wright played the role of the hot headed young athlete extremely well. He had some great looking flying headbutts and took some really good looking bumps. The finish was great as Wright is leading 1-0 but twists his leg on a dropkick. He tries to keep going but Maxine takes him down into an almost PANCRASE leglock and Wright has to quick after going 1-1 with the champion. Some people find the injury finishes in WoS word but I thought it was a good way to have a young guy look strong in his defeat to the champion. Whole match was just tremendously well put together and the heat was magic.

Masambula vs. Tony Charles, 9/2/1972

I was expecting Masambula, the African Witchdoctor to be this really hammy character. I mean, British Wrestling had guys getting hypnotized in the ring and attacking their partners. But this was a fairly straight forward match. Not a ton of shtick from Masambule, just some mild verbal jokes and a lot of wrestling. It was almost a disappointment. The wrestling was very nice, though. Masambula had a cool way of doing things. Dug all the leg grapevines and headstands. Charles was rocking the sideburns and as usual looked like quite the grappler. The match remained a friendly contest and never really ramped up in intensity but Masambula was worth seeing.

Assorted Rare NJPW TV

 This channel is uploading old AJPW and NJPW TV material, most of which is pretty rare. It seems that he takes all NJPW videos offline after a few hours, so download everything as soon as you can.

Antonio Inoki vs. Bearcat Wright, NJPW 10/31/1975

The legendary Bearcat Wright was quite old and past his prime here, although he still was able to look like a menacing dude. He had great looking headbutts, and his choking actually looked really vicious. This felt more like an introduction to the character of Bearcat which sets up a bigger rematch - the brawling after the bell may have been more exciting than anything in the match. Still, footage of Bearcat Wright is a treasure.

Steve Wright vs. Kengo Kimura 12/5/1977

Only about 4 minutes show, but lots of fun, tight wrestling in those 4 minutes. You get the sense Wright had no problem going even against opponents who weren’t familiar with European style wrestling. Wright wins with a super cool kip up into a pin combo.

Tatsumi Fujinami & Osamu Kido vs. Tony Rocco & Chavo Guerrero NJPW 10/13/1978

Real gem of a match. +20 minutes of high end 70s junior wrestling. The 70s style really was awesome, basically a mix of carny matwork, cool suplexes and occasional neat highspots. Really loved Tony Rocco in this, who is such a great carny grappler. Also really dug young spry Chavo, and the Japanese guys are super solid too. We start with about 10 minutes of cool grappling, basically a lot of cool armwhips and pin attempts with some neat scrambling takedowns and blocked moves. Fujinami looks sharp as hell here and throws some great dropkicks. This is 2/3 falls and every fall has a good finish. Loved the crazy 70s dives and big bump at the end. This pretty much rocked.

Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs. Antonio Inoki NJPW 3/16/1989

Didn’t even know this match happened in 1989. It wasn’t an epic, but a nice slice of super enjoyable pro wrestling as you expect from these two. Inoki has great chemistry with Fujiwara on the mat, and he has such a great aura and feel of danger to him, even compared to a guy like Fujiwara. Some very nice matwork here before Fujiwara decides to punch Inoki in the face. These guys continue to throw hands, and when these guys do it it’s way compelling because they actually look like they don’t want to get hit. Fujiwara ends up trying to cut down Inoki using some rough tactics and his hard head, only for Inoki to destroy him very quickly in Inoki-like fashion. Inokis Worlds Biggest Badass shtick matches up really well against Fujiwaras tricky counter artist act.