Interview This was interview was filmed on June 1, 2013, the night before CHIKARA’s “Aniversario: Never Compromise” where the company shut down. It is conducted by Leonard F. Chikarason. While I enjoyed Kingston’s first installment of the Best on the Indies, I found this to be a much more fulfilling watch. Chikarason did a fantastic job in his research and in chronological order touches on all of…

There are 5 ways to watch Japanese wrestling in the US: Get an IPTV for $130 a month and watch shows on Samurai, Gaora, etc.; import the incredibly pricy DVD’s over from Japan; wait until someone uploads to it Youtube or Dailymotion or Veoh; stream it via NJPW World; or my personal favorite, buy via websites that offer burned DVDs of shows. There are two prominent sites I highly recommend to buy…

Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to the final part of the “Quick Guide to Puro Promotions”. Before we get into the promotion, I just want to say thank you for not only reading the “Quick Guides to Puro Promotions”, but also enjoying them. Only one promotion is on the docket, but it’s a pretty good one. Pro Wrestling Zero1 ZERO1 is one of those promotions that I have talked about before in my…

Welcome back to part three of my quick look at Japanese promotions. Apologies for missing last week, as I had surgery on my foot and could not get the article out in time. Last time we talked about the unintentional hilarity of IGF, the fast paced and awesome Dragon Gate, and the sport entertainment entity known as Wrestle-1. This week, let’s start off talking about a promotion that encapsulates…

Welcome back to part 2 of our quick guide to Puro promotions currently active in Japan. Last time we examined the big three of NOAH, All Japan, and New Japan. This week we’ll examine the three other big companies, Inoki Genome Federation, Wrestle-1, and Dragon Gate.   INOKI GENOME FEDERATION During my overview of New Japan, I mentioned how Inoki, after leaving his position with New Japan, fled to…

Call it a “smarkish” pet peeve of mine, but I have never liked it when people just group all of pro wrestling in a country or as a whole into just one company. The ire I draw when people think that WWE is all what pro wrestling is is the same annoyance I get whenever someone groups all of Japanese wrestling into just New Japan and the “strong style”. The reason why is because I feel like pro…

Last week I talked about a man by the name of Hideki Suzuki, who I called one of the hottest prospects outside of New Japan. His 2015 is off to a hot start, and I’m excited to see what happens the rest of the year. However, there is still a giant world of puro out there and I want to put spotlight a number of underrated talents. Here are some of the other wrestlers outside of New Japan who are…