Welcome to the fourth part of the “Quick Guide to the Four Pillars of Heaven”, our 5 part look at the awesomeness of 90’s All Japan Pro Wrestling and the four (unofficially five) men who pioneered the King’s Road style of pro wrestling and lead the company in a decade of sellouts and critical praise. Today, as we examine the final official pillar, let’s quickly take a look at one of the most…

Welcome back to our 3rd part of the “A Quick Guide to the Four Pillars of Heaven”, our 5 part look at the awesomeness of 90’s All Japan Pro Wrestling and the four (unofficially five) men who came together to create art during that wonderful decade. Last week I spent time talking about the King’s Road style, so this week, let’s talk about another important of AJPW as a whole, the gaijin.   Gaijins…

Before we begin this week, I would like to apologize for last week, as I had mistakenly decided to name the article “The Five Pillars of Heaven”. The problem was there was no such thing and that by writing that, I was doing a disservice to you readers as there is no such thing as “The Five Pillars”. It was only the four, but since I wanted to include Akiyama later on, I thought to change the…

If there is one thing I will never shut up about in terms of praising, it might very well be All Japan Pro Wrestling in the late Baba era. From the Genichiro Tenryu and Jumbo Tsuruta match on June 5th, 1989 to the June 13th, 2000 announcement of Misawa leaving and forming NOAH, I am hard pressed to find a better pro wrestling company that that of AJPW during that time. It just wasn’t that the…

Welcome back to part two of our IVPVideos Puroresu Sampler DVD review. Last time we took a look at 4 really good matches to start you off on your journey into Japanese wrestling. Let’s see if the other 6 matches will carry on the quality. Match #5: Takeshi Morishima and Mohammed Yone vs. The Kings of Wrestling (Chris Hero and Claudio Castagnoli) on January 25th, 2009 for NOAH The First Navigation…

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…

To paraphrase my favorite novel of all time, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,: “The G1 Climax is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly hugely mindbogglingly big it is. I mean you may think BOLA or the Young Lion’s Cup is pretty long, but that’s just peanuts to the G1.” The G1 (Grade One) Climax has been the annual round robin tournament for New Japan since 1991. The tournament…

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…

Welcome back to my look at New Japan’s upcoming Dominion show this July 5th. Last time in part 1, I predicted, among other matches, reDRagon would capture the Jr Tag Titles, Sakuraba would turn Shibata into a pretzel, and Kushida would clean up the cleaner. Now we are focused on the 5 main upper card matches that have been building up for more than 5 months. With the three main singles titles,…

For the first time since Wrestle Kingdom 9 back in January, every title in New Japan will be defended on July 5th. Dominion has proved to be a big event in the past, but this year, instead of going into the Kizuna Road event, after July 5th, we are going straight into the 25th G1 Climax. So to say that this show is important for momentum into the Climax is an understatement. But with six big…

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…

With the explosion of New Japan Pro Wrestling’s popularity in the west in the last year or so, there has been a reinvigoration of interest in Puroresu not seen since, I would guess, the ROH/NOAH shows back in 2005 to 2006. While Puro fever is reaching a new high point, it’s also important to look at the other companies in Japan and see how they will fair with this new audience interest that now…