6/1/2025

Recommendations From A History Man

In his latest look back, Peter Edge takes us to some of the wrestling world’s most historic venues and discusses a classic match for each building.

Tennis has Wimbledon, Golf has Augusta, Indycar has Indianapolis, and pro wrestling….actually has multiple meccas when you think of it. In finer detail, the three pillar countries of pro wrestling – the US, Japan and Mexico – have arenas that wrestlers and fans look at as must-go-to destinations (Madison Square Garden, Budokan Hall and Arena México respectively), and in this edition of my Recommendations series, I look at matches that go down into the folklore of those arenas, plus one from Korakuen voted for by my friends.

Bret Hart Vs Owen Hart- WrestleMania X – Madison Square Garden

Owen Hart might be best known by the younger generation as the name of the tournament Hangman can’t seem to w…oh, I need to edit this, don’t I?

Trust me, it was a very amusing joke comparing Hangman to Tottenham, with a light-hearted dig to our friend & newsletter editor Emi, which she wouldn’t have murdered me in my sleep about, for sure.

(Editor’s Note: Still debating it.)

Owen Hart might also be known to non-wrestling fans for his last day on Earth, as the subject has popped up on many a “Most Disturbing Moments On Live TV” video on YouTube and is on the Mt. Rushmore of “Vince McMahon being a total scumbag” moments. However, Owen really should be best known as a fantastic professional wrestler who would have flourished more in this generation than the generations he was part of, and this match shows that to its fullest – the best match Madison Square Garden has ever seen.

After Owen turned heel on his big brother Bret by kicking his leg out of his leg, the stage was set for a brother vs brother match which would kick off WrestleMania X.

After Ospreay and Fletcher at World’s End, people (Dave Meltzer) said it was the greatest opening match of a PPV (I mean, it’s Dave Meltzer talking about Will Ospreay. Like seriously, I expect one day on WOR that Meltzer will say that the Pakistan/India tensions will be solved by Will Ospreay alone).

Anyway, the benchmark for this debate is the Bret/Owen match at Wrestlemania X at MSG.

First off, I need to give love to one of the great wrong announcing fake-outs of all time. A ring announcer who isn’t Howard Finkal says “from Calgary, Alberta, Canada,” and the crowd goes wild…and then Owen Hart’s music plays. Trolling when done right is brilliant.

The match they are telling is that both men want to make this a technical match. Bret, because he doesn’t want to hurt his brother no matter what he’s done to him, and Owen because he wants to beat Bret in the national sport of the Hart family.

Of course, Owen as a brilliant P.O.S. heel celebrates every little victory like he’s just won the Europa League and uses every shortcut he can. Bret ends up sinking to Owen’s level by using strikes.

The brothers put on a match that can be easily used as a guide to technical wrestling. They reversed each other’s moves, and they used inverted versions of moves the opponent used earlier in the match.

Owen is showcased on being on the level of his older brother to the point that Bret has to go above “Bret’s rope” to hit a Superplex.

The finish is expertly done. Owen shows that he has learnt everything from/about his brother by countering a Bret victory roll with a pin to win.

One thing I love about the finish is the palpable feeling of shock: MSG is quiet, Vince McMahon is shocked on commentary, heck, even Owen is shocked as he shows three fingers to referee Tim White as if he can’t believe it himself.

One thing that has been debated amongst my circle of friends in the wrestling bubble is the minimalism vs maximalism debate in in-ring presentation, and while wrestling at its heart endears itself to the viewer more in the maximalism presentation, matches like this are an endorsement for minimalism.

It’s an easy *****. In my opinion, five star matches should only be that when they are perfect and this has no faults whatsoever. An absolute triumph of a match that everyone needs to see to show why people do revere Bret and Owen.

Or if you prefer rubbish late 90s/early 00s British pop band covers of 80s classics like Atomic Kitten’s attempt at The Tide Is High, I’d recommend Dax Harwood vs Cash Wheeler that time they wrestled each other during The Owen.

Genichiro Tenryu Vs Jumbo Tsuruta- Budokan Hall- June 5, 1989

As someone who loves the Kings Road eras of AJPW to the point that I have a sweatshirt and a hoodie with the Four Pillars of All Japan in the 90s in my wardrobe (if you’re at a Rev Pro event and see some bloke in a beard wearing the anime Four Pillars jumper from Post Wrestling, that’s me), I have to point out to people that the Kings Road really didn’t start with any of Misawa, Kobashi, Kawada or Taue but with Jumbo Tsuruta and Genichiro Tenryu, the two big Native stars of the company circa 1980s.

The pair would wrestle each other throughout the late 80s during which time, AJPW would unify the 3 singles titles in the company – the PWF, NWA International and NWA United National Titles. Jumbo Tsuruta, the ace of All Japan, was the first champion and after a first defence on 4/20 that saw a wonky finish when Jumbo’s powerbomb genuinely K.O’d Tenryu enough that the ref counted to three cutting the match shorter than expected, the rematch was set for June in Budokan.

While All Japan didn’t have a single event to call their “granddaddy of them all” unlike other promotions, of the seven shows per year that were hosted in Budokan Hall, June in Budokan having the biggest matches of the year in the main event wasn’t a coincidence, as you’ll learn as this series goes on.

This match is a perfect prologue for what was to come from AJPW in the 90’s. The style we see from the main eventers of that era is seen in the end of this. The bombs from both guys from the halfway point, the near falls they elicit and the roars alongside them are something that shows what DNA from this time has been sprinkled onto today’s product.

The roar when Tenryu kicks out of a Tsuruta Lou Thesz Press shows is loud but dwarfed when Tenryu kicks out of a backdrop suplex, a move synonymous with ending matches in Japan.

Tenryu’s bombs then one by one wear down Tsuruta with every strike, the folding powerbomb being the one to make sure Jumbo’s energy bar is fully empty.

This match would win MOTY in many years around 1989 but it had to be the year of Flair and Steamboat. If you were to start a journey down the Kings Road, this is the set off point, and with many landmarks to gawk at along the way, Tenryu and Tsuruta on June the 5th, 1989, is a good way to see from what the Pillars molded their greatness. *****

Atlantis vs Villano III- Arena México- March 17, 2000

The Atlantis/Villano match in 2000 would end up winning the MOTY in the Observer Awards, making it the only lucha match to win the MOTY award in the awards history.

As previously mentioned, my knowledge of lucha is up there with Paul Levesque based on the post-WrestleMania press conference he gave. So I cede knowledge of the build up to the Club Lucha YouTube channel for context. I would definitely recommend you look at his video looking into the Atlantis-Villiano feud of 1998-2000.

The match starts off weirdly with Atlantis taking exception with the referee who is in the ring, who – on further research – is a ref that favours the heel in general during matches. According to Club Lucha, he was a referee appointed by the (kayfabe, I think) commission to referee the match.

So the ruling body put a corrupt referee in charge of the most important match in Lucha at the time, a mask vs mask match between two of the biggest names in CMLL. Remember that next time you moan about FIFA or UEFA.

A start that sees both men trying to achieve superiority through matwork explodes into life with a filthy tope suicida from Villano the third, in which an accidental head clash sees Atlantis oozing blood.

An opinion I heard on a podcast that reviewed this match from two wrestling fans that went back to watch Meltzer 5 star matches and Observer MOTY said that the difference between this match and a match that they grew up watching from WWE was that both men are trying to win this from the outset.

Villano is trying submission after submission while Atlantis’ only route to victory at this point is a flash pin. It leads to the final 5 mins centred around their submission finishers, with the end coming from one of those submissions.

The post match is great. Villano plays the best babyface – even though he has lived up to his name in the last two years – and the unmasking is an occasion that was worth the hype.

But was it the MOTY in 2000? Not for me, Clive. (It’s Aja Kong vs KAORU for me.)

It’s really good, but the crowd being 50/50 – when it’s obvious that Atlantis is the technico and Villano is the rudo – jars slightly. The search for the victory from second one is cool to watch and it’s ****¾ is deserved, but MOTY? It was fifth on my list for that year.

Manami Toyota vs Kyoko Inoue- Korakuen Hall- May 7, 1995

Korakuen Hall is one of the great cathedrals of pro wrestling history but its size is more of a village hall compared to the Tokyo Dome.

Now you’re probably asking, “Why did you not do a Dome match, Pete?”

Well, my friends in my group chat voted for this match ahead of Kensuke Sasaki/Kenta Kobashi in the Dome in a poll. So they made me watch a one-hour match on the weekend where we had the Monaco GP/Indy 500/Coca Cola 600 and Double or Nothing (and I had to sort out my dad’s car going to the garage with clutch problems when our two local places that we’ve always used don’t do work on clutches anymore).

I think my friends don’t actually like me.

To be fair though, Toyota vs Inoue rocks.

In a 1995 that saw 19 different promotions put on a show in Korakuen Hall (compare that to 19 different companies that put on shows in the last 6 weeks of 2024 in the same building), Toyota and Inoue was easily the best match in the building in 1995 and there wasn’t a better match for the rest of the 90s.

Despite the 1 hour 3 minute run time of the video above telling you this goes long…the first minute tells you that there’s going to be no feeling-out process, as they just go into the signature style that made Joshi so loved in this time period.

20 minutes in they are doing near falls that the 2,100 fans in Korakuen are biting on. Same at 30 mins.

As the hour goes on, there are awesome moments that punctuate throughout.

Toyota does her most elegant springboard dive to the outside. Inoue does a big swing on the outside, with the announcer getting on the mic shouting what has to be “get out of the f****** way” as they get close to the front row with it (I don’t speak Japanese so I don’t know for certain). Toyota gets a table and proceeds to splash on a prone Inoue on top of it and of course it doesn’t break. There is also that lariat from Inoue in the final 10 minutes.

From 35 minutes on, every convention that fans have known gets challenged with the near falls and submissions. Finishers get kicked out of at 35 mins. Submissions draw the fans in. The crowd at 50/50 in support is what a Korakuen crowd sounds like when they are watching an all-timer.

The sounds of gasps at the 45 minute mark turn into exasperation with every call that gets nearer to the 60 minutes. The final few minutes see Toyota selling the exhaustion of such an effort, a result of the frantic nature of the bout, brilliantly.

This is the second best hour time-limit draw I’ve ever seen (Omega/Okada at Dominion will always be No.1 I think), on the basis that they don’t wrestle it as an hour draw from the get-go. The only downer is the final spot that looked really scary but the person who stayed down after the 60 minutes were over got back into action merely a week later. *****

By Peter Edge

Retro News

Judge Angela Lucero of Multnomah County, Oregon has ruled that former WWF wrestler Billy Jack Haynes is unfit to stand trial following charges of second-degree murder and unlawful use of a weapon against Janette Becraft, his wife at the time of her death.

Haynes, real name William Albert Haynes, has been held at the Multnomah County Detention Center since 2024 and was due to go on trial in December 2025 but has now been ordered to be transferred to the Oregon State Hospital, meaning the trial date could be pushed back. The decision was made by the judge after Haynes had been evaluated and both the prosecutors and the defense agreed him to be unfit. A follow up hearing occurred on May 20th.

The family of Janette Becraft have since launched a civil suit against Haynes, citing that the victim had been the victim of physical, mental and financial abuse by the defendant prior to her death, with the suit seeking $750,000 in damages. Portland’s KPTV reports that it is also alleged that Haynes made Becraft cut herself off from her family, withdraw money from her accounts and liquidate her retirement funds after coercing her into marriage.

TMZ reported that Hulk Hogan underwent neck surgery on May 14th, in what was described as a “little fusion procedure”. Hogan’s representatives told the outlet that the procedure had been successful and that this was an outpatient procedure that saw him released the same day.

The International Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame announced Tony Atlas & Rocky Johnson as their tag team induction for 2025. They will be inducted alongside Trish Stratus.

The Cauliflower Alley Club are inducting El Fantasma as their Lucha Libre inductee for 2025. The induction will be part of 3 days of celebrations between the 18th and 20th of August in Las Vegas and will be their 59th annual meeting.

A Wrestler You Should Know About: Chi Chi

Never Judge A Book By Its Cover, even if that book’s entrance music is Barbie Girl by Aqua.

By Chris Whitehead

NOAH Star Navigation

Kaito Kiyomiya made for an electric challenger to OZAWA in the main event of “Star Navigation” in Korakuen Hall as 1,562 roared through 23 minutes of action, with their allegiances changing throughout the bout.

WWE Saturday Night’s Main Event

David Hayter takes a look at the ups and downs from WWE’s event on Saturday night.