Help Please

[ShinzakiFan]

I wanna get into puroresu, but I have some questions I'd like some help with.

1) Which is the better puroresu league and why?

2) Who is the most popular star in Japan right now?

3) Who is the most technically impressive to watch?

4) Where can I buy puroresu DVD's, and which ones do you recommend?

Thanks.

[Muiyan]

Hello, Shinzaki. So you wantto get into puroresu? Very well, welcome aboard!

1.) See, since there are so many promotions in Japan right now and they all have different styles, it's really hard to pick which is the "best"! If you like very classical, technical, and hard-hitting matches, then you got to go with New Japan Pro Wrestling (NJPW)and All Japan Pro Wrestling (AJPW). Also try Pro Wrestling NOAH, which is a promotion that defected from AJPW.

If you enjoy technical JUNIORS (read: light heavyweight) action, then also go NJPW. High-flying crazy actions would have to be Toryumon, T2P, or Michinoku Pro.

For deathmatches and stuff, try FMW, Big Japan, and uh... i can't think of anything else right now.

OVERALL, however, best start with shows before the turn of year 2000, as the 90's puroresu is the best stuff on earth.

2.) Who is most popular? I don't know. Mutoh, mebbe. No wait, it's Bob Sapp! No wait, it's Inoki! No wait, it's Chono! No wait...

3.) The most technically impressive...I *really* can't say.

4.)There ARE no puroresu DVDs, as far as i know. You'll have to settle for tapes, and um... hopefully the others will tell you where to get yer tapes.

Have fun!

[Tradewynd]

Well, I'll take a stab at this one.

1.) Personally, I like All Japan right now. From a mark standpoint, I love Mutoh and will always be faithful to his work. If you've ever seen Beyond The Mat and remember Paul E.'s "it" speech Mutoh is living breathing "it." I really like Kojima as well, and a card with those two on it is enough for me. Of course, you have to be careful what you get with All Japan, because you could also get stuck watching Goldberg squash a real wrestler. Maybe that's your thing, but personally it makes me want to puke. I like the rest of the gaijins over there, The Gladiator(Mike Awesome) is fantastic in my book, and anyone who rips his ring work is forgetting all of the restrictions the WWE put on him. It got to point where he could pretty much just kick and punch. I also like Saturn a lot as well, as he just joined the company.

As far as New Japan goes, I have a love-hate opinion of the company right now. I absolutely love Nagata, and his IWGP Title reign has been a highlight of the last year for me. They always have solid Jr. action, although I'd wish they would book Candido more, or at least have him book more. I'm not an overly huge fan of New Japan's style of the worked shoot, and shows that focus on it are a real downer for me personally. Joanie Laurer is also toward the top of my poopy list. I don't mind her fiance when he brings his work boots, but that...thing...I grant no quarter. Basically - Nagata, juniors, Tanahashi, Chono good everything else bad.

Zero-One is another one that I really like. I'm big on Ohtani, Tanaka, Hashimoto and Corino(Zero-One's 4 bigggest stars) so I can't recommend them enough. If you're a fan of any one of those guys I'd at least get this year's Fire Festival.

Toryumon would be my recommendation for junior action. It's Ultimo Dragon's company, and in my opinion he's the greatest junior to ever grace the squared circle. All of his top students work for the company, and I've never seen a bad Toryumon show. Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever seen a show from them I didn't really like. Totally solid action. The only thing better would be M-Pro during the heyday of Kaientai DX.

If it's garbage wrestling you're looking for, try FMW from the mid 90s. I'm not big on the style myself, but guys like Hayabusa, Tanaka and Megumi Kudo were actually able to tell stories during most of their garbage matches. The early 90s stuff with Onita is also good to see for historical purposes. I personally think BIg Japan is absolute crap, and I love Men's Teoh. IWA Japan has never put on a good show to my knowledge, although they do have a strong cult following among American fans. Their King of Deathmatch Tournament was all right for garbage stuff, but toher than that it's pretty sad.

2.) It's hard to say who is the most popular right now, as there are a bunch of guys with a strong following. Nagata is very over, the musketeers are always over, the Tanaka/Otani team is really popular, Inoki always pops the crowd, Bob Sapp has his fans, for some reason people cheer Goldberg...I don't know that there's a single most popular guy, but those would be my guesses. And I suppose you could make an argument for Steve Corino, considering he can get a pop out of the crowd by calling them crap farmers.

3.) Most technically impressive? That's tough to call. I would suggest tracking down the tape of the Tiger Mask/Dynamite Kid feud. That was incredible and you really tell how they shaped the modern style. Guys like Ultimo, Liger and Sasuke were all very impressive in their time. Dan Severn is also really good when he steps into the ring, although most fans over here chant boring while he's busy trying to tear all of someone's joints out. If I had to choose I'd go with Nagata, but there are a lot of talented guys out there.

4.) Anyone who tells you there are no puro DVDs is LYING to you. There are indeed puroresu DVDs. You can get them from establishments like amazon.co.jp. However, if you're unfamiliar with Japan, DVDs over there are REALLY expensive. There also tends to be a habit of only releasing part of a show on DVD, or splitting a big show on 2 DVDs. And since they normally sell for at least $40US plus shipping each, I can guarantee all of us stick with tapes. If you ever do decide to import, make sure you can play region 2 DVDs.

[Muiyan]

Oops, forgot about those commercial release puro DVDs. I was thinking of cheap alternative DVDs.

[Tradewynd]

It really is surprising that puro DVDs aren't ripped and bootlegged. I would think there has to be a market for it. This forum proves that some people care about puroresu. I've looked around for other sources of puro from just about every asian country, VCD or DVD, legit or otherwise, and the only thing I've ever found were 5 New Japan VCDs. And the kicker about these has to be that the packaging is so poorly designed that the discs get scratched just by being put in the jacket. I opened some of mine from the factory and the screen was shaking so much it gave me a headache. I was able to burn perfect copies of them, but it really isn't the point...

Anyway, if anyone ever does find a bootleg source of puro DVDs, I would appreciate letting the whole forum know. It's not like the promoters are making money from the tapes we're buying now anyway, so we might as well get a product.

[ShinzakiFan]

Wow, thanks guys. I appreciate your help (and any more is welcome!)

Where do you all get your tapes from? Do I have to order from Japan?

[Chris]

I get my tapes from highspots.com you can also check out jtapes.com.

[Tradewynd]

Highspots and Jtapes are both good. Especially look out for sales from Jtapes. They recently had 5 for $25 over Christmas and I didn't hear until it was over. Grr...I hate it when stuff like that happens. Sign up for their mailing list immediately. Golden Boy is also really good, and he has some great deals on eBay every so often. He sells under the name robfoot. His bundles are always great deals, especially the 100 hour sets he puts up. RF Video is a complete waste of your time. Not only are they expensive, their shipping rates are ridiculous and the quality of their product is suspect at best. I STRONGLY recommend you avoid buying from them. If you want a tape of their's try trading, or better yet, buy it from the guy who sells videos at your local indy. If you would want those VCDs I got mine from videomas.com awhile back, and I'm sure they still have them. It was solid stuff. Pro-wrestling.com also lists a bunch of tape traders, you may have luck finding another good tape source there, and if you do, please share it with the rest of the forum.

I don't think you'll want to order tapes from Japan, VHS has traditionally always been more expensive than laserdiscs in Japan (I recently found a Japanese video of Macross Do You Remember Love at a local video game store and the retail price was almost $120 with the current exchange rate.) VHS also continues to be more expensive than DVD today. The only saving grace is that it's at least NTSC. Now, if you can somehow subscribe to Japanese TV and get stuff like GAORU and SkyPerfectTV that would be the deal of the day to get wrestling.

[TRZZXQ]

I am a satisfied customer of www.highspots.com, www.wrestlingemporium.com, and www.prowrestlingtapes.com.

[terrier mask]

Muiyan, u made one mistake. T2P is not a high flyer promotion. There are the "llave" (pronounced yabe, it means key in Spanish) style. Which means that they are submission based wrestlers. They have some of the quirkiest submission maneuvers u could ever see. Technically best?? There are so many great wrestlers in Japan, but I would say Yuji Nagata.

[ShinzakiFan]

Excellent. JTapes looks good, not too expensive. What tapes should I buy, considering I've really never seen a pure puroresu match before? I was a faithful ECW follower until it folded, so I've seen a few puroresu wrestlers, but not many. I'd like to get a tape of AJPW, NJPW, NOAH and Michinoku Pro just to get me started. Could you reccommend a tape from each of those promotions?

[Chris]

I highly recommend Super J cup 94'. You won't regret it.

[terrier mask]

Or even any AJPW from the 90's or anything NJPW. Toryumon and T2P is excellent to get. Last time I checked, Toryumon and T2P never had bad shows.

[Tradewynd]

All Japan-It really depends if you want to see what All Japan has always been or what All Japan has become. If you want to see what King's Road was all about, anything from 1993 is a winner. It was stiff hard hitting King's Road at its best. The 5/1/99 Dome Show is another one I'd recommend. It's a long show, somewhere around 5 hours, you get a Vader vs. Misawa match for the Triple Crown, one of Hayabusa AJ appearances, you can see one of the few times Yoshinari Ogawa didn't totally suck, some comedy matches, there's a little bit of everything. For more recent stuff, they ran a PPV sometime in 2/02 that put them back on the map and was headlined by Mutoh vs. Kawada for the Triple Crown. The 2 Korakuen shows with Goldberg have also been said to be good shows, although Goldberg could ruin the experience for you, especially is you're trying to find out what All Japan is all about.

New Japan-Again, it's if you want to see what it was or what it has become. 1993 was also NJ's best year, so any show from 93 will be a winner. The Super J Cup is one hell of a junior tournament, and the 1994 event is generally looked back on as the best of them. More recently though...I don't know. The 1/4/02 Dome show had a really killer main event, and that would probably be worth the price of admission alone. The 5/2/02 Dome Show featured one of Scott Steiner's recent appearances with New Japan, as well as being one of the few shows that had a ton of workers from other companies on the show. It's cool from a historical standpoint. You can also see how much everyone absolutely HATES Joanie Laurer, and this is after months of Antonio Inoki promoting the hell out of her. If Inoki gave you half the rub he gave Joanie you would be the most over star in the company. The show that Nagata had a time limit draw against Chono from October would also give you a good feel of what New Japan is about today.

Noah-They ran a killer show back in Feb. that was considered the show of the year. I don't remember the title, Naviagation Somethingorother(like that helps, since all NOAH shows are Naviagation somethingorother). It's in the top ten sellers at Jtapes. The GHC History tape is well liked, but it has clipped matches, and I personally hate only being told half(and sometimes not even that much) of the story going on in the middle of the ring. Pretty good though if you want to see all of NOAH's top stars in action though.

M-Pro-For Michinoku, you really have 4 choices. Any of the three commercial tapes from 1996 are winners, and have very little match clipping. There are some really good tape reviews at 411wrestling.com that can give you a lot of info about all of these tapes. The Mask Tournament is another one you can think about, and considering that it's 5 or 6 hours a lot of bang for your buck. Be warned though, it covers the entire round robin tournament, and just about every match on the tape is very heavily clipped. It may give you a feeling of the type of spots you'll see watching M-Pro stuff, but as far as telling a story in the ring, and what Michinoku Pro really stood for at its peak, it tends to come up a little bit short. You just can't fit 60 10+ minute matches on a single tape. If you ever come across an unedited version of the tournament pick it up immediately.

[ShinzakiFan]

Thanks again for all your help.

What is your opinion on the New Japan G-1 Climax 2001 Series bundle that jtapes.com is offering? I've been told the tournament was superb, and the final was something special. I'm very tempted, especially since I'm desperate to see Yuji Nagata and Keiji Mutoh wrestle each other. Is it worth $40?