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5/28/90. Hoshino is awesome, an old dude at this point but full of energy and he had the crowd, great punches, and could play either serious or pissed off, heel or face. There was a misconception that AJPW had comedy and NJPW didn't at this point, but it's just that it didn't make TV.

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Way I see it, what you see in this clip is a clear conscious decision to handle things a certain way, leveraging the fans' understanding of who and what Lex was to achieve a specific purpose. Then the execution of that. It's just that for decades we didn't have a good critical way to frame it.

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This was from basically five months into the Giant's run. It's Luger's first match against him. He takes the Bret bumps in the corner, begs off, flops, sells huge, really doing what he can to stress the size difference and get Giant over. You rarely saw Lex tossed around like this so it stood out.

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Big Daddy's finisher. Imagine being in England in the late 70s/early 80s, and you could just tune in or show up and see this larger than life presence dole out justice with this move, literally crushing bullies and cheats. It's public spectacle. Of course it held the imagination.

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The Choshu vs Chono/Muto/Hashimoto singles matches from late May 90 are really interesting too. Let me know if you want to see the Chono one. That was on a HH that just showed up a few years ago and didn't get a lot of play.

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I've been going through chronologically for a while (and I'll see how the rest of 90 plays out), but this really felt like this was a turning point. To a lesser degree, the Chono/Muto vs Masa Saito/Hashimoto tag title change from a month or two before did as well, but this moreso.

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Week 4 of our journey through the catalogue of Big Daddy to figure out what made him tick in-ring. This week: Akira Maeda, "Banger" and "Crusher", the FA Cup, and a startling conclusion (it will startle you; it startled me). segundacaida.blogspot.com/2026/09/tues...

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(Another mea culpa to old man Muto somewhere in the world for typoing Chono instead of him), but yes. I loved that stumble. It's made even better because he was able to roll to duck the spin wheel kick (it's a bit after the fact but still works) earlier but here he was too broken down.

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Obviously this is Muto vs Hashimoto! Chono's just palling around with Muto since they're tag champs and Muto beat him in the semis. Sasaki got to watch from the back and sulk? Forgive my typo.

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Finish of Chono vs Hashimoto, the finals of the Kyushu Cup on 6/12/90. We hear about the 91 G-1 and we hear about 6/9/90 (Misawa), of course, just three days before this, but you watch the post-match here, really the first time the Musketeers were presented quite like this, and the future was there.

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Matt D - SC @mattd-sc.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Carpentier. Thesz. Headlocks. Pretty much says it all.

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Perhaps Uncle Fred's finest moment.

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Matt D - SC @mattd-sc.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Here's the start to the Kyushu Cup final match between Hashimoto and Muto. Muto had just gone almost thirty with Chono and he knew he had to hit fast and hit hard.

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Watch the end of the clip again!

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For a reason lost to time, WWF decided to start the 5/22/89 episode of Prime Time with Dusty Wolfe vs Barry Horowitz, but man, if someone today strung together the minute of stuff Barry put together here, they'd be my favorite 2026 wrestler. It's so good.

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The great Koji Kitao experiment of 1990 continues in New Japan. I think by June, the fans were starting to warm to him a bit (even if his kicks were still crummy). But what makes this work so well is Vader hyping things up and demanding to face him. Just great work by Vader.

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